LETTERS

Preserving affordable housing

It is a pity the San Francisco Bay Guardian published a narrow-minded article about the National Farm Workers Service Center ["Solidarity Never," 12/23/05].

Founded in 1966 by C ésar Ch ávez and Dolores Huerta, with encouragement from Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and labor leader Walter Reuther, the Service Center builds and preserves quality affordable housing for poor and working people in Latino and underserved communities. More than 3,700 rental and 600 single-family homes have been produced for low-income residents in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Once stabilized, most developments incorporate critical amenities and social services for tenants, such as English language classes, after-school mentoring, homework assistance, computer labs, and healthy-aging programs for seniors.

The Guardian left out some key facts about the rehabilitation currently underway at Vista Del Monte apartments in San Francisco:

The Service Center acquired the property from an owner who could easily have converted Vista Del Monte to luxury apartments, raised rents to market level, and displaced all the tenants. Instead, the Service Center extended the expiring affordability of the complex by negotiating a 20-year contract with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that subsidizes rents so tenants only pay 30 percent of their income. Rents will remain affordable at least for the next 55 years.

The Service Center purchased this 30-year-old property knowing the previous owner had purposely neglected it. As a result, the complex was suffering from structural failures and deteriorating exteriors. Since 2001, the Service Center secured and spent $11 million, or $106,000 per unit, to replace the exterior siding and shear walls; repair plumbing; make structural repairs to balconies and porches; replace all the roofs; replace all windows and sliding glass doors; replace lighting fixtures (both interior and exterior), intercom, site security, and landscaping; improve site drainage; resurface all parking lots; repair structural integrity of the garages; install a retaining wall on the steep side of the hill to protect the property; remediate mold; install new kitchen and bathroom cabinets, plumbing fixtures, and vinyl; carpet flooring throughout; and paint both the exterior and interior.

The community room has not been available, because it is not only being used as a staging area to facilitate the repair work, but also because it is being remodeled to include a new kitchen, computer lab, a laundry room, and barbeque area. In addition, repairs are underway on a retaining wall that allows water from the outside to seep into the room. All this work will be done (completion is expected in February 2006) without an increase in rents to tenants and without displacing tenants.

In these times of booming real-estate values, it is extremely difficult to preserve any type of affordable housing. It is exponentially much more difficult to do so when the housing is located on a hillside with beautiful views of San Francisco Bay in a neighborhood surrounded by multimillion-dollar homes. Articles like "Solidarity Never" do a disservice to all of us in the affordable-housing community who struggle day in and day out to provide and maintain decent housing for those most disadvantaged.

Manuel Horacio Bernal, vice president for Housing and Economic Development

National Farm Workers Service Center

Los Angeles

For the record

In "Giving Us the Business," 1/11/06, we misidentified small-business advocate Scott Hauge as a member of the Small Business Commission.

In "Sex vs. Death," 1/11/06, we inaccurately described the illness that caused the death of Alan Kaye's wife. She died of lung cancer.