As we outlined yesterday, the amount of vacant office space in San Francisco has just hit a new pandemic-era high of nearly 21 million square feet.

For context, the 1,070-foot-tall Salesforce/Transbay tower at First and Mission, which is the tallest building in San Francisco, contains 1.35 million square feet of office space spread across 59 floors. And employing the framework we introduced back in 2020, and others have since co-opted, there is now 15.4 Salesforce Towers, or 909 Salesforce Tower floors, worth of empty office space spread across San Francisco, which is roughly enough space to accommodate between 119,000 employees, based on an average, pre-Covid office density or 160,000 (a la twitter) worker bees.

And yet again, while it’s tempting to see, promote or editorialize an opportunity to convert all the vacant office space in San Francisco into housing, the conversion of existing office space to residential use still makes absolutely no economic sense for the vast majority of San Francisco buildings, due to the relative value of each use and the costs of conversion.

The post Sufficient Empty Workplace Area for 160,000 Folks in San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Every night in San Francisco, more than 4,000 people sleep on the streets without any form of shelter. In the same city, tens of thousands of homes are vacant without a single person sleeping inside.

“It is devastating to realize that for every person sleeping on the streets tonight, there are 14 vacant homes in our city,” county supervisor Dean Preston said.

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A new report released Thursday by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst Office revealed that a staggering 61,473 homes were vacant in San Francisco in 2021. The number of vacant homes skyrocketed from 40,000 in 2019 to over 60,000 in 2021 — a 52 percent increase in just two years, according to the report.

That means that an estimated 15 percent of all homes in San Francisco are empty, by far the highest rate among major cities in the country, the report found.

“In a city where the cost of housing is out of reach for most working people, and with thousands of homeless people living on our streets, it is immoral and inhumane to have tens of thousands of homes sitting empty,” said Preston. “The dramatic increase in just two years shows the dire need for policy intervention to turn these empty units into places where people can live.”

(Data courtesy the SF Budget and Legislative Analyst Office)

In addition to having the highest overall residential vacancy rate, San Francisco also has the highest share of units that are vacant for seasonal, recreational or occasional use — more than 10,000 homes – such as vacation homes.

Homes that are “For Rent” but still remain vacant increased by 142% in just two years. “This data tells us that landlords are holding out on renting their units, waiting for a market rebound so they can charge more in rent,” Preston said. “We need to incentivize them to get their units back on the market and provide housing to San Franciscans in need.”

Meanwhile, 7,754 people can’t afford rent. The city’s most recent homeless census found 4,397 San Franciscans are living on the streets and 3,357 are sleeping in shelters.

The report noted policy interventions that could help reduce the number of vacant units in San Francisco, such as a tax on vacant units.

This November, San Francisco voters will decide whether to adopt an Empty Homes Tax. The proposed law will tax owners of buildings of three units or more, where a residential unit has been vacant for more than six months in a given year. The tax rate is higher for larger units, and it increases the longer a home is kept vacant.

This decaying, 122-year-old Victorian marketed as “the worst house on the best block” of San Francisco sold in 2022 for nearly $2 million — an eye-catching price that the realtor said was the outcome of overbidding in an auction. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The report’s authors wrote, “While new housing supply can be a primary contributor to
affordability … large numbers of vacant units in cities with existing housing shortages can also impact affordability by further restricting supply. Some units may be vacant due to owner preferences and actions that are inconsistent with policy goals of maximizing the City’s housing stock for residents.”

The post 61,000 houses are empty in San Francisco: report appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Hello, it’s Tuesday, Dec. 13, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:

TOP STORIES

The Cecil Hotel rooms for LA unhoused are still mostly empty

The historic Cecil Hotel, with its haunted reputation and 600 rooms, reopened in December 2021 as a privately funded permanent supportive housing project. It’s open to any of the thousands of unhoused Los Angelenos with a government-funded voucher. Many viewed the project as a promising new model in LA because of its size and flexibility.

And yet, a year later, two-thirds of the Cecil remains unoccupied. Even with solid funding and the best of intentions, the Cecil project has struggled to overcome a system beset with a slow-moving bureaucracy and multiple failure points, and to offer a housing stock that serves a population with myriad needs.

