Land Use Committee backs Village Special Use District at 80 Julian to serve Native American community

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Land Use and Transportation Committee on Feb. 27 voted unanimously to recommend a planning-code amendment creating a Village Special Use District at 80 Julian Avenue, a project intended to provide health, social and cultural services for the city's Native American community.

Planning Department staff said the Special Use District would allow conditional exceptions to selected planning-code requirements, change the site's height-and-bulk district from 45X to 80X and facilitate a six-story, roughly 41,000-square-foot building. Alex Westoff, planning department staff, said the project would include a youth recreation and development center, elder services and community space on the first floor, youth programs and social services on the second floor, a dental clinic on the third floor, a medical clinic on the fourth floor and 21 group-housing rooms on the fifth and sixth floors intended to house participants and graduates of Friendship House programs.

"Through the proposed uses, programming and services, the development will help to anchor the local American Indian community, assisting with cultural stabilization and displacement reduction," Westoff said in his presentation.

Peter Bratt of Friendship House framed the project as the culmination of a decades-long vision. "The Village will be a place where our people can access vital support services, but more importantly, it will be a place where people can gather in community to enjoy a sense of connection, acceptance, belonging," Bratt said, invoking the organization's late founder and the project's cultural mission.

Multiple Friendship House staff, current and former clients, and community leaders spoke in support during public comment. Dawila Harrison, a project lead, described the Village as "a sense of belonging" and said it would provide mothers, children and people in recovery with options they lack today. Mary Travis Allen, advisory board president for the American Indian Cultural District, told supervisors the project would raise visibility, promote healing and give youth a clearer identity and future.

The Planning Commission previously recommended approval of the conditional-use application contingent on the SUD becoming effective. Planning staff reported receiving letters of support from neighborhood and cultural organizations and no letters of opposition.

On a motion to advance the item, supervisors voted 3-0 in favor of recommending the ordinance as moved by Chair Melgar; several supervisors asked to be added as cosponsors. The committee's recommendation forwards the zoning amendment and related approvals to the full Board of Supervisors for final consideration.