San Francisco Housing Authority in the 1970s
Historical Essay
by John Baranski
This excerpt originally appeared in "All Housing is Public," Chapter Seven of Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco (see below for copyright and book information)
Valencia Gardens in May 1946, during the early period of San Francisco Public Housing.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
By the 1970s, we should note, the SFHA was a very different institution than it was in the 1940s. Social movements and lawsuits helped to make the institution more diverse and more responsive to residents. To comply with a court settlement, the SFHA printed materials in many languages to “help insure the participation of non-English speaking residents.” The SFHA served seniors and individuals with disabilities through building and unit design and social services.(27)
Tenants were involved in hiring and budget decisions, and they often filled com- mission meetings to overcapacity, leaving many outside and “upset that they can’t get in.” The San Francisco Public Housing Tenants Association (PHTA) leadership reflected the diversity of its most active members, and PHTA presidents (Dorothy Tillman, Cleo Wallace, Judy McCabe, Lillie Ransom, and Hope Halikias) reflected the high numbers of women in the tenant movement.
As a SFHA commissioner, Cleo Wallace was a whirlwind of activity. She worked closely with tenants, community members, the mayor’s office, and progressive politicians John Burton and Phil Burton, and she traveled to conferences around the nation. She represented tenants for the National Tenant Organization, NAHRO, and HUD, and she, like so many other tenants who participated in SFHA decision making, brought a decidedly working-class perspective to her work. As Wallace noted, she didn’t have to ask anyone “about being poor. I don’t think there is any- thing you can tell me about it.” Internally, SFHA staff also became more diverse from bottom to top. SFHA directors Walter Scott, who replaced Eneas Kane in 1977, and then his successor Carl Williams were the first African Americans to direct the agency. Women began to fill top administrative positions, a shift that Commissioner Wallace said was “long overdue.”(28) In 1979, the SFHA added sexual preference to their nondiscrimination policy for their employees and applicants for SFHA housing, thus extending these rights and protections to members of the LGBT community.(29)
For SFHA tenants, the housing program provided several ways to build a shared tenant identity and community. Tenants organized their unions and demands around their specific projects. For example, when Secretary of the Sunnydale Coalition Board Mary Brewer appeared before the SFHA Commission, her list of demands reflected a multiracial and multi-ethnic tenant community at the Sunnydale project. Security needs and maintenance problems plus inadequate staffing topped their priorities. Her presentation was in the first-person plural: “We hope the commissioners with the help of their staff will help us solve our problems.” She ended with “We are hoping we may have an answer from the commissioners now or in writing in the next few days.”(30) Brewer’s use of “we” was similar to that of other tenant union leaders when they discussed themselves and their goals. As social psychologists have found, social groups form around a common experience and shared interests and language, and it was through their group identity, as tenants, that they found the solidarity necessary for community and political action.(31)
Senior tenants were an especially visible part of the public housing community. By 1979, 4,034 seniors lived in SFHA units across the city. These units offered an affordable alternative to the SROs and other low-rent options in the private sector. As one senior noted, “Where else in SF could you get a modern apartment with a gorgeous City view, nice quiet neighbors, well-lit hallways . . . and utilities at an affordable cost based solely on your ability to pay?” Senior projects offered manicured grounds with flowers, gardens, walkways, and benches, and they were near the services seniors needed for independent living.(32)
Beyond the physical amenities and location, SFHA Special Programs Director Effie Robinson ensured a diversity of programs to meet the individual and collective needs of seniors. Meal and transportation programs and friendly pet policies enriched the health and lives of seniors. In these programs, SFHA staff addressed the nation’s “shift in emphasis from extended family ties to individual freedom” of children and “a fixated youth culture” that negatively affected many of the nation’s elderly. Seniors were also very politically active, not only in the SFHA but also in urban politics. SFHA tenant and retired teacher Ruth Brill, for example, was a board member of the Gray Panthers and contributed to the Gray Power movement locally and nationally.(33)
To bring a few of the good things in life to tenants, SFHA staff coordinated with donors and community groups to offer year-round programming for all ages and backgrounds. Effie Robinson ensured that holiday celebrations were “relevant to our senior population: Christmas, Hanukkah, and Russian Christmas.” She noted that these events aimed to reproduce
cultural traditions which have meaning for the older people . . . [but also] establish new traditions for each building which help to substitute for the loss in their lives. Thus decorations selected by the tenants in the past have been preserved and used each year.(34)
In 1977, Robinson worked with community groups and tenant unions to ensure that 900 seniors and guests from twenty-three developments enjoyed a holiday dinner. Family Tenant Services Director Mel Spriggs worked jointly with tenants and donors to ensure that whether it was a Halloween or Christmas party, SFHA events offered meals with music and singing. Some events even had clowns, jugglers, and acrobats. Combined, SFHA staff estimated 10,000 children and adults participated in the Halloween and Christmas parties in 1977. Public housing youth also participated in summer employment programs, camping trips, and excursions to museums, the zoo, the Exploratorium, and the Sacramento State Fair.(35)
Tenants also had a monthly newsletter, Update. The newsletter informed tenants about SFHA and HUD policies and tenant rights; it instructed tenants on how to file grievances against the SFHA; and it ran notices about class action lawsuits by tenants, including cases against the SFHA. The publication listed tenant union meetings and encouraged tenants to stay involved at every level of government. Update carried job postings, safety suggestions, and tips for healthy living. News of tenant events also dotted the pages of Update. The May 1979 issue highlighted Senior Citizens Month, which featured a jazz festival and an awards ceremony for senior activists that was the “annual tribute to older Americans who have contributed so much to all of our lives.” That issue also carried news of annual festivals such as an African American festival: “As with the Chinese Moon Festival, the Japanese Chrysanthemum Festival, and the Hispanic Festival, we will share the music, dance and foods of our Black American friends and neighbors.”(36) The newsletter encouraged tenants to attend educational classes because “the larger the group the wider the viewpoints for discussion—the more interesting the classes become.” The newsletter along with the range of services and programming helped to build a community of tenants.(37)
