March 9, 2008

Redeveloping Bayview-Hunter Point: To Keep or Get Rid of Affordable Housing?

Currently there is some noise being made about the redevelopment project of Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco, which is a state owned development area of affordable housing. The area is not flourishing and many of the buildings occupied by tenants are falling apart. This has resulted in the San Francisco Housing Authority to come up with a redevelopment plan called SF Hope. To be able to fund the whole project, the government has elected to go ahead with both private and state funded development. Unfortunately, this has created controversy on how much of this new project should be for market-rate homes versus affordable housing. Although this project will not be able to succeed without the private development taking a large portion of the plan, it is necessary for the builders to be willing to address the issue of enough affordable housing, because it is in the best interest of the community and they still stand to make a large amount of money.

Right now one of the private companies, John Stewart Co. has pledged to build 267 public housing units along with 90 affordable housing rental units, as well as more than 300 market rate homes. These homes would be priced between $600,000 and $800,000. The ground breaking of this project has been scheduled for next year. Another private company Lennar Corp. is seeking to remake part of the area with new homes, industrial and commercial space, 400 acres of parkland, shops and a new 49ers stadium. Lennar Corp. has also made a pledge to the lower income community and said "25 percent of the project's housing 8,000 to 10,000 housing units would be priced below market rates". They have also offered to completely rebuild the Alice Griffith public housing development (which is pictured here to the right).

The issue at hand is that many people believe that half of the new homes being built should be rented or sold at below the market rate to keep it affordable. These people rallying for affordable housing have gained enough support with the backing of Chris Daly who is the Supervisor of District 6 to bring this issue to San Francisco's June Ballot. The developers feel that if passed this will kill the whole project and ruin the redevelopment plan of Hunters Point. Daly is making the claim that "If we don't set aside a significant percentage of that land to be affordable for everyday San Franciscans, then lets be honest with ourselves, 20 years from now everyday San Franciscans aren't going to live here". What he is referring to is a need to keep the housing affordable to people earning 30 to 80 percent of the city's median income, which is equivalent to $64,267 for a family of four. I believe that this is a true assessment of the situation and the government needs to realize it is the best interest of the citizens. His other argument is that these companies are going to make hundreds of millions on this redevelopment if it goes through and that they can afford to help out the people by creating more affordable housing for the average citizen.

Another argument against the current position of the redevelopment is stated by Ms. Fleming a 60 year old grandmother who has lived there since she was nine, "They're finding all kinds of reasons to put us out of here". At one of the buildings 110 of the 267 units are already boarded up and the city is putting pressure on the remaining families to be evicted. This is arising from circumstances such as being late on rent or according to the evicted tenants the city is trying to find other reasons to have them removed. The issue is that the city and developers say they will be creating the subsidized units along with the market-rate homes, but the people who are now living in this affordable housing feel that they will never get a chance to move back into them after the redevelopment (a concept of what the projected area will look like pictured to the left). Currently most of the tenants in one of the buildings are paying the Housing Authority between $100 to $400 a month. These are people that can barely afford that and according to the Housing Authority this apartment complex owes $200,000 in back rent. Truly, the community does not believe that they are going to have no place to live once this project is underway as well as when the affordable housing is done, if it is not brought up to half of the total of what is built.

In my opinion, this is a very interesting situation. I feel for these people and their situation, as well as the private developer who tries to gain the largest profits possible. This is not the best neighborhood and the redevelopment is necessary, but this ballot should still be passed. If it is not, all they are doing is getting rid of the minorities in that area and making it more difficult to live in an already over priced area. The profit margin will still be high enough with 50% of the housing being priced at market-rate and by keeping the other at an affordable range it only helps maintain the community as a strong and well rounded place. It seems like the city has good intentions but at the same time they need to make sure that they do more to help out the average citizen. With the median family only making around $64,000 a year in San Francisco how can they expect these families to afford $600,000 to $800,000 homes. In addition to that the current tenants can barely make the $100 to $400 a month rent payment. San Fransisco is trying to take the most lucrative deal possible to help themselves since there is a lack of payment from the current tenants. Hopefully this ballot will be passed which would tremendously help the current tenants once the redevelopment has taken place.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think you picked an interesting topic to write about. The issue has so many sides than can be talked about, money, ethics…
In the paragraph stating your opinion you mention, “this is not the best neighborhood and redevelopment is necessary.” I did not get the sense that it was a bad neighborhood, just that the developers were trying to make a quick buck, so maybe you could mention a little more about the neighborhood in the beginning of the post. . Is there other affordable housing available to these people should they be forced out or what would their options be? I agree with your opinion that the ballot should be passed, since even if half of the buildings remain affordable housing, there will still be a great deal of money to be made. It seems this option would be the optimal compromise for the entire community. To me, however, it did not seem like the city had good intention, it seems to have money-making intentions.
You touch on an interesting point about the city “getting rid of minorities,” which I suppose is another article of another time. But anyway, my point is you manage to bring up a lot of different issues although you’re just talking about this one situation and I enjoyed that. You may want to speculate what other motives the city might have for siding with developers besides making money if you think there are any.
Is the city trying to force families out of the units because they want the developers to get their way? That is what I took from it. It seems one of the reasons the reasons the city might be on the side of developers is that the apartment complex is 200,000 in debt. Right? This also made me think about the political/monetary relationship between developers and local city officials. I wondered if you had done any research on that, though I suppose something like that probably isn’t a matter of public record, just something to think about though.

SRC

 
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