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Why it matters that families are fleeing San Francisco
We are child advocates, and we stand for the simple idea that our children ought to be our highest value. We believe that children are precious beyond measure and that any successful society invests its best resources and hopes in the success of its children.
We are deeply troubled that a fundamental transformation of San Francisco is in progress and the future of children and working families is in jeopardy. As thousands of luxury condominiums are being built, public schools are being closed.
As homeowners, landlords and developers seek the highest possible profit out of their property, the cost of providing shelter for our families is skyrocketing. To survive, thousands of San Francisco families are living doubled and tripled up, in illegal and unsafe units, and cannot meet their basic needs despite two or more incomes.
But thousands simply don’t make it. Families who invested in their children, their schools, churches and neighborhoods are priced out, pushed out and literally evicted. Working class neighborhoods that once had vibrant, diverse, family-based communities are being gentrified.
The African American community has been devastated, losing over 25,000 residents since 1980. Given the thousands of market rate units in development between Mission Bay and Visitacion Valley, there is widespread concern that the completion of the Third Street Light Rail will mark the end of the Black community in Bayview Hunters Point.
The dramatic disinvestment in state and federal affordable housing funding has left cities like San Francisco completely at the mercy of the profit-driven market.
Read More
http://sfbayview.com/020806/fleeing020806.shtml
As homeowners, landlords and developers seek the highest possible profit out of their property, the cost of providing shelter for our families is skyrocketing. To survive, thousands of San Francisco families are living doubled and tripled up, in illegal and unsafe units, and cannot meet their basic needs despite two or more incomes.
But thousands simply don’t make it. Families who invested in their children, their schools, churches and neighborhoods are priced out, pushed out and literally evicted. Working class neighborhoods that once had vibrant, diverse, family-based communities are being gentrified.
The African American community has been devastated, losing over 25,000 residents since 1980. Given the thousands of market rate units in development between Mission Bay and Visitacion Valley, there is widespread concern that the completion of the Third Street Light Rail will mark the end of the Black community in Bayview Hunters Point.
The dramatic disinvestment in state and federal affordable housing funding has left cities like San Francisco completely at the mercy of the profit-driven market.
Read More
http://sfbayview.com/020806/fleeing020806.shtml
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What's the solution? SF already has one of the toughest rent-control ordinances in the state.
Also, many families are choosing to leave SF for bigger, better housing, schools and less violent environments. Many families are move out towards places like Sacramento and beyond for this very reason.
If you want more kids to attend public schools, you need to convince the "progressives" on the SF school board that they need to allow families to send their children to NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS NOW.
Forget this "desegregation" stuff, it ain't working. Further, the neighborhoods ARE NOT desegregated, so why force the kids to do it?@! Bottom line - if neighborhood schools do not become the policy learn to live with fewer schools and more families sending their kids to either private schools or moving out!!!
Also, many families are choosing to leave SF for bigger, better housing, schools and less violent environments. Many families are move out towards places like Sacramento and beyond for this very reason.
If you want more kids to attend public schools, you need to convince the "progressives" on the SF school board that they need to allow families to send their children to NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS NOW.
Forget this "desegregation" stuff, it ain't working. Further, the neighborhoods ARE NOT desegregated, so why force the kids to do it?@! Bottom line - if neighborhood schools do not become the policy learn to live with fewer schools and more families sending their kids to either private schools or moving out!!!
You're right. Neighborhood schools are the bedrock of a community. When your kids go to school with all the neighbors' kids, and have the same teachers, you can better monitor who are the good teachers and the bad ones. You can also walk to PTA meetings, science fairs, and other school functions. The tired "segregation" argument is nonsense. The REAL problem is the teachers' union and its insistence on letting the senior teachers pick where they teach. Experienced teachers should be sent to the worst-performing schools, to help them with their skills.
I suggest Neil Smith's "The New Urban Frontier--Gentrification and the Revanchist City" for a critique of the emergence of gentrification as a global phenomenon since the 1970's.
What's happening in SF isn't isolated--it's a (particularly virulent) strain that typifies one side of capital's development in the past thirty years.
What's happening in SF isn't isolated--it's a (particularly virulent) strain that typifies one side of capital's development in the past thirty years.
Greetings of peace in the Name of Jesus. Thank you for taking time to write. Being a mother of a growing family, I am definitely interested in affordable housing in safe neighborhoods. I do however disagree with you and others who have written that a primary solution is to "improve" schools.
You wrote, "And finally, we need an unparalleled, citywide commitment to invest in our public schools so that we have excellent public schools in all neighborhoods that are desirable to low income and middle class families."
There is actually a growing number of people who long to live in a "school-free" zone.
"Excellent" public schools is a pipe dream and oxymoron. Government schooling was a bad idea and a failed experiment. The sooner the nightmare of government schooling comes to an end the better for the nations and planet.
San Francisco would do well to focus on recruiting homeschooling/unschooling families who tend to produce many more children than the typical American family and to do so by scraping government schooling in the city altogether. The dilema of famlies fleeing San Francisco presents the city with a unique opportunity to try something truly progressive and or revolutionary.
San Francisco should abolish compulsory attendance laws, "So that Nobody Has to Go to School if They Don't Want to." http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~egarcia/sample.html
Forget schooling and focus on childrearing. Instead of offering free "forced schooling." San Francisco should offer affordable housing with smart design in safe, family friendly neighborhoods. All the better if the city could create a homeschooling/unschooling friendly neighborhood where parents accept full responsiblity for the upbriniging of their own children and are there to lend other parents a helping hand. People helping people vs. government fathering dependents.
I know that soem of my ideas may differ from yours. But I hope that you will at least read the article that I linked to and consider my pov.
Sincerely I pray,
Lori Ann in L.A.
http://www.honestedu.org/
You wrote, "And finally, we need an unparalleled, citywide commitment to invest in our public schools so that we have excellent public schools in all neighborhoods that are desirable to low income and middle class families."
There is actually a growing number of people who long to live in a "school-free" zone.
"Excellent" public schools is a pipe dream and oxymoron. Government schooling was a bad idea and a failed experiment. The sooner the nightmare of government schooling comes to an end the better for the nations and planet.
San Francisco would do well to focus on recruiting homeschooling/unschooling families who tend to produce many more children than the typical American family and to do so by scraping government schooling in the city altogether. The dilema of famlies fleeing San Francisco presents the city with a unique opportunity to try something truly progressive and or revolutionary.
San Francisco should abolish compulsory attendance laws, "So that Nobody Has to Go to School if They Don't Want to." http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~egarcia/sample.html
Forget schooling and focus on childrearing. Instead of offering free "forced schooling." San Francisco should offer affordable housing with smart design in safe, family friendly neighborhoods. All the better if the city could create a homeschooling/unschooling friendly neighborhood where parents accept full responsiblity for the upbriniging of their own children and are there to lend other parents a helping hand. People helping people vs. government fathering dependents.
I know that soem of my ideas may differ from yours. But I hope that you will at least read the article that I linked to and consider my pov.
Sincerely I pray,
Lori Ann in L.A.
http://www.honestedu.org/
For more information:
http://www.honestedu.org/
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