The city’s compliance with the recommendations in the state-manded RHNA (or Regional Housing Needs Assessment) plan would mean tripling its current housing stock by the year 2031. It would also change the socio-economic fabric of the shifting neighborhood schematic, as a total of 85% of all new developments have gone into just seven of San Francisco’s 36 official districts since Gavin Newsome’s first year as mayor in 2005.

“This is the first plan that is treating housing as a right, as a foundation for health and the economy,” planning director Miriam Chion boasted. “We have produced substantial housing around downtown. Now there is a different demand, a different ask, a different requirement, which is to create a different housing footprint of mid-sized and small multi-family housing throughout high-resource neighborhoods.”

The draft report is due to the California Department of Housing & Community Development on April 20th. San Francisco will be looking to avoid the same fate that befell Los Angeles in February when its own plan was summarily rejected by the housing body. State officials are hoping several new projects in the pipeline will provide more than half the required number, although others with knowledge of the city bureaucracy do not share their optimism.

“I don’t think the city can assume it will get away with something that is smoke and mirrors,” UC Davis Law School professor Chris Elmendorf told the Chronicle. “I do think there are some really good things in the housing element. What is puzzling is the combination of the really good and really bad. If you are being realistic about your capacity, why are you making pipeline claims that are so divorced from the historical record?”