Housing

Rent, buildings, and who gets to live where.

Housing

Parkmerced’s 1,538 apartments voted for demolition in 2011 still stand; the complex is 12% empty

The complex’s own filing to the Rent Board, signed in December with a court-appointed receiver running the property, lists 3,162 units at San Francisco’s largest apartment complex and 383 of them vacant. That is nearly three times the 4.4 percent vacant across all 133,320 rent-controlled units in the same file, and down from one in five in June. Nothing in the 2011 plan has been built. A court handed the complex to a receiver in 2025 after its owner defaulted on a $1.5 billion loan, and the first four building sites went to a second lender at foreclosure in July.

Oct 7, 2026

Housing

59% of homes in San Francisco’s new buildings sit on ground that can give way in a quake

The state maps the 700 block of Valencia Street, where a hotel sank in 1906, as ground that can liquefy, or weaken and give way, in a strong earthquake. Of 48,718 homes in new buildings the city has permitted since 2001 and finished, 28,780 stand on ground mapped the same way. That ground covers about a fifth of the city.

Oct 5, 2026

Housing

The Baldwin Drew 353 Complaints, Most of Any SRO in San Francisco

The Baldwin at 74 6th Street has logged more Department of Building Inspection complaints since 1994 than any of San Francisco’s other 457 single-room-occupancy buildings, though its size explains much of that gap. The city converted the old supportive-housing hotel into an emergency shelter in 2021.

Sep 25, 2026

Housing

Tenderloin Holds 31% of San Francisco’s Homeless-Designated Housing

San Francisco has financed 5,628 units of affordable housing reserved for people who were homeless. Nearly a third, 1,769 units, sit in the Tenderloin, more than any other neighborhood, though the area holds just 17.5% of the city’s affordable stock overall.

Sep 18, 2026

Housing

One South of Market Building Reserves All 96 Units for the Formerly Homeless

All 96 apartments at 53 Colton Street are reserved for tenants who were homeless before they moved in, one of 24 San Francisco addresses set aside that way. Citywide, 5,628 of the 36,395 units in the city's affordable-housing portfolio, 15.5 percent, carry the same designation.

Aug 28, 2026

Housing

Treasure Island created 1,318 of San Francisco's 1,534 new lots in 2026

The island's redevelopment recorded 86 percent of every new property line the city drew this year.

Aug 19, 2026

Housing

Seven San Francisco neighborhoods have zero affordable units in the pipeline

Four others hold 53% of the 10,100 income-restricted units now moving toward completion: Bayview Hunters Point, the Mission, Mission Bay, and the Financial District/South Beach.

Aug 14, 2026

Housing

Thirty Years of Complaints at 74 Sixth Street

No parcel in San Francisco has drawn more building-code notices: 1,258 violation items across 166 notices since 1996. It spent most of those years as a residential hotel. Its residents now describe it, in the same complaint file, as a city-funded shelter.

Aug 6, 2026

Housing

The buildings still betting against the earthquake

A decade ago the city put 4,900 apartment buildings on notice: retrofit the soft ground floor or be named a hazard. The work is 95 percent finished. What’s left is a list of 262 addresses, every one of them years past its legal deadline.

Aug 1, 2026

Housing

The rent is the one thing that didn’t

San Francisco’s cost of living rose about a quarter over seven years — but housing, the line the city is defined by, rose the slowest of anything that matters, and about half as fast as housing nationwide. The climb was the power bill, the tank, and the grocery cart.

Aug 1, 2026

Housing

Parkmerced’s 1,538 apartments voted for demolition in 2011 still stand; the complex is 12% empty

59% of homes in San Francisco’s new buildings sit on ground that can give way in a quake

The Baldwin Drew 353 Complaints, Most of Any SRO in San Francisco

Tenderloin Holds 31% of San Francisco’s Homeless-Designated Housing

One South of Market Building Reserves All 96 Units for the Formerly Homeless

Treasure Island created 1,318 of San Francisco's 1,534 new lots in 2026

Seven San Francisco neighborhoods have zero affordable units in the pipeline

Thirty Years of Complaints at 74 Sixth Street

The buildings still betting against the earthquake

The rent is the one thing that didn’t

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