Research Associate (Volunteer) – Office-to-Housing Conversion Study, San Francisco

About Reside Act NOW

America is short millions of homes, and in city after city rent eats more of every paycheck. At the same time, downtowns are full of office space nobody is using. Reside Act NOW exists to help turn that empty space into homes people can afford.

We publish a free, open screening of downtown office buildings at resideact.org, estimating how many homes each could hold if converted. Estimates like ours are only useful if someone checks them against what actually got built, so we're doing that as a formal study.

About the study

How well do simple rules, the kind planners and researchers use to estimate housing from office space, predict the number of homes a converted building actually ends up with? To find out, we build a record of completed office-to-housing conversions from public documents: certificates of occupancy, permits and property records. Then we compare that record against the rules. The study is pre-registered: the method and tests were written down and fixed before the results were seen. We've documented 20 conversions so far, mostly in Lower Manhattan and Philadelphia, and we're preparing a paper.

About the role

We're looking for a volunteer Research Associate to document conversions in San Francisco. We've already pulled a starting list of conversion permits from the city's open data. Your job is to turn candidates into verified cases, following a written protocol.

• Read certificates of occupancy and permits to record how many homes each conversion created, and on which floors
• Check whether floors were added on top of the original building, and separate them out
• Confirm the building was an office before it converted
• Record how the homes were first offered (rent or sale), with a source
• Note where records disagree and how you resolved it
• Search the city's permit data for conversions our list missed

Strong contributors may be invited to co-author the paper. Everyone who contributes verified cases is credited by name.

Who we're looking for

• An undergraduate degree, in any field. Planning, architecture, real estate, economics, statistics, law or data science is a plus
• Careful with documents and spreadsheets. One misread floor changes the result
• Comfortable following a written protocol exactly
• Nice to have: reading floor plans, Python or Git

What you'll get

• Potential co-authorship on the paper
• Hands-on experience with pre-registered research and public records
• A reference letter after 3 months

This is an unpaid, remote volunteer role, about 4–6 hours a week for at least 3 months. We're an independent volunteer group, not affiliated with HUD, Congress or any city government.

Screening exercise

650 First Ave in Manhattan was an office building converted to apartments. Its certificate of occupancy lists homes by floor:

• Floor 1: 8 · Floor 2: 8 · Floors 3–7: 13 each
• Floor 8: 6, plus amenity rooms · Floors 9–11: 8 each

The conversion permit calls it an "8-story office building" with a "3-story vertical extension." A real estate listing describes it as a "7-story pre-war base with a 4-story glass addition."

How many homes were created inside the original building? In a few sentences, give your answer, your reasoning, and what you'd check to be sure.

How to apply: Click "I'm Interested" and answer the questions, including the exercise above.