HomeMy WebLinkAboutNon-Discrimination Public Comment from Sandra Smiley, third 4-28-14From:Sandra Smiley
To:Carson Taylor; Chris Mehl; Cyndy Andrus; I-Ho Pomeroy; Jeff Krauss
Cc:Aimee Brunckhorst; Chris Kukulski; Chuck Winn; Greg Sullivan
Subject:The Bleaching of San Francisco: Extreme Gentrification and Suburbanized Poverty in the Bay Area
Date:Monday, April 28, 2014 9:19:02 AM
Dear City Commission and City Staff: Here's another discrimination scenario happeningin San Francisco - it's just time for a heads up and take care of business at thebeginning stage that you are faced with so that later phases are not even thought of aseasily as those described in this article. Pass an ordinace to stop discrimination at thebeginning of the ugliness appearing and this stuff doesn't show up later. Thanks for thework you do, Sandra Smiley, Former City Commissioner
"Where's the love? You are the love you have been waiting for - be love, beloving." Anonymous"Everybody can be great ... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have acollege degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree toserve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." - Dr. MartinLuther King, Jr."There's always something new to love." Sharon O'Hara"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." MarkTwain"When you get mired in the monotony of your everyday existence, remember; asmile can bring the sun, a loving word can move mountains and an act ofkindness can change someone’s world." ~ Creator"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but onbuilding the new." Socrates
The Bleaching of San Francisco: Extreme Gentrification
and Suburbanized Poverty in the Bay Area
Sunday, 27 April 2014 00:00 By Adam Hudson, Truthout | News Analysishttp://truth-out.org/news/item/23305-the-bleaching-of-san-francisco-extreme-gentrification-and-suburbanized-poverty-in-the-bay
Protesters block a Facebook bus at intersection of San Francisco's Market and 8thStreets and show unfair system of private tech buses. (Photo: Adam Hudson)
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On January 21, dozens of protesters, decrying displacement and inequality, gatherednear City Hall in San Francisco on a chilly Tuesday morning. At around 9:15 a.m., theymarched down Market Street and blockaded two tech shuttles, one that was parked ata MUNI (San Francisco Municipal Railway) bus stop, the other in the middle of thestreet. Tech shuttles - also infamously known as "Google buses" - are private corporatebuses that take tech industry workers from their homes in San Francisco down thepeninsula to work in Silicon Valley.
Protesters surrounded the buses and placed signs near them that read: "StopDisplacement Now" and "Warning: Rents and evictions up near private shuttle stops." AUC-Berkeley study and maps show that evictions and rent increases often follow thelocations of tech bus stops. One sign bluntly read: "Fuck off Google."
Present at the protest was Martina Ayala, a teacher, artist and consultant for SanFrancisco nonprofits working with low-income families. She is currently facing a no-faulteviction from her residence in San Francisco's Outer Richmond neighborhood that sitsnext to the Pacific Ocean beach. Ayala told Truthout, "The landlord would like us to self-evict" - but not by way of a buy-out, in which landlords evict tenants by paying them toleave. Instead, Ayala said, "They're trying to get us out without having to pay theeviction costs. And so they're doing that by harassing us and calling us every day,sending us three-day notice to pay rent or quit without following through with service."Why would the landlord go to such lengths to push the family out? Ayala says, "Eventhough we are paying $1,750, that is still not enough for the landlord, because theaverage rent is now $3,000."
"Those buses, for us, is just a
symbol of what rich folks can get
away with."
The Google bus blockade lasted for a half-hour. Afterward, the crowd marched downGrove Street to the San Francisco Association of Realtors, then ended at City Hall. Muchof the media coverage of the protest focused on the Google bus blockade. However, theprotesters emphasized that the tech industry was not the only culprit. Developers, realestate brokers, and City Hall all play a role in economically displacing many SanFrancisco residents.
Not all protesters were mad at the tech workers riding the buses. Some encouragedtech workers to support the protesters' cause. One sign read, "Get off the bus, join us!"
