potrero view

The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House’s executive director, Ed Hatter, with a youth program participant.

April 2009

Potrero Hill Neighborhood House Tries to Keep up with a Changing Community

Lori Higa

The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House – the Nabe, as it’s affectionately called – is a registered historic landmark, designed by Julia Morgan, the architect for Hearst Castle.  The plain brown wood building sits atop Potrero Hill, at the corner of Southern Heights and DeHaro streets, with expansive downtown and East Bay views.  The view of the Nabe’s future, however, isn’t as clear.  

Erected sometime between 1919 and 1932, the Nabe was built by a Presbyterian women’s group for a puritanical Russian sect, the Molokani, which fled Czarist oppression in the Volga and Caucasus to settle on Potrero Hill.  At the Nabe the Molokani learned English, machine sewing and other skills.  Old timers remember the Nabe as a gathering place for union activists, Russian socialists, squatters and other beneficiaries of the church’s charity.

In the 1970s, after a struggle with the existing leadership, the late Enola Maxwell became the first African-American and first woman to head the Nabe, ushering in a period of community activism.  Maxwell led the Nabe for more than three decades.  Under her direction the Nabe introduced new education, civic engagement, housing and employment programs, with 40 employees and a budget that exceeded $1.6 million.  

Today the Nabe serves as a “multi-purpose, multi-generational community center” with the mission of serving “those in need from the cradle to the grave,” according to potrerohillsf.com.  The building’s amenities include a theater, gymnasium, two kitchens, computer lab, art room, multi-purpose space, classroom and children’s playground.  However, where historically the Nabe served a geographically isolated, working-class immigrant community, over the past decade the surrounding neighborhoods of Potrero Hill, Mission Bay, China Basin, Dogpatch, Showplace Square and Bayview-Hunters Point, collectively known as the Eastern Neighborhoods, have emerged as one of the City’s fastest growing, and highest-income, areas.

A proud history and prime location provides the Nabe with the potential to be one of San Francisco’s most dynamic community centers.  However, the Nabe is being buffeted by changes in local demographics and other challenges.  While Hill residents praise the Nabe for hosting dozens of social service programs, many are concerned that the Nabe has lost its sheen, drifting away from its role as a central community resource.  According to one Hill resident, serving as a rental facility for programs, even well-regarded ones, isn’t enough. “The Nabe could be a great asset like Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center,” but it always seems to be “under construction.”  

While the Nabe houses public sector and nonprofit programs that serve special needs adults and children, particularly at-risk youth from Potrero Hill Terrace and Potrero Annex, with the exception of the Potrero Hill Democratic Club, few are targeted to Potrero Hill residents or managed by the Nabe, according to Margaret Keyes, a former Nabe board member.  During her short-time on the board, Keyes – a psychotherapist, author, activist and long-time Wisconsin Street resident – advocated that the Nabe develop its own programs, particularly serving public housing residents.  

According to Executive Director Ed Hatter, the Nabe’s primary goals are to help the community reduce the incidence of violence, improve public safety, and close the gap between the haves and the have-nots.  Hatter points to the disconnect between residents who are actively engaged with the community and more recent arrivals who don’t patronize local businesses and hardly know that the Nabe exists.  He calls disengaged new Hill residents “garage door people. They push a button in the morning, push a button in the evening and never the twain shall meet.”   Like other Hill long-timers, though Hatter grew up in the neighborhood he can’t afford to live in it, instead making his home in Bayview.  Previous directors lived at the Nabe; like the White House, the executive director had living quarters in the south wing.   

Hatter isn’t alone in his perceptions about recent arrivals.  One resident compared the “garage people” to a “plague of locusts, descending upon and gobbling up prime parking spots and housing,” while remaining anonymous and disengaged. Many locals have watched with dismay as thousands of post-dotcom carpetbaggers have immigrated to the rapidly evolving Eastern Neighborhoods, lured by sleek slabs of gleaming glass, steel and concrete and high-paying biotech jobs at the University of California, San Francisco’s (UCSF) Mission Bay compound. One long-time resident decried the “invasion of mostly white, Whole Foods-shopping, BMW-driving, 20- and 30-something condo dwelling yuppies who are driving middle and working class locals out.”    

The demographic shift, at which the Nabe is arguably at the center, is real. Dogpatch, another historically significant neighborhood, will be subject to a projected 21,000 additional parking spaces as a result of Mission Bay development over the next few years, according to the San Francisco Planning Department’s web site.  Recent community efforts to restrict parking in the area have focused on Silicon Valley commuters who leave their car in the neighborhood and ride Caltrain to jobs on the peninsula.

