Construction kicks off on mortuary turned senior housing project
LOS ANGELES: In a delicious reverse irony, a moribund mortuary is to be reverse engineered into a seniors housing community.
Ground has broken on 4200 Geary Boulevard, a planned seven story affordable senior housing project in the Inner Richmond District. Their first step: demolish the old two story mortuary that currently holds that address.
In the mortuary’s place will be 98 homes, 41 studios and 57 one bedrooms as well as a ground floor of commercial spaces to be rented out and 16 parking spots. The homes will be marketed to low income seniors, including veterans and seniors who were formerly unhoused, at between 10-15% of the Area Median Income.
Beyond just housing, the space will “center tenant needs,” said the project page on the website of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, the developer.
Proposed amenities include social workers, front desk and property management onsite, outdoor spaces, a rooftop urban farm with fresh produce for tenants. The building intends to seek a Platinum GreenPoint rating, which denotes sustainability and efficiency (like all green appliances) and is a member of the International Living Future Institute Living Building Challenge, which aims to design buildings that embrace a synergy between humans and nature.
The design throughline will continue with “wayfinding signage with large text and symbols,” for the aging residents.
The building, which sits between 6th and 7th Avenue along Geary, is located at the centerpoint between Golden Gate Park and the Presidio.
The project’s funding has come from the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, California Department of Housing and the Community Development Multifamily Housing Program.
Additional funding is anticipated from the 4% Low Income Housing Tax Credit and California Debt Limit Allocation Committee Tax Exempt Bonds, according to the TNDC project page.
The construction kicked off on April 3. The project is expected to take just under two years to complete, which would put the move in date at the start of 2025.
The project comes squarely after the passage of San Francisco’s Housing Element, which sets forth the path for the construction of 82,000 new units across The City, 46,000 of them mandated affordable housing.