Bernal Heights Was Left Off San Francisco's New Zoning Map. Two Projects Prove That's Not the Whole Story

Ask most people who follow San Francisco housing policy whether Bernal Heights is open for new multifamily development right now, and the fast answer is no. The neighborhood is barely a square mile of steep streets and century-old cottages, and when the city spent three years drawing its most consequential zoning map in a generation, Bernal ended up on the outside of it.

That answer is true. It is also missing two projects already moving through entitlement in Bernal Heights right now, one of them alone bigger than nearly eight years of the neighborhood's combined housing growth.

The Map That Skipped Bernal, Again

San Francisco's Family Zoning Plan became law when Mayor Daniel Lurie signed it on December 12, 2025, with the ordinances taking effect January 12, 2026. The plan met a state deadline of January 31, 2026, tied to the city's obligation to plan for roughly 82,000 additional housing units by 2031. Its upzoning is concentrated on the north and west sides of the city, along corridors like Van Ness Avenue, Geary Boulevard, and the Sunset and Richmond commercial streets, where height limits are increasing by two to four stories in most spots and far more at a handful of major intersections.

Bernal Heights isn't one of those corridors. A San Francisco Planning Department spokesperson told local reporters as the draft map was being finalized that the neighborhood is "not included in the current draft map, nor will it be part of future maps." That's the second time in roughly twenty years Bernal has been passed over. It was also excluded from the Eastern Neighborhoods rezoning effort in the 2000s and 2010s, a decision that let the area continue building almost nothing while land values climbed around it. From 2015 through 2023, Bernal Heights added a net 48 new housing units, according to the San Francisco Planning Department's Housing Balance Report, one of the lowest totals of any neighborhood in the city over that stretch.

That scarcity has not gone unnoticed by residents. A group called District 9 Neighbors for Housing spent much of 2025 publicly lobbying the mayor and the Planning Department to add Bernal to the citywide map, arguing the neighborhood has the parks, transit, and retail access that would normally qualify it for the same treatment as the Richmond or Sunset. The ask didn't change the outcome. Bernal stayed off the map.

Two Projects That Didn't Wait For The Map

Here's the part that changes the read for anyone evaluating Bernal Heights as a development target: staying off the city's rezoning map has not stopped multifamily housing from moving through entitlement in the neighborhood. Two separate projects are proof, and they got there through two different state law mechanisms that don't ask the city's zoning map for permission.

The hillside project is the more telling of the two, because of how quietly it moved. Developer Rick Bruce had been trying to build on that stretch of steep, empty lots at the southern edge of Bernal for roughly seven years before SB 423 gave him a faster lane through the process. Architect Jeremy Schaub, who designed the three-building layout, walked commissioners through how the project steps down the slope to keep the street-facing height to three stories even though the full structure rises seven. Two commissioners on the panel voiced open skepticism about building on that grade, one telling Bruce and Schaub simply, "Good luck with that slope."

What's more interesting for anyone tracking this market is who didn't know about it. Kathy Angus, spokesperson for the Bernal Heights South Slope Association, the neighborhood group whose name is literally attached to that hillside, told a reporter she had never heard of Bruce's project and wasn't aware of the SB 423 rule changes that were fast-tracking it. That's not a knock on Angus. It's a signal about how these state-law pathways work: they run through the Planning Commission on their own procedural clock, and a project can clear real distance before the neighborhood groups closest to the site even know it exists.

The Safeway redevelopment is a different shape of the same story. Rather than a hillside assemblage, it's a large, flat commercial parcel on Bernal's western edge. Developer Align is using the state's density bonus law to bypass the neighborhood's 40-foot height limit and build to 75 feet, in exchange for setting aside 51 of the proposed 370 units, a little under 14 percent, for very-low and low-income households. That single project, if it moves forward as proposed, would add more than seven and a half times as many units as the entire neighborhood built in the eight years before it.

Why State Law Beats The Local Height Limit

The mechanism worth understanding here isn't specific to Bernal Heights. It's how California's housing statutes are built. A citywide rezoning map like San Francisco's Family Zoning Plan changes what's allowed by right, parcel by parcel, neighborhood by neighborhood, through a public process the city controls. Density bonus law and streamlining statutes like SB 423 work on a completely separate track. They attach to an individual project the moment a sponsor commits to a set share of affordable units, and once that commitment is made, the local zoning map's silence on the neighborhood stops being the deciding factor.

That's the piece that gets lost when a neighborhood is described as "excluded from rezoning." Exclusion from the map answers one question: what a builder can do without offering anything in return. It doesn't answer the question that actually determines whether a site pencils for a developer, which is what a builder can do once they're willing to trade added height and density for a slice of affordable housing. In Bernal Heights right now, both live projects answer that second question, not the first.

The Catch: State Law Shortens The Clock, Not The Scrutiny

None of this means every parcel in Bernal Heights is suddenly a density bonus candidate, and the hillside project is the clearest reminder why. SB 423 sped up Bruce's timeline, but it didn't make the Planning Commission stop asking about slope stability, drainage, or how residents would manage stairs on a steep grade during and after construction. Bruce himself, after years of trying to build on that hillside, described the entitlement process bluntly: "You can't get there from here."

For anyone underwriting a similar site, that's worth sitting with. Bernal's hillside terrain also carries its own disclosure obligations once a project or a home eventually sells. California requires disclosure when a property sits within a state-mapped seismic hazard zone, and hillside parcels in this part of the city are more likely to trigger that requirement than flat ones. A faster entitlement clock does not remove the geotechnical and soils diligence a lender or a future buyer will still want to see.

What This Means If You're Evaluating a Site Here

A few things worth checking before assuming Bernal Heights is either wide open or off limits for a development play:

• Flat versus hillside matters more than the zoning map does. The Safeway parcel's flat, commercial-corridor location made it a more legible density bonus target than the multi-lot hillside assemblage on Porter and Roscoe, even though both are using state law to bypass the same local limits.
• The affordability math has to pencil first. Density bonus and SB 423 both trade height and density for a defined share of income-restricted units. That trade only works if the rest of the project can carry the cost.
• A quiet site is not necessarily an uncontested one. Porter Street moved for years without the neighborhood's own hillside association knowing the details. Don't assume a lack of local chatter means a lack of local interest once plans are filed.
• Confirm the statute is still current when you file. State housing streamlining laws get amended and extended on their own legislative schedule. What applied to a 2025 filing may not describe the exact rules in place when your project reaches the same stage.

A Few Questions Worth Answering Directly

Does being left off the Family Zoning Plan mean Bernal Heights is permanently closed to city-led upzoning? Not permanently, but nothing currently in motion changes it. Planning Department staff have said the neighborhood isn't in the current draft or in future map iterations under this cycle. A future housing element cycle could revisit that, but that's not where things stand today.

Is every large parcel in Bernal Heights a density bonus opportunity? No. Both examples here involved specific site conditions, a large flat commercial lot in one case and a multi-lot hillside assemblage in the other, and a sponsor willing to commit to an affordability set-aside. Size and location still do most of the work.

What should I do before making an offer on a potential development site in Bernal Heights? Bring in a land use attorney or entitlement consultant early, get a read on slope and soils conditions if the site isn't flat, and confirm which specific state statute your project would rely on rather than assuming the citywide zoning map tells the whole story.

If you're looking at Bernal Heights as a redevelopment target, or you already own a site there and want a read on what state law actually allows before you talk to an architect, KJ Kohlmyer has spent two decades working both sides of San Francisco transactions, from retail listings to entitlement-stage projects for repeat developers. Reach out for a valuation on your site or a look at what's currently in the pipeline nearby.