Home improvement
Quietly, the S.F. Housing Authority has hatched plans for a massive overhaul of the projects. What will it mean for the city's poorest tenants?

By Rachel Brahinsky

The federal HOPE VI programs of the 1990s – in which entire housing projects were razed and rebuilt from scratch – represented a seismic shift in the public housing world. The effort brought some good to residents, including better buildings and safer communities. But the program displaced hundreds of low-income San Francisco tenants and ejected as many as a third of them from their neighborhoods for good.

Now, the Bay Guardian has learned, a quietly conceived policy change is underway that could result in a San Francisco-based expansion of the HOPE VI scheme, which has left the city with fewer units of public housing. San Francisco Housing Authority officials are hoping to rebuild or renovate more than half of the city's public housing stock – and it could happen all at once, potentially dislodging thousands. The city's largest public developments are slated for potential changes, but nobody knows what to expect because the agency has yet to define any coherent vision.

Though SFHA commissioners have discussed the plan at a couple of meetings this summer, neither residents nor key elected officials had any idea what was coming until very recently. The low-profile nature of it so far has left residents and housing activists preparing for the worst.

A city in need of repair

There's no question San Francisco's housing projects, many of which were built in the 1940s and 1950s, are in a rough physical state. "It's extremely well-built housing, but it's wearing out," SFHA spokesperson Michael Roetzer said.

To residents like Elisha Rochell, who lives in the Sunnydale projects on the edge of Visitacion Valley, that's an understatement. "It's barely livable," Rochell told us. "The buildings definitely need some work. They're concrete, old, and moldy. They're a breeding place for germs and bacteria, and who knows what else."

After years of neglecting the housing, SFHA officials now have few places to turn for renovation dollars. The Bush administration's housing policies mirror its plans for most other programs for the poor: it's all about cutting back.

So in late July the SFHA issued a request for qualifications from developers for 18 public housing sites, including Sunnydale. The RFQ is extremely broad, offering up more than 170 acres. The document invites developers – for-profit and nonprofit alike – to consider rehabilitating or demolishing buildings, or constructing new – possibly mixed-income – housing or commercial enterprises on remaining open space.

Although responses were due Sept. 30, just as we went to press, the SFHA has yet to bring the concept to the thousands of people who would be affected if it decides to demolish their homes. That doesn't sit well with Rochell.

"They definitely need to approach the people who actually live here. They need to bring that conversation to [us]," she said. She also wants construction jobs to go to local residents and wants any displacement plan to include good housing for those who might be evicted for demolition projects. "I wouldn't mind leaving and coming back if I had a say-so."

Roetzer insists the SFHA is still at an early information-gathering stage, which is why at this point "there is no public process" with which to involve residents. "The public process is we've issued an RFQ."

It could be years before even one plank of housing is ripped apart under the program, and before anything happens, the community will be involved, Roetzer said. There's no way to know whether all 18 sites – containing 3,479 housing units – will be affected, though for now the SFHA is promising to replace any demolished homes on a one-for-one basis. But there's no promise coming from the SFHA that they won't carry out massive demolitions within a short period of time, straining availability of the affordable-housing stock and forcing mass displacement.

And it's not easy to trust the SFHA. Years of corruption have plagued the agency's image and thinned its budget, and a tradition of undermining tenant power has alienated residents (see "The Turf War over Public Housing," 2/21/01). It's also not a good sign that Sups. Chris Daly and Matt Gonzalez – both of whom pay close attention to the activities of the SFHA – knew little about the program when we called them.

Reason for fear

History shows why Rochell and other residents we interviewed are concerned. Once new homes were built under HOPE VI, despite the SFHA's promises, many tenants were not able to return, partly because of the Clinton-era one-strike policy that eliminates tenants with even relatively minor credit or criminal violations – and partly because the new projects contained 300 fewer housing units.

"This is a very scary proposition because there are no written guarantees, and no commitment that the housing will be protected," Sharen Hewitt of San Francisco State University's Urban Institute told us.

Hewitt, who once worked for the SFHA, fears widespread evictions could "surrender the last safety net that protects the continued presence of low-income African Americans in the city."

The possibility of losing another wave of poor people of color – on the heels of the dot-com era's draining of low-income Latinos from the Mission District – has advocates extremely concerned. About half of public housing residents are African American, and several of the projects slated for possible development in the RFQ are 60 to 74 percent African American. Already, according to U.S. Census data, San Francisco's African American population has been dwindling at an alarming rate – down 23 percent between 1990 and 2000.

There's also concern about further opening public housing management to for-profit developers, who won't get involved if they can't make money. It's hard to profit from renting homes to poor tenants.

"There's an argument that maybe market-rate housing on vacant project space could help [finance low-cost housing]," Renee Cazenave of the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse told us. "But the problem is it opens it up to 'let's make a deal.' "

In the meantime public housing residents continue living in the city's last-resort dwellings. Marisa Taylor told us it's a struggle for her to pay her $168 subsidized rent each month. She lives with her four young children in the Alemany projects, on the southern foot of Bernal Hill, and survives on public assistance. "Outside my window is a whole bunch of trash," Taylor said. "There are bullet holes in my windows."

Taylor would be happy to leave Alemany. But if that's going to happen, she said, she wants the SFHA to assure her she'll have someplace else to go.

Research assistance by Sharon Luk.

E-mail Rachel Brahinsky.