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Mayor’s new emergency order meets chaos at City Hall

It was the first major policy announcement from the new administration of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — a declaration of a state of emergency aimed at providing immediate relief to thousands of unhoused residents.

That declaration needs a City Council vote today before going into effect, a simple enough task in a quieter political moment. Except the council has left one meeting until mid-January, and has been struggling to conduct its business amid a scandal surrounding Councilmember Kevin de León.

De León faces a furor over his participation in a conversation featuring racist remarks and, more recently, a violent incident involving protesters at an Eastside toy giveaway, which only intensified the tinder keg atmosphere at City Hall.

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The P-22 mountain lion was captured in an LA backyard

P-22, celebrity mountain lion and Griffith Park’s most wanted big cat, was captured in a Los Feliz backyard, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced.

The department confirmed P-22 was captured after they received an anonymous tip that he’d been struck by a car in the area. Officials could not confirm if the mountain lion had been hit but said he was “in stable condition.”

P-22 had been sought for evaluation by the National Park Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife after “exhibiting some signs of distress” in recent weeks, including killing a leashed Chihuahua and attacking another dog.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder and former head of digital-asset exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas.

Bankman-Fried’s detention followed a notification from the US that it had filed criminal charges against him, the Bahamas attorney general said in a statement. Authorities in both countries had been probing his involvement in the company’s collapse last month.

In a statement, US Atty. for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said the arrest was made at the request of the American government.

Can California’s electric-vehicle push overcome the red-state backlash?

Environmentalists, along with industry and government leaders, see a transformation afoot in the electric vehicle industry after decades of false starts. They have acknowledged, however, that they can’t complete the shift if electric cars are viewed as something only for rich liberals in California and New York. They need everyone.

But in places like Indiana, it can be tough to own an electric car. Major cities are located far apart, with few charging stations in between. And the most popular EVs remain out of reach for many consumers in places where incomes tend to be lower.

The state is also deep red. And Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to consider buying an EV, according to a poll conducted for The Times by Leger, a Canadian-based polling firm with extensive experience in US surveys.

Edgar Sargsyan’s journey through LA’s criminal underworld

Edgar Sargsyan’s journey to bankruptcy court began with a one-way ticket from Armenia. It descended into the underworld of Los Angeles, where he learned at the elbow of a crime figure how deals are made and dirty money can underwrite a glittering facade of legitimacy.

Sargsyan shook hands with governors and presidents at a Beverly Hills cigar club and conferred with gangsters in jail. He made a fortune through fraud and drug dealing while surrounding himself with an entourage of corrupt lawmen.

But by 2018, the fun was over, the money was drying up and Sargsyan found himself in bankruptcy court, where what remained of his companies’ assets were to be sold off.

Check out “The Times” podcast for essential news and more.

These days, waking up to current events can be, well, daunting. If you’re seeking a more balanced news diet, “The Times” podcast is for you. Gustavo Arellano, along with a diverse set of reporters from the award-winning LA Times newsroom, delivers the most interesting stories from the Los Angeles Times every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

CALIFORNIA

Drought-ravaged LA seeks out a contaminated Superfund site. As drought and climate change ravage California’s once-reliable supply of drinking water, officials in Los Angeles are setting their sights on a relatively new, almost untapped resource for the city’s 4 million residents: the Superfund site in their own backyard.

Supreme Court upholds California ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products. The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a last-minute plea from the tobacco industry and cleared the way for California to enforce a statewide ban on the sale of most flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes.

Tory Lanez will stand trial in Megan Thee Stallion’s shooting case this week. Prosecutors allege the shooting happened shortly after both hip-hop artists left a party in the Hollywood Hills in July 2020. The case has reinvigorated discussions about misogyny in a hip-hop industry and it comes after a series of violent attacks on hip-hop artists in Los Angeles in recent years.

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NATION WORLD

On same-sex marriage, “the country has caught up with California.” More than 18 years after Gavin Newsom defied federal law by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples as San Francisco mayor, President Biden is on the cusp of signing legislation that ensures gay marriages are recognized by the federal government and in every state in the nation .

