Johnnie Mae High lives in a ground floor, Western Addition apartment where she can’t keep the mice out. High is African American and her experience underscores a troubling aspect of San Francisco’s affordable housing system: Less than 1 percent of subsidized units built by private developers and sold to low-income residents between 2008 and 2014 went to African Americans. The bill’s sponsors say it will give African Americans a chance to occupy new projects being built in historically black neighborhoods, including the massive San Francisco Shipyard development at Hunters Point. Critics, including organizations from the Mission District and Chinatown, counter that the legislation is a one-size-fits-all approach to an issue that needs a more nuanced solution. At a time when so many people need help staying in the city, who should get into coveted affordable housing? “You are not going to have any black people left in this town if you don’t do something,” said Cathy Davis, executive director of Bayview Hunters Point Multipurpose Senior Services. Luis Granados, executive director of the Mission Economic Development Agency, said the legislation doesn’t do enough to help Latinos living in the Mission, where thousands have been evicted or priced out of the historically working-class neighborhood in recent years. Most of the city’s new subsidized housing is planned for South of Market in District Six and Bayview-Hunters Point in District 10, giving residents in those districts a big advantage when it comes to winning the affordable housing lottery. Some of those projects are developed by the city, but many are built by private developers, who are required by the city to sell or rent a portion of their projects at below-market prices. Asians, who represent 34.9 percent of the population, have done well in the lottery system, winning 46 percent of subsidized units built by private developers and almost 27 percent of units built by the city. Asian community organizations are very involved in encouraging and helping low-income residents apply for housing. When a lottery opens for an affordable housing project, the Chinese-language newspaper, Sing Tao Daily, places advertisements to alert Chinese residents, said Supervisor Jane Kim. Just as critically, groups like the Chinatown Community Development Center help residents apply for the units. “It’s a psychological leftover from what happened with redevelopment,” Davis said, referring to the city’s redevelopment of the historically African American Fillmore neighborhood in the 1950s, when between 20,000 and 30,000 residents were displaced. The trend has continued: Since 1970, the city’s African American population has declined from 13.4 percent to 5.5 percent last year. “I lived it,” said Supervisor London Breed, a sponsor of the neighborhood preference legislation along with Supervisors Malia Cohen, Scott Wiener and Julie Christensen. Breed grew up in Plaza East, a drug-plagued public housing project in the Western Addition that the city razed in the 1990s. [...] critics of the legislation say it doesn’t create neighborhood preference, it creates district preference — supervisorial districts are much larger and can span multiple neighborhoods. Gen Fujioka, public policy manager of the Chinatown Community Development Center, said not enough analysis has been done on what the impact of the legislation would be. “We are trying to thread the needle between ensuring fair and equal access to housing units with a completely understandable desire for people to stay in their neighborhoods,” said Sophie Hayward, director of policy and legislative affairs at the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
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