NextDoor vs. Reality: What SF's New Upzoning Actually Looks Like

Friday morning, I checked my email and saw this one from NextDoor that said “Red Alert.” I figured something was on fire or there was some big neighborhood emergency.

It was actually a post about zoning changes. Specifically, San Francisco's new Family Zoning Plan (FZP), which took effect in January. The post had nearly a hundred comments, many of them were panicking.

The post was about a specific Coastal Commission hearing. But the comments went exactly where these conversations always go. They warned that it would turn San Francisco into Miami. Some mentioned concerns about parking, transit, character, and greedy developers. So I used the thread as a starting point to look at the whole plan.

I live in the Inner Richmond, and I got curious about what was actually going on and how it would affect the West Side. Because I didn’t know the exact details yet, I didn’t bother arguing in the thread (which obviously didn’t stop everyone else from chiming in).

Instead, I decided to just download the data and see for myself. I pulled the actual zoning changes from SF Planning's public data and built a 3D map. I wanted a visual comparison of what’s here now versus what’s actually being proposed, so I could judge for myself: are we really turning into Miami, or is this just NextDoor being NextDoor?

I also actually walked several of the corridors to see what's already been built, what's in the pipeline, and what's still a parking lot. What I found is that the proposed plan seems….reasonable?

The first argument that was common on the Nextdoor thread was that these buildings would be terrifyingly tall.

The Ocean Beach Safeway goes from 40 feet to 65 feet under the Family Zoning Plan. With the state density bonus, the actual proposal is about 85 feet. A typical Edwardian in the Richmond is 30-35 feet, so this is roughly 2.5x that height. Taller, but not exactly a Miami skyscraper.

Another commenter warned that 85-foot apartments would "block Sunset sky views for dozens of blocks." I walked to the Safeway and looked. There's already a condo complex between the Safeway and the ocean: the Ocean Beach Condominiums. They were built in the 1980s and are about 3-4 stories. The Safeway proposal would be taller, but the idea that this block is some untouched view is hard to square with the multi-story residential building that's already there, closer to the water.

The "Miami" comparison doesn’t hold up either. I looked up how tall the most iconic beachfront residential towers in Miami are. They are the Porsche Design Tower (641 ft), Estates at Acqualina (673 ft), and Bentley Residences (749 ft). An 85 foot development is not in the same ballpark.

You know what IS close to 85 feet? The current height limit in central Paris is 121 feet. Paris allows buildings 40% taller than what the commentors on NextDoor are calling a monstrosity. And notice that people always invoke Miami in these arguments. It's never Paris or Chicago. They pick the city where "tall buildings" carries a connotation of tackiness and excess.

Everywhere? If you look at the map, the upzoning (in orange) follows the major bus lines. Geary and Fulton got the big bumps, because that's where the 38 and the 5 run. Balboa, Clement, and California got much less. The plan puts the most density where the most transit already is. Most of the west side (in gray) is completely unchanged.

One of the most common concerns in these discussions is that new development will destroy the character of the neighborhood. That's a fair thing to worry about. But let's look at some examples of what's actually on some of these parcels and who's building on them.

Ocean Beach Safeway (85 feet). This is proposed to become 526 apartments, 68 affordable, with a replacement Safeway on the ground floor and 416 parking spaces across three underground levels (266 for residents, 150 for shoppers). For the people worried about parking: this proposal has more parking than the current surface lot.

3rd Ave and Geary / Burger King. A franchise owner filed plans to add 9 apartments above his own Burger King. I walk by this intersection all of the time. It’s not exactly the most beautiful corner.

Below is a rendering from sfplanning.org of 3rd and Geary (you can see Ireland’s 32 in there, which is next to the Burger King).

And at 2800 Geary, right next to the Target, an abandoned auto shop is becoming 49 apartments. The developer recently filed plans to utilize the new density bonuses created by the Family Zoning Plan. By using this plan, they are allowed to build a taller, 7-story building.

How does a developer actually get additional height for a building? Under city planning rules, developers only get the density bonus if they successfully meet the city's strict baseline mandates.

First, they must build family-sized units, which the city defines as apartments with two or more bedrooms. For example, out of the 49 units proposed at 2800 Geary, 25 of them (over 50%) will be 2 and 3 bedroom family units.

Second, they are mandated to contribute to the city's affordable housing supply. This is deed-restricted housing for lower to moderate-income households where housing costs are strictly capped at 30% of their gross income. If a developer doesn't include these family layouts and affordability contributions, they don't get the bonus height.

If you want to know what 85 feet looks like in San Francisco right now, you can go see it. Below are a few new constructions I found in the area.

383 Sixth Avenue (Inner Richmond). This opened November 2025 on the site of a vacant funeral home. It’s seven stories, and has 98 units of affordable senior housing: 20 for seniors exiting homelessness, 20 for veterans, the rest for low-income seniors. And it’s built by a nonprofit, not greedy developers.

Honestly the building is a little boring. That said, Google Street View has a feature that lets you see what it looked like in previous years, and the funeral home that was there before wasn’t exactly stunning.

730 Stanyan (Haight-Ashbury) replaced the old McDonald's. This one is eight stories, 160 units of affordable housing, and is the same height as the Safeway proposal. It is designed by OMA, a prize-winning firm. I don’t think it looks that exciting either, but I used to live near that McDonald’s, and I think this is an improvement.

The Alexandria Theater (5400 Geary). This theater has been vacant for 22 years. Building permits are under review for an 83-unit conversion preserving the marquee. This will be 83% family-sized units.

These buildings are all roughly the same height. They might not be exactly what you wanted, but they are housing and clearly better than what was there before.

Every parcel we have discussed so far was a parking lot, a fast food restaurant, a vacant storefront, or an abandoned auto shop. Nobody tore down the Painted Ladies. The zoning simply determines the size of the box, and the city's baseline mandates dictate the mix of units inside. The community still gets a voice during design review to shape how the outside looks. This includes things like the facade, the materials, and the streetscape. But if a developer follows the objective rules, the building gets built. The era of a few neighbors being able to veto a code-compliant housing project over subjective complaints is over.

I personally think the height panic is overblown. One concern though, is that the Richmond doesn't have a subway, it has the 38 bus, and getting downtown takes 45+ minutes. Adding density without rail is a real tension. New buildings may also include less parking than neighbors expect. There are legitimate concerns about the infrastructure.

The city is betting that density will force the transit improvements Geary has been promised since the 1960s. Whether that bet pays off is a bigger question than one article can answer and is something we’ll write about in the future.

But based on what I found this week, the plan is not to turn San Francisco into Miami. It's a handful of transit corridors getting modest height bumps, mostly on parcels that are currently parking lots and fast food restaurants. The “Red Alert” is a false alarm.

If you want to explore the data yourself, I built an interactive 3D map where you can click any block in SF and see its base height, its new height under the Family Zoning Plan, and the difference. You can also toggle between the actual plan, "Paris rules" and "Miami rules" to see for yourself how the rhetoric compares to the reality. The code behind all of this is open source on GitHub.

This is Ashley and Larry. We write FoglineSF, a newsletter about San Francisco's western neighborhoods. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox.