When rent might total $30-40k per year, it would take 10 years of the place being empty to break even.
Unless you mean tenant protections in that owners are hoping to sell the buildings to flip to condos, in which case sure, they’re more valuable without tenants but that’s hardly unique to SF. Many places make it difficult to evict tenants to take rental units off the market.
So if you're a landlord with say a 2 unit building, the ideal scenario would be you rent it out, then once you're getting ready to sell, you leave the units empty once tenants leave. Even if you leave them empty for years, you'll get a better return on your investment than if they were occupied by a tenant paying market rate.