Affordable Housing Ribbon Cutting

Introduction I want to welcome you to the Grand Opening grand opening of 921 Howard Street this beautiful building right up here uh this is 18 stories of 100% affordable housing it happens to be the tallest affordable housing building in San Francisco our tallest building in our portfolio and it's a modern Sleek building we really appreciate um you know everyone who was involved in the process and and all the people who live here um we're going to celebrate this accomplishment today but we can't do this without acknowledging the work and the collaboration from some of our partners here uh this includes Charmaine Curtis from Curtis development the mayor's office Swinton construction Bank of America Perry Architects Cal HFA and many others traditionally we hold a ribbon cutting ceremony when the building is fully occupied that means today we have 203 families and individuals who are living in this wonderful building right here they're close to public transportation shopping restaurants and cultural institutions like museums and yera Gardens that's the heart of what we're here to celebrate at this time I want to invite my co-ceo Katie Lamont and Charmaine Curtis to come up and talk about the story of how we got to this uh building and and what is special about 921 Howard come next to me yeah oh excuse me it's windy it is yeah sorry thank you 921 Howard so much roxan and I'm so pleased to be standing here beside Charmaine many of you may know I've worked at TDC a long time and I started out leading the Housing Development Department and this development has been germinating for a long time and charmain was my partner in navigating our way forward to get to this place today and I'm so grateful that she is our co-developer on this project um so a little bit about the story of how we got to this place today as many of you know Soma has had a lot of market rate development and a lot of deeply affordable development but little to know moderate income development and the time we were conceiving this development there was a lot of call for more moderate income housing and 921 Howard speaks to tndc and Curtis development's perseverance and commitment to providing affordable housing at a broad range of income levels this development is very unique in that we serve folks with extremely low incomes supported by the housing authority and also folks with moderate incomes supported by the California Housing Finance Agency it's also located across the street from the 5m development and benefits from all of those exterior outdoor amenities that it created contributing to a balanced Community we're so grateful to the mayor's office of Housing and Community Development for its steadfast Support over the years as we pursued upzoning through the central Z Soma plan and assembled the financing we're especially grateful to the planning department including Steve warheim who's now moved on and is doing great things at the state legislature through the central Soma plan the planning department helped us to substantially upzone this property it was originally Zone to support 175 homes in an eight-story building and today we are delivering 203 homes in the first phase and the second phase on the side of the street that fronts onto Howard is scheduled to be developed with another 200 30 homes 921 Howard is also one of the most cost-effective affordable housing developments ever built in the city of San Francisco it has a very cost of effective design thank you Perry Architects and it also delivered for a total development cost 10% less than typical affordable housing and this despite the fact that it took us 10 years to assemble the financing and part of how we were able to minimize that acquisition carrying cost is we were fortunate that a philanthropic Tech donor really wanted to support moderate income housing in Soma and he chose to invest through us and through the San Francisco housing accelerator fund so we're grateful to the many lenders that have helped us all along the way including the housing accelerator fund and at the very beginning Enterprise and the state supported Transit oriented affordable housing program we're also grateful to the construction and perm lenders to the Bank of America who made TDC the biggest loan it has ever taken out also made a significant tax credit investment we're so grateful to ca and its mixed income program to support the middle- inome component and as always we are grateful to the mayor's office of Housing and Community Development and with that I'd like to introduce Charming thank you Katie so you know Charming Katie gave all the facts uh which are really good and important facts especially around the middle- income part of this project which I'm really passionate about personally I'm going to go Wayne a little bit more philosophical um it has been an honor and a privilege to work with tndc the past decade plus uh we won't say exactly how many years um and to partner with them on the development of this this amazing project I'm particularly grateful to Katie and to Don Faulk he's here over there um who trusted me to lead the charge when it was hard to see light at the end of the tunnel because we had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of setbacks but we you know we persevered uh Lord knows we persevered and as the kids like to say these days we've been through it but it was worth it to get to to this moment um I love that we celebrate key Milestones throughout the journey starting with the groundbreaking where we do the symbolic turning of the soil and then we go to the topping off ceremony where we write our names on the the steel beam that's going to be the top Beam on the building um and then finally the grand opening each Milestone is an opportunity to recognize the small army of people and it really is I mean it's it's hard to if you're not in this business it's hard to describe the number of folks involved in getting a building built but uh you think including all the construction workers hundreds if not you know over a thousand people it's just it's a lot of work um I especially love the grand opening because this is what it's all about you know this is why we do the work because there right now there over 200 households living here folks who you know may have struggled to