Tenants and Owners Development Corporation

Tenants and Owners Development Corporation, also known as TODCO, is a nonprofit organization that owns eight low-income apartment buildings in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The organization is a prominent and influential opponent of housing construction in San Francisco.[1][2][3][4]

In the 1980s and 1990s, TODCO built low-income apartment buildings. Since the early 2000s, the organization has not built more housing. The organization derives resources from the rising value of its properties, which is a consequence of skyrocketing property prices in San Francisco. The organization has used these resources to lobby against housing construction, as well as fund various other propositions.[1] The organization has been criticized for using the windfalls of its operation on political advocacy rather than on its properties and resident services.[1]

John Elberling is the president of the organization. In 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of Elberling, "his power to shape what does and does not get built in the South of Market has grown in recent years as he has spent freely on propositions, polling, lobbying and lawsuits."[1] Elberling lives rent-free in one of TODCO's affordable housing units, despite the fact that his salary is four times higher than the income he would need to qualify for the building.[1] He also owns a 2,938-square-foot house in Sebastopol, in Sonoma County, California.[4]

In 2015, TODCO supported a proposal to ban the construction of market-rate housing in the Mission District.[5] In 2021, TODCO took a leading role in opposing the construction of a 495-unit apartment complex (25% of which would have been affordable housing) on a Nordstrom valet parking lot.[1][2][6] As of 2022, that campaign is implicated in an ethics complaint about whether former Supervisor Jane Kim violated the law by not registering as a lobbyist for work opposing it.[7]