Bayview residents in San Francisco are up in arms over plans to bulldoze and redevelop the area. “We are under attack,” cried Alicia Schwartz, a community organizer with POWER. “We are being shot in the back every day in the community, but the last straw was when the City Attorney said ‘I don’t care what 30,000 people said.’”
Not only do rising property values make the neglected, polluted, and poor Hunter’s Point/Bayview area prime real estate for development, but the launch of the new Third Street Light rail set for revenue service in April makes the area more attractive to live in.
From the article: “It’s wrong,” complained resident Patti Franklin. “Redevelopment’s gonna come in and put in condos that we can’t afford. We can’t afford things the way they are now. But when they put the [light] rail in, they just want to get rid of us.”
I thought in-fill was the best way to develop an existing community? Forcibly removing existing residents is a formula for destroying communities, but perhaps this is what the city wants, and 33,000 people can’t be wrong.