A few hours after the protest, swarms ofresidents, tech industry workers andreporters packed themselves inside City Hallto attend a San Francisco MunicipalTransportation Agency (SFMTA) hearingabout starting a pilot program to have techshuttles pay $1 each time they use a MUNIbus stop. It is against city law for others to block MUNI bus stops. Violators have to paya $271 fine. MUNI bus riders pay $2 per ride. People who ride the bus and don't paybus fare face a $100 fine. Poor people and people of color are often targeted by transitagents and police for not paying fare. Tech bus riders, on the other hand, do not facesuch penalties.
The hearing was divided by tech industry workers, who largely supported the plan, andresidents who felt it wasn't enough to curb the deeper problem of displacement. At thehearing, Roberto Hernandez of Our Mission No Eviction, a San Francisco resident bornand raised in the Mission District, said, "Children are getting to school late because ofthese tech buses that roll through the Mission. They're late, and they don't eatbreakfast. So they're there with an empty stomach. They start in school late becausethey're getting to school late." Rodriguez told Truthout he had no problem with techworkers, but felt the $1 fee plan was an "insult" and "had no involvement of thecommunity at all. We're concerned about the impact that these buses are having." Headded, "If you ride a MUNI bus, it's slow; it's late; it stinks. Now you ride one of those[tech] buses, you get Wi-Fi; you get luxury on that bus; you get everything. But thosebuses, for us, is just a symbol of what rich folks can get away with." After about threeto four hours of discussion, the city approved the pilot program. The next month, afterpressure from community activists and organizations like People Organized to WinEmployment Rights (POWER), Google agreed to donate $6.8 million over the next twoyears to fund free MUNI passes for low- and middle-income youth.
Two weeks after the tech shuttle hearing was the San Francisco Tenants' Convention,where hundreds of city residents and leaders gathered in an elementary school cafeteriato propose solutions to fix the city's housing problem. San Francisco Supervisor DavidCampos, who represents the Mission District, attended the convention to show supportfor the growing movement. "Right now, the middle class in San Francisco is beingpushed out. It's becoming a city that only millionaires can afford, and you see here thatthere is a groundswell across the city that people are saying, 'We're not gonna let thathappen anymore. We want a city that is affordable for all of us.'"
Also at the convention was Tyler Macmillan, the executive director of the EvictionDefense Collaborative (EDC), a nonprofit legal services clinic that assists residents facingeviction lawsuits from landlords. He told Truthout how the city's judicial system worksagainst eviction victims. "The vast majority of laws are written by and for folks who ownproperty," said Macmillan. "So when you fight to defend evictions, you face a code ofcivil procedure, the civil code, even elements of our local law that really favor folks who
are wealthy and who have access to good attorneys. And so for most tenants in SanFrancisco, both of those things are missing. They don't have money to get to anattorney, and then they're dealing with a set of laws that are really, especially at thestate level, against them in terms of the rights of property."
To evict a tenant, landlords give them a three-day notice to pay rent or leave. If neitherhappens, then the landlord can file a lawsuit to evict. Tenants are given a five-daysummons to appear in court, which is barely enough time to get a lawyer and prepareoneself to fight an arduous legal battle. Moreover, most judges are property owners andlandlords. As a result, "they come in with the assumption that the tenant is wrong," saysMacmillan.
A New Wave of Gentrification
Google bus stopped in the middle of 8th Street by more protesters condemning techindustry's role in gentrification and displacement. (Photo: Adam Hudson)
San Francisco is experiencing a wave of unprecedented hyper-gentrification and urbanremoval. The city was gentrified before, and has long been a pricey place, but thiscurrent episode is more extreme than previous ones.
San Francisco rent has skyrocketed to obscene levels. Median rent in San Francisco isover $3,000 a month, with some neighborhoods in the $4,000-$5,000 range. Averagerent is in the same range. Even rooms for $1,000 a month are virtually nonexistent.Rents in 2013 increased over 10 percent from the previous year, which is more thanthree times higher than the national average of 3 percent. This makes San Franciscoperhaps the least affordable city for middle-class families in the country, with New YorkCity following closely behind. It's so expensive that even San Francisco's minimumwage, which is the highest in the country at over $10 an hour, is barely enough to live.One would have to work five, six, or more minimum-wage jobs to make the city's rent.
"What they do in San Francisco,
they send black people to prison
and [provide] no jobs."
