{"id":29833,"date":"2023-11-11T12:32:12","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T20:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=29833"},"modified":"2023-11-11T12:32:14","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T20:32:14","slug":"arrogant-developer-infuriates-mission-activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/11\/11\/arrogant-developer-infuriates-mission-activists\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrogant developer infuriates Mission activists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A community meeting erupts in anger when the person calling the shots on a big luxury project doesn’t bother to show up.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By TIM REDMOND<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

NOVEMBER 9, 2023 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Share on Facebook<\/a> Share on X (Twitter)<\/a> Share on LinkedIn<\/a> Share on Reddit<\/a>Share on Email<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Real estate developers are generally an arrogant bunch, who try their best to defuse, ignore, or dismiss any public input that might threaten their ability maximize their profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even by those very low standard, the way the man who wants to build 181 units of mostly luxury housing at Mission and 22nd<\/a> is treating the community is pretty horrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hawk Ling Lou owns the site where a series of fires, one of them fatal, destroyed a building where low-income tenants lived in rent-controlled housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Architect Iam Birchall and lawyer CJ Higley try to answer questions while the only person who had real answers didn\u2019t show up. Photo by Andrew Brobst<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lou\u00a0owns a number of buildings in the city<\/a>, and the District Attorney\u2019s Office filed charges against a contractor he hired,\u00a0who allegedly didn\u2019t provide adequate fire-prevention equipment<\/a>\u00a0at the Mission Street site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under city law, if the building could have been repaired after the fire, the tenants would have the right to return, at their original rents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the city determined that the building wasn\u2019t inhabitable and it was demolished\u2014meaning the Right of Return doesn\u2019t apply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city requires major developers to do some form of \u201ccommunity outreach,\u201d so Lou\u2019s architect and land-use lawyer showed up at the Mission Cultural Center Tuesday night for what was billed as a community meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I got there, the architecture team from Ian Birchall and Associates was setting up poster boards on easels with mockups of the project and an FAQ. Birchall says I don\u2019t have permission to post photos of the mockups (which is weird), but\u00a0you can see them here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milo Trauss, a representative of the developer, then announced that there would be no formal presentation, but that participants were welcome to walk around and look at the images and ask individual questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That didn\u2019t fly.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lou Dematteis, a longtime Mission photographer and filmmaker<\/a>, demanded a real meeting, with real input. \u201cWe want to be heard,\u201d he said, not just one-on-one. Let our voices be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Birchall, who said he was not prepared to do a presentation, agreed to present anyway. But all he could really talk about was the design of the project, how many of what types of apartments (all one- and two-bedroom units) would be on site, and how many would be affordable (21, the minimum required under state and local law).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who no larger units? \u201cIt\u2019s about getting the maximum number of units\u201d in the building envelope, Birchall said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bigger question that participants asked, over and over again: Why is this project coming to the Mission? Won\u2019t it lead to more displacement? Will the developer sell the site to the city for 100 percent affordable housing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birchall couldn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is not his fault: The person who can make those decisions\u2014Lou\u2014and who will be making the profits on this, was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeMatteis: Where is the developer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birchall: The developer isn\u2019t here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are coming to a Latino neighborhood,\u201d Susana Rojas, who works with Calle 24, said. \u201cIt\u2019s horrible that the developer isn\u2019t here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birchall couldn\u2019t answer that, although he did say that \u201cneighborhoods change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Mendoza, also from Calle 24, challenged him: \u201cDo you know why neighborhoods change? It\u2019s because of projects like this. A person died here. Our community is suffering, and the developer doesn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Community members demand answers that the presenters didn\u2019t have.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isa Garcia asked the question directly: \u201cWhat is the point of this? There is plenty of unbuilt housing and plenty of empty units.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April McGill, from the American Indian Cultural Center, said \u201cthis is insulting to us.\u201d She noted that there was nobody among the presenters who spoke Spanish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rojas summed it up: \u201cWhy are we wasting our time? When will we have the next community meeting when the developer will be here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birchall could only say: \u201cI can\u2019t make the property owner do the things you want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked Birchall before the meeting whether the project had financing.<\/strong> He said it didn\u2019t; that would come later. Which means that it might not get built any time soon anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest obstacle to market-rate housing in San Francisco today isn\u2019t \u201cred tape\u201d or NIMBYs or the progressives on the Board of Supes; it that financial institutions aren\u2019t putting money into new housing right now because the return on investment isn\u2019t high enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several community members said that after the old building burned, the late Mayor Ed Lee promised that the site would become affordable housing. I asked him Birchall if there was any chance the owner would sell the lot to the city. He said anything was possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, folks in the Mission are furious\u2014at a project they don\u2019t want, and at a developer who doesn\u2019t have the common decency to come to a meeting and listen to the people whose community he wants to change to make a profit for himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite some bad state law, this is not a \u201cministerial\u201d approval; it will have to come before the Planning Commission, where there will likely be strong opposition\u2014not from the so-called NIMBYs worried about property values but from Latino and Indigenous residents of the Mission worried about their ability to stay in their community.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A community meeting erupts in anger when the person calling the shots on a big luxury project doesn’t bother to show up. By TIM REDMOND NOVEMBER 9, 2023 (48hills.org)  Share on Facebook Share on X (Twitter) Share on LinkedIn Share on RedditShare on Email Real estate developers are generally an arrogant bunch, who… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1410],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29837,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29833\/revisions\/29837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}