find affordable housing in San Francisco or retain affordable housing in San Francisco over the years and now they're in a safe place where they have stable affordable housing really in perpetuity because that's how the city structures these projects to me each building that we develop feels like a little miracle um it really does it's just a it's the feeling of getting a building built uh whether you're building with your own hands like Mike and the twinton folks or like us you know who are behind desks and on calls all the time it's really just an amazing feeling of accomplishment to get to make something where there was nothing um and you know I think that housing and affordable housing and sufficient supply of housing is really kind of one of the most fun fundamental issues of our time and so we need a lot more miracles like 921 how to happen and I just want to say a few shout outs to you and maybe they they might be D duplicative but I do want to say some names because I've worked in the trenches with these folks for the last few years um I want to say thank you to ktie already thank the planning department they're not here but without them we wouldn't have an 18 story building here it would be eight Stories the entire switon team Sarah Austin Gabby Samantha Mike Shan and their lovely boss Lori who's going to speak in a minute Jackson and Esther who ay manage this project on the tnd DC side for last three years more than ay Perry Architects Dirk is here Steve's on vacation but you know they're they're amazing Architects I highly recommend them and they had a great team of Engineers and Consultants who uh who worked with them to make this happen our construction manager Andy Larson he's not here today but uh Waypoint Consulting is his firm Bruce Balman and Amy Lee are here they helped us so much with permitting and also again like just really great people to work with um and last but not least people who aren't here are our Financial Consultant and our attorney California Housing Partnership and gin B they are behind the scenes and they are truly you know some of the unsung heroes of the work of building affordable housing in the Bay Area so with that I'm going to turn it over to supervisor Matt Supervisor Matt Dorsey dorsy thank you so much you know it really is an honor to represent um district 6 um this is a neighborhood where the housing that we are building is really something that is a blueprint for what San Francisco is going to look a lot like in the years to come and right now you know we have a housing element where we are on the hook and we have made a commitment that we're going to produce 82,000 units of housing over the next housing element cycle um and this is an example of the kind of housing that we need um it is it is an honor to represent a district that is really what 21st century urbanism can be um and I know that there's a lot of people to think and I think other people I I don't want to get into the list of that but there's one person I want to thank and that's mayor London breed for the leadership that she is bringing to housing in this city um you know two years ago I joined the Board of Supervisors or a little over two years ago and I was elected in that November election but there was an earlier election an electorate of one where mayor breed was interviewing people for who was going to be her appointee and I had a lot of things a lot of opinions on what I wanted to do as a supervisor involving police Staffing and incentivizing and supporting recovery from drug addiction and other issues and I am also I am a card carrying yimi and a dues paying member of yimby I thought I was kind of a housing nerd and London breed was putting me through my Paces on where do I stand on this and what do you this is somebody who really sweats the details on housing and who cares about it because she knows what a big difference it can make uh you know in the life cycle of projects I always love to come to these when there's groundbreakings and different kinds of things for those of you who have been with me at groundbreakings you know that I will always complain if I don't get a hard hat and the and a shovel and a vest I want I'm a gay supervisor so I want the construction gear like the drag the whole thing but but in terms of the things that we're really here to celebrate I think there was just a great Point made today we're celebrating that there's 200 there's more than 200 families whose lives are improved because of what we're doing this is probably the most important thing we can celebrate is what we what we're accomplishing and let's keep doing it um thank you to Mayor London breed for her leadership and continued leadership thank you everybody for your partnership on this and a lot of this has to do with the uh the financing and for that I am happy to introduce from Cal HFA the recent winner of the sea award from the Sacramento Business Journal um I that was yeah I was I was saying earlier I was like I'm gonna look on Google and try to find some obscure thing to say so please welcome Orwin Supervisor Wayne Tam Tam wow that is uh thank you so much I that I guess I do appear on Google um I'm excited to be here um I'm excited to have taken uh the S on the subway and walk two blocks to get here this morning I even stopped by for a cup of coffee uh and that just goes to show how you know how important housing is and how important affordable housing is uh that is being developed close to public transit other amenities that we have here so uh as supervisor said I'm wiwin Tam I'm a director of financing at Cal uh we've heard a little bit about the facts we've heard a little bit about uh the philosophy um so I guess I can talk about the numbers if people are really excited about that um but first of all Cal is the state's affordable housing lender and under the leadership of our executive director Tina Johnson Hall and our board chair Jim Cervantes who's also a board member of tndc calich a is delivering housing uh for low and moderate income California Statewide and how do we do that we do that by working together and one of the one of the organizations we worked closely with is the mayor's office of Housing Community Development uh not only on this project but we also work in conjunction with apple and the mayor's office to uh on our