THREATS, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE
S.F. Redevelopment Agency's plot to take the King Garvey Co-op from its owners
by Carol Harvey
To implement their deceitful scheme in the 1960s to drive African Americans and Japanese Americans out of the Western Addition, SFRA officials demolished enormous numbers of beautiful Victorians like these (located near the edge of the A-2 Redevelopment Area). The blight designations of perfectly decent Victorians were an assault on minority rights and destroyed the charm and beauty of the Western Addition. Michael Strausz photo
Introduction
The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) is trying to carry out the largest eminent domain takeover of real estate ever accomplished in the mostly African American Bayview-Hunters Point, the prettiest, sunniest part of town.
During Board of Supervisor meetings in the Spring of 2006, the Redevelopment Agency promised protesting Hunters Point residents that it would never repeat the atrocity it perpetrated in the Fillmore, where it tore down lovely old Victorians, eradicated the jazz clubs in the "Harlem Of The West," and left the landscape looking as if it had been firebombed.
"That is all in the past," said SFRA Executive Director Marcia Rosen. However, the Redevelopment Agency tore down the Fillmore, rendering it a slum, and still has not rebuilt it. SFRA's enormous power of eminent domain is rationalized by designating certain areas as "blighted."
This history of predatory landgrabs began with Justin Herman, who became executive director of the Redevelopment Agency in 1959. He aggressively used the power of eminent domain to "rebuild" and "modernize" San Francisco. He used Redevelopment's taxpayer money to knock down lovely old Victorians in the Fillmore, leaving a few buildings sticking up out of the dirt like rotting teeth. The historic jazz clubs were torn down as well.
Using the time-honored construct, "blight," the SFRA let the area lie fallow for 20 years. The Fillmore, renamed the Western Addition by the SFRA, never recovered.
Beginning with Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," a mechanism was developed to give grassroots financial power to people in poor communities so they could develop cooperatives like the King Garvey co-op.
Ulysses Montgomery was a developer who found ways for these mostly African American people to use HUD and Redevelopment funds to pay off mortgages in a rent-to-own program. Now, HUD and Redevelopment have conspired to try to take back these real estate holdings.
The following stories reveal the history of Redevelopment's attacks on African American communities. To show how the present assault on the King Garvey co-op by HUD and the SFRA evolved over time, I encapsulated this history through a profile of its original African American developer, Ulysses Montgomery, in part one.
The same campaign was launched against African American businesses in the Western Addition, as revealed in the interview of Charles Spenser in part two.
Spenser is a premier Fillmore businessman who tried to bring back some of its history by owning an important business with historical significance, the New Chicago Barbershop on Fillmore Street.
In part three, I tried to make transparent the vicious assault on King Garvey itself. After 30 years of carefully paying down their mortgages, the mostly elderly African American female shareholders are having their precious, and now phenomenally valuable, real estate stolen from them through lies, extortion and outright theft by the Redevelopment Agency and HUD.
THREATS
Part One
Redevelopment razes the Western Addition
by Carol Harvey
Daniel Landry stood in Gene Suttle Plaza near sidewalk engravings of the names "Rev. Hannibal Williams" and "Mary Helen Rogers," who fought against Redevelopment in the Western Addition, known by local residents as "Black Removal." I followed his wistful gaze to the top of the Fillmore Auditorium where someone in the post-earthquake 1920s Fillmore heyday had perched on a scaffold painting "Majestic Theater" in white on the now-faded bricks.
"I would walk home from Raphael Weill Elementary School, see that sign, and wonder about the '40s and '50s jazz era," Landry reminisced.
It was a splendorous flash in time. In the blocks surrounding the famous auditorium, long before Janis Joplin torched her way to stardom in the 1960s, music rang from every corner.
As teenagers, Sugar Pie De Santo and her cousin, Etta James, practiced duets on their porch. Dressed to kill in minks and suits, folks strutted and strolled the crowded night streets looking for parties. At the Long Bar, the Blue Mirror, Minnie's Can-Do, and the New Orleans Swing Club, all the jazz greats -- Billie, Ella, Trane, and Monk -- played and sang up a storm.Like the lighted arches with hanging glass globes that were melted into scrap for the 1940's war effort, in a few short years the Fillmore jazz clubs and their exploding energy were bulldozed into oblivion. Today, jazz pours from the doors of the one remaining venue, Rasselas On Fillmore, keeping the memories alive.
