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Politically-Favored Developers Win Big if Redevelopment Agency Seizes Control of Bayview
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Redevelopment Commission will decide whether to dramatically expand Redevelopment Agency control of Bayview-Hunters Point. Real estate developers, land speculators, property owners, favored nonprofit groups, and Mayor Newsom have the most to gain from expanding Redevelopment, while non-subsidized tenants, small business owners, seekers of affordable homeownership, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and taxpayers citywide have the most to lose. But much of the testimony at Tuesday’s hearing is likely to be about race, as African-American opponents of the Redevelopment takeover ask why their neighborhoods continue to be targeted for “urban removal.” This Tuesday could represent an historic turning point for San Francisco, or it could instead repeat an all too familiar story.
Bayview-Hunters Point represents the last major undeveloped neighborhood in San Francisco. Should the neighborhood’s gentrification be expedited through a strategy that denies residents control of land use decisions and jeopardizes the city’s longterm financial future, or should the largely African-American neighborhood maintain control of proposed developments in its community, with the taxes generated benefiting not just Bayview but the entire city?
The debate over expanding Redevelopment Agency control of the Bayview involves two distinct issues: the future of San Francisco’s last remaining African-American community, and the citywide budgetary impact of diverting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes generated in the neighborhood from the general fund to the Redevelopment Agency.
Bayview-Hunters Point, like all neighborhoods in San Francisco, has seen property values and home prices steeply increase over the past decade. New housing built in the community is not affordable to existing Bayview residents, and this includes the vast majority of the 1200 units that the Agency contracted with Lennar/BVHP to build at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
Bayview real estate will appreciate in the next decade with or without Redevelopment. But many African-American activists wonder why liberal San Francisco would bring in an Agency to both facilitate and expedite a process that nobody disputes will reduce the neighborhood’s low-income, African-American population.
Quickening the pace of Bayview gentrification is great for land speculators and developers who already own land, but not so good for the area’s tenants. As the Redevelopment Agency uses public dollars to upgrade the neighborhood’s attractiveness, tenants will increasingly be evicted from their newly desirable homes and replaced by TIC owners seeking to convert the former rental housing to condominiums.
More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3015#more
The debate over expanding Redevelopment Agency control of the Bayview involves two distinct issues: the future of San Francisco’s last remaining African-American community, and the citywide budgetary impact of diverting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes generated in the neighborhood from the general fund to the Redevelopment Agency.
Bayview-Hunters Point, like all neighborhoods in San Francisco, has seen property values and home prices steeply increase over the past decade. New housing built in the community is not affordable to existing Bayview residents, and this includes the vast majority of the 1200 units that the Agency contracted with Lennar/BVHP to build at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
Bayview real estate will appreciate in the next decade with or without Redevelopment. But many African-American activists wonder why liberal San Francisco would bring in an Agency to both facilitate and expedite a process that nobody disputes will reduce the neighborhood’s low-income, African-American population.
Quickening the pace of Bayview gentrification is great for land speculators and developers who already own land, but not so good for the area’s tenants. As the Redevelopment Agency uses public dollars to upgrade the neighborhood’s attractiveness, tenants will increasingly be evicted from their newly desirable homes and replaced by TIC owners seeking to convert the former rental housing to condominiums.
More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3015#more
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