Phyllis Bowie on the Fight for Midtown
So some of the people here have the original vouchers. This was promised. So this happened, they had a big press conference because there was so much tension in The City. So Mayor John Shelley and Director of Urban Renewal Justin Herman they said, “We are not—” because they were being accused of racial cleansing in the Western Addition, Fillmore District. They said “We are not. Matter of fact, this is a new model. This is for ownership.” So all of the folks that were displaced from Victorians, you get your vouchers, you move in here. This is for you. And they come in 2016—I have to bring it up and it being stolen from us after we paid the mortgage of. The City is going, “No, no, it’s actually ours. We’re gonna treat you this way.”
I moved to Midtown—it’s really an interesting story. I came back from the military, I was an officer in the Air Force. And my brother had since moved out of SF so I was staying with him in Oakland. He had bought a house in Oakland.
One of the conversations we would have while I was looking for a place to live in SF, is he told me, “I don’t know why you want to go back there. There are no Black people back there. None of—our friends are gone. Everybody’s left. And it’s just a city that doesn’t welcome us. I wanna be around people who look like me.”
So I was like, “Excuse me. No, I am going back to SF. I love my city. The fog and everything.” So when I came back to The City, I absolutely did see a change in Divisadero, on Fillmore. Just in our community. And I made a promise to him. I said, “I guarantee you, I’m gonna find the most beautiful place to live that is in the heart of the community that we were raised in.
Why did I move to Midtown? It was not to do the migration that most of my friends and family had done to the East Bay. And I want to find a really nice place to live. I was a very successful interior designer and I really wanted to live some place nice.So anyway, I filled out the application. For two years I worked with my business really hard to kinda bring my income up. So sure enough, I get into a one bedroom apartment. This is really key: when I signed my lease twenty years ago, it was definitely, you could say it was a lease with an option to own. That once the mortgage was paid of, that part of my rent I was paying would go toward a co-operative. So I’m like, “Perfect. Perfect.”
So that’s why I moved to Midtown. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to have property. It’s in the hood. It’s in my neighborhood that I grew up in. And it’s a win-win.” And you need to have money to get in. This was the elite place to be. My neighbors were like Willie May’s son and you know this was the place to be. And I knew I was fabulous so I want to be in this place, too. along with all the other fabulous icons of SF who lived here. Primarily Black, but it was a very diverse community. But mostly Black.
In August of 2015, we the residents of Midtown went on rent-strike. Now, what prompted the rent-strike was we had been given increased rents. Mine, specifically, was probably the highest increase: 300%. We asked for conversation. The conversation went for naught.
One, they increased our rents and they wouldn’t listen to us. We couldn’t get anyone to listen to us. Even when having an advocate. So we took the advice of Ambassador Andrew Young and we went on rent-strike. Once they raised our rents, we went, “Okay something’s wrong here, we have rent control’. So, now we have two issues. We have ownership, which is still out there, no one’s talking to us. And the second issue is that they’re increasing our rent. And wait a minute, we have rent control.
So then 65 of us partitioned to the rent board to say, “Hey, wait a minute! Put ownership back!”, because The City’s not gonna honor that. But for sure, without a doubt, for over 40 years we have documentation that proves that we have been under rent control. We have been under rent control for at least 30 years.
So we are at the end of 2016 with Midtown Park Apartments. We have been fighting for ownership and for rent control for, now, going on two years.
As we approach the end of our second year of our fight and our litigation against The City of San Francisco for rent control and Mercy— actually both Mercy Housing and the City of San Francisco, we’re in litigation with them to win rent control. Where it stands is almost at the same spot because what The City has done is just appeal after appeal so, you know, they can waste our time and money in court. So the litigation basically, is still where it is, we just have to raise money.
I have to say that one of the best progress that we’ve made is the unity of the tenants. The unity of the tenants and getting a little bit of engagement with the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Mercy Housing. And what I mean by engagement is we have meetings. I’m not saying the meetings are productive.
But, you ask where we’ve come that’s a step forward for several years we begged to have a meeting. So now we have meetings. But the meetings are basically them pushing their agenda on us. And us saying, “No we don’t want to do it.” So there’s not really very much progress as far as The City coming to meet us with our ownership and with rent control. But, the unity of the tenants and the forming of the Tenants’ Association and how we reached out to other people in San Francisco who are going through the same thing, I’d say that’s probably the best progress that we’ve made. The fight for The City, for them to do what’s right, to give us our homes that we paid the mortgage of, is gonna be a long fight.
Next year we’re gonna just keep doing more of it. And we’re gonna call to our communities because we need support. We need support to get the word out again. Tings like this helps get the word out. So that’s what we’re moving forward to next year. We’re tired but we’re not gonna stop our struggle. Like Andrew Young told us, “You gotta stay strong. You gotta stay strong. You gotta keep the struggle alive. Stay strong.” So that’s where we are with that.
Basically, my world was turned upside down and I dedicated two years to really just fighting for the tenants here and fighting for my home. And as a result of that, I saw that this is not just Midtown. This is happening all throughout the United States. And I’ve always been a happy, nice, funny kind of person who’s very optimistic. So because I thought, “I want my smile, my laugh back.” Now that I’ve been meeting with politicians and policy and non-profits and stuff, I want to smile again.
You know, if you would’ve asked me two years ago that I’d be in this situation with my home at Midtown Park and that I would have been doing actions and being with City Hall and talking to politicians... I woulda said you were lying. Because that’s not my natural personality. But I have to tell you, it has been the most joyous 24 months of my life. And I really believe that my whole childhood, from being raised, you know, from my family migrating here from Jim Crow, from my mother being a Black Panther, from my father being in the military, to culminating all to this, even for me being in the entertainment industry: to come here and... it was in my heart. It’s my root: injustice. So wherever injustice is, I will always speak up.
Interview by Alexandra Lacey, edited by Maya Sisneros
Full transcription and video interviews available online at the AEMP website here
Learn more and Support Fillmore residents by reading Phyllis Bowie’s most recent statement here