SF News Report: Hundreds of Below-Market-Rate Units Sit Empty, Despite Waiting List of More Than 20,000 A new City Hall report shows more than 300 below-market-rate housing units are sitting empty, thanks to red tape and a pandemic market where market-rate housing has gotten cheaper.
SF News City Hall Is Haggling Over an Ambitious Housing Plan, Hoping the State Doesn’t Yank Billions of Dollars The SF Planning Commission spent Thursday afternoon debating a “housing element” plan on which billions in state aid is contingent, but so far, state authorities have rejected 97% of other cities’ housing plans.
SF News Famed LGBT Rights Icon Cleve Jones Facing Displacement After New Building Owner Doubles Rent It's a tale at least as old as the first dot-com boom in SF, as elderly renters face displacement or eviction due to the real estate pressures that make rent control precarious. And now one of the Castro's elder statesmen has fallen victim as well.
SF News Gen Z Moving To San Francisco More Than Any Other Group People in the Gen Z age group moved to San Francisco more than any other city in the United States last year.
SF News In More Fourplex Legislation Drama, SF May Un-Streamline the New Streamlined Approval Process Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s fourplex legislation is not a done deal yet, and the expedited review process could still be yanked from the recent SB-9 legislation
SF News After Winning UC Berkeley Enrollment Cap, Neighborhood Group Now Playing Games and Offering New Terms The NIMBY group Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods won a court battle and trimmed UC Berkeley’s enrollment by 3,000. Now they’re offering a new deal to cut it by only 2,000, but the school says ‘No thanks, we’ll keep fighting you.’
SF News Day Around the Bay: Asking Rents Tick Up, SF Apartment Listings Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels An Oakland suspect in an allegedly stolen van died in a fire following a police helicopter pursuit, a former UFC champ is charged with attempted murder in the South Bay, and asking rents continue to tick up in SF as the number of apartment listings returns to pre-pandemic levels.
SF Politics An ‘Empty Homes Tax’ Could Be Coming to Your November Ballot Amidst a recent uproar that nearly 10% of San Francisco housing stock is just sitting vacant, supervisors Dean Preston kicked off a campaign to get a vacancy tax on this November’s ballot.
SF News Billionaire Enclave Woodside Claims It Can’t Build More Housing Because It’s a Mountain Lion Habitat The fur is flying in the fashionable tech billionaire quarters of Woodside, where the mansion-dwellers argue they can’t comply with a new state housing law because it’s a mountain lion habitat.
SF News Report: 10% of San Francisco’s Housing Stock Is Just Sitting Vacant and Empty A bombshell report from the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office confirms what many have suspected for years — that tens of thousands of San Francisco apartments are just cold sitting empty in the midst of a housing crisis.
SF News ‘California’s Richest City’ In Marin Could Get Its First-Ever Mixed-Income Housing, Though It Doesn't Look Too Affordable The Marin County city of Belvedere has not built a unit of affordable housing in 33 years, but a new complex with a couple of affordable units is making waves along its lagoons.
SF Politics Rejected SoMa High-Rise Suddenly the Main Issue In Haney-Campos State Assembly Race The two progressive candidates running for David Chiu’s now-vacated assembly seat have finally found an issue to disagree on, and you’re probably going to hear a lot more about one specific housing project the board of supervisors shot down in late October.
SF Politics State Agency Threatens Investigation Into Supervisors Rejecting 27-Story Residential Tower A few Sacramento lawmakers are squawking over the supes’ denial of a 495-unit project on what’s currently a SoMa parking lot, and a state agency is threatening a possible lawsuit.
SF News Supes Shoot Down 27-Story SoMa Residential Tower Over Seismic, Displacement Concerns What is currently a parking lot owned by Nordstrom’s at Sixth and Stevenson Streets was slated to become a residential high-rise, but was denied on appeal as supervisors did not trust the geotechnical review.
SF News City Scoops Up More Houses for Use as Residential Mental Health Treatment Centers Two homes on Florida Street and Dore Street are the latest pieces to Mayor Breed’s plan to add 400 treatment beds, in the form of “cooperative housing.”
SF News Sunday Links: Even Amid COVID-19, Bay Area 'Starter' Home Prices Are Still Bonkers Rallies across the Bay Area were held Saturday to denounce hate against Asian Americans, local medical experts warn we still have a long way to go before we see an end to the pandemic, and despite falling house prices — nearly a million dollars will still only get you so far in SF.
SF News Report Shows Record Increase in San Francisco Real Estate Listings as People Continue Moving to More Affordable Cities With remote work more popular than ever — amid companies like Google and Facebook now saying employees can work from home well into 2021 — people are leaving SF in throngs. A new Zillow report further supports that idea, showing a 96 percent year-over-year increase in local inventory listings.
SF News Marin Public Housing Actually Exists, But Residents Sue Over Squalor and Disrepair Yes, Marin County actually does have some public housing, but residents have filed suit because the county won’t do anything about the rats, exposed electrical wires, and general disrepair.
SF News San Franciscans Continue Leaving for More 'Comfortable Lives' Elsewhere as Rental Prices Plunge A recent real estate report showed one-bedroom rent prices in SF have fallen 11.8 percent — eclipsing last month's record-breaking 9 percent drop — as more locals pack their bags. We decided to catch up with a few of them to ask why they're leaving (or have already left) the City by the Bay.
SF News Complaints About Nonessential Construction in SF Skyrocket Under Shelter-In-Place Homebuilders are not staying at home, and in some cases entering residential properties, as the Department of Building Inspection sees a roughly 500 percent increase in complaints.
Business & Tech Airbnb Hosts Furious That People Can Cancel Stays for Free During COVID-19 Outbreak The home-sharing service Airbnb is allowing guests to cancel for free over the “extenuating circumstances” of coronavirus travel restrictions, but house-hoarding hosts are huffy about it.
SF News Slain ‘Monster in the Mission’ Property Up for Sale, Local Nonprofit Interested in Buying The developer of the wildly unpopular proposed “Monster in the Mission” luxury condo and apartment project has given up the ghost, and a community group hopes to swoop in and build 100 percent affordable housing.
SF Politics Breed Wants Ballot Measure to Streamline Housing in Wake of SB-50 Defeat The mayor introduces a ballot measure effort to eliminate red tape for affordable housing developments, but the definition of “affordable” is a bit mind-boggling.
SF Politics Wiener’s Controversial SB-50 Housing Bill Dies for Third Consecutive Year A 20-hour scramble to whip up more support for a do-over vote has failed, and Sen. Scott Wiener’s high-density housing plan fell short yet again.
SF News SF’s Biggest Landlord Insists It Won’t Delay Selling Its 67 Rent-Controlled Buildings Corporate mega-landlord Veritas Investments is performing a massive sell-off of mostly rent-controlled residential properties in San Francisco, drawing the ire of a few SF supervisors and a housing nonprofit.