Immigrants sue ICE for spying on their financial records. Immigrants who say their remittances to family abroad were caught up in what they described as a massive warrantless dragnet are suing the government and the wire-transfer behemoth Western Union, which gave money transfer records to law enforcement.

What’s next for Brittney Griner? Experts discuss a road to recovery. After 294 days in Russian custody, Griner was slated to undergo evaluation at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Those assessments regarding Griner’s physical, mental and emotional state were just the first step in an uncertain path for the two-time Olympic gold medalist.

In Ukraine, a mayor who surrendered his town becomes a symbol of treason. In the small town of Kupiansk, there was no sudden bombardment, no violent mayhem — the city’s mayor, politically friendly with Russia, spoke to a Russian commander over the phone and then simply surrendered. Misery arrived anyway.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

The Golden Globes return after turmoil. The nominations for the 2023 Golden Globes were announced, with the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. showing particular affection for films “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and TV series “Abbott Elementary” and “The White Lotus,” among others.

Elon Musk booed for nearly five minutes straight at Dave Chappelle show in San Francisco. Before welcoming Elon Musk on Sunday stage in San Francisco, Dave Chappelle encouraged his fans to “make some noise for the richest man in the world.” And they did — by loudly booing the billionaire tech mogul.

Angelo Badalamenti, “Twin Peaks” composer and David Lynch collaborator, dead at 85. Badalamenti and Lynch were longtime collaborators, with the composer once calling their relationship “my second-best marriage in the world.”

The rise and fall of canceling culture in comedy. Comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff and comics Donnell Rawlings and Tiffany Haddish explain the origins of modern-day culture and its historical equivalents.

BUSINESS

Elon Musk should prepare for “hundreds or even thousands” of arbitration cases, labor lawyer says. As questions continue to swirl around Musk’s next move, ex-employees through their attorneys are seeking every possible avenue to obtain the benefits they feel entitled to in the aftermath of the tumultuous takeover of Twitter.

Will a legal fight over a $70 million Malibu mansion derail a reality star? A saga of power, corruption and allegations of deception involving multiple lawsuits and parties has played out from the courts of Los Angeles and the halls of Congress to as far away as the shores of Central Africa.

OPINION

How did we let the Golden Globes back in? Columnist and culture critic Mary McNamara writes, “Last year, a Times investigation revealed the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.’s gift-expecting, early-access-demanding, pay-to-play approach to its awards and lack of any Black members. Everyone was outraged. Publicists threatened a massive boycott, Tom Cruise said he would return his statuary. NBC dumped the 2022 telecast. Now, a year later, the Globes are back, announcing their nominations on live TV.”

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SPORTS

How ultimate underdog Morocco became “the Rocky of this World Cup.” In the first World Cup held in the Middle East and the first played in a majority-Muslim country, Morocco has made history by becoming the first African and first Arabic-speaking nation to reach the semifinals.

There was something Bourdain-like about the big, soccer life Grant Wahl led. Wahl died early Friday morning after collapsing in the press center at the men’s World Cup in Qatar. He lifted, popularized and pioneered soccer coverage in the US Above all, he shared that giant, adventurous life with colleagues and strangers alike.

ONLY IN LA

(Michael DeForge / For The Times)

How to find the best tamales from around the world in Los Angeles. Tamales are delicious year-round but are particularly popular during the holiday and New Year’s seasons, often accompanied by a steaming mug of atole, champurrado or other hot beverage.

This year, The Times’ food team is highlighting their love for all the tamales — not just from Mexico, but also from Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia and Cuba, just to name a few places. And they’re even extending the strict definition of tamal to include Chinese sticky rice packets wrapped in lotus or bamboo leaves.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, and Sheldon Leonard hold their awards backstage at Emmy Awards in 1964.

(Los Angeles Times)

Dick Van Dyke was born 97 years ago. The versatile comedic actor became a beloved television icon as the ottoman-tripping — or sidestepping — star of the classic 1960s situation comedy “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

Van Dyke displayed his versatility in a variety of roles, including Bert the cheerful Cockney chimney sweep in the Oscar-winning 1964 Disney musical “Mary Poppins” and an alcoholic public relations man in the 1974 TV movie “The Morning After.” Van Dyke also had an eight-season run as the white-haired and mustachioed crime-solving doctor in “Diagnosis Murder,” from 1993 to 2001.