Rather than see the Victorian jewel housing Jimbo's Bop City at 1690 Post torn down to make way for the Japantown complex, activist Essie Collins petitioned the Redevelopment Agency to move the building intact around the corner to 1712 Fillmore. There a branch of world-famous Marcus Books, devoted to African American literature, established in Oakland in 1960 by Drs. Raye and Julian Richardson, was installed.
Dr. Raye Richardson, Chair of the San Francisco State Black Studies Department, and her husband, Dr. Julian Richardson, journalism professor at S.F. State, were recognized by Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union with Doctoral degrees in Humanity and Letters. Their daughter, Karen, said proudly, "Marcus Books has a good reputation because of Raye and Rich's incredible integrity."
As part of Justin Herman's 1960s-era Urban Renewal, the SFRA forced one of Julian Richardson's publishing companies and other African American businesses to relocate from Fillmore Street. Richardson became a director for the Fillmore Community Development Association, organized by individuals and Western Addition organizations in opposition to the A-2 Redevelopment project.
Under then-Mayor Joseph Alioto, the SFRA attempted to enlist community cooperation by convincing displaced residents that "responsible neighborhood participation with government agencies is vital to the rebuilding of communities."
Ulysses Jim Montgomery, a licensed professional engineer, developed methods to use redevelopment to generate economic benefits "by the people and for the people" of the Western Addition. "Instead of fighting Redevelopment," he said, "let's come up with a program where they give us the land and finance us so that we, the people, construct and own these buildings under the Redevelopment process."
Montgomery is an urbane world traveler of Cherokee, Black, and European descent who regards San Francisco's past and present with clear blue eyes. Columbia-educated with a civil engineering degree from MIT, Montgomery was one of two Blacks out of 3,000 graduates.
Like many African Americans, his forebears are tough, rebellious survivors of the British slave trade's brutal Middle Passage. A relative helped initiate the discrimination lawsuit, Brown vs. Board of Education. An ancestor, Angola Jamie, led one of the first slave revolts.
In the 1960s, Julian Richardson and Ulysses Montgomery, who described his friend's family as "very close to me," worked with other black community leaders attempting to create what a Redevelopment brochure described as "more socially oriented housing for the Western Addition A-2 project area."
During Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s, Montgomery developed and constructed the Martin Luther King Marcus Garvey Cooperative where Daniel Landry lives. At M.I.T., Buckminster Fuller mentored Montgomery on "what architecture and economic development of buildings were supposed to do for people." After graduation, he traveled to Africa, developing projects in Angola, Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia.
During an interview at Jones Memorial Church, where he is a congregation member, Montgomery outlined how Johnson's War On Poverty "gave economic power to low-income people in cities." Federal law mandated that anti-poverty money could only be spent on programs reviewed and approved by the community. Thus, the government granted the people effective control of utilization of federal funds.
In the 1960s, Ken Simmons and Will Usury, of the Congress of Racial Equality, "with the help of the people" designed the Economic Opportunity Council implementation program which included elected neighborhood policy councils for Hunters Point and the Western Addition.
Neighborhood councils approved Montgomery's housing empowerment plan. The people's vote for his plan "got me started, and (established) my power base to develop housing in San Francisco by and for the people.""Daniel Landry's father, Abe, is an old trooper," Montgomery said, remembering a time in 1966 when Abe Landry defended his life. "I was in the (New Chicago) barber shop getting a haircut, with Abe and a few people from the old Western Addition," Montgomery recalled. "Abe got into a tussle with people trying to stop (Montomery's program). Somebody pulled out a knife and tried to cut his throat. That's my scar down the side of his face. He got that defending me."
Justin Herman became executive director of the SFRA in 1959. He used eminent domain to "rebuild" the Fillmore by razing the lovely Victorians there. Today, Justin Herman Plaza is named after him.
When Justin Herman first got wind of Montgomery's housing plan, he didn't readily accept it. Montgomery said, "The first time I met him, he came up to me and said, 'I run the Redevelopment Agency, not you.' A lot of people hated Justin Herman. We fought like cats and dogs, but when he gave his word, he kept it."
In 1966, Montgomery convinced HUD Regional Director Bob Pitts to freeze all financing for the SFRA. Montgomery said, "Bob Pitts bought my program, saying I was honest, and what I was doing was in the best interests of the people." Pitts told Herman that before Redevelopment got more funding, they must change their plans to include Montgomery's ideas.
