Amble by the weed- and detritus-choked vacant lot at 22nd and Mission streets during the rainy months and you’ll hear them: Frogs. That’s an odd sound for the bustling heart of the Mission, but this is an odd sight: An imposing jet-black fence, unlovely sloping wasteland and a vast puddle resembling the putrid swimmin’ hole Sheriff Andy Taylor would’ve told Opie to avoid.
It’s a mystery how the frogs get here every year (surely they don’t take the bus — and where do they go when Opie’s swimmin’ hole dries out?). But, sadly, it’s no mystery how this bereft piece of land got here. This is the crater where the Mission Market once stood.
On Jan. 28, 2015, it burned, displacing some two-dozen commercial tenants — including Mission Local — and more than 60 residents. Jorge Flores was left with third-degree burns on much of his body, and 38-year-old Mauricio “El Pelón” Orellana was killed.
The San Francisco Fire Department confirmed to Mission Local last week that it pegged the cause of the blaze as an electrical problem within the walls of the building — not a tenant’s cooking fire, which building owner Hawk Lou claimed at the time. And still does.
After the initial fire, Lou allowed the derelict building to degrade into a charred, moldy and vermin-infested husk — and a refuge for homeless people who may have been responsible for additional fires. In 2016, it was ordered demolished by the city. And, since then?
Ribbit. Ribbit.
While little has changed on-site (other than an unimpeded view of a mural of world peace leaders, funded by one of the Mission’s most detested landlords), much has changed, legally, in the larger, surrounding world. In California, the law now gives a good deal of encouragement to developers hoping to build dense projects that meet baseline affordability requirements — and limits municipalities’ ability to interfere.
As such, Lou’s proposals through the years for the developments to be built atop the ashes of the Mission Market grow bigger and bigger and denser and denser. By year’s end, his biggest, densest and latest offering will come before the Planning Commission: A 10-story, market-rate tower, with the blessing of state law if it comes in at 15 percent affordable.
San Francisco has a dire housing shortage, sky-high rent and property costs, and an alarming number of people living on the street. It is abhorrent that this land has been allowed to lie fallow for so long. There should be housing here, as there had been for more than a century prior to the blaze.
But that’s not all that’s abhorrent. Following the fire, Mission Local investigated Lou’s many properties — there were 19 at the time, with an assessed value exceeding $15 million — and some clear patterns emerged. A goodly percentage of Lou’s tenants are monolingual Spanish-speakers, often living several to a room. Upkeep on these buildings has not been aggressively pursued: Former residents of the Mission Market — which, again, the fire department says burned due to electrical problems — claim that there were no smoke alarms on site. The District Attorney charged contractor Tommy Jue with fraud and grand theft in 2021 for setting up faulty fire alarms at numerous city locations, including this one.
Lou’s tenants, it seems, are entering into a bargain: Their cheap rent comes at the cost of dodgy conditions and building management not taking kindly to requests to fix stuff. Sadly for the tenants at 22nd and Mission, this bargain turned out to be of the Faustian variety. And Lou may yet make a killing here, even after a man was killed. This prompts serious questions: What should the city do? And, more elementally, what can it do?
Reached on the phone, Lou said he would not offer a comment. Then he spent about five minutes commenting. He continues to blame the demise of the Mission Market on a tenant’s kitchen fire. “I have done nothing wrong,” he says. Lou insists he’s not a greedy man, nor a bad one.
Maybe that’s so, but bad things happened here under Lou’s watch, and he stands to be the beneficiary. While the Mission Economic Development Agency has long coveted this site for affordable housing, the asking price in recent years was purportedly in the range of $20 million — and that would be just to obtain the land, let alone do construction and put in the windows and doors.
Rather than countenance the moral hazard of a dodgy property owner profiting off of a tragedy he helped to bring about, could the city of San Francisco simply take the land and do with it as it pleased? You may be surprised to learn that, yes, it could.
“Eminent domain” is a term more often associated by the public with municipal governments seizing private property so as to erect highways or municipal buildings (or Dodger Stadium). But the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London ruling in 2005 broadened the government’s reach. In this case, five justices found that a city’s taking of private property and awarding it to a private developer qualified as a “public use.”
“This freaked out a lot of people,” says Mark Wolfe, a San Francisco land-use attorney and Stanford University lecturer. That’s understandable: The scope of what justifications a city can now offer to take away private property is now awesomely extensive. A mandatory purchase of land at “fair-market value” from a dodgy owner/developer, and subsequent setup of a nonprofit developer to build 100 percent affordable housing, is — easily — within the scope of what a city can now do.