We appreciate that you took the time to read Today’s Headlines! Comments or ideas? Feel free to drop us a note at headlines@latimes.com.

The post At this time’s Headlines: Why 600 rooms on the Cecil Lodge for L.A.’s unhoused are principally empty appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

My adventure on San Francisco Bay Area public transportation to see how the system is recovering after Covid-19 did not begin auspiciously. It was about 8:30 a.m. on the last Tuesday in September, and I was waiting at a bus stop on Silicon Valley’s main drag, El Camino Real, in Mountain View. Nearly a dozen people were waiting with me. Then a shiny unmarked bus with “RIDE MPK” on its electronic destination sign pulled up, and almost all of them got in — headed, I guessed, for the sprawling Menlo Park office campus of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp parent Meta Platforms Inc.Together with one other guy at the stop, I watched in anticipation as a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority 22 bus to Palo Alto pulled up behind the RIDE MPK bus, then in dismay as it switched lanes and proceeded to the next intersection. After the other guy asked the driver of the private bus if he could drop us off in Palo Alto (answer: no), the two of us sprinted about 50 yards to where the VTA 22 bus was still waiting at what turned out to be a helpfully long red light. The driver let us on (with no apology for skipping our stop), and the rest of the ride to Palo Alto’s California Avenue shopping district, where I was meeting a friend for coffee, was uneventful.

After coffee, I resumed my planned circumnavigation of the San Francisco Bay by walking a couple of blocks to the California Ave. Caltrain station, walking through an underpass that looked as if it would take me to the northbound platform, walking back through that underpass after a nice woman walking her dog informed me that I couldn’t get to the train that way (she said people frequently make that mistake), then walking through the correct underpass. From there I traveled by:

• Caltrain to Fourth Street in San Francisco

• San Francisco Muni N-Judah light-rail train to Embarcadero station

• Golden Gate Transit ferry to Larkspur

• Golden Gate Transit 580 bus to the El Cerrito Del Norte Bay Area Rapid Transit station

• BART orange line train to the Berryessa/North San Jose station

• Lyft Bay Wheels bike to San Jose Diridon Station

• VTA Rapid 522 bus back to my hotel in Mountain View

The journey took about 10 hours, including that coffee in Palo Alto; a break for lunch, emailing and phone charging at Bloomberg’s office on the Embarcadero not far from the Ferry Building in San Francisco; some book shopping at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur while I killed time waiting for a Marin Transit 228 bus, followed by a mile-long walk to Bellam Blvd. in San Rafael, mostly on a bike path, after Google Maps informed me that the 228 bus was running late and would miss the connection to the next bus to El Cerrito; and a couple of ride-extending wrong turns in San Jose (where I could also have traveled by bus or light rail but chose the bike for variety’s sake).

The approximate distance traveled was 160 miles (257 kilometers). The total cost was $32.52, which would have been about $45 but for the half-price fares BART was charging during September in celebration of its 50th birthday and the discount on bike rides afforded by my Lyft Pink membership, which I have because Lyft also operates the Citi Bike service in New York, where I live. I could have paid for all of it through the Clipper account in my iPhone wallet, but I didn’t do so with the bike because my way was cheaper, and I ended up buying my Caltrain ticket with a credit card because I couldn’t figure out how to use the Clipper reader — although I subsequently saw enough other people succeeding at this to believe the problem lay more with me than with Caltrain.

All in all it was a pleasant, often scenic experience, with Larkspur the only bad connection. And no, I never had trouble finding a seat. I was on the two VTA buses at rush hour, and at times most seats on them were occupied, but they never felt crowded. The same was true on BART as we rode through Berkeley and Oakland, but after Warm Springs/South Fremont I was the only person in my train car during its late-afternoon journey to the last two stations on the line, both of which have been in service only since June 2020.

My motivation for all this (other than that I enjoy riding on trains and boats) was to explore the situation with the US public transportation network that has taken the biggest hit from the pandemic and accompanying shift to remote work. In 2019, the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metropolitan area, which consists of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, was second only to metropolitan New York City in the percentage of employed people who travel to work primarily by public transportation, at 18.9%. It then experienced the steepest drop in that percentage among the top public transportation metros, with its transit share falling to just 4.9% in 2021, behind Boston-Cambridge and even the great metropolis of Ithaca, New York.

