Gimme a Home . . . - Revision history

Ccarlsson: fixed links

2022-11-05T06:20:57Z

fixed links

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:20, 4 November 2022
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	<font size=4>Yerba Buena Redevelopment</font size>		<font size=4>Yerba Buena Redevelopment</font size>

	Today’s Yerba Buena Gardens sits atop the Moscone Convention Center, and is at the heart of a thriving museum district. The Center for the Performing Arts and the Yerba Buena Museum are part of the main blocks surrounded by 3rd and 4th, Mission and Folsom, along with the Children’s Zeum, an ice rink and carousel, a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and waterfall, a 2.5 acre lawn with free public music shows, and the Metreon mall on the northwest corner. The SF Museum of Modern Art is east across 3rd Street, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum is in the old PG&E substation on the north side of Mission, to be joined soon by the Mexican Museum currently under construction. The Museum of the African Diaspora and the California Historical Society are just east on Mission past 3rd Street. In the early 1960s, when the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) laid out its vision for these central city blocks, none of this was on the drawing board except a version of the Convention Center. The public amenities such as the Children’s Museum (Zeum) and the ice rink, along with the two Yerba Buena Center (YBC) cultural facilities, were all achieved as a result of years of struggle and legal actions that blocked the original vision of the SFRA, which would have built a modern sports arena or stadium surrounded by highrise offices along with the planned convention center. Today’s neighborhood also houses several large low-cost senior housing projects, all built before any Yerba Buena Gardens facilities were complete. This happened in response to successful legal action taken on behalf of the organized tenants of the former SRO hotels that filled these same blocks before Redevelopment.		Today’s Yerba Buena Gardens sits atop the Moscone Convention Center, and is at the heart of a thriving museum district. The Center for the Performing Arts and the Yerba Buena Museum are part of the main blocks surrounded by 3rd and 4th, Mission and Folsom, along with the Children’s Zeum, an ice rink and carousel, a [[Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial\|Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and waterfall]], a 2.5 acre lawn with free public music shows, and the Metreon mall on the northwest corner. The SF Museum of Modern Art is east across 3rd Street, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum is in the old PG&E substation on the north side of Mission, to be joined soon by the Mexican Museum currently under construction. The Museum of the African Diaspora and the California Historical Society are just east on Mission past 3rd Street. In the early 1960s, when the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) laid out its vision for these central city blocks, none of this was on the drawing board except a version of the Convention Center. The public amenities such as the Children’s Museum (Zeum) and the ice rink, along with the two Yerba Buena Center (YBC) cultural facilities, were all achieved as a result of years of struggle and legal actions that blocked the original vision of the SFRA, which would have built a modern sports arena or stadium surrounded by highrise offices along with the planned convention center. Today’s neighborhood also houses several large low-cost senior housing projects, all built before any Yerba Buena Gardens facilities were complete. This happened in response to successful legal action taken on behalf of the organized tenants of the former SRO hotels that filled these same blocks before Redevelopment.

	The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' and ''San Francisco Examiner'' both began running pro-redevelopment articles in the mid-1960s, emphasizing that the neighborhood was run down and derelict, populated by winos and bums. That was not well received by the actual residents of the hundreds of SRO rooms in the local hotels along Mission, Howard, Third Street, and Fourth Street. Retired sailors and longshoremen made up a significant portion of the residents there, men who had worked long and hard since before WWII, and were enjoying their retirement years living among old working pals and friends with similar histories in the neighborhood. Many of them had been strikers during the [[1934 Big Strike\|Big Strike of 1934]] and the subsequent labor actions that led to the thriving union movement that gave San Francisco its reputation as a labor town.		The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' and ''San Francisco Examiner'' both began running pro-redevelopment articles in the mid-1960s, emphasizing that the neighborhood was run down and derelict, populated by winos and bums. That was not well received by the actual residents of the hundreds of SRO rooms in the local hotels along Mission, Howard, Third Street, and Fourth Street. Retired sailors and longshoremen made up a significant portion of the residents there, men who had worked long and hard since before WWII, and were enjoying their retirement years living among old working pals and friends with similar histories in the neighborhood. Many of them had been strikers during the [[1934 Big Strike\|Big Strike of 1934]] and the subsequent labor actions that led to the thriving union movement that gave San Francisco its reputation as a labor town.
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	''Photo: Chris Carlsson''		''Photo: Chris Carlsson''

