Conveyed to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development back in 2014, in lieu of providing below market rate (BMR) units within the new One Henry Adams and 801/855 Brannan Street buildings which were completed last year, the City is now seeking a qualified team to secure financing and build affordable housing on the fenced 37,800-square-foot parcel at 600 7th Street, between Brannan and Townsend.
The selected team will be expected to develop at least 150 apartments on the South of Market site which is principally zoned for development up to 68 feet in height, with ground-floor commercial space “servicing the surrounding neighborhood.” And while roughly half of the units are expected to serve either formerly homeless families with dependent children or low-income families with an average income of no more than 60 percent of Area Median, with a mix of one to three bedroom units, at least 75 of the units are expected to be studios to serve formerly homeless adults.
Responses to the City’s Request for Qualifications (RFQ) are due on June 26 and the City is aiming to award the project to a team at the end of August, with hopes that construction on the development, which has yet to be designed or approved, will commence “as soon as possible.” And the site, which has been sitting vacant since early last year, should qualify for streamlined approvals and density bonuses if claimed.
The city is so thoughtful, not only do they supply injection addicts ( of which we now have 25,000 in SF ) with unlimited syringes. They now provide cribs to do their drugs in. Why should only necessary people like teachers, fire fighters and police be subsidized to live in SF? Those strung out high on the streets should get their shot at subsidization too ! 700,000 dollar units should also be awarded to people who not only do not contribute much, they in fact, inflict much degradation on the city. It’s truly inclusiveness in action ! That means EVERYBODY !
Yes, because 1 affordable housing development that aims to keep people who used to live on the street off the street, is the real problem…
Get real.
You know the city already has over 7,000 units to house street people in. But more keep coming. Gee, I wonder why?
Have we (the city or state) actually been able to identify why they “keep coming”? I don’t think it’s as simple as you suggest.
The narrowly ignorant rationale that homeless people manifest as a result of providing homeless services is somewhat of an oxymoron—suggesting that the people that “keep coming” are here for assistance and housing rather than to just live free…
As we first noted and foreshadowed three years ago: San Francisco’s Homeless Crisis is Homegrown and a Catch-22.
“roughly half of the units are expected to serve either formerly homeless families with dependent children or low-income families with an average income of no more than 60 percent of Area Median”
Yeah, look at all those free-needle-using drug addicts…
Maybe read before spouting off with a steaming pile of unsubstantiated nonsense, and you know, stereotyping every person who has ever been homeless as a drug-addicted tweaker.
Since you mentioned it, yes let’s house a few sweepstakes winning homeless families ( regardless of any contribution they may, or may not make, to the health of the city ) at 900,000 dollars ( or more ) each. Right here in the most expensive place on the planet. It’s much better than housing 4 times as many homeless families, someplace with much less expensive real estate. It’s just so rational and the “right thing” to do !
“Of the people in supportive housing in San Francisco, 80% use cocaine, speed, or heroin every thirty days, or get drunk to the point of unconsciousness.” ….International Journal of Drug Policy
Volume 25, Issue 3, May 2014, Pages 556-561
Supportive housing is a subset of the Below Market Rate (BMR) / Affordable universe.
@Sam Walters: I looked up that study you mentioned. It’s called “Single room occupancy (SRO) hotels as mental health risk environments among impoverished women: The intersection of policy, drug use, trauma, and urban space”, and talks about drug-addicted single women in SROs:
“Methods: We report data from a qualitative interview study (n = 30) and four years of ethnography conducted with housing policy makers and unstably housed women who use drugs and live in SROs.”
It’s actually surprising, then, that only 80% used drugs, since that was a requirement to be part of study. You’re wasting my time and others with your unsubstantiated prejudiced takes.
Not all who are homeless are drug addicts. Talk to some, you may learn something. Do you berate the police too for protecting mosques since all Muslims are terrorists?
You obviously are contributing a ton to society with your remarks, which clearly represent the height of human achievement.
Stop spewing egotistical, entitled, elitist drivel. Your notion of “necessary” people is nauseating.
The Karmic Law of Responsibility. In particular, it’s helpful to remember that you are the source of what happens throughout your journey. What is happening around you is a mirror for what is happening within you; that is the sense in which you are responsible for all of your life experiences, whether fantastic or unpleasant.
This karmic law aims to teach you that you should be looking to take ownership of the good and bad things you create, rather than constantly looking outside yourself to find excuses.
So you have moved on to spouting religious nonsense now?
Why not blame pacts with Satan for their behavior?
Although I would say that this is definitely not the right location for this type of project, there’s plenty of data that supports a housing first approach to solving homelessness and unless you’re volunteering or doing anything to support that cause, your opinion is about as worthless as everyone else’s. Put that anger to use and go volunteer Sam Walters
Housing First = Neighbors Last.