The other metropolitan area through which I traveled, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara — also known as Santa Clara County or, roughly, Silicon Valley — had only a 1.1% transit share in 2021, down from 4.7%  in 2019. And yes, the people in the Ride MPK bus count as public transportation users in these statistics, which are from the American Community Survey conducted annually by the US Census Bureau. Respondents are supposed to check “bus” if that’s the main way they got to work and not asked whether that bus was public or private.

What drove commuting by transit down was mainly a huge increase in working from home, with the percentage of workers doing so jumping to about 35% last year in both the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas from 7.2% and 4.8%, respectively, in 2019, higher than in any other large US metro area, and topping 45% in parts of San Francisco, San Jose and some suburbs. 

Here’s complete(ish) transit ridership data through June of this year for the entire nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, which encompasses the two metropolitan areas already mentioned as well as three smaller ones along the north side of the bay: Santa Rosa, Napa and Vallejo.

Bay Area bus ridership in June was 62% of what it was before the pandemic in June 2019, and ferry ridership was 56%. Rail ridership was at only 35%. That’s because trains in the Bay Area were used mainly by white-collar commuters, and of course they were the ones most able to stop commuting and work from home. Another way to see this is by transit agency, of which there are reputedly 27 in the Bay Area (a trio of San Francisco Chronicle journalists tried to ride as many as they could the day after my journey and made it on to 17), although only 16 appear to report ridership data to the Federal Transit Administration.(1)

Commuter-focused rail services BART and Caltrain have experienced the steepest ridership declines since 2019. Golden Gate Transit, which operates ferries and intercounty commuter buses, is next. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Bay Area Vanpool, which subsidizes and helps bring together groups of people commuting together with unpaid drivers, has been the only service to report an increase in ridership. Apart from that, agencies focused on local bus service have generally done best, with Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) an exception that can probably be explained by the fact that it only went into full service in August 2017 and people were still figuring out that it existed in June 2019. (It was certainly a surprise to me when I encountered a station on my walk from Larkspur to San Rafael.)

The ridership recovery at BART and especially Caltrain has also lagged behind those at other commuter-oriented rail operations across the country such as New Jersey Transit and the Washington Metro.

These numbers are through July (the Bay Area transit charts stop at June because the National Transit Database didn’t have any July numbers for AC Transit). Since then, some large Bay Area corporations have been leaning harder on employees to come into the office at least two or three days a week, and daily BART statistics show that September ridership was back to about 40% of normal at midweek and more than 60% of normal on weekends. (And, yes, tickets were half price in September, but so far October doesn’t seem much different.) Here’s how that stacks up against the rail services operated by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is also nice enough to report daily ridership stats.

So far BART, the MTA and other transit agencies nationwide have been able to keep running despite the ridership declines thanks to almost $70 billion in federal pandemic aid. But starting in the middle of next year, they will face a financial reckoning, and it turns out BART and Caltrain are among the most vulnerable large US transit agencies because, before the pandemic, fares covered almost three-quarters of their operating expenses. The following chart is adapted from a recent analysis of the looming public transportation fiscal cliff by Garett Shrode of the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington. It shows all the US transit agencies that had (1) operating expenses of $100 million or more in 2019 and (2) farebox revenue that covered 40% or more of those expenses.

The New York City subway, by the way, had a farebox recovery rate of 70% in 2019; buses dragged NYC Transit’s score down to 53%. The largest transit agency with the lowest farebox recovery in 2019 was the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, at 15%. The San Francisco Muni was fourth lowest, at 23%. LA Metro, which I rode on and wrote about in February, is a bus-focused operation that caters to a much poorer ridership than Caltrain or BART, and this is to a lesser extent true of SF Muni as well. These agencies provide essential services, and their lower farebox recovery rates aren’t necessarily a sign of failure. But it does seem a little perverse that Caltrain and BART, the two large US transit agencies that have been most successful in getting riders to pay the bills, now face perhaps the most dire budget outlook.

