As we noted last month, when San Francisco’s 300-acre Mission Bay neighborhood is “fully developed” it is slated to encompass 6,500 units of housing; 4.4 million square feet of clinical, office and other commercial space; 419,000 square feet of retail; and over 40 acres of landscaped open space, totals which don’t include the Giants’ massive Mission Rock project which is slated to rise on the Port’s adjacent Seawall Lot 337 (aka the Giants Parking Lot A).

Of those 6,500 units of housing, roughly 5,800 have already been built, including nearly 1,200 units of below market rate housing, with another 271 affordable units under construction and affordable units on the boards for Blocks 9 and 9A.

And with the ground for the 141-unit development to rise on Block 9 slated to be broken next year, San Francisco’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure (OCII) has just issued the formal Request for Proposals to develop and sell affordable condos on 9A.

An anticipated amendment to the master plan for Mission Bay should allow the slender 30,000 square foot Block 9A site bounded by Mission Rock, the future Bridgeview Way, China Basin Street and a future public green space (“P19”) fronting Terry A. Francois Boulevard to rise up to 90 feet in height across the full parcel.

As such, the OCII’s goal is for 135 units of “high quality and thoughtfully designed affordable housing” to rise on the site, with a mix of (25%) one-bedrooms averaging around 525 square feet, (50%) two-bedrooms averaging around 825 square feet and (25%) three bedrooms averaging around 1,050 square feet, a garage for up to 33 cars and below market rate sale prices designed to be affordable, and restricted, to those making between 80 and 110 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI).

Responses to the RFP are due on July 22 and the winning proposal will be identified in the fourth quarter, with an exclusive negotiating agreement expected to be inked in February of next year (followed by at least a year (or two) of negotiations, financing and design).

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

27 thoughts on “RFP for Affordable Condos to Rise in Mission Bay”
  1. How much less could housing cost for everyone in SF if we didn’t require all of these massive subsidies on new housing construction to support these entitled groups of people somehow who feel they have a right to have someone else support their lifestyle choices?

    The only reason we have so called “below market rate housing” is that someone else has to pay more to provide these benefits.

    1. Could be more classist if you tried. The reason we have to subsidize affordable housing is because your denialist world view has dominated local politics for decades, preventing anywhere close to enough market rate housing from being built. That, in turn, would have prevented prices from becoming so astronomical, which necessitated affordable/BMR housing requirements in the first place.

      Why should current and future generations have to pay the monetary and social cost of your selfish lifestyle choices?

      1. Nothing is more “selfish”, than using the corrupt power of government to force others to pay your lottery winning living expenses. Talk about undeserved special rights (and they are special, only a few of many thousands can ever win) awarded just to highlight your mediocrity. Calling people who pay their own bills “selfish ” is the pinnacle of delusion.

        1. We get it. You made it clear in the last thread. You hate poor people and think that you earned everything you have and that nobody else deserves a shot at the same. Looking forward to those of your generation and/or with similarly racist, classist, and reality-denying views being stripped of power and relegated to where you belong: the dustbin of history.

          1. You are simply delusional. You think it’s hateful, to not to pass out hundreds of thousand of dollars in discounted real estate, to a few people who actually did nothing to deserve it, except winning the lottery ? It’s more hateful to all the millions of people who will never get anything, to perpetrate the “affordable” housing myth. Subsidized housing will never meet even a small fraction of the need and is just lipstick on a pig. It lets cynical politicians, look like they are “doing something”, but just anoints a few winners.I see great inequality in giving a few luxury subsidized housing and 99% of everyone else…. nothing.

          2. “Subsidized housing will never meet even a small fraction of the need and is just lipstick on a pig”

            Meanwhile, you don’t want to see any housing get built (which would actually help address the problem) because you already got yours. You’ve reached a level of hypocrisy and immeasurably extreme self-centeredness, that there isn’t even a sufficiently brutal way to describe it.

          3. “You are simply delusional. You think it’s hateful, to not to pass out hundreds of thousand of dollars in discounted real estate, to a few people who actually did nothing to deserve it, except winning the lottery ?”

            The same—that they hardly “deserve” it, that they’ve won a “lottery”—could arguably be said for the people who come into the possession of *un*discounted real estate.

            Let’s build more housing all around, already.

        2. Government subsidizes all kinds of things for all types of specific “entitled” groups. How much less would housing cost for everyone in SF if we didn’t let longterm landlords/homeowners pay a pittance compared to younger folks/newer arrivals? Let’s repeal Prop 13 and SF’s racist single-family zoning laws, then we can talk about what’s fair.

