Sept. 12, 2025
For more than a decade, the city of San Francisco wanted to turn the historic Balboa Reservoir — long used as a parking lot for City College — into a 1,100-unit housing complex.
It took five years to entitle the project and sell the 17-acre lot to Bridge Housing in 2022. But because of the financing crunch of the past several years, the developer never broke ground.
Then, state money started flowing in, allowing construction to begin this year. One pot of funding came from California’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program, which awarded the developer $45.7 million to help pay for one tower with 159 affordable housing units.