In April 2011, with a push from
Mayor Ed Lee, the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors passed a city
ordinance that gives Twitter and
other tech companies a 1.5
percent city payroll tax cut for the
next six years in return for those
businesses staying in San
Francisco's mid-Market Street area.
Moreover, San Francisco is one of the most unequal urban areas, and its incomeinequality is growing the fastest in the nation.
Evictions have also shot up, displacinghundreds of San Francisco residents.According to the Anti-Eviction MappingProject, a grassroots project that has beencounting and mapping evictions in SanFrancisco, "The number of evictions in 2013has surpassed evictions in 2006, the heightof the real estate bubble. Total no-fault evictions are up 17 percent compared to 2006.More significantly, there has been a 115 percent increase in total evictions since lastyear" in 2012. From 1997 to 2013, there have been over 11,000 no-fault evictions -either through demolition, owner move-in, or the Ellis Act. The Ellis Act is a Californiastate law that allows landlords to evict tenants to "go out of business" by pulling theirproperty off the market. This allows speculators to swoop in and flip the property. Infact, speculators are driving many Ellis Act evictions. The Anti-Eviction Mapping Projectreports that Ellis Act evictions "increased by 175 percent" in 2013 "compared to the yearbefore." Additionally, "Demolitions have gone from 45 in 2006 to 134 in 2013, a 197percent increase."
The displacement of San Francisco's African-American population was the canary in thecoal mine for today's current incarnation of gentrification. Previous waves ofgentrification and urban renewal, particularly in neighborhoods like the Fillmore District,which is famous for its historic jazz scene and was long known as the "Harlem of theWest," exiled many African Americans from San Francisco. According to census figures,in 1970, African American's constituted 13.4 percent of the city's population. In 1980,they dropped to 12.7 percent; then to 10.9 percent in 1990. By 2000, African Americansmade up 7.8 percent of the city's population. Now, San Francisco's black populationhovers around 5 percent or 6 percent only.
Willie Ratcliff, publisher of San Francisco BayView newspaper, told Truthout "SanFrancisco has certainly conspired to drive us[African Americans] out of here" throughracially discriminatory practices in theeconomic and criminal justice systems."Particularly, what they do in San Francisco,they send black people to prison and[provide] no jobs." While they are 6 percentof the city's population, African Americansconstitute 56 percent of San Francisco jailinmates. Unemployment for black SanFranciscans has remained high for a while.For black youth, unemployment is 19.4percent, while it is 4.8 percent for the city.African Americans are also disproportionately impacted by evictions in San Francisco, asthey are 29 percent of EDC's clients for eviction lawsuits, according to the group'sstudies.
The wave is so severe that nonprofits and organizations that help marginalizedcommunities are struggling to finance their offices in San Francisco. Homeless YouthAlliance, which helped homeless youth for over a decade, closed last Christmas becauseit could not afford rent. To fix this, the city plans to "spend $4.5 million to assistnonprofits facing eviction or struggling to make rent," according to the the SanFrancisco Examiner.
Who is this development for?
As the poor and middle classes are pushed out of the city, San Francisco welcomes thebooming tech industry, whose workers' average salaries are over $100,000. In April2011, with a push from Mayor Ed Lee, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed acity ordinance that gives Twitter and other tech companies a 1.5 percent city payroll taxcut for the next six years in return for those businesses staying in San Francisco's mid-Market Street area. The tax breaks must be re-approved every year. In 2012, the taxcuts cost the city $1.9 million and were re-approved for this year. Twitter is expected toget $22 million from the tax break over six years and possibly more since stock optionsare untaxed, and the company is now publicly traded. Twitter's IPO is also expected tocreate more millionaires.
In exchange for tax breaks, San Francisco's tech companies have to make charitablecontributions to the city known as community benefit agreements (CBAs). But thosecontributions largely benefit other members of the tech industry. They include Yelpreviews, cocktail parties and employee-only ballet performances. Contributions are madeat the company's whim, and there is no enforcement mechanism to ensure they help thecommunity. Meanwhile, community members have yet to see anything meaningful comefrom the CBAs.
