Homes...? Not Homes!

pstrongHomes Not Jails Occupyingbr / Vacant City Property /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/440/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Ted Gullickson/p p While thousands of people are forced to live on the streets and while over a hundred families are turned away from shelters every night, there are dozens of city owned buildings which are vacant and have been declared "surplus" by the city's Real Estate Department. Each of these buildings could be renovated cheaply via sweat equity and turned into permanent affordable housing./p pPeople who are homeless have occupied one such building today: the old High School of Commerce at 170 Fell Street (corner of Fell and Franklin). The occupiers will hold a press conference at the site today, Sunday, August 12, at Noon to demand that the city make the property available to the squatters so that they can renovate it and live there. The squatters also call for legislation to require that ALL surplus city property be made available immediately for housing./p pThe Site/p p 170 Fell Street is the site of the old High School of Commerce and has been vacant for 11 years. The site is in need of renovation (and as a historic building can not be demolished)./p p Two civil grand juries in San Francisco have sharply criticized the school district (as well as other city agencies) for failing to adequately inventory and plan re-use of surplus property. Complaining that city agencies have ignored repeated requests to utilize surplus property, he grand jury said: "The (School) District still has no plans for disposition of its surplus real estate property. Meanwhile, the unused properties remain idle. Nearby residents complain of the eyesore and the City is deprived..." The grand jury recommended: "The District should immediately develop a formal plan to sell or lease all of its surplus real properties."/p pEarlier (1992), a similar study of surplus school properties was highly critical of how these properties were managed. The so-called "Simmons Report" (Surplus Property and the District Real Estate Portfolio -A Strategic Approach). That report said the city should dispose of certain properties (including the old High School of Commerce) which:/p p ".They had not been used for a number of years."/p p.In their present unused and hazardous condition they represent a potential liability to the School District./p pDemographic forecasts indicate that there will be no future demand for these facilities."/p p These critiques of vacant city property were issued after 170 Fell Street had already sat unused and vacant and deteriorating almost five years. Now, more than five years later the site still is empty and unused./p pMeanwhile, the city is critically short of affordable housing, to the point that every year well over a hundred people die while living on the streets./p pHomes Not Jails calls for the immediate transfer of this property to HNJ or a non-profit housing developer for renovation into affordable housing via the sweat equity labor of people who are homeless who could trade their skills and labor for affordable housing./p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p