>> good morning, everyone! i get the amazing privilege of being the coronavirus of habitat for humanity greater san francisco and we're so pleased you can join us. we're here in diamond heights to break ground on a very important project to us. there's not very many community occasions that is exciting as the ground breaking except for the day we give the keys to the family which is coming soon. as we begin, i would love to invite a champion for affordable housing and a good friend to habitat for humanity, pastor

teresa chow sigh a few words and to bless us all. pastor chow. [applause] thank you. a house carries very significant importance. it's more than just a shelter, for some it's a sanctuary, place of rest and belonging. for my parents, who emigrated to the u.s. from south korea a house was a dream, however their dream didn't stop at owning a house for themselves, but being able to provide a house for their children and grandchildren. 20 years ago, when i moved to san francisco, newly married, my parents' dream was realized as they helped my husband and i purchase our first home. and it's why i chose to wear this particular stolz today. this korean fabric means many colors. during very difficult times through out korean history, parents would don their children in these colorful fabrics as a

symbol of their hope. they carry the hopes and dreams of the community and i wear this carrying dreams many of us for not just housing but affordable housing. to make this dream come true, it takes the community to put fourth the sweat equity, to push fourth just policies, build a foundation, network the resources and carry the hopes with determination. i love that the homes that will be built here on this land begins with community. city officials, faith leaders, volunteers, neighbors, homeowners and home dreamers, which truly makes it our house. in the korean angst possess i have pronoun, my is rarely used. we use our. my house is our house, my dream is our dream, my land is our land. however, when we say our house, we also carry the responsibility

of not only the hopeful future but the past so that our dreams do not -- are not at the expense of others and that's what it means to be a community. so in the spirit i would like to share this house blessing by poet jan richardson and acknowledging this is on the ancestrial home lapped of the aloney people who are the or not inhabitants. think of the year as a house, door swung wide and welcome, threshold swept and waiting a grace spaciousness, opening and offering itself to you. let it be blessed in every room, let the it be hollowed in every corner. let every nook in the refuge and every object set to holy youth, let it be here that safety will rest, let it be here that health will make its home, let it be here that peace will show its face and let it be here that love will find its way, here let

the weary come and let the aching come, let the lost come and let them find rest and find their soothing and let them find their place. and let them find their delight. and may it be in this house of a year that the seasons will spin in beauty and may it be in these turning days the time will spiral with joy and rooms will fill with ordinary grace and lights spill from every window with welcome to the strangers calling it home. amen. [applause] >> thank you so much pastor. we appreciate you and your congregation for your friendship and your advocacy on housing and your on going support. i want to welcome our guests here with us today. because of covid we had to limit the crowd. i appreciate all of you who are

here with us, and physically and in spirit. i'm delighted to say that mayor breed is with us today. since her inauguration, mayor breed has been a true champion and leader prioritizing affordable housing. under her leadership, the mayor's office of housing and community development has continued and increased their work supporting families and communities across the city. today, san francisco has a robust pipeline of affordable housing and ready to be built and available at all levels for all family sizes. madam mayor, it's great to see you and we look forward to bringing hundreds more homes that we have in our pipeline in the next several years forward to partner with the city. i also couldn't be happier the district 8 supervisor mandelman is with us today. there are few people who have worked harder more thoughtfully

than you have to get more affordable homes built with the needs of each neighborhood. it's good to see you. i'm going to come back to a would be wonderful proposal of yours in a little while. eric shaw is also with us today. thank you for your leadership and your vision and we really appreciate it. we also have with us three san francisco habitat homeowners today. den ice, jenn, and jeanette. if you can all just wave. like all habitat homeowners, denise jenn and janette know their way around a construction site and experienced home builders. i know they can't wait to welcome new families to these homes and help them on their journey. i'm so pleased to see bryn smith here today, a fantastic volunteer who has worked hundreds of hours both here in san francisco and overseas across the globe. thank you, bryn. you live a stone's throw away and we'll see him working on the

homes. representing our amazing dime opened heights neighborhoods, i can see betsy eddie, thank you, co president of the diamond heights community association, and betsy is such a strong supporter of this project. from the moment i first called her to say yes, how can we help and i really appreciate you. last time we were together, just up the hill at the police academy, we had about 70 community members join us to learn about and support the project. i was so impressed that we had almost everyone 68 out of the 70 who said yes we want to see this project happen. something that doesn't get enough recognition here in our city. our architectses, toby is here and you can see the beautiful rendering behind me and it will turn into a beautiful community for the families that live here. and you can see reflected in the design the compliments of the neighborhood as you look around. several members of our habitat for humanity greater san francisco board are with us

