The board of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency voted to dramatically downsize an affordable housing project in the Mission District that would have brought about 465 low- and moderate-income housing units to the neighborhood.
On Tuesday, the board approved a plan for just 100 units, despite opposition from advocates and community members.
“We feel a little used,” said Erick Arguello, Mission resident and president of Calle 24 Latino Cultural District. “We worked making sure this was all available for the community to give input, and then this is what we end up with.”
The transit agency said it reduced the scope due to Muni’s $307 million budget deficit, inflation and increased construction costs since the project started in 2018.
The revised plan, which the SFMTA announced in September, downsized the project at Bryant Street between 17th and Mariposa streets from 465 units of affordable housing to 100.
The project would sit alongside Potrero Yard in the Mission District, which houses dozens of buses. The plan includes a four-level bus storage and maintenance facility that would hold 68 percent more electric trolley buses.
Studio and three-bedroom apartments would be built along Bryant Street, reserved for households earning up to 80 percent of area median income, or $87,300 for a single person. But the plan no longer includes hundreds of additional units that would’ve been built on a reinforced podium above the facility.
Several Mission District residents and advocates were disappointed Tuesday.
Roberto Hernandez, founder of the Our Mission No Eviction group, told the board and a crowd of about 50 people gathered inside City Hall on Tuesday that he was part of an MTA working group focused on Potrero Yard for the past eight years.
He said that the group was shocked when the agency told them it had downsized the project without involving them in the discussion or considering other options.
“There is clearly poor planning on both the SFMTA and the Mayor’s Office of Housing,” he told Mission Local. “I just didn’t get a sense that they were even coordinating any kind of effort to get the financing.”
Julie Kirschbaum, the SFMTA’s director of transportation, apologized at the beginning of the meeting.
“I know this community has been deeply affected by housing affordability issues and the resulting displacement for decades,” she said. “I know that losing the housing above the bus yard is a wound that will not easily heal.”
Tracy Gallardo, a longtime Mission resident and District 10 legislative aide, spoke at the meeting and asked the board to find a compromise and build the additional units in the future.
“I urge you to make all those considerations, and hope that you will move this project forward in a way that brings us all the housing that was promised to the community,” she said.
Several others also asked to find a replacement site for the housing, but officials said funding is a challenge. Sean Kennedy, a senior SFMTA manager, said the agency cannot use its transit funds for housing.
These projects are extremely expensive, and financing them remains the biggest constraint, Robert Baca, from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, told the board.
“We have thousands of units throughout a pipeline in the city that we would love to move forward if financing was available at the different levels,” Baca said.
Members of the SFMTA board seemed empathetic about the loss of housing units, but they still largely voted in favor of the reduced project, saying it would improve transit conditions and safety for workers.
The current bus yard is 110 years old and has been deemed seismically unsafe.
Of the seven commissioners, only vice chair Stephanie Cajina voted no, citing the failed commitment to building affordable housing for communities in the Mission and Bayview.
“I’m sorry that I can’t do more today than just cast my one vote, but I’m very disappointed how this ended up,” she said.
The revised project is expected to cost $612 million. Demolition work for the bus yard is planned to start in 2027, and construction should be completed in 2030.
The project still needs to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, scheduled to vote on the matter on March 17.
Roberto Hernandez worked hard to kill the mixed income housing on this site that would have brought multiple times more low income affordable units. It is unreasonable to ask SFMTA to use its very limited transit funds to subsidize housing.
This failure is on Roberto, Calle24 and other NIMBYs.
Neither market rate housing nor “affordable housing” will have any meaningful impact on housing prices.
The financing spigot for market rate housing shuts down long before housing prices begin to fall and the pipeline for “affordable housing” is too narrow to scale.
I don’t expect these nonprofits will have learned anything from this after pushing this development to be 0 market rate housing.
This announcement seems like a decent example of how the fixation on a special tranche of housing dubbed “affordable housing” can end up working hand in hand with the forces contributing to the unaffordability of all other housing.
The basic underlying problem is the contradiction between housing as shelter and housing as a financial investment, creating a vicious cycle where the more housing costs tend to increase relative to the broader economy, the more financial incentives (both for large financial institutions that never truly kicked their mortgage-backed securities habit after 2007-08, and for individual homeowners whose real estate equity is an increasingly crucial pillar of their financial security) will tend to be tied up in ensuring that the trend continues. So in order for less fortunate people to have affordable housing, it can’t happen by making housing more affordable *in general*, it can only happen by setting aside a special category of “affordable housing” as distinct as possible from the rest of the housing market, taking care to ensure that this category is some combination of low-quality enough that nobody who could afford any other type of housing would ever consider it, and/or scarce enough that its impact on the broader housing market would be minimal.
