Mission Local reports:
A developer submitted preliminary plans for 351 new condos with the San Francisco Planning Department on October 18.
To make room for the new buildings, which are described as between five and ten stories in the Preliminary Project Assessment, the developer plans to raze several businesses, including Walgreens, Burger King and Hwa Lei Market. A nightclub and a vacant Dollar Store on the site would also go.
They aim to beautify and improve the quality of life in the area, and make the BART plaza a more inviting hub, and they say no residents will be displaced. Read on for more info, comments by locals, blueprints and more.
I think it’s cool as long as they name the place “Royal Gate” in honor of Cranky Old Mission Guy and days gone by.
I know this comment thread is going to be a shitstorm, but I just wanted to say that Royal Gate would be a fucking FANTASTIC name. OK, go to it.
HAHA
Steel 211 Commons
Starting at just $4,000 a month for a studio!
SF residents can either complain about new big housing projects or the city’s high rent. NOT BOTH.
Wrong. Condos do not in any way affect rental housing. You could build 10K new condos and not one working-class person would have an easier time renting an apartment.
These disingenuous arguments are getting tiresome.
Except for the increasingly common practice of converting rental properties to TICs via the Ellis act, you mean? The unmet demand for ownership opportunities is most definitely affecting the rental market.
Demand will always be higher than supply here, meaning TIC evictions will still happen no matter how many “legal” condos you build. Also, while there are programs like FHA and BMR, almost everyone I know doesn’t have even the $20-50K (assuming even modest down-payment percentage) to put down. Add a working-class person with a kid or two, and it’s an impossibility.
You just switched your argument from “building more condos doesn’t help the working class with the short supply of rental housing” to “even if you built more condos, the working class would not be able to afford them”. I’m afraid that’s very unlikely to change no matter what happens.
My assertion is that the number of Ellis act evictions is currently spiking because we’re not facing only an increase in demand for more housing. Specifically, there is an increase in demand for ownership opportunities among people that can afford to pay today’s market prices, and this is creating a larger-than-usual incentive to convert rental properties to TICs which certainly affects the rental market. According to Mission Local, Ellis act evictions are up 81% year-over-year, though admittedly the absolute number (127 evictions) is barely a drop in the bucket.
@Ben
I love the ingrained notion in SF that a property owner is REQUIRED to keep their property as a rental property. It’s empowering to have the ability to dictate how someone else uses their private property, isn’t it? It’s like you buy a couch, but then your neighbors all get to dictate that you have to sit on the floor forever, because you let a friend sit on the couch to watch the game this afternoon.
“Private property” rights are what the elite use as an excuse to fuck everyone else.
An excuse to fuck everyone? You do understand the difference between public and private, right?
Also, if by ‘elite’ you mean ‘one of thousands of tech workers that are entirely common to this area’, then yeah, you nailed it.
There are many people on the fence for renting or buying. If condo supply goes up and is able to make condos more affordable even slightly, then some renters will be able to leave the rental market for the buyer market.
+1. A few years ago I planned to buy about now; thanks to the spike in demand I can’t anymore. Once I can, that will be another apartment freed up for someone else. I know I’m not alone.
Wrong. What’s to prevent condo owners from renting their apartments as income properties?
Increasing housing stock at any price level with any ownership type, will reduce cost of ownership/rentals.
Hazbeen: Yup, well said. If there’s one thing we should learn from the k-razy rents/prices in SF and the fact that record numbers of luxury housing have been built in the past year or so, it is that high-end housing doesn’t make mid-range and low-end housing any cheaper at all.
Very true.
How about the number of buildings owned by TNDC downtown? Wouldn’t there be a more cost-effective way to help all those people than housing them in prime real estate?
Sounds about right.
Way, way too big for that location. 6 stories or so would be much more reasonable.
Yeah, I could swear that I once saw a zoning map that limited construction on that corner to six stories.
“Google Bus Terrace” has such a nice ring to it.
A lot of people rely on Walgreens for household supplies.
And a lot of people rely on Burger King for bacon cheeseburgers.
i like flame broiled ok!
Sure, but there’s another Walgreens at 15th and Market, there’s two Safeway locations nearby, the Duc Loi market, etc. etc.
There will be protests if people have to walk more than two blocks to get to a Walgreen’s.
FoodsCo 3 blocks away sells all the same shit as Walgreens and more, at the same price.
Before y’all lose your shit about a tall building going up, pretty please read this article by the director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR): http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/
The only thing that’s going to bring housing costs down for people that don’t qualify for subsidies is increased housing supply. The smartest thing this city can do is increase the density around major transit hubs – encourage people to live in areas where they can walk and where owning a car isn’t required because the cost of providing parking is a significant factor to why all new housing costs so damned much. I’ve got a link for that one too: http://daily.sightline.org/2013/08/22/apartment-blockers/
Yup. And six stories of housing is a hell of a lot more dense than the 0 stories of housing that exists there now.
Agreed. I bet they are starting with 10 stories because they know that will get knocked down to no more than 6 in the approval process…this way the developer can act like they are making concessions, etc…and being the “good guy”.
SPUR is the #1 LOBBY GROUP for developers and one of the main voices posing as support for the 8 Washington project. Do some homework people…
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/08/08/agency-official-under-fire-development-project-endorsement
Oh noez!!!1 Some developer might make some money off a project so it must be EEEEVUL!!! Let’s kill all development and just keep trying to allocate a tiny number of apartments to a few times as many people and things will turn out just awesome for the reg’lar folks. It’s been working so well for so long.