But should it? Wolfe referred to a Los Angeles Times op-ed in which the power of eminent domain was likened to Tolkien’s One Ring: An all-powerful tool that, once used, will invariably be used again and will, again invariably, lead to strife and corruption. “The use of eminent domain,” Wolfe says, “is a slippery slope.”
Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the City Attorney, naturally isn’t talking about her office’s legal opinions with regards to this individual site. But she does note that the city has never before used eminent domain “to acquire a private parcel to construct a residential use.” The last time the city used this power was to wrest away land for the Central Subway tunnel.
Well, that worked out great.
But Wolfe figures there’s an easier and cheaper way than eminent domain to get something more desirable built on this site — and built by someone more desirable. And it’s something this city often can’t help but do: Make building stuff impossible!
Because Lou is using a state density-bonus program, the Planning Commission may be constrained in the roadblocks it could throw his way. But, notes Planning Department chief of staff Dan Sider, Lou’s project is subject to the hearing process and — brace yourselves — to the California Environmental Quality Act.
Stuff moves slowly in this city. Especially when this city wants it to move slowly. And, while CEQA is the bête noire of pro-housing advocates, many of them can’t help but crack a smile in this case.
“I hate to say this. I die a little bit inside when I say this. But the city should use its discretion and deny him his permits every step of the way,” says Sam Moss, the executive director of Mission Housing and a vociferous YIMBY. “Not only is the planning permit discretionary, so is every other permit. I really do hope, for the first time since I got into the development world 15 years ago, that San Francisco exercises its discretion on every single turn: Public Works, the fire department, everything.”
“The only lever San Francisco has right now is its discretion,” says Moss. City intransigence has spurred him to work hard to weaken this lever. But, this time, he’s hoping the lever is as strong as Archimedes’.
“Every city faction will agree that Lou should not build this. You’re going to see a unique world where pro-housing advocates and pro-tenant advocates and straight-up NIMBYs all agree that discretion should be pulled at every level.”
“This,” Moss concludes, “is a pure unicorn.”
Eugenia Aldama and Humberto López lived at the Mission Market building from 1972 until, abruptly, Jan. 28, 2015. They didn’t hear any alarms going off — naturally — so the senior citizens instead had to be rescued from the fire escape.
“It really bothered me,” says Aldama, now 79. “I took a year to get well. My neighbor died, and he was a friend of mine. I would wake up in the night, screaming, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’”
After the blaze, Aldama and López ended up in a single-room occupancy hotel, living among drunks and drug users. Stress and something in the water piping that made them sick led both of them to lose more than 20 pounds. Later, they relocated to Parkmerced. For the young-at-heart couple, who used to dance their way through the Mission, it was profoundly isolating. Aldama admitted that she used to get lost, because all the houses looked the same. The couple is now living in a senior facility in the Richmond District: “Our new place is so clean! Not even a fly,” gushed Aldama. “We are very happy where we are.”
When asked their thoughts about their former landlord potentially erecting a lucrative 10-story structure on the site where they lost everything, both Aldama and López seemed jolted by unwelcome nostalgia.
“Do you see this?” Aldama asked, pointing to an inch-long hairline scar on her left temple. “I told him so many times to please fix the handle on the stairs. He wouldn’t.”
López, 72, summed up his relationship with his longtime former landlord as “Dinero! Dinero! Dinero! I was there 42 years, and any repairs, I had to pay. I fixed everything. The taps, the wardrobe, everything!”
When asked what he’d like to see replace the crater where he spent most of his life, López’s answer was quick and unambiguous: “More affordable housing.”
Translation and additional reporting by Kelly Waldron.
Does this guy suck? Certainly. Do I want him to profit handsomely off of killing and displacing his tenants through what sounds like poor maintenance? Hell no. And yet this illustrates one of the basic problems behind San Francisco housing policy: the law should be administered predictably and impartially according to clear written rules, not based on how much we like or dislike the personalities involved in each project. If the rules say a building can be built, then getting those permits should be no more complicated than getting a vehicle registration or any other non-discretionary permit. And if we don’t like the results, we can simply change the rules, but there should be always clear, predictable written rules and less backroom gamesmanship where unwritten rules change depending on how politically connected you are (and perhaps your donor record).
