Please join HANC on Thursday, January 9, at the Park Branch Library, 1833 Page Street, as San Francisco tenant leaders discuss possbile solutions to the affordable housing crisis.
San Francisco has now reached a dubious “first place”: Our city is the most expensive place to rent an apartment in the United States. This is not the first time we have achieved this distinction but it comes during a period of declining real wages for many middle, lower and fixed income people who make up a disproportionate number of renter households in San Francisco. The crisis, while new, seems far more alarming and destructive, demanding far reaching policy changes.
The Lee administration is dusting off the same old, same old lines: we need to offer home ownership to “middle income” San Franciscans (usually defined at folks earning above 150% of median or nearly $150,000!); we need to allow the “private market” to “build more housing” even though as shown in last months article the more market rate housing we build in San Francisco the higher prices climb,; we need to lessen “regulation” even though we are building 150% more market rate housing than ABAG says we “need”!
All of this has been heard before, but what HANC wants you to hear is the actual thoughts and ideas of tenants and folks who work with San Francisco’s tenants every day, week end week out, year in year out. These voices are rarely heard yet the best ideas currently being discussed are coming from these tenant activists.
HANC has invited three of the most experienced tenant leaders in the City to come to January 9th meeting: Ted Gullikson, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union; Gen Fujioka, of the Chinatown Community Development Center and past Director of the Asian Law Caucus and Sara Short, Executive Director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. Taken together these three folks have helped to create the current landscape of local laws protecting San Franciscans who, by choice (and yes folks, many people choose to be tenants) or necessity, rent in San Francisco.
Bring your questions, ideas and a friend or two to hear information and views simply not available anywhere else in San Francisco, Thursday, January 9, 7PM , Community Room, Park Branch Library, 1833 Page Street.