California Law Would “Right That Wrong” of Urban Renewal

A half century ago, San Francisco bulldozed thousands of homes in blue-collar neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal. Now one state senator wants to make it right.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, has launched a bill to set up a fund to allow the city to borrow against future tax revenue to pay for thousands of affordable homes in areas hurt by urban renewal, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Senate Bill 593 would create a Redevelopment Property Tax Trust Fund to finance affordable home construction in the Western Addition, Japantown, South of Market and beyond.

The bill, approved in the California Assembly, goes before the Senate this month.

San Francisco, like many cities across the state, has struggled to fund affordable housing since former Gov. Jerry Brown scrapped redevelopment agencies in 2011. The city’s redevelopment agency had paid for the construction of 867 homes in the decade before it was dissolved.

Under the proposed law, bonds and affordable housing construction would be overseen by the city’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, responsible for completing the former redevelopment agency’s projects, including Bayview-Hunters Point Shipyard and Mission Bay.

Weiner said tax increment financing will cover about half of construction costs and will leverage other public and private funding sources to fill out affordable housing needs.

“This is a very specific wrong that was done to several communities in San Francisco and we have an obligation to right that wrong,” Wiener told the Chronicle.

Housing destroyed in the name of urban renewal include 5,842 homes, many of them owned by black families in the Western Addition and other neighborhoods between 1955 and 1975.

A move to address the destruction of entire communities is a long time coming, Mattie Scott, who has lived in the Western Addition’s Freedom West co-op for nearly half a century, said.

“It was urban removal,” Scott, an activist against violence. “Redevelopment removed families and businesses that were thriving and made it hard for them to come back. Took away their stability. Took away their jobs, their livelihood. And didn’t replace it.”

— Dana Bartholomew