Low-Density “Donut Hole” Riles San Francisco Neighborhood

Glen Park residents are asking why their neighborhood was left out of the tracts most likely to be upzoned in the current version of San Francisco’s Housing Element, an eight-year plan to build 82,000 new units in the city, which came back before the Planning Commission this week.

Upzoning refers to the practice of rezoning areas to allow more housing, particularly multifamily development. And while single-family neighborhoods often oppose the density-promoting change, many Glen Park residents would welcome it.

Of the 37 letters submitted to the Planning Department between Oct. 6 and Oct. 14 commenting on the housing element, 23 were from Glen Park residents. Another dozen at least have been sent since then, according to Mike Schiraldi, an SF YIMBY member and Glen Park resident who organized the letter-writing campaign through his Glen Park Urbanists mailing list, which has 220 “pro-housing, pro-walking/biking/transit, pro-walkable-neighborhood folks who live in and around Glen Park,” he said.

When the draft housing element came out, Schiraldi said that he could see that the idea was to upzone the western half of the city to match the higher density already allowed in the eastern half. But when he looked closer, he saw that half of his neighborhood, the “Fairmount Tract” close to St. Mary’s Park, was not considered a “high resource area” and therefore not prioritized for upzoning.

Schiraldi said the omission created a low-density “donut hole” in the midst of the surrounding upzoning. Other than a higher environmental cleanup score caused by one former dry cleaner, he couldn’t find any reason for excluding the community, which has its own BART stop, well-regarded public elementary school, busy retail and restaurant strip on Chenery Street, and a near ban on new apartment buildings that has held since the 1970s.

“It’s exactly the kind of neighborhood screaming to have its exclusionary zoning repealed,” he said. “I live within its boundaries, a block away from a billionaire’s pair of houses and a block away from BMR townhouses built before the ban. I’m very much in touch with the zeitgeist of the community, and I know it would welcome increased diversity, with fewer $5 million single-family house remodels and more multifamily housing built with regular folks in mind.”

Even though Schiraldi is deeply connected to his community, he said even he was taken aback by the robust letter-writing response from his neighbors.

“It’s always hard to tell when people will be motivated to actually go out and send a message,” he said. “People are busy, or shy, and that doesn’t always translate into sending letters.”

The campaign caught the attention of several Planning Commission members, who referenced the letters at an informational session on the housing element this week. When the Planning Department response was that the omission would be examined more fully during rezoning discussions after they hope to have a compliant housing element completed in January, Planning Commission President Rachael Tanner told Glen Park residents to “stay tuned and keep advocating for that part of the neighborhood.”

Schiraldi said that ideally the tract will be included in the Housing Element so he and his neighbors won’t have to wait out the upzoning process, which could take three years if the city gets its element approved in time or one year if it does not. Even if it ends up being left out, he will be happy if the Planning Department can better explain the reasons why.

“All I can ask is they take a real look at the situation and if they still decide to exclude the neighborhood, it will be an explicit decision and not just an oversight,” he said.