The Most Contested Apartment Building in America: New at Reason

Robert Tillman’s idea of converting a coin-operated laundromat into a new apartment building initially had a lot of things going for it.

Except for his laundromat—one of three within a 100-yard radius in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District—no businesses or tenants were located on his property, meaning no one would be displaced by its redevelopment. The site was already zoned for housing and was close to a major commuter rail stop, big pluses in a highly regulated, transit-obsessed city. Best of all, the new building would bring 75 additional apartment units to a city suffering from a severe housing shortage and some of the highest rents in the country.

But instead of sailing through the permitting process, Tillman has spent five years and over $1 million just trying to get approval to redevelop his own property. Anti-gentrification activists and city politicians have gone to extreme lengths to stop him.

“My site is the easiest site in the city to build,” he says, and yet “it’s taken me longer to get to this point than it took for the United States to win World War II.”

Tillman’s troubles started in 2014, when he first sought permission to redevelop his property. Though San Francisco has a well-earned reputation for being a hard place to develop, Tillman says staff at the city’s Planning Department were initially very enthusiastic about his project, write Christian Britschgi and Justin Monticello.

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