Muni Is in Trouble. It’s Land Might Be the Lifeline.
San Francisco’s transit agency needs money—and it's finally looking to its real estate for help.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is facing a financial cliff. With a projected $50 million shortfall this year and a potential $320 million deficit in the next few years, the agency is in crisis.
But there’s a sliver of good news: Muni owns land. A lot of it.
Now, through a new Joint Development Program, SFMTA is looking to tap into its underutilized real estate portfolio to generate housing, commercial space, and, critically, new revenue. It’s a smart move—and a long-overdue one.
110 Acres, 25 Sites, One Big Pivot
Muni controls over 110 acres of property across San Francisco—think bus yards, parking lots, and garages. For years, most of these have been treated as single-use infrastructure: necessary, inert, off-limits to the housing conversation.
But that’s changing. Under the Joint Development Program, 25 sites have been identified for possible private development. The idea is to partner with developers who can transform these publicly owned parcels into mixed-use projects that support transit goals and the city’s broader housing needs.
If it works, it’s a win-win: Muni gets revenue, the city gets housing.
Enter the Surplus Land Act: Blessing or Burden?
There’s one big constraint: the California Surplus Land Act (SLA). It requires that at least 25% of housing on surplus public land be affordable. That sounds straightforward—but there are key questions still to be resolved:
Will the 25% affordability requirement apply to each individual site, or can it be averaged across the entire program?
How will this affect developer interest, particularly for smaller or more constrained parcels?
Will the Planning Department and state regulators allow flexibility?
These aren’t small details. The difference between parcel-by-parcel and program-wide compliance could mean the difference between feasible and dead-on-arrival for many projects.
Transit-Oriented Development: Good Urbanism, If You Can Make It Work
Let’s be clear: housing on transit agency land is good urban policy. These sites are generally:
Close to existing infrastructure,
Located in already-developed neighborhoods,
Positioned to reduce car dependence.
Plus, monetizing public land for public benefit is something San Francisco should have been doing all along.
But good ideas need execution. And for this to work, Muni will need:
Clear development guidelines,
Political support,
A fast-track entitlement process,
And a compelling answer to how affordability requirements will be structured.
The Joint Development Program is still in its early stages, but it’s one of the more interesting policy shifts to emerge from the post-pandemic real estate recalibration.
Final Take: A Test of Will, Not Just Feasibility
SFMTA’s budget shortfall isn’t going away. Neither is San Francisco’s housing crisis. The Joint Development Program offers a rare opportunity to address both at once—but only if the city is willing to prioritize feasibility alongside affordability.
This is more than a real estate story. It’s a test of how nimble our public institutions can be when the stakes are high.
If Muni can pull this off, it could become a model—not just for San Francisco, but for transit agencies across the country facing similar dilemmas.
Let’s hope they get it right.