What was intended to be a temporary community benefit on a site slated for affordable housing development within a few years, Hayes Valley's PROXY, shows no signs of going away anytime soon, despite some activists pushing for the housing to be built.

Parcel K, one of a group of land parcels along Octavia Boulevard that used to sit underneath the Central Freeway until its demolition over 20 years ago, has been earmarked for affordable housing since before the freeway even came down. In 2009, the idea for Proxy took shape, and with the help of ENVELOPE Architecture + Design this "evolving open space experiment," made partly out of shipping containers, was built in late 2010.

Suppenkuche's successful offshoot Biergarten has been there since the start and is now a staple of the Hayes Valley neighborhood. Ritual Coffee has also had a stand there since the beginning, now going on 14 years. And other stuff has moved in and out of the container spaces including AETHER Apparel, Smitten Ice Cream, a short-lived popcorn store called Fluff Nugget, and now more recently San Francisco's Hometown Creamery has moved in.

The plaza area of PROXY is used for outdoor fitness by LuxFitSF, as well as for outdoor cinema events, and neighborhood gatherings like the Hayes Valley Carnival.

All in all, PROXY has more than lived up to its purpose, activating what might have sat as a dreary vacant lot the past two decades, and meanwhile most of the other, smaller housing parcels along Octavia have been built up.

Starting back in 2013, PROXY got an eight-year extension, as it became clear to city leaders that finding funds for a 50- to 75-unit affordable project was going to be difficult if not impossible. Then-Supervisor London Breed said at the time, "PROXY is a true asset to Hayes Valley, and... far better for the community, far more enriching, and more fun than a parking lot, which was the area's previous use."

Now, as the Chronicle reports, things remain stalled, and Breed's office says it's largely about state and federal housing funds and where they're getting prioritized. A community group just delivered a 1,600-signature petition to Breed's desk calling for the site to be developed — but it seems likely that a different group, like the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, could easily come up with that many signatures or more to keep PROXY in place.

"That is a piece of valuable, critical open space of Hayes Valley,” said Jen Laska, the former president Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, speaking to the Chronicle. “If we take that away, we are not going to get it back.”

Supervisor Dean Preston, in whose district PROXY sits, has been gunning for the housing to get built and pinning the blame on Breed — the two are perennial political antagonists — and the official word from Breed's office is that it will be at least another three to five years before the project moves forward.

"[The mayor] has pushed for housing all across the city, including in this very neighborhood where there are 933 affordable homes under construction within a half mile of this site," says Breed's spokesperson Jeff Cretan, in a statement to the Chronicle. "The reality is this parcel is not competitive for state and federal funding right now, which provides about two-thirds of the development costs. This has to do with funding and feasibility."

50 units of housing is 50 units of housing, but it doesn't put that much of a dent in 82,000 units that the city is on the hook to get approved in the next few years. And it sure looks like what was meant to be a three-year "experiment" is going to end up being a 20-year (at least) retail and entertainment hub in the heart of bustling Hayes Valley.

Previously: Hayes Valley Residents Pushing Back Against Affordable Housing Development at Site of PROXY

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