Mission District residents voted overwhelmingly on Thursday night to keep 10 units of affordable housing from being slashed at 16th and Mission streets, after some fear that building heights would have to be reduced to accommodate shadow concerns.
The residents had a choice to make: Reduce the height of the proposed 382-unit building at 1979 Mission St. to minimize shade at Marshall Elementary School’s playground during the winter, or maintain the original design and retain the units. They choose housing.
Dario Romero, community planning manager at the Mission Economic Development Agency, said the vote demonstrated the need for affordable hosing in the neighborhood.
“Many moms said kids will develop and do better at school if they have their own room. If they have a place to live,” said Romero. “The conditions many families are experiencing right now are deplorable … living in shelters where they don’t have privacy, where they can’t play, where they can’t laugh.”
Last night’s vote took place at the Women’s Building at a third, and final, meeting over the issue. The project’s developers, Mission Housing and the MEDA, discussed in detail the results of a January shadow impact report that found the school’s playground would be shadowed 95 percent of the time in winter as a result of the third phase of the affordable housing project.
The results worried parents and some school staff members concerned about less sun exposure for their children.
Developers then responded by presenting a new model that reduced the shadowing by 20 percent. They informed attendees the final decision was to be made by a vote. Option No. 1: to keep the original building at nine stories and 112 affordable housing units. Option No. 2: to adopt the new plan, reducing the height to six stories and the numbers of affordable housing units to 102.
The voting was undertaken over multiple meetings.
And the final results came right before 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
“Option No. 1: 83 votes. Option No. 2: 33 votes,” read Brenda Cordoba, the president of the board for Faith in Action, who volunteered to count the votes. “Here, we do what the community wants. What we need is more truly accessible housing.”
Attendees chanted in support.
Others were not so happy with the results.
“I’m a little bothered that we’re not taking more consideration about the children’s well-being and health, at the moment,” said Grace Estrada, a parent of a 5-year-old who attends Marshall Elementary.
“These kids love to be outside. It’s a part of their well-being, to have access to sun, to have access to clean air.”
Estrada added, however, a larger concern as a parent lies in phase one of the project: The nine-story, 136-unit building of supportive housing.
“My main concern is what we’re attracting to a neighborhood that can’t take anymore [poor street conditions],” she said. “The children in this community are already seeing so much, and they’re going to be exposed to so much more now.”
Who was the electorate here?
It’s “césped artificial” — so it’s OK.
So when MEDA says “Mission Residents,” did they check people’s residential status somehow to ensure they lived in the neighborhood, or did the nonprofit cartel marshal up their few hundred supporters to execute the plan as directed and pass then off as residents, representative of the Mission?
Anyone else think it’s messed up that barely over 100 folks voted for this when there are like 100k living in the mission?
The decisions should be made by planning commission and supervisors.
Working folks can’t attend these meetings.
Actually, it shouldn’t require any discretion whatsoever — whether it’s the Planning Commission or the BOS or some random group of people — as apparently is the cause with this boondoggle.
If a housing development conforms to the laws in place at the time it is proposed, it should be allowed to proceed expeditiously — period.
Requiring continual, unending, time-consuming, uncertain and costly discretionary review of proposed housing projects over the course of the past 5+ decades, has led directly to our chronic housing shortage and the ever-escalating prices that inevitably result from such poor/myopic NIMBY-led policies.
It’s the fundamental reason that the taxpayers supposedly now “need” to pay for the most expensive housing ever conceived, i.e., so-called “affordable” housing at $1.2 million per unit (and climbing).
Utterly insane and unsustainable “progressive” policy in action, folks!
There are ways to reflect sunlight back to overshadowed areas with many mirror like reflector and diffuser building facades.
There’s usually a solution, if we want it, and seek it.
The nonprofits are steamrolling Marshall Elementary.
Again.
Through a “public engagement process,” they constrain the public discussion so that we can’t talk about how disrespectful and offensive Permanent Supportive housing for addicts on Marshall’s doorstep is, by only discussing shadows and units.
The City has been unable to defend Marshall from the incursion of fentanyl. Now the City is going to do further damage. It is like the nonprofits get paid to be the shock troopers for classist, anti-immigrant white supremacy.
Hopefully this years budget axe will exsanguinate this corrupt scam.
I think we should have and enforce very strong norms for public behavior while still making space for dysfunctional people to have a dignified and convenient home. I don’t think those homes need to necessarily be new developments that cost $1m per door. I think market rate developers build housing the most cheaply and if the city wants a new affordable housing building it should buy it from a market rate developer, as it did with the Panorama.
Most importantly, nobody should need to vote on whether a particular development should be allowed. It should be clear from the city plans what the answer to that question is.
> It is like the nonprofits get paid to be the shock troopers for classist, anti-immigrant white supremacy.
This is the most amazing satire. It’s like an episode of Parks and Rec brought to life.