Another win for Affordable Housing in the Mission District and the city of San Francisco. It is the result of years of work in partnership with Tenderloin Neighborhood Development corporation [applause] supervisor hillary ronens office. [applause] mayor london breed and her team. [applause] our friends from wells fargo. [applause] the California Department of housing and Community Development. [applause] and many other amazing organizations. Casa d indiscernible 631 florida is main stay and permanent fixture for Affordable Housing in the Mission District. This project has 130 Family Friendly homes, including 39 homes for the formally unhoused. [applause] in addition to the housing, it will be the permanent home, the permanent home for carn val San Francisco,b a true San Francisco institution. This will be the 9th Community Based organization that is housed in one of buildings and continues to strategy of cultural placekeeping to insure that the Mission Never loses its history of latino culture l and arts. [applause] casa d 631 florida was a Community Space before becoming housing and Community Space it will remain permanently. [applause] so, we know that much of what we do is about living our values. Togetherness are two core values. This project will not be here today if collectively we did not have the audacity to dream of what could be and should be. Of the audacity to fight for what we think is right and just. Also, today is about togetherness. Look around. We are here celebrating together how this housing for communityhow this housing and this Community Space will serve families and Community Members who are often underserved and underrepresented. Again, the core of our work comes down to the people who now call casa d631 plor florida their permanent home. [applause] again, i want to share my gratitude to all of those who contributed to making the building happenp. Specifically, i want to thank mayor breed. Thank you mayor. [applause] who administration is key insuring Affordable Housing in the Mission Remains a priority now and for the future. This includes her leadership in making sure that buildings like this one become a realty each and every day. Also, she has been a true champion for the small sites program, which has aallowed to purchase 38 apartment buildings and saved over 300 families from eviction in this neighborhood. Thank you, mayor breed. [applause] i want to thank the board of directors for their trust, for providing great care, guidance and support as we dare to become an Affordable Housing developer, taking many many risks along the way. Thank you [applause] finally, i must thank our team. They now provide services to over 17 thousand people per year in this neighborhood. [applause] our staff shows a remarkable ability to beadacious by adapting and pivot to meet the needs of our community at any moment. This includes providing key services before, during and after the pandemic. Insuring our businesses have access to Technical Assistance and capital. Rehabilitating existing apartment buildings and building New Buildings like this one. Creating spaces for Community Organizations that are no longer threatened by eviction. You name it, meta staff always steps up to support this community. Thank you meta team. [applause] at the end of the day, we will do this work because of the People Living here. Our residents. Our community. And now it is my great pleasure, it is my great great pleasure i have to say to introduce you to dolores a woman who calls this building her permanent home. [applause] [speaking spanish] hello everyone. Thanks for being here. Mayor london breed, welcome. [speaking spanish. Waiting for translation] my name is dolores ramero originally from el salvador. Im 77 years old and i worked and lived in San Francisco for many years. [waiting for translation] i worked really hard to bring my two children to this country, and i worked at a Mexican Restaurant before and getting there at 6 p. M. And finishing up at 5 a. M. [waiting for translation] i used to live on 20 and valencia for 35 years. I used to go up three flights of stairs every day, and i count the steps 42 steps. [waiting for translation] when i got to 20 and valencia i was full of energy and that was good, but in 2008 i was diagnosed with cancer. [waiting for translation] it was very hard for me because it was very difficult after a huge operation procedure to go up the three flights of stairs. [waiting for translation] i needed to go up and down sitting down. [waiting for translation] [applause] but in 2020, covid came and i was in the hospital for a total of 6 months. [waiting for translation] after covid, after the 6 months, i didnt recover fully and i couldnt go up the three flights of stairs. I had to move with my daughter for total of 4 months because i couldnt do it and i needed the elevator at her apartment. [waiting for translation] but i continued to go up those three flights of stairs sitting down and i would come down sitting down as well. [waiting for translation] i fell three times going up and down the stairs, but i thank god, thank meta, tndc and all the other organizations involved in this project. [waiting for translation] but after covid, after applying since 2008 for housing, march 2022 they let me know that i won the lottery. [applause] [waiting for translation] [laughter] on march 2022, veronica from meta called letting me know i won the lottery. She was confused and shocked because she didnt buy a ticket. [laughter] [waiting