San Francisco, CA – San Francisco mayor London Breed made a recent visit to Treasure Island to overlook the latest housing and infrastructure developments in the Bay Area. During the visit, Breed said that 8,000 mixed income units will be created to offer housing to over 20,000 people in the 400-acre island made by Army Corps of Engineers in the 1930s.
While the project has a twenty-year timeline, the first residents moving into neighboring Yerba Buena Island in January 2022 will be new residents moving into the 124-condo complex Bristol. Prices are typical for the Bay Area – studios will be priced at $800,000, one-bedrooms at $1 million, two-bedrooms at $1.7 million, and three-bedrooms at $3 million.
Not all news is discouraging for most people who cannot afford those prices. In March 2022, Chinatown Community Development Center and Swords to Plowshares will open Maceo May Apartments, a 104-unit affordable housing building that will be created to offer housing to formerly homeless veterans. The $75 million building will have six floors, and105 units, ranging from studios to two-bedroom units.
Alongside the housing project, a new Ferry Terminal will connect the island to the city. London Breed along with reporters and project developers visited Treasure Island using the Ferry line that promises to be soon open to the public, the trip lasted just under six minutes from the Ferry building in San Francisco to the new terminal.
The view of the San Francisco skyline may be spectacular from Treasure Island, but residents say they suffer a lack of infrastructure, resulting in multiple power outages and radiation exposure. 27-year-old Treasure Island resident Rocio shared, “I’ve been living in T.I. for over five years now, and it feels like we live in a different country sometimes. I have experienced so many power outages that I have more than 20 candles around the house just to be prepared.”
As unfortunate as that sounds, Rocio also says there is a bright side to living in Treasure Island.
“The best part of living in T.I. is that rent is as cheap as it would get in the Bay Area,” she said. “I pay $700 hundred dollars and all my friends envy that.”
Although cheap rent will end soon and the over 2,000 residents who currently reside on the island will have to find a new place to call home.