	The developer was TOOR’s successor organization, [~~http~~:www.todco.org Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO)]. A 70-unit expansion, Woolf House II, opened next door in 1982, and a third part was added 1996. TODCO’s Mendelsohn House was opened in 1988 on Folsom just south of the Moscone Convention Center consisting of 189 well-built apartments overlooking an 18,000-square-foot public community garden cession in midblock. In 1977, bureaucratic rules forced TODCO to give its fourth location (across the alley from Mendelsohn House) to a Filipino organization, where they built 147 senior apartments under separate management and ownership. These four developments resulted from TOOR’s successful fight against the original relocation plans and to this day are providing more than 600 units of low-rent units to 850 residents. TODCO has gone on to rehabilitate the Knox Hotel, Hotel Isabel, the Leland, and the Bayanihan House at 6th and Mission, all providing long-term low-rent housing to hundreds of area residents.		The developer was TOOR’s successor organization, [https://www.todco.org Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO)]. A 70-unit expansion, Woolf House II, opened next door in 1982, and a third part was added 1996. TODCO’s Mendelsohn House was opened in 1988 on Folsom just south of the Moscone Convention Center consisting of 189 well-built apartments overlooking an 18,000-square-foot public community garden cession in midblock. In 1977, bureaucratic rules forced TODCO to give its fourth location (across the alley from Mendelsohn House) to a Filipino organization, where they built 147 senior apartments under separate management and ownership. These four developments resulted from TOOR’s successful fight against the original relocation plans and to this day are providing more than 600 units of low-rent units to 850 residents. TODCO has gone on to rehabilitate the Knox Hotel, Hotel Isabel, the Leland, and the Bayanihan House at 6th and Mission, all providing long-term low-rent housing to hundreds of area residents.

	[[Image:Bayanihan-house 0244.jpg]]		[[Image:Bayanihan-house 0244.jpg]]

Ccarlsson at 04:25, 15 January 2020

2020-01-15T04:25:20Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:25, 14 January 2020
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	[[Image:George Woolf of Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TOOR) 1970 TOR-0092.jpg\|left]] '''George Woolf'''		[[Image:George Woolf of Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TOOR) 1970 TOR-0092.jpg\|left]] '''George Woolf'''

	'''Photo: Lee Sims collection, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library, TOR-0092''		''Photo: Lee Sims collection, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library, TOR-0092''

	The first president of TOOR was George Woolf, a octogenarian labor militant who had once led the Alaska Cannery Workers Union (which was eventually absorbed into the ILWU). He was a no-nonsense person with a long pedigree of engaging in collective actions. Another early leader who eventually succeeded Woolf was Peter Mendelsohn, a long-time sailor who had gone door to door in the 1950s to raise money for ILWU President Harry Bridges’ legal defense when he was repeatedly accused by the federal government of being a communist. Mendelsohn penned a letter from TOOR to Harry Bridges at the height of their effort to resist the Redevelopment Agency’s plans to tear down their homes:		The first president of TOOR was George Woolf, a octogenarian labor militant who had once led the Alaska Cannery Workers Union (which was eventually absorbed into the ILWU). He was a no-nonsense person with a long pedigree of engaging in collective actions. Another early leader who eventually succeeded Woolf was Peter Mendelsohn, a long-time sailor who had gone door to door in the 1950s to raise money for ILWU President Harry Bridges’ legal defense when he was repeatedly accused by the federal government of being a communist. Mendelsohn penned a letter from TOOR to Harry Bridges at the height of their effort to resist the Redevelopment Agency’s plans to tear down their homes:
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	[[Image:Woolf-House-250-4th-St 174508.jpg]]		[[Image:Woolf-House-250-4th-St 174508.jpg]]

	'''Woolf House at 250 4th Street in 2017.'''		'''Woolf House II at 250 4th Street in 2017.'''