Some argue that San Francisco's housingproblem stems from a lack of supply. If thecity built more housing, the argument goes,rent would come down, but the city makes itdifficult to build. However, San Francisco has had a building boom since 2012, and renthas increased instead of decreased. San Francisco's chief economist Ted Egan said thatto noticeably reduce rental prices, the city would have to build 100,000 market-rateunits - the same amount it's built since the 1920s. Mayor Ed Lee, meanwhile, hasproposed to build 30,000 housing units by 2020. Building 100,000 market-rate unitswould have the same impact on affordability as giving every low-income household -about 56,000 in the city - $75,000 to assist their down payments, according to Egan.Unless San Francisco is willing to build an extremely high amount, building morehousing would hardly reduce rental costs. Additionally, while building more housing isnot bad, the issue is what kind. As Uptown Almanac's Jackson West points out, "even ifyou remove the permitting costs from the process, it's not profitable to build anythingbut luxury housing." This raises the question - who is this development for?
The Process of Gentrification
Whenever the term "gentrification" is thrown around, confusion often follows. DirectorSpike Lee went on an expletive-laden rant against gentrification in New York City,saying, "You can't do that. You can't just come in the neighborhood and start bogartingand say, like you're motherfuckin' Columbus and kill off the Native Americans. Or whatthey do in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people. You have to come withrespect. There's a code. There's people." In response, columnist Joshua Greenmanwrote in the New York Daily News, "But Americans of all races, motivated by economicand cultural currents, have moved from city to city, and from neighborhood toneighborhood, since civilization began. . . . Everyone replaces someone. Sometimes,neighborhoods go from predominantly Latino and African-American to increasinglywhite." Greenman's characterization is fairly common - gentrification is typicallyportrayed as a natural, benign process of people simply moving from one neighborhoodto another. Depicted this way, challenges to gentrification seem dyspeptic and naive.However, gentrification does not occur inevitably. It is a systematic process with manymoving parts.
As a process, gentrification is typically preceded by disinvestment in predominantly black
and brown neighborhoods. A new report by Causa Justa :: Just Cause (CJJC), a BayArea tenants' rights organization, notes that investment, including real estatedevelopment and infrastructure funding, usually follows white populations while shyingaway from communities of color. For decades, banks denied financial services, such asloans and credit, to predominantly black and brown neighborhoods - a practice knownas redlining. This generated low property values in those communities and deterioratedthe neighborhoods. Then the process of displacement begins.
Kalima Rose, a senior director at PolicyLink in Oakland, California, wrote thatgentrification occurs "in a series of recognizable stages." The first "involves somesignificant public or nonprofit redevelopment investment and/or private newcomersbuying and rehabbing vacant units" in usually working-class, black and Latinoneighborhoods with low property values. Next, "the neighborhood's low housing costsand other amenities become known, and housing costs rise. Displacement begins aslandlords take advantage of rising market values and evict long-time residents to rent orsell to the more affluent. Increasingly, newcomers are more likely to be homeowners,and the rising property values cause down payment requirements to increase. With newresidents, come commercial amenities that serve higher income levels." Then as"rehabilitation becomes more apparent, prices escalate and displacement occurs inforce. New residents have lower tolerance for existing social service facilities that servehomeless populations or other low-income needs, as well as industrial and other usesthey view as undesirable. Original residents are displaced along with their industries,commercial enterprises, faith institutions and cultural traditions."
In short, gentrification is trickle-down economics applied to urban development: the ideabeing that as long as a neighborhood is made suitable for rich and predominantly whitepeople, the benefits will trickle down to everyone else.
Police Crack Down on Poor, Homeless
To make way for this new wave of gentrification, San Francisco police have enforced thecity's criminalization efforts against the poor, homeless and working-class people ofcolor. Last September, SFPD shut down a group of chess games, claiming it was a"public nuisance" and "disguise" for drug use and gambling. This is despite it being a30-year tradition that has helped poor people; while criminal elements often came notbecause of players themselves, but from surrounding unsavory characters.
Last November, "DJ" Paris Williams, a 21-year-old African-American City College of SanFrancisco student and bicyclist, was stopped and brutalized by two undercover policeofficers outside his Valencia Gardens apartment in the Mission District, a historicallyworking-class Latino neighborhood experiencing intense gentrification. The cops' issuewith DJ was him riding his bike on the sidewalk near his home since the complex isprivate property. As he entered his home, the police grabbed DJ from behind and beathim. When three residents came to help DJ, they were beaten up, too. One person,Orlando Rodriguez, had his face smashed to the ground by police and was badlybloodied.
