• • • Op Ed • • •
YIMBYS Cashing-In on SF’s Neighborhoods
San Francisco’s North Beach is Furious
• • • • • • • • July 2025 • • • • • • • •
Our new mayor, Daniel Lurie, and our new supervisor, Danny Sauter, just can’t wait to upzone North Beach. This historic district, an adored international destination, should have received a historic landmark designation by now, but the politicians we elected make sure it’s put off. Before there are any landmark protections, they will make developers happy building hideous high-rise big boxes we don’t need and, most definitely, don’t want.
San Francisco has, at last official count, 61,000 unaffordable empty rental units, and the City’s iconic skyline suffers from too many of these monstrosities already. They’re mostly empty, as you can tell at night, when so few units light up with signs of life.
Lurie and Sauter have announced that the devastation of North Beach will begin in September. They plan to construct 19-story high-rises that cast long shadows and block views people have enjoyed for well over a century. They will be sore thumbs in a district beloved for its Victorian architecture and old-world charm, and the residents of North Beach are furious.
Citizen committees are gathering to oppose this outrage, and if they can’t stop it, they can at least make sure that the politicians who are foisting it on the neighborhood—and Fisherman’s Wharf, the neighborhood’s outskirts — will go down in the City’s history as the ones who ruined a beautiful, historically significant place. Once built, these unappealing high-rises will be an eyesore forever, a potent reminder to think about and research carefully before voting.
Our elected officials seem to forget that they work for their constituents, not the developer demographic whose campaign financing elects them. No one ever asked the residents of North Beach and the Wharf how they felt about this tasteless invasion. We have codified height limits, but they’re ignored by politicians who seem indifferent to public outcry and do whatever pays off.
and Bay in 1962. Dubbed “buck-teeth
on the bay,” neighborhood activists,
realizing over-sized developments
were coming for their neighborhoods,
organized local community movements.
No more were built.
A high rise was built in Paris 50 years ago, and the public was so enraged that they never built another one and passed laws limiting building heights that have never been violated since.
Although Gavin Newsom demands cities build more housing every year, it’s pointless in a city with 61,000 empty units that people can’t afford.
The City has recently lost a sizeable chunk of its population because of the affordability crisis. According to the Census Bureau, the population in 2024 was an estimated 827,526, but four years earlier, it was about 50,000 more.
World Population Review claims that the real population number for 2025 is 767,968. Many articles have been published recently about big American cities losing population, and this City was often cited as the biggest loser. It was also designated to be #3, more than once, and in nearly every estimate, in the top five.
Losing is an ongoing trend in what was once “everyone’s other favorite city.”
• We lost our cheap rents when the tech industry blew in, which caused us to lose our huge artist community—which produced new forms of art nearly every decade of the 20th century.
• We lost our iconic skyline, thanks to developers with zero creativity, and got a giant phallus downtown.
• We lost a relaxed quality of life when everything got ridiculously overpriced.
• We lost our fabled friendliness when people only paid attention to their cell phones.
• We lost our busy retail downtown and a bustling Financial District in the pandemic.
• And now they want to destroy neighborhoods — beginning with North Beach, with no acceptable rationale. The wrath of the neighborhood’s activists will repay the decision-makers, bringing this blight serious remorse.
If this City hadn’t had four elections last year, the activists of North Beach and the Wharf and representatives of surrounding areas would probably be contemplating recall.
If 61,000 empty options for renters were the objective, we’d be converting all those unused office buildings into housing.”
On July 21, opponents to the mayor’s plan are meeting at Club Fugazi to share outrage and ideas. Among the organizers are North Beach Business Association, the Russian Hill Community Association, Aquatic Park Neighbors, Barbary Coast Neighbors, Middle Polk Neighbors, North Beach Tenants Committee, Pacific Avenue Neighbors, the Upper Chinatown Neighborhood Association and the Lower Nob Hill Neighborhood Alliance. This may also be of interest to people on the west side, who have recently fought plans to put up high rises in their neighborhoods.
San Franciscans and the citizens of Paris showed us that enough opposition counts. Destroying a city’s historic aesthetic should not be allowed, and there’s no indication that creating housing is the end goal of upzoning. If 61,000 empty options for renters were the objective, we’d be converting all those unused office buildings into housing.
July 21, 2025, 6:00 PM
Club Fugazi, 678 Green Street, San Francisco
P Segal is a San Francisco writer and organizer on the board of ArtHouseSF.org.
July 2025
