In the 1960s the San Francisco Redevelopment Authority put into effect an "urban renewal" plan that resulted in 20,000 African Americans being displaced from the Fillmore area. With bulldozers and wrecking balls leveling homes and businesses, it was like a preview of post-Katrina New Orleans.
Now, black activists wonder if the sequel is about to be played out in Bayview Hunters Point, another historic African American neighborhood that could soon be designated for "blight" removal by the same redevelopment agency. The result, they say, would be an upscale neighborhood with market-rate condos and no trace of the African American culture that flourished there.
On March 7, the Redevelopment Commission will hold a hearing into a proposed amendment to the already existing redevelopment project area. The amendment increases the size of that project from 130 acres to over 1,300. Basically, Redevelopment is looking to swallow up all of Bayview and Hunters Point. That amendment could be the eviction notice many in Bayview have feared.
Why should queers care? Because as queer black writer James Baldwin once wrote: "If they come for you in the morning, they will come for us at night." In the case of the poor and working-class in this city, they've already arrived at the door.
Gentrification is no stranger to San Francisco. In addition to the Fillmore, the late 1960s saw the displacement of the elderly Filipino residents of the I-Hotel in the old Manilatown area, again in the name of "urban renewal." Twenty-two years later, that site is still a hole in the ground. In the late 1970s, Realtors and landlords found a gold mine in the Castro, which had gone from a deteriorating Irish American neighborhood to the new center of queer culture. Rents soared. Harvey Milk, San Francisco's first out queer supervisor, lost his famous camera store in 1977 when his rent shot up from $400 to $1,200 a month.
The dot-com boom of the late 1990s was the second gold rush. Thousands were displaced, as landlords used every dirty trick to evict long-term tenants paying low rents, so that they could offer their apartments to Silicon Valley workers with large disposable incomes. Neighborhoods changed overnight. Now, TICs (tenancies in common) have taken the place of the dot-com boom as the economic cleansing tool of Realtors and landlords out to make a killing.
The problem is not just a local one. Everywhere in America, gentrification is seen as the only solution for neglected neighborhoods. But rundown areas don't become that way by themselves. A lot of complex economic forces are at play. Poor neighborhoods are redlined so that businesses and homeowners can't get loans or borrow against their equity. Employers that have traditionally provided jobs move someplace else, usually overseas where they can pay lower salaries. The city stops caring about the neighborhood.
Instead of bringing in the bulldozers, government should provide no-interest loans to help small businesses grow and provide jobs. If government and private foundations also lent a helping hand to landlords and homeowners to bring their places up to code, houses would increase in value. With a plan like that, a neighborhood such as Bayview could be improved for the people who live there now, not for outsiders. Unfortunately, that's not how it works in America.
For Bayview, the writing's on the wall. The Third Street Muni rail line certainly isn't being built to benefit the black-owned businesses in that area. In fact, the construction that has left the street torn up for years has had a negative economic impact on those merchants. The sale of the old Third Street Coke bottling plant also will leave residents out in the cold: They won't be able to afford the market-rate condos planned for that site.
The SF Bayview reports that brokers are already trying to push out Third Street African American business owners. As editor Willie Ratcliff described their approach in a front-page editorial February 15: "Oh, how sad! You're redlined and can't borrow money against your equity to fix your place up? Don't worry. We have buyers ready and waiting. They won't pay you what your property's worth, but it'll be more than you'd get if you wait for the city to take it by eminent domain."
As queers, it is important that we attend the Redevelopment Commission hearing at City Hall, room 416, on March 7 at 4 p.m. and stand in solidarity with the residents of Bayview who are saying no to gentrification and displacement. We should join the voices that day who will ask the commission what the plan is for Bayview Hunters Point and who will benefit from it.
If we don't support the residents of Bayview now, our displacement could be next on somebody's agenda and we'll be standing alone.
Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a southern Italian queer activist, writer, and performer who believes that free housing, like healthcare, is a basic human right.