Parcel G proposal to house LGBT elders is fought by NIMBY-ism
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by Bruce Allison/PNN elder and poverty scholar Back when San Francisco was celebrating the beginning of the roaring 20's, a decade of peace and prosperity, the lower Haight district was one of the top places for citizens to enjoy. Fast forward to 2008. San Francisco is continuing the legacy of anti-discrimation and respect for all by opening units of affordable housing that would be open to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors in San Francisco as well as those that are straight. The property being used as the site for this affordable housing unit is about 3 sq. acres and though it may seem small, in San Francisco it is considered to be quite large. This land was originally the campus of the University of California, San Francisco. In the 1920s, the property was given to the University of California, Berkeley in which they had designed into an extension campus. In 2004, UC Berkeley chose to abandon this property and gave it up to the city in order build affordable housing for seniors and people with disabilites . To take this a step further, OpenHouse, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco that provides opportunities and programs for LGBT seniors in the Bay Area, has proposed to make the property of 55 Laguna Street into affordable housing for but not exclusively to LGBT seniors. Though not given preferential treatment, seniors that are LGBT are given priority because many have complained about being harassed by landlords and not given places to live. The area media income required to live in these units would possibly equal 30%. This past March, the plans for these affordable housing units were put in front of the Board of Supervisors at City Hall. Though the NIMBY(Not in My Neighborhood) citizens voiced their discontent by arguing that seniors that are mostly 70-80 will group together and form a gang that will attack the other citizens in the neighborhood, they were igonored. The Board of Supervisors voted for the plans for affordable housing for LGBT seniors and construction is set to begin in 2009. |