The Humboldt Building at 785 Market St., pictured in 2024, is one of the few office-to-housing conversion projects in San Francisco. A new Downtown Revitalization District could facilitate more conversions.

Since the 1920s, when it was known as the Wall Street of the West, downtown San Francisco has been the neighborhood where the offices are. Sure, some people live there — 25,000 to 70,000, depending on how you define the area — but it’s still primarily a place to work.

Before the pandemic, approximately 470,000 people commuted each workday to downtown San Francisco, driving significant business and economic activity. Not anymore. Office occupancy rates plummeted, and downtown had one of the slowest recoveries nationwide. As of mid-2025, the average daily commuter population in downtown San Francisco has stabilized at roughly 150,000 to 160,000 people, making it difficult for small businesses to thrive.

The city may be coming back, but it still needs a new road map.

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It’s long been obvious to most San Franciscans that having part of their city alive only during the workweek is an outdated paradigm that no longer serves the neighborhood — or the city at large. San Francisco derives 40% percent of its tax base from downtown. Accordingly, office-to-residential conversions have been a preoccupation ever since the pandemic. Yet even with office vacancy rates at 40%, there’s been little movement in converting empty space into housing.

San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development has been working to make conversions more viable. It introduced a Downtown Adaptive Reuse Program in 2023 that waived planning code requirements, clarified building code requirements, and streamlined the permitting and approval process for eligible........

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