Justin Herman gave Montgomery the development rights to nonprofit housing corporations he helped community groups organize. They had first priority in getting federal money to finance their projects.
In 1973, SFRA Executive Director Wilbur Hamilton and Gene Suttle, SFRA A-2 project manager, met with Montgomery. "They advised me HUD was preparing to cancel all mortgage guarantee allocations for my clients. The only way they could stop it is if I closed my business and left San Francisco."
"Neither Gene Suttle nor Wilbur Hamilton would ever have done that by themselves," Montgomery said. "They were told to do it," by two white men, HUD Director James Price and his deputy, Bob Gillian, "and they did it reluctantly. To protect my clients' interests, I liquidated my consulting business and transferred my clients to friends."
"I was Black," he said. "They didn't like my attitude. I was developing co-ops or nonprofits, for the people, by the people, who I wanted to own them; not just so a few African Americans -- but mostly white developers and contractors -- got the profits, wound up owning everything, and all the Blacks got is maybe a chance to rent in a subsidized project."
Under LBJ's poverty program, he pointed out, "community groups got development rights for many projects in Western Addition and Hunters Point." But now, he charges, there is an attempt by those in power to reclaim these profitable rights back from the people.
According to Montgomery, "HUD, Redevelopment, and some profiteering carpetbaggers are taking back ownership and control from original African American community groups at Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, and Ridgepoint in the Bayview. They are after Unity Homes. In the Western Addition, they want Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King Co-ops. The attack on King Garvey is the core. (If) they take it, all the others will go."
LIES
Part Two
SFRA's legacy of deceit, demolition and distrust
Charles Spenser stood in the Rincon Center at the old Art Deco post office at 101 Spear Street in San Francisco, gazing at the colorful murals painted on the lobby walls depicting historical images of hostility against people of color. Before moving from Indiana, he, too, bought the myth that San Francisco was a progressive and liberal city, welcoming people of all races, ethnicities, and types.
Spenser is a polite and respectful businessman who articulates his ideas with precision and erudition. He is thoughtful and generous with those he trusts. Spenser was raised in a close-knit community in Columbus, Georgia; yet his father hid Charles and his siblings under the bed during 1970s firebombings.
In his 12-year career as a stockbroker before he bought the New Chicago Barbershop #3 in the Western Addition, Spenser discovered the truth about San Francisco: It is no different from any other part of the country.
The New Chicago Barbershop #3, located at 1551 Fillmore Street, has a warm, sunny feel with dark wood and comfortable chairs. Spenser bought the business in 2002 to keep alive in the present a precious piece of the past.
In the 1940s, a Mr. Walker from Chicago expanded his business to three shops. The Fillmore Street location is #3, across the street from the Rasselas Jazz and Supper Club. Reggie Pettus, who was featured on a PBS documentary, "Hidden Cities: The Fillmore," still cuts hair at this barbershop. He is a part of Fillmore history, familiar with Western Addition figures from Mary Rogers to Essie Collins.
All walks of life in the African American community come to this neighborhood hub for haircuts, including Ulysses Montgomery and Abe Landry. Danny Glover has his own barber, but drops by just to chat when he visits his old neighborhood. On the walls are photographs of visitors and regulars, such as comedian David Allen Grier, and KGO progressive radio talk show host Ray Taliafero.
"The biggest thing I am doing is trying to keep the barbershop alive," Spenser said. "It is one of the last Old Fillmore businesses. People come by who got their haircut here when they were a kid. It's something the black community can identify with. I want all people to come in and feel comfortable."
A self-assertive person who thinks and acts independently, Spenser doesn't want anyone to give him anything. He works hard and knows many successful, industrious Black people like himself. His strong individualism and social consciousness motivates him to clean up the parks on the weekend. Whether alone or with a group, it is a direct action he can take.
As past president of the Fillmore Jazz Preservation District Merchants' Association, Spenser soon encountered the Redevelopment Agency. First, the Agency knocked down many beautiful old Victorians, leaving the Western Addition with a few buildings sticking up from the gray dirt like rotting teeth. Then, they promised to rebuild it. But, the SFRA left it fallow for 20 years, creating the same blighted conditions that were the original excuse for razing it.
Redevelopment replaced a thriving community of butcher shops and clothing stores where African American families bought everything they needed. As a result, the Western Addition's A-2 project area became a wasteland with no jobs and no hope, and a dangerous reputation.
