The Pigeon Palace is a non-profit organization founded by the tenants at 2840-2848 Folsom St, in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco in 2012. Our goal was to further our landlord’s decades-long practice of providing affordable housing to low-income people; in her words, “refusing to choke anybody.” Our landlord Frances was a fan of pigeons. She scoffed at people who considered themselves better than these resourceful birds and she often pointed out the pigeons’ ability to survive hatred, violence and almost any effort to limit their free movement. We were determined to stay in the building at a cost that doesn’t choke anybody. We worked with the San Francisco Community Land Trust (SFCLT) to buy our building.

With the September 2015 closing of the sale, the occupied units of low-cost housing were saved, and the remaining units (two were unoccupied at the time of sale, a third was vacated in 2021) are set as moderate income housing. The Pigeon Palace has been permanently removed from the speculative real estate market. It can never be sold again, the tenants are virtually eviction-proof,