VOLUME 2, NUMBER 19    <>  MONDAY, MAY 14, 2001

Stylish and energetic Willie Brown has drawn attention across the nation as the first black mayor of this diverse city. Behind the scenes, however, his administration pursues a program that is contributing to the exodus of black residents — part of a process that some observers call the “whitening” of San Francisco.

The story of the city’s Hayes Valley housing projects offers a telling window into what’s going on. A year ago, the projects were off-limits to outsiders, two square blocks of contested turf in the retail drug wars.

Today, there are holes in the ground where the projects were, and 300 black families have been blown out of town. Real-estate prices on neighboring blocks have gone through the roof, and privately owned townhouses are planned for the site.

Public housing is disappearing from San Francisco, and the city’s social and economic structure is being transformed as poor people of color move to towns 10 to 50 miles away in search of jobs and affordable housing.

Since 1970, San Francisco has lost one-quarter of its black community: 25,000 people. They have been pushed out by the high costs of living in one of the world’s most beautiful cities — low apartment vacancy rates and a dearth of space for new construction have kept rents among the highest in the country.

The exodus also reflects a political decision to cut San Francisco’s public housing stock.

This is not a purely local decision. Rather, the city is implementing a national policy. In 1995, the federal department of Housing and Ur ban Development (HUD) proclaimed, “The single most pressing problem facing America’s cities today is the concentration of poor people, particularly poor minorities. Now “deconcentration,” a term first coined by a Rand Corporation consultant in the early 1980s, has become the catchphrase of both housing policymakers and developers as inner-city housing projects are eradicated.

The story has a particular twist in San Francisco. Brown won his narrow victory with the help of an unprecedented turn-out of black voters. Yet his administration has undercut the pressing housing needs of his most loyal constituency.

Some 60 percent of San Francisco’s black population lives in subsidized housing — and that housing is on increasingly scarce and valuable land. So the national agenda of urban deconcentration fits hand-in-glove with the city’s growing need to house burgeoning numbers of high-income professionals.

Hayes Valley tenants were lured into approving redevelopment plans and leaving their homes with promises of jobs and a chance to move back in when new units were built. But the jobs — in demolition and construction — never materialized. And the finished project site will have at most 117 public housing units to replace the 294 units that were on the site. In short their “temporary relocation” turned into permanent displacement.

Some former Hayes Valley tenants say the city’s Housing Authority deliberately allowed their buildings to fall into utter disrepair. In fact HUD, instead of forcing the Authority to properly police and maintain public housing developments, waited until living conditions had become unbearable, then injected $100 million to demolish and rebuild this and two other projects. Meanwhile, the developer of the site pays only a $1 yearly rental for use of the land and is forgiven $35,000 in property taxes each year as well.

During the Bush administration, HUD Secretary Jack Kemp promoted “resident empowerment” in public housing, and Home Ownership for People Everywhere (HOPE) programs pumped millions into “resident management councils.” The idea was for public housing tenants instead of Housing Authorities to maintain and operate their own communities through democratically elected boards.

The program collapsed, largely due to the intransigence of 3,000 local housing agencies, who correctly viewed real tenant power as a threat to their jobs. Some 400 resident councils were funded, but only one was ever allowed to manage a project.

Under Clinton, HUD shed the rhetoric of empowerment and fired up the bulldozers, transforming HOPE into a juggernaut (demolishing 30,000 inner-city public housing units across the country in just two years).

Tenants of Bernal Dwellings in San Francisco’s Mission District learned from witnessing what happened to Hayes Valley tenants. They formed an alliance with a consortium of neighbors and local developers, and after dozens of community meetings, the coalition presented a professional architectural and financing plan to the Mayors Office and HUD. Tenants were to oversee and benefit from the redevelopment process, from design input to working on construction crews.

Mayor Brown killed the proposal. Two hundred Bernal Dwellings families were summarily evicted in January [1997]. Most left town in search of new lives, though some were relocated to other housing projects, to await another HOPE-sponsored eviction.

On the streets throughout this city are many memorials. Bayview Hunters Point has more than its share. No one tries to hide them. No one tries to explain them. They are in many cases the only thing left to note that a life has been taken and that someone cared about that life. 

There have been so many young lives lost to something that no one wants to give a name, or a cause. Yet they are someone’s children, someone’s father, someone’s little brother or big brother. Someone loved them, yet no one is doing anything that I can find to stop the taking of another life. 

In the past few days I have talked with the mothers and girlfriends of some of the young men whose lives were taken, much too early and for no good reason that I have heard. Friends and neighbors all seem to know something but are afraid to say anything. 

One mother explained, “Every day before I go to bed now, it is with the fear that someone will call or come to say, ‘Your son has been gunned down. He didn’t make it.’ Or that he has gunned down someone else. If I don’t help get him out of town, I’m afraid he will be next, or maybe his younger brother will get in the way of someone else’s anger, or they may come to the house not caring who’s in the house and we will all get killed.” 

The neighbor who sat in on this conversation turned to me and said, “You know there must be something that you can do. You know everybody. The police in most cases are as bad as these young people out there, so we can’t call on them. The churches aren’t doing anything. Most of them won’t even talk to these kids. And those groups that came to the church last year only came out to see if there was going to be any money given out to anyone. You know that’s right because I was there just like you, and I could see it on your face when some of them started asking for money for their group, for things like taking kids to Great America. Those aren’t the kids who are doing all this killing.” 

