I don’t find a lot of areas where the Yimby movement, the affordable housing providers, and most neighborhood groups agree, but a senior housing project a few blocks from my house in Bernal Heights seems to have widespread support—despite a rather unusual challenge that the Board of Supes will hear Tuesday/3.
The project, sponsored by the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, which builds affordable housing, would create 70 units for low-income seniors at 3333 Mission, where a Big Lots store went out of business.
A few homeowners near the area have filed an appeal challenging a technicality in the project that requires a change in the subdivision map. They argue that the project would impact a park on Coleridge Street.
I happen to know that park very well. It’s been closed for years for what the city calls maintenance issues (there’s not enough money to keep it up). But for decades while it was open, nobody ever went there.
I know because I would take my kids there when they had colds and were too sick to hang out with the crowds of children at the Bernal Heights Park off Cortland. I knew they would be fine at this empty space with damaged play structures, since nobody else would be around to get their germs.
No neighborhood people stopped at the benches there. In the 15 years that the park was “open,” I never saw another human being there.
The BHNC plan would rebuild and improve the park anyway. There’s nothing in the plans that would impact anyone in any negative way.
Low-income seniors don’t drive cars. They don’t create congestion or crime. We all ought to welcome these fully affordable projects, and mostly, we do.
A few neighborhoods have tried to stop a few affordable projects, leading the Yimbys to push legislation that make most of these approvals simple. But the reality is, Yimby laws or not, most of these appeals in San Francisco go nowhere.
In this case, as Quintin Mecke, director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, notes:
A small group of homeowners has filed an appeal to stop 3333 Mission, a 100% affordable senior housing project led by the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center. This tactic is dangerous: it threatens critical funding and delays deeply needed sanctuary for seniors who have been priced out of the Mission-Bernal corridor.
The irony is clear: The appeal claims to be about “saving” Coleridge Neighborhood Park. But in reality, the park has been closed since 2020 due to safety issues and deferred maintenance.
The 3333 Mission project is the solution, not the problem. BHNC’s plan provides the funding to finally reopen and revitalize the park, delivering:
A safer, better-designed public green space.
New community room access for neighbors.
Long-overdue investment in public assets.
There’s about zero chance that the supes will approve the appeal. The hearing starts at 3pm.