If this landlord is criminally or civilly responsible for the death and displacement, by all means that process should divest him of his profits and attempt to repair some of the harms he’s caused, including building affordable housing, but turning every permitting decision into a years-long public referendum over how much we dislike the developer is no way to run a city.
he might have been a bad landlord, but these guys advocating for the city to take the property is straight greed. moss would love to get his hands on the property as the developer. and what good is mission housing doing. keeping the status quo with poor folks living in poor housing. while the organization manipulates the politics of the city with who they put in those buildings. look at mannys cafe. hes not from the mission and was given the location because of their connections. if the owner is a slum lord than take him to court.
100% agree. The irony displayed in articles like this often seems to be lackadaisically dismissed by ML authors on the regular. Who’s really profiting from such a tragedy… (Clearly whoever steals the property first.).
Mission Housing is not poor housing as far as I know, the buildings all look well maintained to me. they are just full up and most do not even have waiting lists a person can join. We need more low income housing especially for elderly.
Odd that there is no direct way to deal with slumlords – even if it’s the ideal outcome, wearing down an applicant with tacit approval feels like the wrong way to go about it since it’s the very mode that we’re trying to move away from
I lived next to a two family house where the owner moved out, partitioned rooms, and ultimately rented it out to 47 people. I fought this situation for three years. I discovered people living in the two car garage with no water. the abutting ally was used as a toilet. Finally, after three years of writing letters and visiting City Hall, the DA, SFPD, DPW, and other agencies busted the place. It is much better but I couldn’t believe it took so long to get the city to act on it. I asked the attorney representing the landlord why it took so long. He told me that the city is loathed to evict tenants so will put up with this sort of situation. Had I been in a better neighborhood, I think the situation would have been handled immediately. But I live in the Mission and the city turns a blind eye– so let’s investigate bad city practices as well.
First, it is cool there are frogs there! Anyway, it is no secret that supervisors in the Mission have blocked any market rate housing. It is the city that has preferred to keep this a blighted empty lot for years, not Lou. I live next to the empty and blighted 1515 SVN block where the city fought the developer and, finally, killed the project. There should have been housing put on it in 2017! This reasonable project with 157 units of housing, 20% affordable/low-income, and below market rates artisan studios on the ground floor, and parking, was delayed until the developer decided to give it up. The city took over the property and will put affordable housing on it, which is great, but I have had to live for the last eight years with trash, encampments, and illegal activity around this block that constantly disrupted the lives of neighboring residents. Not only that, instead of the six stories with ground floor studios to promote pedestrian traffic, the affordable housing will be a whooping nine stories with no storefronts and zero parking. The city could really care less about the life and vibrancy of our communities. Instead, they operate on their misguided ideologies. Yes, we need more affordable housing, but killing housing projects hurts communities and perpetuates the housing crises. The Mission is suffering and blocking much needed housing only perpetuates our pain.
Kelo only addressed the U.S. Constitution. The California Constitution has its own takings clause which is broader and would likely prohibit this type of seizure. Regardless, the city would spend millions and years litigating it and then at the end would likely pay millions more for Lou’s legal fees. Just not a good idea. Private property rights exist even for people you think are bad.
Not seeing it. In fact, the opposite appears true: “…private uses incidental to, or necessary for, the public work or improvement.”
https://law.justia.com/constitution/california/article-i/section-19/
Just saying – left to wonder in the constant onslaught of one-sided news screeds whether accusations of negligence/suggestive criminal behavior are noble observations premised upon objective reporting or more a Trumpian flavor-of-the-day reflection motivated by the too common hell bent penchant to use gossip mongering means, aimed at persons we do not know, to achieve guised and rascally ends. “True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” – EH (again, just saying)
Sir or madam —
Would you like to take another run at saying what you’re trying to say?
JE
This is an aside, but I’m pretty confident that there was *one* frog, in 2017, and that’s it. Why am I sure? Because I loved that that damned frog was there, and every rainy season since (there haven’t been many with enough water to create a pond there) I have gone by repeatedly, hoping for signs of another frog. I’ve never heard one.
If the landlord was negligent – it sure sounds like he was – it should be possible for the city to take him to court for that, and also to soak up at least some of the profits he makes as a result of the building’s destruction. In the meanwhile, we need housing.
Local planning has been a political tool for doling out favors and punishing rivals for too long, which is exactly why the state is stepping in.
