Mayor Edwin M. Lee issued the following statement on the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use & Transportation Committee unanimous approval of the 5M Project:

“We have a mandate from San Francisco voters to produce more affordable housing, faster. In order to reach our aggressive housing goals of building and rehabbing 30,000 new homes by 2020, half within reach of our low and middle income families, we need to seize on opportunities like this one. This 5M Project provides an unusual downtown opportunity that will transform four acres of underutilized land to create affordable housing, jobs, parks and other community benefits. I thank Forest City for agreeing to their new goal of 40 percent affordable housing to move this project forward for our seniors, low income residents and middle income families.

I would also like to extend my thanks to two Supervisors who helped make sure that this project responds to the City’s most critical needs. Supervisor Jane Kim worked to find a way to increase the overall affordability of the project, while ensuring it addresses the needs of a wide range of incomes, from teachers to low income seniors.  Supervisor Scott Wiener took a firm stance to ensure that the 5M Project will also be the first development project in San Francisco to pay transit impact fees on residential units, with these funds slated to pay for pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements in the vicinity of the project.”

The 5M Project being developed by Forest City is a four-acre, 1.6 million square foot privately-owned and privately-financed mixed-use development project that was approved at the Planning Commission on September 17th with an affordable housing package that would create a total of 212 new units of affordable housing, all at the low and very low income levels. The 5M Project will now create 241 units of permanently affordable housing, reaching 40 percent. The result is an even more robust housing package that increases the project’s overall affordability to 40 percent and dedicates a portion of those new affordable units to middle-income households. For more information on the 5M Project, go to: www.5mproject.com.