Assembly Bill 1532 would categorize office conversion projects as "by right" developments, relaxing the permitting and review process for housing projects by preventing a city or county from requiring certain permits to convert a vacant office into housing.
The bill is partially spurred by the hundreds of empty offices in downtown San Francisco, which has seen one of the slowest pandemic recoveries in the country among major metro areas.
According to the commercial real estate firm CBRE, some 27 percent of San Francisco's offices were vacant at the end of 2022.
Assemblymember Matt Haney, of San Francisco, told Bay City News that the pandemic has changed how people work and that downtowns are starting to resemble ghost towns. "Turning empty offices into housing,” said Haney, “is one of the only paths forward to saving our downtowns."
In addition to preventing local governments from stalling office conversions via the permitting and review process, AB 1352 would also make office conversion projects allowed in any area of a city regardless of local zoning laws.
The bill requires that at least 10 percent of units in an office-to-housing conversion must be reserved for low- and moderate-income families.
AB 1352 would also create a grant program to partially subsidize office-to-housing conversion in an effort to further incentivize new projects.
