18 November 2025/SF News/Jay Barmann (SFist.com)
The SF Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a new affordable-housing program based in a new building on mid-Market Street that would be dedicated to housing artists and creative types who are largely being priced out of the city.
“The story of San Francisco cannot be told without its artists,” says Supervisor Rafael Mandelman in a statement. “This program is an important step toward honoring that legacy and ensuring artists remain at the heart of our city’s future.”
Mandelman adds that this is a “major step toward ensuring artists can afford to live, create and thrive in San Francisco.”
The Artist Housing Certification Program is the first-ever housing program in the city dedicated to providing affordable housing to artists, and the legislation establishing it was introduced by Mandelman last month.
The program will operate in conjunction with a new 90+-unit development that is still in the predevelopment stages, to be constructed on the site of the McRoskey Mattress store at Market and Gough streets (1687 Market Street). As SFist reported in May 2024, an anonymous benefactor gifted $100 million to two non-profits for the purpose of building what’s been dubbed Artists Hub on Market, or just 1687 Market. The non-profit developer who shared in the gift is Mercy Housing.
The project received its Planning approvals back in March, and construction is expected to begin in early 2026. The finished development will have over 90 units designated affordable and for local artists, and the building will also include a black-box theater and other designated creative spaces.
The San Francisco Arts Commission will be administering the new program, and it’s not yet clear when applications might begin. Eligible applicants will need to be artists or arts administrators and their families, making at or below 80% of area median income or AMI (2023 AMI levels are shown here).
A press release for today’s announcement cites a 2023 annual report by the Arts Commission that cited a 2018 survey that found that 19% of artists who responded said they had been displaced from their housing in the last two years.
A driving force behind 1687 Market is Randall Kline, a founder of SFJazz who oversaw the construction of that organization’s $64 million SF Jazz Center, completed in 2013. Kline apparently was the one who solicited donors for a project to build artist housing in the city.
“SFJazz was built to serve the local artist community,” Kline told the Chronicle last year. “Over the past 40 years, as I saw more and more artists leaving the city, I talked with potential funders about this idea to see if we could provide affordable housing. One donor stepped forward.”
Previously: Some Anonymous Donor Just Gave $100 Million to Build Affordable Housing for Artists on Market Street
