Academy of Art University has leased three of its former student dormitory buildings in San Francisco to The Residency, a startup founder hostel and research lab, turning dorm rooms once filled with art students into video studios, robotics labs and cohort housing for entrepreneurs paying about $2,000 a month to start.
The properties at 1916 Octavia Street, 2209 Van Ness Avenue and 1153 Bush Street now house roughly 20 founders, researchers and academics each for three-month stints, according to The Real Deal. Residents work on startups and research projects during their stay, and some can exchange equity in their companies for a spot in the program instead of paying rent outright, the outlet reports. Academy of Art University still owns all three buildings even as it hands over operations to the tech hostel tenant.
From Dorm Rooms to Demo Day
The Octavia Street building has a particularly layered past. Known as the Coco Chanel Residence Hall during its stint as an Academy of Art dorm, the four-story property had previously operated as both a tourist hotel and a residential hotel before the university ever got involved, according to Houseberry. Former dorm rooms there have been converted into video studios, and a sunroom now holds robotics equipment, per The Real Deal's reporting.
The Residency organizes three cohorts per year and preps participants for a demo day during their stay, according to the same Real Deal report. Neftali Velez of The Residency said the organization sees its San Francisco locations as a kind of campus, given how close the buildings sit to one another. The program offers short-term residential cohorts for startup founders.
A Building Still Bound by Housing Law
Not every leased address is a clean slate. Municipal records show that 1153 Bush Street contains 15 single-room occupancy units protected by the city's housing preservation laws, per the same Houseberry report. San Francisco's Residential Hotel Unit Conversion and Demolition Ordinance is known as Chapter 41 and was first adopted in 1981, according to the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco officials have not publicly issued zoning determinations or clarified which permit rules apply to founder hostels operating inside former unpermitted university dorms, Houseberry notes.
The Van Ness Avenue property carries its own history. Known as the International Institute, the building is a Classical Revival structure designed in 1901 by architect Moses J. Lyon, per Houseberry's reporting. It is the same stretch of Van Ness where Academy of Art once ran an unpermitted auto museum; between 2018 and 2019 the university liquidated 56 classic cars from that collection for nearly $9 million, according to Mission Local.
The Lawsuit That Set This in Motion
None of this is happening in a vacuum. San Francisco sued Academy of Art University in 2016, accusing it of illegally converting housing into university facilities and naming 22 buildings in the complaint, per The Real Deal. The city initially announced a $58 million settlement that year, as SFist reported. In January 2020, the Board of Supervisors approved a restructured settlement valued at $57.96 million, including a $37.6 million affordable-housing payment and $20.4 million in back fines and fees. Academy of Art also agreed to upgrade and obtain permits for 34 properties as part of the settlement, The Real Deal reports.
The university has spent the years since unloading real estate. It announced plans in 2025 to sell nearly a dozen properties totaling almost 375,000 square feet for about $120 million, and this year it sold a three-story Fisherman's Wharf building for $18.3 million, the St. Brigid Church building for $4.7 million, and the former First Congregational Church building for $15 million, according to The Real Deal.
Part of a Bigger Coliving Trend
The Residency is not the only experimental coliving venture reshaping San Francisco's tech housing scene. The Commodore Hotel at 825 Sutter Street was sold and rebranded in 2025 as the Superhero Hotel, which now targets startup founders with packages that include access to Frontier Tower, The Real Deal reports. Frontier Tower itself is a 16-floor downtown vertical village for tech entrepreneurs.
Inside The Residency's own cohorts, about 20% of participants are women, a share that exceeds typical tech startup averages, according to the SF Standard. The Octavia Street property also has video studios, rounding out a picture of communal startup life built inside buildings the city once fought to pull back into legal housing status.
