by Randy Shaw on July 27, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)
A 16th & Mission Miracle
New Affordable Housing Reopens the Mission
Since the late 1970’s a major San Francisco story line has been the Mission’s gentrification. It’s a classic case of the working and middle-class displaced by more affluent residents. Valencia Street’s upscale restaurants, new condos on closed industrial spaces, and tenants facing speculator evictions symbolized the Mission’s transformation.
But today’s Mission offers a different story. While rents on private market rental units and home sales still price out the working and middle-class, a massive amount of new affordable housing has re-opened the Mission to the non-rich. And this expansion of affordable housing is likely to continue.
Which raises the question: can the Mission’s pre-1980 social and economic diversity return?
Three Gentrifying Waves
When I moved to San Francisco in 1979 young activists were congregating in the Haight-Ashbury and Mission. We realized we couldn’t get an apartment in the Haight when a manager asked us if we had nice furniture. He said the owner wanted to rent to tenants with quality furnishings because he was planning on selling the place. The Haight-Asbury’s gentrification was in full swing. This occurred without any new, “luxury” housing promoting this trend.
The Mission’s post-1979 gentrification transformed Dolores Street and much of Guerrero. Guerrero became the Mission’s new western border.
The next big gentrification wave that hit the Mission came with the 1995 dot com boom. Because the Mission was located near highways leading to Silicon Valley, it became a popular choice for affluent tech workers. Its two BART stations also made the Mission a convenient home for downtown workers. Rents skyrocketed on vacant units. Bad faith speculator evictions were rampant.
The dot com boom priced out a countless number of Latino families who sought to live in the Mission. Latino families could not afford Mission rents even when they pooled incomes for overcrowded units. Many moved to the Tenderloin. This brought the neighborhood a major influx of immigrant Latinos for the first time. In 2005 the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which I head, launched the La Voz Latina organization to serve their needs.
The second tech boom of 2011-2019 seemed to finalize the Mission’s gentrification. It appeared that available apartments and houses would be limited to the affluent. But activists convinced Mayor Lee to target most the city’s affordable housing funds to the Mission. This huge victory was obscured by the area’s ongoing transformation.
Massive Affordable Housing
Mayor Ed Lee’s Mission Action Plan 2020, approved by the Planning Commission in 2017, projected roughly 1000 new affordable units in the neighborhood. Many were skeptical the city could reach that goal. But Mission Housing has since built 385 units in the Mission. It has another 136 are under construction and work will begin on another 225 next year. That’s 746 units from one nonprofit builder.
When you add units built by MEDA, inclusionary units, and those acquired through the Small Sites program (also adopted by Mayor Lee), the number of affordable units in the Mission since 2017 easily exceeds the 1000 goal. Meanwhile, new market rate housing in the neighborhood has largely stopped as builders cannot get financing.
Affordable projects have their own financing pools, and continue to get built.
The Mission also has several SRO hotels leased or owned by nonprofits. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic alone leases roughly 450 units in four hotels. The city’s master-leasing program enables very low-income residents to live in the Mission. In addition to its apartments Mission Housing owns over 170 SRO units in the neighborhood.
Defeating the Monster
The dramatic reversal in the Mission’s fortunes is perhaps best captured by the fate of the proposed “Monster in the Mission” on the northeast corner of 16th and Mission. Our story on the October 4, 2014 march and protest against the project lays out what was happening to the community’s affordability.
Our 2015 story reported on the project’s collapse. As reporter Carl Finamore put it, “A political earthquake just hit San Francisco when, amid much controversy, plans for construction of 331 high-end rentals and deluxe condos in the heart of San Francisco’s working-class Mission District collapsed.”
But the project was revived in 2017.We then wrote about a rally by the over 100 groups in the Plaza 16 coalition opposing the project. The opposition prevailed.
Now the site will be nonprofit affordable housing. Construction is underway on a nine story permanent supportive housing project named “La Maravilla.” A joint project of Mission Housing and Mission Economic Development Agency, the 100+ unit project is a testament to activists demands to preserve the Mission’s affordability. There are few more stark examples of the reversal of the gentrification process. This affordable project will hopefully become the Mission’s new story line.
Translated, “La Maravilla” means the wonder or marvel. The conversion of the 16th and Mission site to affordable housing is truly amazing.
The Mission’s Other Challenges
The Mission has always been atypical of other gentrified neighborhoods. Drug activities and illegal vending at 16th and Mission BART station have long occurred. But they have gotten much worse. Drug activities have also expanded to neighborhood parks. Mission Street between 16th and 20th has a lot more vacant storefronts than before Covid.
The Mission’s sidewalk vendors used to be primarily women selling tacos and used clothing. Today, the 16th Street BART station offers the city’s biggest market for stolen goods. The new state law that was supposed to help crackdown on illegal vending is not working in San Francisco.
Valencia Street has rebounded from its Covid-era downturn. But the media has long misused Valencia to “prove” the Mission’s gentrification while ignoring downscale Mission Street. Valencia Street has always been an outlier.
Activist tenant and community resistance have fueled the Mission’s reopening. Their success sends a message to those in other neighborhoods not to give up the affordability fight.
Randy Shaw offers a more complete account of San Francisco gentrification in Generation Priced Out.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.
