Group loses bid to stop housing project
A neighborhood group that spent 2½ years fighting a 90-unit affordable housing development in San Francisco’s Sunset District lost its final appeal, setting the stage for the builder to start construction in May.
On Wednesday, the Board of Appeals turned down an appeal from the Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association, which argued that the city should revoke the project’s construction site permit. The group claimed that toxic substances near the property at 2550 Irving St. had not been adequately tested and remediated.
The group previously unsuccessfully sought a preliminary injunction in San Francisco Superior Court to stop the project. It also lost an appeal of the demolition of the San Francisco Police Credit Union building that previously occupied the site. That building was knocked down in June.
Anne Stanley, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, said the group’s lawsuit and appeals added about $1 million to the $102 million project cost due to legal and environmental consulting fees and additional testing requested by the community and the Board of Appeals.
The development, which will be built by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., “exemplifies San Francisco’s efforts to invest in the development of quality affordable housing in high resource neighborhoods, including the Sunset and other west side neighborhoods,” she added. “This project is in direct alignment with the city’s affordable housing goals and is critical to addressing the housing affordability crisis.”
The project would have faced much longer delays and legal costs had it not been for SB35, legislation that streamlines the approval of affordable housing projects.
At the appeal hearing, Deputy City Attorney John Givner said the city has limited authority to deny the building site permit because the project met the criteria specified in SB35.
Board of Appeals member J.R. Eppler said it’s clear that there are toxic substances in the Central Sunset neighborhood — mostly associated with several long-gone dry cleaning businesses — that should be cleaned up. But, he said, the construction at 2550 Irving St. would not prevent that from happening.
“I see a very bright line between the contamination which needs to be remediated and the permit we are here to consider,” said Eppler. “I don’t think the permit is material to the contamination issues.”
Planning Director Rich Hillis agreed.
“We want affordable housing and we want clean soil in the neighborhood,” said Hillis. “It seems we can do both.”
While the Sunset has produced only about two dozen affordable units in the past decade, in that period more than 4,400 residents of that neighborhood have applied for affordable housing through the city’s lottery system.
The Board of Appeals vote comes as Assembly Member Matt Haney is sponsoring legislation that would prevent groups or individuals from appealing post-entitlement building permits.
“This process adds delays, costs, and hurdles that have made San Francisco one of the most costly and time-consuming places to build in the state,” Haney said in a statement. “It’s also the reason why only 26 affordable units have been built in the Sunset in the past decade.”
Not all board members are pleased with the pro-housing legislation. Board of Appeals member John Trasvina suggested that neighbors should have been able to argue their case to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, not just the Board of Appeals.
“I don’t think we should be the body imbued with this power, but unfortunately our state Legislature has ripped away the other layers of review,” he said.
The Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association had been asking for additional testing and cleanup of carcinogen tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, that was detected near the site. Flo Kimmerling, who heads the group, argued that the developer and city should have used “soil vapor extraction” to vacuum tainted soil from the site.