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• 1 2019-08-24T22:53:30-07:00 1970s and 80s 3 Public Housing Decline, Disrepair, and the Devaluing of Black Lives plain 2019-08-24T22:58:31-07:00 01/01/1970 - 01/01/1990 Beginning in the 1970s the SFHA was plagued by corrupt leadership and financial issues, including the embezzlement of funds by staff, disproportionate salaries, all the while public housing maintenance and repair bills were left unpaid. The SFHA rose to the top of HUD’s list of troubled agencies due to the troubled state of its public housing projects. Nationally, in 1973, President Nixon placed a moratorium on the construction of new public housing projects, except for senior-only projects. In 1973, a group of 5 Black women from Hunters Point public housing projects known as “the Big Five” (reports differ but, Julia Commer, Bertha Freeman, Osceola Washington, Elouise Westbrook, and Rosalie Williams are often cited as the members) marched in Washington, DC to address the lack of HUD funding and poor housing conditions in Hunters Point. Their efforts won HUD funding for the redevelopment of the Hunters Point housing project that hadn’t been remodeled since its origins as temporary war barracks during WWII. Meanwhile the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard closed in 1974 and over 5,000 workers lost their jobs, which disproportionately impacted Black households in San Francisco.
         In 1975, George Moscone was elected mayor of San Francisco. In 1976 Moscone appointed Jim Jones of the infamous Peoples Temple to the San Francisco Housing Commission, making him the chairman of The City’s public housing program. Jim Jones took advantage of Black people whose lives were devastated by structural racism and the decimation of the Western Addition/ Fillmore, by exploiting them for his perverse religious pursuits and political conquests. In 1977 Mayor Moscone invited Governor Jerry Brown to spend one night at the Pink Palace to experience what poverty was like. Residents had long been requesting assistance from The City in response to the high rates of violence they experienced. Governor Brown promised money for a private police force to patrol the area, later that same year residents of the Pink Palace went on rent strike after a woman was found there strangled to death while they still awaited the promised security. That same year Jim Jones abandoned the Housing Commission and fled with the Peoples Temple membership to Guyana after suspicious reports came out. In 1978, he forced over 900 people to commit suicide—most of them Black women from San Francisco. 
         During the 1980s President Reagan significantly cut HUD’s budget and effectively disinvested from the country’s anti-poverty, low income housing program. In 1980, tenants of Alice Griffith, Potrero, North Beach, and Yerba Buena projects sued the SFHA in order to get needed repairs on their housing.
         In 1981, several tourists were robbed in front of the Pink Palace, which led Mayor Dianne Feinstein to lobby for the buildings conversion to a senior-only public housing project. Hundreds of people were evicted and the SFHA’s budget was drained despite the fact that simply remodeling the building and keeping it as family housing would have saved millions and would have aligned with the requests by many long-term residents. Rather than rehabilitate, The City began a path of disinvestment from public housing while investing in policing and other antagonistic measures, particularly in majority-Black neighborhoods.