bond recycling program and to date we've delivered an additional 250 million of tax exempt bonds uh which otherw would otherwise go unused except for this partnership so uh we are really proud of that relationship with the mayor's office of Housing Community Development this this project was funded through our um mixed income program and again to date we have uh delivered over $320 million of subsidy funds across the state which has resulted in over almost 10,000 units for again low and moderate income Californians and this is and this is this is a prime example of the uh inclusive community that we're trying to create for for again low and moderate income Californians uh we would again like to thank uh the mayor's office tndc uh Bank of America and the state treasur office uh for uh for the volume cap for this this financing and I would like to turn it over now to uh Lori Dunn I didn't I didn't Google you beforehand good Lori Dunn thing good morning uh my name is Lori dunan I am the vice president division manager for Swinton in the Bay Area wow this has been an amazing journey um we are we feel so fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to deliver over 200 units to downtown San Francisco we are a community Builder and we really appreciate the opportunity to not only construct a beautiful building but to also be giving back to the community we know how important this project is to tnd DC and to Mayor breed and we consider ourselves very lucky to have been a partner we see this project as a very successful project with tndc Curtis development Perry Architects and all of our subcontractor trade Partners so again thank you for the opportunity we're so excited to be able to deliver this beautiful project hi everyone Liz minck from Bank of America and so honored to be here today and without fail no matter how chilly it can feel the sun always comes out for these amazing opportunities Bank of America was founded in the great city of San Francisco in 1904 and our purpose is to help make Financial lives better we do that by supporting the building of inclusive communities and creating Economic Opportunity for livable neighborhoods just as we're seeing here today with this glorious new building last year Our Community Development banking group invested 7.85 billion dollar across the United States creating housing units and Economic Opportunity These funds created over 13,000 units of affordable housing and homes for families seniors veterans formerly homeless and those with special needs Bank of America is proud to be a financial partner and participate in public private partnership ships with tndc Curtis development the mayor's office and the City and County of San Francisco as well as Cal HFA I'm going to thank all the same people that we've been thanking today um including of course the mayor's office Cal HFA tndc Curtis development and all of my amazing Bank of America teammates many of whom were able to join me today thank you all [Applause] State and Local Measures and it sounds like we're still waiting for the mayor to arrive and luckily I have been planning to talk to you about very important state and local measures that we would like you to support So as we all know um it is critically important to couple both local investment and state investment to seed affordable housing like 921 Howard and so while we have a state representative here thank you Irwin we want to express how grateful we are to the state its legislature for putting prop five on the ballot prop five for those of you who don't know hopefully you'll be learning more and more every day in the build up to November 5th will be lowering the voter threshold for local bonds for things like affordable housing and also other public infrastructure like schools police fire protection parks open space Public Health libraries and public transit the state has been doing its part to make it much easier for localities to raise funds to support affordable housing development and so please do your part and vote for prop 5 on November 5th this along with previous state enabling legislation that allowed for the creation of regional financing authorities like the Bay Area Housing Finance Agency which serves the nine County Bay Area um has really set the stage for another important measure that you will see on the ballot in November it's known as measure 4 it's also colloquially colloquially known by people in our field as the baffa bond so baffa again is the Bay Area financing a housing financing agency this Bond will raise 20 billion billion dollars and 2.4 of them for the City and County of San Francisco so please we need voters throughout the whole region to vote for this measure and we need all of you to please do your part to speak about this to your friends family and networks and to participate in whichever way you can to support the passage of the measure it is critically important to our ability and the city of San Francisco as a whole ability to fund the pipeline that it has and to seed and develop new affordable housing throughout our community that's what I've [Laughter] got so thank you we're so grateful you all here we hope the mayor has her opportunity to thank you all and that you have the opportunity to thank her and we thank you again um I will ask roxan to send you off into the five Pool Toss minutes oh okay what need another yeah that's what we hear okay the pool toss is coming so this is going to be my trial by fire Matt and I were talking earlier about what he learned what his formative experiences were that positioned him to be ready to be um a supervisor I don't know if you want to share your story [Laughter] Matt well I'll just I'll just share I'm just practicing filling time um so Matt was sharing if you if it's okay that he spent some time as a City attorney spokesperson and he had the really fun job about addressing the public about the cases that the city was not winning and so that prepared him and I can appreciate it's a hard job to be a supervisor not everyone is always happy with you all the time and you have to navigate you know all of those constituencies so um and I um am now public speaking more than I have in the past and learning how to roll um with the moments so I will say one other thing and then um I appreciate them impr prompting me so tndc is