Supervisors hear push to prioritize 100% affordable housing on public land; departments cite funding and infrastructure trade-offs

San Francisco supervisors and city housing officials spent more than three hours Thursday examining how the city uses public land to create affordable housing, with advocates and residents urging the Board to prioritize 100% affordable projects.

Sponsor Supervisor Dean Preston framed the hearing as a response to concerns following the Balboa Reservoir approval, which included both affordable and market‑rate units. "Can we do better?" Preston asked, pressing departments on ways to achieve higher levels of affordability on city‑owned sites and to bring decisions earlier in project development.

Office of Economic and Workforce Development policy staff and the Mayor—s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOCD) described two broad categories of public land: smaller surplus parcels that are good candidates for single‑building, 100% affordable projects and larger, multi‑acre enterprise agency sites that typically require new infrastructure and are more likely to rely on mixed‑income development. Lee Lutensky of OEWD said sites that best fit the 100% affordable model tend to accommodate a single building of roughly five stories and yield about 100–130 units, which aligns with available…