Posted on: December 16, 2024
Public, private partnership opens 70-unit project in hard-hit district
Source: CoStar; Author: Rachel Scheier
All 70 units at 180 Jones in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood will be permanent affordable homes for low-income residents, with half providing subsidized housing and support services for formerly homeless adults.
Residents have begun moving into a new nine-story San Francisco apartment building dedicated to providing affordable housing in one of the nation’s most unaffordable cities.
Mayor London Breed and officials from the California Department of Housing and Community Development inaugurated the 38,500-square-foot building at the site of a former parking lot at the corner of Jones and Turk streets in the Tenderloin, one of the city’s grittiest neighborhoods. All 70 units at 180 Jones will be affordable homes for low-income residents, with half of them providing subsidized homes and support services for formerly homeless adults.
Local officials are touting the 180 Jones project – built by nonprofit developer Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. – as part of an ongoing push to build more housing in Sn Francisco, partly by reversing policies that have fed the city’s reputation over the years as notoriously unfriendly to new developments.
“To be a city that is more affordable for all, we have to be aggressive in building housing all across San Francisco,” Breed said in a news release.
The low-income apartments are priced for those earning less than 40% of the area median income, which in San Francisco County is about $130,000. The development also aims to provide “step-up housing” for longtime local residents of single-room occupancy hotels, or converted hotels with shared bathrooms that used to be plentiful across the city but are now mostly concentrated in Tenderloin. The residential hotels house an estimated 30,000 residents who cannot afford San Francisco rents, which currently average $3,118 per month, according to CoStar data.
New York overtook San Francisco as the most expensive rental market in the country following the pandemic. But as of the fourth quarter of 2024, rents appeared to be rising again in the city, according to CoStar, and they are predicted to rise further in 2025.
Falling short
With the 70 new units at 180 Jones, San Francisco has added a total of 1,267 units in new affordable housing since 208, according to the city. Officials said an additional 143 units are currently undergoing renovation.
The city is on the hook to allow for 82,000 new homes to built by the end of 2031 as part of its plan to satisfy state-mandated requirements for cities to do their part to help solve California’s housing shortage.
So far, San Francisco is falling drastically short of that goal, especially in the last few years as the city continues to struggle from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just over 1,200 units have been completed so far in 2024, according to the city. That is about half the 2,618 new homes built in 2023 and well below the boom years of 2016 through 2021, when San Francisco saw as many 5,250 new units built annualy.
“The San Francisco Bay Area is set to end 2024 with a decade-low new multifamily units under construction,” according to a recent CoStar analysis, which explained that construction has still not bounced back ever since the pandemic reduced renter demand as residents and workers left the city.
The new development is part of Breed’s initiative dubbed Housing for All, which seeks to “make real change to how San Francisco approves and builds housing” by cutting red tape and easing zoning restrictions, among other measures.
In an attempt to speed those goals along, a new state law kicked in this past summer after the city failed to meet its housing benchmarks. The legislation, written by state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Bay Area Democrat, requires cities that fall behind on their state housing goals to drastically speed the approval process for most projects.
Housing first
Streamlining the development process doesn’t address all the barriers to getting more Bay Area housing built. The price of construction and materials such as wood, steel and concrete have skyrocketed over the past decade, driving up overall costs. Land also comes at a premium in the Bay Area.
The 180 Jones project was financed through a patchwork of city and state funding, including $23.8 million in California Housing Accelerator Tier 1 money. The developer is also providing in-house property management and services for residents, including a 24-hour desk clerk and on-site social workers.
The Tenderloin became a national symbol of urban dysfunction during the pandemic thanks to headlines and images of sidewalk encampments and open-air drug use, prompting Breed to declare a state of emergency in the neighborhood in 2021. Officials have since embarked on a crackdown to clean up the area, though the city has stuck with a “housing first” approach that prioritizes providing stable residences for those living on the streets without preconditions like sobriety, employment or participation in treatment programs.
The 35 subsidized apartments for formerly homeless adults were allocated last year based on referrals through San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
“By providing safe and stable homes, we empower our most vulnerable community members to reclaim their lives, access vital services and build a pathway toward lasting stability,” Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the department, said in a news release about the 180 Jones development.
Read the full article, here.
Posted in: News