STATUS: Filed Petition on 7/31/2026
We, along with California Housing Defense Fund and Californians for Homeownership, have filed a lawsuit against San Francisco for violating the State Transit-Oriented Development Law (“TOD Law”), known as SB 79, and against California HCD for approving San Francisco’s illegal ordinance.
SB 79 allows development projects within certain height, average floor space, and density limits to be built “on any site zoned for residential, mixed, or commercial development” in the areas immediately surrounding high volume transit stops.
It also allows local governments to exempt sites that meet certain criteria from the upzoning provisions of the law. In this case, the City is attempting to use the exemption for the Bayshore, Bayview, and SOMA areas by designating them as “industrial employment hub[s].”
Those areas must meet all of the following requirements:
Contiguous area of at least 250 acres. IEH must be designated in the general Plan on or before January 1, 2025.
The parcels within it shall be primarily dedicated to industrial use
Housing shall not be a permitted use on any of the sites so excluded.
However, none of these three areas meets SB 79’s requirements for that designation because they do allow housing. Excluding the parcels that allow housing, the areas are less than 250 acres.
Furthermore, the City’s Planning Code contains an illegal preemption of the Density Bonus law and fails to meet SB 79’s requirements for an alternative plan.
We ask the court to invalidate the portion of the City’s ordinance that illegally designates areas as exempt from SB 79’s development requirements and to compel HCD to revoke its approval of the City’s ordinance until it is in substantial compliance with the law. We also ask the court invalidate the sections and provisions of the City’s Planning Code that prohibits development projects from using State Density Bonus Law as well as to compel HCD to revoke its approval of the City’s SB 79 alternative plan until it is in substantial compliance with the law. Lastly, we ask the court to declare that HCD has violated the law with its approval of the City’s Alternative Plan.