San Francisco mayor fails to block bill restricting housing in wildly expensive city

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed admitted temporary defeat Tuesday after she tried and failed to veto a city housing bill.

The bill "will enact housing density controls for most developments in the Jackson Square Historic District, the Jackson Square Historic District Extension and the Northeast Waterfront Historic District," according to The San Francisco Standard. However, the proposal notes, "Projects under the city’s office-to-residential conversion program are exempt from the new rule."

"The vote was 8-3, with Supervisors Myrna Melgar, Joel Engardio and Matt Dorsey siding with the mayor," the outlet reported. "Breed and her supporters could not convince an additional supervisor to dissent, which would have kept her veto in place."

"This is not only well considered but recommended by our Planning Department," San Francisco Board of Supervisors Aaron Peskin reportedly said. "This is not a policy discussion. This is a political discussion."

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San Francisco Mayor Breed admitted temporary defeat Tuesday after she tried and failed to veto a housing bill. (Getty Images)

"The narrow legislation is modest in its scope," Supervisor Ahsha Safaí said. "We have to preserve the character and history of our city."

Breed responded to the passage of the bill in a post on X. 

"Today is a setback in our work to get to yes on housing," she wrote Tuesday evening. "But I will not let this be the first step in a dangerous course correction back towards being a city of no. We will not move backward."   

"Change is hard," Breed wrote in a statement to the press on the housing bill. "There are those who say they want to see change, and yet when the proposals come, they will say not here, not this way. But we will never address our housing shortage without bold and sustained action – and real solutions. Our current housing shortage is the result of decades of bad policy decisions and inaction, and it will take years of consistent and relentless work to make the necessary change to get more housing built." 

Breed said that she was proud of the work that San Francisco has made in lowering "housing fees, remov[ing] housing barriers, creat[ing] new funding, and reform[ing] city permitting." 

Peskin's chief of staff shared a statement with Fox News Digital concerning the defeat of Breed's veto. 

"Today the Board of Supervisors proved that the city can be both pro-housing and pro-neighborhood. The Mayor's Political and unprofessional veto of legislation that her Planning Director and Planning Commissioners recommended has been overridden by common sense," Peskin said in the statement. 

"The politically-motivated and completely untrue rhetoric that this legislation is somehow ‘anti-housing’ is patently false," the statement continues. "Developers will still be able to build bigger and higher – but they won’t be able to demolish buildings on certain blocks and replace them with towers that are the same height as Telegraph Hill itself."

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Breed said that she was proud of the work that San Francisco has made in lowering "housing fees, remov[ing] housing barriers, creat[ing] new funding, and reform[ing] city permitting."  (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

San Francisco is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country and a recent survey found that even earning a six-figure income or higher would still be considered "lower middle class" in the northern California city.  

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In addition, San Francisco has been suffering from a rampant homelessness crisis.