Rebuilding public housing in San Francisco stymied by bad economy

From the SF Examiner,

When Mayor Gavin Newsom started the Hope SF initiative in 2007, the goal was to transform eight of San Francisco’s grimiest public housing sites into vibrant, thriving communities with residents from all income levels.

Those were the best of times.

While launched with great fanfare, promise and, yes, hope, four years ago, the dream is now fading and Hope SF’s future is uncertain. Only two sites have the public funding to move forward and now hundreds of residents of the most decrepit public housing in The City face the increasing possibility that they will be stuck in vermin-infested homes that are consistently rated as dangerous because of life-threatening deficiencies.

Part of the problem is the drop in the housing market. Funding for Hope SF — which stands for Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere — relies heavily on developers who would make money by building market-rate condos in the area. Financing the projects depends largely on projected sales of those market-rate units. Yet the only project that has broken ground so far, Hunters View, won’t include market-rate housing in its first three phases.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner