200 6th Street Site

As far as we know, Mercy Housing has yet to secure the $19 million it will take to raze the four-story Hugo Hotel which has sat vacant since 1987 and build a new nine-story mixed-use building upon the site at 200 6th Street at the corner of Howard.

200-214 6th Street Rendered

That being said, the proposed mixed-use project which would yield 67 apartments for very low income households and 2,845 square feet of new commercial space on the ground floor continues to make its way through planning, and we now have the renderings.

200-214 6th Street Rendered

The proposed building includes eight studios, 24 one-bedroom units, 25 two-bedroom units, and 10 three-bedroom units with the three-bedroom apartments ranging in size from 1,020 to 1,105 square feet, the two-bedroom from 750 to 880 square feet, the one-bedroom from 535 to 635 square feet, and the studios from 410 to 500 square feet.

If approved and funded, the project would take an estimated 20 months to construct, including two months for demolition of the Hugo Hotel which was acquired by eminent domain and upon which Brian Goggin’s “Defenestration” has been hanging since 1997.

Defenestration

UPDATE: Some food for thought with respect to what constitutes a “very low income household” at 30 to 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), the demographic for this project as proposed. This year, an individual would have to make between $21,650 and $36,050 to qualify. A full-time employee at minimum wage would earn just over $21,000.

The median salary for a full-time public school teacher in San Francisco is $60,687 which is just over 80 percent of the Area Median Income, the threshold below which an individual is considered “low income” with respect to affordable housing develoments in San Francisco.

36 thoughts on “Redeveloping Sixth Street: Corner Of Sixth And Howard As Envisoned”
  1. I think it’s a great idea to take a bunch of low income people and stick them in one place. I’m sure that won’t result in drugs, violence or public urination. Who should I write the check to?

  2. yeah, i wish this weren’t yet more “very low income” housing, but still, i love that that we’ll see a grade-level retail wrap and no parking egress. height’s not too bad on this one either, though i suppose that’s a wash considering that it just means more units and a greater density of hard to house inhabitants.

  3. Hey KG,
    Keep your money. And your negative whiny attitude. An absolutely hideous building is being replaced by a more attractive building, and you’re complaining. Pathetic.

  4. more attractive is so relative. It’s the same inside the box design as everything else that’s being built. And having that much low income housing in an already low income area will just keep that stretch of 6th street from ever improving beyond the shooting up and shooting down gallery of crack town that it is.

  5. These images remind me that we have some of the worst street landscaping of any major city in the country. Those trees are pathetic. And the sidewalk hardscape condition is even worse.

  6. @sf, Reality check time. I live in the TL and I’m sick… SICK of people like yourself thinking you can help [low] income people by sticking them together in a pretty new building. My neighborhood is constantly affected by the loitering, graffiti, drugs, violence, and general filth of people who expect someone else to take care of them. You’re a sucker. A chump. You obviously know nothing about this and you would prefer to just pat yourself on the back for saying something politically convenient.

  7. I don’t think this building is more attractive. It’s stupid. Paneling this city in mustard stucco and aluminum boxes is reductive. If you look closely, Sixth is actually one of the few SOMA steets that has a bit of character to it…and I’m not talking about the crackheads. The street should be cleaned up, but not by maintaining it’s low rent status with generic prefab construction. The existing condemned building should ultimately go, but it’s a shame to lose one of the most interesting art installations in the city, especially with all the other vacant lots and lifeless facades in the area that new construction could replace.

  8. More housing for the homeless? Did it work before? Do we have any improvement to show for the money? Nope.
    More people just flock to the city to live their personal failures here because it’s easier than starving in the boonies. It’s happening. Year. After. Year.
    SF still hasn’t understood rule #1 of chronic homelessness:
    If you help them, you own them.
    And they never go back.

  9. kg and lol, don’t waste your vitrol here.
    Please by all means show up during public comment period at a planning commission meeting or better yet a Board of Supervisor’s meeting so you can inform these people in charge of making decisions like this of the error of their ways and how you, more than all of the social scientists who’ve published to date on chronic homelessness and all of the studies that have been completed, know how to deal with the hard core homeless like no one else can. Make sure to assail them for embracing “politically convenience”.
    I’d pay cash money to see that.
    As far as the building goes, it’s more ugly disposable modernism, just like most of what’s going up in SOMA over the last five years. I have no attachment to the existing condemned building, but it would be much, much better if the replacement didn’t clash so much with the surrounding buildings.