for translation] but no, it was the lot tory for my future home. [waiting for translation] [applause] [applause] on october 2022 they told me to come pick up my key. She said she didnt feel she was picking up a key, she felt she was picking up a crown because she feels like a gwen queen at home. She wants to thank all the organizations that made this happen and hope everyone continues to support what we are doing to keep people housed and thank you everyone again. Thank you. [applause]she wants to thank all the organizations that made this happen and hope everyone continues to support what we are doing to keep people housed and thank you everyone again. Thank you. [applause] i like to introduce pedro, Deputy Director of legislation at California Department of housing and Community Development. [applause] [speaking spanish] good afternoon everybody. Im pedro, Deputy Director at department of housing and Community Development, and it is a great honor to be here today. I want to congratulate the community and our partners today at meta and tndc for this tremendous building and this Beautiful Community that they have built with 130 new Affordable Homes. This project includes homes that are affordable for people who experience homelessness, it includes two Community Spaces and Sustainable Agricultural on the roof and this is a model for how housing can be built to be affordable, environmentally sustainable and socially responsible. I also want to thank madam mayor on behalf of director vulas quez and the Newsom Administration and my self it is honor to celebrate and thank you for your continued support of Affordable Housing here and throughout your city. It is with partners like you that we make buildings like this happen so thank you. Thank you also to supervisor ronen for your leadership and continuing to push for more Affordable Housing here in the mission, and throughout the city. I also want to acknowledge the work of my partners at the state level with the california tax credit and Debt Limit Allocation Committee for providing the invest mentds to make it possible. It is great joy and say it department of housing and Community Development is proud to have invested 14 million in this project. As i said, this is exactly the type of project we want to fund. To share a little bit about why i feel personally connected here, my own family immigrated to the United States from brazil and when i was young we struggled to find stable housing. Eventually we did. It wasnt affordable but it was stable, and it gave usit gave me the stability i needed to study and to actually be here speaking to you all today. This is a amazing opportunity that this building is providing to all 130 families that live here, but also the families that are going to be here in the future. Places like these are key to maintaining a stable mission. Making sure that there continues to be art, neighbors to continue to be in their neighborhood. And i can know that having a place like this would have made a tremendous difference to my family had we had the opportunity and im so glad dolores has this opportunity and so many other families will get to enjoy this permanent Affordable Housing. That is why Affordable Housing continues to be such a critical investment for the administration of governor newsom. This administration invested 20billion in Affordable Housing since it started and we have built every 10 thousand units and there is another 45 thousand Affordable Housing units on their way. Collectively thesethank you. [clapping] collectively these units are going to provide homes for nearly a Million People through the useful life, and more then a Million People need Affordable Homes in california, but it is a significant start and we need the help of you all to continue building on that momentum. Thank you all for having us. Thank you for building this Beautiful Community and it is great pleasure i introduce nob nub hernandez, Community Member the executive direct of canasf and founder of mission food health. Thank you all so much. [applause] those do not know spanish, good afternoon. [speaking spanish] first of all,b i want to acknowledge a whole bunch of people and i want to start with jonathan. Where is jonathan at from south space . Come here jonathan. This brotheri have to tell you a story, man. He came to our neighborhood and he started cell space. Cell space was one of the most beautiful spaces that we had here in our community where carnival, indiscernible here earlier who did the blessing, the theater groups, all kinds of artist, it was a communal space and thriving 7 days a week and sometimes 24 hours a day, and nobody ever shut us down because we were making noise, right . But it was fun noise because it brought young people, brought children, it brought community together, so thank you my brother. I want to honor and tell you i love you. I love you. Thank you. [applause] and then unfortunately the story goes sideways. All a sudden indiscernible came to the city. Riches and wealthy people come in. For some reason they decided they wanted to live in this little ghetto, this village we have been existing, right. They wanted a urban culture experience, but they gentrifyed us in a violent way where we had over 10 thousand people who were evicted and a lot were left homeless, so we didnt sit back as a community, we organized and organized i organized. We created save the mission and i want peter to come up here, i want indiscernible to come up here. I want kelly