	''Photo: Chris Carlsson''		''Photo: Chris Carlsson''

	The developer was TOOR’s successor organization, Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO). A 70-unit expansion, Woolf House II, opened next door in 1982, and a third part was added 1996. TODCO’s Mendelsohn House was opened in 1988 on Folsom just south of the Moscone Convention Center consisting of 189 well-built apartments overlooking an 18,000-square-foot public community garden cession in midblock. In 1977, bureaucratic rules forced TODCO to give its fourth location (across the alley from Mendelsohn House) to a Filipino organization, where they built 147 senior apartments under separate management and ownership. These four developments resulted from TOOR’s successful fight against the original relocation plans and to this day are providing more than 600 units of low-rent units to 850 residents. TODCO has gone on to rehabilitate the Knox Hotel, Hotel Isabel, the Leland, and the Bayanihan House at 6th and Mission, all providing long-term low-rent housing to hundreds of area residents.		The developer was TOOR’s successor organization, [http:www.todco.org Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO)]. A 70-unit expansion, Woolf House II, opened next door in 1982, and a third part was added 1996. TODCO’s Mendelsohn House was opened in 1988 on Folsom just south of the Moscone Convention Center consisting of 189 well-built apartments overlooking an 18,000-square-foot public community garden cession in midblock. In 1977, bureaucratic rules forced TODCO to give its fourth location (across the alley from Mendelsohn House) to a Filipino organization, where they built 147 senior apartments under separate management and ownership. These four developments resulted from TOOR’s successful fight against the original relocation plans and to this day are providing more than 600 units of low-rent units to 850 residents. TODCO has gone on to rehabilitate the Knox Hotel, Hotel Isabel, the Leland, and the Bayanihan House at 6th and Mission, all providing long-term low-rent housing to hundreds of area residents.

	[[Image:Bayanihan-house 0244.jpg]]		[[Image:Bayanihan-house 0244.jpg]]

Ccarlsson at 04:19, 15 January 2020

2020-01-15T04:19:54Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:19, 14 January 2020
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	The long housing crisis that dates from the 1970s to the present corresponds closely to the advent of the neoliberal era. The federal government’s steady retreat from housing support has not been replaced by state and local governments. This has resulted in the emergence, since the beginning of the 1980s, of a growing homeless population in most major US cities. The sharp increase in capital flowing into real estate, both residential and commercial, during the past decades, has unhinged a century-long stability that kept the upward trajectory of housing prices and wages moving together. Housing prices have raced far ahead of income, leaving most San Franciscans locked out of moving to new homes, either rentals or owned. As George Monbiot recently noted in a column, where it once took a working class family in England about three years to amass enough to start buying a home, it now takes an average of 19 years! (9) Similarly impossible numbers confront people in U.S. cities too.		The long housing crisis that dates from the 1970s to the present corresponds closely to the advent of the neoliberal era. The federal government’s steady retreat from housing support has not been replaced by state and local governments. This has resulted in the emergence, since the beginning of the 1980s, of a growing homeless population in most major US cities. The sharp increase in capital flowing into real estate, both residential and commercial, during the past decades, has unhinged a century-long stability that kept the upward trajectory of housing prices and wages moving together. Housing prices have raced far ahead of income, leaving most San Franciscans locked out of moving to new homes, either rentals or owned. As George Monbiot recently noted in a column, where it once took a working class family in England about three years to amass enough to start buying a home, it now takes an average of 19 years! (9) Similarly impossible numbers confront people in U.S. cities too.

