Environmental Justice Framework and General Plan Policies

What is the San Francisco General Plan?
The General Plan provides a comprehensive set of objectives and policies that influence how we live, work, and move about, as well as the quality and character of the City. The General Plan reflects community values and priorities through its public adoption process, ensuring both private development and public action conform to this vision. The General Plan helps shape our daily lives, respond to today’s big challenges, and lead us to a more equitable, sustainable, and healthy future that enables all San Franciscans to thrive.

What is the Environmental Justice Framework?
The Environmental Justice (EJ) Framework will provide an overarching vision and a set of policies to be incorporated into the City’s General Plan. The first such policies will be found in the Safety and Resilience, Housing, Transportation Elements, which are currently undergoing updates. It will also include guidance to City agencies and other stakeholders on how they can address environmental justice in their work. The EJ Framework is intended to fulfill the requirements of SB 1000, as well as directives by the Planning Commission and Historic Preservation Commission to address racial & social equity.

What is Environmental Justice? How is environmental justice related to racial and social equity?
We define environmental justice as the equitable distribution of environmental benefits (such as clean air and water, parks, affordable housing, transportation, and other public services) and environmental burdens (such as pollution, heavy traffic, and crime) to promote healthy communities where all San Franciscans can thrive. Government can foster environmental justice through processes that amend past injustices while creating proactive, community-led solutions for the future.

Similarly, the concept of environmental racism recognizes that the burdens of environmental justice are often felt most keenly in American Indian, Black, and other communities of color. This is due in part to a long history of policies and actions that have resulted in discrimination, segregation, and racism. Studies have shown that people of color are more likely to face higher exposure to environmental hazards – for example, at the national level, the US EPA found that Black residents are exposed to 50% more air pollution than white residents.¹

Many people of color and low-income communities also have less access to resources that can support their health and wellbeing, such as healthy food, affordable housing, good schools, and parks. These conditions may contribute to wide disparities in health outcomes by race, neighborhood, and income. For example, life expectancy for Black San Francisco residents is 10 years less than for white residents (72 years vs. 82 years).²

Similarly, amongst San Francisco high schoolers, Latinx students are 1.6x more likely and Black students are 2x more likely to have asthma than white students. COVID-19 has also magnified these racial inequities, with Latinx, Pacific Islander, and American Indian residents facing the City’s highest rates of COVID-19 infections.³

What will the Environmental Justice Framework do – and not do?
The Environmental Justice Framework will develop policy priorities and identify implementation measures that will influence how the City advances health in communities of color and low-income communities that face higher pollution and other health risks. These strategies will be developed in collaboration with leaders from the communities most impacted by environmental injustices, targeting neighborhoods identified in the draft EJ Communities Map (see next question for more details).

While the Framework does not directly create new programming or funding resources, it guides and promotes the development of action plans that will advance our Environmental Justice goals, such as City agencies’ Racial Equity Action Plans and related programs (such as the environmental justice programs at San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and San Francisco Department of the Environment, among others).

What is the draft Environmental Justice (EJ) Communities Map?
The draft Environmental Justice Communities Map identifies areas of San Francisco that have higher pollution and are predominately low-income, such as (but not limited to): Bayview Hunters Point, South of Market, Tenderloin, Chinatown, Visitacion Valley, Potrero Hill, Treasure Island, and Mission neighborhoods.

This map is based on CalEnviroScreen, a tool created by CalEPA and OEHHA that maps California communities that are most affected by pollution and other health risks. The draft EJ Communities Map includes additional local data on pollution and demographics. The map is being refined during the community engagement process based on public feedback.

The map will be used to identify neighborhoods that the City should prioritize for policies and programs to address environmental justice and health. The City is working to create an interactive version of the map that will include more data and information on other related topics (such as housing, transportation, parks and recreation facilities, and other public services).

• ¹ SF.gov: COVID-19 Data and Reports
• ² RaceCounts.org: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, County Health Rankings (2018-2020)
• ³ SF.gov: COVID-19 Data and Reports