More housing plan details emerge at meeting

OFFICIAL BCNA NEWS

The Port of San Francisco made a public announcement of its decision to build affordable housing on Seawall Lot 322-1 at a public meeting of the Port Commission in November 2011.

Since that time the Port has been relying on public meetings of NEWAG (Northeast Waterfront Advisory Group) to disclose plans being made for this major enterprise on a seawall lot declared to be “useless for Public Trust purposes” under State legislation, SB 815 (then Senator Carole Migden), years ago, according to NEWAG.

SWL 322-1 is at Broadway, Front and Vallejo Streets. For many years the land has been used as a parking lot.

The July 2nd meeting of NEWAG distributed a rerun of last November’s 20-page printed folder “Affordable Housing at Seawall 322-1 through the Jobs Housing Linkage Ordinance,” along with additional information–Financial Objectives, the Selection Process, and Next Steps.

The formation of a Working Group to convene in August was discussed again. Names of potential participants were suggested, but the list was not finalized at the meeting. The working group will meet twice in August.

It was stated that the RFP (Request for Proposals) would become final following those meetings, with the draft being presented to the Port Commission for approval in September 2014. Upon the vote of the Commissioners the RFP would be issued in September or October.

A key “Development Program Objective” in the new NEWAG folder is: “Must include new permanent family housing that includes a mixture of targeted incomes, up to a maximum of 60% AMI” as well as “Terms of any City subsidy must be consistent with other affordable family rental housing.”

RFP submissions would be due in January and February 2015 and reviewed by the selection panel in February and March 2015. Developer interviews would take place in April and the developer selected in April or May, 2015.

When the audience was allowed to speak at the July 2 meeting, BCNA President Robert Harrer (representing Advisory Group member Diana Taylor, BCNA vice-president, unable to attend) rose to reiterate the previously expressed opinion of many waterfront residents that Port project planners should include consideration of moderate-income families and seniors as potential occupants of the new housing.

Other speakers in the audience agreed that these two categories of new affordable housing recipients–middle-income families and seniors–deserve consideration in planning for the Port housing project.

Harrer also referred to the frustration that neighborhood organizations feel about the difficulty of communications with the planners of a project that “clearly is of benefit to the northeast waterfront community.”

Teresa Yanga of the Mayor’s Office of Housing said that the two meetings of the Working Group will be held August 7 and 21 at 810 Battery Street, located in the first major affordable housing project of CCDC (Chinatown Community Development Center) on lower Broadway–in place and fully occupied since 2008.