An ambitious affordable housing for teachers was set to bring 63 housing units to a bedraggled abandoned building at 18th and Mission streets, but the federal funding was denied, and the project is now delayed indefinitely.

We got the great news last July that two empty San Francisco locations were set to be transformed into affordable housing for teachers. One of those sites is not far from Civic Center, the other is an absolutely shambolic vacant building at 2205 Mission Street (at 18th Street) seen below, which for years has been a magnet for nothing but graffiti and blight.

But the lovely translation from that dump into this magnificent project is now stalled. Mission Local reports that the affordable housing nonprofit behind the project, Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA), has lost a primary source of funding for the project. That means the project is now delayed indefinitely, and might not ever happen at all.

Per Mission Local, MEDA had hoped to get funding from a federal New Market Tax Credits program, “but its application was denied.” MEDA has not commented on why, though Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s office confirmed the denial of the funding.

“We are very disappointed,” Ronen’s legislative aide Ana Herrera told Mission Local. “Because we had expected by the end of this year the project would break ground.”

MEDA has already secured $12 million in local funding for the rebuild, so this thing is not entirely dead in the water. Ronen’s office noted the project could have its cost lowered by building the units as apartments rather than the more difficult-to-finance condos, and funding could also be available through a Regional Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) bond that may appear on the local November ballot.

A communications manager for the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) told Mission Local that their office is “working with MEDA to find a path forward, including identifying alternate funding sources.”

The other separate teacher housing development at 750 Golden Gate Avenue, which was announced at the same time as the 2205 Mission project, is unaffected by this news. That project is organized separately by a different organization called MidPen Housing Corp., and hopes to offer 75 units for educators, paraeducators, and early education providers within SFUSD and the San Francisco Community College District.

Related: SF Adds New Teacher Housing Projects, One of Which Will Convert Eyesore at 18th and Mission [SFist]

Image: Google Street View