The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today unanimously rejected an appeal of the first stage of the “Marvel in the Mission,” the planned 100-percent-affordable housing development at 16th and Mission streets.
Since permanent supportive housing projects are shielded at the state level by SB 2162, neighbors instead undertook the arcane maneuver of appealing the Department of Public Works’ approval of subdividing the project into three separate lots.
The neighbors objected to the placement of a 136-unit, nine-story building intended for people currently or formerly struggling with addiction in close proximity to Marshall Elementary School.
“As Marshall Elementary community members, we seek to amplify the voices of Marshall families who are unable to attend this hearing because of the summer vacation,” said Capp Street resident Ali Gilmore at today’s hearing.
Following the nearly three-hour hearing, the supervisors, however, rejected the appeal and said the concerns raised by the neighbors regarding supportive housing near a school cannot be addressed by appealing Public Works’ subdivision process.
Earlier in the meeting, representatives for both Public Works and the Planning Department said the developer’s applications were in compliance with city codes.
Aaron Starr, principal planner at the city’s Planning Department, said that while he understood the issues and concerns raised by the neighbors, those are not relevant to an appeal regarding subdivisions of a construction project.
“The issues raised in the appeal focused on the broader development, not on the tentative map,” he said. “We respectfully recommend upholding the Planning Department and DPW decision.”
The appeal was supported by some half a dozen neighbors who live nearby on Capp Street; Marshall’s principal also spoke in favor of the appeal.
The supporters of the appeal claimed that said that siting permanent supportive housing for current or former drug-users in proximity to an overt drug scene at 16th and Mission, and close to an elementary school, was a disaster in the making.
Perhaps three times as many people showed up to speak against the appeal and in favor of constructing the housing.
Sam Moss, the executive director of Mission Housing, which is developing the site, said that permanent supportive housing is necessary to help homeless San Franciscans move toward recovery. The building is set to have mental health services sited on the ground floor, as well as space for a nonprofit.
“I would ask what else you would have us do than house homeless people?” asked Moss. “I stand by the decades, and thousands of people from the Mission, who have called for these buildings at these income levels.”
Neighbors said they don’t oppose either affordable housing nor permanent supportive housing, but they believe the area is already oversaturated with services.
The Mission, along with SoMa, Bayview-Hunters Point and the Tenderloin, hosts most of the behavioral facilities and shelters in the city. Instead, they want developers to turn the permanent supportive housing into family housing.
Despite their votes, some supervisors showed sympathy for the appellants’ case.
Board President Rafael Mandelman said he understood neighbors not buying the city’s rationale that additional homeless services in their district would improve street conditions.
“Often they don’t,” said Mandelman, while Moss stood in front of him at the presenter’s podium. “Why should these people believe that this will be one of those cases where things don’t get worse?”
Moss’ response came quickly.
“We’re also open to any support from the city of San Francisco, Public Works, the police department and the Board of Supervisors to address the current state of the streets because that’s not permanent supportive housing’s fault.”
Following today’s unanimous rejection by the Board of Supervisors, it is unclear what next steps, if any, are next for the appellants.
District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, in whose district the proposed building is situated, said street conditions at 16th and Mission streets are a top priority for her office. She called for the mayor’s office to invest in community ambassadors and engagement specialists, instead of unquestioned additional funding in police overtime.
Fielder explained her vote, telling the audience that appealing the project through a challenge to the subdivision map is not “the proper venue.”
“I envision a 16th Street corridor where children can walk safely with their families, to Marshall, to the Youth Art Exchange, to the park and to home,” said Fielder.
“I believe in a 16th Street … where we have transit oriented affordable housing, where BART and Muni riders feel safe and, dare I say, pleased to take public transit and where small businesses thrive,” she said.
The neighborhood COULD have had a 300 unit building, of which 90 of those units were affordable, with ground floor retail for local businesses, community spaces, and a beautiful new BART plaza, all completed in 2017-2018. Residents got sold on pushing for a 100% affordable building instead. Now, instead of affordable housing for those residents and families most in need, we are getting 136 units of housing for people struggling with addiction pushed onto a neighborhood in crisis, in in the middle of what is now probably the biggest open air drug market in the city where users come from all over to get their fix.
Even again today we are being lied to about how this building will not increase crime or decrease public safety, when we’ve all seen right before our eyes how the tiny home village on the Walgreen’s parking lot accelerated 16th & Mission’s devolvement into a haven for dealers and users.
Having a mix of housing at all income levels creates a healthy, safer, and thriving neighborhood. Hopefully we can have more of all housing in this area and turn it into the vibrant area it could and should be.
