From Redevelopment to Reconciliation: Housing Mistrust in San Francisco
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Written by Alice Chu, edited by Larry Dang
When hearing about San Francisco’s South of Market district, many things may come to mind. You may think of the towering high rises and fancy shops surrounding the Metreon and Moscone Center near the Financial District. Or perhaps the term SoMa conjures in your mind allusions to high rates of crime and urban poverty. To understand how the SoMa and other regions of San Francisco came to become so divided, we must first look to the history of urban planning and infrastructure building in the city. From the 1950s to the 1970s, two of the most affected San Francisco districts, the SoMa and the Western Addition, experienced urban renewal — the name given to a process that was intended to alleviate the effects of poverty through physical improvement and redevelopment of neighborhoods but instead displaced thousands of residents and tore apart communities. The pain and mistrust generated from the failures of those decades have persisted well into the present day, and attempts to reconcile those misgivings have forced the city to confront the reality of the past. To implement truly ethical and just housing policies and practices, the history of these neighborhoods must be understood: how did so many people lose their homes without fair compensation and proper replacement housing, and who was responsible?
Rhetoric, Racism, and the Redevelopment Agency
In 1948, the Board of Supervisors formed the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency to revitalize neighborhoods. After a long stretch of development stagnation during World War II, the Redevelopment Agency pushed for vigorous development in the post-war period. Part of their aggressive strategy included redeveloping the South of Market and Western Addition neighborhoods of San Francisco, using rhetoric like “blighted” and “slum clearance” to morally justify redevelopment of areas rich with culture and community and degrading the worth of these neighborhoods. Sociologist Herbert Gans stated in his critique of redevelopment, “However poor the condition of the flat, the slum is home, and for many it provides the support of neighboring relatives and friends, and a cultural milieu in which everyone has the same problems and is therefore willing to overlook occasional disreputable behavior.” Urban renewal was supposed to improve conditions for residents, but its actual implementation showed that administrators were often more motivated by establishing attractive neighborhoods and generating revenue than helping the poor. Another motivation was racism: examination of historical documents reveals that “slum clearance” was coded in the removal of residents of color. By the 1950s, the Western Addition was occupied predominately by African American residents. A 1966 redevelopment plan determined that African Americans would constitute 16.5% of the population in San Francisco by 1978, while the “target” amount was 13%. The Home Ownership Loan Corporation, a Roosevelt era corporation founded under the New Deal to refinance home mortgages to prevent foreclosure, also began the practice of redlining, or discouraging banks from giving out loans to residents of non-white neighborhoods. Black and Latinx Americans were thus prevented from moving and buying their own homes.
Federal legislation of the time streamlined the Agency’s work at the expense of SoMa and Western Addition residents. The Housing Act of 1937 was the first crucial piece of legislation that enabled the government to pursue urban renewal. It allowed housing authorities to utilize eminent domain project — the compulsory acquisition of private property — and to employ private firms to demolish existing buildings and build new ones. Under the Housing Act of 1949, urban renewal in areas regarded as “slums” received federal funding, which further bolstered the Agency’s aggressive housing strategy. Certain words were never fully defined in housing law, like “blighted,” a term that marked which parts of the city needed to be redeveloped. As a result, the Agency was able to apply the word rashly and to parts of the city that had little political clout, resulting in the destruction of many neighborhoods. Additionally, vague terminology and the non-binding nature of important provisions created problems. Title I of the 1949 Housing Act stated that the federal government could help fund projects that would be “predominantly residential,” but this phrase was never specified either. In the Western Addition, city administrators looking to maximize profits replaced residential buildings almost entirely with commercial development.
South of Market and the Land Rush
In the 1950s, many seamen, working men, and residential hotel occupants lived in the SoMa. Homelessness and drug addiction were prevalent, and in 1952, the Redevelopment Agency remarked that “the South of Market area for many years has been recognized as an area of blight producing a depressing, unhealthful, and unsafe living environment, retarding industrial development, and acting as a drain on the city treasury.” By 1953, many sections of the SoMa had been designated for redevelopment by the Board of Supervisors. Its convenient location and less expensive rent would be lucrative for businesses to serve the large firms downtown. One project proposed turning 87 acres of the SoMa land into the Yerba Buena Center, and Ben Swig’s San Francisco Prosperity Plan of 1954 called for a new sports stadium, a convention center, and numerous office buildings.
However, after the Board of Supervisors officially approved the redevelopment plans in 1966, demolition and relocation began, putting 4,000 residents and 700 small business at risk. SoMa resident Luther Briggs told the court the importance of his community:
“I have lived in this South of Market district for 30 years. My whole little world and existence and my only friends are here. To be forced out of here would upset my whole existence.”
