Vol. I, No. 52 · San Francisco — Monday, October 19, 2026 · Price: one bathroom at a time

BY HAZEL WONG, NUMBERS DESK

The four towers at Davis Court and Jackson Street went up in 1965 and 1966, on the ground where San Francisco’s wholesale produce market had stood. Since May 2023 their plumbers have filed the same permit 400 times. It reads: change out the angle stops and shower valves, set a new pedestal sink, toilet, bathtub and shower trim. Angle stops are the shutoff valves under the fixtures. Only the apartment number changes.

The Gateway is 1,254 rent-controlled apartments in four towers and a row of townhouses, and it is turning over. Of its 1,201 occupied apartments, 905 have a tenant who arrived in January 2020 or later. Each move-out lets the owner set a new rent. The bathrooms came later: in 2020 and 2021 the complex filed 12 plumbing permits while 326 of today’s tenants moved in, and the remodel program did not start until 2023. A one-bedroom rented to someone who arrived in 2024 or later is typically $3,501 to $3,750 a month. For the 17 one-bedroom tenants who arrived before 1980, it is $1,251 to $1,500.

The permits are the physical record. The three parcels filed 41 plumbing permits in the twenty-one years from 2000 through 2020, about two a year. Since 2021 they have filed 469, naming 415 different apartments. In 2024 the parcel that holds 440 Davis Court filed 67, more than any other parcel in the city, and its 196 since 2021 are also the most in the city. The city issued 14,762 plumbing permits in 2024 across 9,334 parcels; 6,381 of those parcels filed one. The permit file says which apartments got a permit and when. It does not say whether every remodel followed a move-out.

The remodel is a form letter. Four hundred of the permits since May 2023 carry the same description, down to the pedestal sink, and differ only in the apartment number. Of the 469 permits, 427 are marked complete.

The turnover came in two waves, and the Rent Board’s inventory records both. In 2020 and 2021, as downtown emptied, 326 of today’s tenants moved in. Those pandemic arrivals still pay less than the tenants who came in the decade before them. A typical one-bedroom in that group is $2,501 to $2,750, against $2,751 to $3,000 for a tenant who arrived between 2000 and 2019. Then came the second wave. Since 2024, 418 apartments have taken a new tenant, 207 of them in 2025 alone.

The complex turns over faster than the city’s other rent-controlled buildings, though not by as much as the permits suggest. Across every San Francisco building built before 1979 that reports to the Rent Board, 61 percent of occupied units have a tenant who arrived in 2020 or later, and 30 percent since 2024. At the Gateway the figures are 75 and 35 percent. Its vacancy, 53 apartments or 4.2 percent in February, matches the citywide 4.4 percent.

Under state law, a San Francisco landlord may set any rent when a rent-controlled tenant leaves on their own. The cap, 1.6 percent this year, applies only while the tenant stays. The Gateway’s rent table shows what that rule is worth across one building: each era of arrival pays roughly $500 to $750 a month more than the one before it, with one exception. The pandemic arrivals pay less than the tenants who came in the two decades before them.

The inventory is owner-reported, in $250 rent bands, as of the owner’s filing on February 26 and 27, 2026. Move-in dates are the start of the current tenancy. The desk is confident in the counts and in the direction of the rents. It cannot say from these files what a remodel costs, and the public assessor roll it used does not name the owner. It can say that 415 apartments got a plumbing permit since 2021, and that 418 got a new tenant since 2024, the three years that hold 386 of the 469 permits.

The produce market moved to Islais Creek in the 1960s. The towers that replaced it went up in 1965 and 1966, and the file says the next permit will read like the last four hundred, with a different number on it.

The city’s annual sweep of accounts that stopped filing made up 45 percent of the 7,260 location closures in its business registry this year. Papyrus had been gone six years. The file’s closure dates record when the city stopped waiting, which can be years after the storefront went dark.

BY MEL ADLER, COMMERCE DESK

Papyrus sold its last greeting card in San Francisco in the winter of 2020, when the chain closed all 254 of its stores in bankruptcy. On June 30, 2026, the city’s business registry closed its six shops here: Fillmore, Union, California, Market, Montgomery and Embarcadero Center.

It was a busy day. The Treasurer and Tax Collector’s registry gave 3,243 San Francisco business locations an end date of June 30, 2026. It flagged 3,182 of them “administratively closed”: the city’s term for an account that has not filed or made contact in three years, or that another department reported shut. Through October 18 the registry shows 7,260 locations closed this year. Forty-five percent of them, 3,236, closed by that flag, and all but 54 of those on the one day. Any count of closures drawn from the city’s registry has this day in it. This year the file counts the pen along with the padlock. This paper noted the June cliff in its second edition on July 18 and read it as the renewal deadline at work. The flag names the rule.

