Mayor Lee & Supervisor Cohen Celebrate First Phase Completion of HopeSF Hunters View Public Housing Rebuild Project

Welcome 25 Families to New Homes in Hunters View HOPE SF Revitalized Community

January 11, 2013 – (RealEstateRama) –Today Mayor Edwin M. Lee and Supervisor Malia Cohen celebrated the completion of Phase One of the HOPE SF Hunters View public housing project, the first of five public housing sites slated to be redeveloped as part of the City’s HOPE SF initiative, and welcomed 25 San Francisco families (14 former Hunters View public housing families and 11 new families) to their new homes in one of the most ambitious, nationally-recognized public housing revitalization initiatives.

“Today, we are delivering on a promise to the residents of San Francisco’s public housing,” said Mayor Lee. “By rebuilding Hunters View and other sites like it, we are providing hope to families and transforming communities at the same time. Five years ago under the leadership of Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco made a bold step by launching the HOPE SF initiative that is revitalizing our City’s most distressed public housing sites.”

“HOPE SF is one of the most transformative policies that we have ever enacted in this City,” said Supervisor Cohen. “As the Supervisor whose district includes four of the five largest public housing developments in the City, I understand how truly transformative projects like the revitalization of Hunters View are to the residents and our Southeastern neighborhoods. In order for all of the City’s residents and neighborhoods to be working, healthy and safe, we must continue to put our efforts and our resources behind rebuilding these properties, creating new opportunities for our public housing residents, supporting our families and strengthening our communities. And this is exactly what this project does.”

“I am looking forward to working with the residents, the Housing Authority, the Mayor’s Office and the John Stewart Company to create a future Hunters View community filled with promise and opportunities for every existing and new community member,” said Hunters View Tenant Association President Deeva Youngblood.

Hunters View is a 256 unit public housing development that is being transformed into a mixed-income community of up to 750 units in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. The construction team includes John Stewart Company, Devine and Gong and Ridgepoint Non-Profit Housing Corporation, which began construction of Hunters View in 2005.

Hunters View sets new standards for neighborhood sustainability and accessibility. The development will be a sustainable community incorporating San Francisco’s ground-breaking Green Building Ordinance and achieving previously unprecedented levels of community sustainability improved energy efficiency, recycling, air quality, and accessibility throughout the neighborhood.

Over the next four years, the Hunters View revitalization will consist of 350 new environmentally-sustainable housing units, new parks and playgrounds, a community center, new infrastructure and a new street-grid that connects the development to the larger neighborhood. By May 2013, 107 families will have new homes in the City’s revitalized Hunters View community, which will consist of 107 new units, a new park and community-serving spaces for the residents.

“After many years of non-stop effort, we are overjoyed to deliver the first building in the first phase of the first HOPE SF development,” said John Stewart Company President and CEO Jack Gardner. “It took the commitment, financial support, and confidence of many people and agencies to get us to this point, including the City, the State, the San Francisco Housing Authority, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), private lenders and investors, and most importantly, the residents of Hunters View themselves. We are honored to play a role in delivering on the grand vision of HOPE SF, which is to transform the City’s most troubled public housing complexes into vibrant and exciting new mixed-income neighborhoods.”

Hunters View as a part of the City’s HOPE SF initiative is the first of five public housing sites slated to be redeveloped. Launched in 2006, HOPE SF is the City’s innovative initiative to revitalize the City’s most distressed public housing sites into mixed-income communities without displacing existing residents and while providing residents with services that will allow them to thrive in the transformed communities. HOPE SF initiative was born out of a need to address the ongoing deterioration of San Francisco’s public housing in the light of diminishing Federal assistance. The City has committed $95 million dollars to HOPE SF, the largest local commitment to public housing in history. The five HOPE SF sites are Hunters View, Alice Griffith, Sunnydale, Potrero Terrace and Annex and Westside Courts.