Stolen Equity-Stolen Housing Tour #1: From the FillNoMo to the Bayview

pstrongStolen Equity-Stolen Housing Tour Stop #1: The FillNoMo/strong/p pAt 1:30 pm on the last Friday in Black Herstory Month after struggling to Copwatch at the sweeps of UnHoused San Francisco residents on Division street, POOR Magazine launched our stolen equity/ stolen housing tour, beginning on Eddy street in the FillNoMo district of San Francisco touring the multiple vacant and ldquo;in renovationrdquo; units being ldquo;rad-edrdquo; by for profit and non-profit developers.Our goal was to bring attention to the a href="http://sfbayview.com/2016/02/fake-housing-crisis-from-bayview-to-baltimore-public-housing-kept-empty-while-thousands-are-un-housed/"fake housing crisis/a being perpetrated so people could make money flipping poor people housing while unhoused San Franciscans had nowhere sleep./p p ldquo;Our neighborhoods are all gone, from Porsquo;Lice terror to our own children caught up in the violence to the RAD -funded gentrification , i am going through culture shock in my own hood, ldquo; said Queenandi X Sheba, staff writer, teacher and poet with POOR Magazine and Deecolonize Academy. as she toured Eddy street./p pThe Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) is the newest in HUD#39;s Poor People Removal Programs- and basically is the selling off of all public housing building leases on the stock market to private investors which then get transferred to for profit and non-profit housing devil-opers (as I affectionately call them) only to turn poor people housing into the lie of mixed-income affordable housing.(a href="http://sfbayview.com/2013/09/rad-public-housing-privatization-stealing-our-last-acre-and-our-one-remaining-mule/"POOR the Bayview - the only media telliing the truth on this issue for the last 3 years)/a/p pldquo;They donrsquo;t want our indigenous peoples, our Black and Brown children to be here, this is eradication, ldquo; said Sala Haquiyah -Chandler, warrior mama and fighter for justice who lost her own Sun in a quadruple homicide in January of 2015, as she joined the tour which was connecting the dots between stolen equity and generations of African and indigenous families who used to live in San Francisco./p p spanspanspanspanPerhaps in act of solidarity, on this same day the San Francisco Housing Authority employees union 1021 held a concerted walk offnbsp; during their break times to demand leadership and solutions to address the housing crisis that is disproportionately displacing African Americans and Latinos. San Francisco employees continue to raise concerns about the real-life impacts taking place as privatization continues to decimate the level of service to the cityrsquo;s most vulnerable populations./span/span/span/span/p pstrongTour Stop #2: Midtown apartments/strongbr / After going by the threatened with eviction home of the John Coltraine Church on Fillmore and so many more used to be public, now privatized buildings we proceeded to Midtown Apartments on Scott st. ldquo;They told us when we moved here that they we would be able to buy our apartments,rdquo; said Miles, revolutionary tenant from the Midtown Apartments who launched a historic rent strike when non-profiteer Mercy Housing raised all the rents of the hundreds of Black, Brown, elder and disabled tenants of Midtown apts earlier this year. ( a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oTWhvtTASc"Miles on PNN-TV)/a/p p On this powerful stop of the tour wenbsp; ended up at Midtown Apartments only to be met by some very powerful revolutionary elders and folks who refuse to accept this theft of their rightful equity. As of last week they received 60 day notices from Mercy Housing who is salivating over the potential profits of this huge apt complex./p p ldquo;San Francisco was built by all of you,rdquo; Said Leroy Moore one of the stolen equity, stolen housing tour guides from POOR Magazine./p p ldquo;Midtown residents have equity, this is your building. Midtown Needs to Give Equity Not Eviction notices,rdquo; I said as a last chant before we left the determined leaders of the Save Midtown fight determined to come back and stand with them until they recieve their rightful equity- NOT evictions. ( a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3vBuKFLOY0"Jay - Tenant and revolutionary with Midtown on PNN-TV)/a/p pa href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e05L7MmCT3E"(Youth SKolaz from Deecolonize Academy at Midtown)/a/p p strong5th stop Bayview/strongbr / We ended the tour on top of Northridge road only to find literally hundred of intentionally blighted, closed and boarded up units of perfectly good housing now completely stolen by Lennar Corporation under the RAD program. nbsp;/p pFrom the top of the hill our tour viewed literally hundreds of units of empty housing, kept that way, so the next for profit or non-profit developer could eat them up and spit us, the tenants, the long-time residents, the African, Pacific Islander, Raza and Poor peoples whose lives and hearts and families have built this hill for generations, out onto the cold streets of displacement./p pPOOR Magazine has created a model for poor, houseless and indigenous people-led movement for land liberation, self-determination and housing. We call it a href="http://www.poormagazine.org/homefulness"Homefulness./a We are proposing it to Yelamu Ohlone land (SF) right now. Maybe the Mayor could take a break from his incessant selling off the city to the highest bidder long enough to listen./p