Turn 12 high-end units into two billionaire penthouses? Sure — that’s what the “market” wants.
While we continue to fight over whether there ought to be more “market-rate” (read: luxury) housing in the Mission, and whether there is any rational supply-and-demand element in the equation, Tishman-Speyer is giving us an excellent answer.
The developer building the Lumina towers at 201 Folsom Street now wants to turn the top floors into the kind of massive penthouse apartments that are being sold to international billionaires who never really spend much time living there.
According to Socketsite (thanks to Sfist for the tip):
At the extreme, the eight three-bedroom units across the 41st and 42nd floors of LUMINA’s Tower B could be combined into one mega-duplex measuring over 20,000 square feet, while the four three-bedroom units atop the 37-story Tower D could become a single 9,000-square-foot penthouse, “depending on market demand.”
This is going to help solve the affordable housing problem?
Even if you argue that rich people need housing too so they don’t evict tenants in the Mission, this is just nuts – only a tiny, tiny, fraction of the people in the world will be able to afford these penthouses. And if they sell for $20 million or so, do you think the developers of other “market-rate” building won’t notice and start to convert normal condos into these giants?
And why is this allowable when Sup. Scott Wiener wants to slow down “monster houses?”. What we have here is a plan to turn 12 new units into two.
And it’s being done because of “market demand.”
You couldn’t ask for a better case study in why the “market” isn’t, and won’t, solve San Francisco’s housing crisis.
