Harlow Srain, a 28-year-old community organizer, has spent nine months trying something most apartment hunters gave up on years ago: picking up the phone. She has contacted more than 200 San Francisco landlords and property managers to ask, person to person, whether the rent is negotiable, according to a KQED report published September 29, 2026. About 50 were willing to talk. None lowered the price.
Her timing could hardly be harder. The median San Francisco rent hit $3,878 in Apartment List’s October report, up 25.7 percent in 12 months, while rents nationally slipped 0.4 percent. On September 10, Mayor Daniel Lurie declared a “rent emergency” and announced a $30 million package aimed mostly at preventing evictions.
Srain’s search shows who gets squeezed when a wealth boom lands on a city with almost no empty apartments. It is people who don’t work in tech and who have to move anyway. It also shows how often the first voice a renter reaches is no longer human.
The experiment
Srain shares a one-bedroom in Bernal Heights with a former partner, and has been looking for her own place since they split late last year, KQED reported. Her pitch is plain. She tells whoever answers that she doesn’t work in tech, has lived in the Bay Area for about a decade, and wants to stay. Then she asks if the price can move.
Most calls went to voicemail or to a bot, KQED found. When a human manager answered, the conversation usually ended at the first mention of a discount. One manager listing a $4,700 two-bedroom in the Mission District sympathized but told her people are paying top dollar.
Her reasoning, as she put it to KQED: “Why not just ask to have them cut that back a little bit?” The owners who did engage were mostly small ones. Srain told KQED that one older landlord in Pacifica walked her through his water bill, property taxes and a monthly profit of roughly $100 to $200. That figure is her account of the call and has not been independently verified.
The numbers behind the squeeze
| Measure | San Francisco | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Median rent, all unit sizes | $3,878 | U.S. $1,388; SF metro $3,017; Oakland $2,366 |
| One-bedroom / two-bedroom | $3,915 / $4,640 | U.S. $1,220 / $1,374 |
| Change over 12 months | +25.7% | California +2.5%; U.S. −0.4% |
| Apartment vacancy | Just over 2% (June) | Nearly 11% during the pandemic |
At the common guideline of spending 30 percent of income on rent, the $3,915 median one-bedroom implies a household income of about $157,000. That is this publication’s arithmetic from Apartment List’s figure. Eviction defense lawyer Tuesday Thornton raised a similar number on KQED’s Forum and asked, “who are we building a city for?”
Analysts tie the surge to artificial intelligence money. Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather told CNN the AI boom concentrates wealth in a smaller group of workers and investors than earlier tech cycles did. Zumper found active rental listings down about 30 percent from a year earlier. NPR reported one couple watching a Zillow listing draw 200 contacts within four hours.
Why landlords say no
Property managers told KQED the refusals are not personal. JJ Panzer, whose Real Management Company oversees more than 700 Bay Area units, said rent control means a landlord can raise the rent substantially only when a tenant leaves. A vacancy is the one chance to reset the price, possibly for years.
Paul Griffiths of Vesta Asset Management told KQED that demand is so heavy some owners price above market just to thin out the applicants. He said he would not have time to return a call asking for a discount while scheduling showings for 75 people. He also said most people see housing as a human right, but that landlords alone cannot be made responsible for providing it.
There is a legal wrinkle, too. Fairweather told KQED that fair-housing law bars landlords from favoring applicants based on protected characteristics such as family status. A heartfelt appeal about children or an aging parent can therefore put an owner in a bind. Rules written to keep tenant selection impersonal also leave little room for the kind of human appeal Srain is making.
Where the algorithms actually are
Nothing in KQED’s reporting says an algorithm rejected Srain. Her obstacles are price and volume. But automation now sits at several points in the rental process, which is part of why reaching a human decision-maker has become unusual.
Leasing bots. EliseAI, one of the largest vendors of AI leasing assistants, is described by the industry newsletter Thesis Driven as powering roughly 10 percent of U.S. apartments. That is a company-linked figure that has not been independently audited.
Screening scores. A TechEquity survey of more than 400 California landlords found 57.5 percent received screening reports containing an AI-generated score or recommendation. About 37 percent of California landlords followed the recommendation without further review. In November 2024, a federal court approved a $2.275 million settlement in a case alleging that SafeRent’s scoring model disadvantaged Black, Hispanic and voucher-holding applicants. Multifamily Dive reported that the company did not intend to discriminate, and a separate industry analysis said the settlement carried no admission of liability.
Pricing software. San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban landlords from using algorithmic tools that draw on competitors’ nonpublic data to set rents, in a 2024 ordinance. California followed with AB 325, effective January 1, 2026. The Justice Department sued the software maker RealPage in August 2024. RealPage has denied wrongdoing and says its software is legally compliant.
Two rental markets in one city
The headline rents describe what a newcomer or a mover pays. Joshua Howard of the California Apartment Association told KQED’s Forum that Census data put the median rent San Franciscans actually pay at about $2,476. He said the typical renter household spends 24 to 25 percent of its income on rent.
Both numbers can be true. Long-term tenants in rent-controlled units are shielded; Howard cited a 1.6 percent allowable annual increase. Anyone forced back onto the market by a breakup, a job change or an eviction meets the full $3,878.
That gap is why Srain is fighting to stay put. KQED reported that after moving from Salinas in 2019 she cycled through shared houses, friends’ couches and her car, moving almost twice a year. Bernal Heights is the longest she has lived anywhere in a decade.
