Community Urges Supervisors to Protect Tenants, Support Small Businesses, Prioritize Truly Affordable Housing
PRESS RELEASE for Monday, November 3, 2025
San Francisco, CA – Today at City Hall, the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition (REP-SF) and our allies are delivering public comment in support of truly affordable housing at the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use Committee hearing about Mayor Lurie’s dangerous upzoning plan. Tenant advocates, small business owners, affordable housing groups, labor, and families have been sounding the alarm about Mayor Lurie’s upzoning plan, which, if passed, will increase speculation and accelerate the displacement of tenants and small businesses across the city.
Our communities strongly support Supervisor Connie Chan’s and Supervisor Chyanne Chen's proposed amendments to the upzoning plan, which focus on protecting tenants, supporting small businesses, and prioritizing truly affordable housing. We urge the Board’s Land Use Committee to move these critical amendments forward.
REP-SF is demanding that there be a hearing on the upzoning, with the Board of Supervisors sitting as a Committee of the Whole, to allow members of the public the opportunity to speak in front of the full Board on these citywide changes.
“REP-SF strongly opposes Mayor Lurie’s upzoning plan, which does not serve families, will make rent more expensive, will increase the displacement of tenants and small businesses, and will make it impossible for San Francisco to develop the affordable housing we desperately need. We urge the Board’s Land Use Committee to reject the Mayor’s displacement plan, and instead invest in a real community plan that protects tenants, supports small businesses, and focuses on truly affordable housing for families, seniors, and working people,” said Jeantelle Laberinto of the REP-SF coalition. “We appreciate Supervisors Chan and Chen's leadership in introducing critical amendments to strengthen tenant protections, prioritize affordable housing, support small businesses, create real family-sized housing, and ensure sustainable, affordable development.”
“If we don't exempt all rent-controlled buildings from upzoning, we are putting a target on the head of every tenant who calls those units home, and we would be asking investors to bring in a wave of displacement worse than the city has seen in the last 50 years,” said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, Director of Policy and Campaigns for Housing Rights Committee of SF, a member of REP-SF and SFADC. “Tenant groups are asking for the City to exempt all rent-controlled housing from its upzoning plan and to pass tenant protections in buildings covered by the state upzoning. Tenant groups continue to pressure state politicians to expand protections of tenants under upzoning, including removing the Ellis Act.”
“The Mayor’s upzoning plan creates new threats to small businesses that are already struggling to survive. It marks our businesses for demolition, and it will incentivize the development of overpriced luxury housing that will be unaffordable for small business owners and workers,” said Justin Dolezal, co-founder of Small Business Forward, a member of REP-SF. “We strongly support Supervisor Chan’s proposed amendment to require developers to pay impact fees, including a nexus study that will allow us to require developers to pay into a small business relocation assistance fund for displaced commercial tenants.”
“Despite the plan being called the ‘Family Zoning Plan,’ it does not have the interest, nor the input, of our youth and working families in mind. The Mayor uses youth and families as a cover, while planning to price us out and demolish our rent-controlled homes, while prioritizing market-rate development over affordable housing for low-income families,” said Emily Mock, lead youth organizer at the Chinese Progressive Association, a member of REP-SF.
City Economist Ted Egan’s new report is full of faulty assumptions. There is NO discussion about how public investment would immediately result in housing production. Egan’s report calls for the same old supply-side, trickle-down economics, which falsely claim that building more housing will lower housing prices. Egan's report shows that even if prices do fall, price reductions will be so slight, they will be barely noticeable for those currently struggling to afford the high price of housing.
REP-SF member People Power Media’s report tells a much different story – one that is based in fact – but doesn't fit the mainstream media’s or the YIMBYs’ intentions. People Power Media’s report shows clearly how market-rate development is failing our communities and deepening inequality in San Francisco. During the last Housing Element cycle from 2015–2022, the City overwhelmingly built market-rate housing unaffordable to its essential workers, low-income residents, and communities of color. This report affirms what our advocacy has always said: the housing crisis is not about a lack of housing supply – it’s about a lack of affordable housing. San Francisco is building for profit, not for people. We need immediate action from City leaders to prioritize real affordable housing that meets the needs of our communities.
For more information, please read REP-SF’s Sept. 4 letter to Mayor Lurie, the Board of Supervisors, and the Planning Commission. Read REP-SF’s Advocacy Platform to learn more about our community solutions.
