Small group of people sitting and standing around a table pointing at a map
Credit: SF Planning

Activating Community Priorities

Part of the Housing for All initiative

Collaborate with Equity Communities and Cultural Districts to address housing needs. Use a people-centered and capacity building-approach for long-term engagement.

To meet the needs of the City's diverse and historically marginalized communities, SF Planning is committed to advancing the Housing Element through: 

  1. Recognizing the right to housing as a foundation for health, and social and economic well-being.

  2. Repairing the harms of racial and ethnic discrimination against American Indian, Black, and other people of color.

  3. Fostering racially and socially inclusive neighborhoods through equitable distribution of investment and growth.

  4. Providing sufficient housing for existing residents and future generations for a city with diverse cultures, family structures, and abilities.

  5. Promoting neighborhoods that are well-connected, healthy, and rich with community culture.

With a people-centered approach, SF Planning will partner with Equity Communities, Cultural Districts, and City agencies to build community capacity. This public participation process will encourage community planning and self-determination that celebrates and strengthens the unique cultural and ethnic identity of San Francisco's communities.

Resources will be updated as materials become available.

Please continue to check for updates.

The desired outcomes of this project are:

  1. Broaden community awareness of the Housing Element and its community-identified housing priorities.

  2. Support community planning by engaging Equity Community voices and community organizations.

  3. Foster community self-determination through collaboration on implementation of housing policies, programs, and projects.

The department will support community-led discussions to prioritize implementation actions. To build understanding and reduce obstacles to action, additional sister-agencies will help assess feasibility and needed support, including:

Some implementation strategies may require legislation and Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors consideration.

What is an Equity Community?

 A community (or communities) are groups in focus and uplifted for resources, policies, services to address their experience in social and health inequities or has been/is chronically underserved by systems and institutions and has been or continues to be marginalized due to poverty, structural racism, or other factors.

Equity populations include but are not limited to, American Indian, Black and other people of color; low-income communities; recent immigrant and refugee communities; LGBTQIA communities; people whose first language is not English; and returning citizens who were previously incarcerated.

Partnering with Communities

SF Planning is partnering with following communities:

  • American Indian

  • Mission

  • Sunset

  • Bayview

  • Fillmore/Western Addition

  • SoMa

  • Japantown

  • Tenderloin

 

Map of San Francisco highlighting partnering neighborhoods

Map of Equity Communities partnering with SF Planning during the first phase of the "Activating Community Priorities" Housing Element Implementation Work Area. Click on map to enlarge.

SF Planning will identify strategies in phases to support community-driven planning in achieving the City's housing, economic and land use priorities.

Phase Details
Spring 2023 Engage and raise awareness of the Housing Element and its community-identified housing priorities. Support community-led policy and strategy discussions to prioritize implementation actions.
Summer 2023 Uplift the already adopted community-identified priorities with public capacity-building materials and resources.
Fall 2023 Coordination and communication with sister-agencies to assess needed resources and feasibility.

The timeline is subject to change, please continue to check for the latest updates.