(Dis)location: Black Exodus

1940s and 50s

Although the U.S. did not formally join the war until the Pearl Harbor Attack of 1941, it began wartime preparations as early as 1940. The Defense Housing and Community Facilities and Services Act of 1940 (also called the “Lanham Act”) funded the Federal Works Administration (FWA) that, among other things, carried out “War Public Works” including the building of temporary military housing.
       In San Francisco, the SFHA managed The City’s temporary wartime housing, some of which later became formal public housing such as at Hunters Point. In 1940, San Francisco built Holly Courts in the Bernal Heights neighborhood as the first permanent public housing project on the West Coast. Holly Courts was exclusive to white working poor families. The SFHA then built Potrero Terrace, Sunnydale, and Valencia Gardens as white-only low-rent public housing projects. This was at a time when African American migration from the U.S. South was increasing. The Black population in San Francisco rose from just 4,846 at the 1940 census to 43,502 by 1950. In 1943, the SFHA built Westside Courts as a majority-Black public housing project. 
       In 1946, the San Francisco Planning Association issued “A Citizens Survey” on public housing, which included a section that highlighted several issues related to the needs of minority groups in San Francisco who were disproportionately living in “slum housing” and facing discrimination in the private market for apartment rentals. The report recommended that the SFHA revise its policy to allow minority groups in all housing projects and to increase public housing units for minority groups. Still, the SFHA continued to operate on a racist policy of segregating public housing projects and limited access to racial/ethnic minority groups.
       In 1952, SFHA built Ping Yuen as a Chinese-only public housing project and North Beach Place for white residents only. The NAACP filed a lawsuit against the housing authority for discriminating against two Black applicants, Mattie Banks and James Charley, Jr., to North Beach. The CA courts found the SFHA’s discriminatory policies illegal and ordered the SFHA to apply all standards of eligibility to public housing projects equally. The SFHA appealed, and in 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Banks vs. The Housing Authority of San Francisco, which effectively upheld the CA Supreme court ruling to ban segregation in SFHA. However, without a mechanism for enforcement, segregation still occurred.       

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