You’re being hysterical. SPUR?! Also, don’t cite to SFBG article and call it research.
Why not? SFBG is arguably the best local news source in the Bay Area.
After this blog, right? SFBG is ok, I guess. SPUR isn’t evil though.
Yup. SPUR is an astroturf group. Fuck them.
What does that mean (seriously)?
You mean what is an astroturf group?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
I agree with the need for more housing/density, but I can’t help but think of the lessons learned from adding freeway lanes. If you build it, they will come.
Hell, maybe we should just limit condo sales to city residents of 5+ years. Ten dollars says we’d have a glut of housing stock in two years.
They’ve already been coming, despite you not building it. That’s the problem. It’s not going away.
“If you build it, they will come.”
Bingo. Supply-siders are naive or just moles for “tha man.”
I’m very familiar with the freeway expansion effect, but I don’t think it’s an appropriate analogy here. In the freeway case, adding supply creates an equal amount of demand because the additional supply shifts the balance of things so that the freeway is once again the most convenient option relative to whatever people were using before the lanes were added. The new lanes become filled, things stabilize and some people decide it’s no longer worth dealing with the freeway and start using alternatives.
Housing is a different beast because it’s a game of musical chairs and when the music stops (supply becomes constrained), it’s a bidding war to see who gets the last handful of seats. Those with money are going to beat those without. Jokes about Uber and helicopter taxis aside, that dynamic doesn’t exist when talking about transportation infrastructure.
Spur and the planning dept are hurting our city.
Yup. Definitely so.
This.
Consider my example—as a 6+ year SF resident who just spent the last 4 months trying to find a place with my fiance—for some perspective:
When I moved to the SF in the beginning of ’08 with two friends, we got an apartment in the TL where rent was $1,500 per month, and all we had to do to get the apartment was fill out the application.
In 2013 dollars, that same apartment would cost a little less than $1,700 per month. My fiance and I just signed the lease on a place that’ll cost us $2,200 per month, in a neighborhood that is much better than the TL. That means that rent has increased by 5% per year over the last 5+ years. That not half bad for one of the most desirable cities in the US.
However, even though this mission bartender and his fiance have good credit, make upwards of 80k, and have the feel-good story of being newlyweds, we were still turned down for over a dozen apartments. The main reason? We kept getting told that some other applicant made significantly more money than we did.
The main problem with the SF’s housing market is not so much that rents have shot up some unbelievable amount, but simply that there are now so many more qualified applicants competing for a EXTREMELY limited number of apartments.
Whoops. Meant for this to be a reply to Ben’s initial comment.
If the plan includes burning that Walgreen’s to the fucking ground, I’m behind it. That’s the most disgusting Walgreen’s in San Francisco, if not the universe.
Poor people are so disgusting!
Poor people? You are obviously stupid.
We all know that it’s not the poor, it’s the poorly-behaved that make the 16th and Mission Walgreens a horrid place.
wow this remark shows what kind of people have moved into this city.
I agree. Waaaaaay too many poors there. I mean inside its fine. But nearby and around it, there are just so many poor people. And most are brown!
Yeah lets get rid of all the poor brown people or better yet lets make slaves of them. What ignorance!
I’m just going to leave this here: http://sfist.com/2013/10/25/san_francisco_is_the_least_affordab.php
BK makes THE BEST chocolate shakes. get ‘em while you can!
I saw a lady make a chocolate shake on a support column in the MUNI station once. Whipped her pants down, SPLAT! whipped ‘em up and walked off happy as a holiday.
O.K. that’s a pretty scungy poorly used space. But, can we keep the Walgreens, which serves the community and designate at least 50% of the homes for the seniors, artist, and familes who have been displaced by the Ellis Act? How about some of the ground level space for a community group? Let’s make the developers agree to this. It’s our neighborhood. . .
San Francisco has Chinatown, Japantown, and with the demographic changes that the Mission has seen in the past fourteen years, the best name for this will be Honkytown Towers.
well shit. youve gone and made me spill my 6 dollar latte while laughing at that.
I can’t believe they are changing this beautiful neighborhood that I moved to. That Burger King has been here since forever (when I moved here 6 years ago) and it’s a fixture of the community.
Also, I can’t see how this will help the housing situation for lower and middle income renters. I don’t understand how creating new housing opportunities for the wealthier people with whom I’m currently competing for rental apartments could possibly ease my burden. Do you think if all the people who are currently outpricing me were out of the rental market, rents would magically go down because the demand for rental housing would go down? HA!
Supply and Demand does not apply to San Francisco. We are above all of that.
We must preserve the Burger King and the Walgreens! It anything is essential to preserving the character of the Mission, it’s chain stores.
I wonder how many jobs will be lost. 6 businesses will be closed. You may all laugh about it. But people will be losing there jobs. Is that to deep for all you folks?
… yes, and those 6 businesses will be replaced with even more storefronts. Which will hold stores that will employ more people. How about showing a little concern for the future employees of those businesses as well?
My only complaint is it will block the sun from shining on my children’s playground at Marshall Elementary.
Don’t you see how the Mission is slowly losing its essence? I’m sure if you’re new here you wouldn’t notice, or even care. You move here because it’s “cool” and there’s hip shops and restaurants, but what do you give back to the community?