SF News Massive Hilton Hotel Near Union Square Could Become Housing, After Sale Goes Through San Francisco's largest hotel, which is also one of the country's largest hotels outside of Las Vegas, the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, is headed for auction. And there are some hints that a buyer could convert it into apartment housing.
SF News Judge Strikes Down SF’s ‘Empty Homes Tax’ After Property Owners Sued Though San Francisco voters approved the residential vacancy tax known popularly as the “Empty Homes Tax” in 2022, the landlords lawyered up, and that tax on vacant rental units was just tossed out by an SF Superior Court judge.
SF News Here Is the Affordable Housing Project Slated to Rise on the Site of Oakland’s Ghost Ship Fire Nearly eight years after the Ghost Ship fire killed 36 people, we have our first look at the plans for the two-building, five-story affordable housing complex being built to replace it in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, and it will have an on-site memorial.
SF News A New Group of Silicon Valley Techies Are Now Trying to Build A North Bay Village The project, named Esmeralda, says it is completely separate from the similar "California Forever" proposal from Solano County.
SF News SF Billionaire's 17-Story Condo Proposal Appears Dead In the Water, Which Partly Explains His Feud With Aaron Peskin SF Standard owner Michael Moritz trashed Supervisor Aaron Peskin in the NY Times yesterday. Today we get some insight into why, as a Telegraph Hill condo project Moritz is backing just had its applications canceled, though mostly because of a missed deadline.
SF News Breed Proposes Yet Another Incentive to Convert Offices to Housing, as No One’s Been Jumping on Previous Incentives Mayor Breed is pushing a new proposal to eliminate an estimated $70,000 and $90,000 per unit in costs to convert downtown office space to housing, as developers aren’t really biting on previous conversion incentives.
SF Politics $20 Billion Bay Area Affordable Housing Bond Killed Off at Last Minute, As It Seemed Unlikely to Pass What would have been the biggest housing bond in California history has already been yanked off the ballot three months before the election, and Bay Area voters will not be voting on a $20 billion affordable housing bond in November’s elections.
SF News SF Forced by State to Streamline Housing Approvals After Missing 2023 Production Goals State Senator Scott Wiener’s bill intended to eliminate reviews and challenges to housing proposals has now done just that, as the state just forced San Francisco to streamline approvals and massively speed up housing production.
SF News Project to Redevelop Divisadero Car Wash Site Looks Alive Again, With 203-Unit Building Proposed The same day that we hear about signs of life at a large residential project at Van Ness and Market, another long-stalled, presumed-dead development project on Divisadero appears to be stirring awake as well.
SF Politics State Auditors Step Into Housing Element Mandate Mess, Question Whether Regulators are Doing Enough to Help Cities California cities are scrambling to comply with state-mandated housing element goals, and they may be scrambling too hard, as a state committee is going to audit whether the goals are too demanding and the penalties too harsh.
SF News Some Anonymous Donor Just Gave $100 Million to Build Affordable Housing for Artists on Market Street We may be losing the McRoskey Mattress store at Market and Gough streets, but we’d be getting about 100 affordable housing units for artists in a slick new building, thanks to a cool $100 million from an anonymous benefactor.
SF News Latest, Greatest Version of Ambitious Stonestown Development Gets Approval, With Even More Housing The grandiose plan to turn Stonestown Galleria and its parking lot into a vibrant housing village with new parks was approved by the SF Planning Commission, and it’s been souped up from 2,900 housing units to now 3,500 units.
SF News Infamous Nordstrom Parking Lot Will Remain a Parking Lot Five More Years, City Hall Not Happy About It The notoriously rejected 27-story residential tower in a SoMa parking lot had its Plan B version approved, but now the developer is putting the project on ice, and a highly frustrated Planning Commission approved letting it remain a parking lot for another five years.
SF News Report: More Than 80% of Middle-Income 'Below Market Rate’ Housing Units Sitting Vacant In SF, Partly Thanks to Red Tape It’s great that San Francisco developers are given incentives to set aside housing for middle-income families that can’t afford the pricier units. It’s not so great that a large percentage of these units are sitting empty because of bureaucracy and the state of the housing market.
SF News Ambitious Potrero Bus Yard Affordable Housing Project Might Get Slashed From 500 Units to 100 Units As the SFMTA proceeds with their grand plan to modernize the 109-year-old Potrero Yard bus facility and build 500 units of affordable housing on top of it, we receive word that they may reduce that affordable housing component to barely 100 units.
SF Politics Supervisors Override Breed’s Veto of Peskin’s Density Limit Legislation, In Big Win for Peskin With two supervisors likely running for mayor, the SF Board of Supervisors flexed a supermajority and shot down Mayor Breed’s veto of their measure to limit large towers along parts of the city’s northern waterfront.
SF News SF’s Former Biggest Landlord Veritas, Now Defaulting to the Tune of $1 Billion, Selling 762 More SF Apartments The local downfall of SF’s one-time biggest residential landlord Veritas Investments continues unabated, as they’re selling off more San Francisco properties, this time 23 buildings with 762 rent-controlled apartments.
SF News Long-Vacant Mid-Market Condo Building Gets City Hall OK To Switch to Apartments Instead Mohammed Nuru bribery complications left a 12-story, 109-unit residential building empty for nearly three years, but that building known as The Oak just got the OK to convert from condos to apartments under a new owner who does not have any bribery charges.
SF News Concord Is On Track to Get Rent Control, More Bay Area Cities May Follow Rent control is going beyond Oakland and San Francisco, as Concord is on the verge of implementing it, and a handful of other Bay Area cities also have rent control ballot measures in the works.
SF News Former Mission-Bernal Big Lots Slated to Become 70 Units of Affordable Senior Housing The big lot that used to house Big Lots on Mission Street may soon be home to an affordable senior housing complex, from the same nonprofit that’s rebuilding the burnt remains of the 3300 Club across the street.
SF News This Market Street Office Building Is Slated to Become 120 Apartments By Next Year An office-to-residential conversion, the second major one to move forward on Market Street, is in the works at 785 Market, a.k.a. the Humboldt Bank Building, and the developer has plans to turn the building into 120 apartments for middle-income residents.
SF News Fillmore Safeway to Close to Make Way for Housing, Depriving Neighborhood of Its Only Grocery Store A long troubled but still very active and popular Safeway location in the Fillmore neighborhood is slated to close in early March, with the site being sold to a residential developer.
SF Politics Peskin, Chan Making Noise About Suing the State Over Mandatory Housing Goals The latest drama over SF’s state-mandated goal to build more than 82,000 new housing units comes from Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Connie Chan, who want to blow up that mandate with a lawsuit, though City Attorney David Chiu may be unwilling to throw that bomb.
SF News The Latest Barrier to New Bay Area Housing? PG&E Equipment Delays There are hundreds of otherwise ready-to-go housing units just plain sitting vacant across the Bay Area, because PG&E is backlogged on the electrical components needed to connect these units to their power grid.
SF News Stonestown Redevelopment Project Gets New Renderings, Revisions The planned redevelopment of the Stonestown Galleria property, which will turn what are currently parking lots into new residential, retail, and office space, has received some revisions, which include dropping a planned 200-room hotel.
