Amongst the items in front of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors tomorrow, a proposed resolution approving the City’s Redevelopment Agency’s 70-year lease of Lot number 13, Block number 768 more commonly known as 701 Golden Gate Avenue to allow for the development of the Mary Helen Rogers Senior Community.
When resolved, on the surface area parking lot an eight (8) story concrete building over below grade parking and with 100 apartments for very low-income senior households will start to rise. Construction is slated to begin in early 2011 and last for 20 months.
And with an estimated development cost of $42,226,488 (construciton cost of $399 per square), call it $422,265 per unit, 26 of which will be studios with the balance one-bedrooms.
∙ San Francisco Board of Supervisors Agenda: December 14, 2010 [sfbos.org]
∙ 701 Golden Gate Avenue Lease Resolution [sfbos.org]
If you are so broke you need housing assistance, how can you own a car?
You could buy each one of the low income seniors their own house in Stockton for a quarter of what the studio costs to build.
I’m with Sunny Jim here. I don’t see why we create entitlements allowing people to live in some of the most expensive real estate in the country. However, you certainly don’t have to go as far as Stockton to find better bang for the buck. We could help far more people for the same amount of money if this type of housing wasn’t in SF County.
Ah..maybe because some senior citizens choose to live in a city, and love it.
And any great city is made up up a mix of incomes and ages, not to mention genders and sexual orientations and ethnicity.
By preventing people from naturally flowing out of the city, we prevent other communities from sharing some of our diversity. As a result the social/cultural chasm between SF and its neighbors keep growing wider and wider, increasing the rejection of San Franciscans of its surroundings.
Of course few want to leave town. But it’s the natural cycle of things. SF should be a heart pumping fresh blood in and exporting out energy and ideas.
With entitlements like prop 13, rent control and subsidized/protected housing all we are creating is Nimbyism, busybodying and hyper-activist sclerosis that suffocates this town.
It’s a well-documented fact that non-profit developers produce projects with construction costs approximately double that of for-profit developers. There’s a lot of fat there that goes towards lubricating the SF non-profit machinery.
hayes valley is turning into a retirement community
BobTheBuilder, could you please provide a link showing the numbers?
Non-profit construction costs seems to be very high indeed, but is it really twice the cost of the for-profit builders?
What’s making them so high? Union labor?
“call it $399 per square foot and $422,265 per unit, 26 of which will be studios with the balance one-bedrooms.”
smells like pork, no?
As a professional working in building design and construction, I can tell you that $399 a square foot for higher end condominium construction in San Francisco is nearly unheard of. Most higher end condo developers target $250 a sq. ft. or less. Developers couldn’t make a dime with those cost. The sponsors behind this project are clearly shady dealers and should be run out town. Non-profit developers of this sort are certainly engaged in back room deals and pay-offs to any one who has any say in the approvals for such a project. Shame on our city officials and any one else who has their finger prints on this project.
Do those estimates include soft costs, or is $250 per square foot just construction costs?
Here is an interesting chart with office construction costs in various locales:
http://evstudio.info/2010/03/11/price-per-square-foot-construction-cost-for-multi-story-office-buildings/
I would imagine that condos are more than office though, right? How much more?
There was a study done in SF around 2003 or so that showed huge differential between for-profit and non-profit developers’ costs – sorry I don’t have the exact reference. I think it might have been done by Mayor’s Office of Housing. It was done in relation to discussions over the previous incarnation of the inclusionary-housing ordinance that sought to put a dollar price on the construction cost of a unit of housing as a fee in-lieu of actual construction (now declared illegal for rental housing). It was obvious to the City that what was best for them was to make private developers build the affordable housing whereas it was best for the non-profit lobbyists to get the $$$ tax instead – hence the list of 2 or 3 options in the ordinance. I don’t know what the statistics show but I believe most for-profit developers chose to pay off the City (if they could persuade their bank to go along) rather than go through the farce of BMR sales/resales/rental – those fees paid to MOH are, of course, long gone and unaccounted for.
The Cathedral Hill “neighborhood” is ripe for a name change.
I think the first couple comments had it right. If you spent your life spending rather than saving it’s time for you to move somewhere cost effective (Stockton, Fresno, Modesto, etc.). Save the prime real estate for those willing to pay income taxes, generate payroll taxes and spend money to generate sales taxes.
