Leo Sosa, Executive Director:
After 3 impactful years at 546 Bryant Street, Dev/Mission is moving out of our SoMa Headquarters. This is a very unfortunate situation for our organization, which has proudly supported this great community from this space. Since being at our HQ we have enrolled almost 200 young adults ages 18–24 through our Registered Pre-Apprenticeship Program, connected about 100 low-income families with computers through our Basic Digital Literacy Program, and distributed over 1,500 computers out of our Refurbishing Center at this location.
With rapid commercial growth across SoMa, real estate dynamics in our neighborhood have shifted significantly. With our lease up this year, we entered negotiations with our landlord expecting standard terms, but were informed that our rent would jump by 156%, bringing our monthly cost to $19,000. Because of this, we made the tough decision to leave our HQ by November 1st. As a community-focused nonprofit, taking on this cost would directly impact our operational budget and our ability to serve local youth.
Saying goodbye to a space that hosted our Pre-Apprenticeship cohorts, hands-on training, and countless hours preparing our trainees for careers in tech is tough, but staying financially resilient ensures our resources stay where they matter most: invested directly into our students.
Our core mission is not slowing down. While we actively search for our next permanent home, our program operations, tech programs, and team will temporarily move at our Mission District location: 360 Valencia Street. All of our free tech training programs, our Refurbathons, and our Community Technology Ambassador program will continue without interruption.
We are deeply grateful to every partner, funder, mentor, and alum who helped make our SoMa HQ such a vibrant learning hub. We view this pivot as the start of an exciting new chapter and will share updates as soon as we finalize plans for our future permanent Headquarters.
