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Sunset group sues to stop SF area’s first all-affordable housing project
Group claims nonprofit developer didn’t address community concern
A Sunset neighborhood association is suing to stop the area’s first all-affordable housing project, saying the nonprofit developer didn’t provide sufficient engagement with the community or address concern over massing and scale.
The Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association filed the suit Wednesday in San Francisco Superior Court, according to the San Francisco Business Times. It’s asking for a temporary restraining order to stop developer Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, which just submitted its entitlement application, from proceeding.
The group said TNDC ignored repeated requests to find a compromise on the development.It’s proposing a four-story, 80-unit design with more parking and priority for Sunset residents, compared with the seven-story 90-unit project TNDC has advanced to the planning commission.
Yet the 90-unit count was already a compromise, as it was intended to be a 99-unit development, according to an organizer with the Westside Community Coalition, which supports the project. The design has also been modified slightly to include a10-foot setback, remove streetside benches and add architectural interest, in response to community feedback.
TNDC targeted the site of the San Francisco Police Credit Union along Irving Street in 2019. The future of the $9 million sale was in flux until July, when a Board of Supervisors committee authorized a $14.3 loan agreement, paid for by a voter-passed affordable housing bond, to finance the purchase and pre-development costs. The authorization came after an audit showing the city had failed to make affordable housing funding on San Francisco’s west side a priority.
Just 18 affordable units have been built in the Sunset in the last 10 years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The neighborhood, south of Golden Gate Park and stretching to Ocean Beach, is predominantly filled with single-family homes.
Residents in San Francisco’s more dense Eastern side have long argued that they shoulder more than their share of the city’s affordable housing. A 100 percent affordable housing project was recently approved in the Mission and two affordable housing developments along the Embarcadero just opened.
At the meeting allocating funding for the Sunset project, Supervisor Matt Haney said his downtown district has produced 4,000 affordable units in the same decade that Sunset has created less than 20.
“It’s completely unsustainable for us to only build affordable housing in one corner of the city,” he said.
Sunset Supervisor Gordon Mar approved the funding but also said it had “deeply divided the neighborhood.” Mar is one of three supervisors advancing upzoning legislation that would allow fourplexes on the single-family lots that largely comprise his district.
[SFBT] — Emily Landes
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