Mission Seniors Say New 'Affordable' Housing Project Still Out of Reach

Nearly 200 local retirees, youth and clergy members gathered in San Francisco's Mission District on Sunday to demand that a nearly completed "affordable housing" development remain accessible to the neighborhood's lower-income seniors.

Many of those attending the event, at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on the southern edge of San Francisco's Mission District, had rejoiced last year when city leaders drove shovels into the dirt to mark the official groundbreaking of Casa Adelante at 1296 Shotwell St., a project that promised 100% affordable housing for seniors.

But that same group now argues they were sold a bill of goods, and that as the project nears completion, the longtime promise of "affordable" housing is, in actuality, far from that.

"People were happy about it, but at the end of the day, they're sad because they might not qualify," said Olina Orellana, a local community organizer.

Most of the development's 94 units are for seniors living on no more than 50% of San Francisco Area Median Income — $41,450 in 2018 — according to the Mission Economic Development Agency, the project's nonprofit developer. About 20% of the units are reserved for homeless seniors.

That threshold still puts the apartments out of reach for many of the neighborhood's low-income, mostly Latina seniors, many of whom subsist primarily on Social Security income of $600 to $800 per month, and say they simply don't have the savings to afford the proposed rent.

Orellana said she and fellow seniors have for years been looking forward to the new development, and she even helped drum up support for the idea when it was first proposed. They were given the impression, she says, that the city would provide additional subsidies and preferences to ensure that neighborhood seniors could afford the rent. Those subsidies, she said, never came.

For its part, MEDA, the developer, said that the city would need to provide additional subsidies to accommodate seniors on fixed Social Security incomes. The group said it held multiple community meetings since taking on the project, and consistently advised attendees that the development would indeed provide "affordable housing for low-income seniors," said Christopher Gil, a spokesman for MEDA.

"We heard from some seniors on very low, fixed Social Security incomes that they would not be eligible, so we then stated that we, and other community-based organizations, would work and advocate with these community members to find subsidies so that they would have a chance to qualify," he said.

MEDA joined other community groups in successfully pushing the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve a plan that gives preference to Mission District residents in the lottery for Casa Adelante, Gil said. His group, he said, is now advocating for the Senior Operating Subsidy introduced by board President Norman Yee, which would make project-based subsidies available to the city's most vulnerable seniors.

"We are all looking at other prospective subsidies, too," Gil said.

But Orellana said more immediate action than that is needed to help her community and make sure they have secure places to live.

"We have grown old in this city, working hard, paying our taxes, and now we have nowhere to go, they're kicking us out," she said. "If we don't get what we're asking for here, we'll end up asking for money in the streets because we won't have anywhere to live."