The former "Monster in the Mission” condo project is now slated to be 100% affordable housing, but some residents tried to block the project over housing so many of the formerly homeless. The SF Board of Supervisors shot down their appeal.
Way back in the early tech boom times of 2013, a developer rolled out a plan to demolish the Walgreens and Burger King next to the 16th and Mission BART station, and replace them with a massive condo project that earned the unflattering nickname "Monster in the Mission.” That developer faced enormous Mission District backlash, and abandoned the idea, paving the way for the city to buy the building and make it 100% affordable housing.
Two nonprofits called the Mission Housing Development Corporation and the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) are building this new project, and they’ve give it the new nickname “La Maravilla” or “Marvel of the Mission.” But they rankled some local residents with their June announcement that the site "will serve families, seniors, and formerly homeless individuals,” as those residents felt that bringing more formerly homeless individuals into the neighborhood would just be inviting more blight.
So those rankled residents appealed to project to the SF Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, hoping to block it. Their technical argument was on the ministerial and procedural grounds that subdividing the property into three different addresses would further endanger the safety of the neighborhood.
But Mission Local reports that the supervisors unanimously rejected the appeal, so “La Maravilla” is still on track to get built at the 16th and Mission BART station, formerly homeless residents and all.
The opponents appealing the project billed themselves as the “Defenders of Marshall Elementary" the school adjacent to the housing project. Capp Street resident Ali Gilmore said the project has “implications for the public health and safety of the neighborhood,” and said that permanent supportive housing projects such as this attract “as much violent crime as liquor stores.” He claimed it would affect the school with “systemic and structural racism that would be unacceptable at any other elementary school in SF.”
And he took a turn of phrase on the whole NIMBY/YIMBY debate.
“The NIMBYs here are the project sponsors, who live elsewhere, forcing undesirable land uses in the back yard of brown kids’ schools, not theirs.” Gilmore told the supervisors. “With respect to this project, ‘YIMBY’ now means ‘Yes in Marshall’s Back Yard.”
Mission Housing Development Corporation executive director Sam Moss then spoke in defense of the project. “We’re here to defend the idea that lower-income and working class families who are the backbone of our city deserve to live in San Francisco,” Moss said Tuesday. “Building affordable housing in the Mission should not be controversial.”
“This appeal isn’t about protecting the neighborhood, it’s about protecting privilege,” he added.
About six residents spoke in opposition to the project during public comment, though dozens spoke in favor of it. And the supervisors were also in favor, rejecting the appeal unanimously.
“This is not the exact, proper venue for opposing the project itself,” the district’s Supervisor Jackie Fielder said before the vote. “I know what it’s like to grow up in a dangerous neighborhood, and I am sympathetic to the concerns about safety for kids and families. But this is not a land use issue.”
And then she went on a stemwinder over the whole “Abundance” movement.
“If this city is about ‘abundance’ right now, ‘abundance’ for whom?” Fielder asked. “Abundance for downtown? Abundance for AI companies, for market-rate developers, abundance for police overtime? But not abundance for 16th Street.”
One can see the concern that putting more low-income housing at the 16th and Mission would only exacerbate the neighborhood’s low-income status. The same complaints have dogged the Mission Cabins "tiny homes” on the same parcel, or the nearby La Fénix Apartments low-income housing project.
Supervisor Myrna Melgar argued those complaints are misguided. “I don’t think it’s correct to say that Mission Cabins or La Fénix or any of these new activities have brought this population,” she said before the vote. “Because I can tell you, this population was always there.”
Image: Google Street View
