Neighbors who live near proposed low-income senior housing on Mission Street have already bargained down the project size from 120 homes to 70. Now they’re using a loophole in a recent law to delay the project even more.
On the edge of Bernal Heights, the building would be four stories high and replace the discount retail store Big Lots and its parking lot. The store closed in 2022.
It would also replace — and here’s where the neighbors come in — part of a small park next to the old Big Lots site. The park has been closed since 2020, but neighbors who object say it’s a crucial resource for families on the block.
According to an online petition (“Save Our Park!!”), the neighbors “welcome affordable senior housing in our community” but want the city to force a redesign that won’t infringe on the park space. (The petition has 359 signatures.)
They were scheduled for a Board of Supervisors hearing in December, but it was postponed and is now slated for next week.
San Francisco’s housing rules have traditionally allowed for appeals like this to rise to the top of the City Hall food chain, one reason why SF has had some of the slowest housing approval times in the state. A Board of Supervisors appeal is how the now-infamous South of Market tower on Stevenson Street — 500 homes to be built on a parking lot — got kiboshed in 2021.
But in large part because of that Stevenson ruling, state lawmakers passed new rules meant to end this kind of appeal. So how is it happening, especially with subsidized homes meant for dozens of the city’s most vulnerable residents?
Bernal’s edge
3333 Mission checks a lot of boxes for a range of housing proponents. While at the bottom of the hill, it’s still in Bernal Heights, where the median condominium price last year was more than $1 million. SF’s new housing plan deliberately targets well-off neighborhoods historically resistant to new housing, but prosperous Bernal Heights was left off the map.
The proposed 70 units would be more new homes than Bernal Heights added from 2020 through 2024, according to the Planning Department. The new building would complement a 49-unit senior housing next door.
These homes, all for rent, should be priced for tenants making between $33,000 and $131,000 annually, and 100 percent reserved for low-income seniors, a fast-growing local population at high risk of falling into homelessness.
The project is also the work of a local developer, the nonprofit Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center. BHNC paid more than $2 million for the shuttered Big Lots site in 2024.
The problem, neighbors say, is Coleridge Park. It’s a private space also owned by BHNC, not to be confused with the city-owned Coleridge Mini Park less than a block away. It closed in 2020 because of COVID and never re-opened. BNHC says it’s because of inadequate resources for maintenance.
Neighbor Jeanne Choy Tate, who authored the neighborhood petition, fears it will never reopen under current plans.
That said, it’s not disappearing entirely. The new development will cut it roughly in half to 3,885 square feet. BNHC says it’s also adding 1,000 feet of community space open to the public in the new building.
BNHC has made other concessions. It already agreed in 2024 to bring the project down from 120 units to 70 and from six stories to four. At a public meeting, neighbor Don Lucchesi, who filed the appeal of the project with the board, said he’d prefer it to shrink further, down to 56 homes.
Lucchesi did not return requests for comment, but Choy Tate says the developer has dismissed neighborhood concerns: “They’ve never listened.”
A fast track… or so they thought
When state Sen. Scott Wiener’s housing bill SB 423 gained approval in 2023, it included a special present for Wiener’s hometown of San Francisco.
SB 423 gives developers a faster track in cities behind on their state-mandated housing goals. Because of SF’s historic delinquency in approving new homes, SB 423 kicked in first here, in 2024. Since SB 423 became law in San Francisco, 20 developments have qualified; another with hundreds of units on the Embarcadero is in the works. The city lists 11 more in the “preliminary filing” stage.
As long as SB 423 project complies with local code, adds an extra level of affordable housing, and uses union labor, it can bypass various reviews and public appeals.
At least that’s what BHNC thought last year when it used the law to file its application for 3333 Mission. But neighbors found a loophole. Says Gina Dacus, CEO of Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, “The appeal does not challenge the already approved entitlements” — that is, the building itself – ”but rather the tentative final map,” meaning the property line alterations that make the construction legally possible. Put another way, the opponents are literally attacking the grounds for the new building.
Every day of delay incurs more fees, and if the appeal goes beyond February it will have ‘a negative impact’ on the application for a critical state grant.
BHNC housing development manager Connie Xie
The matter made the supervisors’ agenda in December before the postponement. District 9 Neighbors For Housing’s Brandon Powell, whose group pushes for more homes in Bernal Heights, calls the appeal a case of “SF snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
If it gets to a hearing next week or in the future, it’ll likely have an uphill battle. The current board voted 7 to 4 for the citywide upzoning plan, which philosophically is all about less red tape for housing. That said, supervisors often defer to colleagues whose district holds a project in question.
In this case, it’s Jackie Fielder, who voted against the citywide housing plan. Fielder did not respond to requests for comment about 3333 Mission.
Delays can kill housing
Another opponent of citywide upzoning is a critic of SF’s red tape in this particular case. “The appeals process, while democratic in intent, often imposes disproportionate costs on small, local builders,” says Quintin Mecke, director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, a coalition of tenant groups, activists, and affordable housing developers.
Delays cost small developers like BHNC money and jeopardize grant deadlines. Even when appeals ultimately fail, they can set back or even sink projects by holding up a key piece of the funding puzzle.
BHNC housing development manager Connie Xie said in December that every day of delay incurs more fees, and if the appeal goes beyond February it will have “a negative impact” on their application for a critical state grant.
It’s not uncommon for big projects to split lots, merge them, or in other ways shuffle property lines. The 3333 Mission appeal could show the way for others to exploit the loophole, SF Planning chief of staff Dan Sider tells The Frisc: “State law has closed other avenues of appeal, so it would not be unreasonable to assume we will see more of these.”
SiteLab urban planner Ben Grant predicts a new round of local and state legislation in response to these loopholes. “The city and state will work to backfill laws and policies to prevent exploiting them — always fighting the last war.”
Correction, 1/30/26: This story has been corrected to show that the 3333 Mission apartments will be for rent, not for sale, and to clarify the income levels that will qualify tenants for the units.
“SF’s new housing plan deliberately targets well-off neighborhoods historically resistant to new housing, but prosperous Bernal Heights was left off the map.”
I believe that Bernal was included in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan 2009, which would be why it’s not in the western proposal.
Bernal was not included in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, according to the Planning Department.