EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, scrambling to blunt community criticism of the Redevelopment Agency's activities in Bayview–Hunters Point, has appointed a new agency director, Fred Blackwell. But the problem was not with the top of the agency (the outgoing director, Marcia Rosen, was neither corrupt nor incompetent) but rather with the entire direction that redevelopment has taken in San Francisco under several generations of mayors. It's time to take seriously the suggestion of Sup. Ross Mirkarimi — that the agency be taken out of the mayor's control and given to the district-elected supervisors.
Redevelopment is a powerful tool that has been terribly misused all over the nation, and the scars in San Francisco are real and lasting. A rapacious Redevelopment Agency determined to wipe out low-income housing devastated huge swaths of the Western Addition and South of Market in the 1960s, and the communities still haven't fully recovered. Some people argue that the entire program should be abolished — that redevelopment should be consigned to the dustbin of bad urban history.
But at a time when it's terribly hard for cities like San Francisco to raise money for affordable housing, basic infrastructure (see accompanying editorial), and ambitious programs like public power, the legal advantages of redevelopment are too good to give up.
A state-chartered redevelopment agency sells bonds and raises money with nothing to back up the bonds except the projected increase in property taxes expected from improving a blighted area. The city can't do that on its own; if it could, then raising, say, a billion dollars for affordable housing would be relatively simple.
In theory, the redevelopment agency could also fund municipal wi-fi, public power, and all sorts of other major projects.
The problem, of course, is that a lot of people in low-income neighborhoods don't trust redevelopment — and given the history, it's hard to blame them. But part of the essential problem with the Redevelopment Agency in past years has been its utter lack of accountability; the Western Addition and SoMa plans were drawn up in secret and executed with little regard for community input.
As long as San Francisco supervisors are elected by district, they will be, by definition, more accountable, closer to the neighborhoods, and less corrupted by money than any citywide elected official. Giving the board control over redevelopment is a far better model.
Plenty of cities allow their legislature to run redevelopment. The city councils of both Oakland and Berkeley also function as the directors of those cities' redevelopment agencies. It's time to move San Francisco into that column. *
Rosen may not have been corrupt, but she fell prey to the same old Red't BS - look at how she let corporate power and for-hire black "community leaders" cow her on Home Depot. You drink too much Calvin coolade, and were always waaayyyy to easy on her. She was the effing ED, for Heaven's sake. But, unless you have a Mayor like Agnos (and doesn't he look great in hind sight?), who appointed Red't Commissioners like me, Fei Tsen and Paul Wartelle, proven community-based fighters on behalf of poor and working people, and people of color, Red't just rolls along, relatively unchecked.
One other issue you need to have the guts to hammer - the roll of sell-out "black leaders" in making Red't destructive, corporatist work possible. SFHA is even worse - give it to the black leadership, and then ignore how poorly that Commission oversees it, home to most of the black people who can still live in SF. More below about black private non-profit owned HUD-subsidized housing. The recent shipyard BS at least made their shameless pandering public knowledge - 5 Black "leaders"/ministers set up a for-profit corporation funded by the developer. If they simply wanted to produce more affordable housing, why not make use of one of the existing non-profits? Or at worst, set up their own? I mean really. In one of my first votes as a Red't Commissioner, I got slammed by a Black fellow Commissioner for voting for a black developer of one of the last remaining parcels in the Western Addition - instead of supporting the big white developer of Fillmore center because he had some black partners on a leach shilling for him. Have the courage to attack Red't, and the two unholy alliances that give it sway - corporate interests, and African-American leaders who will sell out for pay. Not to mention straight-out race baiters for hire like Rev. Arnold Townsebd, who will shill for whoever pays his price. He's another old buddy of Calvin's, like Rosen.
Buck bagot
415/385-0389
PS Another interesting investigative piece - the Reverends Boyd and Brown own and control some of the HUD-subsidized housiong developments, through church-based non-profits, at which much of the drug-related violence in the black community takes place. Boyd used to have the security firm owned by his Assistant Deacon ineffectively guard Prince Hall. But that's no surprise - these leaders choose their own "economic development" over the benefit of poor folks and the black community. The "create a few black millionaires" theory of ec dev't.
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