Eviction notice served on Bayview Hunters Point

Now we have our notice in writing. In Monday’s mail came a “Notice of Public Hearing of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Commission on the Proposed Bayview Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan Amendment” announcing that on Tuesday, March 7, at 4 p.m. in City Hall Room 416, “any and all persons having any objections to the proposed Redevelopment Plan Amendment may appear before the Agency and show cause why the Redevelopment Plan Amendment should not be approved.”

Notice of another boring meeting? No, not this time. This is an eviction notice to nearly everyone who lives in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco’s Black heartland.

The word “amendment” doesn’t sound like a threat. But this “amendment,” according to the notice, “proposes to add approximately 1,361 acres of new land as ‘Project Area B’ to the existing 137-acre Hunters Point Redevelopment Project Area.” The map on the back of the notice designates nearly our entire neighborhood as the proposed Project Area B, dwarfing the existing project area that covers much of Hunters Point Hill. The proposed “amendment” stretches from Cesar Chavez Street south to the county line and from Highway 101 east to San Francisco Bay.

If we allow the Redevelopment Agency Commission, whose strings are pulled by Mayor Gavin Newsom, to declare our neighborhood a “project area,” we are consenting to our own eviction from the most valuable land – considering we have the best views and the most sunshine – in San Francisco, the city with the most valuable land on earth.

Property in a project area is subject to the city’s seizure by eminent domain. In horror, Black San Franciscans watched it happen a generation ago when the world-renowned Fillmore district became Fill-no-mo’, when Redevelopment bulldozers destroyed 200 Black-owned businesses and the homes of 5,000 Black families. They even tried to bulldoze our memories by renaming the neighborhood the Western Addition.

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