El Faro, a Mission District taqueria that has been serving San Francisco for 65 years, is up for sale — not because the food got worse, not because customers stopped showing up, but because the rent doubled.
Let that sink in. A business that survived recessions, the dot-com bust, a global pandemic, and whatever the hell 2023 was couldn't survive its own landlord.
This is the story of small business in San Francisco, distilled into one devastating headline. We talk endlessly about supporting local businesses, about preserving the cultural fabric of neighborhoods like the Mission, about how chain stores and empty storefronts are hollowing out the city. Then we watch it happen in real time and shrug.
To be clear: landlords have the right to charge market rent. That's how property works, and we're not about to argue otherwise. But let's also be honest about what's happening here. San Francisco's regulatory environment — sky-high property taxes, byzantine permitting, an unstable commercial landscape — creates enormous pressure on property owners, who then pass that pressure downstream to tenants like El Faro. The city has spent decades making it harder and more expensive to own and operate property, and then acts surprised when legacy businesses get squeezed out.
Meanwhile, City Hall loves announcing grant programs and "legacy business" registries that amount to little more than a plaque and a press release. El Faro was, in fact, on the Legacy Business Registry. Fat lot of good that did.
If San Francisco actually wanted to keep institutions like El Faro alive, it would focus on making the city cheaper and easier to do business in — for everyone. Lower the regulatory burden. Streamline permits. Stop treating commercial property owners like ATMs. Instead, we get task forces, studies, and ribbon-cutting photo ops while another 65-year-old taqueria puts a "For Sale" sign in the window.
The Mission loses again. And nobody at City Hall will lose a minute of sleep over it.
