Cries of ‘Racism’ at Mission District Housing Meeting

An open house for a new housing development at 1515 South Van Ness Avenue quickly turned raucous on Thursday night, as activists repeatedly called for the site to be turned into affordable housing and claimed the developer was ignoring the Latino community.

“Racism! Racism! Racism!” shouted Jordan Gwendolyn Davis, a transgender advocate, after a neighbor of the project spoke in support. The neighbor said the developer had done “a lot of community outreach” with those in the immediate vicinity of the project site, who would be “most impacted by the project.”

But the largely Latino crowd balked, saying the developer never reached out to them despite their participation in previous meetings on the project. Activists thought project sponsors had met with wealthy white homeowners rather than working-class Latino renters.

“Why are they meeting with just the homeowners?” asked Erick Arguello, the president of the neighborhood association Calle 24. Arguello and others questioned the outreach of the developer and said his group was not invited to the table to voice their concerns.

“Your private meetings are bullshit that don’t represent the community,” said Eddie Stiel, a nearby resident.

The development at 1515 South Van Ness Ave. — headed by Lennar Multifamily Communities, a division of the development giant Lennar Corporation — would be six stories tall and 157 units. The site, at the corner of South Van Ness Avenue and 26th Street, is the old McMillan Electric Co. building and sits right next to a planned fully affordable, nine-story building.

Open house for Mission District project 1515 South Van Ness—i.e. “Titanic Mess on South Van Ness”—getting testy. pic.twitter.com/I28FT1UFX8

— Joe Rivano Barros (@jrivanob) July 1, 2016

Peter Schellinger, a representative of the developer, said meetings were attended by homeowners and renters alike. Those who expressed interest in the design of the project in the past were invited to some dozen community meetings held in the two years since the project was first envisioned, according to project sponsors.

But affordability issues — the issues most raised by the crowd — were not the subject of past meetings and could not be meaningfully addressed now, Schellinger said.

“I can’t afford to do it,” Schellinger said of building fully affordable housing. The financing for the project was already penciled out, and unless the city wanted to buy the land from Lennar, it would proceed as envisioned.

The lion’s share of its apartments would be market-rate: 138 studios, one bedrooms, and two bedrooms to be rented at likely between $3,000 and $6,000 a month. The other 19 units would be affordable to those making 55 percent of the area median income, or $53,300 for a family of three. Those units would be mixed in throughout the building as required by city law.

On the ground floor, a cafe is envisioned for the corner, alongside six “trade shop” spaces of 700 square feet each, which Schellinger said could be rented to artists and craftsmen through a group like SFMade — a manufacturing advocacy non-profit — at about half of market rate rents for such spaces.

The affordable units are some 12 percent of the project total, the minimum required by the city. The project is not required to increase its level of affordability to 25 percent under Proposition C — which was approved by voters in June — because it was grandfathered in alongside other projects in the city. The project will go before the Planning Commission for approval on July 21.

Arguello and others said they would meet with the mayor’s office on Friday and discuss the possibility of the city buying the site. The city earlier approached Lennar to purchase the land, Schellinger said, but did not make an offer after the it was valued at $40 million. The site was purchased in 2010 for $4.25 million, according to public documents.

The last time the city bought a formerly market-rate site and turned it into affordable housing was at 490 South Van Ness Ave. last year. That was bought for $18.5 million, but the sale was controversial for conferring profit to the developer, who had originally bought it for $2.5 million.

Activists pushed for the purchase nonetheless, saying only affordable housing on the site could mitigate the displacement effects in a neighborhood racked by increasing rents and a decreasing Latino population.

“When you get people making $160,000-$200,000, what’s gonna happen to all those shops on 24th Street?” asked J. Scott Weaver, a tenants rights attorney. “Lennar should sell this site to the city.”

The exchange came some 40 minutes into the open house, which began with the project sponsors standing near architectural mock-ups of the six-story building, speaking to those with questions. The sleepy event ramped up when activists came into the room at the Mission Cultural Center holding signs reading “Luxury apartment development raises rents for everyone!”

Speaker after speaker took the floor and said the project would exacerbate gentrification in the neighborhood. Some became visibly angry when project sponsors tried to carry on conversations with others in the room. Eventually, Schellinger and Roberto Hernandez, a local activist, attempted a dialogue.

“Would you be willing to build this 100 percent for teacher housing?” asked Hernandez, after describing an exodus of teachers from San Francisco.

“I don’t have that luxury,” Schellinger responded, saying the project could not afford non-market-rate rents.

“We would all support you,” Hernandez continued, pointing to the 30 people gathered around him. “You would get your project without delay. You would still make money, it’s just the amount of money you’re gonna make.”

It was the latest in a series of confrontations between private developers and Mission District activists. An organized group of community members dubbing itself United to Save the Mission has been opposing dozens of market-rate projects in the neighborhood, notably increasing the amount of affordable housing at the nearly block-sized project on Bryant Street earlier this year through their opposition.

Still, that was considered a loss by activists who wanted more affordability in the project, and the group has been organizing against a planned development at 16th and Mission streets called the “Monster in the Mission” alongside dozens of smaller projects, including 1515 South Van Ness Ave., which has been named the “Titanic Mess on South Van Ness.”

Schellinger, the project sponsor, said the confrontation was not unexpected. He understood the gentrification concerns and lack of affordability, but said building more housing would ease the housing crisis and deflate rising rents.

“There’s philosophical divides” between the sides, he said. Not only is building more housing better for the city, he said, but those who understand the financing and process behind housing development know that a project cannot be radically altered this late in the game. Investors and debt have already been allocated, and the financing behind the project cannot change to drastically increase the affordability of the units.

Those in the room, however, were not interested in process. They spoke only of the unaffordable rents of a new glass tower in their neighborhood, and said they would continue their opposition.

“For us it’s not philosophical,” responded Arguello. “For us it’s reality.”