today. mark and ken preston and thank you for coming out and if i missed anyone, sorry. we have a board meeting later so i'll hear about it. normally, of course, in pro covid times, we would be able to welcome many more of our hundreds of homeowners and thousands of volunteers to this event. i feel so blessed that we've been able to be here together and gather as many friends. i know we're all excited to be moving forward with this path to a gradual and safe reopening. we're starting the project with a very special story attached to it. on this site, right here, stood the home of a great san franciscan maria collish. she was one of the first people to move into the diamond heights neighborhood in the '50s when all of this was in open meadow. she was a chemist, activist, medical researcher whose circle of friends included chemist line, artist, and venture and

architect fuller and photographer imaging cunningham and if you look over at the plaque, you will see the beautiful image that the shot of her that we memorized on a plaque. she loved her city and had he loved the people who live here. the site was donated by her son and his wife. in her honor and memory they wish to help more hard-working families stay in the city that she cared for. today, mischa at 99-years-old is resting at home and he is looking forward to seeing a video of us all later today. the flag recognizing his mother will be a fix to the building when finished. the sculpture is based on a photo. this will stand as a reminder to all of the life maria left and her generosity to families in san francisco. so now where there was previously one home, there will be eight homes.

three and four bedroom homes for families. this type of urban refill project typically more manageable numbers on units on smaller parcels o of land has potential to contribute to the number of homes that low income people can be homeowners in in san francisco. that's why we're so supportive of sensible proposals such as those by supervisor mandelman to make it a little easier to build smaller size projects and certain locations that are in keeping with the neighborhood character density and transportation availability. just yesterday, the supervisor introduced legislation to make four-unit buildings easier to build and we support that effort. so what makes a habitat project? well, all of our homes are affordable homeownership. because we know home opioid allows families to realize potential, to build wealth and equity and accomplish their dreams. habitat serves as both the general contractor, the

developer and the mortgage lender with a zero down and zero percentage interest loan for families. we cap all families housing costs at 30% of their income and this pro voids predictability, stability, and for the next generation, and for this generation as well. our homeowners invest 500 hours working alongside their neighbors and the community. they will be joined by hundreds of volunteers who live and work in san francisco and who want to make sure families have a chance to stay and plant their roots in the community. these homes are forever affordable as habitat buys them back when families move on it market rate homes or relocate after their children are grown and the process starts over again with another family. san francisco loves volunteers, pound for pound we have the most generous people in the country right here in san francisco. we've already been inundated with offers from volunteers who are anxious to safely get back to work after the past year of quarantine. this will be supported by

habitat pro commercial construction staff and they have kept our construction sites safely and productively across our region. habitat san francisco is building in and to see so much affordable housing gun o in our. and the balboa reservoir projects last year. we're excited and proud to be homeowner developers in these projects. this is being supported by the mayor's office of housing and community development with $1.5 million in construction and permanent financing. just like so many affordable developments, the mayor will drive them to the finish. i want to acknowledge eric. when he learned that 85% of habitat homeowners were bipoc

family in san francisco and we look forward to carrying the legacy forward in awful our projects. and as our reopening process proceeds, we listen to the guidance from local government, we look forward to restarting our critical repair work which has helped so many of our neighbors stay safe and warm in the homes they know and they've been in for a long time, especially in the buy view and san francisco. tur for being here. i'm delighted to introduce you to the woman who needs no introduction, and the leader mayor london broad. breed. [applause] madam mayor, welcome. >> thank you, i had to put my hair back. it's windy out here. first of all, let me say how excited i am about this project and i am not surprised the community here in diamond heights rallied together to support it. this community is a very active community and i have a history, believe it or not, with the diamond heights community when i worked at treasure island when

the city was considering moving the police academy to treasure island. this community fought to keep the police academy right here in this community and they were successful. along with the work and the advocacy around george christopher park and we broke ground on a new playground and in that particular area, a couple weeks ago. and so, this is an amazing community. it's a resilient community. it's a community that has a history that was just talked about. maria polish, one of the first residents here in the 1950s when it was just a meadow and now look at it. a neighborhood and a community where children are raised and people shop and see each other at the grocery store and we know that this project is going to be an important part of this community too. so, i am excited about it. i'm especially excited because some of you might have remembered when i served on the