    1. Brahma, thank you for your insightful comments. You hit the nail on the head. The proposed building’s suburban-mall-stucco style is not unberably horrible per se but it does clash too much with its surroundings, particularly with the Victorian Orlando Hotel across the street. There is no reflection of the rounded turret of the Orlando, only modernist, rectangular clash. What’s the use of declaring this a historic district if new structures are so discordant and so out of context?

  10. Brahma, obviously the so called “social scientists” have failed in a massive fashion in SF.
    1000s of people’s livelihood depend on SF having a homeless problem. 100,000s suffer from it. The problem is who’s closest to City Hall?

  11. @Brahma, I’ll do that if you’ll submit your assessment of “ugly disposable modernism” to the Architects and Planning Commission. I’m sure their qualifications are flawed and you’ll enlighten them with a study to reinforce your candor. Since, you know, observation and intuition have no place here. Oh, and please be sure to copy us on that.

  12. Count me firmly in the KG camp. I am a western SOMA resident/condo owner since 2004 and my empathy toward the homeless and their issues is gone, gone gone…That said, demo-ing that hideous bldg cant happen soon enough and anything in its place is better, but I would prefer units priced or rented at market…just to dilute the friggin demog on that corner.

  13. I’d rather see this be market rate and even high end housing, and make it about 25 stories tall; but also make sure it has adequate below grade parking for cars and bikes.
    We will never solve the homeless problem in SF by continuing to build more homeless housing. We are enabling this disgusting “lifestyle” choice, for most. They all come to San Francisco because we allow them to move in and take over our streets, shoot up drugs and piss in the doorways.
    Good comments KG; totally agree with you.
    BTW: I too am aware that Brahma does not like modernist architecture; we hear the rant over and over. What would you like Brahma? and share with us your design philosophy about what makes good and great, contemporary, modern urban architecture with regard to materials, form, fenestration, colors and massing. I continue to remain truly baffled by your comments that every new building seems to “clash” with the existing context.
    What will not clash, by your definition?

  14. touché, kg. hah! Well played, sir.
    Luckily for me if I ever try that, the planning commission isn’t just made of up of just architects or professional urban planners.

  15. I think it’s hilarious that the “very low income” end up in the same hideous glass and aluminum things that the yuppies inhabit by choice.
    Speaking of hideous, there is a special place in hell for people who move to poverty-stricken areas for the low rent and then accuse their unfortunate neighbors of freeloading.

  16. KG for mayor! London has had enough of providing free 2bd housing with parking for “the poor” while making other working people spend a fortune on small studios nearby. The government officials in the UK realized that everyone cannot live in the city center, and it is not realistic to expect some people to spend 50% of their inconme on housing while others get it for almost free.

  17. kg for mayor! I couldn’t agree more.
    How do we clean up homelessness by continually enabling the source(s) of this problem? This is a great opportunity for SF to improve the worst street in SF, and they managed to fantastically f#ck it up by doing the same ol’ same. The trash is just being put into a newer, cleaner bin — but the cleanliness and newness won’t last long before it gets pissed and shitted on.

  18. Some food for thought with respect to what constitutes a “very low income household” at 30 to 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), the demographic for this project as proposed. This year, an individual would have to make between $21,650 and $36,050 to qualify. A full-time employee at minimum wage would earn just over $21,000.
    The median salary for a full-time public school teacher in San Francisco is $60,687 which is just over 80 percent of the Area Median Income, the threshold below which an individual is considered “low income” with respect to affordable housing develoments.

  19. I’ve lived for over 20 years and every year/election we get candidates swearing that this time they are going to fix the homeless problem (and MUNI).
    Yet here we are arguing about the same things and the beat goes on.

  20. I agree. I’ve lived in The City for over 30 years and the homeless situation just gets worse. Muni is as slow and f**ked up as ever.

  21. This year, an individual would have to make between $21,650 and $36,050 to qualify. A full-time employee at minimum wage would earn just over $21,000.”
    It’s worth pointing out that while this doesn’t help teachers/nurses/cops/firefighters it gives housing to the working class serving you coffee, doing your laundry and handling your returns at the local Gap. This does not help the homeless.
    BTW, futurist – maybe MUNI would be improved if it ran on “major north/south corridors” like Noe St through Noe Valley (your words, Rocky’s Dad). Just sayin’ as long as we’re off topic…

  22. We will never solve the homeless problem in SF by continuing to build more homeless housing. We are enabling this disgusting “lifestyle” choice, for most. They all come to San Francisco because we allow them to move in and take over our streets, shoot up drugs and piss in the doorways.
    We will never solve the parking problem in SF by continuing to build more automobile housing. We are enabling this disgusting “lifestyle” choice, for most. They all come to San Francisco because we allow them to move in and take over our streets, injure people and befoul the air.
    Requires surprisingly few changes! We even have the 15% affordable housing requirement equivalent (except in the center): minimum parking requirements.

