While new affordable housing proposed in San Francisco is projected to cost more than $1.1 million per unit, the 145-unit apartment complex pictured here at 833 Bryant St. was built for millions less due to factors including expedited permitting and off-site construction.
Courtesy Tipping Point CommunityHow much would it cost San Francisco to try to build its way out of an affordability crisis?
Almost $1.2 million per unit on the high end, according to new state housing funding applications posted online ahead of a Tuesday Board of Supervisors meeting.
Though exorbitant building costs have long been a Bay Area norm, housing researchers say the trend has been compounded by increasingly acute worker shortages, pandemic-era inflation and familiar political issues like long and unpredictable approval processes.
The stakes in San Francisco are especially high now. State officialsare reviewingthe city’s track record of stymieing new housing, and voters are set to decide this fall on duelinghousing development ballot measures——这一系列事件将帮助确定磨her seven-figure costs become the new normal, or a relic of the height of the housing crisis.
“Building affordable housing in San Francisco is usually very expensive,” said Muhammad Alameldin, a policy associate at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “They haven’t built housing for decades. They’ve pushed out all the workers. Now if they want to build housing, it’s going to come at a premium.”
The new359-page San Francisco applicationfor California Department of Housing and Community Development funds focuses on three proposed all-affordable projects: a 160-unit development at 730 Stanyan St., a 73-unit building at 2530 18th St. and a 90-unit complex at 2550 Irving St.
Estimated development costs per unit are highest at the proposed Irving Street development, which would primarily house residents who earn 20% to 60% of San Francisco’sarea median income, with 22 units set aside for families experiencing homelessness and 15 one-bedroom units allocated for veterans with housing vouchers.
Developer the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) pegs total per-unit development costs for the project slated to break ground in spring 2024 at around $1.17 million, or perhaps even slightly higher with the developer seeking overall funding of almost $166 million.
Total per-unit costs were estimated at around $1.02 million for the730 Stanyan St.project, which is slated to include 50 formerly homeless households and residents earning between 20% and 80% of the city’s median income. That development, a joint effort of TNDC and the Chinatown Community Development Center, is also projected to start construction in 2024.
大多数新保障性住房在加州”没有t cost nearly as much” as these projects or a handful of high-profile,seven-figure projectsin San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland in recent years, according toprevious researchby the Terner Center.
Researcher Alameldin said development costs are driven by two sets of factors: “hard costs” like construction, labor and materials; plus “soft costs” like permitting fees, fluctuations in land value and unanticipated delays.
而硬成本地飙升g the pandemic, thanks to complications like diminished trade and supply chain issues, Alameldin said San Francisco has long been “practically infamous” for driving up soft costs with long, volatile planning debates.
Still, there are examples of creative ways cities and developers are looking to slash costs, including modular construction and streamlined permitting requirements. Costs were estimated ataround $383,000 per unit, for example, to build 145 supportive housing units at 833 Bryant St., thanks to factors including faster approvals, a mix of public and private funding and off-site construction.
“Not all projects are a million dollars a door, but these outliers are notable because these could be the status quo in maybe a decade,” Alameldin said. “And that’s the fear — when this becomes the norm, the political barriers that must be overcome to finance this kind of housing become much bigger.”
Lauren Hepler (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:lauren.hepler@sfchronicle.com