This one incident is part of a larger trend. Bay Area hip-hop journalist Davey Dreported, "As more white folks have been moving in, many Black and Brown folks, wholong made up the majority of folks living in the Mission, have noted they are frequentlybeing profiled and stopped by police. They are often viewed suspiciously, even thoughthey have lived there for generations. Many feel that they are being made to feelunwelcome in their own neighborhoods, and police harassment is part of a largerprocess to make it so uncomfortable that folks move out."
Recently, months after DJ's assault, SFPD shot and killed 28-year-old Latino Alejandro
San Francisco is literally washing
away its homeless population
"Alex" Nieto in Bernal Heights Park. Nieto was a City College of San Franciscoscholarship student and resident of San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood - southof the Mission - with hopes of becoming a youth probation officer. Police mistook Nieto'sTaser for a gun. Nieto wore a Taser for his job as a nightclub security guard. SFPDdispatch audio reveals that Nieto was not acting erratically nor fired at officers before hewas killed. Community members were outraged at Nieto's killing. They protested andconnected his murder to the city's deepening gentrification. Nieto's family is now suingthe city, claiming the killing was unjustified.
At the corner of 16th and Mission Streets inthe Mission District, groups of poor andhomeless people, artists, activists, sometimesdrug dealers, and other passers-by regularlycongregate. In response, a shady campaigncalled "Clean Up the Plaza" was born. The
campaign was announced in June 2013, and San Francisco police began daily patrols in
September, leading to increased harassment of homeless people and residents in the
area. In October, Maximus Real Estate Partners submitted a proposal to the San
Francisco Planning Commission to build a 10-story, 351-unit housing development at the
16th and Mission intersection that would cost around $175 million and replace several
businesses in the area. Many community members oppose the plan. "This proposed plan
doesn't take into consideration the affordable housing needs this neighborhood has,"
CJJC organizer Maria Zamudio told El Tecolote.
The 16th and Mission intersection has not always been a safe environment. However,some community members feel threatened not just by local crime, but also by police -Nieto's shooting being one reason for that. A group of activists called Coffee Not Cops,inspired by Books Not Bombs, congregate at the intersection every other Sunday toserve coffee, pastries, literature and talk to people (except police) in the area about thepolice presence and gentrification. On their flyer, they pose an interesting question,"Let's say crime stops on 16th and Mission. Do we really think it will be Latino families,working class people, and young people of color who will be around to enjoy thissupposed lack of crime?"
For a while, almost no one knew who was behind the "Clean Up the Plaza" campaign,and it was rumored to be linked to the planned development. It turns out that link isSan Francisco political consultant Jack Davis, who has a long record of working onbehalf of real estate interests and whose roommate, Gil Chavez, runs the "Clean Up thePlaza" website. Independent journalist Julia Carrie Wong confirmed that "Davis is alsoworking as a paid consultant for the condo project at 16th and Mission."
Adding insult to injury, San Francisco is literally washing away its homeless population.Last September, the San Francisco Department of Public Works launched a pilotprogram to keep the streets clean. A DPW spokeswoman told Al Jazeera America, "Wewash the streets using disinfectant and steamers as part of our alleys program. We alsopick up litter, human waste and other debris." But under this program, street cleanershave sprayed their high-powered hoses at homeless people sleeping on the streets. Ahidden camera from the Coalition on Homelessness captured a DPW worker kicking ahomeless person and trucks spraying the homeless with their powerful hoses. It is alsovery common to see homeless people lying on the street in downtown San Francisco,particularly along Market Street near where tech companies like Twitter are located.
Suburbanization of Poverty
Protesters march down Grove Street to San Francisco Association of Realtors to protestdevelopers and realtors for evicting people. (Photo: Adam Hudson)
Often overlooked in stories about tech buses and displacement in San Francisco is howgentrification perpetuates the suburbanization of Bay Area poverty. US Census datashows that, from the years 2007 to 2011, large chunks of San Francisco's middle classmoved to Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the East Bay, along with other parts ofCalifornia and out of state. Macmillan told Truthout that, after being evicted, manyEviction Defense Collaborative clients move to the East Bay area, including "inner andway outside of Contra Costa County." Low- and middle-income residents, many of whomare people of color who can no longer afford to live in San Francisco or Oakland, usuallymove to outer East Bay area suburbs like Vallejo, Antioch, and Fairfield - or as far asStockton.