  23. Why is it that firefighters and cops almost always get mentioned when the topic of low/affordable housing comes up? These two professions earn quite a comfortable living, both making nearly, if not more than, six figures. The city/public does not need to give them any handouts; they could afford market-rate housing just fine. Also, they retire more comfortably than most private-sector working-class people . . . but this is really getting off topic.

  24. I agree with PN. I have a hard time with some posters characterizing people who earn $21K to $36K a year as people who are the ones who are guilty of “loitering, graffiti, drugs, violence, and general filth” and who “expect someone else to take care of them.” and as “trash [that] is just being put into a newer, cleaner bin.” Have you ever thought that the neighborhood should change incrementally? Certainly the working poor are a step up from homeless crackheads, and this is a totally appropriate neighborhood for such incremental steps. High rise luxury here is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
    Further, there is a subtext here that the same people always live in the same place forever. People move in to places like this to try to get a leg up and move on to the next step. Do you think that the hardcore that were on Sixth St. 30 years ago are the same hardcore that are there today? I would venture that only a few are. Buildings like this will discourage future hardcore and bring in a pride of place for low income wage earners, not those on welfare or crackheads.
    I lived for 4 years two blocks from here, and really have an interest in this neighborhood, and this to me is a reasoned and appropriate building. I’ll leave the architectural critiques to others.

  25. I guess I confused very low income with no income. With that in mind, it’s a somewhat different story, even though it’s still social engineering for one class (lower) against 2 others (lower-middle class and middle class). No-one is helping the middle class when they are the people that can anchor a neighborhood. [/ends middle class rant]
    This still begs the question: are people on the low end of the pay ladder better off living smack in the middle of the 6th street mess, or closer to a middle class environment in Daly or Oakland?
    Do you want to live among people who can pull you down or people who can pull you up?
    True tenants could move out after a while, but the thing with below market rent (either rent control or explicitly subsidized) is that it’s hard outgrowing it. Aid of any kind shields you from the real world on some level. Short term help can be good, long term not so sure.
    Also, will this be regularly means tested?

  26. Lol, there are programs with the mayor’s office of housing that offer help to first time home buyers with income up to $80k to $110k (depending on household size). So its not accurate to say no one is helping the middle class. Generally the middle class in SF doesn’t need help finding an apartment, so the programs aimed at them are to help them buy a small condo in the city.
    Now there are not enough of these units and enough money in the MOH’s to make a huge dent in that demographic but as someone that lives in one of those developments I do know for a fact that the city does at least try to offer some help to middle class families.

  27. As a resident near 6th Street and lucky winner of a BMR condo through the city, you bet I’ll be at the planning commission meeting to give my best shot in voting down this project. I worked real hard, scrimped and saved starting with my first job to get a small piece of the american dream and own a home in SF. Was no free hand out and I’m still subject to ever increasing market rate HOA dues and random property tax appraisals. I pay way more than my fair share to enjoy a normal, peaceful quality of life. This project as many of you mention only enables and give the homeless yet another handout. It’s time we all take our thoughtful comments above to those that are making the decisions!

  28. I pretty much agree with kg too. I have lived a 1/2 block off 6th & Mission for 13 years, and think it should be mandated that anyone making policy down there live down there (or in the Tenderloin). I DO like diversity, and am not into cookie cutter, but there is no question that condensing 80% of all of SF city services within that 5 block radius is not diversifying – it’s reinforcing institutionalized poverty.

  29. anon@10:39:
    Can you explain more? You’ve apparently benefited from the city’s social engineering for lower income people, but now you want to block other people from benefiting from other similar programs?
    I don’t understand.

  30. I benefited yes but in a fair way. It was no easy/free ride. Took years of saving, months of financial planning and an extreme lifestyle change to make it work. I have median income employoment (not welfare) and don’t spend my days loitering, urinating, using drugs,or shouting up and down the sixth street cooridor. I have pride of ownership, community involvement, and do not abuse local services.
    I’m not against local government assistance as I clearly benefited but my livelihood is now regulated in a fair way. You can have a home, but you have to work hard for it, take care of it, and pay an appropriate percentage of your income for it.

  31. anon, I think you’re confused.. These proposed apartments would be for people with jobs, not on welfare, not, as you say, “loitering, urinating, using drugs,or shouting up and down the sixth street cooridor”.
    See above: “This year, an individual would have to make between $21,650 and $36,050 to qualify.”

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