The sweep usually lands on June 30. This year’s is the largest one-day sweep since 2021, when the date closed 3,399 locations. June 30, 2019 closed 5,091, and the 2018 cleanup of the registry closed 14,425 on that one day. The same date closed 1,947 locations in 2024 and 1,661 in 2025. Two years broke the pattern: 2020 had 52 administrative closures all year, and 2022’s 4,172 mostly fell on other dates, with 384 locations closed on June 30. The three-year clock shows in who was swept. Of this year’s 3,243, 913 had registered in 2022, more than any other year, and only 14 in 2023, whose clock had not run out. The 39 that registered in 2024 or later could not have gone silent for three years; by the city’s definition, those are the ones another department reported shut.

The sweep is where the city’s books catch up with the news. The seven Union Bank locations in the registry, registered since April 1, 1996, were merged into U.S. Bank on May 26, 2023. The registry closed them June 30, 2026. Coin Cloud’s eight Bitcoin machines, in the Mission, on Powell Street and on Ocean Avenue, belonged to a company that filed for bankruptcy on February 7, 2023. Closed June 30, 2026. The oldest account on the list is the Marine Exchange of the San Francisco Bay Region, start date September 1, 1849, at 505 Beach Street. It is alive: its website lists October 2026 meetings from an address in Emeryville. The registry recorded a departure, not a death, and could not say when it happened.

The flag is not only for the dead. One license type shows up in bulk among the swept: 122 of the 3,243 are registered as tattoo or body-piercing practitioners, individual artists rather than shops.

Take the sweep out and the file says something quieter. Businesses themselves reported 4,024 San Francisco closures through October 18. For January through September, that is 3,935, against 6,337 in the same months of 2025, a drop of 38 percent. That figure will rise. Owners report closures late, and the reports bunch at filing deadlines: 1,220 in May 2025 and 1,295 in December 2025. The desk is confident in the size of the sweep and the rule behind it. It is not confident that real closures fell by anything like 38 percent; a closure in August 2026 may not be reported until next spring.

Papyrus’s registration says its San Francisco life ran from March 1, 1989 to June 30, 2026: thirty-seven years, the last six of them on paper.

ON THE CALENDAR

Agentic Runtime Security Demos. An evening of demonstrations on how to keep AI software agents in check once they start taking actions inside real company systems, held after a cloud-security conference and opening with a proposed standard for the field. The room is full: 252 people had registered as of October 18, up from 56 when the page first appeared on September 23, with no spots left. The hosts, the compliance company Vanta and the startup Keycard, list it as a one-time night rather than a series.

Wednesday, October 21, 5:30 PM · near Chinatown, address on registration · free · lu.ma/vanta-zg62

From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of 1:55 a.m. October 18. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.

