Activists in San Francisco who for decades have blocked market-rate housing in the Mission District may have met their Waterloo in a high-rise proposal by developer Hawk Lou.
New state laws to encourage housing growth will likely ensure approval of Lou’s plan to build a 10-story, 181-unit apartment building at 2588 Mission Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Plans include 30 affordable apartments.
The building would rise on the vacant site of a 2015 fire that engulfed a three-story building, killing a tenant, injuring five people and displacing dozens of low-income residents.
At a recent meeting, planning commissioners said that state laws prevent them from rejecting the project, and that a rejection could open the city to a lawsuit from Lou. The commission put off a decision to April — to gather facts and allow Lou to explore selling the property.
For 17 years, activists battling gentrification have prevented all but 169 market-rate units from being built in the Mission.
But the weapons once employed by advocates who want Lou to sell his property to the city for affordable housing no longer work.
Two state laws, a density bonus law and the Housing Accountability Act, now set objective standards governing whether a city can reject or modify a project.
Because Lou’s proposal conforms to all city rules, the city can’t reject it, the Planning Department told the Chronicle. A state-mandated housing goal also requires San Francisco to permit more than 82,000 homes by 2031.
Opponents could still appeal under the California Environmental Quality Act, which would require the Board of Supervisors to consider the project. But the board usually rejects such appeals, according to the newspaper.
If Lou’s project is approved, it could deal a significant blow to organized anti-market rate development activism in the Mission.
Some commissioners said they were sympathetic to opponents who said the property owner didn’t deserve to benefit from the site. Lou was blamed for not maintaining the building before the fire and was sued by multiple residents, resulting in “considerable settlements,” Patrick Miller, Lou’s attorney, told commissioners.
When it burned, the building had missing fire extinguishers, blocked fire escapes, broken smoke alarms, locked exits and no working sprinkler or fire alarm systems, according to a Chronicle report.
Despite the controversy, the planning commissioners said they would still likely vote to approve the project.
Miller defended his client, saying he’s been an upstanding member of the community.
“There’s a lot of feeling and a lot of emotions going on in this community,” Miller told the commission. “But for the purposes of what the commission has to do … there’s nothing in this plan that is contrary to the directive given by virtue of state law.”
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