New Housing Complex Offers Positive Change For The Tenderloin

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KCBS)  -- Some two hundred people in San Francisco's Tenderloin District -- including some who were formerly homeless -- are living in a new lower-income housing complex, which celebrated its grand opening yesterday.

There are sixty-seven occupied apartments in the new Curran House, located in the 100 block of Taylor Street. The nine-story complex includes studios and one, two and three bedroom units with one, one and a half or two bathrooms each.

Don Falk of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Association -- which spearheaded the project on land that was a long-time parking lot -- told KCBS that new family housing like the Curran House is a positive change for the neighborhood, which has had only a small handful of new family housing developments in the past decade.

"This is terribly needed. Although people don't perceive the Tenderloin this way, over thirty-five hundred children live in the Tenderloin," Falk said. "Yet ninety-five per cent of the housing stock here, is one-bedroom, studio or residential hotel rooms."

The $24 million complex won a national design award for low-income housing. It was funded with both public and private funds, including $12 million from the Mayor's Office of Housing

New Curran House resident Kenneth Griffin agrees that it's helping to change the Tenderloin.

"I think it's wonderful that you see families and children down here," Griffin said. "They're making it very comfortable. There's restaurants, there's the theater, there's art galleries. I think it's very nice."

Curran House residents include people with disabilities, and individuals and families with relatively wide income disparities.

"There's a variety of different people," Griffin said. "it's a mixture of all different races blending in together, and getting along."

Rents range from $750 for a studio, to $1,150 for a three bedroom unit. At least ten units have been reserved for the homeless.

"A lot of the folks here are earning less than ten-thousand dollars a year," Falk said. "But it's also a mixed income group with working poor earning as much as thirty-five or forty thousand dollars a year."

Griffin said he and his new neighbors appreciate all that's happening in the area. "They offer a lot things: whether you need furniture or financial assistance, anything you need, it's right here for you."

Curran House includes ample green space. Residents and visitors enter the large lobby through a "decompression garden," and the lobby leads to a separate courtyard with space for children to play. There's also a rooftop garden, as well as a conference room and ample common areas on the ground level.