Vacant San Francisco Commercial Units To Pay Fees and Possible Fines

San Francisco hardly looks like a ghost town however many vacant commercial spaces can be seen from Vis Valley all the way the Marina. Call it the Amazon and high lease rate effect.

To cure this ill, San Francisco recently passed an ordinance authored by San Francisco Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, which “requires vacant or abandoned commercial storefront owners to pay annual registration fees [...], require annual inspections of registered vacant or abandoned storefronts, and update the penalty for violations of the requirement to register.”

Under the new legislation, a commercial storefront counts as “vacant or abandoned” if it’s been unoccupied for 30 days, with exceptions specified for units undergoing construction or repair work.

Fewer’s new rules specific that building owners pay a $711 fee to register a vacant storefront. The new rules state that the money to be paid upon registration rather than more than 200 days later, as the previous current law specified.

The law further specifies, “The owner of a registered vacant or abandoned commercial storefront department shall provide a report from a licensed professional confirming the storefront’s interior and exterior has been maintained” every year or face further fees.

The new ordinance also removes the exception that a storefront is technically vacant as long as it’s being offered for sale or lease.

If that wasn’t enough for commercial building ordinances, San Francisco Supervisor Peskin submitted a proposal that owners of commercial properties in Neighborhood Commercial Districts — areas where stores and services are clustered — that remain vacant for more than six months would face a fine of at least $250 per day.

It remains obvious to anyone who walks down a commercial district that storefronts represent the visible face of the long-term vacancy problem, Peskin aims to target residential properties as well. Landlords with three or more units that sit vacant for six months would also pay $250 per unit per day until the unit is leased.

The Board of Supervisors would need to approve Peskin’s plan to place it on the November ballot, where it would need to pass by a two-thirds vote to become law.