Affordable housing in San Francisco got a boost from $117 million in state grants for developers of three projects struggling to pencil out 290 affordable apartments.
The California Department of Housing and Community awarded the final funding needed to build homes at 4200 Geary Boulevard in Inner Richmond, on Sunnydale Avenue in Visitacion Valley and 234 Van Ness Avenue in Civic Center, SFYimby reported.
The support was provided by the California Housing Accelerator Fund, seeded with $1.75 billion from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
The money will finish paying for three affordable housing projects containing 290 units below market rates. The apartments will be reserved for families, formerly homeless residents, public housing residents, seniors and people with developmental disabilities.
“This funding is an essential tool in our work to deliver more affordable housing in San Francisco,” Mayor London Breed said.
All three developments are expected to break ground early next year.
The projects include a 98-unit affordable housing project for veterans, seniors and former homeless residents at 4200 Geary Boulevard.
They include Sunnydale Block 3B, a 90-unit family housing project with 75 percent of its apartments set aside for public housing residents, plus 3,400 square feet of shops and restaurants.
And they include The Kelsey at 234 Van Ness Avenue, a 102-unit affordable housing project with 25 percent of its apartments reserved for clients of the Golden Gate Regional Center, a service provider for people with developmental disabilities.
The developers’ final costs of each project were not disclosed.
Earlier this summer, San Francisco celebrated the groundbreaking of two affordable housing projects funded by the first round of California Housing Accelerator Fund disbursements.
A 70-unit affordable apartment building at 180 Jones in the Tenderloin for low-income tenants will include 35 apartments for formerly homeless residents. It broke ground in June and is expected to open late next year.
Star View Court, formerly known as Treasure Island Parcel C3.1, was another accelerator project that broke ground this summer. The 138-unit complex was the second affordable project in a plan to redevelop Treasure Island.
The city needs to build more than 82,000 homes by the end of the decade to meet its state housing goal.
Of those, 33,000 must be affordable for low-income and very low-income families. To pay for them, the city says it’ll need another $1.3 billion.
At the same time, building affordable apartments now costs as much as $1.2 million per unit. While the city must build tens of thousands of new units, it managed to build less than half its affordable housing mandate in the current eight-year building cycle.
— Dana Bartholomew
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