			[[Image:Eviction-zone-sign 2150.jpg\|340px\|right]] '''Guerrilla installation at Folsom and 24th in the Mission.'''

			''Photo: Chris Carlsson''

	San Francisco is worse than most places since it has been the deliberate policy of the political leaders to stimulate “Manhattanization” and the expansion of downtown as a source of jobs, while doing very little to plan for the inevitable increase in needed housing. Facing the city’s stubborn unwillingness to plan and direct housing construction, organizers and activists who came together in 1979 as the Council of Community Housing Organizations put forth the first office/housing linkage ordinance in the country called the Office Housing Production Program in 1981. Decades later, the legacy of this approach is that the city has relied almost exclusively on new inclusionary rules and/or in lieu fees from developers as compensation for allowing them to decide what to build and for whom. Rather than a robust, self-financing public housing sector buying lands and building low-cost high quality housing for its residents, San Francisco, like most U.S. cities, leaves the initiative to private developers. Although the city has long had a vigorous Planning Department, and a Planning Commission that oversees it, private developers still largely set the agenda. If a public interest is identified and sought by city planners, it is assumed that the private developers will adapt to it in exchange for concessions on building height, density, parking, inclusionary minimums, etc. For many decades, the overwhelming majority of new construction has been luxury housing serving the tiny fraction at the top of the income scale. The slippery and vague idea of “affordability” has been defined to apply to families making over $100,000 (magically transformed into the “middle class”) due to the absurdly skewed incomes of the ultra-rich in San Francisco. This leaves the majority of San Franciscans who earn between minimum wage and $40/hr. to fight over the trickle of “below market rate” units required by the deals struck with private builders.		San Francisco is worse than most places since it has been the deliberate policy of the political leaders to stimulate “Manhattanization” and the expansion of downtown as a source of jobs, while doing very little to plan for the inevitable increase in needed housing. Facing the city’s stubborn unwillingness to plan and direct housing construction, organizers and activists who came together in 1979 as the Council of Community Housing Organizations put forth the first office/housing linkage ordinance in the country called the Office Housing Production Program in 1981. Decades later, the legacy of this approach is that the city has relied almost exclusively on new inclusionary rules and/or in lieu fees from developers as compensation for allowing them to decide what to build and for whom. Rather than a robust, self-financing public housing sector buying lands and building low-cost high quality housing for its residents, San Francisco, like most U.S. cities, leaves the initiative to private developers. Although the city has long had a vigorous Planning Department, and a Planning Commission that oversees it, private developers still largely set the agenda. If a public interest is identified and sought by city planners, it is assumed that the private developers will adapt to it in exchange for concessions on building height, density, parking, inclusionary minimums, etc. For many decades, the overwhelming majority of new construction has been luxury housing serving the tiny fraction at the top of the income scale. The slippery and vague idea of “affordability” has been defined to apply to families making over $100,000 (magically transformed into the “middle class”) due to the absurdly skewed incomes of the ultra-rich in San Francisco. This leaves the majority of San Franciscans who earn between minimum wage and $40/hr. to fight over the trickle of “below market rate” units required by the deals struck with private builders.

