Welcome to Mission Moves! Moves are happening in the neighborhood all the time; something strange is happening at the store that’s been closed forever, a bike lane is heading to your street, or your fave bar was just sold overnight.
This originally reported roundup notes newsy Mission development, housing moves and happenings. Please send us your tips and curious questions.
Let’s dive in!
Wellness hubs to address the fatal overdoses
The mayor and Department of Public Health unveiled a drug overdose prevention plan to combat the substance abuse and fatal overdose crisis. The star of the show is a string of “wellness hubs.” These hubs promise to offer overdose prevention services and links to housing and benefits throughout the city. The first hub debuts by year’s end, the plan states.
The hubs are interesting tools that borrow a page from the Tenderloin Center’s book. The Tenderloin Center connects about 400 daily visitors to overdose prevention, social welfare resources, showers, and hot meals. Breed’s office used the center to rationalize the controversial Tenderloin Emergency Plan, and many politicians and community groups praised the center’s ability to save lives. Nonetheless, the mayor will shut it down barely a year after its opening. Let’s hope the smaller wellness hubs last longer.
The effort explicitly lists its goal to reduce overdoses in the city. By 2025, San Francisco hopes to reduce overdose deaths by 15 percent, narrow drug-use inequities by 30 percent, and increase the number of folks using medicine for addiction by 30 percent.
If you’re thinking, “15 percent of what? 30 percent of what?” then we’re in the same boat. Ironically, though the report touts data-tracking as a solution, it does not offer the present-day racial breakdowns of overdose deaths, nor the number of medication for addiction treatment (MAT) users.
Lucky for you, I asked, so we can better glean what we’re aiming for by 2025. The Health Department hasn’t yet responded, so we’ll table it until next week.
Thursday’s plan also promises roughly 110 new overnight treatment beds (40 in the Bayview) to help folks dealing with substance abuse. The report underscores that this gets the mayor closer to her goal of opening 400 mental health beds, which is true, depending how you count it. But please don’t confuse the 400 beds as all for substance abuse treatment; they’re not.
We do know that, two years from now, San Francisco should increase its naloxone kits from 45,000 distributions per year to 75,000, and offer naloxone in at least half of the permanent supportive housing sites, according to the plan. By year four, all permanent supportive housing should have naloxone. (You can also get some at the pharmacy.)
See for yourself. Read the full report here.
Planning Commission hears the Housing Element
Next week, city officials are submitting a document that imagines a wildly different San Francisco than the one you know. It’s the latest stage of the Housing Element, a document showing how San Francisco plans on creating 82,000 new units of housing in the next eight years.
To do so, this requires a huge shake-up of city zoning, especially on the West side. Making space for 82,000 units is a puzzle, and there’s “several scenarios” that could help us solve it. Some of those scenarios will be mapped out in the update released next week.
Inevitably, all solutions require massive upzoning, in which the city would increase the amount of units allowed on a parcel. The first map that identifies underutilized/vacant sites to upzone shows relatively limited development in the Mission, in part because the state demands the bulk of new development focus on well-resourced neighborhoods. Still, upzoning is possible here, though it looks that it will be incremental, an extra unit here or there. Planners identified just a few underutilized parcels that could allow 20 to 100 units.
Nearby, other parcels may see an upzoning boom. One proposal calls to increase multifamily housing along transit lines, including Church Street and 17th streets and the Market/Castro area. The city will likely tap into recently passed state legislation that allows multi-family homes along commercial corridors, or 100 percent affordable housing on parcels normally reserved for office use.
Valencia Street Vintage
You know her. You’ve bought from her. And now, she’s opening a storefront in the neighborhood.
In November, Allison White will open Valencia Street Vintage, named “so people know what they’re buying, and where we are.” But folks who frequent Valencia Street may have already seen her at her parklet at 714 Valencia St., near 18th Street, where White will now operate permanently, selling items or complimenting customer’s outfits.
Valencia Street Vintage pieces will range from $5 to $200. White has zipped around the Bay Area to stock inventory. The store will operate Thursdays through Mondays, to ensure White gets two full days of family time. (I mean, with all the kids’ activities, the store must be shut on Wednesdays.)
The store comes as a milestone for White, who pored over “whatever” magazine she could get her hands on, back in Iowa as a child. Accessibility in shopping has been central for her. “I think, growing up, I was afraid to go into vintage stores because they were so precious. I always thought things would be too expensive. I’d like to build the place that I would want to shop,” White said.
Beyond selling clothes, White hopes the store elevates a sense of community. Having grown up in a restaurant, White learned first-hand how kitchen staff and regulars can become family. So, expect to see a “homework studio” for her three kids in the basement, and a comfy couch for locals who just wanna hang out.
White’s lived here years, and says it’s rare that she steps out without bumping into a familiar face. Twice during our interview, folks stopped her to say hi. “I’ve ran into him three times this week,” she said about one person.
Those who don’t know her might know her husband, fellow entrepreneur and Yellow Moto Pizzeria business owner David White. She met him while tending bar at Bloodhound. “He would come in for a year and ignore me,” White, 37, said of her 51-year-old partner. “I say I like everything vintage — even my husband.”
In the pandemic, her confidence and drive toward fashion reignited. White started selling vintage items with a friend. She later floated the idea of launching an official business, and friend and Chezchez owner Josh Harrison encouraged her to take the plunge.
Her family echoed that enthusiasm. When David separated from his Flour + Water partners earlier this year. White offered support. When Yellow Moto opened, she pitched in. “You didn’t waver. You always believed in me. Now, it’s your turn.”
Hopefully with the addition of the indoor space the vintage shop owner can start leaving more sidewalk space open for pedestrians.