In The News
Stalled S.F. Housing Project Receives Grant
to Jump-Start $2.3 Billion Plan
April 16, 2025 | Source: San Francisco Chronicle
By Laura Waxmann, Reporter
The Crankstart Foundation is the latest investor seeking to jump-start the long-planned remake of San Francisco’s largest and oldest housing cooperative into a truly mixed-income community featuring new affordable housing alongside thousands of market-rate homes.
The family foundation of billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz has awarded a $7 million grant to the mammoth project, which is expected to become one of the most impactful redevelopment plans that the city’s Fillmore district has seen in years: It proposes razing and rebuilding the existing, 382-unit Freedom West co-op at 820 McAllister St. and adding 1,885 market-rate homes, a new senior housing building and a 250-room hotel.
But the ambitious plan, which has been pending since 2020, has faced delays as financing for major development efforts dried up in the wake of the pandemic. Construction on “Freedom West 2.0” was supposed to start at the end of this year, but developer MacFarlane Partners confirmed Wednesday that it is now eyeing the first quarter of next year for breaking ground as fundraising continues.
Crankstart’s gift brings the project just $1 million shy of the $25 million needed to start construction, according to MacFarlane Partners. It comes a few weeks after the foundation published a report seeking to guide the city’s response to homelessness. Among its recommendations were prioritizing affordable and permanent supportive housing on 300 development sites across the city.
“Everyone deserves the opportunity for both economic stability and economic mobility,” Crankstart CEO Missy Narula said in a statement Tuesday. “Crankstart widely supports programs that unlock opportunities for people from all backgrounds in San Francisco. We are proud to help Freedom West fulfill its vision for preserving and building affordable housing in the Fillmore community.”
MacFarlane CEO Landon Taylor said that, given a dearth of traditional predevelopment funding that is available for co-ops, his team launched a fundraising campaign in 2022 inviting impact investors and philanthropic donors to the table. Other key investors in the project include the Low Income Investment Fund, the San Francisco Foundation, Menorah Park, the Housing Accelerator Fund and Common Spirit Health, a Catholic nonprofit health system which contributed $5 million in 2023.
The redevelopment project has been valued at $2.3 billion, and MacFarlane has said previously the team faces close to $581 million in upfront costs for the project’s first phase before the market-rate units can be built and profits can be made.
“Freedom West is helping to create true systems change,” Taylor said. “We hope the success of the Freedom West 2.0 model will help make predevelopment funding available to other nonprofit housing co-ops who need it in the near future.”
The project was updated last year to add a 115-unit, 100% affordable senior building with a 1,200-square-foot ground floor commercial space at the corner of Laguna and McAllister streets. This building would be first in line for development once the project is ready for construction.
The nonprofit co-op, known as the Freedom West Homes Corp., was founded in response to the urban renewal that displaced thousands of residents from the Fillmore and Western Addition neighborhoods in the 1960s. It sits on a 10-acre site near Jefferson Park in the Fillmore and currently houses some 1,000 residents, or shareholders, of which about 60% are seniors.
It has agreed to sell two-thirds of the property to the developers for redevelopment into market-rate housing, but only after the replacement units and new affordable units have been delivered. The hope is that the proposed project will protect the area’s affordable housing and help the nonprofit co-op become “self-sustaining” through new revenue that will be created by it.
“It’s not just about preserving affordable housing for Freedom West residents — it’s also about creating a self-sustaining, thriving neighborhood that can be a beacon of hope and catalyst for the revitalization of the greater Fillmore/Western Addition community,” said Mattie Scott, board president of the co-op.
This is a reposting of an article that was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 16, 2025. The original article can be viewed via this link: https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/sf-housing-freedom-west-20279072.php.
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