One way to remedy that, of course, would be to get more riders. Barring a spectacular reversal of the work-from-home trend, this will require bringing aboard more non-commuters, and there are big obstacles to that. I can report from ample personal experience that BART is the most efficient way to travel at rush hour from Lafayette, the East Bay suburb where I grew up, to downtown San Francisco and back. At other times of the day, and between other destinations in the Bay Area, a car will usually get you there quicker. The region experienced most of its growth after the arrival of the automobile and is thus laid out to favor car transport over other modes — as is true of all but a few US metropolitan areas.

California is in the early stages of a bold effort to change this by forcing its cities and suburbs to become denser, adopting legislation that allows homeowners in most of the state to add dwelling units to existing homes as well as divide their lots in two and build duplexes on each lot. It also streamlines housing approvals in commercially zoned areas and bans local governments from requiring parking spaces for residential and commercial developments within half a mile of major transit stops, among other things. If you squint, it’s possible to see a future in which many more Bay Area residents can walk to transit. And, let’s be honest, getting places by car is much more of a hassle.

In the meantime, the simplest way to make transit more convenient outside of rush hour is to increase its frequency. Low ridership and budgetary pressures are pushing Bay Area transit agencies in the opposite direction, but the data showing a much stronger recovery in ridership on weekends rather than weekdays at BART and the New York commuter railroads indicate that some schedule rejiggering away from peak commuting hours to other periods might entice new riders — as well as save money, given that peak service costs more to provide than off-peak does.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

• Is Your CEO Taking the Subway to Work?: Sarah Green Carmichael

• We Should Keep Wearing Masks on the Subway Forever: Justin Fox

• You Can Learn a Lot Taking a Bus to the Super Bowl: Justin Fox

(1) I’ve used the brand names of some services because they’re shorter than the formal names, but I realize that some may seem a bit cryptic to outsiders. Among those I don’t mention elsewhere in the column, AC Transit is the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District, SamTrans is the San Mateo County Transit District, SolTrans is Solano County Transit and WestCat is the Western Contra Costa Transit Authority.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. A former editorial director of Harvard Business Review, he has written for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

The post San Francisco’s Empty Prepare Automobiles Spell Hassle for Public Transit appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco has been in a housing crisis for years.

A recent study by city government researchers found 1 in 10 of the city’s condos and homes are sitting empty.

For example, at the corner of Third Avenue and Lincoln Way, an entire building sits empty. It’s been boarded up for quite a while, enough time for neighbors to wonder what’s ever going to be done with it.

“I think there should be a date for long it can remain empty. For a certain amount of time, it’s fine,” said San Francisco resident Lauren Turetsky.

The property is in San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston’s district. He said it’s a prime example of a persistent problem in the city.

High rent, exorbitant home prices, and not enough space — the Bay Area is full of housing problems. There are thousands of places sitting empty in San Francisco and now, Supervisor Dean Preston is proposing a tax for these vacant homes. NBC Bay Area’s Jessica Aguirre spoke to him for more information.

“We see in a lot of neighborhoods, buildings that have just been abandoned,” he said. “They sit vacant not just for a year or two years, sometimes five, ten years or more.”

But the older buildings are a smaller portion of the overall problem. According to city figures, larger towers and condominium complexes that have been built in the Financial District, SOMA and Mission Districts really make up a larger portion of the empty units in the city.

According to a report by the San Francisco budget and legislative analyst’s office’s 2019 data, there are about 40, 458 housing units that are sitting empty.

Of that 2019 data, the vast majority have been sold and are unoccupied or they’re seasonal, recreational and other occasional housing, or they’re off the market renovations, corporate housing or homes tied up in personal family issues.

Preston told NBC Bay Area Wednesday that he is exploring a vacancy tax, aimed at owners who are keeping properties off the market, sometimes for years as a business decision.

“So, one of the things a vacancy tax could do is change that calculation. So now there’s actually a cost to holding it vacant. And they’re going to be more interested in renting it, or selling it to an owner occupant,” he said.

It’s an idea that’s raising questions among residents.

“We have to be very careful about being too arbitrary about time limits and very careful about how you define a vacancy,” said San Francisco resident Ray Vandenberg.

Preston is exploring similar taxes that have already been imposed in Vancouver, Canada, Washington DC and Oakland.

