Rising water, housing reversals, new cop on the block, and stuff to do

Good afternoon! It’s a beautiful day, we’ve got a lot of news, and there’s plenty of stuff to do.

• It may feel like spring in the Mission, but there’s still standing water in Bayview Hunters Point from the storms a few months back. Residents point to the flooding as a symptom of the city’s neglect of environmental dangers in the low-income, historically Black neighborhood. The waters around San Francisco are expected to rise as much as 3.5 feet by 2040, and rising groundwater also threatens to flood from below, mobilizing buried contaminants at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Yet sea level rise mitigation schemes drawn up by the Port and City of San Francisco exclude the city’s southeast.

“Their plan cuts off at Bayview. That’s concerning to me. If you’re going to build a seawall to protect downtown, what about where all the toxic soil is?” asked Arieann Harrison, a lifelong D10 resident and founder of the Marie Harrison Community Foundation. Harrison and other environmental justice activists are gathering at Bayview Plaza on Saturday for a march urging the city to take action.

• In housing news, California is doubling down on its recent ability to force localities to meet housing goals, using new legislation like SB35 and SB828. Yesterday, the SF Planning Commission reversed itself and voted to advance two controversial housing projects it had previously delayed or downsized. One, for 73 units of housing at the Nordstrom parking lot on Stevenson Street, had been delayed in 2022 by the Board of Supervisors, provoking a political firestorm and an investigation by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

The commission also approved a fiercely opposed group housing project in the Mission that was recently under state scrutiny, a six-story, 19-unit building between Sanchez and Church. The decision reverses a 2021 Planning Commission vote to lop off one of the stories to appease neighbors’ shadow concerns — a move state officials deemed in direct violation of the state density bonus.

• Mission Police Station has a new captain: At a community meeting, Captain Gavin McEachern announced his retirement, presenting his successor, Captain Thomas Harvey, an 18-year veteran of the SFPD. “I just ask for a little patience as I get up to speed,” Harvey said, before attendees launched into a barrage of complaints.

• There’s plenty of stuff to do this weekend and beyond: a virtual talk with Mimi Chakarova, Mission Local’s multimedia advisor, about her amazing new film; free emergency go-bags and an earthquake simulator at the main library branch; Alicia Garza of Black Lives Matter speaking at City College, and a superbloom of fundraisers, parties, and art festivals popping out all over.

Enjoy the sunshine,

Sara