Transforming Neglected Housing To Address San Francisco’s Housing Crisis

Veritas Investments has led the way on improving San Francisco’s rent-controlled housing stock through series of interior, exterior, life safety and system upgrades. Buildings which commonly come into the Veritas portfolio often do so following years of disinvestment and significant deferred maintenance. One 26-year resident said things are now the best they’ve ever been!

From case study examples, Veritas offers a road map for preserving the city’s classic Victorian and Edwardian buildings with life-safety and general maintenance improvements, extending their useful life for years to come. These transformations benefit both long-term residents whose presence in the city helps it retain the character and charm and also attracts newcomers eager to start their own San Francisco story in one of Veritas’ many historic buildings.

The company’s building at 634 Powell Street in Lower Nob Hill offers a perfect example of a structure with great bones that had been neglected by its prior owners and has since experienced a metamorphosis under Veritas ownership. Following a series of seismic as well as substantial interior and exterior improvements, 634 Powell is now a beautiful, desirable, and safe place to live. Sub-standard plumbing and water systems, dangerous boiler equipment, and other unsafe conditions had previously placed the building on a pathway to obsolescence, but now both long-established residents and newer arrivals benefit from significant improvements to the building’s key systems and infrastructure. In short, this nearly century-old structure now has a renewed lease on life and is primed to continue to housing San Franciscans for decades to come.

At 634 Powell, Veritas brought an aging, neglected property back to life with seismic, building-code and comfort improvements, and all residents now enjoy a better, safer building.

Veritas has bought dozens of similar properties back from the brink of disrepair, including several properties in which units were so neglected that they were no longer habitable. At 845 Pine, for example, eight apartments were unable to be occupied when Veritas acquired the building, due to decades’ worth of deferred maintenance; today each of the eight are occupied.

At 1146 Taylor, Veritas acquired the building in a state of significant disrepair and retuned 14 units back to life that had been left vacant by prior owners. Throughout these improvement efforts, Veritas has taken great pains to minimize inconvenience sometimes associated with rehabilitation to its residents.