Superfund City

From Spot.us,

Alice Griffith Housing Project is part of a redevelopment plan called HOPE SF, which has been underway for the past five years. The program seeks to transform San Francisco’s most distressed public-housing sites into thriving mixed-income communities. The staff at HOPE SF says it will rebuild every housing unit but says not everyone will get to come back. 



“By the time they begin the moving, at least 60 percent of the residents will have been moved out because of gang injunctions or not having the correct paperwork or just plain misinformation,” says Grace Martinez, a grassroots organizer at Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, formerly known as ACORN in the Bay Area.

 Read more at spot.us

San Francisco public housing shouldn’t be left hopeless

From the SF Examiner,

It was 2007 when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom launched the ambitious Hope SF initiative, making a promise to the residents in eight of San Francisco’s most-dilapidated public housing projects that help was arriving. The unlivable conditions arising from years of underfunding and deferred maintenance would be addressed with the old buildings being torn down and new mixed-economy community would be built.

But after all the grand fanfare, with impressive deals made in anticipation of city funding contributions and millions of dollars raised for design and preliminary development, the harsh reality of the national housing meltdown brought the dream crashing to a halt. Public housing residents who have been repeatedly disappointed are back in limbo, living day-to-day in homes that — in many cases — are vermin-infested, lack heat, have broken walls, ceilings or windows, and are consistently rated as dangerous and life-threatening.

Read more at SF Examiner

Rebuilding public housing in San Francisco stymied by bad economy

From the SF Examiner,

When Mayor Gavin Newsom started the Hope SF initiative in 2007, the goal was to transform eight of San Francisco’s grimiest public housing sites into vibrant, thriving communities with residents from all income levels.

Those were the best of times.

While launched with great fanfare, promise and, yes, hope, four years ago, the dream is now fading and Hope SF’s future is uncertain. Only two sites have the public funding to move forward and now hundreds of residents of the most decrepit public housing in The City face the increasing possibility that they will be stuck in vermin-infested homes that are consistently rated as dangerous because of life-threatening deficiencies.

Part of the problem is the drop in the housing market. Funding for Hope SF — which stands for Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere — relies heavily on developers who would make money by building market-rate condos in the area. Financing the projects depends largely on projected sales of those market-rate units. Yet the only project that has broken ground so far, Hunters View, won’t include market-rate housing in its first three phases.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner

BofA gives grant to Sunnydale Hope SF - SF Business Times

Bank of America and the U.S. Green Building Council selected Sunnydale Hope SF in Visitacion Valley as one of ten affordable housing projects nationwide to each receive a $25,000 grant to pursue green initiatives in redevelopment.

The award also includes educational resources that will be used to pursue LEED certification in neighborhood development, the newest green-rating system released earlier this year by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Sunnydale HOPE SF is the transformation of a physically and socially isolated public housing site into a healthy, mixed-income community.

Read more: BofA gives grant to Sunnydale Hope SF | San Francisco Business Times