FoundSF

"I was there..."

by David Brigode

Originally written for my MPA at SF State in 1983, this is part one (of three) of my personal recollection of SF Tenant History from 1974-1983, and my role as a co-founder of the San Francisco Tenant’s Union and advocate for Tenant’s Rights and Rent Control.

return to part one

With the collapse of the Tenant’s Action Group in early 1976, a major vacuum existed in terms of grassroots organizing. The San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation was forced by cutbacks and internal bureaucratic maneuvering to restrict client load and offer bare-bones unlawful detainer eviction responses. In response to this situation, some TAG veterans (Michael Canright, a Union carpenter; Rick Ames, a tenant-landlord attorney, and myself) in January 1977 founded the San Francisco Tenant’s Union in the converted kitchen and back closet of the Haight Ashbury Switchboard at 1531 Haight, initially paying $25 a month rent. The first six months of operation were low key, due to sporadic staffing and resources, and an overall community commitment to the defense of District Elections of Supervisors. It was seen that rent control would not move forward without a new Board of Supervisors, and renter activists threw everything into the defense of District Elections.

Calvin Welch and Rene Cazanave, at the deeply influential 409 House (SFIC, District Elections, Council of Community Housing Organizations), took notice of my prior work as an organizer on behalf of the proposed Straight Theater Community Center and hired me on at $352 per month as a community organizer in 1976-77 with the Ecumenical Ministry for the Haight Ashbury, funded by the Episcopal Church. It was called 409 House, and its location at 409 Clayton was on the ground floor of the business office of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic founded by Dr. David Smith. I worked on the Haight Newspaper, ran the mimeograph, and I was able to devote 15-25 hours a week to staffing the SFTU counseling phone, setting up systems and outreach literature, and recruiting anybody who walked in. (This was in addition to painting houses). I lived at 1531 Page, in a 4-bedroom apartment, and worked at 409 Clayton and 1539 Haight, all within a block and a half. With my share of rent at $95 per month, I could devote time to build a foundation for the SFTU that could support our future work.

Thus, we had a bare minimum infrastructure in place. In late summer of 1977, Dennis Keating at UC Berkeley sent us three interns for the phones, and I recruited several SFSU students (including Jim Faye). I sent out a letter asking for phone referrals from key city agencies. Within two weeks we were averaging 250 calls per month. They were overjoyed to refer all those phone calls to us. By the fall of 1977 serious organizing commenced. A phone service, counseling renters as to their rights and options under the law, was helping over a hundred tenants per week; a mailing to potential referral agencies quadrupled that phone load in three weeks. The student interns were crucial during this surge. The old TAG Tenant’s Rights handbook was updated and reprinted.

SFTU Handbook cover, art by Prowler

Activity on the legislative front was increasing. In late 1976, the SF Fair Rent Committee was established at Glide Church, consisting of representatives of senior groups, legal academics, and neighborhood and tenant organizers. The goal was to place a rent control initiative on the ballot in November 1977. A rough draft was drawn up and preliminary contacts were made. However, the unexpected defeat of the April 1977 Berkeley rent control ordinance measure, albeit in a low turnout election, put a severe damper on the proceedings, and many activists focused on district elections of a new Board of Supervisors for the rest of the year. An associated measure on the Nov. ’77 ballot seeking tax money to purchase the I-Hotel failed at the hands of a “anti-spending” electorate.

Other associated legislation which did pass included prohibitions on converting residential units to commercial usage, and an ordinance prohibiting the conversion of residential hotels to tourist usage (drafted and lobbied by an intern named Diana Bilovsky, who received criticism from her attorney supervisor for upstaging him).

At that time San Francisco had “at-large” election of the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors. Nine came from the wealthy Pacific Heights, and the other two came from the equally well-off St. Francis Woods. They were conservative, all-white but one, and pro landlord, pro-Manhattanization and indifferent to the needs of an increasingly diverse population. Prop T in November 1976 (the Carter election) instituted supervisor district elections based on the neighborhood, allowing candidates to run with much less money and more local grassroots support. Reactionaries attempted to repeal it in August 1977, along with recalling Mayor Moscone, but lost badly 2 to 1. District Elections, when finally held in November 1977, produced progressive supervisors in several parts of the City.

By December ’77, with a district-elected Board of Supervisors (including Harvey Milk from District 5), housing issues finally took priority on the agenda. An umbrella group, the San Francisco Housing Coalition, was formed in a series of meetings at Antioch West University, with over 40 individuals in attendance representing housing, ethnic, and neighborhood groups from all over the City. After much discussion, it was decided to concentrate effort on the issue of speculation, by a) researching outrageous examples of high profit and rapid turnover, b) publicizing these “horror stories” in a negative light, and c) drafting and placing this “anti-speculation” ordinance. This measure would tax capital gains at up to 80% if sold in less than a year, progressively downward to 20% after 4 years.

