Marie Harrison speaks about Redevelopment in the Fillmore
I remember when my mother went to her first [Redevelopment] meeting because she needed to know where we were going to end up at. Were we going to be displaced, were we going to be moved out? If so, where were we going?
My mom got what they called a “gold certificate,” which stated that she would have first rights of refusal to any three-bedroom unit that came available. At a community meeting that I went at 1800 Oakdale, the conversation came up, but all these folks who got these certificates were not able to go back or they couldn’t afford the new rents.
A lot of the questioning then was from folks who had moved out of the Fillmore into the Bayview and they wanted to know why they were not able to afford to go back if they wanted to go back.
So the question then became, “How many units are really available? How many spaces are available for people here who have certificates or even gold certificates to go back to? Do you have places there for us to go back to?”
The reality check was when the guy says, “Well, honestly, you’d have to go over and just kind of look around and see what’s available.”
But there was nothing. People from Pacific Heights were moving down into the lower end of Fillmore. They were either opening up businesses or they were renting apartments that maybe we could have rented.
They were buying houses because maybe the owner couldn’t either afford to live there anymore or they were elderly and were by themselves and their children were either out of the state or couldn’t afford to help keep the house up for their parents.
At the redevelopment meetings that we went to, there wasn’t a lot of real information, a lot of talk, but they didn’t offer any real help for you to find a new place to live. Public housing folks were able to get some type of assistance by looking at where there was an empty public housing unit someplace else in town. So you’ve got to go to Sunnydale, or you can go to Potrero Hill. My mom ended up in Potrero Hill.
Redevelopment did not help us find the unit in Potrero Hill. A friend of hers took her to the Housing Authority office, which was at the bottom of Turk Street. Because she had us, and her and my dad had separated, they were able to give her a unit for us. There was just me and my baby sister Renee, so they gave us a two-bedroom in Potrero Hill, which was fine, because we were still very close to where we could hop on a bus, go see my dad on the weekends, come back home to get ready for school. So we did pretty good.
Listen, it was weird seeing in the Fillmore - seeing whole blocks just come down. It was like they came down overnight. It was like you’re boarding up all of these units and moving everybody out. And there are people who are literally about to be homeless. Overnight this started to happen and it was weird to me. I wasn’t used to that. Seeing whole areas just blocked of with heavy equipment. “God, what’s happening? And where are all these people going?”
A lot of the people who left the Fillmore, especially a lot of the business owners, their intent was to come back and reopen their business. I remember hearing, through someone else’s conversation, that the guy who owned the cleaners on Fell and Fillmore—they moved him out, told him he could come back. But then the rent for the storefront almost tripled.
That’s not fair and that’s not right.
I remember that was the first thing I remember that really struck me hard. They promised that you’d be able to come back. I don’t know anybody that actually made it back. Especially to their businesses. The cleaners is now owned by somebody different.
Redevelopment came in like gangbusters. You’re going to be able to have something bigger and better for your family. They tried to sell a pipe dream that a lot of folks weren’t buying.
One guy said, “It’s painful going back, looking at the place where you used to live, and it’s all something different and somebody else is living there. You forced us out, guaranteed us that we could come back, but there’s really nothing there for us to come back to.”
Just by sheer attrition, people who pack up their whole households and their children and move out of a place, what is the likelihood they’re going to move someplace else and then pack up five or six years later, pack up their children and moved back? Then, I didn’t realize, but now I know for a fact: by sheer attrition, not even half of those people were going to go back to the Fillmore. Not even half of them. And I think Redevelopment knew that.
If you look around the Fillmore now, it’s a whole different place.
There are little quaint shopping stores and restaurants. More restaurants than we’ve ever had when I was growing up there. The movie theater’s gone. There was a nightclub down there. I’m trying to think, what was it called? Oh ... it evades me right now. But that’s gone. There was a jazz club on ... was it on McAllister or Golden Gate? There was a jazz club, not quite at the corner, but right in the middle; it was gone. Everything that you would recognize from my time living in the Fillmore was just gone.
It was gone and something else was in its place. Almost all of the Black families were gone. Almost all of them.
Interview by Jin Zhu and Alexandra Lacey
Edited by Maya Sisneros and Jin Zhu