Yes on F! It's Good Public Policy

It's easy to find a critic of the Redevelopment strategies of the 1950's and 60's. Derided as "urban removal", Redevelopment Agencies around the US, including San Francisco, adopted strategies to declare urban areas as blighted, then proceeded to raze them in order to develop large scale commercial and market rate housing. This strategy has had a disproportionately damaging impact on communities of color especially in the Western Addition and Yerba Buena Center areas.

The "No on F" campaign represents a return to these "bad ol' days" but is much less direct because there is no direct, immediate displacement. This portion of Hunters Point is currently a wasteland of environmental devastation, but Prop G envisions a fantasy land of parks and shiny new condos. Proposition F, also on this June 3 ballot, would require that residential development at the Shipyard have 50% of the units be affordable to households at or below 80% of the Area Median Income.

Measure F appropriately raises the question of "for whom is development in San Francisco?". If we look at the fact that San Francisco supposedly learned from its poor Redevelopment policies and started committing 50% of the tax increment revenue raised from Project Areas to support affordable housing development Citywide, then we have some hope. If we look at the fact that the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution sponsored by Supervisor Maxwell in 2007 that it be the City's policy for development of the Eastern Neighborhoods (currently undergoing rezoning) that 64% of all new housing be affordable, then we have even more cause for hope.

So, who lives in the Bayview now? 2007 per capita income is $18,080 as compared to $34,946 for San Francisco as a whole. 21% of Bayview residents live below the poverty line while 11% of San Francisco lives in poverty. The average household size is 3.5 while the average San Francisco household is 2.3. And, in the Bayview, 21% of households are paying more than 50% of their income toward housing, and if per capita income is so low, then this becomes a desperate situation. Based on these statistics, from the Department of Public Health's Healthy Development Measurement Tool, one might conclude that the Bayview needs affordable family housing.

Instead, Lennar Corporation's response to this situation is to develop 10,000 units of housing, only 15% of which would be affordable to households at 60% of the Area Median Income ($50,900 for a 3-person household) and another 7.7% of the housing affordable to households between 80% and 120% of Area Median Income. According to the 2000 Census (SF Prospector), the entire Bayview District currently has 10,035 units and 35,760 people, and since most of this housing stock was build before 1979, if it's rental, it's subject to rent control which any new housing is not. Lennar's development would, therefore, double the population of the Bayview, while nearly all that housing would not even be affordable to those who live currently in the Bayview, creating an economic and physical divide between the "old Bayview" and the new Hunters Point development not unlike the Geary Blvd "freeway" that 1950's Redevelopment used to divide Pacific Heights from the Western Addition!

Proposition F DOES work. Lennar is spending millions of dollars to convince us that Proposition F will kill development in Hunters Point, but really it's just that they don't want to do it. Lennar wants to make a 20% profit on their development, and for them, that's not negotiable, so they're willing to spend millions of dollars on a campaign against F to protect those profits; Second point-this is public land. Yes, there are remediation costs (some of which will be offset by federal grants), and yes there are infrastructure costs. We have similar infrastructure issues at Mission Bay but the Redevelopment Agency was still able to get a tremendous amount of affordable housing, primarily on sites that non-profits are developing. That's right, the burden for developing most if not all of the affordable units would NOT be on Lennar! In addition, Lennar has the ability to profit from the affordable housing developments as an equity investor through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program. This helps to get the amount of affordable up from 30+% (Mission Bay) to 50% (Proposition F) while Lennar's deal is still feasible.

Instead of thinking creatively and critically, opponents of Proposition F are willing to sell out our City to the highest bidder regardless of the long term social and economic costs. The ripple effect of building so many thousands of $600/ $700,000 condos-the amount of an entire new neighborhood-is staggering. Proposition F not only works but is essential to the long term sustainability of a diverse San Francisco which is a social, economic and environmental imperative.

Joseph Smooke
Executive Director, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center