Feature
by Robert Shurell
On a gray, cool Sunday morning, I rode my bicycle from my home in the Richmond district through Golden Gate Park, where the joggers, strollers, happy dogs and young kids were sharing JFK Drive. I coasted down Haight Street, passing the just-awake kids on my way to Market Street, where many were still sleeping in the hotels or on the sidewalk. As I kept one eye on the chips of glass glittering in the gutters, and the other eye on the people, buildings, cars and sky, I wondered about the new housing development I was going to see. I knew about Mayor Gavin Newsom’s vision of helping the most needy of our citizens, but I couldn’t get a positive image of what this new apartment complex for chronically homeless people was going to look like. I pictured dim Corbusian corridors disappearing into a distant perspective, doors everywhere and flickering fluorescent lamps casting more shadow than light on warping floor tiles, broken like old teeth.
The block of Folsom Street between Ninth and Tenth streets is easy to miss. Cars roar by at 40 miles per hour, trying to catch the green light. Slowing down and stopping on that block, I noticed its condition. Kung’s Trading Company stood in a glum line along with several other low, gray buildings—all closed, shuttered and locked. An overflowing dumpster squatted halfway down the block, parallel parked between a couple of cars, trash languidly shuffling in the blackish gutter. Then, I saw a brick façade that looked a bit cleaner than the others and was the only one to have inviting trees and planters outside. The building is at the midpoint of the block, on the northeast corner of Dore alley, and aptly called the Folsom-Dore apartment building.
I locked my bike to a tree—I couldn’t find a public bike rack—and walked along the façade to get a feel for it. I knew there was a community room facing Folsom Street, but the shades were pulled down and I couldn’t see in. Noticing some brick repointing, I stepped across the street during a break in the traffic to see the bigger picture. The old brick wall is flanked by new building mass colored black. “Good,” I thought, “The new mass doesn’t compete with the old brick wall.” Horizontal wood slating hides the black mass, and introduces the first vowel in the building’s aesthetic vocabulary. The second aesthetic vowel enunciates itself above the ground level: color. “Good,” I thought again, “Yellow, orange, green—it’s like bringing a lively kid to a boring gathering that’s been going on far too long. It isn’t polished, it doesn’t worry if what it says is proper, but it’s there saying "look at me’ and at least you can react to it.” It’s another instance of smart design from architects David Baker & Partners.
Several people came and went as I was waiting for my friend to call me up to his apartment. There was an older guy in an army jacket who went in and out a couple of times (each time to a nice little coffee shop on the corner, I later found out). A couple in long rubber raincoats left with a grocery cart. One guy with a nice haircut hopped in a new Civic and drove off. I thought it strange that two Mercedes and a Mini Cooper left the parking garage. I later found out that resident parking spots aren’t available in the garage. Residents park on the street, if they have a car. The small garage houses three spots for City Car Share vehicles, and the rest are for building management and the support staff in the offices at the front of the building.
It also struck me as strange, when it came time to go inside, that I had to walk about 150 feet down an alleyway lined with struggling mini palm trees to get to a building entrance. I wondered about safety issues at night. “If friends are coming here in the evening,” said my friend as we relaxed in his fourth-floor studio, “I tell them to catch a cab and get dropped off right at the entrance.”
“How is it that he, young but with a steady professional job, is able to live in this complex?” I mused. The answer is that the top-floor units in this complex, funded by various nonprofits and government agencies, are market rate, although restricted to lower income individuals. The lower three floors are inhabited by those who are either regaining their lives from homelessness or are afflicted with HIV/AIDS or other debilitating diseases. My friend rents his studio loft apartment for $1,200 a month, while some of the tenants on the lower floors pay as little as $200.
The studio itself is quite spacious considering it is only 500 square feet (including the loft). Daylight enters from windows on two walls and the ceiling, opening up the space. A balcony (built using the horizontal wood-slat vocabulary) opens the little apartment to the outside. Although it is a studio, the apartment has four distinct spaces: the kitchen, the living space, the den and the loft. Each unit is interlocked with its neighbor, much like Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation, providing interesting living spaces as the units interact. The bathroom is enormous, as large as the den; such gracious proportions are part of the disabled-accessible design. A ceiling fan hangs high above the kitchen.
“This apartment is very energy efficient,” said my friend, “my electric bill is about ten dollars a month. The baseboard heaters aren’t electric, but hydronic, which is much more energy efficient. Also, the solar panels you see on the roof apparently power the base building functions.” When asked what he likes and doesn’t like about the apartment, he revealed, “What I don’t like are little things: the stair to the loft blocks the corner of the slot window; when my neighbor has the heater on, mine gets hot too; and the kitchen feels like it’s built at seven-eighths scale—everything’s just a bit too small for normal-sized kitchen goods. The sink is too small for a regular drainboard; the drawers are so narrow a silverware tray won’t fit. It’s no big deal, just a bit odd. I do enjoy the excellent lighting from the large windows. I like the little theatre-aisle nightlights going up the stairs—sometimes they are the only lighting I need in the evening. Of course, the location is prime. The neighborhood is cleaner and safer by day, and just a 20-minute walk from where I work at Fifth and Market.”
We walked through the public spaces. The corridors weren’t endless, as I’d feared, but open air, with design elements like changes in floor texture and doors hidden behind alternating bump outs to keep the scene interesting as you walk. We walked down the inviting outdoor stair to the ground level and paused to enjoy a bench designed into the small courtyard there. “This is going to be strange,” warned my friend, and we walked through a tall gate into what was either the residents’ private courtyards or a public walkway, which I agreed was the least effectively designed part of the entire complex. “I never take this route when I come down to do my laundry,” he said, “It’s just too uncomfortable.” Once through the public-private pathway, though, we entered a large courtyard dedicated to a children’s playground. Adjacent was the laundry room, which I noticed had full visual control of the playground. “It’s great, isn’t it?” asked my friend, “You can let the kids play while you fold the laundry, and not worry at all. The only problem is that there aren’t too many kids living here.”
Rolling my bike out to the street and riding off to my next appointment, I continued to think about this housing complex I’d just experienced. Mayor Newsom has a good idea going here. Accountability is the way to a better life, and I think just about everybody knows it, especially somebody coming in off of the street. Further, these apartments are nice, not your stereotypical institutional supportive-housing units, which lets the people living there know that somebody cares. As my friend said, “The place is done well on a budget. It’s not high-end design, but it has been designed, and that makes the difference.”
The building design and construction industry is buzzing about sustainable design. Sustainable usually means lowering water and energy consumption, recycling and reusing construction materials and selecting appropriate sites to build upon. These efforts will make a huge difference in our lifetimes. But another element of sustainability, not spoken of as often, is selecting the appropriate use for the building being built. I like the idea of neighborhood sustainability, or the ability of the neighborhood to continue on beyond your lifetime, or your children’s, because appropriately used buildings are added to the neighborhood.
The beautiful coastal land San Francisco was built on was around for a long time before there was a city here. It will be here for a long time after we’re gone. What can we do to make it a better place, a place that will be healthy and vibrant 100 years from now, or 500 years from now? The neighborhood near the Folsom-Dore apartments is weak, but growing. It is not yet completely self-sustainable, because if we left it on its own, it might not make it. But, with Folsom-Dore apartments, it has taken a step in the right direction.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or San Francisco Apartment Magazine. Robert Shurell is a licensed architect and designer with Architectural Resources Group, a firm specializing in historic preservation throughout the western United States. Feel free to contact him with questions or comments at Robert@argsf.com. © 2006 by San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.