The city currently maintains roughly 2,800 designated landmarks. The proposal, which emerged alongside a wave of pro-housing state laws that grant developers broader approval rights with reduced public review, would push that number toward 5,600 across a seven-square-mile city. Housing advocates and urban policy observers have been openly skeptical, arguing the timing signals an effort to use preservation law as a shield against new development.

The concern isn't unfounded on its face. San Francisco has a documented history of landmark review being deployed against projects that later survived scrutiny. In at least one prior case, a developer paid $23,000 for a 137-page historical study of a laundromat; the historians concluded it was not historic; the Board of Supervisors voted 11-0 to indefinitely delay the project anyway.

The $700,000 figure is a small line in a multi-billion-dollar city budget, but critics note that the cost of expanded landmark review falls unevenly — primarily on developers and, downstream, on renters. State housing law has grown increasingly hostile to local review mechanisms that slow production, and an aggressive expansion of the landmark inventory could draw legal scrutiny under those statutes.

The proposal has not yet gone to a full Board of Supervisors vote. The Historic Preservation Commission is already reviewing individual properties under the new initiative, including at least one cannabis dispensary.

Watch for: a Board of Supervisors hearing on the funding allocation, any challenge from the state Department of Housing and Community Development, and whether the landmark survey moves faster in neighborhoods with active development pipelines.