One assumes that the city’s real estate powers — Blackstone, Shorenstein and roughly 50 others — hate all measures that hike taxes on commercial real estate. After all, their No on Props C and D PAC — innocuously named the Committee for an Affordable SF — has over $1 million to stop either measure from succeeding. But only one of...
District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen received no clear answers at a hearing she called Monday to figure out why seven fully affordable housing projects in the Mission District are taking so long to break ground. “I’m not seeing that level of prioritization of these projects, and that’s what’s concerning to me,” Ronen said after she questioned officials from the Mayor’s...
As the mayoral race heats up, the city got some sobering news: despite all the talk about the need for more housing, the city added fewer new units last year than it had in 2016. San Francisco added 4,441 housing units in 2017 — a 12 percent decrease, compared to net additions in 2016. Last year’s additions, however, are well...
The Mission Economic Development Agency is proposing an eight-and-half-story mixed-use building at the corner of 18th and Mission streets — now the site of a decaying former stove store that could cost the nonprofit as much as $1 million to restore. As Mission Local reported in December, MEDA bought the building for $6 million, with plans to develop it...
Residents of the Mission’s SROs are often dismissed by the neighborhood as a nuisance, and many would agree they are treated that way — “like fourth-class people,” in the words of one resident. But on Thursday, during a meeting with District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen, they challenged that notion. “We’re citizens like everyone else,” said Mervyn Greene, a Mission...
The Mission Economic Development Agency — or MEDA, as most know it — has purchased a 16-unit building on the corner of 17th and Mission streets for $7.75 million. A majority of the 11 residential and five commercial spaces are currently occupied by longtime, low-income tenants. “By taking market-rate buildings off the private market, we can keep them affordable over...
When Nancy Ana Lucero discovered that her picture appeared in an “I Am Not a Monster” ad at the 16th and Mission BART station, she was furious. It was sometime in September, she recalled; a fellow educator had called her to let her know. “I was shocked,” she told Mission Local in a recent interview. “I thought it was really...
In her four years working in the real estate arm of the Mission Economic Development Agency, Karoleen Feng has played a key role in turning the program from an idealistic aspiration into a major player in the neighborhood’s housing scene. A year or two ago, Feng said, the nonprofit didn’t much impress the local development community. “I was talking to...
Developments in Development is a “weekly” column recapping real estate, housing, planning, zoning and construction news. There’s 880,000 of us now living in this city. And record numbers of us have jobs — unemployment is 2.3 percent, the lowest it’s ever been. But about those jobs. The Council of Community Housing Housing Organizations recently presented an estimate to the Planning...
Mission Local checked in this week with Hillary Ronen about her first year on the job as District 9 Supervisor and some of the changes in the neighborhood. Ronen talked about her goals for building 5,000 affordable units of housing in the Mission over the next 10 years, her priorities for public safety, and the complicated needs evident at the...
A derelict building at 18th and Mission streets owned by a former Facebook executive that has been decaying for years has been acquired by the Mission Economic Development Agency for $6 million, with plans to add at least 40 affordable housing units to the property. The building last sold to Owen van Natta in 2014 for $5 million. MEDA’s purchase,...
Steven Buss is a self-described “gentrifier,” and he’s on a mission to soothe his conscience. “Look, I am a gentrifier. I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not. I’m white, I’m relatively wealthy, I work in tech,” he said. “I know my presence in the neighborhood exacerbates gentrification, which is also why I want to help mitigate it.”...
It’s been nearly a decade since the last large-scale, entirely affordable building was completed in the Mission, and it will be longer still before any of the seven affordable projects in the pipeline break ground. How long is hard to say, but already many of those seven — representing more than 770 affordable housing units — have run into their...
Disclosure: Mission Local rents its office space from MEDA. While affordable studio space has long been a concern in the local arts scene, the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Mission Economic Development Agency have now launched a program focusing on another factor in stabilizing the artistic community: Housing. The program, apparently the first of its kind in the city,...
For the crowd of around 100 people who filled the auditorium of the Mission Language and Vocational School Wednesday night to hear the plans for an 130-unit affordable housing building, it couldn’t arrive fast enough. This kind of community input meeting, where developers pitch their proposed building, usually draws small groups of immediate neighbors who critique the height of the...