Then Secretary-Treasurer of San Francisco George Johns declared, “skid row and broken bottles are presumably the targets [but] two minority groups, Negro families and the Aged, will be the most prominent victims of a massive eviction. It is no secret that unemployment in San Francisco is much too high. The present version of urban renewal and usual tampering with and elimination of industrial sites will only make it higher.” Although the Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TOOR) wrangled some victories for residents and slowed down development throughout the early 1970s, urban renewal escalated again in the late ’70s. After the Moscone Center was completed in 1981, a flier for a San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) conference included a graphic depicting aspects of the South of Market land rush, notably including Dianne Feinstein in the top right corner holding a gun to mark the start of developers racing to buy up land, as well as a pot of gold symbolizing SoMa real estate and a crushed hand under the pot, representative of the old neighborhood’s fate.
The Western Addition and the Housing Subtraction
During WWII, the Western Addition went through a significant transformation. Many African Americans who moved to San Francisco looking for work in war-related industries settled down in the Western Addition, particularly in the Fillmore district. From 1940 to 1950, the population of African Americans in the Western Addition increased from 2,144 to 14,888. The new wave of African American residents had a profound impact on the neighborhood’s community and culture. The popularity of jazz music skyrocketed in the Western Addition, and San Francisco quickly became the center of jazz on the West Coast. Sixty-three small businesses were rooted in the Fillmore, and Western Addition residents felt greatly tied to their community despite the unemployment and poverty that existed after the end of the war made many war industry jobs irrelevant.
Like with the South of Market, the Board of Supervisors recognized the excellent location of the Western Addition (just west of downtown) and its politically disenfranchised residents. In 1947, the City hired Mel Scott, a respected planner and former journalist to look into the redevelopment of the Western Addition. While he staunchly defended the black residents who moved into the Western Addition during the war, stating in his 1959 book The San Francisco Bay Area: A Metropolis in Perspective that “most of [those black residents] were products of a social system that resolutely kept them ‘in their place,’” his official report on rehabilitation prospects would eventually lead to many issues for the neighborhood. He concluded in this report, “Nothing short of a clean sweep and a new start can make of the district a genuinely good place to love,” allowing the City to move forward with its problematic redevelopment plans. Though Scott asked that the city ensure the displaced residents would be adequately housed in “future projects,” the City failed to live up to this request.
In June of 1948, the Board designated the Western Addition as a “blighted” area, using the area’s crime statistics as evidence, and greenlighted the redevelopment process. By design, relocation in the Western Addition became minority removal. A 1947 report that studied prospective redevelopment stated, “In view of the characteristically low income of colored and foreign-born families, only a relatively small proportion of them may be expected to occupy quarters in the new development.” The displacement of residents was a disaster. First, the destruction of housing occurred on a large scale within a very small time period, which caused significant upheaval. Only many years later did construction of replacement housing even begin, which meant that the displaced residents had no choice but to settle down elsewhere. Additionally, the redevelopment plans also focused on a second, distinct neighborhood: the several blocks between Octavia Street and Van Ness Avenue, which was wealthier and predominately white. Most areas designated for demolition were within the Fillmore, while the Redevelopment Agency planned to build a disproportionate amount of buildings in the wealthier district. Thus, the people who actually needed to find replacement housing weren’t compensated enough to afford the new units that were being built. Finally, the Redevelopment Agency turned a blind eye to the reality of segregation and redlining. By tearing down housing in the Fillmore, the Agency reduced a large amount of the housing available to African American families. The conditions condemned as “blight” were not removed. As redlining began to cause other predominantly African American neighborhoods in San Francisco to become overcrowded, the conditions just spread to these communities and worsened.
The deceitful actions of the Redevelopment Agency further exacerbated the situation. They skewed the statistics surrounding urban renewal by reporting that 97% of those displaced were moved into standard housing, while a 1959 review on the Western Addition by the United States General Accounting Office found that 33% of residents had been relocated into substandard housing. Furthermore, relocated residents were supposed to receive “fair market value” compensation, but the Agency worked to ensure that this was the lowest value possible. If most of the housing on a block was bought up, then the Agency would lower the value of the remaining resident-owned properties by demolishing all the buildings around them. The owners would be forced to accept compensation from the Agency, which was much less than their properties’ former value. With the increase in the cost of housing, unfinished new housing that rendered certificates useless, and unfair reimbursement, the promised right to return became a right to nothing.
By the late 1960s, most of the Fillmore had been destroyed. Between 20,000 and 30,000 Western Addition residents were relocated; like in the South of Market, urban renewal in the Western Addition had cost thousands of residents their homes. Former residents of SoMa and the Western Addition scattered to different parts of the city, and many faced long-lasting psychological consequences in addition to the tangible losses of their houses. As their community-based support systems were dismantled, they experienced a mixture of grief and anger. The breakup of close-knit neighborhoods also destroyed social capital such as relationships amongst neighbors and collective cultural norms, which help develop economic and political strength and healthy communities. In a matter of a few years, the vibrancy of some of San Francisco’s most diverse districts had completely vanished. However, for the people who had once lived in the South of Market and Western Addition, the memories of urban renewal, displacement, racism, and the government’s lies did not disappear as quickly as their demolished houses. Even as shiny new skyscrapers and posh restaurants took over more and more of San Francisco’s streets, the stories of urban renewal that were passed from generation to generation reminded dislocated residents, their children, and their grandchildren of the wealth that was inaccessible to them but had been generated at their expense.
