Photo above of San Francisco soup kitchen line, 1985, by Photographer Lloyd Francis.
1.
Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer for El Cerrito Journal, December 21, 1986, “Council Upholds Condo Project In Spite Of Residents’ Petition”.
A few things stand out while revisiting this news work I did twenty-two years ago. The El Cerrito Journal ran not only this story below about the proposed residential development, but alongside it my two related stories. The first was about a proposed retail development, the other about 1986-87 revenues for El Cerrito. The budget story was one of three I did on the subject that year for the paper.
Councilmembers openly say they are encouraging commercial and residential development which ultimately attract younger, more prosperous residents:
“Councilwoman Anna Howe, commenting during the meeting to residents involved in the appeal, said the condominiums would encourage younger families to move to El Cerrito and that apartment owners as compared to renters are ‘better additions to the community.’”
This is, in 2008, for an elected person, politically difficult to say in a major urban or suburban zone. Politicians today, to keep their jobs, have to literally contradict themselves.
They have to say to the city’s newspaper that they ‘deeply regret’ the loss of affordable housing in the city. They must be seen working to implement effective local programs to assist the poor.
As they say this to voters and to the media, however, they must simultaneously and far more strenuously work toward a slow, quiet reduction of the lower-cost residential or commercial buildings/neighborhoods they are pledging to protect or expand.
Why is this? Is it because they enjoy double-dealing this way? In some cases, perhaps so.
More likely, most of them would prefer to be plain about the embedded costs of affordable housing, but can not. Whether he/she enjoys lying or spinning campaign exaggerations is beside the point, anyway. If the leader wants the job, he’s got to talk out both sides of his/her mouth. Complete truth is for the political activist but not the elected city official.
But why is lower-cost housing nearly impossible for a city to construct and maintain? Because cheap housing is, when bunched up into neighborhoods, a financial liability for a city. The struggling neighborhood is not an asset from which the municipality can collect taxes, and, in turn, repair roads and pay police. This is what the 1986 member of the city’s council was admitting, in effect, with her statement.
That’s a meaningful fact regarding this story because next to my stories on this 1986 front page is a story about charity organizations for the homeless. That story, written by Jim Zelinski, focuses on the conditions of local homeless people. The story runs with an informational sidebar and two photographs.
One photo depicts a man quoted as saying he’s been homeless for 15 years. The second photo shows a demonstration in Oakland’s Martin Luther King Park. A tent city is standing which is dubbed “Reaganville.”
Ronald Reagan was then the U.S. president. He was unpopular with liberal activists, needless to say. We were used to derogatory slogans targeting Ronald Reagan. The point is, some political figures can withstand such pressures, and others can not.
Those sincerely supporting affordable housing, assistance for the homeless, will rarely be prominent figures. They will be charity figures, activists, like the ones shown in this 1986 newspaper.
In early August of 2008, The San Francisco Chronicle ran a few stories about the slow exodus of the city’s less prosperous residents. The mayor and San Francisco’s other city leaders were pledging to form action groups to keep the less-prosperous populations intact.
Today, the city’s elected officials surely will form such groups. But mainly for show. Will those leaders truly work to expand housing for the poor in San Francisco? Expand low-cost housing for residents of the Bayview/Hunter’s Point region? Continue to direct city resources toward fighting the high homicide rates within those districts?
I won’t even answer my own foolish inquiry. We well know what a large city – its residents -- can and cannot, will and will not, pay for in 2008. As for the question of where we place, as a society, struggling populations, I honestly have never had a great answer to this.
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