Two things can be true at once: The Maximus Project AND permanent supportive housing on top of an elementary school will harm the neighborhood.
Sorry to bust your cartoon bubble, but infill planning is HARD and requires comprehensive analysis to do correctly. The consequences will not be borne by you, they will be borne by those with no power who are rooted in the community, unlike the itinerant prospectors, who must live then them for the duration.
For anyone who’s actually read the appeal letter that was submitted by neighbors against this project, you would know better than to believe Mark Solomon & Co.’s claims that they aren’t NIMBY’s. I wish the article that the Chron ran on this appeal had actually published their letter next to the quote they ran of Marc claiming he’d “support a whole Salesforce Tower worth of affordable housing for families”, so everyone would know just how full if “it” he actually is. For those who haven’t read the appeal letter, the objections it raises against perm supportive housing and homeless people are only the third point underneath two other objections, filled with your standard NIMBY faire about how the project is too tall, doesn’t fit with neighborhood character, and doesn’t have enough parking. The best part of the letter is how they claim that the buildings won’t fit in with neighborhood character because they lack setbacks. Mind you, the appeal was submitted around the same time that Mission Local was running articles that highlighted the challenges with policing behavior in the setbacks at 1950 Mission across the street. If this project was a suburban style garden apartment, they would still complain about it. Some people just like hearing the sound of their own voice.
You YIMBY really think that as soon as one closes on a home, that the NIMBY welcome wagon reels one into the homevoter realm.
We got notified of the subdivision at the last minute. One of us took the leadership in crafting the appeal. I recommended that the only legally actionable element for appeal would be danger to Marshall students. The drafters decided to include height/bulk and congestion.
I did not review the document before it was filed because the appellant had a summer trip scheduled for the next day and cranked out the document and left. Once I read it, I explained to all how #1 and #1 were legally defunct and how we should abandon those claims.
That is why we abandoned #1 height/bulk and #2 congestion at the outset of the hearing and said that we wanted affordable housing for homeless families next to Marshall Elementary rather than substance and psych treatment and that we’ve welcomed 4 affordable housing buildings and want more.
Is it a crime to want high functioning neighbors for our troubled neighborhood next to the school instead of the most difficult substance and psych cases and their attendant walls-out problems? DEM says that most addicts at 16th/Mission are not homeless nor are they living in SF. They are self professed drug tourists. Is SF supposed to treat any and all addicts who show up? And what happens to the majority who like doing fentanyl and do not want to cure?
We argued danger to Marshall kids, not height and bulk, not traffic congestion.
Back to your urbanist hobby horse with you, where you hate cities, hate urban residents and most especially are willing to throw poor, immigrant and homeless kids of color under the bus for a project that is residential substance and psych treatment where you leave after being treated, not permanent housing for families or individuals.
Marc, some of us have been around long enough to hear your complaints over the years, especially when 490 South Van Ness was getting built, to know that we should take a heaping pile of salt when you claim to have “welcomed 4 affordable housing buildings and more” to the neighborhood. You realize that if the appeal had been approved, it wouldn’t have stopped the perm supportive housing from getting built, right? What it certainly would have done is make it more difficult for the developers to build the two family buildings you claim to support, which are dependent on the subdivision to be packaged separately for financing and permitting purposes. A part of me wonders whether stopping the family buildings is your unstated objective behind the appeal. But when I hear you mischaracterize permanent supportive housing as a “psych treatment facility where you leave after being treated” among all the sounds of thrashing from your desperate attempts to grasp at straws, it’s clear that you’re out of your depth. What’s more likely is that you piggybacked off the appeal as an opportunity to force someone to listen to you bloviate.
We opposed 490 South Van Ness as market rate project but supported it once off street parking was eliminated and the building went 100% affordable. What’s you problem?
Had the appeal been granted, then there would have been discussions on what kind of affordable to program Phase I. It is not like the parcel would have reverted to market rate and you know that.
I could not care less about how that would impact any financing constraints of affordable housing operators who could not care less about at risk brown kids.
Mission Housing and MEDA has held their cards close to the vest. At the Mission Cabins community meeting in March, MHDC said PhaseI would be PSH. When I asked if that meant substance and psych treatment MHDC said yes. SFPDH apparently will have space in the facility.
Drug and psych treatment, 136 densely packed cells between fentanyl central and an elementary school full of at-risk youth puts both the kids and the addicts at risk. A building full of high functioning homeless families would bouy up the beleaguered neighborhood already harmed by luxe condo TOD.
