A 100% affordable housing project broke ground at 16th and DeHaro streets Monday morning, and this is newsworthy, because it's being built by a market-rate developer, and it was not originally going to be affordable housing.
If you’ve spent much time in Potrero Hill, you probably know the unique blue building on a triangular lot at 16th and DeHaro streets (seen below). That building was supposed to have been torn down years ago, because of a proposed 425-unit, market-rate housing complex that was proposed to be built there. But like many housing projects, the proposal at 300 DeHaro Street in Potrero Hill was stalled because of high interest rates and persistently expensive construction costs.
So the developer DM Development successfully unstuck the project out of that mud. KQED reports that DM Development resubmitted the project as 100% affordable housing, in order to get more low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs). And now the Chronicle reports that the 300 DeHaro Street project just broke ground Monday, and will soon offer 425 affordable studio and junior one-bedroom units.
“We ended up pivoting the project from a mixed-income project to a 100% affordable housing project,” DM Development CEO Mark MacDonald told KQED. “Using low-income housing tax credit financing as a way to kind of get around the challenges that the market rate developments have had.”
Potrero Hill residents had long suspected that the site’s previous affordable housing units were kind of sham “micro-units,” but now all of the units will be affordable. The project has still led to the evictions of blue-building tenants Cafe Da Fonk and Torraku Ramen. But this is an exceptionally large building for 100% affordable housing (11 stories), and DM Development says they're now inclined to build more affordable housing, even though they usually build the market-rate condo type buildings.
“This is not just a one-time thing we are doing because of market conditions,” MacDonald told the Chronicle. “It just so happens that the market-rate stuff is on hold, so we saw this as an opportunity to start this [affordable development] business."
According to KQED, the new 100% affordable housing building at 300 DeHaro Street is expected to be completed and opened by Summer 2027.
Image: DM Development