Public housing tenants also expressed their identity through art. Building on the SFHA traditions begun in the 1940s with neighborhood-themed murals and Beniamino Bufano’s sculptures, tenants continued to make art. Murals brought life to project walls. Bernal Dwellings’s mural offered movement and color to reflect “the multitude of races and cultures” in the city; Ping Yuen’s had the Eight Immortal Gods in Chinese culture; and North Beach’s offered a mix of animals, flowers, and spaceships to “delight the eye and excite the imagination.”(38) Art classes, exhibits, and programs were regularly held for tenants of all ages. Holly Courts had a resident artist who directed a citywide summer youth employment program in the housing project’s art room, though the artist also led mural projects in many neighborhoods.(39) A regional art festival sponsored by Bay Area public housing authorities and tenant unions drew exhibits from both fine arts and crafts and offered entertainment that “featured gospel singers, Berkeley’s New World Ensemble, and Make-a-Circus jugglers.” In 1978, the Ping Yuen Children’s Art Group and Holly Arts Program from Holly Courts entered their art for the festival’s competition, and Louise Yee of the Ping Yuen Tenants Association served as a judge. Tenants, often with SFHA support, wove their artistic expressions into the cultural fabric of their community.(40)
Although the SFHA provided support to improve the daily lives of tenants, by the 1970s the authority, like its counterparts across the nation, had less capacity to address the problems facing government housing. As the tragic case of Julia Wong illustrated, high crime rates and the lack of safety in and around SFHA projects reached deadly levels. Gangs, drug abuse, theft and vandalism, and violent assaults reduced tenants’ quality of life, drove up public housing costs, contributing to negative images of public housing and its tenants, even though many of the perpetrators were not public housing tenants. SFHA tenants responded to these issues in different ways. Some retreated; others moved out; still others organized to make improvements. For those who wanted improvements, the SFHA was a natural target of criticism. To be sure, the authority needed to do a better job of providing lighting, working facilities, and security, but the San Francisco Police Department also was not doing its job. SFHA Director Carl Williams noted, in response to requests to improve safety, that the city needed to do more. He said, “Public housing residents are residents of the City and County of San Francisco and the S.F. Police Department has a clear responsibility to provide security for the entire city.”(41)
Federal housing policies that moved resources away from public housing presented another challenge to the SFHA program. By the end of the 1970s, HUD dollars flowed to private landlords in a number of ways. Section 8 vouchers, various subsidies for private landlords and developers, and low-income housing tax credits all moved federal money away from public housing. The lack of federal funds necessary to repair aging buildings and infrastructure, some of which dated to the 1940s, and the inability to do repairs added to the social problems caused by poverty and negative images of government housing.(42) Other HUD programs encouraged homeownership over more public housing. When HUD acquired the Navy housing known as Inchon Village in Hunters Point, the federal agency, with support from Supervisor Dianne Feinstein, agreed to transfer the property to the SFHA only if the housing authority refurbished and then sold the homes to low-income residents. HUD Secretary Patricia Harris made a personal visit to endorse the project before the SFHA and San Francisco Redevelopment Agency began turning the property, which was heavily polluted from naval operations, into townhomes known as Mariner’s Village.(43)
The SFHA leadership also fended off attempts by San Francisco political leaders who tried to reduce the agency’s purpose and even end its existence. In November 1978, just after the murders of Moscone and Milk and the Jonestown mass murder and suicides, Supervisor Dianne Feinstein became mayor. In office, she often favored policies to assist business and redevelopment interests over the rights and desires of residents, and she was willing to reduce social programs and economic rights to align with her budget priorities. After the passage of Proposition 13, a state ballot measure that cut property taxes, Feinstein prepared the SFHA and other city agencies for an era of fiscal constraints. Upon entering office, her motto to the city’s administrators became “Do more with less,” which included a push to cut wages and benefits and contract out city jobs to the private sector. She also expected SFHA housing to be available for the redevelopment agency in order to meet federal relocation requirements (that is, so that the agency could credibly reference SFHA units as places to which displaced tenants could be moved when they were uprooted by redevelopment projects).(44)
Beyond this, while in office Feinstein revived the idea of merging the SFHA with the redevelopment agency. To justify the merger, she supported a narrative of the SFHA having “real problems” and needing new leadership. The proposed merger would give the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency control of SFHA land and housing as well as the expertise of SFHA staff. It would be a major victory for redevelopment in the city. SFHA commissioners voted against the merger, and SFHA Director Carl Williams worked to prevent it, because they understood the vital role the authority played in providing low-income housing to the city’s residents. By 1979, Feinstein gave up on the merger, but even so, her attacks on public housing reflected her belief in a reduced role of government in addressing inequality.(45)
Feinstein belonged to growing number of Democrats in and out of San Francisco who were moving away from the assumptions that had guided the expansion of civil and economic rights during the New Deal and Great Society. These “New Democrats” still believed in government programs and regulations, though now on a smaller scale, and they were influenced in part by the political success of the New Right political movement. New Right politicians captured a growing voter base for the Republican Party through a platform that promised to cut social programs, regulations, and taxes and reverse the gains of the civil rights movement while restoring traditional gender roles and sexuality, military power, and faith in the United States.