	Knowing many of the individuals who populate the tenants rights and anti-eviction movements in San Francisco, I can attest to their dogged persistence and deep knowledge of the intricacies of surviving and sometimes even thriving in one of the global epicenters of wealth accumulation. The tidal waves of money that have washed into the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular have necessarily brought with them shocking levels of poverty, homelessness, and a degradation of life for a significant fraction of our neighbors, both housed and unhoused. Organizations, activists, and lawyers are all overwhelmed by the endless cycles of investment, development, speculation, displacement, eviction, destruction, and despair. Communities have been permanently ripped apart. Friends and family have been banished to the far reaches of the Bay Area or completely out of California. The harsh logic of a housing market that caters to the nouveau riche of the tech, medical, and legal industries while starving public housing and low-cost private housing of investment has dramatically reshaped the demographic make-up of who lives in San Francisco in a few short decades.		Knowing many of the individuals who populate the tenants rights and anti-eviction movements in San Francisco, I can attest to their dogged persistence and deep knowledge of the intricacies of surviving and sometimes even thriving in one of the global epicenters of wealth accumulation. The tidal waves of money that have washed into the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular have necessarily brought with them shocking levels of poverty, homelessness, and a degradation of life for a significant fraction of our neighbors, both housed and unhoused. Organizations, activists, and lawyers are all overwhelmed by the endless cycles of investment, development, speculation, displacement, eviction, destruction, and despair. Communities have been permanently ripped apart. Friends and family have been banished to the far reaches of the Bay Area or completely out of California. The harsh logic of a housing market that caters to the ''nouveau riche'' of the tech, medical, and legal industries while starving public housing and low-cost private housing of investment has dramatically reshaped the demographic make-up of who lives in San Francisco in a few short decades.

	Decades-long efforts to address the steady shrinking of low-cost housing affordable to the poor and poorly-paid working classes have had some success. Using lawsuits to extract concessions from developers, and office/housing linkages that pull fees and actual units from luxury developments, the nonprofit housing movement has managed to build over 25,000 apartments since the 1970s. But nobody can look at San Francisco in 2019 without being overwhelmed by the building boom that has reshaped the skyline and many neighborhoods, with construction cranes and cement trucks clogging the city, rushing to put up the latest crop of highrises before the next downturn hits.		Decades-long efforts to address the steady shrinking of low-cost housing affordable to the poor and poorly-paid working classes have had some success. Using lawsuits to extract concessions from developers, and office/housing linkages that pull fees and actual units from luxury developments, the nonprofit housing movement has managed to build over 25,000 apartments since the 1970s. But nobody can look at San Francisco in 2019 without being overwhelmed by the building boom that has reshaped the skyline and many neighborhoods, with construction cranes and cement trucks clogging the city, rushing to put up the latest crop of highrises before the next downturn hits.

Ccarlsson at 04:16, 15 January 2020

2020-01-15T04:16:28Z

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Ccarlsson: Created page with "''' Historical Essay ''' ''by Chris Carlsson, 2019; originally published on [https://notesfromb..."

2020-01-15T02:29:19Z

Created page with "''' Historical Essay ''' ''by Chris Carlsson, 2019; originally published on [https://notesfromb..."

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''' Historical Essay '''

''by Chris Carlsson, 2019; originally published on [https://notesfrombelow.org/article/gimme-home Notes From Below]''

[[Image:Cc-and-halloul-at-fernando-eviction-protest 20190531 113713.jpg]]

'''At the anti-eviction protest, May 31, 2019, on Howard Street in San Francisco.'''

''Photo: Chris Carlsson''

I arrived early with my 2-year-old granddaughter to a park in central San Francisco. A half hour later others began to arrive and at the appointed time, a group of about 20 dedicated housing activists walked two blocks to a nondescript tech office. One person, pretending to have a package delivery, rang the bell and got the door open. We all quickly filed in to the unsuspecting workplace and fanned out distributing leaflets denouncing a woman (who was thought to work there) for her planned “owner move-in” eviction of the co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO, pronounced Choo-choo) and his wife and son from their Noe Valley apartment of many years. The office workers there told us that she was hadn’t worked there for over a month, and our direct action effort concluded almost as soon as it had begun. We left fliers behind and asked them to let her know we stopped by. My granddaughter sat on my shoulders gamely clutching one of the handouts, not yet knowing she had just attended her first anti-eviction direct action protest.