celebrating um it's one of its biggest fundraisers of the year we have two big events this one is called the pool toss it's going to be held on September 26th it's an iconic San Francisco event it is really fun um it's at the Phoenix Hotel which is a lovely institution in the tenderloin that you all should support it's great has a great cocktail bar it has a fun pool you can invite all your friends to stay there when they come to town and they have been actually a truly incredible supporter of TNC over the years hosting this event um they're also our neighbor we developed 555 Lin right next door 108 homes serving families in the tenderloin and they have been a great um neighbor and partner to us as we move through the planning and design and then execution of that building we had the privilege of opening that building earlier this year and um the pool toss we have a web page and you can donate to our tosses I think we're up to five we're convincing our sixth we did it y um and so Rebecca Foster actually who leads the housing accelerator fund and I mentioned her earlier was integrally involved in supporting this project is uh one of our tosses um tickets and sponsorship yes tickets and sponsorships are available yes there's actually like a lot of food from local businesses many of much of that food is actually donated to us I believe and we have a fun cocktail bar but just drink one or two drinks don't get drunk on the job um yes so you can check out our website tiets are available now Perfecto do you think she wants to hear my baish [Laughter] feel maybe I'll just deliver it as she walks in you guys ready do over redo over okay recogniz stff what maybe recogniz yeah that's a great idea actually yes Roan will do that I'm sorry I just you know a lot of us you officials and dignitaries are up here talking but I want to really recognize some of our staff that are back here in the back of the raise your hands if you work at this building if you work at tndc we appreciate each and every one of you guys yes thank you um you're what makes this happen after it's built and we have the ribbon cutting you're what makes this building successful so thank you all for coming and now I have to Jackson's here too yes where are you there Jackson thank you Shon manag project yes so I I think the mayor's here now I'll stop okay yes just to Echo what rock San said the development team can build a beautiful building but what really really ultimately matters in the lives of the people that live live in it is their experience every day with property management and services and now I'm pleased to introduce to you mayor London [Applause] breed all right I made it better late than never right um I gotta say when I'm able to come to events like this whether it's groundbreakings or Ribbon cuttings what people don't always see is the hard work that goes into making something like this possible all the various teams and organizations to put the financing together the hard work that goes into making sure neighborhood preference is a priority in a project like this that we are being very intentional about our Outreach to ensure that families struggling the most have access to a beautiful place like this uh it is really very rewarding to walk through these doors especially after being at the ribbon I mean at the groundbreaking on this site uh and Lori uh from Swinton was there with us along with a number of other folks uh supervisor I don't think you were there yet we were missing you though and we were there breaking the ground and really talking about the significance of what this will mean for families and really trying to open up the pipeline for families who are you know just a little bit above you know the the the the lowincome status but like middle income and and we're making to a tad bit too much to qualify for affordable housing so to have this project go up to 120% Ami is truly incredible and really exciting and this is one of the biggest projects I think we've ever built from mohcd and thanks to the voters for passing almost a billion dollars in bonds we were able to use $39 million uh for this project along with State and other resources and the other person who's always with me at these various uh openings and groundbreakings is Liz minck from uh a from uh Bank of America thank you so much for being here and for your continuous support uh but I am also very excited about welcoming and and finally um having someone an African-American Le and own business uh a woman in particular Cheryl Curtis sharmaine Curtis from Curtis development because that often doesn't happen in projects like this and so it is so meaningful and I want to thank Katie and tnd DC and so many of the folks who helped to put the pieces of the puzzle together to truly make this project not only a success but an inspiration for the people that we are trying to serve it is an amazing building it's a beautiful neighborhood it is exactly what we're doing with downtown bringing more people more families to downtown uh and and making sure that there are amenities that there are support and there's housing security that's what this project is about that's why I'm so happy to be here adding more housing to our portfolio we need more and more and more and now with not only SB 423 which will make everything that is following whatever the rules are as of right so we can get more housing buil but this state Regional Bond uh what is it called now ba bafa what number is it four four region that is going to deliver even more money so that we can do more projects like this faster we have a number of projects that are waiting in line for these resource and can you imagine with over 50,000 units that are already approved in San Francisco dumping 50,000 housing units in the San Francisco pipeline what that would do for housing affordability in this city it would be a game Cher and that is what we're doing with our new housing policies and with getting to yes and making magic like this project happen so I'm so happy and grateful to be here thank you to all of those who were involved and congratulations to the new families who have an opportunity for a safe affordable place to to call home thank [Applause] you ready okay join us in the count starting with five 4 3 2 1 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]