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Resurrection of the I-Hotel

San Francisco's epic neighborhood battle ends in ... victory?

By Neela Banerjee

A banner telling it like it was for the I-Hotel tenants thirty years ago. Photo by Russell Lowe

Near the northeast corner of San Francisco’s Chinatown, at the junction of Jackson and Kearny Streets, an unruly chain-link fence surrounds a sunken, vacant lot. Brick foundations barely peek through the patches of yellowed grass, giving the hint that there was something here before. Cars come in and out of the $6-an-hour parking lot next door. To the left, the Trans-America building shoots high into the sky. Tourists pass by on their way to North Beach, pointing out the piles of trash that litter the lot. An elderly Asian man walks by, relying heavily on his cane, not even turning his head to look at the space that once was the thriving heart of one of the defining movements in Asian American history.

Thirty years ago the struggle to save the affordable housing unit known as the International Hotel, lovingly called the I-Hotel, galvanized a group of young Asian American revolutionaries into what would become a symbolic fight against capitalism and the plight of urban removal.

Longtime I-Hotel activists Belvin Louie, Desu Sorro, Bill Sorro and Alfred Robles meet to discuss plans for the August 4 celebration, which commemorates 24 years since eviction. Photo by Yvonne Lai.

By the end of this year, these dedicated housing activists — and the new blood they have inspired along the way — will see construction started on the new International Hotel Senior Housing building, right where the original hotel stood. Along with 104 units of affordable housing, the site will also house a Manilatown museum, commemorating the cultural heritage of the area and marking one of the greatest victories the people’s movement has ever seen.

On one of the hottest days of the year so far, a handful of I-Hotel activists and organizers met in the garden of the Mendelson House retirement home in South of Market to discuss the delayed community groundbreaking event, which was to be held June 6. The groundbreaking has been pushed back indefinitely, as details among the developers and construction companies are streamlined.

Back Then... Twenty-four years ago, this building was torn down after a 9-year fight against eviction of the 100 Filipino and Chinese seniors who made this their home. ...Now... Since then, the lot has remained empty. Vigilant housing activists watching over the space have made sure affordable housing returns. ...Before Long This sketch shows the 14-story International Hotel Senior Housing building, with a Manilatown community center at street level and St. Mary’s Elementary School.

“We’ve been fighting for it this long, I guess we can keep going,” longtime housing activist Bill Sorro says.

Sorro is joined by other original members of the I-Hotel organizing team: Belvin Louie, Mitchell Bonner and the legendary poet Alfred Robles. These men still speak with passion in their voices about this work. Old hands at dealing with the system, they discuss the minor setbacks with a wiseness that could only come from experience.

New generations are also here — like Roy Recio, a 32-year-old Filipino American teacher and one of the younger members of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, an organization that sprung out of the fight to save the I-Hotel. A newcomer, J.P. Jacinto, a third-year student at San Francisco State, shows up to represent a statewide Filipino American fraternity known as Chi Rho Omicron (XPO). Even this informal meeting represents the cross-generational and cross-ethnic power of the I-Hotel struggle.

“A lot of us came out to the hotel because we were really pissed that somebody would treat our people like that,” Sorro says. “I went because I was mad at the way they were treating the old-timers, trying to throw them out in the streets. I’m still mad.”

Louie chimes in: “What people may not know is that the whole history of California had a lot to do with those old-timers. If you trace their histories, they were involved in a lot of important struggles. For instance, the Farm Worker’s struggle started with the Filipino Union which merged into the United Farm Workers.”

The Manongs

One of the most amazing facets of this struggle is that it has immortalized the elderly Filipino men, known as Manongs, who were the main tenants of the I-Hotel. These men live on through the documentation of their lives in Curtis Choy’s documentary The Fall of the I-Hotel and in the memories of those who worked with them.

The Manongs represented a typical Asian male immigration experience of the late 1800s to early 1900s. Hearing about the wealth of work and riches in America, often from Christian missionaries, Filipino men immigrated to the United States looking for work. Many arrived in the 1920s and were caught up in the throes of the Great Depression.

Also at the time, legislation prohibited Filipinos from owning land or having businesses. This forced them to toil in fields and factories, working menial and labor-intensive jobs. They lived in rooming houses, which became community hubs, as well. From the early 1900s, much of Kearny Street became a center for these Filipino workers and was dubbed “Manilatown.”

The hotels gave a sense of home to these men, who were barred from buying property and hindered from starting families by immigration laws. Migrant farmworkers stayed there off-season, merchant sailors stayed there when on shore-leave, and the shared heritage added to a sense of security that was hard to come by at the time.

