July 8, 2025
Will the Creation of a Historic District in San Francisco Hold Back New Housing?
By Phoebe Grandi
Activists are butting heads with a local preservation organization over a proposal to turn part of the city’s North Beach neighborhood into a nationally registered historic district.
At a “Historical Housing Tour” on April 9, Jane Natoli walked attendees through the proposed historic district and pointed out the empty or damaged structures. She started at a burned-out apartment building on Union Street and Columbus Avenue. From there she took her audience to see a dilapidated storefront—an auto shop in a parking garage with busted windows—and a sausage factory that’s also a nationally recognized landmark.
“It’s a cool building,” said Natoli, the organizing director for the San Francisco chapter of national pro-housing organization YIMBY Action. “It was once the largest sausage factory on the West Coast, right? But it hasn’t been that for a long time, and what it is right now is an empty building with a parking lot next to it.”
The tour had an audience of about thirty, mostly housing advocates or historic preservationists. One was Katherine Petrin, the author of a proposal to turn North Beach into a historic neighborhood. Over the last 45 minutes of the tour, along a vibrant stretch of Grant Avenue between Filbert and Union Street, that group fell into debate about how historic preservation fits into San Francisco’s rich cultural history and the city’s urgent need for new and affordable housing. “In a city like San Francisco, especially, we have a lot of conflicting views about how we honor our past while making a path forward,” Natoli said.
