Pioneering Leader for Equitable Sustainable Housing: A Member Impact Story

By Natalie Hickerson

ILFI is proudly featuring a series of member impact stories to showcase and celebrate some of the wonderful work our community has been doing. This week we introduce architect Anne Torney, leader of Mithun’s San Francisco office and Board Member of the San Francisco-based Housing Action Coalition.

To Anne Torney, climate change and income inequality are the two biggest challenges of our time. Her work at Mithun, a multi-disciplinary firm committed to sustainable integrated design, allows her to address both of these issues at once by helping to spearhead new and greener approaches to affordable housing. She has worked with numerous low-income housing providers on buildings in urban areas up and down the west coast, keeping health and sustainability at the center of all efforts.

A current project that embodies this important work is Casa Adelante 681 Florida. Located in the historically Latinx Mission District of San Francisco, the project is a collaboration of two neighborhood-based nonprofits, MEDA and TNDC, and is the second in a cohort of six all-electric, fossil fuel-free affordable housing buildings by Mithun. This affordable housing project demonstrates not only the ecological promise of cutting-edge sustainable design but the potential of these buildings to serve as infrastructure for community identity. The roof, for example, is a valuable outdoor resource and social space that can bring residents together. Thanks to close collaboration with one of the developers’ strong urban gardening programs, the roof deck features a garden with designated beds and tool storage areas. People using the adjacent laundry rooms can hang out with people who are gardening, and the rooftop space can be used for birthday parties and other outdoor gatherings—with a beautiful view of the city as a backdrop.

The ground floor of the building will serve as the new Cultural Arts Healing Center for Carnaval San Francisco, a community group that honors Latin American, Caribbean, and African Diasporic cultural history through performances, visual arts, classes, and more. The patterns on the space’s entry gates, designed by local high school kids through the neighborhood arts group Youth Art Exchange, weave together references to past and present Latinx culture. An outdoor pre-function multi-use space allows events and activities to spill out onto the street, amplifying the presence of cultural institutions beyond participants to include the wider community.

Anne asserts that projects like 681 Florida and the others of its cohort have impacts far beyond the spaces themselves: they are demonstrations of what is possible. Mithun used this group of buildings to conduct research comparing the costs of all-electric with conventional systems and was able to demonstrate that going fossil fuel free was not only safer and healthier for residents, but was cost neutral—and even cost-saving. Anne explains that the Mithun team has “shared this research widely at different conferences and with cities considering reach codes, in order to help folks understand how they can move the needle on decarbonization.”  Illustrative success stories like this can be very effective in convincing skeptical developers and municipalities to embrace large-scale sustainability goals.

In terms of the broader ILFI community, Anne values the opportunity to see what people are doing across the country, “at different scales and in different places with different levels of urbanity”. She believes that a key function of sustainability organizations is to inspire and empower and that projects implementing groundbreaking ideas addressing the intersection of climate change and inequity can serve as path-breakers demonstrating proof of concept, encouraging others to take bold steps in their own practices. 

About Anne Torney

Anne is an architect who has made affordable multi-family housing and transit-oriented urban infill the focus of her work for more than 30 years. She brings a deep commitment to community voices and ecological performance to all her projects, which range from supportive studios for formerly homeless seniors, to the revitalization of isolated public housing sites into walkable, mixed-use, and mixed-income communities. Her affordable housing experience includes award-winning projects in San Francisco as well as San Jose, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Notable examples include Casa Adelante at 2060 Folsom, and Sansome and Broadway Family Housing, a CNU Charter Award honoree. Anne serves on Mithun’s Board of Directors and leads the firm’s San Francisco office. She is a longtime Board Member of the Housing Action Coalition. An active member of AIA and the Urban Land Institute, Anne is a frequent contributor to conversations on equity, affordable housing, and diversity in the profession.

Interested in becoming part of our community of practitioners, organizations, and everyday advocates transforming the building industry through the holistic lens of climate, health, and equity?