Senior Housing Lottery Delayed

The process to select the first residents of an affordable housing development in San Francisco aimed toward LGBT seniors has been delayed by several weeks.

The project sponsors had hoped that by late May applications would be made available for those interested in applying for 39 rental units being built inside Richardson Hall at 55 Laguna, with the lottery to select the residents being held sometime in late June.

Now it is expected that the applications will be ready sometime in early June and that the lottery will be held in early July. The exact dates have yet to be finalized.

The $16 million renovation of the former college building is the first stage of an estimated $40 million project that will result in 119 units of affordable senior housing split between two buildings. There will also be a senior services center on-site named after Bay Area Reporter founding publisher Bob Ross, who died in 2003.

The complex at the corner of Laguna and Hermann just off Market Street is a joint venture between Openhouse, a nonprofit LGBT senior services provider, and Mercy Housing California, which develops below-market-rate housing. Officials of the two agencies met Tuesday afternoon to discuss the application and lottery process, but did not reach any concrete decisions.

"No date yet set for running the application, beyond what we already knew, which is that it will be early June," Joel Evans, Openhouse's director of development and marketing, informed the B.A.R. following the meeting.

Set for completion by September, the first building of low-income senior housing will have a total of 40 apartments, one of which will be set aside for a resident manager and eight will be designated for people living with HIV at risk for homelessness. Any senior, whether LGBT or straight, who is at least 55 years of age and meets the income requirements for the below-market-rate units can apply.

As the B.A.R. reported last month, 16 of the units will be available to seniors who live in District 8 due to a rule the city adopted that sets aside 40 percent of the units in new affordable housing developments for people who live in the supervisorial district the project is located in, or within a half mile of the site.

The other 15 units will be awarded to eligible seniors whether or not they live or work in the city. Openhouse would like to see at least 3,000 LGBT seniors apply to live in the building and will be providing assistance next month to those who do on how to complete the application.

"Members of the LGBT community can come to Openhouse and we will help you fill it out. We will have workshops," said Evans.

It is expected that the timeframe to return the application will be reduced from the normal 28 days to 10 days or less.

"That hasn't been nailed down either," Evans told the B.A.R. this week.

According to information Openhouse has posted to its website, a single person interested in applying must have a maximum household annual income of $28,550 to $35,700. For a family of two, the maximum household annual income is listed as $32,600 to $40,750.

The agency also estimates that rents for a studio will be in the range of $821 to $893 and for a one-bedroom will be between $879 and $1,019. A two-bedroom unit will likely rent for $1,055 to $1,146.

A second building to be constructed on what is now a parking lot, and will have a street address of 95 Laguna, is slated to open in the spring of 2018. It will have 79 apartments, 14 of which will be designated for people living with HIV or AIDS, and one unit will house a resident manager.

Seniors age 62 and over will be able to apply for those units - the state raised the age limit after financing was secured for the Richardson Hall rehab. Construction is expected to commence in 2017, and the lottery to select residents should take place sometime in 2018.

Openhouse Welcomes Interim ED

This week Openhouse quietly welcomed Tim Daniels as its interim executive director. He started Monday, May 23.

The agency's former executive director, Seth Kilbourn, announced in March he planned to depart sometime in May. He had led Openhouse since 2008.

Daniels has twice before headed a local nonprofit in an interim capacity. He spent less than a year at both the Foundation for Youth Investment and the Mario Pedrozzi Scholarship Foundation.

Between 1998 and 2003 Daniels was the executive director of the San Francisco-based Seven Tepees Youth Program. He then was hired to lead another city nonprofit, Boys Hope Girls Hope, and in 2005 he left to become executive director of the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center, where he worked for five years.

Daniels was unavailable for an interview, and the agency had not disclosed the terms of his contract, by press time Wednesday.

For more information about the 55 Laguna development and how to apply for one of its units, visit http://openhouse-sf.org/55-laguna-information