HOPE SF and Moving Forward
Despite the painful past, the City and County of San Francisco is at the very least beginning to attempt to make amends. In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced the HOPE SF project, an initiative headed by the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (SFMOHCD) that renovates the city’s decaying public housing. HOPE SF is the nation’s first large-scale public housing revitalization project, differing from the federally based US Department of Housing and Urban Development project HOPE VI in that it doesn’t rely on federal tax credits for funding but instead integrates itself into the fabric of city government, allowing development sites to maintain stable funding from year to year.
Hunters View, an affordable housing project in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, was the first HOPE SF site — with rats and raw sewage, the former buildings had been ranked among the worst public housing in the U.S. However, the resident pushback against renovation was proof of the lingering suspicion that was rooted in the injustices of the 1950s and 1960s. In an exclusive interview with SFMOHCD Construction Representative Erin Carson, she stated that “it was like an inherent mistrust, and it was based in truth.” To the residents of Hunters View, redevelopment felt like repeating history: another government organization was going to decimate another predominately African American community and perhaps kick them out of San Francisco altogether. Building trust after “generation after generation of broken promises and lies” was an arduous, but vital, process. Carson stated,
“The only way to [establish trust] was to actually deliver, piece by piece, each promise that we [made].”
For example, when discussing job opportunities in the housing construction projects, the SFMOHCD eliminated barriers and trained residents in preparation for those jobs instead of just stating that jobs would be available in several years when construction commenced. The SFMOHCD also ensured that residents were involved in the decision-making. In relocation meetings, the SFMOHCD and residents would sit down together and go through each document page by page, examining wording that they disagreed on or the meaning of certain provisions.
The City’s promise of a right to return had been a fallacy multiple decades ago, and residents were worried that it would still be a fallacy. The countless meetings that were held to discuss the application process, the conditions of new housing, and eviction were couched in the idea of the right to return and defining what it meant. Developers in Hunters View continued to have meetings with the community until the residents and SFMOHCD alike were satisfied with the legal documents. To not repeat the mistakes of the past, they did not tear down all the existing buildings at once (the financially cheaper option); development happened in phases, and different services were offered onsite, such as childcare, job training, and financial planning. The process of replacing each and every one of the 267 units in the old Hunters View cost $450 million in total, made possible by private, city, state, and federal funding. By really listening to concerns, having difficult discussions, and working closely with residents, the SFMOHCD fulfilled their promises, step by step.
While there was initially significant concern that former residents being temporarily moved while redevelopment of Hunters View was occurring would not want to move back into the community (nationally, there is typically a 15% rate of return of residents into rebuilt public housing), an incredible 64% of former residents of Hunters View opted to move into the newly rebuilt buildings. Since residents moved back in, crime rates decreased and school attendance rates jumped by 30%. The success of Hunters View has calmed some of residents’ fears for future projects: residents of Alice Griffith, another HOPE SF project that the City is working on now, are more open to redevelopment, and they can learn from the mistakes of Hunters View to improve the process even further.
Combining Skepticism and Partnership
Carson believes that the key to successful rebuilding is “a healthy dose of skepticism with a… dose of partnership and trust.” Hunters View has shown the deep importance of community engagement. To ensure fair and ethical development, developers must maintain constant partnership and dialogue with residents. Even today, Hunters View residents are still involved in decisions surrounding maintenance and upkeep of the buildings and community, and they are polled about their experience to give the management a sense of how to better address residents’ wants and needs. Betty Brown, who called the old Hunters View home for 37 years and raised three children there, stated that she was skeptical at first that the new development would result in much. However, it finally has, and she declared,
“This is what we were waiting for.”
Carson mentioned that one of the reasons that the SFMOHCD was so meticulous with Hunters View and engaging residents was that it was the first HOPE SF project, and they wanted to get it right the first time around to establish trust for future projects. While Hunters View may represent a step in the right direction, one of Carson’s main points in discussing community partnerships was also that city officials must always be held accountable. Policymakers must be held responsible so that they cannot ignore their politically disenfranchised communities to cater to wealthier districts and developers. The success of Hunters View should not foster complacency but rather a desire to continue to push the SFMOHCD and the City to engage all future projects with as much care towards residents as they did in Hunters View, ensuring that the mistakes of the past can never be repeated again. ●