Members of our entourage included long-time activists from the Housing Rights Committee, the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Eviction Defense Collaborative, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, and the aforementioned CCHO. I was just a body there, but I also sit on the board of the San Francisco Community Land Trust (SFCLT), and am blessed with a low-rent, eviction-proof apartment in the Pigeon Palace, a SFCLT property we got through what we like to joke was one of San Francisco’s biggest recent land heists (by community members rather than profiteers). (After a long, complicated political organizing effort over several years, our building was purchased in a 2015 probate auction by SFCLT with a huge $2.6 million “soft second” loan from Mayor Ed Lee’s Office of Housing and Community Development—something that never would have happened without the surrounding political mobilization in the Mission during the 2013-2015 period in which the purchase took place.)

Looking at housing from an “autonomist” perspective raises the immediate question of the state. Typically, autonomist analyses focus on the direct action of workers in workplaces, or when applied to housing, the focus falls on the direct efforts of tenants and communities to control homes, apartments, buildings, blocks, neighborhoods, and communities. Tenant unions, rent strikes, and eviction defense squads can also highlight a direct action-focused housing politics. Squatting may be the quintessential example of autonomist housing politics, but squatting has never been able to gain anything but very short-term occupations in San Francisco since the 1970s (at least those that have announced themselves—it is thought that there are some ongoing successful squats that have stayed far below the radar). Unlike European cities which have some legal space for seizing abandoned or derelict properties by squatters, the sanctity of private property dominates San Francisco and U.S. politics.

Focusing on everyday people and not on politicians and businessmen makes sense of course. But in the course of decades of bitter conflict over access to shelter, or better, the right to good quality housing, the battle always involves public policy as much as direct action. The basic legal structures and public policies surrounding property and wealth distribution inevitably affect the shape, duration, and results of housing struggles.

Success is not defined very often in autonomist politics. The maximalist goal of total revolution, a mythical end point in which all commodification of humans and the products of our shared labor is abolished, where we collectively and democratically decide about every aspect of our lives, is an enticing chimera that haunts the stunted realities of limited reforms. A utopian future in which every person is entitled to and has a well-made, comfortable, well-maintained home of adequate space in self-organized communities, is far from our current reality.

In the reforms we DO enact, usually via political pressure on elected government, or slightly more directly in ballot propositions (swamped by the distorted claims bankrolled by the other side’s overwhelming financial advantage in campaign spending), gains are consolidated, breathing space is opened, and we can actually feel secure and comfortable in our own homes, whether rented or “owned.” San Francisco has also pioneered a hybrid form of nonprofit housing development corporations that have worked alongside tenant organizing since the 1970s to expand the availability of “affordable housing.”

Both of the stories told here led to ongoing efforts that changed federal and local laws and built real buildings full of permanently low-cost homes, mostly for seniors. Taking a longer view, these struggles also gave rise to two of San Francisco’s most successful nonprofit housing development corporations (Tenants and Owners Development Corporation—TODCO, and Chinatown Community Development Corporation—CCDC) which have gone on to build and rehabilitate thousands of low-cost housing units that to this day allow tens of thousands of San Franciscans who don’t make a lot of money to live here in relative grace.

Social mobilizations at the dawn of San Francisco’s Housing Wars pushed the limits of what was possible at the time. Two memorable fights, each lasting a decade, each dependent on concurrent political movements that cross-pollinated with them and fed mutual inspiration and staying power, show both the power and limitations of housing politics. While gains were made, and worst-case scenarios were held at bay, the seeds of today’s unsustainable housing crisis (as well as some of the best responses to it) are clearly visible in the twists and turns that shaped the fight over Yerba Buena Gardens and the Redevelopment Agency’s agenda for South of Market, as well as the epic battle over the International Hotel (I-Hotel) on Kearny Street. The I-Hotel and Yerba Buena fights both began in the 1960s and culminated in the late 1970s, pushing out the original inhabitants and organizers. However,over the ensuing decades they produced permanent low-cost housing for the kinds of people who had originally put up the fight (albeit not the specific people who actually fought).