Outer Sunset Residents Frustrated by Delays Opening Shirley Chisholm Village Community Room

The door on the southwest corner of 1360 43rd Avenue has been locked since the building went up. Behind it sits a 749-square-foot room, built with public funds and documented in 2021 planning materials as a space that would be "open by reservation by the neighborhood at large." Two years later, Kathy Howard, a longtime Outer Sunset community activist who attended every outreach meeting held for Shirley Chisholm Village, has never stepped inside.

"We're not stupid. We're not asleep. We're going to act and act until we get our meeting room," Howard said.

The room, which sits beside the 135-unit Shirley Chisholm Village affordable housing complex at 43rd Avenue, was a central concession that helped MidPen Housing win neighborhood backing for a project built on the former site of Playland at 43rd Avenue, a beloved park with a playground, skatepark, and community garden that operated from 2016 to 2022. In slides presented by MidPen staffer Lauren Fuhry at a 2021 community meeting, the space was labeled "publicly accessible interior." A 2021 memo to the Citywide Affordable Housing Loan Committee described it as "a community room that will be open by reservation by the neighborhood at large."

What residents were not told, according to Howard, was that access would be contingent on MidPen securing a full-time nonprofit tenant to manage, insure, and maintain the room. Lyn Hikida, speaking for MidPen, said the financing structure left no alternative. "This building is a separate space from the affordable housing over there," Hikida said. "It needs to be separately insured, managed, maintained. There are utility expenses here and that can't be covered by the public funds that are used for affordable housing."

Gordon Mar, who served as the district's supervisor during the planning phase, pushed back on that framing. "Of course, this publicly accessible community room was very much part of the discussion," Mar said, "but never was it understood to be contingent on an arrangement with the nonprofit that would operate it."

The original operator, Sunset Youth Services, announced at a 2021 virtual meeting, withdrew in 2024 after the city's Department of Children, Youth and Their Families cut the nonprofit's grant funding. MidPen had required a one-time $125,000 buildout fee from any tenant, offset by free rent in the first year, but the ongoing cost of staffing community events proved prohibitive. "It just started feeling complicated," said Sunset Youth Services' Stueckle. "We didn't have the money to really pull it off."

On April 1, 2026, nearly two years after Shirley Chisholm Village was completed, MidPen announced that Children's After School Arts, known as CASA, had signed a lease for the space. CASA, a children's afterschool art and wellness nonprofit, is currently furnishing the full 1,562-square-foot suite, which includes the 749-square-foot community room it plans to make available for public reservation. The booking system is expected to launch June 1, with a community open house scheduled for June 6. When asked about evening access for neighborhood meetings, a CASA representative said the organization eventually plans to move to keyless entry.

"It was clearly stated that these would be public community rooms," Howard wrote. "There is no ambiguity about what the public was promised." For residents who have been waiting since 2024, the June 6 open house will be their first real chance to test whether that promise holds.