Maribel 1

Maribel Sanchez
RRS 250-01
Professor Larry Soloman
May 15th 2016
SF- From Color to White

Gentrification has been a problem for the Bay Area for over 20 years
now, reaching its all-time high the past couple of years. The Mission District
is famous for its richness in Latin culture and food. It is home to thousands
of Latino immigrants as well as their children that were born and raised in
the neighborhood. Hispanics first started moving into the Mission around the
50s, replacing the older European residents who were scared of immigrants
and change. This era was called, White Flight, where Europeans moved
from cities to suburbs in an attempt to avoid the incoming immigrants. By
the 90s the Mission District had become almost 70% Hispanic. Hundreds of
immigrants settled in the Mission District because it was their home away
from home. It was probably one of the only places in the city where one
could actually find people that looked, talked, and shared the same values or
culture as one did. Its obvious that there was bound to be some problem
with that many Hispanics all in one area. But all in all, the Mission District
was once the place that Hispanics actually looked forward to living in.
Another city that is unfortunately also going through these changes is
our neighboring city, Oakland. After the 1906 earthquake, a lot of people that
lived in San Francisco relocated to Oakland seeking new jobs and new

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homes. They started building homes and businesses and slowly the city
began to grow. In the 1940s a large amount of African American immigrants
moved to Oakland that were coming from the Southern states. By the
1980s, Oakland had become about 50% African American. Now, around 35
years later, the African American population has decreased to about 25%,
which is half of what it once was. West Oakland got effected the most out of
the whole city. The streets where families of African Americans once used to
live in, have been replaced by new businesses that bring in a whole new
wave of customers. These businesses have gotten some attention and has
made parts of Oakland a hotspot for wealthy tech-boomers and have in
return pushed out most of the older residents.
Now in 2016, the tables have turned for these two once predominantly
Hispanic/ African American communities. It almost seems as if were going
through Reverse White Flight, which is forcing the Native people out of
homes that theyve been living in for decades. The main reason why
gentrification is happening is because of the tech-boomers that have decided
to start living in the neighborhoods. According to the SF 2.0 video we
watched in class, most of the new residents work in other cities such as San
Jose and usually work for big companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook,
or Air BNB. Most of these people, which happen to be mostly white, are
drawn in by the richness in culture and business that the Mission
neighborhood offers. They specifically choose to move in these poorer
neighborhoods because they feel like theyre making the community better,

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which in a sense is true, but also unfortunately ruins the lives of the original
inhabitants. These new people buy out smaller businesses and replace them
with businesses that usually appeal to other white people: cafs, sandwich
shops, etc. Sometimes these businesses services are expensive and are
sometimes come off a little odd to most Latinos, making it unavailable or
undesirable to Hispanics who live in the mission and usually do not have a
ton of money to spend on overpriced irrelevant things.
In the SF 2.0 video, I remember the story about the Flower Mart near
downtown SF who the techies had been trying to buy out for a while now.
The mart is the main supplier for most other flower shops in the city, and
taking it away would cause a huge ripple of negative effects. There was
another story where a man had owned his business near the Dogpatch area
but was forced to move out because the landlord decided to triple the rent all
of a sudden. According to the owner, when he first started his business, there
wasnt anywhere to even buy a coffee in that neighborhood. Fast forward a
couple years to where its the complete opposite, and now theres tons of
businesses in the Dogpatch area.
This in turn creates a whole new problem for the original inhabitants,
this time concerning their homes as well. With all the new businesses
opening up, more and more white people decide to move near these areas.
Statistically, white people have shown to make significantly more money
than other minorities such as Hispanics and African Americans. Therefore,
theyre able to pay more for housing than the original inhabitants are. The

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culture and vibe brought them in, and in turn forced out lower income
families who just couldnt afford to pay that much for rent. The growing
amounts of businesses has caused a negative ripple effect that has
unfortunately made landlords in the area extremely greedy. Because they
know people are willing to pay more money for a unit, most landlords have
decided to try and raise rent in an attempt to evict the existing tenants who
probably pay only about a quarter of what the unit would go for on the
market. Tenants who have made this place their home for decades of course
do not want to move. Yet, some have no choice. There is a couple ways the
owner may evict you, some called no fault evictions. Some landlords pay
their tenants off, the way my ex landlord paid off my mom so that he could
move into our beautiful 2 story home on Lexington and 20th. Other landlords
dont even bother with that and instead choose to just evict all of their
tenants. They can legally do this because instead of kicking their tenants out
and renting it out to new people, they are instead able to convert their
apartments into condos or privately owned units rather than rented out
apartments. This sets the landlord free of rent control, and can therefore sell
it for as much as they want. Sometimes they even purposely ruin/set the
apartments on fire so that it is no longer uninhabitable and therefore will
force them to leave. Weve seen this happen in the Mission a couple times.
More recently at the Popeyes on Mission street got set on fire, which I
personally think they did on purpose. The fire alarm didnt go off, as if
someone had broken or turned them off. Then as soon as they could, they

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sold the building and try to make new apartment condos out of it. These
condos are sold at market rate, meaning that they are usually priced way too
high for the original residents to afford. This has unfortunately been the case
for many Latin and African Americans and will continue to do so until
something changes.
I think that the first thing that has to change is to get rid of the Ellis Act
law. This is the root of the whole problem. However its very hard to get rid of
it because the people that wrote the law intended it to work favorably
towards the richer primarily party. When cases are presented to the judge,
they too are shut down due to the fact that judges are rich themselves who
probably own properties and want to profit off of them. Landlords should not
be able to kick them out. If he wishes to go out of service, then I feel like
tenants should be able to willfully move if they choose to. The thing about
gentrification that angers me the most is that older tenants who have been
living there for decades, are getting forced out of their homes. Older people
rely on their social security as a source of income, which is usually not a lot
of money. They probably used most of it to pay their rent, and with an
income so small like that, they would never be able to afford a market rate
apartment, leaving them with nowhere to call home. Immigrants who cant
make a ton of money are forced to move further and further out of the cities
due to the fact that rent is so important.
I never thought that new businesses added to the neighborhood was a
bad thing, and I think people appreciate the new stores as well. So I think

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that keeping these stores and welcoming new businesses really does only
help the community. What I do have a problem with is that these new
buildings are creating jobs, but theyre not for people living in those
communities. According to Mayor Ed Lee, a deal he made with companies in
the Tenderloin district would create up to 1,179 new jobs, but they wouldnt
go to the residents. According to the video, they would instead hire white or
Asian techies that could find a job at any other big company. If there was
laws that would force companies to hire a certain percentage of nearby
residents, then this problem could be resolved. Big companies just dont
want to have to teach people how to do new things; they expect them to
already know it. Another solution to the problem is forcing new apartments
to have a certain amount of affordable housing. In class we talked about the
new apartments by the At&t park, who supposedly may have some
affordable housing in it. We need to be able to compromise with each other,
but doing so may be hard when racism has been known to be instituted in
most rich, high end people who probably own the huge apartments. I never
thought there was never anything wrong with white people coming into the
neighborhood, but if they cant compromise then thats a problem. Having a
business is one thing, but coming into OUR communities and treating us like
WERE the outsiders, is a whole other thing. I dont ever think white people
will stop coming into the Tenderloin or the Bayview or the Mission because
they see potential and our cultures intrigue them. Hispanics have some of
the best food, music, and artwork that you can only find in the Mission. Its

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sad to know that nowadays we live in a society where white people love our
culture but hate our people.