‘I used to live in the Bayview … then I became homeless’

I had the pleasure of meeting Lillette, who was holding a small hand-made sign that said “Let’s get our priorities straight,” at a press conference at City Hall on Mayor Newsom’s reduction of the City’s affordable housing goals.

“We are not going to let the mayor reinvent housing policy in his press office,” said housing activist Calvin Welch, who charged the mayor with rewriting the Housing Element of the City’s General Plan. With one stroke of his mighty pen, or in this case his mighty mouse (attached to his press secretary’s computer), Newsom reduced by 68 percent the City’s affordable housing production goals, which had been approved by the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors and the state of California in a document called the 2004 Housing Element.

“The Housing Element is a solid document, and the mayor is changing it through press releases,” emcee Rene Cazenave of the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse told the crowd gathered on the City Hall steps.

“Washington, D.C., has specifically said it does not care about housing the poor,” declared Sara Short, one of the Housing Justice Summit activists who called Tuesday’s action. “So for Newsom to not target funds to house the City’s poorest citizens is not only wrong, it is a guaranteed recipe to bring more homelessness and poverty to San Francisco.”

Sara and several other housing and land use activists called the Housing Justice Summit in July to create a grassroots, progressive, proactive housing agenda. They are determined to halt the gentrification that’s pushing working class, poor and homeless residents out of this increasingly homogenous, rich-people-only town.

To add insult to injury. the mayor’s press release characterized his new goal, which reduces the number of affordable housing units to be built in the city by 7,200 units, as a “housing opportunity made for everyone.”

And for conscious Bayview readers, I am quite sure the mayor was including in his scaled-back plan the 1,600 homes he and Lennar are itching to build in the Hunters Point Shipyard, one of the nation’s most toxic Superfund sites, notwithstanding vehement protests by Bayview residents and activists.

“San Francisco is increasingly becoming a city completely unaffordable for the majority of families living in this city,” asserted Ntanya Lee, fierce activist on youth and racial justice and executive director of Coleman Advocates, also a member of the Housing Justice Summit.

NTanya concluded with her usual flare for breaking it down: “We must stop the conversion of family housing into luxury housing. Housing justice is the key to making this a city of families.”

As the press conference ended with a chant – “What do we want?” “Housing!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” – my mind reflected on the determined look in Lillette Durton’s eyes. Now a member of the Community Housing Partnership board, she said in response to my nervous question about the possible closure of her current residence, “No, we won’t let that happen, because we will continue to fight that!”

Read more about issues of poverty and race written by the people who face them daily at http://www.poormagazine.org.

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