by Randy Shaw on July 13, 2026 (beyondchron.org)
Kennedy Re-imagined Berkeley’s Future. Berkeley’s most fabled housing came from such legends as Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan and Walter Ratcliff. But the builder who has done the most to change the city’s landscape since the 1990’s is Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy won approval to build market rate housing in downtown Berkeley when none had been constructed since World War 2. He was arguably the first YIMBY, making arguments for building taller and denser infill housing that have become staples of the pro-housing movement.
Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests has built 699 units in Berkeley in 16 projects. It has 476 more units in 7 projects in the pipeline. No other builder comes close to matching Panoramic’s visual impact on the Berkeley landscape.
How did Kennedy do it? How did a person arriving in Berkeley in 1986 overcome five decades of the city’s anti-housing policies? Kennedy has surmounted seemingly insurmountable barriers to get housing built in both Berkeley and San Francisco. Could his approach be a model for others?
Here is how Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests succeeded.
The First YIMBY?
While Patrick Kennedy was attending Harvard Law School he decided he did not want to be a practicing attorney. He took a break to get a masters degree in real estate development from MIT. After passing the bar he went to work at BART in its real estate department.
Kennedy’s Berkeley legacy started when he built a three unit condo. He then built a 24 unit condo project at Shattuck and Hearst. Panoramic Interests went on to develop 473 units, most in large projects.
Kennedy was a 1990’s builder talking about housing in 21st century terms. He urged cities to “decriminalize housing development” and promoted “transit oriented development” decades before the YIMBY movement made these terms commonplace.
The Berkeley City Council ultimately had the power to approve or kill projects. It had not been swayed by pro-housing arguments in the past. Kennedy changed this dynamic. He did so by building political support among progressive groups supporting more housing.
Three constituencies in particular turned out at council meetings to back Kennedy’s projects: disabled activists associated with the renown Center for Independent Living, environmentalists connected with the Greenbelt Alliance, and UC Berkeley students. Kennedy did in Berkeley what Joe O’Donoghue was doing for the Residential Builders Association in San Francisco: they mobilized political support for housing projects so that naysayers stopped dominating hearings.
Kennedy aligned his projects with longtime council member Shirley Dean. Dean was the leading “moderate” on the council for years before serving as mayor from 1994-2002. She was an anathema to progressives. Progressive council members like Dona Spring almost consistently opposed Kennedy’s projects.
Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests became a political lightning rod. After progressive councilmember Carla Woodworth broke from the progressive consensus and backed a Kennedy project, the six term incumbent was defeated for re-election in 1996 due to her vote.
Kennedy was Berkeley’s first developer to use the state density bonus enacted in 1978. He suspects other builders didn’t know about it. Kennedy’s legal training likely contributed to his being a builder who always understood the legal landscape.
Kennedy sold all of this Berkeley properties in 2007. He and his wife wanted to move to San Francisco so he shifted Panoramic Interests focus there.
Kennedy’s Housing for the Unhoused
Kennedy built three projects in San Francisco. All in the South of Market. What would have been Panoramic’s biggest impact was never implemented: a cost-effective strategy for housing the unhoused.
In February 2017 Kennedy wrote a story for Beyond Chron touting a new strategy for reducing homelessness. As he described:
It is a multi-story, modular, prefabricated housing system that meets all of San Francisco’s building and seismic codes and eliminates many of the costly aspects of micro-apartment development. And because of its size, design , and use of technology, the MicroPAD® represents a complete modernization and reinvention the residential hotel.…the MicroPAD building system reduces development times by 40–50% and offers project cost savings of 30%-40% over conventional development.
After Kennedy contacted me about the MicroPAD we had several THC tenants visit a mock unit. They loved it. Mayor Ed Lee also loved the idea of our leasing these units. But he told me I had to get the San Francisco Building Trades Council sign off on a city-funded project using modular housing.
I pitched the plan to Michael Terriot, then the union’s head. I offered to condition the city’s support for modular housing for the unhoused on legislation banning it for other projects. But he did not want to open the modular housing door. So Kennedy’s cost effective strategy for housing the unhoused went nowhere.
I tried to revive the modular strategy in 2020. I wrote a story about how San Francisco could house 6000 homeless persons in two years. See “Solving San Francisco’s Homeless Crisis.” The city could have used Kennedy’s housing strategy instead of wrecking the Tenderloin’s Little Saigon by converting tourist hotels in the area to shelters. But the city again missed a major opportunity to meaningfully homelessness. These photos show the Berkeley project for the unhoused that Kennedy could have replicated in San Francisco.
Kennedy is not as positive on modular as he once was. He sees a problem with its use in tight infill sites due to traffic issues. But there remain enough viable sites for the Lurie Administration to examine the feasibility of Kennedy’s strategy. Kennedy thinks 2000 units is still doable.
Building in SF is “Impossible”
Kennedy describes building private market housing in San Francisco as “impossible.” He blames the city’s dysfunctional inclusionary housing rules. Not the percentage of affordable units—which Mayor Lurie and the Board is moving to sharply lower–but the extreme delays in filling these affordable units.
Kennedy’s project at 333 12th Street had 26 below market rent units. After 2 and 1/2 years, the Mayor’s Office of Housing filled only eight of the vacancies. This with a waiting list of 3000! Kennedy offered to provide staff to MOH to process applications for vacancies. They weren’t interested.
San Francisco could easily fix this problem by allowing the owners to fill their own vacancies. MOH would then monitor to ensure income limits have been met. Instead the city remains wedded to a Rube Goldberg-like placement strategy that keeps affordable units vacant, costs nonprofit owners desperately needed funds and pushes builders like Panoramic out of the city.
Returning to Berkeley
So Kennedy returned to Berkeley. In my 2018 book Generation Priced Out, I was very critical of Berkeley’s anti-housing policies for driving out the working and middle-class. But Berkeley has become one of the nation’s most pro-housing cities. Kennedy just finished a project on Francisco Street at Shattuck and has two approved North Berkeley projects left to build. All three are on the Northside, where little new housing has been built.
Patrick Kennedy has “never been more bullish about Berkeley.” His persistence in trying to get housing built has encouraged other builders. Kennedy and Panoramic Interests have provided Berkeley with a more vibrant and inclusive future.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.
