SF Housing Battle May Open Doors for Developers—Part One

SAN FRANCISCO—An ordinance to protect this city’s housing stock may present a rare opportunity for student housing developers to do business in one of the country’s hardest markets to enter. Last month, the San Francisco Planning Commission overwhelmingly passed an ordinance proposed by the City and County Board of Supervisors that would both ban the conversion of residential housing into student dwellings and provide incentives for educational institutions and developers to build more student housing. It has a few more rounds to go before being signed into law by the mayor, but its final passage is likely, say insiders.

“We have a lot of educational institutions in San Francisco, and our housing market is a bit out of whack and expensive,” Scott Wiener, a supervisor and author of the ordinance, tells Student Housing Alert. “We’re really not meeting the housing needs of our residents and the educational institutions have struggled to provide good housing for their students. Our goal has been to try and provide incentives for educational institutions to create their own housing so we’re not cannibalizing the existing housing.”