I’m not counting on getting bailed out by a communist govt. down the road like these blue haris. Do they have no pride?
Sell the lot to the highest bidder or put up a jiffy lube… both better uses.
The $422,265 per unit is NOT for construction costs only , but for total development costs (acquisition + hard costs + soft costs + financing + developer fees).
As for the $399 per SF, I’d like to see where socketsite is getting its data before jumping to conclusions. I know for a fact that the general contractor on this project is bidding well below this per GSF on Type I mid-rise currently for similar types of city-funded housing projects. (as in well under $300/GSF) So my first suspiscion is that there is something wrong with the number or there’s some baked into the SF hard cost that unusual.
As for the private vs. nonprofit cost comparision – yes, at times these types of projects are more expensive. But the proper comparison is not comparing these types of projects vs. for-profit condo deals. The proper comp is public works projects – because that’s in part what these are. Like ANY construction project with City funds, there are two requirements that significantly increase costs: 1) the requirement to pay prevailing wages and 2) the requirement to meet the City’s local hire and small business hire requirements which are quite significant. (for ex., 50% of new hires on the project need to both local AND from a low-income community)
There isn’t anything shady in general going on here – this is just what is costs when these types of hiring and wage requirements are part of the project. Got a problem with that? – take it up with the BOS – and good luck, because they are about to vote close to unanimously to increase these requirements even further.
“In general” would seem to be a weasel word there.
As for the $399 per SF, I’d like to see where socketsite is getting its data before jumping to conclusions.
“Development” would have been a better choice of words above in terms of total costs (since changed from “construction”), but a project staff report to the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee does note: “Construction Cost Per Square Foot: $399.”
The sheer paranoia and readiness to pound the less fortunate under the bootheels of the rich around here is really astounding. “weasel words”? “communist”? Looks like even socketsite isn’t immune to the tea party crowds ready to make Sarah Palin into El Presidente for life.
I can’t believe folks are seriously suggesting an Orwellian socioeconomic cleansing of SF by shipping all of the City’s poor to Stockton. Disgusting. Especially when one considers the wholesale strip-mining of the working class that the wealthier classes have been engaged in for the last 20 years.
I might take it all semi-seriously if these kinds of critics were willing to fork over their mortgage interest welfare and capital gains welfare.
“I can’t believe folks are seriously suggesting an Orwellian socioeconomic cleansing of SF by shipping all of the City’s poor to Stockton.”
Who is shipping who anywhere? The suggestion is that housing can be built outside of SF instead of some of the most expensive real estate anywhere in this country. That way, more people could be helped because we wouldn’t have SF’s astronomical building costs. Instead, we create overpriced housing so that fewer people are helped and further making this town into a museum.
“I might take it all semi-seriously if these kinds of critics were willing to fork over their mortgage interest welfare and capital gains welfare.”
By the way, if you’ve ever read any of my SocketSite posts, I advocate getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction and making capital gains taxes the same as income taxes so that we are neutral between investment and consumption. You clearly don’t read people’s posts, so why make rash judgments?
“I might take it all semi-seriously if these kinds of critics were willing to fork over their mortgage interest welfare and capital gains welfare”
How about the critics with rent control welfare? How do you feel about the legitimacy of their voices?
“readiness to pound the less fortunate under the bootheels of the rich” Classic! End of debate.
“Who is shipping who anywhere? The suggestion is that housing can be built outside of SF instead of some of the most expensive real estate anywhere in this country. ”
By defintion, if you build the affordable housing elsewhere – like Stockton – then the low income households in THIS city will have to move elsewhere – like Stockton – for affordable housing. Its the same thing as just saying lets move the poors to Stockton.
“Instead, we create overpriced housing so that fewer people are helped and further making this town into a museum.”
We aren’t creating overpriced housing by building affordable housing in SF instead of places like Stockton. We could build 100x as many affordable units in Stockton and it wouldn’t affect housing prices a whit in SF. The only thing NOT building affordable housing in SF ensures is that the only people living in SF are the affluent. Again, its so self-evident as to be an LOGIC FAIL on your part.