From the San Francisco Chronicle:

An alliance between environmentalists and housing developers might seem like a case of strange bedfellows. But in the six years since the Sierra Club launched its campaign against urban sprawl, the organization has worked not only to fight developments it considers bad, but also to support those it considers good, said Tim Frank, a senior policy adviser for the Sierra Club.

So his group came to Affordable Housing Associate’s defense, filing an amicus brief that argued the development — an infill project near several bus lines and a half-mile from the Ashby BART — would be exactly the kind of project that prevents sprawl.

It was the second time the Sierra Club filed a brief on behalf of an affordable housing developer, Frank said, and might be the first time an environmental organization helped to win a court victory in support of a development. “This is a very good project in a very good location, and we thought it was intolerable that people would try to stand in the way,” he said. Affordable Housing Associates now hopes to break ground on the $10.5 million project by the end of the year, said Kevin Zwick, the nonprofit group’s director of housing development, and to open units to low-income seniors with federal Section 8 subsidy vouchers by late next year or early in 2006.