          1. And let’s scrap property tax, and have a tax that ALL RESIDENTS pay…the UK has a council tax, that home owners and renters both pay. IT WORKS.

        3. Sam, I assume you are a SF resident, as well. Why should SF residents, especially those who don’t own property, be *forced* to give you a depreciation tax credit for property that is actually appreciating? Do you really deserve it? Any of us who are able to afford property in SF have have disproportionately advantage by our system of government. It’s time to give back.

    2. I could be reading this wrong, but by ‘lifestyle choices’ do you mean people who make a living as teachers, cops, nurses, and single income families?

      1. Oh, the city cares not at all if you are a “contributing” member of society to suck money from others to house you. They spend millions on 7,000 units of which 80% of the residents are confirmed addicts. See you don’t have to contribute ANYTHING to get in on the gravy train!

        1. Supportive housing and BMR housing aren’t the same thing. This is indicative of your view that all poor people are drug addicts and that all BMR housing is meant to go only to the unemployed, drug-addicted, and/or formerly homeless.

    3. You are so correct. Government giveaways don’t happen in a vacuum. You have to take from some poor suckers to give to someone else.

      1. SF government is the way that the majority of SF voters want it… and I doubt that the homeless meth addicts vote. – so I guess if you don’t want to pay for the housing of others, don’t buy a home in SF.

        1. To correct that: “If you don’t want to pay for housing of others”

          Someone shouldn’t buy or rent in San Francisco as renters are also paying massively extra costs every month for newly built rental properties to also support the needs of these seemingly entitled parts of our SF population.

    4. so who is actually paying for these affordable units? why do you immediately assume its “everyone else”? Is it possible that “below market rate housing” requirements are reducing the land value? so can it be the land owner who pays for majority of it?

    5. You are clearly an oblivious person, if not completely dissociated. I’m not usually participating in call-out culture, but you deserve it for such a myopic comment. Your privilege has blinded you. It is you who demonstrate entitlement with this post.

  2. The housing crisis throughout the Bay Area is the progressive/liberal version of the wall and the GOP. Keeping people out. Either by a wall or, in cities like SF, through zoning and NIMBYISM. It is so bad in Mountain View that tech workers have taken to living in RVs. Mountain View and Google don’t like the sight of RV’s near the Google campus and are going forward with plans to ban RVs being used for living within city limits. Check out Lake Merced. There are 20 or 30 RVs parked there – it is a driving hazard near the SF State campus as the the road/lanes are narrow and some of these RVs are quite large.

    1. Let’s assume you read the recent piece in Bloomberg, An RV Camp Sprang Up Outside Google’s Headquarters. Now Mountain View Wants to Ban It:

      One 24-year-old Google contract worker lives in a rented RV with her girlfriend close to the internet giant’s campus…she studied psychology, then moved to Atlanta where she rented a townhouse for $1,050 a month. She applied online to be a Google security guard and when the contracting firm gave her the job, she moved to Mountain View in April. She initially considered renting a small apartment, but realized she couldn’t save any money that way. “An apartment out here would cost at least $2,500 a month,” she said. “The money I make here is great, but I would be pretty much spending the majority of that on rent and I just don’t want to do that.” So she decided to rent the RV for $800 a month.

      Emphasis mine. I don’t read that article as being about “keeping people out”, I read it as the market has failed to provide reasonably priced apartments, so working class people (or in this specific instance, college-educated people working as security guards) are trying to keep more of their income rather than hand half or even the majority of it over to the local landlord class. Essentially, you have workers playing regulatory arbitrage, just like landlords who run illegal hotels out of residential neighborhoods by using AirBnB.

      If you really believe in the magic of markets, you should want people to be barred from living in RVs, because that suppresses the apparent demand for apartments below where it otherwise should be, and thus the market signals for increased investment in apartment housing never makes it to developers.

      1. it makes no sense to move to silicon valley from atlanta, if you could afford a decent place there with a lower salary and have moved to higher paying job here, but not enough for rent. She basically took a pay cut to move to the most expensive housing market in the country. I dont actually feel too bad for her. thats a very dumb financial move. of course, there could be other motives

  3. Affordable housing on Waterfront property? Loonie liberal lacking common sense discretion. Even working middle class saving up for twenty years can’t live this well. I’m all for providing a hand up, this is a gold plated handout. Sell the land.

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