Once one monster finds a home in the Mission District, more monsters are sure to follow, and together they’ll tromp all over the affordable housing, community, and commercial spots that have long defined the gritty neighborhood that is centered around the BART plazas at 16th and Mission streets, displacing longtime residents and community institutions.
That’s been the theory espoused by opponents of the 10-story, 345-unit housing project that Maximus Real Estate Partners wants to build where the Walgreens now resides at that intersection — a project the group has dubbed “monster in the Mission” — and it’s a theory that’s being reinforced by a fresh round of evictions right across the street.
A dozen residents of the Station 40 anti-capitalist collective at 3030B 16th Street were served with eviction papers just last week after the Jolish family, who owns that building and the one next door, refused requests to let them buy the building in partnership with the San Francisco Community Land Trust. Station 40 has been a home and gathering space for the last 11 years, hosting Food Not Bombs and other community-based organizations.
“It is no coincidence that Station 40 is being evicted on the same intersection as the hotly contested proposed development by Maximus Real Estate Partners of a 350-unit luxury apartment building in what is a predominantly working-class neighborhood,” the tenants said today at a press conference in the BART plaza.
These tenants were already members of the Plaza 16 Coalition that has been organizing against the Maximus development for almost two years, a coalition that will gather again this Wednesday (March 4) at 5:45 p.m. at the Laborers Local 261 Union Hall (3271 18th Street) to march on the nearby meeting where Maximus officials will unveil their proposed community benefits package.
Also on hand for today’s event were activists with the Housing Rights Committee, Eviction-Free Summer, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Tenderloin Housing Clinic, and others who have been fighting an increasing number of evictions around the city that have been driven by real estate speculation and an aggressive push to quickly build more market-rate housing in the city.
“What’s happening here is an economic cleansing,” Kerman said, calling on those who face eviction to resist it and fight to keep San Francisco an economically and socially diverse city. “If you do fight, you can win.”
“There is an epidemic of evictions happening in the Mission,” HRC’s Tommi Avicolli Mecca said. “People are being pushed out by greedy speculators.”
Several of those who came to speak were involved in other eviction battles of their own, such as Patricia Kerman, who has so far successfully fought off her eviction from the Mission District home that she’s lived in for 28 years. “What’s happening here is an economic cleansing,” Kerman said, calling on those who face eviction to resist it and fight to keep San Francisco an economically and socially diverse city. “If you do fight, you can win.”
But those who want to preserve affordable housing and community spaces around 16th and Mission face some powerful opponents who stand to make millions of dollars and are willing to fight dirty to push that project through. As I exposed a year ago in the Bay Guardian, Maximus and its political consultant Jack Davis in 2013 launched a shadowy “Clean Up the Plaza” campaign to highlight the bad behaviors of poor people in the plaza before announcing the housing project as what will save the area.
The Maximus project includes 42 below-market-rate units, the minimum required under city law, while the 303 remaining units are expected to command high rents and further fuel complaints about the poor people who live nearby and congregate in the plaza.
And if the Maximus project goes through as planned, speakers at today’s event said the Jolish Limited Partnership — whose two adjacent properties have an assessed value of more than $1.8 million, according to city records — and other property owners in the area stand to make fortunes selling out to developers of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
Or as the Station 40 tenants said in the defiant conclusion to the statement they read today, “The simple truth that the Jolish family continues to deny is also our greatest strength: this is our home. This is our home and we are going to fight tooth and nail for it. We are not millionaires trying to add a few more million to the pile. We are working class people who, against all odds, have built a home here. Having something to fight for makes us strong.”
Got a tip for The Bold Italic? Email tips@thebolditalic.com.
Photo from Station40/Facebook