What the city is doing, and what it doesn’t cover
Lurie’s $30 million package directs about $27 million to replace expiring federal emergency housing vouchers for some 650 extremely low-income households. Another $3 million expands full legal representation to 400 households facing eviction. It also raises relocation payments for tenants displaced under the state’s Ellis Act by 25 percent.
None of that lowers the asking rent for someone who is not being evicted. KQED reported that the city has been adding only 2,000 to 3,000 homes a year against a state-mandated goal of 82,000 by 2031. The city’s own chief economist projected last year that the mayor’s rezoning plan would yield at most about 14,600 additional units over 20 years.
Fairweather told KQED the responsibility lies largely with local governments that control how much housing gets built. She added that there may never be enough apartments in San Francisco for everyone who wants one. The San Francisco Apartment Association said the city should not punish owners for a shortage beyond their control.
What renters can still do
Asking for a lower rent is legal, and Srain’s results suggest small owners are the ones most likely to pick up and explain their costs. In this market it has not produced a discount.
Renters who suspect a screening report cost them an apartment have a federal right to find out. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says a landlord who denies an application because of a screening report must name the company that supplied it. The applicant can get a free copy within 60 days and dispute errors.
The other option is distance. Oakland’s median rent is $2,366, about 39 percent below San Francisco’s. Srain told KQED she knows the East Bay may be her best choice, and that having to make it points to a broken system.
What happens next
Parts of Lurie’s package need action by the Board of Supervisors, and the Apartment Association has signaled it may challenge provisions it believes conflict with state law. The federal voucher program the city is backfilling expires at the end of 2026.
Redwood City voters decide a rent control measure in November, a campaign Srain canvassed for with the nonprofit Faith in Action. OpenAI and Anthropic are both expected to go public in the coming months, according to CNN. Redfin estimates their employees’ windfalls could theoretically buy nearly 29 percent of the homes in the metro area.
Srain is still looking.
Editorial note: Srain’s account of her calls, including landlords’ statements about their costs, comes from KQED’s reporting and was not independently verified. No source reviewed indicates she was screened out by an automated system. Claims about RealPage and SafeRent are allegations or settled matters; both companies have denied wrongdoing or settled without admitting liability.
Sources
- KQED, “This SF Renter Is Trying to Beat the AI-Fueled Housing Boom With an Analog Approach” — https://www.kqed.org/news/12100661/this-sf-renter-is-trying-to-beat-the-ai-fueled-housing-boom-with-an-analog-approach
- Apartment List, San Francisco Rent Report, October 2026 — https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ca/san-francisco
- KQED, “San Francisco Mayor Lurie Infuses $30 Million in Reforms to Tackle ‘Rent Emergency'” — https://www.kqed.org/news/12098973/san-francisco-mayor-lurie-infuses-30-million-in-reforms-to-tackle-rent-emergency
- CNN via ABC7 San Francisco, “AI wealth is fueling housing market frenzy in San Francisco” — https://abc7news.com/post/ai-wealth-is-fueling-housing-market-frenzy-san-francisco-million-dollars-asking/19692675/
- NPR, “AI wealth is creating a ‘mansion shortage’ and upending San Francisco’s housing market” — https://www.npr.org/2026/09/01/nx-s1-5930432/ai-san-francisco-housing-market-real-estate
- KQED, “Report Projects Weak Housing Production Under San Francisco Zoning Plan Over Next 20 Years” — https://www.kqed.org/news/12062042/report-projects-weak-housing-production-under-san-francisco-zoning-plan-over-next-20-years
- TechEquity, “Screened Out of Housing: In a nutshell” — https://techequity.us/2024/08/05/screened-out-of-housing-in-a-nutshell/
- TechEquity, “How AI-powered tenant screening harms renters in the Sun Belt states” — https://techequity.us/2025/04/09/screened-out-sunbelt-explained/
- Multifamily Dive, “The hidden legal risk of AI apartment leasing tools” — https://www.multifamilydive.com/news/ai-leasing-tools-hidden-legal-risk-ada-compliance/817626/
- Fortress, “The State of AI in Leasing” (SafeRent settlement terms) — https://fortresstech.io/blog/state-of-ai-leasing-agents
- Thesis Driven, “Deep Dive: EliseAI” — https://www.thesisdriven.com/letters/deep-dive-eliseai/
- Local News Matters, “San Francisco becomes first in nation to ban use of AI algorithmic tools to set rent prices” — https://localnewsmatters.org/2024/09/04/san-francisco-becomes-first-in-nation-to-ban-use-of-ai-algorithmic-tools-to-set-rent-prices/
- Shelterforce, “Legislators Push Back Against ‘Rent-Setting’ Software” — https://shelterforce.org/2025/07/11/legislators-push-back-against-rent-setting-software/
- Squire Patton Boggs, “State Legislation Increasingly Targets Pricing Technologies” (AB 325) — https://www.squirepattonboggs.com/insights/publications/state-legislation-increasingly-targets-pricing-technologies/
- CRE Daily, “RealPage Lawsuit Escalates Over Rent Algorithms” — https://www.credaily.com/briefs/realpage-lawsuit-escalates-over-rent-algorithms/
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, rental denials and tenant screening reports — https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-should-i-do-if-my-rental-application-is-denied-due-to-a-tenant-screening-report-en-2105/
- KQED, “Redwood City to Vote on Rent Control in November” — https://www.kqed.org/news/12090248/redwood-city-to-vote-on-rent-control-in-november
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