San Francisco has built fewer homes this year than any year since the Great Recession.
Developers in the city completed 1,205 homes year-to-date — less than half of the 2,593 homes built last year and less than the nearly 1,300 homes produced in 2011 and 2012 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The number of homes constructed in San Francisco this year dwarf the number homes built in the boom years of 2016-2021, when developers completed 4,500 to 5,250 units.
The dearth in construction makes the city likely to fail in meeting its state-mandated goal of building 82,000 homes by 2031.
Now two years into its eight-year cycle, San Francisco has completed 4.4 percent of its Regional Housing Needs Allocation goal.
To meet the goal, the city would have to average 13,000 units a year over the next six years. This year, its more than 1,200 homes include 600 affordable units. There are 4,792 units under construction, of which 2,210 are affordable.
At the same time, developers are preparing to build more housing, according to the Chronicle.
And with lower interest rates and a revitalized Downtown market, San Francisco could go from sitting in doldrums to a frothy bow wave of building homes.
This year, city housing officials have created enhanced infrastructure financing districts to allow builders to borrow money against future tax revenue to expand streets and utilities.
A district was created at the 2,600-unit Potrero Power Station, where the first 105-unit affordable complex has broken ground. New infrastructure has allowed 537 units to be completed at Mission Rock, and 1,000 homes being built on Treasure Island.
Infrastructure work will spur 1,525 homes at India Basin, with site preparation slated to start next year. A first phase of 282 affordable apartments is also expected to start at Balboa Reservoir, with plans for 1,100 homes.
The city is in talks with Prado Group, the developer of 3333 and 3700 California Street in Laurel Heights, about creating an EIFD, Judson True, director of housing delivery for Mayor London Breed, told the Chronicle. The two projects would add up to a combined 1,236 homes.
Multiphase projects, from Pier 70 to Potrero Power Station to Treasure Island to Candlestick Point, would result in 38,000 of the 72,000 units in the city’s development pipeline.
“The table is set to create vibrant new neighborhoods and build thousands of homes as economic conditions improve,” True told the Chronicle. “We’re much better at helping get the infrastructure built, which has been a major impediment in the past.”
Next year, the city is required by the state to rezone parts of the city to allow multifamily housing in neighborhoods that have traditionally not seen construction, including the Marina, Cow Hollow, West Portal and the Sunset and Richmond districts.
Some 800 construction trades specialists are unemployed.
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Rudy Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, said multifamily developers are winning the approvals needed to add homes to already entitled but delayed housing projects, which should help make them financially feasible.
“That is not people doing it for fun, they are doing it because it’s the only way projects have a chance of working right now,” Gonzalez told the Chronicle. “Multifamily is going to pencil when it pencils.”
— Dana Bartholomew