America Awakens to Redevelopment Nightmare

For all the furor, outrage and demands for Congressional action stemming from the Supreme Court ruling, many may be surprised to learn a critical fact: the Court simply affirmed fifty years of Redevelopment Agency practice. From St. Louis to Pittsburgh, from Detroit to our own liberal bastion of San Francisco, and in hundreds of other cities across America, Redevelopment Agencies have taken homes, demolished businesses, and wrecked lives, all in the name of "progress" and urban renewal.

Departing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor perfectly captured the national outrage over Redevelopment Agencies when she stated in her dissent, "All private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded." Maxine Waters and other progressives have pointed out that wealthy developers dominate the Redevelopment process through their campaign contributions to elected officials, so that even the "public uses" for which Redevelopment has used eminent domain has frequently been designed to benefit private interests.

Many current San Franciscans seem entirely unaware that the city's Redevelopment Agency demolished businesses and homes throughout the entire Fillmore District solely for the benefit of private developers. The Agency's destruction of 5000 SRO units in the South of Market had some public purpose-Moscone Center and Yerba Buena Gardens-but the mass "slum clearance" project also brought hefty profits to developers building upscale condos in the area.

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