San Francisco meets key housing deadline

San Francisco's state-mandated plan to build more housing units is done, but now the city has to build them.

State of play: San Francisco supervisors gave the city's housing element final approval yesterday, which was followed by Mayor London Breed signing and submitting the plan to the state.

• California officially certified the plan yesterday morning, Gov. Gavin Newsom's office said in a press release.
• The plan requires SF to create more than 82,000 new housing units over the next eight years. It also mandates that nearly 46,600 of those units be for low- and moderate-income households.

Why it matters: San Francisco desperately needs more housing to meet demand. Without this plan, the city was at risk of losing tens of millions of dollars in state grant funding for affordable housing and transportation projects, as well as forfeiting local control over zoning laws.

What they're saying: Approval of the plan was "just the first step," Breed said in a press release.

• "Now we need to do the work to remove the barriers that obstruct new homes from being built quickly across our entire city."

Between the lines: City supervisors have expressed concern about how San Francisco will meet its goals, especially those concerning affordable housing.

• "The part that people don't want to talk about is that we're setting affordable housing goals that everyone knows we're not going to meet," San Francisco District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston previously told Axios.

What to watch: How the city addresses the zoning, permitting and affordable housing challenges that stand in the way of reaching these new housing goals.