The commercial vacancy tax San Francisco voters passed in 2020 applies to street-facing ground floor space in the city's named neighborhood commercial and neighborhood commercial transit districts, at $250 per linear foot of frontage in its first taxable year rising to $1,000 per linear foot thereafter. The Financial District and Union Square are excluded. Reported results: North Beach's vacancy rate has come down to roughly half the 10 percent it carried when the tax passed, Haight-Ashbury has filled most of its vacancies including a space empty for eight years, and the Treasurer and Tax Collector has collected about $5 million, directed to a small business assistance fund. The exclusion is now the live question. The tax was designed for neighborhood corridors at a time downtown was thriving, and downtown is the part that is not.

Watch: Whether a downtown commercial vacancy tax is proposed, and how it interacts with the pharmacy-vacancy measure on the November ballot (MB coverage, Issue 5).

Source: San Francisco Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector; ABC7 San Francisco

Verification note: Confirm the collection figure and current corridor vacancy rates against the Treasurer's most recent data before publication.