From Gentrification to Activism

The International Hotel was built in the late 1800s for wealthy travelers. Rent was $50 a month. The hotel was rebuilt in 1907 after the original building was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. In the 1920s, the I-Hotel became a home base for hundreds of Filipino men who worked on seasonal schedules. Rent stayed at $50 until just before tenants were evicted in 1977.

By the 1960s, the decline of Manilatown was imminent as the Financial District started expanding. High-rises, such as the Trans-America building, and the need for parking lots and other commercial endeavors forced people out and caused the demolition of low-rent hotels. The 10-block Manilatown that was full of hotels, restaurants and pool halls was squeezed down to one last block. In 1968, the Milton Meyer Company bought the I-Hotel and the building fell under the management of Walter Shorenstein. Within seven months of acquiring the building, Shorenstein delivered eviction notices to the tenants, with plans to build a multilevel parking garage. The tenants began to organize around this issue with the United Filipino Association (UFA).

Sorro, who grew up in the Fillmore District, was a professional dancer at the time with a community-based performing group. He was about to go to Cuba to study dance and revolution, when one day in 1969 he saw the I-Hotel tenants in a picket line on the news. It changed his life.

“Seeing these men really incensed me. I went to Cuba for a few months, and while I was there I knew I was going to come back and move into the Hotel. I knew I had to somehow help and that is all I could think of,” Sorro says. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a dancer any more.”

Sorro moved into the hotel and lived there until 1975. Other activists such as Emil DeGuzman, a San Francisco Human Rights Commissioner today and the president of the I-Hotel Tenants Association, became involved around 1969, as well. DeGuzman was a student at U.C. Berkeley and came into his political consciousness at the tail end of the Free Speech movement and the Third World Strike.

“There is no way you could go to school there and not be radicalized by all that,” DeGuzman says. “I was involved with the Third World Strike, and that sense of fighting racism and fighting for a relevant education was something that really did a lot to train me on how to organize and how to do the work necessary to fight a struggle.”

Fighting Fire with Fire

In March of 1969, the UFA and Shorenstein reached a new lease agreement, allowing the tenants to stay. No official papers were signed, however. Suspiciously, one day later, a fire destroyed the north wing of the hotel, killing three tenants. Arson was suspected but the investigation was deemed insufficient in court. The new lease agreement was canceled, the tenants faced eviction again within three months, and the building was condemned. Eventually, with pressure from the city, Shorenstein agreed to a lease, with the conditions that the tenants would be responsible for all repairs and had one year to bring the building up to code. This time, community support really mushroomed, especially among Asian Americans.

Louie, also a student at Berkeley at the time, says there was a huge effort to bring students out from all major Bay Area colleges and universities to help with the renovations.

“There was a core of people who would come everyday,” Louie remembers. “We would hitchhike across the Bay and then get home late at night. On weekends, we would spend all day working there.”

By the summer of 1970, the community had reached their goal and the building was up to code. The I-Hotel thrived and community organizations, such as the Chinese Progressive Association and Kearny Street Workshop, moved into the commercial spaces underneath the hotel.

The hotel was run by the likes of Sorro, DeGuzman and Robles, who lived among and with the Manong and Chinese seniors. Back then, the hotel was more than the abstract symbol it has come to represent. For Sorro, DeGuzman and Robles, the struggle was about their elders — the Manong — who taught them about life through their stories and more often, their actions.

“When you got to know the different people living in the hotel, you realized that they all have these incredible histories,” Louie says. “You have to get to know them, live with them to realize that this is not just some old man living in this tiny room. He has gone through a whole life of struggle to survive. That’s why the eviction was so wrong.”

Sorro still speaks about the Manong with love and respect in his voice. These men were his teachers. They are the ones who inspired in him the passion that still drives his work today.

He remembers Tong Yee, a Chinese man, who was quiet and isolated for years only to come out on the frontlines of the struggle against eviction. And Joe Rigadio, who Sorro remembers for his dedicated work ethic and kindness, “whether he was handing out clean laundry on Fridays or lending his neighbor some rice to get him through until his check came.”

Sorro continues: “As young revolutionaries, we didn’t believe in the process from the get-go because we knew how much the system sucked. But for the tenants who came from another place, another generation, another time — they still had some confidence in the system, that the system was going to do right for them as American citizens. So many of them felt like guests. My old man felt like a guest in this country.

“But once the tenants began to eliminate that process because they got screwed by the system, they, in turn, became the most outspoken and the most vigilant about their own condition, and there was no turning them around.”

DeGuzman says that the hotel really lived up to its name, explaining that even though it was predominantly Filipino and Chinese, there were people from all over the world who lived there. DeGuzman and others helped run the business of the hotel, which usually housed 75 to 100 tenants. The activists working on the I-Hotel created an amazing community space, complete with progressive service and arts organizations on the ground floor.

