More coverage of the Redevelopment approval at BVHP
Today’s Chronicle has coverage of last night’s meeting…
More than half of San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point will fall under the jurisdiction of the city’s Redevelopment Agency under a proposal approved Tuesday evening that aims to clean up blight, create jobs and build affordable housing in the struggling community. The Redevelopment Agency commission unanimously backed the plan that turns more than 1,300 acres of the Bayview into a redevelopment area — the largest redevelopment plan in San Francisco history.Acknowledging the strained relationship between the city’s black community and the agency, which in the 1960s bulldozed homes in the Western Addition and forced out many black families, commissioners said the goal of the Bayview plan is to keep residents living there, not somewhere else.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has final say on the matter and is set to vote on the issue sometime this spring. Mayor Gavin Newsom expressed his support for the plan in a letter Tuesday.
Despite hearing assurances that the plan forbids eminent domain on any building where people live, some residents still said they did not trust the agency.
Among those that don’t trust the agency are Francisco Da Costa of Environmental Justice Advocacy. In a post titled ‘Negro Removal a Reality’, he writes “SFRA is not about jobs – it is about taking property and giving it to developers to built homes and facilities. In this case SFRA will build mostly Market Rate units and use Tax Increment to make millions of dollars.”
He also wrote a long editorial prior to yesterday’s meeting, “The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) has the worst track record when it comes to displacing homes, facilities and people. SFRA has been a failure at Mission Bay, screwed thousands over in the Western Addition and will now that SFRA has got its way in the Bayview Hunters Point.”
I still do not have an position on this matter, but am happy to hear that they are not going to eliminate existing housing. That doesn’t account for the locally-owned businesses in BVHP, however…
UPDATE: I would like to add two articles from BeyondChron today, who are strongly opposed to the redevelopment.
1. Bayview-Hunters Point Turns Out in Force Against Redevelopment by Casey Mills – “The San Francisco Redevelopment Commission voted last night to approve the transformation of 1,200 acres of Bayview-Hunters Point into a Redevelopment Area. The vote came in the face of massive turnout from Bayview/Hunters-Point residents and community activists at the meeting, many of which came out strongly against a Redevelopment Area. Speaking before the Commission’s hearing and at a press conference beforehand, a variety of speakers argued that the Redevelopment Agency has not changed since it played a central role in displacing the black Fillmore community in the 60s, and continues to work towards allowing private developers to profit off the displacement of low-income communities and communities of color like Bayview/Hunters-Point.”
2. Land Speculators, Politically-Favored Developers Win Big if Redevelopment Agency Seizes Control of Bayview by Randy Shaw – “Yesterday, the San Francisco Redevelopment Commission decided to dramatically expand Redevelopment Agency control of Bayview-Hunters Point. Real estate developers, land speculators, property owners, favored nonprofit groups, and Mayor Newsom have the most to gain from expanding Redevelopment, while non-subsidized tenants, small business owners, seekers of affordable homeownership, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and taxpayers citywide have the most to lose. But much of the testimony at Tuesday’s hearing was about race, as African-American opponents of the Redevelopment takeover ask why their neighborhoods continue to be targeted for “urban removal.” Yesterday represented an all too familiar story.”
