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.
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.”
You cannot believe Ronen. The 1515 S Van Ness (at 26th St) site was only supposed to be here for one year (as reported in mission local) but yet it is still here more than 6 years later. She also said they would address the camps around the site. Yet there are literally camps blocking the entire sidewalk on 26th next door to the shelter — I had to walk in the street to get by.
As a neighbor I fully support this and I’m glad to see Supervisor Ronen come around. It has never made sense to me why a vocal few people, who absolutely do not represent the Mission in my opinion, will simultaneously complain about encampments and oppose affordable housing and shelter.
The solution to homelessness is housing. Period. That’s where we have to stay focused, not just because it’s the right thing to do by our down-on-their-luck neighbors (although that should be enough reason!), but also because we are never going to make long-term progress on street conditions when the strategy is to shuffle people from block to block with sweeps and sidewalk barricades while offering no safer place to actually go. Without housing and shelter, all the sweeps, as well as the “planter box” barricades now illegally obstructing sidewalks, are nothing but a game of cruel musical chairs.
You clearly are not a parent. We do not want this encampment next to our kids’ school. The area around 16th St is overloaded with services, halfway houses, and SROs. The city has done a terrible job of dropping these dwellings into our neighborhood, turning them over to nonprofits with no-bid, lucrative contracts, and walking away. We have had enough. It is time for other neighborhoods to do their share.
This is not housing; this is an encampment like the one at 33 Gough. That project, like the “safe sleeping site” at South Van Ness and 26th, has attracted drug dealers, tents all around, fires, fights, and crime. It can be better served at a larger site (eg behind the UCSF building on Folsom) that is not next to a school and not near the 16th St corridor where drugs and stolen goods are sold day and night.
I don’t know if the OP is a parent, but *I* am. I’m not too far from this, and I support this development. Should other neighborhoods bear the brunt of this as well? Sure, but no one who has said so has ever had the slightest intent of following up on getting projects on those other neighborhoods get built; it’s never been anything other than a standard NIMBY move. Temporary housing still represents an improvement over the chaos of the current situation.
If you don’t contend, day in and day out, with the overflow from 16th BART and the containment zone policies, if you live on a residential block far afield insulated from the insanity, then you don’t live in our neighborhood and need to stay in your lane.
Kid goes to school quite nearby, not “far afield”. I support the project. You will continue to try at every opportunity, no doubt don’t get to pawn off everything the city needs onto unspecified “other neighborhoods” in an obvious attempt to kill it altogether. Sorry. Deal.
You live nowhere near proximate to the spillover from 16th and Mission, blocks over and blocks up. Stay in your bike lane.
Wait a second. . . the Gough tiny homes were $15,000 each and the Mission’s are expected to be $116,000? Wha??
Also, Ronen: said the tiny homes project, which would ostensibly only be on the site for about two years before an affordable development breaks ground
Yet, the article says the tiny homes would be there “as soon as Spring of 2024” but then goes on to say “the corner is slated to become 450 units of affordable housing as soon as 2025.”
I can’t imagine that the tiny homes will be onsite during the development of the Affordable Housing, so this math isn’t checking out, unless I’m mis-understanding something.
Hi Dan, thanks for pointing that out, we just fixed it.
Ronen told community members at a City Hall meeting this week that it would be several years before the ~ $250m is identified for the 1979 Mission construction and ground is broken. But Ronen is probably lying about that too.
Hillary Ronen is lying.
Hillary Ronen has always supported the project.
Hillary Ronen proposed the project.
Hillary Ronen lied to the community that she’d contacted UCSF to enquire about using their parking lot for the cabin village.
Hillary Ronen lied to the community when she said that she’d not support the project until the Marshall community was kept clean and crime free.
Hillary Ronen lied to the community when she said that she had any power to hold the contractors to account after the site opened.
Hillary Ronen lied to the community when she said that she’d meet with the community if anything changed.
Hillary Ronen promised a hearing on this matter, but included funding for cabins in this year’s budget without informing the community.
Hillary Ronen and Emily Cohen from DHSH lied to the community when they said that tonight’s meeting was to inform the community about a proposed cabin village.
The cabin village is a done deal and tonight’s meeting is a farce, a slap in the face to the community after months and months of lies.
The ease and frequency with which falsehoods emit from Hillary Ronen’s lips is most astounding.
La supervisora mentirosa es sin vergüenza.
Who wants to put money on a stage full of mostly white NIMBY this evening, who live nowhere near here, and will sternly lecture Marshall community members, who already bear more than our fair share of the City’s burdens, on our selfishness while making any push back all about them personally.
NIMBY nonprofit staffers and execs will likewise sing for their suppers, piously peddle their bona fides to site the cabin village adjacent to an elementary school serving youth of color, migrant youth, homeless youth and low income families–far away from the NIMBY’s homes.