A $50m building pays half a million dollars in property taxes, and construction of that size pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees before a shovel hits the ground. The city is making plenty of money on this development. Money that it could use to alleviate poverty (but instead will use to employ an army of useless nonprofit workers who engage in “coalition building”).
Sam is savvy enough to know that all his posturing is increasingly meaningless in light of state laws like AB1633 which eliminate post-entitlement CEQA review or SB423 which remove any discretion at the city level for 15% affordable housing for San Francisco, which is permitting a dozen units a month in a city of a million. Maybe the city can do the only thing it knows how (weaponized incompetence) for this developer and get some court cases decided a la Laundromat which make the work of others easier.
Joe I love your work but you need to resist the urge to use Mayberry metaphors in 2023
Nah, I’m good, but thank you.
Do not necessarily disagree with your general concepts – just using “killing” as a tagline, especially given the context and facts and people no one who writes such articles could know, seems designedly inflammatory to the service of what end and whose purpose.
Many frogs are good at hibernating when their pond dries out. They burrow into the mud and go to sleep until it rains and the pond fills up again. Nature finds a way.
In the mid-90’s that building was home to the Beta Lounge, one of the pioneers of over-the-internet broadcasting, with weekly live DJ’s and live electronic acts. It was an exciting place to be. Another forgotten little piece of SF cultural history from a simpler time when the tech revolution brought us many good things and not yet so many bad ones. They still have a web presence today with hours of outstanding, commercial-free music.
This lot ought to be acquired by the city and turned into a park. Mission Street, despite being the longest street in San Francisco, has almost NO green space. This would be an absolutely perfect location for a small park, especially given the weekly farmer’s market that takes place adjacent to it, and the school that’s directly next door to the lot.
There are a number of great parks (Mission Playground, Alioto Park, Jose Coronado, Parque Niños, In Chan Kaajal and Dolores Park to name a few) of various sizes within blocks. And as much as I love parks and more green space, we need housing far, far more than we need more parks.
It’s 2 blocks from BART, it really should be housing – anyway Dolores is like 4 blocks away
I think parks are great but we are in a housing crises.
Housing and “Yimby” activists would rather stick it to the property owner than see 182 much-need housing units built. There’s no mention in the article how so-called housing activists are a major impediment to housing being built, often delaying projects for years and years (we’re a decade into an empty corner where Walgreens was at 16th and Mission).
New & improved Left Coast NIMBYism, just like the old Jim Crow NIMBYism, will continue to create nothing but urban slums & suburban sprawl. Mutually Assured Obstruction is not a solution. We need State laws to overrule & streamline zoning & permits
I like the modern look of the condo building next door. Maybe they could build another one similar to that, but a little taller.
UGH, I hate the building next door. It sticks out like a sore thumb
To become a slumlord you have to have slum tenants that’s what devalues your property how they live the hazardous conditions they created!! Why move into a building and continue residing in such conditions and never do anything like get the city’s departments involved if thing aren’t resolved!
It seems to me She was to me that any of the tenants that we’re living in and affected by this great tragedy should have been paid out by the insurance of the property. I’m put into suitable housing of their choice. Therefore, afterwards, as your lives were ruined, destroyed or greatly affected as to the rebuilding of the building, it should be rebuilt in the manner which would best serve the housing needs of the mission and the city of San Francisco for the people none other than that. That’s what I think.
Thanks for writing about this. Surprised at the lack of comments. Hawk Lou is a well-known slumlord profiteer, and should face consequences. I have no skin in the game but lived a few blocks from here when this all went down. I refuse to believe there’s nothing that can be done to force this slimeball to sell his property. Yes private property rights trump all in our society as the law is written, but SF has the administrative power to make his life hell and edge him to sell to the city or non profits.
Some of this blame can be levied at David Campos, then supervisor, who, like most D9 supes, do very little to hold the wealthy to account when they cheat and exploit working class residents of D9. Lots of blame and shame to go round here!
This is the canonical case for using eminent domain to acquire private property owned by a scofflaw in order to send a clear message that if you’re going to allow your rental housing to decay and kill people in SF, you’re gonna FAFO.
Once the drawn out approval process bears no fruit, then the market rate value of the parcel will diminish significantly.
To all of the YIMBY “streamlining” deregulators out there, this is exactly infill housing has to jump through approval hoops. Eliminate these aspects of the approval process and YIMBY are giving the green light to deadly scumbag slumlord profiteering.