462 22nd Avenue

Working to solve the housing crisis one building at a time is a great passion of ours. When the Accessory Dwelling program was introduced in San Francisco, we jumped at the chance to convert underutilized garages, storage spaces, and utility rooms into new apartments. Now, 4 years later, our small team has designed over 275 new rent-controlled apartments in San Francisco using this program. This project, at 462 22nd Avenue was one of our first. Here, we converted (5) parking spaces into (2) new accessory dwelling units, both 2-bed/2 bath units.

We rattled every cage we could, fighting for clarity in the process, streamlined permit reviews, and consistent plancheck reviews and we succeeded. Thanks to the leadership of Mayor London Breed and her focus on creating housing, we were honored to work with her team to solve these problems for all ADU projects in the City. Now, plancheck reviews are consistent, these projects are reviewed and approved in 6 months or less, and the code interpretations for these projects are clear. It is one of our proudest accomplishments as architects because it affects all projects in the city, not just ours.

As part of our fight for change, this project at 462 22nd Avenue was featured as an example of the difficulties we faced: sfchronicle.com

And 6 months later, when the City had successfully cleared their backlog of 900 ADU permits, we had the honor of being featured again: sfchronicle.com

Credits

  • Contractor:

    • Sincere Construction
      Jamson Wong
      415-806-3680
    • Engineer:

    • Darren Wong Engineering
      415-570-1636
      dwongengineer@gmail.com