board of supervisors i introduced neighborhood preference legislation and that legislation made sure that when we build affordable housing in communities, the right of first refusal for the certain percentage of those units goes to the people who actually live here who are qualified for the affordable unit. in order to allow for opportunities for your children or grand children, who may have grown up in this community, to have at least the possibility of getting access to these homes. so in this particular project, neighborhood preference will be used for home ownership. i can't be more thrilled to be working with habitat for humanity because of the incredible work that they do the hardest part of owning a home is putting together a down payment. and in san francisco, that's at least a minimum of $250,000 in order to own a home that many people sometimes can barely afford. and here, no down payment. no more than 30% of their income

used to pay representative. a place that people will call home and be able to raise their families. and if they are so fortunate enough to excel in life and generate more revenue for their household and move on to purchase another property, the home will still be affordable to the next generation. this is an incredible project for our city. and i couldn't be more thrilled. i wanted to say how much i appreciate all of you the voters of san francisco. when i first became mayor, we put on the ballot an affordable housing bond which wow supported overwhelmingly and since i've taken office, we've been able to, along with that affordable housing and other resources, we're able town vest over a billion dollars in affordable housing in san francisco. that's why it was not a hard sil for us, immediately providing the resources necessary to get the job done for this project so it's your support, your advocacy and everyone coming together and it really does take a village

and this village came together to provide incredible opportunities for home ownership for families and i'm looking forward to being here when we cut the ribbon in the first families move in. thank you all so much for being here today. [applause] thank you so much, mayor. now i want to introduce someone well-known to us and well-known further afield for his thoughtful approach to an environment where more affordable homes can be built. i want to welcome rafael mandelman. welcome. >> thank you. samson bloom. this is a little bit of like a collision of my multiple world's. i want to grad school 20 something years ago with eric and hey eric, and i worked when i was a lawyer in private practice representing local governments on many teams, are you representing kappa chat? you are on the board. awesome.

well, good to see you. so, at any rate, everybody, i am so excited about this particular moment. from the moment that i started as a supervisor, i wanted to see more affordable housing built in district 8 and district 8 is a hard district to get affordable housing built in notwithstanding the displacement that has happened from district 8. it's hard because we're built out and we don't have a lot of available sites because land values are high. from our very first meeting with mayor breed, i've been asking her for help with affordable housing in district 8 and she's been delivering it. she acquired a big giant property on market street that is going to house lgbtq queer seniors and friends. this particular project is really exciting and required moe and eric to do outside the box thinking about how to use the

funds. in district 8, projects small projects like this habitat projects, affordable home projects make a lot of sense on these small sites. but it's been something that most have been funding before and i'm sure partly through the intervention of our mayor and doing things like this and it showed great flexibility around funding this and i have all sorts of people who i should thank. got the mayor and eric shaw and of course habitat for humanity and the tremendous work you do and you are pushing us to think outside the box about getting this project done. all of the volunteers and of course the neighbors. betsy, deserves praise all the time in every way but it's wonderful to be in a neighborhood that is welcoming affordable housing and wants to see it built here and i'd love

to say this was courageous to have this project here but the neighborhood wants it and people have been e-mailing us saying when is it getting done. there's excitement and enthusiasm and of course finally to mischa and his family for making this opportunity availability this is exciting. thank you, everyone. >> thank you so much. so as we get ready to mark the occasion with some photos. we're going to put some shovels in the ground. i want to thank everyone for being here and lending your support. thank you mayor breed, you are well served by your staff and they were amazing to work with and thank you supervisor mandelman and your team, also amazing and thank you to our neighbors here in beautiful diamond heights we can't wait to see you out on the construction site in the spring and be ready to start with our volunteers, right, err on, and all our communities of homeowners, volunteers, board members, staff, donors, thank you, thank

you, thank you. and a most special thank you to my friends, and our generous donor mischa and the vision and donation of this hand in honor of maria, began journey and brought us here where today. thank you all. thank you very much and we appreciate you joining us. we're going to move over to some photos. 3, 2, 1, turn that dirt! >> we're in business!

>> kate austin: the phone number to use is 415-655-0001. the access code is 187 794 8539, thenpress pound, pound. when your item is called dial star 3 to be added to thequeue to speak . you may address the board . item number one called order. director sutton. [rollcall]