Ronen hopes to push affordable housing plans

feet to the fire,” Ronen said.

She wants the city to avoid situations where plans change unexpectedly, such as at 600 South Van Ness. The 27unit housing project was approved to include four affordable condo units, which local housing activists supported. But the units became “impossible to finance” for lowerincome buyers and sat empty for years, she said. Toboni Group, developer of the project, later received city approval to pay a fee instead, she said.

“Our intent from the beginning was to sell the below market rate units to fund our nonprofit organization, the Affordability Project, which is currently entitling a 70unit below market project in San Francisco,” Joey Toboni, managing principal of the Toboni Group, said in a statement. “The City, after having multiple month’s long gaps in communication, ultimately and without legal legitimacy, prevented us from selling these units. When the City could not find a path for us to sell the units, they asked us to inlieu the units despite us publicly speaking about our desire to sell them going back to 2017.”

“We’re from here. We care deeply about workforce and lowincome housing which is why we’re doing something about it. Supervisor Ronen on the other hand, makes it very difficult to build housing to solve this problem,” he said.

Ronen said the legislation would ensure “luxury developers do their part to help the City build the amount of affordable housing we so desperately need.”

San Francisco has one of the highest affordable housing requirements in the country, requiring projects under 25 housing units to provide 14% affordable housing, and rental projects of 25 or more units to provide 21% affordable housing.

“I don’t expect it to cause any delays or prevent people from developing housing,” Ronen said, noting the bill won’t increase the amount of affordable housing required.

“If they’re forced for some reason to change because of market conditions, they can do that under this legislation, they just have to be clear about that and go through a process,” Ronen said of developers.

The proposal has support from the Planning Department, Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, and the Council of Community Housing Organizations, a coalition of affordable housing developers, Ronen said. She said she hopes it will go to a vote by October. Ronen’s district includes the Mission, the site of numerous housing battles after rents soared and the area’s Latino population fell by t,000 residents. Public funding and fees have helped build nine affordable projects with 1,000 apartments in recent years, which Ronen said has helped residents at risk of displacement.

“It’s one of the most inspiring things you can see,” Ronen said.

At the Mission’s most contentious site, 1979 Mission St. next to the 16th Street BART plaza, a marketrate project was scrapped after fierce opposition. Developer Crescent Heights is now planning to donate the site for affordable housing. Supervisors could approve a deal by December, Ronen said.