The population pressure has triggered higher property values and the emergence of high-end restaurants and wine bars.  These changes have exacerbated local income disparities.  More than three-quarters of Hill residents are upper income European-Americans, with the rest, roughly 10 percent, mostly African-Americans living below federal poverty guidelines.  After the 2010 census is taken, new numbers are likely to show a dramatic decline in the area’s African-American population.

Hatter believes that public safety is best assured by “being a neighbor, knowing your neighbors makes life safer for everyone.”  According to Hatter, the Nabe has a crucial role to play in connecting the dots between new and old, black and white, rich and poor.   “The eco-divide is widening,” Hatter said. “We’ve been working with the City’s Department of the Environment, as we’re in the most environmentally impacted area in the City.  We want to get the word out that the Nabe is up-to-date, with green, sustainable, recyclable materials, photovoltaic and so on, as we renovate.  We’re keeping an eye on Mirant Corp. [owner of the Potrero Hill power plant,] so that it works incrementally on Illinois Street.”  

Despite Hatter’s attempts to reach-out to developers and UCSF, he’s found it difficult to engage the community’s new stakeholders.  “Our youth program manager sits on the UCSF council,” Hatter stated.  “There’s been a lot of meetings, but very little action.”  Hatter recently met with a UCSF staff person regarding neighborhood changes, but felt discouraged by the lack of reciprocity. “To be in it is to be of it,” he said.

According to Hatter, the Nabe has long supported workforce development programs for community members, including entry-level jobs in construction.  But, Hatter asserted, “We were cut out of the projects 12 years ago, when Catellus took over as master developer of Mission Bay. They did the same thing to Mission Hiring Hall.”  He describes UCSF as being “exempt from the requirement of hiring 50 percent of employees from the neighborhood.  The City’s 12B ordinance required at least half of new business’ workers be hired from the neighborhood.  The problem was that the ordinance dealt more with end-use positions than construction jobs.”  With the passage of anti-affirmative action Proposition 209, UCSF and private developers are no longer compelled to hire local minority residents, said Hatter.  “We made a good faith effort, despite the removal from workforce legislation,” Hatter insisted. “It just didn’t work, trying to have a relationship with UCSF to use neighborhood residents to fill entry-level positions.”  

Hatter listed a number of actions he hoped to take to raise the Nabe’s profile, including holding a fundraiser at the Mission Bay Community Center, distributing welcome packages – including information about the Nabe and a merchants directory – on every “garage person’s doorstep;” and  hiring a full-time fundraiser.  But there’s no money to initiate and pay for such activities.

The list of programs that rent space at the Nabe is long and varied.  It includes Head Start, which provides preschool for children from low-income families; substance abuse adult day treatment programs; after-school enrichment programs; intervention for juveniles in the justice system; youth and adult employment skills training; Narcotics Anonymous; Alcoholics Anonymous; senior nutrition; recreation and exercise programs.  In days gone by, there were lecture series, a resident theater company and movie nights.  Today such activities are rare, extinguished by a lack of money, attention, and neighborhood disengagement.

Current programs, despite their number, don’t generate sufficient funds to pay for upkeep of the aging facility and the salaries of its 22 member staff, expenses that exceed $1 million, according to the Nabe’s latest tax filings.  To make ends meet, last year Hatter deferred his salary for three months while waiting for reimbursements from government agencies.  And the Nabe faces substantial challenges associated with ongoing maintenance and repair.  The building, according to Hatter, “is old and takes lots of money to maintain.”  Fortunately, it has a competent, talented, savvy custodian, Leon Bevin. Watching him work, said Keyes, would provide the kind of education a kid should get from his or her father.  

In previous years, community members could use the Nabe for free or a small donation.  Today, some residents complain that the Nabe’s fees are so exorbitant that it’s prohibitive to hold community events there.  According to a member of a Potrero Hill children’s group, “The Nabe used to charge us $35 for a room; now they want upwards of $250, so of course we couldn’t pay that and found space elsewhere.  Is it really a public space if it’s privately-held? Who is it really serving?  It seems like selective usage, maybe reverse racism.  If it’s private, and if the community can’t use the space, then it probably shouldn’t be considered a community center.”

The Nabe doesn’t have a web site, making it difficult to track down such information as staff biographies, organizational history, board members or fundraising activity.  There are, however, multiple reviews posted on Yelp! complaining about inappropriate behavior by Nabe managers.  According to a January 2009 post: “I recently attended a work party at the Neighborhood House and was offended by the lack of professionalism by the manager, which had a negative impact on the gathering. The space itself is nice enough; the view of the City breathtaking. Would I suggest this space for an event?  NO.  The manager was ... all drama and hostile.  She was a complete pest the entire time.  It was incredibly warm and yet the doors needed to be closed due to the neighbors and noise.  Our contract allowed for amplification, and yet the DJ became a problem.  She then terminated the party an hour early and called the police. I can fully understand why the space sits empty.”  Hatter acknowledged that he has a loose management style, but offered no excuses or apologies for any particular incident.  

