The fate of a soup kitchen evicted from the Tenderloin in February remains uncertain, even though the two French nuns who run it thought they had found a home in the Mission a month later. Residents at the new location, 1930 Mission St. between 15th and 16th streets, have voiced concerns about allowing the nuns to purchase a unit there.
Multimillionaire Tony Robbins, a famous motivational speaker, gave Marie Valerie and Marie Benedicte of the Fraternite Notre Dame Mary of Nazareth $750,000 to buy the real estate in the Mission and another $50,000 to get the soup kitchen up and running once they moved in.
There are 17 condominiums in the building and two ground-floor commercial spaces, one of which houses a medical marijuana doctor. The nuns planned to purchase the other and set up a soup kitchen in the 1,434-square-foot space owned by Armen Jalalian.
But the building’s homeowners association called an emergency meeting to thwart the soup kitchen from moving in, according to several sources.
“The building’s property manager told me that [some members of the HOA] are vehemently against selling,” said Antonio Gamero, the real estate broker who helped the nuns find their new soup kitchen location last month. “[They] are trying to clean up the Mission and don’t want the homeless to be there. More crime and more loitering devalues the property.”