There was a great deal of publicity and awareness raising around both this ordinance and housing costs and displacement, spearheaded by Warren Hinckle in the Chronicle (1/19/78), using data we had gathered from SFTU intakes. While the exercise was valuable, the Board of Supervisors rejected the measure in April ’78 by a 9-2 margin. My speech before a hostile Board, in a crowded Chamber full of angry renters and landlords, was defiant. I said “There is a war in San Francisco. From the Mission to the Sunset, from North Beach to the Fillmore, renters are losing their homes and speculation is destroying the heart of the City.” A trifle Churchillian, but appropriate.

The Housing Coalition was not spared personality-oriented division. The two principals, Calvin Welch and Chester Hartman, were both talented and knowledgeable housing professionals who, unfortunately, had a history of clashes extending back to the early battles over the Yerba Buena Center. Policy direction choices were viewed in terms of “alliances,” i.e., the focus on anti-speculation rather than anti-demolition legislation was seen as a “victory” for Welch. Further bad feeling resulted from one of the constituent groups, Public Interest Economics-West, soliciting and receiving a grant for anti-speculation research based to large degree on work performed in common by the whole group. And, in a vote taken in May of ’78 on whether the SFHC should undertake a rent control initiative in the Fall, a narrow 16-15 NO vote further split the group.

But events soon overtook everyone.

By early 1978 we had “horror stories” of rent increases and an action program including a rudimentary draft rent control ordinance. We were organizing tenant associations in buildings and became the go-to source for media inquiries. Gradually, a tenant-oriented advising, organizing, and lobbying entity was established based on volunteers and sparse donations. Intake forms were kept and building organizing started to take place again.

Warren Hinckle’s pivotal piece in the Chronicle in January 1978, which was the first description of the city-wide wave of increases and displacement being encountered by middle class tenants in SF, used largely SFTU anecdotes. Dianne Feinstein’s office (she was then Chair of the Board of Supervisors) called us first thing the next day, asking “who are you guys?” (exact words).

At the time we were so broke we printed our press releases on the back of already printed paper. Our first Tenant Handbook was printed on the 409 House mimeograph and collated as therapy work by the Langley Porter Psychiatric Outpatient Day unit at UCSF (who got credit on our title page).

It was very educational to hear about all the problems, the idiotic landlords, and to be invited into people’s homes all over the city. Here’s a sample of what we encountered:

• A 7-story SRO building in the Tenderloin was in such bad shape that a constant steam of water was flowing down the interior stairs.

• A building rent strike in Noe Valley that was so successful the owner had a nervous breakdown and moved into an empty unit. He just refused to make repairs in exchange for a rent increase.

• The day after we lost a very bitter rent control election, a tenant called the office to complain about a rent increase. The counselor explained what her limited options were, but that rent control had lost. She then said “Oh, I don’t believe in rent control.” The counselor cursed her up, down, and sideways and hung up.

• A man called and asked “if his girlfriend’s landlord continued to enter her apartment every time he heard her take a shower, could he ‘shoot him?’.” We said we sympathized but advised against.

• The entire Trinity Tenants Association (TTA) would meet in the apartment of the Zigas’s on 2000 Broadway in Pacific Heights. Not my usual venue. The TTA served as an organizing node for Trinity Tenants from North Beach, Market Street, and other buildings. It was the moment that rent control went from a “fringe issue” to a solid and middle-class activity.

• I was counseling one day when an interruption came in the middle of the call. The person indicated he was an engineer with PacBell and was at their switchboard building in the Western Addition. He asked who we were. He said that our phone hotline was being called so heavily that the circuits were overloading. It turned out he thought we were a whorehouse or a drug dealer.

• Theoretically we were practicing law without a license. However, we were not charging fees except asking for donations. Nobody ever messed with us over this, although people resented our effectiveness.

• My favorite was to organize buildings owned by lawyers. They were usually quite arrogant, but only skilled in their particular field of law. They would constantly screw up the simple things.

• I only helped evict a tenant twice. Once, a renter set fire to the entryway and stairwell of the 6-unit building, and the landlord would not evict because he wanted everybody out to raise the rent. The other time was a resident who drilled holes in the walls of his unit to spy on his neighbors.

• We had a meeting with the owners in the lobby of the building that was experiencing a 60% rent increase. The owners, a young white couple, patiently explained to us that they were members of “EST,” a notorious cult of “prosperity” mongering, and that it was their “destiny” to get rich from this rent increase, and they were quite happy taking the renter’s money. This was one of the few times I was just left speechless as to the arrogance and entitledness they displayed.

• I saw people living in basements with piping overhead and no windows. I saw a house listed as a two-bedroom in which the 2nd bedroom was the space underneath the porch deck with a dirt floor. Cockroaches, rats, junkies in the next unit.

• An elderly woman, a 52-year tenant in the Outer Richmond, received a triple rent increase. I just sat with her at her kitchen table and sympathized. Nothing could be done.

• Before rent control, the only defense against a rent increase was finding a code violation. I once advised a renter with a rodent problem to take a frozen rat to court to fight. Community organizing at its most basic.

continue to part three