Affordable housing breaks ground on Mission near 16th

San Francisco city officials and Mission District community leaders broke ground at 1950 Mission St. that will provide 155 affordable housing units.

The site was The City’s first navigation center and was formerly Phoenix Continuation High School before the Mayor’s Office Housing and Community Development scooped up the site from the school district and transformed the site into a temporary navigation center.

Last year, the Board of Supervisors approved to turn the site into affordable housing units.

The units will be available to households with incomes from 40 to 60 percent of the Bay Area median income. Of the 155 units, 40 will go to families that were previously homeless.

Households living at the site will include a rooftop garden, a courtyard, a community room with a kitchen, and a workshop for youth that will help teach them to maintain bikes. PODER will host the workshop.

Mission Housing Development Corporation and Lutheran Social Services will help provide on-site supportive services funded by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

Additionally, Mission Neighborhood Centers will operate a new Head Start and Early Head Start program to provide education for toddlers.

Mitchell Crispell, project manager with Bridge Housing, said the affordable housing site is in a transit-rich neighborhood that includes Muni and BART within walking distance at Mission and 16th streets. The building will also have 264 spaces of bike parking.

Mayor London Breed said it was exciting to finally to get 1950 Mission site going, and that she plans to introduce measures in the upcoming November election to streamline and fund new affordable housing units:

“I am looking forward as we go to voters this November that we build affordable housing and teacher housing, and that we put a bond for affordable housing on this November ballot. We can’t just say we support affordable housing and not provide the resources necessary to build it and get it done.”

Sam Moss, the executive director of the Mission Housing Development Corporation, said the site represented a promise that Mission Housing made when it was created in 1971:

“We promised to be an anchor of the community. We promised that we would have support for everyone that needed it and this is what that looks like.”

Jerold Chinn

Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.