San Francisco opens more housing units in first quarter than all of last year

By: 11 years ago

Rene Cazenave Apartments

• City on track to complete more units during first five months of 2014 than all of last year

• 2,123 housing units opened, with 24 percent permanently affordable to low-income households

SAN FRANCISCO, California—City Hall is billing the grand opening of the Rene Cazenave Apartments by Mayor Edwin M. Lee on Tuesday, April 29 as a milestone in the administration’s effort to 30,000 new and rehabilitated homes to the city by 2020, with at least one-third of those permanently affordable, and the majority within financial reach of the middle class.

In the first quarter of this year, 2,123 housing units opened to provide new homes to families, with 24 percent of those units permanently affordable to low-income households.

“We are making great progress toward our ambitious 2020 housing goals and our pledge to make San Francisco a City for the 100 percent,” said Lee. “With more than 2,000 homes completed for residents in the first quarter of 2014, we are well ahead of our annual goal of completing 5,000 units a year.

And by continuing to prioritize housing projects such as the Rene Cazenave Apartments, Lee added, “we are delivering on our pledge to help San Francisco families and residents from all levels of the economic spectrum call San Francisco home.”

In the first three months of this year, 1,870 new housing units received occupancy permits from the Department of Building Inspection, with 205 of those units provided as permanently affordable units through the city’s Inclusionary Housing Program. Another 253 affordable units – at 474 Natoma, 1075 LeConte, and in the Rene Cazenave Apartments – received completion permits just before the close of 2013, and opened their doors to welcome new residents in early 2014.

It is estimated that by May 2014, more new units will have been completed than arrived in all of 2013. Completions will be tracked on a quarterly basis through the city’s Housing Meter, which is posted on the mayor’s website, www.sfmayor.org.

By comparison, as described in the just-released 2013 Housing Inventory, a total of 2,499 new housing units were constructed in 2013. This number was a significant three-fold increase from 2012, and 26 percent over the 10-year average of 1,846 new construction units.

That same year 712 new aﬀordable housing units were built, a 39 percent increase from the previous year’s production, comprising 36 percent of new units added to the City’s housing stock. For more information on the 2013 Housing Inventory, go to: https://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/Housing_Inventory_2013.pdf.

Rene Cazenave Apartments opened 120 units of supportive housing in the Transbay Redevelopment Project to formerly homeless individuals. Rene Cazenave was a longtime community organizer and activist in San Francisco and a Community Housing Partnership board member for 20 years.

As a co-founder of the Council of Community Housing Organizations in 1978, Cazenave worked on multiple land use issues, San Francisco political campaigns, and affordable housing matters.

Cazenave passed away in June 2010. The project named in his honor provides supportive housing as well as accessible services to help lift its residents out of homelessness permanently, and includes a wide range of programming space, a private courtyard and green rooftops, and two retail spaces.

It was developed in cooperation between Community Housing Partnership and BRIDGE Housing. Funding was provided by the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, the successor to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.

The administration has been able to retain resources to continue redevelopment’s work in TransBay, Mission Bay and the Hunters Point Shipyard.

The Rene Cazenave Apartments are the first units and first affordable units completed under the TransBay Redevelopment Plan, which requires 35 percent of all units be affordable.