“We took a slum and turned it around and made it a viable place for the community,” DeGuzman says. “It was incredible. Teachers would bring their classes to us like a field trip to the museum and they would sit and eat with the tenants and talk to them.”

Sold!

After a few years of relative peacefulness, in 1973 Shorenstein sold the building out from underneath the tenants to a foreign corporation called the Four Seas Investment Corporation. Four Seas was owned by a Thai liquor tycoon named Supasit Mahaguna. By the end of the next year the tenants faced another eviction notice. In 1976, after mass demonstrations and efforts to introduce and pass tenant relocation legislation, the eviction case went to court. The jury was deadlocked for three days, but in the end, Judge Ira Brown ruled in favor of Four Seas.

“No one can dispute that this was completely unjust,” DeGuzman says. “That the city would enforce this law for the purposes of an absentee landlord who doesn’t even live in this country over affordable housing for the elderly — that is just how insane this whole thing is.”

At first, Sheriff Richard Hongisto delayed the eviction, claiming to have insufficient manpower. Throughout the remainder of 1976, tenants and activists tried to convince the city to buy the hotel. Hundreds marched on City Hall to pressure the Board of Supervisors, who finally agreed to allocate $1.3 million to buy the I-Hotel. A judge later ruled that the city could not buy the hotel and sell it back to the tenants.

“Through all these battles and all the way the courts rule, you can really see that when you challenge private property, you are really challenging the foundations of capitalism,” Sorro says.

In January of 1977, organizing to save the hotel jumped up to a frantic pace as Hongisto was threatened with jail time unless he carried out the conviction. Some 5,000 people formed a huge human barrier around the block. The police backed down.

Judge Brown called for a stay of the eviction because of the threat of violence.

In Choy’s The Fall of the I-Hotel, footage of these huge protests and human barriers shows the intensity of the struggle. What is most striking about these scenes is the sheer diversity of people locked arm-in-arm. Sorro says they had widespread support: the African American community, Latino community, restaurant workers, garment workers, unions. They all came to march.

Police forces line up against the protesters in 1977. Photo by Russell Lowe.

The documentary shows in detail the night of August 4. SWAT teams arrived in force and slowly and methodically broke down the human barrier by beating through it with billy-clubs and using sledgehammers to break open doors and drag the elderly out. None of the activists thought it would ever come to that point.

“It was disgraceful to us that it happened, that the sheriff felt he had to do this,” DeGuzman says. “It was totally barbaric.”

Ripped from Their Family

After the eviction, the tenants were separated, scattered and displaced. Some of them had been living in the I-Hotel for over 40 years. DeGuzman and Sorro both say they tried to keep the Tenants’ Association going, but without the structure of the building, the community could not sustain itself. The building was demolished by the end of 1977.

“They had to tear down the building really fast because it was too strong of a political message,” Louie says.

By tearing down the last remnants of Manilatown, the site of the heroic and historical struggle, history seemed to be erased.

But activists who drove the struggle and who came to call the I-Hotel their home would not allow it to be covered up with some high-rise. Then-Mayor Diane Feinstein created a citizen’s advisory committee, which had the authority to review any developments that were to be built on that space. For 17 years, the committee, informally called the Kearny Street Housing Corporation, guarded the space vigilantly against all commercial developments that did not include affordable housing. The Four Seas corporation tried to team up with many developers over the years, to no avail.

“That they couldn’t do a doggone thing with that hole in the ground is an indication of how strong the political movement was,” Louie says. “In that sense, that they couldn’t refill it with a high-rise is the ultimate victory.”

A New Community Center

Around 1994, St. Mary’s Catholic Center contacted the Kearny Street Housing Corporation with an idea. St. Mary’s had been looking for a site to relocate their elementary school since they had been displaced because their building was not up to seismic code. Because of their history in Chinatown, they wanted to stay there — they wanted a partnership.

In the past years community groups and the Kearny Street Housing Foundation have made proposals to buy the land from Four Seas. All were rejected. But when approached by the Church, the Four Seas finally agreed to part with the land. Meanwhile, Kearny Street had secured a $7.5 million loan from HUD and an equal amount from the Mayor’s office to build an affordable housing unit on the site.

Plans for the site include a K-6 grade school with a small chapel and a gymnasium. Adjacent to the school will be the 14-story affordable housing development known as International Hotel Senior Housing, containing 104 units. Underneath the building will be a four-level parking garage and on street level will be the Manilatown Community Center.

The idea for the center came straight from the community. The Kearny Street Housing Corporation held focus groups in the Filipino American community to find out what kind of amenities people wanted, and what they kept hearing over and over was ‘What about Manilatown? What about the Filipino community that thrived there?’

