Alice Griffith, or Double Rock, public housing lies about halfway between Candlestick to the South – the 49ers’ current stadium is at the right – and the Hunters Point Shipyard to the North. Photo: Francisco Da Costa

The Stop Lennar Action Movement (SLAM) is advancing to a new stage in the fight against environmental racism and developer-driven policy in San Francisco. Just last week, the coalition filed the necessary paperwork to begin collecting signatures on a ballot initiative that, if approved in the June 2008 election, will require any developer building housing on Candlestick Point to provide 50 percent of those homes at rental and ownership prices that would be affordable to residents falling far below San Francisco's high median income levels.

For nearly a year, Bayview residents have waged a staunch battle against Lennar BVHP LLC, a Florida-based developer whose desire to build luxury condominiums has literally made families, elderly residents and children sick with nosebleeds, headaches, severe skin rashes and other illnesses. Through weekly Thursday night town hall meetings, hundreds of hours of public testimony before various government bodies and courageous positions taken by some of those governmental entities, Bayview residents have called into question the commitment of the Newsom administration to protect the future of African-Americans in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Board of Education, the San Francisco Youth Commission and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District have each unanimously declared that the Lennar Corp. endangered the health and well-being of residents in Bayview Hunters Point and that the City and County of San Francisco should take immediate steps to hold them accountable by forcing the company to stop work until the situation could be remedied to the satisfaction of the community. Amid a crowd of more than 400 community residents and allied organizations, the Board of Supervisors, in a 6-5 vote, failed to pass a resolution calling on the Department of Public Health to temporarily shut down the company until the residents living adjacent to Parcel A could be tested for exposure to lead, arsenic and other inorganics.

At the end of 2007, members of the Tabernacle Development Corp., a group of local church leaders who receive money from Lennar, began gathering signatures to qualify a so-called Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative. If approved, this initiative would repeal Propositions D and F, which limited city subsidy of a stadium development project on Candlestick Point to $100 million in lease bonds and changed the existing zoning laws to allow for a stadium, mall and housing project.

More importantly, Lennar's initiative would combine the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Bayview Redevelopment Project Areas, giving them access to hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increment monies and to 700 additional acres of land in the community, including land currently occupied by the Alice Griffith Housing Development - also known as Double Rock.

The initiative itself, while purporting to be about jobs, housing and parks, really offers no guarantees for anything but parks. Full of loopholes and legalese, the initiative does not mandate housing that is accessible and affordable to Bayview community residents, does not require local hiring or permanent job creation and does nothing to guarantee the right to return, particularly for Alice Griffith residents who would be displaced by Lennar's development plans in the area.

The Affordable Housing Initiative, conversely, would require that new housing built in the area be affordable to the Bayview community. Currently, the Bayview Hunters Point Area Plan of the General Plan of San Francisco has already set parameters for rental housing to be affordable to those with 50 percent of the City's median income and ownership housing to be affordable to those with 80 percent of the City's median income.

This initiative says that whether or not the project areas are combined, at least 50 percent of all new housing units built must be affordable to those at 30, 60 and 80 percent of San Francisco area median income. In relative terms, this means, for example, that the more than 20,000 people who sit on the waiting list for deteriorating public housing in San Francisco would have real access to new housing.
Just as importantly, it means that Bayview would become a model for the rest of San Francisco by requiring that the tools of redevelopment, mainly tax increment monies, be used in the interests of and for the benefit of working class residents in the community.

We know that Lennar has no intention of providing any true community benefits to the residents of Bayview Hunters Point. We've already seen and experienced firsthand what value Lennar places on this community, from the way in which they've intentionally exposed poor and working class community members to dangerous inorganics - such as naturally occurring asbestos - that have long term, deadly effects, to the way in which they've placed a high priority on funding local residents, and even City officials, to convince those who are suffering that it's all in their minds.

Just like they did on Parcel A - where they committed to building affordable housing yet later "took back" their agreement - the so-called Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative gives Lennar too many loopholes through which they can avoid providing any benefits to the current residents in the neighborhood. The Affordable Housing Initiative merely holds any developer of the Candlestick Point area to its commitment and forces it to use community dollars to benefit current community residents by closing the loopholes of "might" and "could" and "should" to "must" and "will."

In order to make these requirements a reality, however, the movement needs you. We've got a lot of signatures to gather in the next two weeks to be able to really fight for the future of working class San Francisco. But, with the help of all of those who believe that development in San Francisco should benefit the people rather than subsidize wealthy corporations, those who believe that community dollars should benefit community residents, and all those who know that the future of Black and working class San Francisco is at stake, we believe we will win.

For more information about how to get involved, call POWER at (415) 864-8372 ext. 305 or 303.

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