Take These Empty Streets

by Gretchen Hildebran/PoorNewsNetwork

The clean-cut men sitting at the table in the corner seemed friendly enough, introducing themselves and peering at my nametag to determine my affiliation. Upon seeing that I was with POOR Magazine they started throwing out sound bites. The man sitting next to me stated awkwardly that he was here to be part of the “consensus building process.” They were representing AIG management, a property development firm who owns lots in the Mid-market Project Area. The area, which extends from Market and Mission streets between 5th and 9th, is being targeted by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency for “revitalization.” This past Saturday, for the second time, I was spending my morning in a community feedback session with the Mid-Market Project Area Committee (PAC) about their plans to redevelop.

Not in Our Vacant Lots

My conversation with the developers at my table was a stark reminder of the difference between this meeting and the last one, where I sat with Tenderloin residents and POOR magazine staff, joking and stressing about the scariest elements of the PAC’s plan. This time around my table mates were pointing at the lots designated as “vacant or parking” and insisting that their projects wouldn’t cause displacement because “no one is living there.” I looked around the room and recognized the people from the SFRA and PAC but few of the residents and advocates from the last meeting were in the room. The smaller room and preponderance of white men in polo shirts made my stomach cramp and my replies became tense in my throat. It worried me to be the representative from Poor at this final meeting for community input on the plan. I needed to bring up issues that developers and neighborhood “improvement” councils wouldn’t be interested in talking about.

The official event started with a recap of the PAC plan and agenda. José once again ran us through the goals of the plan. At this point it occurred to me that the plan had not changed at all since the last meeting. I thumbed through to the Housing and Neighborhood section of the plan and noted that the goals we had rewritten in the last meeting were also unchanged. All of our feedback and suggestions were instead written up in packets labeled “raw notes” and summarized as a list of questions: “What is affordable? To whom? Must redefine who residents are – people who live there? People who sleep there?” Some of the items, such as the enthusiastic “Movies!” (topping the list of goals and objectives) were a complete surprise. The notes were confusing and diluted the strength of community statements made in the previous meeting into a bunch of question marks.

How Low Can You Go?

The “question” of affordability and “to whom?” were indeed the crucial issues at hand in this meeting. Fewer neighborhood folks were present to raise specific issues from a resident’s perspective, and we listened to a for-profit developer, Eric Tao, one of the guys at my table, and a non-profit developer, Craig Adelman of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, talk about possible projects for the area.

Mr. Tao spoke about the need to build a great many market rate units in order to make low-income units profitable and developers simply wouldn’t build if they couldn’t get the figures to “pencil out.” Mr. Adelman deepened the economic view by explaining the limitations of the official label of “low-income.” According to a governmental chart listing “2001 Income Limits and Affordable Rents For Housing Programs” for the SF Bay area, a yearly salary of $47,600 (for one person) qualifies as low-income. In addition, anyone surviving on less than 20% of the chart’s average median income (AMI), $11,214, isn’t considered “reachable” by low-income housing availability. For-profit developers wouldn’t even consider building housing for people at this income level.

There was no chart available to define the AMI of the Mid-Market area but it seemed clear that the great numbers of low and no-income residents of the area are not even being discussed when developers use the word “low-income.” The TNDC serves people at about 17% AMI, but Craig added that traditional types of financing are not possible for these projects. His suggestion that rent subsidies were a good alternative for ensuring financing for such development provoked grumbling from the crowd. Rent subsidies aren’t popular, but this was the only suggestion offered to building below low-income housing. The PAC has no apparent strategy to overcome financing problems for these very low-income developments.

Who Lives There Anyway?

With these grim facts in mind I made my way to the “Housing Mix” breakout group. We were given a sheet of questions to frame our debate, which were culled from the previous meeting, but didn’t seem to address what was on people’s minds. A solid looking blond man from the Civic Center Improvement Group spoke up immediately about the “potential” in this area, and how he wasn’t worried about displacement because “there aren’t a lot of people in the area.” This sentiment was also shared by an architect in the group who noted that Mid-Market was general an “empty” area. This was an odd echo of the developers telling me earlier that they wouldn’t be displacing anyone because their lots were already empty. Or maybe it reminded me again of all the low and no-income folks who below the sights of official definition.

While they assured me that they were only interested in increasing resident density, it was important to immediately answer the first question on the list: “How do we define ‘residents’ of Mid-Market?” While the question seemed redundant to some in the group, this topic occupied us for most of the next hour. If you pay rent, receive mail or if you list a certain address on your voter registration – even a street corner - everyone agreed this qualifies you as a resident. It was even agreed that homeless people should be considered residents, although what rights that guaranteed them was more nebulous.

Should homeless people be protected from displacement as well as businesses, homeowners and tenants? Should they have the right to the sidewalk where they sleep and live? Police sweeps and “renewal” in other parts of the city displaced most of the homeless people into the Mid-Market area to begin with. These folks need to be protected getting moved out again. This idea was confusing to some members of our group, who reacted with phrases about “entitlements” and “imbalance of rights.” The developers dropped into the background at this topic, the dollar signs in their eyes fading as boredom set in. It took some work to get the idea of homeless rights written down on the official note pad. In the final summary it will surely get written up as yet another question: “Should homeless people be entitled to the right of protection against displacement?” Sadly there was not one homeless person to explain this basic human right to the developers and bureaucrats at the meeting.

A Nightmare to Some

It is easy to get swept up in the idea of urban planning, to go over figures and statistics and become romantic about concepts like beautification and revitalization. These plans are simply a fantasy for people struggling from day to day. These plans become a nightmare that may finally brush them into the void where folks go when they lose their housing, services and neighborhood. Sometimes when you don’t have roots or connection with a place and you can only dream of what might be there instead of appreciating and supporting what already exists.

The PAC has gone out its way to list “preserve economic and social diversity” as its “primary goal.” Is a governmental agency able to come in from above and set an agenda that will work for the folks in SROs and on the street? That should the first question on the PAC’s list. The questions they have on their list should be developed into directives that counter our city’s treatment of low-income and homeless people and demands their rights before those of investors and developers.

There are other questions the PAC needs to ask, such as: How can SFRA funds be used to create more housing for folks for who don’t even register on the income scale? How can equity be ensured for very poor renters and homeless folks? How can for-profit developers be prohibited from jamming the neighborhood with market rate and luxury housing? Many ideas have been proposed during the two community meetings to deal with these questions. They include using rental subsidies to guarantee financing for supportive housing, allowing SRO residents and homeless folks to buy their rooms or piece of sidewalk, and mandating a minimum of 20% affordable housing in all new development (housing as well as parking structures). In addition to adding these components to their plan, the PAC needs to define affordable and low-income according to the actual incomes that are currently earned by Mid-Market residents. Until they do this, any inclusive desire they have to protect the current diversity of the neighborhood is a deceptive daydream.

Like it or not, the PAC is making a plan for the Mid-Market area (just as the South of Market PAC is doing the same for 6th Street). This meeting was the last time for official community input into the Mid-Market plan but all PAC meeting are open to the public. The Mid-Market PAC meets every Monday at the Flood Building on the 4th or the 8th floor. To form a plan that recognizes, respects and supports very low and no-income folks we need to show up to these meetings and remind them that they can’t build their fantasies on top of someone else’s home and neighborhood.