Lines of racial and class inequality lie not just in San Francisco and Oakland but also inworking-class suburbs like Antioch, Pittsburg and Vallejo. Some of these cities are low tomoderate income and have sizable African-American and Latino populations. Pittsburg,an East Bay industrial town flanking the Sacramento River Delta that connects to theSan Francisco Bay, is 17.7 percent black, 42.4 percent Latino, 15.6 percent Asian, has amedian household income of $58,063, and its poverty rate is 17.1 percent, according tocensus data. It is also home to an old coal mine, the steel company USS-POSCO andDow Chemical. Vallejo is 22.1 percent black, 24.9 percent Asian, and 22.6 percentLatino, has a similar median household income and a 16 percent poverty rate.
In January 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a report thatanalyzed the increasing poverty in Bay Area suburbs. Looking at census data, between2000 and 2009, poverty increased in both urban and suburban areas. However, povertyrose faster in the suburbs than in urban areas and varied across racial groups.According to the report, "The number of people living in poverty rose 16 percent in thesuburbs, compared to 7 percent in urban areas. Blacks and Hispanics saw the greatest
percentage growth in suburban poverty, as did the native-born population." AfricanAmericans were the "only group to see a decline in the number of poor urban residents.While the number of poor blacks living in urban tracts decreased by 11 percent, thenumber of poor blacks in the suburbs increased by about 20 percent." San Franciscoand Oakland both have declining black populations.
Poverty rose in cities like Pittsburg, Antioch, Concord, Vallejo, the fringe of San Jose andMillbrae. The percentage of poor people living in the suburbs increased among all racialgroups, but the highest change was among African Americans. "The share of the poorBlack population living in the suburbs increased more than 7 percentage points, whereasthe next highest group, Asians, increased 2 percentage points," the report said.
The report notes that several factors contributed to the suburbanization of Bay Areapoverty. One is the collapse of the housing bubble in the late 2000s, which particularlyhurt Stockton, Antioch and much of East Contra Costa County. In the mid-2000s, thehousing boom provided affordable housing in the suburbs. Once it burst, home valuesdropped, foreclosures skyrocketed, people lost their jobs, and poverty increased.
Some low-income residents moved from the cities to suburbs to escape crime and findbetter opportunities. But gentrification also factored in suburbanizing poverty. The reportnotes, "The rising value of properties in the urban core may have led to indirectdisplacement, as landlords converted rental units to condominiums and Tenancy inCommons (TICs), or raised the rents to the extent allowed by local regulation. Displacedresidents may have moved from central cities to more affordable suburban areas."
These Bay Area working-class suburbs provide cheaper housing, some of which isSection 8. However, there are disadvantages to living in these communities. Socialservices that help low-income people are typically located in urban areas, where much ofthe poor have long been concentrated, while the suburbs lack them. Thus, poor peoplein the suburbs have little access to nonprofits and organizations that can help them.Moreover, Bay Area suburbs are no different than other suburbs when it comes tolacking public transportation. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) goes throughout much ofOakland and San Francisco but barely reaches Pittsburg and doesn't even touch Vallejo.Thus, low-income workers are forced to endure long commutes on the freeway, whichleads to greater traffic and pollution.
Taken together, what's going on in San Francisco is deeper than just a fight betweenwell-to-do tech workers and longtime San Francisco residents. San Francisco ismicrocosm of what's going on in metropolitan areas around the world. From SanFrancisco to New York City to London, urban areas are being redesigned intoplaygrounds for the very rich. The poor, working and almost-nonexistent middle-classpeople who can't afford to live in these rich Elysiums are forced to live farther away,with few resources to support themselves.
By pushing poor and working-class people to the suburbs, gentrification doesn't benefiteveryone. Instead, it reconfigures the geographic lines of racial and economic inequality,granting improvements to the lives of the moneyed classes, at the expense of the needs- and sometimes, even the survival - of everyone else.