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Animosity in North Beach Housing

Members of SFHA and North Beach Tenants Association listen to complaints from residents at 531 Bay St.

By Ethen Lieser

It looked as though steam was going to shoot from their ears. That’s how heated the arguments have been lately between the tenants of 531 Bay St. and the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA). The animosity stems from failed promises made by the SFHA, and neither side has budged in negotiations.

Hope VI, a 1992 federal program funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), renovates and rebuilds rundown public housing developments. Next in line for this program is 531 Bay St., a 229-unit complex built in the 1950s, in which 40 percent of the residents are Asian Pacific Islander American. It houses mostly low-income families who make around $11,000 a year. The residents pay around 30 percent of their monthly income on rent, averaging $233 a month. The new complex will feature 355 apartments.

The residents in the west block of the complex have already been relocated to temporary housing. However, the remaining tenants of the east block have been fuming over what SFHA will do next.

According to Don Paul, a member of the Housing is a Human Right organization, the tenants have been receiving written assurances since 1996 that there would be two phases to their relocation and renovation. These two phases would allow many of the residents to remain on site during demolition and construction, moving back and forth beetween North Beach’s east and west blocks. Now, SFHA is planning to have only one phase.

According to Michael Johnson, a partner of EmJohnson, Inc., one of three partners of the North Beach Development Associates, the two phases would take four-to-five years.

“We will continue to have these discussions so that we can all come to an agreeable set of items and conditions,” Johnson said. “Obviously, we’re not intending to anger the tenants, but the necessity of going from two phases to one phase has been dictated by the available financing on the project. And in the end, all the tenants will be able to get back into the property sooner, than later.”

The budget will be around $100 million, Johnson said. The process of relocation of the west block will start in October and construction will begin in July of 2002. Families can start moving in around the summer of 2004. In an agreement with the tenants and SFHA, the tenants will have first-priority option when coming back to the newly renovated complex.

But according to Cynthia Wiltz, the president of the North Beach Tenants Association, her residents aren’t so confident. There is already a 98 percent occupancy rate in public housing, and new apartment-seekers must often wait up to three years to obtain a unit under Section 8 leased housing, where the tenant must first qualify according to established income guidelines.

“I feel for the tenants because I don’t think they know definitely that they can come back,” Wiltz said.

Said Paul: “Now they are being told that they must leave for 18 months until the project is completed. They will have a hard time finding a place to live, and staying in contact with the SFHA to know when to return. The history of the past tenants who have been displaced by this Hope VI program is that a large percentage do not come back. They haven’t been able to remain in the Bay Area for the protracted amount of time. The typical story is that the public housing resident has to move hundreds of miles away from San Francisco, and that person just loses contact.”

However, Gregg Fortner, the acting executive director of SFHA, disagrees with Paul.

“I think the main problem is communication,” he said. “We have to make sure everyone understands what goes on in the schedule, and to give them the comfort level in the relocation. I think people think they can’t come back, but that’s not the case. I’ve only been in this job for four months now, and I want to leave what happened in the past, in the past. We need to move forward.”

The lack of communication lies with the SFHA, Paul said. Paul believes many have been left in the dark during negotiations. “Tenants have not been involved at all in any of the decisive steps in this process,” he said. “It has an agenda different from the tenant’s welfare.

“It will probably be a court case unless it is resolved through negotiation.”

Reach Ethen Lieser at elieser@asianweek.com.