I held my nose and worked with the nonprofit dominated Plaza 16 Coalition to throw off Maximus. I cofounded the SF Community Land Trust. I’ve done more to bring affordable housing to San Franciscans than your anonymous ass and did it as a volunteer.
When in North America have homeowners ever begged the City to build housing for homeless families next to their homes?
You are simply wrong about everything, like the typical YIMBY and hate cities and urban dwellers like typical urbanists.
AIs, yes, that is the jargon of the political class that I was able to learn by involving myself in politics and by volunteering on the Community Land Trust Task Force and the Western SOMA Citizens Planning Task Force back in the day. I know enough that I can tell when the professionals are lying. The professionals bank on public ignorance about this arcana to be able to get what they want.
If I spelled all of this out in every post, my posts would be twice as long. And my fingers get tired typing it all.
“100% affordable: units in a building constructed or acquired by either the government or nonprofit developers where rents are set at a certain percentage of incomes based on family size for incomes that fall within predetermined ranges that are mostly “lower middle class” to “working class.”
Mission Housing: MHDC, Mission Housing Development Corporation, a local city funded nonprofit affordable housing developer run by Sam Moss that’s a co-project sponsor of 1979 Mission with..,.
MEDA: Mission Economic Development Agency. A nonprofit that met with such success in defending Mission businesses from the ravages of the market that they decided to expand their business model to affordable housing to see if they could not do for housing what they did for small biz. MEDA is the personal political property of Luis Granados, an east bay resident who extracted $363K in salary from San Francisco taxpayers in 2023. When I ran for supe in 2000, Granados lived in the units block of Fillmore, on the bay in the Marina. When I say political class, I mean political class.
MHDC: see above
PSH: Permanent Supportive Housing for low functioning individuals with either psych or substance issues or very low functioning homeless people with “wrap around services” on site.
SFPDH: San Francsico Department of Public Health, a $2b+ city government department that runs SFGH and community health centers and also outsources $1b or so in grants and contracts to nonprofits.
TOD: Transit Oriented Development, raising building heights to allow for denser residential along transit lines. The Mission was upzoned for TOD in 2008.
“100% affordable, Mission Housing, MEDA , MHDC, PSH, SFPDH, TOD”
I have no idea what you are talking about. Are these all secret codes for people who can’t get a job so they live off San Francisco tax payers by hiding in non-profits sucking city money ????
This is a project that has been highjacked.
The community was talking about HOUSING. Was it going to be mixed income or 100% affordable HOUSING? We were talking about how we wanted to build our community – what would make the best mix of neighbors.
How we are suddenly expected to accept a facility that will be run by paid staff offering treatment to people who mirror the biggest problems the city of San Francisco suffers is beyond me.
What happened to housing for our community? The treatment facility should be stopped.
“What would make the best mix of neighbors”
Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good fails again, as it usually does.
This is not perfect being the enemy of the good. There are several possible programmings for Phase I. Affordable housing for homeless families is one of them. PSH is another. Both are equally attainable on this parcel. The discretionary choice was made for PSH. Discretionary choices are at some level arbitrary. The Marshall community wants a different arbitrary discretionary choice.
“Walmart…. — nuff said.
The hearing was probably not the right place to address community and school parents’ concerns, as it was about the Walgreens lot permit approval process. Being excluded from Mission housing’s plans left very few options to hear our concerns. We had requested meeting with Jackie Fielder. These were ignored.
However many in the community and elementary school parents weren’t informed of the changed plans for the Affordable housing lot to include another building for people trying to get off or are still using drugs. No mail from Mission Housing was received by stakeholders directly impacted by the change in plans nor sent notice of community meetings to hear project updates and give input. Some of us living across from the school got a DPW notice about the changes AFTER the new plans were already approved. This was pointed out by the appellants.
The appellants spoke in their presentation about the school and other stakeholders WANTING affordable housing for homeless families and low income families. These comments were twisted around by Sam Moss.
Several Board supervisors expressed empathy for the dire conditions around the school, as stated in this article. They spoke of existing housing for people struggling with addiction that have been mismanaged and indeed attract crime and all manner of societal decay.
Affordable housing has been a success near the BART plaza /school except for La Fenix, which is a hot mess.
Adding on a new building for people struggling with addiction- with temptation all around , drug dealers right there. Urban decay is right here. Bad idea.
A friend addicted to heroin who was trying to get clean had to live far away from temptation to buy drugs.
Build more Affordable Housing. Yes In Marshall’s Back Yard!
Add on a building for people struggling with addiction next to Marshall and an existing open air 24/7 drug market.
Yes In (Sam) Moss’ Back Yard !
