SAN FRANCISCO, Kalifornia (PNN) - September 30, 2025 - After small businesses became frustrated with San Francisco permitting laws, a district supervisor has stood up to try and strike it down.
His proposed ordinance - filed after a dozen small business owners reached out to explain they were being harangued by regulations - would remove the “prior use” requirement, as well as those preventing businesses from uniting storefronts and moving into adjacent, empty spaces.
The story began as CBS News found it, in the hills of southern India, of all places.
Himanshu Bhaisare and his wife Milana Ram sell coffee beans from her family farm in a lovely hilly area of Karnataka ten thousand miles away in the farmer’s markets of San Francisco.
They rent time at a roastery in Berkeley, but their passion for the coffee of India saw them locate an old drycleaners on Lombard Street near to their home, and plan to convert it into a roastery and cafe.
Just as they arrived on the last dot of the dotted line of a lease agreement, there was a problem. The property contained a “prior use” requirement, which necessitates future owners to use the building as it was already permitted.
“I went to two or three more offices in the same department asking, ‘Is this really true?’ Because it made no sense to me,” Bhaisare told CBS Bay Area.
“It’s things like that that are really frustrating, especially when we have someone who wants to bring their business to San Francisco and we have all these barriers that are preventing them from opening up,” said Danny Sauter, SF’s District 3 supervisor, and author of a bill that will be up for consideration early in October that would remove the prior use requirement and other stifling regulations.
“We’ve already had about a dozen different small business owners reach out to us and tell us that without this legislation they could literally not open what they want to open.”
What CBS News didn’t follow through on were some of the other ways Sauter was tackling overburdensome regulations. To name those they forgot to mention, it’s illegal in the neighborhood of Knob Hill to open a business in the arts, such as a dance studio. It’s illegal on Polk Street to open medical businesses such as a dentistry practice or acupuncture clinic.
It’s also illegal to open two businesses under a single roof, and how does that make any sense when the only thing better than a friend to have a coffee with is a new book? Perhaps bought at a bookstore?
Ram is hopeful the bill will be passed with support from so many small business owners and prospective owners, and that Lombard Street and the surroundings can taste true Indian quality coffee.
