Yes I agree with you, but who pays for it? JLL and CBRE are large and diversified enough that they can eat the cost of their SF commercial properties being vacant.
It doesn't make sense for them to spend funds on retrofitting their properties into apartments when they can regeotiate their mortgage commitment to be much more amenable in the short term, especially when similar residential properties in SF like NEMA, The Gateway, and others continue to have elevated vacancy rates.
You can't force private businesses to do residential retrofits - they'll only do it if there is a viable financial case for them to do it.
Most luxury residential property in SF is owned and managed by Greystar, Avalon, and UDR. These are different companies from JLL and CBRE who own the vacant office buildings. At that point, who pays for the retrofit - JLL+CBRE or the residential landlords line Greystar+Avalon+UDR? It doesn't make sense to either because they are large, diversified international companies that have better opportunities to deploy the capital they have at hand (eg. NoMA in DC, NYC, etc). Why spend $1-2 billion renovating+retrofitting when you can spend the same amount with a better RoI in other markets.