The post San Francisco Contemplating Emptiness Tax for Empty Properties – NBC Bay Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) – Record-breaking investments and large commercial office businesses are still being made in Silicon Valley, although many of the large office buildings are still vacant during the pandemic.

“We made the largest office rentals of the year in the United States and the largest investment sales of the year in the United States in a week in Silicon Valley,” said Mark Ritchie of Ritchie Commercial in San Jose.

CONTINUE READING: Smash-and-Grab Thieves Hit San Jose Eastridge Mall Jewelry Store; 5 Wanted

In one of its most recent major office deals, a British investment company was paying a record San Jose per square foot price for three office buildings on Coleman Avenue in North San Jose.

“It just shows the incredible global interest in investing in Silicon Valley to buy the office space for the tech companies in anticipation of the return to work after COVID,” said Ritchie.

But in some parts of downtown San Jose, the only sounds you hear are the pounding and machinery of high-rise buildings.

And most of the people on the sidewalks are construction workers.

With most office workers still working from home, once busy streets and sidewalks feel like a ghost town.

CONTINUE READING: Kitten rescued from Highway 101 near Burlingame is now available for adoption

“I think it’s pretty dramatic, we have little foot traffic during the week,” said Randy Musterer, who owns two sushi restaurants, one in downtown San Jose.

“We’re getting some companies, but definitely not what we’re used to,” he said.

It’s still a struggle for the small businesses that are trying to survive.

“It’s an uneven recovery, there are still many shocks with working from home, the bottlenecks in the supply chain. Small businesses are nowhere near complete recovery. While things appear to be going in the right direction, it will be a top priority when considering some of these future investments, ”said Derrick Seaver, President and CEO of the San Jose Chamber of Commerce.

“There is light at the end of the tunnel, but will it be in a year? In two years or in 10 years? ”Asked Musterer.

Nobody knows the answers, but those who can afford to sit out COVID are putting their money here.

MORE NEWS: Santa Cruz man sentenced to 6 years federal prison for malicious hate crimes

“Anyone who thinks the Bay Area is over, moving to San Francisco, San Jose, and Texas doesn’t know what’s going on. This is still the absolute center of the universe for new technology and innovation, ”said Ritchie.

The post As Workplaces Sit Empty, Buyers Wager Massive On Robust Restoration For Downtown San Jose – CBS San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Everywhere you looked on the last day of the year it seemed like a reminder that 2020 was a year like no other.

So it was significant that the only crowd that ABC7’s Kris Reyes found was not for a celebration, but for the ceremonial closing of a San Francisco landmark.

RELATED: Here’s a look back at the San Francisco New Year’s Eve Fireworks Show from years past

The Cliff House sign came down in front of a tearful crowd and officially closed the restaurant after 157 years.

END OF AN ERA: The sign went down in San Francisco’s iconic Cliff House restaurant. The restaurant announced this month that it will be permanently closed after 157 years. From shipwrecks and a fire to the 1906 earthquake, the Cliff House saw it all. https://t.co/U4gUBeXqeX pic.twitter.com/QV6hNFPvQ1

– ABC7 News (@ abc7newsbayarea) December 31, 2020

“I’m actually glad we had the earthquake this morning. We took that off our disaster bingo card, but it’s so indescribably sad that the Cliff House is closing,” said Jonathan Alloy, who was married at the Cliff House Has.

“I think we won’t take a break until 12:01 pm,” said another spectator who was crying when the sign came down.

There will also be no fireworks, instead many will be at home. The programming is unlike anything we’ve ever had – virtual concerts and ball drops, online chats, a socially distant stroll in the open air.
Even so, there are always those who find the bright spots. Semaj Temple said she was grateful for the 2020 lessons and all the free time she had with them.

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“I look forward to all of the new things that will come with change and how I can adapt to those things,” she said.

Back at the Cliff House, accepting change is not that easy. The crowd lingered there for a while, taking in a sight that will not extend into the New Year.

“I don’t think things will go back to normal, I don’t think things will ever go back to normal,” said Tom Hontalas, who owned Loui’s, another popular San Francisco restaurant that was closed from the pandemic.

He remains hopeful, but until 2020 he has a simple farewell: “Good liberation.”

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