So what I can do right now is to put it out there, show everyone what I see and what I think we can do. But it is going to take all of us. 

Let’s start with the numbers from the San Francisco Police Department website. Go to www.ci.sf.ca.us/police and click on Crime Statistics, then on Monthly Crime Statistics by District. (You can see the police district boundaries by clicking on Weekly Crime Summaries, then on any date. The Bayview District is about the same area as District 10.) 

While you’re there, check out the SFPD home page. What caught my attention was the police badge with the Spanish motto, “Oro en paz, fierro en guerra.” It means, “Gold in peace, iron in war.” War? Are the police at war? With us?

The statistics show 41 homicides in the year 2000 for the entire city. The Bayview District had eleven, by far the highest of any district. Southern District, South of Market, was next highest with seven.

So when the talk is about drive-bys and other shootings, Bayview always seems to come up and for good reason: It’s happening here, it’s happening to our children on our side of town, and we need some real ideas on how to stop the violence. 

Before I list some specific ideas, I want you to remember the Third Hand. That’s the force that wants our lives to get so hard in Bayview Hunters Point that we’ll all just pack up and leave this priceless land that we’ve called home for generations and let the gentrifiers take over. 

For most of us, running away can’t be the best option. Instead, let’s find ways to take control — to support our families and own our own homes. 

Meanwhile, tell me what you think of these ideas:

1. Take a good look at these pictures of memorials, then ask yourself what can I do. 

2. If you are the mother and it’s your son out there, go get him. Remind him that you are still the mother and if he won’t abide by your rules then he can be sent away. Find a family member who lives outside of California. Don’t ask him to go. Send him. It may save his life. 

3. Fathers, it doesn’t matter that you are not in the same household. If he is your child, then you must step into his life as his father. It’s never too late. 

4. City service providers are not offering the kinds of services that will help solve the problems that are facing our children and their families. Social workers have failed to bring families together or keep fathers involved in the wellbeing of their children. Educators and job trainers have not prepared our young people for well-paying jobs inside or outside the community they call home. 

There have been far too many deaths without the grief counseling needed to help people adjust to these losses. The faith community has failed to reach out and touch the minds and hearts of the young men whose lives are at risk. 

Many service providers are more protective of their paychecks than of the lives they are charged with serving. They need to throw away the handbook and bring on people with new ideas who have experienced the lives that these young people are living. In many cases, this may mean working alongside people whose vision extends beyond traditional services, with the hope of reaching the root of the problems that are plaguing our community.

5. Don’t overlook the obvious: It is now and has always been about economics. Most of these young people come from households headed by single mothers. If they work, it is at minimum wage jobs that leave them very little quality time with their children. Then there may be those parents who have taken a vacation from family responsibilities and in some cases need as much help as their kids do. We need to be there with the help needed. 

6. Don’t sign up for training if there isn’t a job at the end or a job while you’re being trained. 

7. Brothers and sisters, if you are among those who have escaped the despair and survived in this world despite the many hardships of growing up poor, black and unwanted — if you are a Michael Jordan or a Maya Angelou, a doctor, a lawyer, or maybe a big-time actor — hear the call for help. Come home. Let each one teach one. 

8. For the brothers in the ’hood, you are not immortal, and unless you start to think more of yourselves than you have been, then no matter what we do, you are not long for this world. 

On one of the memorials in our community, up and down Haight Street, and down Third Street to Evans, you’ll find flyers on white paper with big black letters that say, “Thanks for doing our job for us, niggers. — KKK.” One very young lady ripped one of these flyers off a memorial and put a match to it. Hurt and angry, she cried, “Doesn’t it make you mad?” I had to say no. You see, the truth is, we are doing their job for them. 

Our young folks act without thinking, and each time we lose one more, there’s one less who can wake up and see the Third Hand moving them around like chess pieces. We need to see that none of these young men dying or killing has anything to show for it. They don’t own anything, most never leave the area where they hang out, they’ve never bought anything other than a car, and when they are gone they’ll leave nothing more then one or two people who will miss them. 

Our lives, our children, our families, and our neighborhoods matter. Let’s stop fighting each other and fight for what we love and what we deserve.

I leave you with pictures of the last acts of kindness that these young people will know. R.I.P.

Call Marie at (415) 822-8126.

Marie Harrison, Director, ABCDpac

From the San Francisco Sun-Reporter of May 6, 2001. To read the entire piece, go to www.sunreporter.com/headlines.html

When Dr. Amos Brown lost his race for Supervisor in District 11 against Gerardo Sandoval, many people thought it was the end of his San Francisco political career. Brown, who is also pastor of Third Baptist Church, has been an ongoing presence in San Francisco’s politics for the last 30 years, as an activist, a community college board member and as a Supervisor.

Brown would keep a national profile as a national board member of the NAACP, and he would still pastor his church. He has kept his national presence speaking out nationally on various media outlets, and he is still trying to save souls in the streets, but Brown has been very visible politically in San Francisco. He is helping to reinvigorate the activist spirit of San Francisco's Black community….