According to Hatter, he was asked to accept the executive director post three times before he took the job.  He’s been in the position for five years.  With a degree in social work, Hatter spent some two decades, off and on, at the Nabe, working in various capacities.  Hatter is Enola Maxwell’s grandson, and his aunt is Sophie Maxwell, Enola’s daughter, and District 10 Supervisor.

Bevin suggested that Keyes join the Nabe’s board of directors after he observed the mini-City Arts and Lecture-like series she and Move-On.org friends produced in 2004.  After she joined the board in 2007 she dove in.  Keyes said that she conducted “a lot of research on the social problems of Potrero Hill,” in hopes of creating Hill-based programs that served the most needy. She examined the root causes of the violence that many families living in the Hill’s public housing were experiencing.  She wanted the Nabe to create programs that would address crime, and help families fight unfair evictions resulting from the obfuscating, 20-page rental agreements issued by the San Francisco Housing Authority.  But Keyes’ ambitions were stymied by a lack of board transparency.  Other than the director’s agenda, the nonprofit didn’t keep board minutes.  Thinking that the problem was a lack of training, Keyes arranged for the board and staff to attend a capacity-building workshop, but got little support for the programs she suggested.  Keyes resigned from the board six months after she joined it.  

Developer consultant and lobbyist Joe Boss has been a staunch supporter of the Nabe for more than two decades, interacting with its social and after-school programs as a member of multiple neighborhood associations.  Boss is actively involved in the Nabe’s ongoing renovation, most recently providing renovation-related monies as a member of the Eastern Neighborhoods Trust Fund, a donor-advised fund which was created from mitigation fees that resulted from a Showplace Square office project that Boss helped broker.  

In addition to directing Trust Fund monies, Boss has coordinated donated labor and materials from companies such as Bode and the Nibbi Brothers to repair a number of longstanding structural issues, including backed-up sewer lines, aging roof shingles, sidewalks and invasive trees.  According to Boss he supports the Nabe because “It’s a historic Julia Morgan landmark, for God’s sake!  Sure, the Nabe has had its ups and downs over the years, what nonprofit hasn’t? Compared to most community-based organizations who aren’t worth a hoot, the Nabe is different. It’s a great facility with great programs like the senior lunch program, its support of families and neighborhood kids...”

General contractor, Chief Executive Officer of Everest Waterproofing, and London native Keith Goldstein first got involved with the Nabe as Potrero Hill Association of Merchants and Businesses (PHAMB) president four years ago. According to Boss, Goldstein has written personal checks to the Nabe many times over the years.  Like Boss, Goldstein serves as an advisor to the Eastern Neighborhoods Trust Fund.  Goldstein praised the Nabe for providing life-giving support to people who really depend on it. “I find myself so inspired by the Nabe, when I go there at lunchtime and see groups of developmentally disabled seniors, the after-school nutrition programs for the children of Potrero Hill Terrace.  It’s also a great place for community meetings.” Goldstein uses the Nabe to hold an annual fundraiser for his own nonprofit, Seeds, which has built clinics and schools in impoverished villages in the Himalayas.  “What the Nabe needs,” he added, “is a development director, someone to write grants, put together a brochure for facilities rentals.”  

Despite the significant renovation work done on the Nabe, “It has a long way to go,” said another resident under condition of anonymity.  “The Nabe needs to put together a capital campaign, and maybe do an organizational restructure.  I would like to help the Nabe become a great community center, but I’m just not motivated because of the way it is currently run.”  

Last month, the Nabe hosted a successful barbeque that featured a local hula dance troupe and blues band that raised several thousand dollars.  Plans are afoot to hold more fundraisers.  PHAMB is partnering with the California Culinary Academy to host Taste of Potrero at the Nabe this fall, featuring a nine-piece Dixieland jazz band, whose members are all over 70 years old.  According to Goldstein, “It’s a wonderful event, with a spectacular view of the bay, and a breakfast buffet that will be provided by the student chefs from the Culinary Academy.”  In past years, the event was poorly promoted and attendance was low. This year, Goldstein hopes to involve more merchants as sponsors and draw participants from a revitalized street festival replete with play structures for children and a live world music stage.  

Goldstein believes that holding more events like Taste of Potrero at the Nabe will bring together the eastern neighborhood’s diverse residents, whose paths might otherwise never cross.  Such a mixing of different races, incomes, ages, and occupations would herald a fresh start for the Nabe, perhaps enabling it to retake its place as the heart of Potrero Hill.

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