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Notes
27. SFHA, Minutes (June 29, 1978).
28. For “overflow crowds” see SFHA, Minutes (January 1, 1977). On Kane resignation and Scott and Williams, see SFHA, Minutes (December 23, 1976) and “New Housing Chief Starts Making Reforms,” San Francisco Examiner (August 25, 1978). Cleo Wallace quote on women in SFHA, Minutes (May 25, 1978); and her quote on being poor in SFHA, Minutes (December 23, 1976). For a great study of women tenant activism in Baltimore, see Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
29. SFHA, Minutes (July 12, 1979).
30. SFHA, Minutes (April 13, 1978).
31. Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Be- havior,” in Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin, eds., Psychology of Intergroup Relations (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1986), and Richard D. Ashmore and Frances K. Del Boca, “Conceptual Approaches to Stereotypes and Stereotyping,” in David L. Hamilton, ed., Cognitive Processes in Stereotyping and Intergroup Behavior (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1981). For class identity, see E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1963). For community building in public housing, see Williams, The Politics of Public Housing; Howard, More Than Shelter.
32. Quote in Update (November 1979). Monthly issues of Update (1978–1988), which was published by the SFHA for tenants, can be found in the SFPL.
33. Pet policy in Update (March 1982). Nearly every Update issue reported on senior public housing tenant activities and lives. Brill in Update (April 1983). Kleyman, Senior Power. For analysis of senior housing, see Galen Cranz, David Christensen, and Sam Dyer, “A User-Oriented Evaluation of San Francisco’s Public Housing for the Elderly,” sponsored by the Departments of Senior Citizen Social Services, SFHA, and Center for Planning and Development Research, UC Berkeley, 1977 (located at the SFPL).
34. Quote in SFHA, Minutes (January 12, 1978). Also see Update(1978–1988).
35. SFHA, Minutes (September 22, 1977).
36. Quotes in May 1979 Update.
37. Quote in July 1978 Update. On the importance of print media to building community, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1996).
38. Update (November 1978). Also see Howard, More Than Shelter.
39. See Update (July 1979); SFHA, Minutes (September 22, 1977).
40. SFHA, Minutes (April 13, 1978).
41. Quote in SFHA, Minutes (January 11, 1979). For problems of crime surrounding public housing, see Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Fritz Umbach, and Lawrence J. Vale, eds., Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015; Howard, More Than Shelter.
42. SFHA, Minutes (February 23 and March 9, 1978). For Carter’s urban policies, see Raymond Mohl, “Jimmy Carter, Patricia Roberts Harris, and Housing Policy in the Age of Limits,” in John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000); Hays, The Federal Government and Urban Housing; Biles, The Fate of Cities; Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States.
43. SFHA, Minutes, (August 18, 1977; and May 25, 1978); for Harris visit, see SFHA, Minutes (April 13 and April 27, 1978). Also see “San Francisco Redevelopment Program: Sum- mary of Project Data and Key Elements, 1981” [copy located at HUD library, Washington, DC]; Lisa Davis, “Diseaseville,” San Francisco Weekly (August 27, 2003).
44. Quotes in “Feinstein Tells the City’s Chiefs: ‘Do More for Less,’” San Francisco Examiner (December 13, 1977). Also see SFHA, Minutes (July 27, 1978), and Dianne Feinstein to Ronald Pelosi letter (November 28, 1979) in SFHA, Minutes (December 13, 1979). Hartman, City for Sale; Brian J. Godfrey, “Urban Development and Redevelopment in San Francisco,” Geographical Review 87, 3 (July 1997): 309–33.
45. Quotes in “Feinstein Tells the City’s Chiefs: ‘Do More for Less.’” SFHA, Minutes (July 27, 1978); Feinstein to Pelosi (November 28, 1979).
Excerpted from Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco by John Baranski, published by Stanford University Press. Used by permission. © Copyright 2019 by John Baranski. All rights reserved.