to come here. Come here, man. [applause] come on come on. And rodrigo. Where is indiscernible come on. And this iswhere is she at . Okay. We created a army. Armando come here anybody else who was part of the mission no eviction. Our mission no eviction we organized and organized and organized and we created save the mission and we organized and we demanded then all these developers coming here had a responsibility to give back to our community. In this space here, we fought and fought and fought against the developer and he won the Planning Commission by one vote but we appealed that to the board of supervisors. We had the power of the people and the votes at the board of supervisors. He had to give us his space and justice was served, so i want to thank all of you. I love you all. Thank you. Organized and that was over 3,000 that get up and march and do whatever it took. I just really believe that you know, we called this space indiscernible and now it is thewhat are we calling it . The beauty on bryant. I wanted to do today to thank the creator, because a lot of times we have fear. We have doubts, and it takes time and some people dont have the patience to continue to fight, but i always said, we got to believe in the creator, got to believe in the universe and come together and are Stay Together no matter what and stay strong. What was the indiscernible strength in numbers. Thank you mayor breed. Strength in numbers and that isit has gotten us through and be able to build and celebrate today. I want to honor all thejust take a moment of silence, because i fought with him like you wont believe, but i want to honor and thank and may his soul rest in peace, mayor ed lee. Not only did we get the space, but we went with mayor ed lee and said you have to come up with the money to build the housing. We just dont want a piece of land from this developer. We need the money and he did. He came up with money, he found it within 72 hours. I dont know indiscernible people put money under their matresses or closet or backyard and he found the money and that was the beginning of help make this happen. I are want to thank meta and tndc for coming together and it was a marriage. [speaking spanish] and they came together and they made it happen here in our community. Most beautiful thing is for community to take responsibility for itself and do things for itself. Of course with the help of many. I want to thank all the artists that you know were displaced, but continued and we were able to work with them and i want to thank the people that entrusted our organization. Cana a organization that produces the carnival and entrusted in creating the space next door which is indiscernible because of the lessens we learned in the pandemic, with meta help with a lot of the people who economically were broke and Mental Health was effected so we decided to take a right turn and not only make it indiscernible but also Indigenous PeoplesCultural Arts healing center. With that, i want to end by havingbecause i come from an organizing background, cesar chavez and dolores raised me and when we gather and have a victory we clap together so ill ask you to put your hands together and well slow. Those who have not done it and those who know how to do it well do it. Well go real slow and then speed it up. [clapping] we used to say indiscernible today well seei will say indiscernible [speaking spanish] with that, i want toit is great honor to introduce an amazing woman who like i grew up in the indiscernible grew up in the ghetto and made her way through school against all odds, put herself through college, became elected to the board of supervisors and now and has and will continue being our mayor of San Francisco, please help welcome mayor london breed i call it lb [applause] thank you roburty roburto and are thank you for joining us today. This is really exciting and i never thought we would get to this place this quickly, even though it has been a really long time, but roberto you remember when we would ride through the mission and i want to say it was before i became mayor, and roberto and i talked about some of the challenges and also some of the properties that we could identify that we needed to purchase because of the investment that the city needed to make in providing housing to make up for a lot of the evictions and a lot of the issues that were occurring in this community, and it had a lot to do with our bond came because what was happening in the mission actually happened in the community i grew up in in the fillmore Western Addition and it was important to him and this community that we dont repeat the same mistakes of the past, and so when we were riding through the mission we were talking about various properties and you know all the owners and are developers and what was going on, and i was so grateful to come together and collaborate and strategize and purchase some of the various properties and to work with our state partners to get the resources necessary to make sure that we were able to get these places built, because you are right, purchasing the land is one thing, but building the house is quite something different. It does take a village. It takes a village to make things like this happen in our city, and one of the things im really proud of with this project, it wasnt just about building a building and hitting the lottery, mrs. Romero would talk about hitting the lottery. What was really important was the neighborhood preference legislation and mak