S.F. housing battle lands on hillside
Townhomes planned on site originally set as affordable
Rosa Baltobano was 6 when her family scored a subsidized apartment in the Vista Del Monte apartments in San Francisco’s Diamond Heights neighborhood.
It was only a couple of miles from the Mission District streets where the family had been homeless, but it was a world apart — a windswept spine overlooking a steep hillside of Monterey pine trees descending into Noe Valley below.
“We used to run up and down the hill,” she said. “We shouldn’t have been climbing those trees, but we sure did. I have a few scars from falling and scraping myself.”
Now, more than 30 years later, Baltobano is raising her own children at Vista Del Monte. And while her kids play in the rugged open space, that may not be the case for very long as the hillside is the focus of a fight over a proposed townhomes project.
The developer, On Diamond LLC, an affiliate of Emerald Fund, has an option to buy the property and wants to construct 24 townhomes that average 2,500 square feet and will likely fetch more than $3 million apiece. The development
The project “strongly aligns with San Francisco’s goal of creating family housing near transit, shopping and parks.”
would not include any affordable units, but the developer would pay $2.8 million to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
Opponents question whether the current property owner, the Cesar Chavez Foundation, has the right to sell the land to a market rate developer. The foundation bought
Marc Babsin of developer Emerald Fund
the property using public money — tax-exempt affordable housing bonds issued by the California Statewide Communities Development Authority — and the deal included a deed restriction that requires it to maintain the property for affordable multifamily rental uses for a period of 55 years.
Selling the open space to become housing that only the very wealthiest city residents could afford “seems tantamount to theft of public funds and an illegal use of property designated for affordable housing,” said the group 1900 Diamond For All, which has asked the City Attorney’s Office to investigate.
Marc Babsin, a principal at Emerald Fund, said that the fee to the city will provide gap financing for 11 affordable units. He said the lack of three- and fourbedroom homes is one of the reasons San Francisco has the smallest percentage of kids of any major U.S. city.
The project “checks all the boxes,” he said. “It strongly aligns with San Francisco’s goal of creating family housing near transit, shopping and parks. We have these wonderful classic San Francisco neighborhoods that haven’t built a single project with over 20 units in 40 years. This is where we should be building housing.”
Carolyn Lee, an attorney for the Cesar Chavez Foundation, said the property had been subdivided in 2019 and the portion of land slated for development has “absolutely no remaining deed restrictions, regulatory agreements, declarations, covenants, or any other recorded encumbrance” that would prevent it from becoming market rate housing. Both the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had signed off on the subdivision and proposed sale of the land, she wrote in a letter.
But the idea that land acquired with tax-payer money would be sold off to a profit-driven third party is problematic, according to Steve Chaffin, an opponent who lives across the street from the site. Chaffin said that he would support housing aimed at moderate-income families.
“Whatever is done there is supposed to be for the increased enjoyment and use of the people who live at Vista Del Monte and building multimillion homes is not that,” Chaffin said. “You don’t need so much square footage — it’s obnoxious. This was San Francisco redevelopment agency land. We should all be angry that Cesar Chavez Foundation is going to take this land that we the taxpayers subsidized and sell it to the highest bidder.”
While Diamond Heights is a neighborhood of million-dollar views and midcentury modern homes, it is also among the city’s more economically diverse enclaves, having been purposefully developed to be a mixed-income neighborhood, with 640 affordable units, about 25% of the housing stock. Developed from 1961 to 1978, the neighborhood includes the 275-unit Glenridge Cooperative Apartments.
Vincent Nesbitt, a retired custodian, said the residents in the Vista Del Monte building “watch out for each other.” He relocated to the hillside 40 years ago after a fire in the Bayview District left him homeless. He fears that the construction would destabilize the hill, something that happened when several townhomes were built a few years ago to the north of his unit. About 7,500 cubic yards of dirt and rock would be removed from the hillside, according to the plan.
“It’s a mess. It’s just a big a slap in the face,” he said. “When they ran the steel beams, it ripped our building off the foundation. I think it’s another form of squeezing us out.”
Cesia Gutierrez is another second-generation Vista Del Monte resident who is raising her 2-year-old daughter there. She said the open space next to her apartment was a lifesaver during the COVID shutdown when playgrounds were closed.
“We run up and down these hills, and now my daughter gets to do the same thing. The little bit of nature we have left, they want to take it from us,” said Gutierrez, a receptionist at a dental office. “There could be another shutdown. Where are we going to go? We are going to stand across the street and watch them build condos we could never afford?”
Betsy Eddy, co-president of the Diamond Heights Community Association and a retired city worker, said she would support housing for the “missing middle people who work tirelessly for the benefit of our city and cannot afford to live here.” She said that the developer’s point person, Babsin, has been “generous with his time,” but that little about the proposal has changed. In fact, the latest version is 5,200 square feet bigger and has six more parking spaces than an earlier iteration, she said
Babsin said the changes have been significant. The latest design includes a pocket park on the southwest corner of the property, which residents asked for. It includes a mid-block crosswalk, sidewalks that will be doubled in width, and “bulb-outs” that will make it safer for pedestrians.
Milo Trauss, who lives at 26th and Sanchez, said Diamond Heights and the surrounding neighborhood “have not pulled its weight or been responsible” when it comes to producing housing. “It’s familyoriented housing. It’s an undeveloped site. Nobody is getting displaced,” he said. “It’s exactly what San Francisco needs.”
For now, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the neighborhood, is not taking a position on the project because it will likely be appealed to the Board of Supervisors. He said it’s clear that District 8 has been derelict in housing production — over the last 40 years, there have not been any 20-unit buildings in Diamond Heights, Glen Park or Noe Valley. He said he is waiting for the city attorney to weigh in on the question of the deed restriction.
Mandelman said he would prefer smaller homes. “In District 8 we have been way overproducing billionaire mansions and way underproducing housing that everyday folks might be able to live in at some point.”