“What people said in so many words was that they wanted there to be something more than just a plaque on the side of this building that says ‘This used to be Manilatown,’” Sorro says.

The center will be a site that memorialializes and commemorates the struggle for the I-Hotel. It will educate about Manilatown and be a venue for Asian American performing and visual arts, according to Sorro.

He adds: “We want it to really promote contemporary and traditional Filipino arts, everything from Qbert to the weavers of the Philippines.”

Envisioning the Future

Back at the meeting, the organizers make plans for the August 4 commemoration of the 24th year since eviction. The Manilatown Heritage Foundation wants to throw a huge event that would attract thousands of people.

“The I-Hotel was a real Asian American fight-back,” Sorro says. “We want to bring the whole community in for the celebration.”

They discuss how the celebration should include the changing demographics of the Asian American community, such as the Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander groups who were not involved in the I-Hotel struggle, but engender the fight for justice today.

“This struggle was always about inclusiveness,” Sorro says.

Jacinto of XPO announced that his fraternity is willing to offer any help they can for the celebration, from security to set-up. Jacinto’s fraternity, XPO, focuses on Filipino American culture and history. Pledges to XPO must learn about Filipino American history, and watching Choy’s documentary is required.

“It is very important to us,” Jacinto says. “We are here to support the movement because it is a way to be part of our history, our heritage.”

Roy Recio, another young activist, grew up in Watsonville. He is dedicated to the struggle because of his father and grandfather, who were Manongs, like the men who fought and lived in the I-Hotel. He speaks of activism in the same way as Sorro and DeGuzman, as a struggle that is necessary to fight for the justice of the people.

“I learn a lot from these guys, more than I would from my own age group, just sitting around and drinking beer and listening to their stories,” Recio says.

Sorro believes that it is just as important to pass on the struggle and the empowerment that comes from struggle to people like Jacinto and Recio, as it is to fight.

“When we were struggling 30 years ago, we got a sense that we were just a continuation of those who came before us and the kind of struggle that they waged both directly and indirectly to make life better for us,” Sorro says. “We really cherished and respect the mantle that has been passed on. I learned from them how to pass it on, to make youth understand that their vision counts, that it is essential.”

A History of Struggle

When asked what it was like to see 5,000 people congregate for the cause, DeGuzman shakes his head and softly says, “It was amazing.”

DeGuzman also emphasizes how important the I-Hotel was for Asian Americans.

“It was the time for those of us who were Asian American, there was an identity for us to feel proud and a sense of identification of these men,” DeGuzman says. “The whole period with the Vietnam War, where Asian people are being killed, the farmworker movement, the civil rights movement. It did a lot for us as young people to get a sense of who we were, that we are part of this community, part of this history. And to many of us these elderly men were our history that we never got in books.”

The I-Hotel was a catalyst for resistance in the Asian American community. From the International District in Seattle to Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, Asian communities up and down the coast saw the struggle and used to it inspire their own fight against urban removal.

“We knew there was solidarity and we drew strength from being part of a global movement for self-determination,” Sorro says. “We were revolutionaries that identified with movements in other countries, in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was wonderful. It was beautiful for us to say, ‘We ain’t fuckin’ minorities. We are the majority on this planet.’”

Even with the major victory that will happen with the construction of new affordable housing on the I-Hotel site, Sorro and DeGuzman continue to fight for affordable housing. They both say that the problems of poverty, homelessness and gentrification have only gotten worse.

“It can never be better. If you look at any major city, the inner city by the laws of capitalism is the most expensive,” DeGuzman explains. “If you look at South of Market, that land has totally been transformed. Places like that have a clock. It can all be transformed eventually because whatever exists on it today does not reflect what it is worth.”

DeGuzman sees the new I-Hotel as a victory, but one that pales in comparison with all the work that is still to be done.

“Where is affordable housing for people who are the most disenfranchised? The ones who can’t go out there and work, like the elderly, families with children, single mothers, people with HIV? You can’t see a victory in the overwhelming picture of the lack of affordable housing in this city for people,” DeGuzman says. “As much as this city has money for police and fixing streets, they don’t really factor in the kind of money needed to provide for the homeless and people in communities that are targets.”

Sorro also takes this victory in stride. What is most important to understand, he says, is that housing is a basic human right of the people.

“People ask, ‘Do you feel vindicated now that they are filling that hole up?’ No, we don’t. We don’t feel vindicated because justice don’t work like that. Justice isn’t something simple, so that if you fill the hole up with this much justice then you’re equal,” Sorro says. “The lives of the people who died as a result of the eviction and the trauma of being displaced, these elderly people — is it now OK because we are going to fill it up with 104 units? Is it OK that a community was destroyed and there is no remnant of a Filipino community that thrived there? It is not OK.”