In short, Housing First states that everyone is ready for a home. Mentally ill are not required to take medication/or treatment compliance to be a resident. Sobriety is not required to be a resident. Residents will be accepted without regards to any previous criminal convictions or history. Participation in on-site services, such as counseling, employment is at-will and is not required.
It is a dependency model that ‘hopes’ to see a change in behavior, but doesn’t require it. Those that do not change will continue to be recipients of tax payer dollars in perpetuity. This model has been adopted at the state and federal level. In order to receive federal/state funds (HUD funds) a company must abide by the bullets above to be eligible to receive those funds.
Housing First is said to decrease the cost to the city, however, millions of dollars keeps getting spent on this model yet the the problem continues to grow and each year the budget must allocate more and more money. In many cases the taxpayers are taxed to create an additional revenue. Why would I volunteer to ruin the city further? And why would any addict change, when their addicted state has provided all the want in life?
“when their addicted state has provided all the [sic] want in life”
The issue is complex and housing policies address a moral and ethical need. Perhaps your points about SF real estate being a bad candidate and the expense of the policies are correct, but your expressed opinions about the people involved indicates an area in which you seem to be lacking information and insight, and it will be difficult to give your other views credit when you’re providing ‘supporting’ arguments like the one above.
I’d like to see some middle-income subsidized housing in SoMa for a change. It’s not ideal to have a neighborhood of the very rich and the very poor, no in-between.
Gordon Mar recently picked out some site on Lawton for teacher housing. How about a land swap? House the formerly homeless in the Sunset, and teachers on this corner in SoMa.
The qualification is up to 60% AMI, which is currently just under $50k annually for a single person. Yearly recertification allows up to 175% AMI which is up to $150k for a single person household.
That’s in between IMO especially from some of the affordable renters I have at my site. These are people that had it rough, worked their way out of a hole, and wound up succeeding, moving out, and in some cases buying a home. Not every story is like that and there are definitely scoundrels in the system, but with the new changes in the 2018 SFMOHCD operations, hopefully we will see the most at risk populations getting served and given opportunities with more developments like these.
It’s easy to make suggestions about what developers should and shouldn’t do but at the end of the day, they are the ones putting up the capital to make something happen. Making housing specifically for teachers sounds like a good idea but try telling that to a developer when you haven’t tested it with your own capital!
I would think that a housing voucher for teachers might make more sense and something they would feel almost immediately. Giving them priority access to roughly 14000 affordable units in SF similar to Certificate of Preference and Displaced Tenants Housing Preference.
Let me clarify my pithy comment. Housing is a right, and families making 60% of AMI or less and/or exiting homelessness absolutely deserve stable, decent housing. This type of project needs to happen, no question.
Also, teacher housing is not my idea. It’s already happening. SFUSD is working with MidPen Housing to build teacher housing at the Francis Scott Key Annex in the Outer Sunset, and as the Examiner recently reported, SFUSD and Supervisor Gordon Mar have identified 7 other potential sites for teacher housing in the city. I was slightly incorrect in that the site along Lawton was selected by SFUSD, but Mar identified four other sites in the Sunset.
I’m reacting to a pattern I see that whenever there is a 100% affordable housing project proposed in the Sunset, the Richmond, Presidio Heights, Noe Valley, etc., you know, well-to-do, high-resource, possibly a little more suburban neighborhoods, it seems to almost always be targeted at teachers or middle-income households. Conversely, whenever a project is announced that has units set aside for people exiting homelessness, it usually happens to be in SoMa near 6th Street, the Tenderloin, or occasionally the Mission.
As a matter of good citywide planning, this shouldn’t always be the case. On the one hand, neighborhoods like the Sunset are classified as higher-resource areas, and there would be benefits to low-income and formerly homeless families to getting to locate in these neighborhoods. On the other hand, the bifurcated demographics of SoMa, where you have people who can afford $4800 a month rent, and people who have basically nothing, and the middle class is missing, isn’t healthy for anyone in SoMa. So what I’d like to see is more middle-income subsidized housing in SoMa (and I think housing reserved for teachers and SFUSD employees counts as that), and more housing targeting extremely low incomes and formerly homeless on the west side, etc. A land swap between this site and one of the identified teacher housing sites in the Sunset is an idea that may or may not be totally practical, but that I wanted to put out there for the sake of conversation.
It’s nothing like Publishers Clearing House. That’s completely nonsensical and incoherent comparison. We get it; you hate the homeless and poor people.
Publishers Clearing House dangles big prizes in front of people, that most will never get. Publicly funded subsidized housing dangles a very limited supply of luxury subsidized housing in front of people, that just like Publishers Clearing House prizes, most people will NEVER GET. They are EXACTLY the same come on.
I don’t see a mention about a density bonus. Does that not apply when you’re building BMR already? Feels like an extra 2 floors could give us 20-30 more units.
UPDATE: City Now Seeking Interim Proposals for Fenced Housing Site