Two longtime residents and artists as well as tenants in 18 other units will be able to stay in rent-controlled apartments thanks to two nonprofits buying six buildings from a landlord who decided to back away from evicting tenants and instead sell the buildings to the city.
The purchase, part of the city’s small sites program, will mean that the units remain affordable housing. The San Francisco Community Land Trust and the Mission Economic Development Agency will purchase the buildings.
The deal, “really has the potential to be a win-win situation,” Richard Hurlburt of the SF Community Trust said in July during negotiations. “They get out from under the bad press of evicting tenants and tenants get to stay.”
René Yañez, a Mission artist who started the annual Day of the Dead art installation and was one of the founders of the Galería de La Raza and the Mission Cultural Center, is one of the tenants affected by the purchase. As a result of the deal, Yañez and his partner, Cynthia Wallis, will be able to stay in their apartment. Yolanda Lopez, his former wife who is a well-known Mission artist, also lives in one of the Mission units being purchased.
Three of the properties that purchased by the non-profits are in the Mission District -- two of them on Guerrero Street and San Jose Avenue -- and the other three are in SoMa, NOPA and Duboce Triangle.