At a “Historical Housing Tour” on April 9, Jane Natoli walked attendees through the proposed historic district and pointed out the empty or damaged structures. She started at a burned-out apartment building on Union Street and Columbus Avenue. From there she took her audience to see a dilapidated storefront—an auto shop in a parking garage with busted windows—and a sausage factory that’s also a nationally recognized landmark.

“It’s a cool building,” said Natoli, the organizing director for the San Francisco chapter of national pro-housing organization YIMBY Action. “It was once the largest sausage factory on the West Coast, right? But it hasn’t been that for a long time, and what it is right now is an empty building with a parking lot next to it.”