-Marshall school ally.
The activists who opposed the “monster in the mission stopped those greedy developers and out of town techies from gentrification of the mission and displacing others who are more entitled to I’ve in San Francisco.
Now that they got their wish they oppose the homeless and mentally ill from occupying a different development to service them.
I guess the old adage be careful what you wish for was never so true and the “monsters in the mission” might very well look themselves in the mirror.
Plain stupid to put a facility like this at 16h and Mission right now. This is like building a nuclear power plant right on top of the San Andreas fault on engineers’ assertions this will prove their designs survive the Big One.
Wow !
Marc Salomon vs Sam Moss
Now there’s a mix of two of the best minds in San Francisco.
I agree with Moss and my Supervisor, Jackie Fielder who needs to pair with my old buddy, Matt Dorsey on a Charter Change to give the City and its 500,000 Registered Voters a chance to choose their own Police Chief as we did in 1857 when we chose James Curtis of the Vigilante Committe that had hung people w/out the benefit of a trial … to be the City’s first Police Chief.
Right now the Chief is a figurehead pulled between the mayor who chose them and a powerful Police Union determined to get as much money for as little work and exposure to danger as possible.
Thus, the clusterfudge at 16th and Mission with empty police cars with flashing lights like Waymos and the Cop Motor Home about to get towed for being in the same spot for over 2 hours.
Face it, we need to bring back Feinstein’s idea of a Cop Box at every BART stop and Major Tourist Hubs but in a space age improved set with a stage and speaker stand and assigned Vendor Stall spaces.
16th and Mission should be considered as a Positive Feature of SF’s fascinating history of Shanghaied sailors and forged passports and immigration papers and all drugs and sex and lots of Jesus.
We need cops there 24/7/365.
And … ??
We need to SEE them !!
go Niners !!
h.
The last stand of the neighborhood’s Trevor Chandler supporters who still believe, not in housing and treatment (i.e., what works), but in the failed policy of displacing unhoused folks to be someone else’s problem – exactly what led to the conditions at 16th & Mission in the first place. Their divisive and hateful politics lost the neighborhood by 26 points at the ballot box. The Mission, thankfully, still believes in solutions, even if that isn’t always reflected in comment sections on here. We’re lucky to have a strong champion in Jackie Fielder.
And where is Jackie Fielder these days? Certainly not at 16th and Mission helping to solve anything that’s going on for her affected constituents. She’s allowed her district to be the containment zone for this madness and doesn’t say a word about it. I read her interview with Mission Local back in May and it was all platitudes and PR-speak, zero concrete or immediate solutions to what’s still happening there.
Once a YIMBY, always a YIMBY. Only for a lapsed YIMBY could calls for affordable housing for homeless families from the Marshall Elementary school principal, the PTA president and neighbors be construed as opposing housing. Oscar Palma interviewed me for a previous article. When he asked me what I’d say to anyone who said that I opposed housing, I responded “I’d tell them to go fuck themselves, we support housing for homeless families next to an elementary school and I co-founded the community land trust.” Scott, I’d tell you what I told Oscar. You were gullible enough to be taken in by snake oil salespersons and you’ve still got that shit on your shoes.
Marc,
I want to tell you how much I admire your mind and always have and you should ignore people who vote you down which I assume you do.
Let me interject some Space Cadet stuff here from my hanging out with a bad crowd (vicariously on YouTube) who just may destroy the World before anything is built on that corner.
More advanced Activists have begun picketing SF’s Open AI like it’s Frankenstein’s lab and they could be right.
Marc Andreessen says they may have to bomb them like Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear development sites.
Be assured there are nuclear warheads in more than one country with their name on them.
AGI and its big brother will either kill us or put us on easy street everyone of us within ten years.
Either way, Poverty’s days are numbered.
I remain convinced that building the 4 RV/Tent thousand unit Campgrounds inside the City Limits is the ticket because many of the people my dog and I clean up after every day are not civilized enough to live indoors.
Better to have a space you can hose off and rake.
I’d make space for 400 RV’s total and you have a head start with the golf courses’ parking lots.
Go Niners !!
h.
Retired physicians can write prescriptions for pharmaceutical fentanyl and we can build fentanyl dens to warehouse them somewhere like Pier 70 while they smoke their lives away out of sight.
These addicts are not going to be cured from addiction, most of them do not want to get cured, until we’re on easy street and they have prospects for a non-shit life, although the grifters see gold and will get rich trying.
Plain vanilla affordable housing is like razors and costs money to run. Addiction treatment is like razor blades offering infinitely repeating billables. Ka-fucking-ching.