Even if it isn’t the avowed motive, the demand that this SFMTA development be “affordable”-only plays directly into the hands of this tendency: fewer “affordable” units in total, and less possibility of a mixed “affordable”/market-rate development blurring the perceived lines between the two categories, both of which function in practice to minimize the development’s overall contribution to housing affordability.
I wonder, if this project has to get a conditional use authorization, what the D9 nonprofit extortion play is going to be.
Disappointing outcome of stakeholders pushing such high affordability requirements that are hard to finance
San Francisco has the second highest revenue per capita of any city in the country (and probably the world). Despite the fact there are almost no kids here (kids being a major drain on any city’s resources), the city manages to run a budget deficit and can’t afford anything. The failure of this project is as sad as it is predictable.
Sounds like Muni’s financial situation is too dire to be able to afford the larger and more speculative design. Perhaps if these were market-rate units a larger design would pencil out. But “affordable” units really means subsidized units, and Muni (and the City) cannot afford that right now.
interesting that with the mayor calling for cuts in affordable housing and cuts to city jobs, he is also against a tax on the wealthy because we can’t have the pain felt by the rich although the poorer residents are used to being barely able to scrape by or constantly be at risk of losing their housing. it’s great to know the mayor and his minions are working hard to protect the rich from paying their fair share.
I don’t think you’re reading anything and have a shallow understanding of the mayor’s position on housing, budget balancing, or taxing the ‘wealthy’.
There isn’t much the City can do to “tax the rich” anyway. It is just a slogan with no bite.
SFMTA’s going to do what SFMTA’s going to do. For what I’ve seen, public input and such is mostly a check in the box. Sometimes they put a finger on the scale. This time though it looks they simply don’t have the money. This was an opportunity for YIMBYs to step up, partner with SFMTA and backfill some, if not all, of the shortfall. It’s been crickets. No wonder, they are a front for RE interest, and said interest has no interest in affordable housing these days.
@Erick Arguello: Sucks when the shoe is on the other foot, huh?
Not sure where you heard that – the YIMBY position is generally, more housing of every kind. If there’s any opposition, it’s to ‘affordable or nothing’ (whether genuine or use as a poison pill).
My reading of Daniel’s comment is that YIMBY the advocacy position (roughly, “build more housing everywhere with fewer restrictions than what SF imposes now, it will help everyone in the long run”) can or should be discussed separately from activist groups with “YIMBY” in their names.
It’s often stated in ML comments that these groups are funded and controlled by real estate interests and that their use of the YIMBY catchphrase is a ploy to try and manipulate public opinion in favor of their paymasters’ development projects.
I don’t personally have a strong opinion on this because I haven’t seen much evidence one way or the other.
@daniel please feel free to correct me if I have misunderstood.
So a few conspiracy minded people in a comments section have convinced you this is a real estate ploy? Maybe look at the actual advocacy organizations and their wins instead.
Affordable housing programs may indeed provide the needed housing for those on a limited budget, but they also destroy the surrounding community. Why do I say that? Because the system does it all wrong. Instead of creating a good mixture of affordable and market-rate housing, with the market-rate housing being the anchor, and the affordable housing sprinkled in, they build huge blocks of affordable housing that concentrate poverty. It’s no different than the project housing the federal government used to build post WWII, which turned so many urban spaces into slums. Affordable housing needs to favor ownership programming and community building. not overwhelmingly low-rent community killers.
One more thing they don’t tell you… After 20 years, the developer, who still owns these affordable units. can then sell them at market rate. So, no building generational equity or long-term housing. They seem to have missed the point.
The plan to build a whole housing community on top of a complex 4-story bus facility was always a pipe dream. Are there any real precedents? Other than hudson yards, the most expensive private development in US history? This ain’t hudson yards, folks.
This is an example of unrealistic visioning getting to many people excited and then let down. We need to get back to basics to build our future — and not be fed these absurd architectural fantasies as solutions.
I’m an affordable housing architect. This thing was bound to die.
@LK – This is nowhere near the size and expense of Hudson Yards, this is one city block.
Meanwhile, 58 people in San Francisco have over $200 BILLION in the bank. Seems like they could spread it around a bit….
Per Forbes, there are only three individuals in the world with a net worth exceeding $200 billion. None of them live in San Francisco, and the one that lived in CA by all accounts is in the process of moving out of state to avoid the potentially net worth tax. Finally, none of them would be silly enough to keep anywhere near $200 billion in a bank(s).
I assume OP meant the 58 hold $200b collectively
The constant refrain that a handful of billionaires in Atherton and Orange County are going to pay for SF activists’ progressive laundry list is bizarre. It’s like a nervous tic.