potrero view

October 2008

Potrero Terrace and Annex to be Redeveloped

By Andrea de Brito

As the last few children were picked up at Starr King Elementary School, roughly 40 residents of the adjacent public housing complex, a handful of developers, San Francisco Housing Authority and other City officials, and a few concerned neighbors filled the school’s small cafeteria last month.  The event marked Bridge Housing Corporation’s first community meeting with Potrero Terrace and Annex residents since the Housing Authority entered into an agreement to negotiate a redevelopment plan with the nonprofit housing developer earlier in September.  Community outreach is integral to Bridge’s way of doing business, explained president Carol Galante; the public housing residents were skeptical.

The plan to redevelop Potrero Terrace and Potrero Annex emerged from the City’s HOPE-San Francisco initiative, an alternative to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) now nearly extinct HOPE VI program.  HOPE VI, which over a decade and a half period financed a number of public housing redevelopment projects in San Francisco and throughout the country, was extinguished during the Bush Administration.       

Under HOPE-SF developers are encouraged to craft plans to rebuild the City’s distressed housing projects.  Last spring the Housing Authority chose redevelopment proposals for Potrero Terrace-Annex, Sunnydale-Velasco, and Westside Courts.  San Francisco will contribute $5 million towards the $95 million necessary to redevelop the three public housing sites.

The HOPE-SF Task Force created a list of principles to guide redevelopment, such as one-for-one replacement of public housing units, job opportunities for residents, integration with neighborhood improvement plans, the creation of environmentally sustainable housing, and building a strong sense of community.  HOPE-SF principles are only guidelines, as Task Force member Rene Cazenave explained. “The Task Force has very little power.”

Bridge will issue a formal redevelopment plan for Potrero Terrace-Annex by early 2010.  Under preliminary plans the 606 existing housing units will be demolished and replaced with the same number of units over five project phases, enabling existing residents to remain in their homes until new units are constructed.  In addition, 446 market rate homes, 229 affordable homes, and commercial space will be developed.  The market rate homes are supposed to pay off the cost of building the public housing units.

“Bridge is a Republican nonprofit controlled by realtors that doesn’t have a grasp on community. They are likely to do anything the Housing Authority says,” said Cazenave, who supports one-for-one replacement for public housing tenants but sees it as the number one challenge financing HOPE-SF redevelopments. “Who’s gonna want to pay $600,000 for a condo in the projects?” Cazenave asked. “They’re going to cut the number of public housing units if they don’t move people in.”  Sara Shortt, Housing Rights Committee’s executive director,  is concerned about gentrification at Potrero Terrace-Annex. “There are certain amenities homeowners that buy condos there are going to want to have. They’re going to want to see a Starbucks and a Jamba Juice,” she said. “This could really change the neighborhood’s demographics.”

In response to existing residents’ concern about being displaced by redevelopment, in mid-September the Housing Authority posted a “Do Not Move Notice.”  The notice states that “It is the Authority’s intent that all residents in good standing will be relocated to the new housing upon completion.”  But Cazenave isn’t convinced.  “The problem with phased [one-for-one] relocation is that anyone who has a problem with the Housing Authority is getting evicted to make room for relocation on-site,” he  explained.

Shortt wants the City to adopt legislation protecting public housing tenants’ rights.  Under the Public Housing Tenant Protection Act, HOPE-SF principles of one-for-one replacement units, and not just the right to return, but the right to remain, achieved through phased on-site relocation would be enforced.   “From tenants’ perspective, there is a real fear that people there now won’t be able to return. Based on frightening examples in history, people were screened-out, had to meet eligibility requirements, or got forgotten on the record, lost in the shuffle, or were not in good standing so they were denied the right to return,” Shortt said.  

Although redevelopment will improve housing conditions, there’s no guarantee that it will solve existing problems with crime, evictions, and poor management.  Cazenave points to the Bernal Dwellings as an example of a HOPE VI redevelopment where many of the same problems remain. “Nothing else was done except rebuilding:  no programs, no community integration activities, no added police. Zero effort. Now the property owners are up in arms,” he said. “Without anti-violence programs, job training, and ways to break barriers between groups, it won’t work.”

“You will not see police cars after you hear gunshots, at all. There’s a substation down there and you’re supposed to be able to get a hold of them 24 hours a day, which is not true. They’re never at the substation,” said a Potrero Terrace resident, speaking of existing conditions at the complex.   Other Potrero Terrace residents, while in favor of on-site relocation, are concerned that gang wars might break out as a result of tenants being relocated from one block to another.

The HOPE-SF Task Force is working on a Predevelopment Service Plan – slated for completion by the end of this month – which will catalogue City programs available to public housing residents, such as rental assistance, afterschool programming, and family case management.  Existing barriers to accessing programs, such as the requirement of a GED or driver’s license, will be eliminated under the plan, the implementation of which will be funded by general funds and philanthropic foundations.

