High-Rise Sprinkler Mandate Delay Advances After 50-Plus Residents Plead for Relief

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Land Use and Transportation Committee spent nearly two hours hearing from residents overwhelmingly opposed to the city's first-in-the-nation residential high-rise sprinkler retrofit mandate before voting to push back the first compliance deadline by five years — a move sponsors and residents alike acknowledged is not enough.

• High-rise sprinkler retrofit deadline extended from 2027 to 2032 as 50-plus residents call the mandate unaffordable, displacing, and unprecedented nationwide

• 25 District 8 properties advance toward historic landmark status under the Family Zoning Plan, with Board President Mandelman warning CEQA can no longer protect historic buildings

• Parklet program overhauled to drop unworkable operating-hour and public seating mandates

• Adaptive reuse ordinance for historic buildings approved with Mission neighborhood protections preserved after community collaboration

The committee's longest and most contentious item — consuming roughly two hours of testimony and debate — was the adoption of the 2025 San Francisco Fire Code, which carries forward a 2022 mandate requiring automatic sprinkler retrofits in existing residential high-rises above 75–120 feet. The mandate affects 143 buildings and an estimated 9,800–26,000 residents.