Landlord Hawk Lou’s attorney claims tenant’s cooking caused deadly 2015 fire, but the Fire Department says otherwise.
by XUEER LU FEBRUARY 7, 2025, 6:00 AM (MissionLocal.org)
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The fate of a frog pond and detritus-strewn crater at 22nd and Mission streets where a three-story building burned in a deadly 2015 fire that displaced dozens has now been delayed for another two months. Its owner, Hawk Lou, hopes for it to be developed into 10 stories of market-rate housing.
But, in two months’ time, it is unlikely commissioners will reject the 181-unit project, even though community leaders across the Mission District, including prominent YIMBYs, are against the project. Commissioners’ hands are tied, they said at Thursday’s hearing, and they will likely be forced to approve the landlord’s plan.
“We don’t have the power, unfortunately, legally, to do what the community wants us to do,” said commissioner Sean McGarry. “We cannot put the moral over the legal, because it’ll just be overturned a week from now.”
Still, dozens of Mission residents pleaded with the commission to stop Lou’s plans, saying he is profiting from death and displacement. They demanded he sell the lot to the city for 100-percent-affordable housing; Lou’s current proposal has only 19 affordable units, or 10.5 percent, the minimum required for the state density bonus that allows him to exceed height limits.
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“Unintentionally or intentionally, you will reward all the bad behaviors,” said one commenter. “If this goes through, this is just another black eye on the Mission District,” echoed another.
The 2855 Mission St. once housed a three-story residential and commercial building until it burned on Jan. 28, 2015, in a fire that killed 38-year-old Mauricio “El Pelón” Orellana, a tenant.
The fire also displaced some two dozen commercial tenants, including Mission Local, and more than 60 residents. After two subsequent fires, the building was condemned and torn down in 2016.
In reporting after the fire, Mission Local found that Lou owned at least 19 buildings with hundreds of tenants, many of them monolingual Spanish speakers who lived in “rundown and often overcrowded spaces.” Tenants at the 22nd and Mission site claimed there were no smoke alarms in the building.
Mission residents have long demanded that Lou sell the property to the city for affordable housing, and have blasted his proposal as “insulting.” They have also advocated for the right of the building’s previous tenants to return, although because the project is deemed “new construction,” they have seemingly lost that right under city law.
On Thursday, 51 speakers accused him of being a negligent landlord, and reiterated those demands.
But Pat Miller, Lou’s attorney, deflected blame, saying without evidence that a tenant caused the 2015 fire. “The source of the fire was … a singular unit in the residential area where a pot boiled over.”
But fire department officials reiterated to Mission Local in 2023 that the cause was an electrical problem within the walls of the building. Asked after the hearing about the fire department’s assessment, both Miller and Lou declined to comment.
Other commenters brought up an attempt by then-Mayor Ed Lee to turn the building into affordable housing, saying Lou failed to uphold his pact with Lee.
Reached by Mission Local, Jeff Buckley, who was Lee’s senior housing advisor, said there was no “deal,” but that Lee did try to get Lou to sell the property. “He even went to Hawk Lou’s butcher shop,” Buckley said, to convince him.
But Lou’s price was too high, Buckley said.
“Ed Lee wanted the site to be 100-percent affordable, and was ready to pay for it,” Buckley added. “But it had to be appraised, and the owner’s price well exceeded the appraised value.”
Lou, who was stone-faced the entire evening sitting in the second to last row of City Hall Room 400, went up to the podium to address the interactions with Lee. It was the only time he spoke publicly during the four-hour hearing.
He started by saying, “Nobody knows any more [than me] of the communication between me and Ed Lee” and that Lee “really, really, really” wanted to help, before trailing off and speaking about the lawsuits he is facing, including from tenants and the insurance company of the building next door. He did not say anything else during the hearing, nor did he talk to any of the residents.
Commissioner Derek Braun, for his part, said there was a possible path forward for residents: Pressure the city to allocate enough funds to buy the site for affordable housing, and pressure the landlord to sell it.
But that, he said, is not in the hands of the Planning Commission. And it would be expensive: Sam Moss, the executive director of affordable housing developer Mission Housing, said that once projects receive permits and are “entitled,” they become much more expensive for the city to buy.
If, as expected, the project passes at the Planning Commission in April, Lou would next need to pull building permits before starting construction. Construction could then take several years.
Additional reporting by Joe Eskenazi.
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XUEER LU
Xueer is a California Local News Fellow, working on data and covering housing. Xueer is a bilingual multimedia journalist fluent in Chinese and English and is passionate about data, graphics, and innovative ways of storytelling. Xueer graduated from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism with a Master’s Degree in May 2023. She also loves cooking, photography, and scuba diving.More by Xueer Lu