According to Housing Authority director Henry Alvarez III, while the Authority isn’t broke, “We’re horrible at what we do. But we’re going to get better at it.” He promised to reduce evictions through the implementation of the rental assistance program, which was launched at Hunters View last winter.  “The SFHA sent the message to people that they did not take action if rent wasn’t paid, so many stopped paying, especially when they felt unsafe or their units are uninhabitable,” Shortt said.  “We have advocated strongly with the SFHA around this and as a result got them to have a policy of accepting fair payment plans in these situations, knowing that these eviction attempts could be used as a back door to deny right of return. We also are assisting those residents who believe they are being unfairly charged or don’t owe money with negotiations with the SFHA.”

“Jo,” a mother of three children and 16-year Potrero Terrace resident, was evicted from the complex a few months ago after accumulating more than $1,000 in back rent. She and her kids now live with her sister a few doors from her old apartment, which is boarded-up and vacant.  If it weren’t for her sister, Jo claims she’d be a single mother on the streets.  According to Jo, the Housing Authority told her about the rental assistance program two months before she and her children were evicted. “They let people go a year without paying rent and then you’re $2,000 worth of back rent and then you’re out. They don’t say, you’re $200 behind, let’s talk.  Or come in and let’s figure out a way,” said Jo.

Finding a way to pay rent as a single mother with a low-paying job was only part of Jo’s problem.  For years she suffered through bad heating, broken windows and doors, mold infestation, backed-up pipes, and peeling paint.  It took more than a year for management to respond to her complaint that her apartment had no heat.  She was finally provided with a small space heater, which allowed only one room to be heated at a time. To make matters worse, the windows didn’t lock and her son’s window didn’t close, creating a draft during winter. When her bedroom door broke, Jo went without a door because management asked her to pay $100 for what she calls, “a piece of cardboard that was scraping along the floor every time it opened or closed.”

When Jo moved in every room in her sister’s apartment was filled with tubs of black water.   The vacant upstairs unit had been invaded and set on fire, and when the pipes were broken, water bubbled under the ceiling paint of the unit below. The moldy, black water bubbles burst, damaging much of the family’s possessions, an expense for which they were never reimbursed. It took more than a year for management to fix the leak damage, for which Jo’s sister was charged.

“Living up here is a lose-lose situation. You work and they make you pay an over amount of rent for a crappy place. It’s not like you’re paying $700 for something that’s nice. You’re paying $700 for a place where if you walk outside your door, you might get shot,” Jo said.  “Ninety percent of us don’t know how to pay our bills on time. That’s why we’re here.  They should have workshops for people to help us get our rent paid. I never had a father or a mother, so I never learned how to do that. It’s nice to have a place where you can only pay $700 rent, but if you don’t know how to manage your money, you still can’t pay that amount.”

The Potrero Terrace and Annex complex isn’t Bridge’s first San Francisco redevelopment project.  In 1995, Bridge helped rebuild the North Beach public housing projects under HOPE VI.  The model used – mixed-income housing and mixed-use – was considered innovative because it included new and additional high-density units, integrated residents of different incomes, and featured a Trader Joe’s and Starbucks at which residents would be offered employment.

But James Tracy, Eviction Defense Network founder and long-time housing rights activist, says it took a strong, independent tenants association to ensure North Beach tenants had legal protection.  During North Beach’s redevelopment tenant activists collaborated with Eviction Defense Network to develop an exit contract.  The Housing Authority agreed to sign the contract, fearing that if the tenants delayed the project it would lose $23 million in HOPE VI funding .  “Before North Beach it was generally one-for-one replacement of dwellings but not of extremely low-income units,” Tracy said.

Angela Chu, of Chinatown Community Development Center, stressed the importance of providing accessible information to tenants, maintaining a database of residents, and keeping in touch with temporarily relocated tenants. “What Housing Authority does is talk to people with the loudest voice who like to talk and take care of their own interests. If you don’t have a strong tenants association, it makes it harder for things to be done properly,” she said.  “Redevelopment by itself won’t change the state of the community. What we need are social programs that deal with education, drug problems, paying rent on-time, and gang violence,” said Joanne Abernathy, a 40-year Hunters Point housing resident who works for Communities of Opportunities, a City-sponsored effort that focuses on Southeast San Francisco’s public housing issues.   “People don’t stay in public housing because they want to.  Housing Authority makes living in public housing a permanent situation when it’s supposed to be temporary because it doesn’t help with social programs, rental assistance, or helping people buy homes. Poverty will continue growing while people keep living in public housing,” she added.

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