“They just told us they sold the building, none of us knows whats going to happen but now we know why all of our young people are being criminalized and their families evicted,” said Mary X, one of the long-time residents of the now no longer public housing project known as Plaza East. She was referring to a confusing announcement made by Housing Authority on Friday, Feb 28, 2014
The newest revelation in the shadowy world of RAD-gate- just got more shadows. According to Sara Short from the Housing Rights Committee, (in a post on Facebook) one of the prize jewels of the Housing Authority known as Plaza East was already sold to a private housing corporation who is partly owned by Goldman Sachs, known as MacCormack & Barron So who do we trust, and what are they hiding?
Goldman Sachs???!
If you read my original story written back in September 2013, the proposals of a new acronym known as RAD (Rental Assistance Demonstration) which to put it simply is the selling off of all public housing buildings across the US to private investors like Goldman Sachs was “presented” to an already bought in/mayor appointed Housing Authority board as the way “to save public housing”.
This pseudo-public meeting of the San Francisco Housing Authority, held just two weeks before the “deadline” to turn in the RAD proposal, was attended by a very small pre-selected group of non-profit housing organizations, many of whom would be beneficiaries of the RFP’s that would go out to “control” read: receive funding, to manage the housing authority buildings.
This meeting was the first time I or any of my fellow public housing warriors heard about the RAD program. And I only happened to be there because I had to advocate for a tenant on an unrelated matter.
“The RAD program will enable these buildings, many of which were in serious (intentional) dis-repair to be saved, was the constant refrain from careful speaking Mayors office representatives selling the meeting on RAD’s benefits.
Public housing needed to be “saved” we were told, because the perfect storm of (intentional) “bad management” and (politrickster-stolen) stripping of funding from HUD made them uninhabitable so the only ‘answer’ presented was non-profit and for-profit privatization of public housing buildings. This budget genocide to HUD’s budget which began as far back as Nixon has been painstakenly researched and documented by poverty skolaz at Western Regional Advocacy Project
But this clean, simple corporate-esque solution was missing so many pieces, like what about the intentional blighting and boarding up of unit after unit of repairable housing in Hunters Point, Sunnydale and Alice Griffith? What about the endless jaws of John Stewart and Lennar waiting in the wings with millions of dollars for redevil-opment, buy-outs and removal, followed up by racist, plantation worksites that don’t hire locally and racist plantation management that create age-separated capitalist ghettos, demand credit checks, incomes and place insane rules on their tenants.
No, family- RAD, just like its older brother Hope IV is a deep, dark lie of corporate mayors and corporate gentriFUKation and actually part and parcel of a more frightening process to control, eradicate, remove and criminalize public space, and us black, brown and poor people who convene, shop or live there.
RAD Evictions begin with Our Black and Brown Youth
“I can’t control my 19 year old son,” Sabrina Carter, African-American single mama and life-long resident of public housing in San Francisco, who is but one of over 7 families whose children have been criminalized, have been forced to sign stay away orders against for their own children, followed up by insanely unfair stipulated judgements which are adjudicated by San Francisco Judge Quidachay and end up in their eviction.
I a 10 year resident of Asheville Housing Authority in Asheville, NC. Last year our Housing Authority told us that they was applying for RAD and promoted to the residents like nothing is wrong with it and its there only option because they are running low on funding. I wanted to know if there is anyone we can contact to get help on how to address this. (comment to PNN)
Notwithstanding all the “confusion” about when Plaza East was privatized and why, what we know for sure is the criminalizations and evictions that Sabrina and so many families from San Francisco to North Carolina who just received in public housing have recently been increasingly facing are but a small taste of what we as public housing tenants have to look foreward to as we face the privatization of what used to be public housing.
This a clear example of the overall plan to send poor people across the US to the other “Public housing” aka plantation prisons, all locally all the remaining low-income peoples of color out of this increasingly wite, rich City.
Click here to see the buildings in San Francisco approved for RAD funding
POOR Magazine is seeking a conscious law firm to represent the families of public housing in a class action suit. Any families who would like POOR Magazine to come out to your buildings and help you organize about RAD please email deeandtiny@poormagazine.org
Please join us in Singing in Sprit for Our Families in Struggle Action at SF CIty Hall @ 9am, Tuesday, March 11th, 2014