Dog City: San Francisco's Affordable Housing Struggle

By Jamilah King, May 23, 2008

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In a city that boasts more dogs than children, citizens fight for affordable housing amid competing redevelopment ballot measures.

An April 2006 National Geographic article featured the city's posh amenities for canines of all breeds. "San Francisco is home to 745,000 people and an estimated 110,000 dogs," writes the author, "packed into an insular fiefdom just seven miles long and seven wide."

Perhaps not coincidently, San Francisco also has the fewest number of children per capita of any major U.S. city. Children under the age 18 currently make up a mere 15 percent of the city's population.

But most longtime S.F. residents didn't need a national story to shed light on its shrinking youth population and the parallel rising costs of living that continue to push families out of the city. For low and moderate-income folks, the news was yet another example of how hostile the city has become to working class families of color. It's a cruel irony for a metropolis that's built a strong reputation as a beacon of equality. While many working class children of color face school closures and social program budget cuts, the city's well-to-do canines dominate public recreation facilities, have access to emergency pet care and a homeless pet shelter that boasts televisions in each "private condo."

It wasn't always this way. The assault against families in San Francisco is a decades long tale of skyrocketing housing prices, bureaucratic negligence and ruthless over-development. Working families have always put up a fight, and the battle may culminate in two critical initiatives on the upcoming June ballot that will decide how much affordable housing will be allocated in the city's southern corridor.

Families Leaving San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the country. According to a study (PDF) published in 2007 by the California Budget Project, a two-parent family needs to earn upwards of $77,000 to survive in the city.

"Working people should be able to live in places that they've historically helped build," says Tom Jackson, Director of Organizing for the San Francisco-based group Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. His organization has recently restructured itself to include a specific focus on working class families of color.

Even with one of the highest minimum wages in the country at nearly $9.50 per hour, most families can't afford to live in the city's increasingly high rental market, much less purchase a home. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is over $2,000 and the average home sells for around $800,000. For most city workers, like teachers who earn (PDF) roughly $50,000 per year, living comfortably in the city they serve is an unattainable dream.

In 2006, Coleman Advocates documented the disappearance of families from the city's landscape by commissioning the Public Research Institute at San Francisco State University to examine census numbers. The published report (PDF), "Families Struggle to Stay: Why Families Are Leaving San Francisco and What Can Be Done," uncovered disturbing facts: While families of all racial, ethnic and income backgrounds are leaving at will, the majority of those who have left are families of color who have been priced out and don't have the resources to thrive in San Francisco.

In a ten year period between 1990 and 2000, there was a 45 percent decline in the number of black families with kids in San Francisco, a number that prompted the San Francisco Chronicle to write that the city's black population had "dropped faster than that of any other large city in the United States."

The city's exiting families have been countered by a tidal wave of young professionals without children. The Coleman study found that 90 percent of households who moved to San Francisco between 1995 and 2000 did not have children.

Now, families are fighting for their right to live affordably in the city where they work and have community ties. Through collaborative grassroots efforts, families, religious leaders and local organizations have vowed to battle the city's family housing crisis.

Redevelopment and Removal

On June 3, voters in San Francisco will choose between two competing visions for development in the southeastern Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. Both ballot initiatives, Propositions F and G, seek redevelopment, change and a clean-up of the area's toxic sites, but each measure differs in its housing commitments and community buy-in. Proposition G is funded in large part by condominium developer Lennar Corporation while Proposition F, put forth by San Francisco-based advocacy groups, offers a counterproposal that would require that 50 percent of new housing be affordable for lower income residents. The measures are being hotly contested due to the Bayview's history of governmental neglect.

Residents of San Francisco's predominantly working class, Black, Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood have withstood the effects of toxic waste. The neighborhood is within earshot of an abandoned Naval shipyard that, over the years, has spewed poisonous particles into the air causing higher than average rates of asthma and cancer.

"Both of my daughters had routine nosebleeds," remembers Nina Donahue, a community activist and resident of Bayview. "At one point, doctors thought they were going to have to operate on one of my daughters' noses." Donahue eventually moved to Daly City, just south of San Francisco, and the nosebleeds stopped. She also recalls a coworker frequently bleeding from his ear and an instance when she blew her nose only to find small rock particles in her tissue.

For decades, the Navy, city officials and community members have debated over the best course of action for the toxic shipyard. Then, the San Francisco 49ers professional football organization, whose playing facility is located in Bayview's Candlestick Point area, threatened to leave the city if the team didn't get a new stadium. And while the 49ers have been moving forward with preliminary plans to relocate to the city of Santa Clara, Mayor Gavin Newsom has joined forces with Senator Dianne Feinstein in what writer Sarah Phelan has described as "a last-ditch solution to keep the 49ers in town." The city has joined forces with Lennar Corporation to build a new stadium, partially funded by luxury housing on the new site.

Part of the proposed site, however, sits on state land. That's why Lennar funded a new ballot initiative that would turn the land over for development.

The initiative, Proposition G, would give Lennar public property to develop a new football stadium, luxury housing and businesses. Backed by Newsom, Feinstein and Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, the proposition has both government and financial sway. Proponents argue that Proposition G will make good on decades-long promises to revitalize the vulnerable community, and will provide much needed construction and retail jobs for the area.

Yet opponents to the proposition argue that it's a deceptive ploy that will usher in the gentrification of the city's last remaining affordable community of color, pointing out that Prop G is filled language that sounds beneficial, but is not legally binding.

"Proposition G never guaranteed the people in the community anything," says Donahue. "They didn't outline what they meant by affordable housing, and there's nothing in it that calls for permanent jobs for people from the community."

Proposition F: Families Fight Back

Residents, church leaders and community organizations have helped orchestrate an ambitious grassroots movement against Proposition G. In less than two weeks, the coalition known as The Bayview Affordable Housing Initiative gathered nearly 12,000 signatures to sponsor a counter initiative on the June ballot. The alternative measure, known as Proposition F, attempts to outline standards for affordability and holds any developer accountable for cleaning up hazardous areas rather than simply capping or building over them.

"Lennar has failed us in the past," Donahue says. "We saw what they did in other communities, and refused to let them to do the same to us."

A key Proposition F demand is its insistence that 50 percent of all new housing units built in Bayview's Candlestick Point neighborhood be affordable to those who make 30, 60 and 80 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). Under current plans, Lennar has claimed that only 30 percent of the new development would be available to low and middle income families. Prop F supporters also point out that the Lennar-backed proposal is not legally binding, questioning the validity of some of the commitments he has made to the community.

Lennar has already dumped $2.23 million to defeat Proposition F, countered with the less than $10,000 Proposition F supporters have spent. The Proposition G campaign, which opponents call deceptive, uses imagery that draws on the community's history of working class industry. The Proposition G campaign has also recruited church leaders and youth of color from the community to work on its behalf.

"I've seen these kids on the street passing out flyers and wearing 'Yes on Prop G' T-shirts, and when I ask them if they've read the fine print, or if they know what it's about, most times they just shrug their shoulders," Donahue remarks. "Everybody wants the shipyard to be cleaned up and for the community to be beautiful, but we're fighting to make sure that we're around when that happens."

Canine issues may seem irrelevant when stacked up against the removal of working families and the existence of toxic waste. Yet the disparity in the level of attention and resources directed towards the humans of this city is an entryway to discussing solutions to an outrageous problem.

"Dogs in this city are being taken care of [better] than people in our communities," Donahue says. "People need to be conscious of what's really going on."

For a recent update on the negotiations surrounding Propositions F and G, read the San Francisco Chronicle's recent story.

Please note that the Chronicle's editorial board has publicly endorsed Prop G.