SOURCES & RECEIPTS

1. History: The Cultural Landscape Foundation, “Golden Gateway” (tclf.org/landscapes/golden-gateway): former wholesale produce market; begun in the 1960s, residential complex completed 1967; two 22-story buildings, two 25-story buildings and 58 townhouses; architects Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons and DeMars and Reay with landscape architects Sasaki, Walker and Associates; produce firms re-established near Islais Creek (localwiki.org/sf/produce market). Build years, stories and unit counts: DataSF Assessor Historical Secured Property Tax Rolls (wv5m-vpq2), 2025 closed roll, parcels 0198008 (556 Battery St, built 1965, 22 stories, 416 units), 0199022 (200 Washington St, 1965, 25 stories, 378 units), 0200014 (100 Washington St, 1966, 22 stories, 460 units): 1,254 units. Addresses on those parcels (440, 460, 405 and 465 Davis Ct; 550 Battery St; 155 Jackson St): DataSF Addresses with Units (5mjj-njit). 2. DataSF, DBI Plumbing Permits (a6aw-rudh), queried October 19, 2026, blocks 0198, 0199 and 0200: 41 permits filed 2000 through 2020; 469 filed January 1, 2021 through October 14, 2026 (10, 14, 59, 167, 137, 82 by year); 415 distinct apartment identifiers parsed from descriptions; 400 permits since May 23, 2023 with the identical remodel description (by the prefix of the unit number, 1 through 5: 109, 50, 51, 138, 9; 43 carry a unit number with no prefix); status complete 427, expired 30, issued 11, canceled 1. Citywide 2024: 14,762 permits, 9,334 parcels, 6,381 parcels with one permit; most-permitted parcel 0200014 (440 Davis Ct), 67. Editor’s recheck, October 19, 2026: parcels ranked by permits filed since January 1, 2021: 0200014 196, 3773100A 160, 9998998 (a placeholder parcel) 154, 0263011 143, 0199022 137, 0198008 136. 3. DataSF, Rent Board Housing Inventory (gdc7-dmcn), 2026 submission for blocks 0198, 0199, 0200 (block addresses 400 Block of Davis Ct, 500 Block of Battery St, 100 Block of Jackson St): 1,254 units, 1,201 occupied by non-owner, 53 vacant; signature dates February 26 and 27, 2026; occupied units by move-in year as charted (2020: 174; 2021: 152; 2022: 54; 2023: 107; 2024: 177; 2025: 207; 2026: 34; before 2000: 102; before 1980: 30, earliest April 5, 1972). Median rent band, one-bedrooms, by move-in era: before 1980 $1,251–$1,500 (17 units); 1980–1999 $2,001–$2,250 (30); 2000–2019 $2,751–$3,000 (84); 2020–2021 $2,501–$2,750 (121); 2022–2023 $3,001–$3,250 (69); 2024–2026 $3,501–$3,750 (185). 4. Same file, 2026 submission, all units in buildings with year built before 1979 and occupied: 103,796; move-in 2020 or later 62,884 (60.6%); 2024 or later 31,087 (30.0%). Citywide vacancy: 5,897 vacant of 133,320 units (4.4%). 5. San Francisco Rent Board, “Annual Rent Increase for 3/1/26–2/28/27 Announced,” January 14, 2026 (sf.gov): 1.6 percent. Vacancy rent-setting: California Civil Code §1954.52–1954.53 (Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, 1995). Queries in receipts.json.

2. Papyrus: CNN Business, “Papyrus is closing all of its stores,” January 24, 2020 (Schurman Fine Papers Chapter 11; all 254 stores closed over four to six weeks). Union Bank: U.S. Bancorp Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2023 (sec.gov): acquisition of MUFG Union Bank December 1, 2022; MUB merged into U.S. Bank National Association May 26, 2023. Coin Cloud: Cash Cloud Inc. voluntary Chapter 11 petition, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Nevada, February 7, 2023 (first-day declaration of Christopher McAlary, Dkt. 19). Marine Exchange: sfmx.org, visited October 19, 2026 (10 Commodore Drive, Emeryville; meetings listed October 20, October 27 and November 5, 2026; “more than 175 years”). 7. DataSF, Registered Business Locations (g8m3-pdis), Treasurer & Tax Collector, queried October 19, 2026, rows with city = San Francisco: location_end_date June 30, 2026: 3,243, of which administratively_closed 3,182; all 2026 end dates through October 18: 7,260, administratively closed 3,236, reported 4,024; June 30 totals 2018: 14,425, 2019: 5,091, 2020: 727, 2021: 3,399, 2022: 384, 2023: 2,207, 2024: 1,947, 2025: 1,661; administratively closed by year: 2018 15,081, 2019 4,619, 2020 52, 2021 3,009, 2022 4,172, 2023 1,836, 2024 1,650, 2025 1,326; June 30, 2026 cohort by location start year: 2019 227, 2020 234, 2021 338, 2022 913, 2023 14, 2024 27, 2025 5, 2026 7; license code “TATTOO, BODY PIERCING, PRACTITIONER” 122; neighborhoods as printed; Papyrus Stores 6 rows (dba start March 1, 1989; 243 Montgomery St, 1888 Union St, 865 Market St, 2109 Fillmore St, 3525 California St, 2 Embarcadero Ctr); Union Bank, N.A. 7 rows (dba start April 1, 1996); Coin Cloud 8 rows (2038 and 2057 Mission St, 660 Powell St, 1551 Ocean Ave and four others); Marine Exchange of the San Francisco Bay Region, 505 Beach St, start September 1, 1849. Reported (not administratively closed) closures by month: January–September 2025 6,337; January–September 2026 3,935; May 2025 1,220; December 2025 1,295. Open locations with no end date: 102,409. 8. Definition: DataSF dataset description for g8m3-pdis, Treasurer & Tax Collector: “Business locations marked as ‘Administratively Closed’ have not filed or communicated with TTX for 3 years, or were marked as closed following a notification from another City and County Department.” Queries in receipts.json.

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