Joaquín TorresJoaquín Torres

Joaquin Torres is running unopposed for another term as Assessor-Recorder, and SF YIMBY is happy to endorse him again. While this office's core job — fairly assessing the city's roughly $350 billion in taxable property and maintaining public records — isn't a land-use lever, Torres has built a long track record as a reliable pro-housing official.

For 12 years, as President of the SF Housing Authority Commission, Torres led the rehabilitation of over 3,400 units of public housing with roughly $1 billion in improvements, ultimately transferring that housing to affordable-housing operators who could run it better, and grew the number of families served by 20% to over 16,500 households. He stepped down from that role in 2025 after stabilizing what had long been a troubled agency, and his successor inherited a much stronger foundation because of it. Torres has also served on SPUR's executive board, supporting the kind of urbanist research and advocacy that aligns with our own priorities.

Joaquin Torres is running unopposed for another term as Assessor-Recorder, and SF YIMBY is happy to endorse him again. While this office's core job — fairly assessing the city's roughly $350 billion in taxable property and maintaining public records — isn't a land-use lever, Torres has built a long track record as a reliable pro-housing official. For 12 years, as President of the SF Housing Authority Commission, Torres led the rehabilitation of over 3,400 units of public housing with roughly $1 billion in improvements, ultimately transferring that housing to affordable-housing operators who could run it better, and grew the number of families served by 20% to over 16,500 households. He stepped down from that role in 2025 after stabilizing what had long been a troubled agency, and his successor inherited a much stronger foundation because of it. Torres has also served on SPUR's executive board, supporting the kind of urbanist research and advocacy that aligns with our own priorities.

We recommend voting for Joaquín Torres for Assessor-Recorder. This office assesses more than $350 billion in taxable property and keeps the city's official records.

Though Torres is running unopposed, he has earned the seat on the merits.

Torres inherited an in-progress $55 million replacement of the office's decades-old technology, started under his predecessor Carmen Chu, and carried it to completion. We don't want to diminish Chu's role in that important transition. She deserves all the credit for the hard work getting it rolling, but Torres does deserve the credit for ensuring it completed successfully.

In December 2024 he made San Francisco the first county in California to put its recorded documents online for free (https://www.sf.gov/assessor-recorder-joaquin-torres-launches-new-service-for-recorded-documents), more than 7 million of them going back to 1990, replacing a system that charged residents for copies of their own deeds. He did it while keeping assessments on schedule through the most volatile commercial real estate market in memory and, by his own account (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/questionnaires/november-2026/joaquin-torres/), the highest volume of assessment appeals since the Great Recession.

Source (https://growsf.org/voter-guide/san-francisco-voter-guide-november-2026-election#assessor-recorder)