Supervisor Hillary Ronen has changed her tune on the addition of 60 tiny homes proposed for the corner of 16th and Mission streets, writing in a community newsletter today that she will be supporting the project after previously opposing it.
She said the tiny homes, which would ostensibly only be on the site for about two years before an affordable development breaks ground, would have a full-time staff member to ensure cleanliness. That addition, she wrote, changed her opinion on the proposal.
“I had prior reservations over this project, due to concerns over our city departments’ capabilities to keep conditions around Mission shelter sites clean,” she wrote in the newsletter. “I am proud to announce that the Mission will soon have a brand-new, full-time City employee dedicated to maintaining safe and clean conditions around these shelter sites and throughout the Mission.”
The homeless village could come to the corner as soon as spring 2024.
Initially proposed by the city in 2022, the tiny homes project at 1979 Mission St. had seemingly been put on hold after community members in the Mission expressed concerns regarding safety and sanitation, stating that a homeless village could expose students at the nearby Marshall Elementary School to drug-use and violence.
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The temporary nature of the project — the corner is slated to break ground for 450 units of affordable housing as soon as 2025 — had also raised questions about whether the investment of $7 million will be worth it. San Francisco’s first tiny home village at 33 Gough St. opened in 2022 at $15,000 each, but the Mission site would cost some $116,000 per cabin.
Ronen originally supported the project, but said it might be off the table in February after a community meeting indicated overwhelming opposition. “I am not going to support this project unless I can look you in the eye and say it’s safe,” she vowed at that meeting, saying she wanted the site to be properly maintained.
The tiny homes project, however, progressed quietly. It was well underway in early August, according to an email from Emily Cohen, spokesperson for the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
“The reason that I was opposing it is because I wasn’t sure that the city had the capability of improving the conditions in the neighborhood rather than making them worse,” Ronen said in an interview today. “Now that we have a full-time person who will be walking by the site every day, problem-solving in realtime and this will be a priority area for the entire city.”
According to Ronen, a city employee will be available in November to field phone calls and fix problems around the tiny homes in realtime. The staff member, who will work under Sam Dodge, the director of the Healthy Streets Operations Center, “will be physically walking around the Mission District every day” and have a direct line to city staff to fix problems at a quicker pace, said Ronen.
Ronen stressed that she believes the 60 tiny homes “are one of the best types of shelters that we have” to address homelessness in the Mission and prevent encampment fires, like those on Stevenson and Julian streets.
“The only way we can get people off the streets and inside is if we have more shelter space, and there’s very, very limited shelter space available in the city. And oftentimes people choose not to use congregate shelter because they feel unsafe there,” she said.
The parcel of land, 1979 Mission St., was acquired by the city in 2021 after years of neighborhood opposition to a planned market-rate housing development at the site. It has since been designated 100 percent affordable housing and dubbed the “Marvel in the Mission” by local organizers.
The homeless village will remain on the lot in the years before the affordable housing project breaks ground. According to planning documents, the village will be made up of two-room “modular” units. In addition, two bathroom and shower trailers will be available on-site.
The Department of Homeless will host a community meeting Wednesday from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 1661 15th St. to discuss the project.
If everything goes forward as planned, the Department of Homelessness will break ground in November with the goal of opening in the spring of 2024 and operating as long as the parcel is available, according to Cohen.
“We will absolutely vacate in time for the affordable housing development to start,” said Cohen, who roughly estimates that the tiny-homes village will last about two years. “But we also want to use vacant, city-owned property to the fullest extent possible to help support our community.”