It is common belief that Justin Herman built the Geary corridor from downtown to the ocean as a way of shunting traffic past Fillmore to dry up African American businesses there. Spenser observed, "That underpass appears to have been an intentional effort to divide the community, have commuters speed through the black part of town without seeing that real people live here, so they can't shop and stop."
Justin Herman Plaza was his reward.
Musing on the Rincon Center mural, Spenser considered the Embarcadero, an area Redevelopment actually redeveloped, making a major investment complete with mixed-use buildings, high-rises, businesses and shops, market-rate and low-income housing, infrastructure, roads and rails. He contrasted it to the SFRA's pathetic effort in the Western Addition.
Of the violence on the streets, Spenser said, "I know many senior citizens and some kids - there are certain blocks they don't visit because stuff happens." Kids have no activities, hope or good role models. People wonder why kids are violent in a violent society that blares out shows like "America's Most Wanted." The hard-working citizens Spenser knows in the Fillmore's African American community are seldom portrayed on television.
"With no jobs, and no education, kids can't think clearly," he said. "If a kid grows up, and he can't think, add, count, somebody could take a simple thought, put it in his head, and it will stick."
Spenser stated that Redevelopment destroyed the community while promising to rebuild it. However, he added, "there is no reason to attack the Redevelopment Agency because the facts speak for themselves. After 40 years, they still haven't completed the project area."
Seeking budget information, Spenser and other merchants found that when "contractors low-bid with the Redevelopment Agency (for) contracts, it appears the Agency knowingly told them to contract with themselves, because they weren't being paid enough -- kind of double-dipping." He also has discovered a pattern and practice of the SFRA fast-tracking preferred developers who, by the percentages, happen to be white.
"Their approval process goes quicker than developers who don't appear to be preferred or friendly developers," he said.
Spenser observed that, instead of investing in infrastructure improvements, the SFRA spends taxpayer money on marketing and promotion. The SFRA awards contracts to "consultants." One group, Cultural ID, was hired to market cultural history in the Fillmore. Cultural ID organized the Preservation Jazz District to bring summer jazz performances into the Fillmore.
"It's a little like throwing a housewarming party before building the house," Spenser said. This marketing scheme does not address housing or jobs. The SFRA has not funded businesses that provide work or meaningful careers for people. "When we ask for jobs, people (hire us) for six months as a flag waver on Third Street, or working McDonald's for an hourly rate that doesn't allow you to buy a home, rent an apartment, or get a car," he said.
Spenser is aware that there are San Francisco interests that have worked out a long-term plan -- not just 10 years into the future, but 50 years ahead. He considers this a good idea, but feels that the African American community, including the Bayview, Fillmore, and OMI, should have its own plan, as well. He wants African Americans to be as unified as the Japanese community activists who kept Starbucks out of Japantown.
He has seen drawings of one part of The Grand Plan for filling in the Fillmore-Geary underpass. Suddenly, more land is available. "What happens to land in San Francisco?" he asks. "You build stuff on it. So, maybe this becomes another transit village that urban developers love."
According to Spenser, "The Agency is saying, 'Look, we are building Yoshi's, so that's our economic development.' The community was destroyed. It has not been rebuilt. Yoshi's is not going to rebuild the community. Yoshi's could be a part of it, but it's not all of it. Yoshi's will need dishwashers and doormen, but create no professional jobs with any real future."
In this Monopoly game, The Plan is well worked out. The pieces -- Marvin Gardens, Boardwalk and Yoshi's -- are filled in one by one, added to the basic design. No need for speed. If need be, the process can take generations. Generations forget.
"Part of the plan on Fillmore is for the Black community to continue to transition out and other communities to transition in," Spenser said. The King Garvey co-op is an expendable game piece. "You need a healthy residential community to have a healthy business community," he added.
So when he heard HUD was threatening to foreclose on the King Garvey shareholders' property, he took it upon himself to meet Board President Carlos Levexier. Levexier invited him to meetings in the Fall of 2004 at which he joined other community members, including the historian John Templeton, and Raye Richardson. Were it not for their support and presence, Spenser believes the shareholders would have lost the property.
"They have fantastically valuable land that the Redevelopment Agency and the City want," Spenser asserted. He wondered if King Garvey residents, mostly elder women, understand they are not renters, but 30-year owners of homes in a property with world-class value situated next to the Geary corridor. The property's accumulated equity, estimated at $46 million, could secure their futures for the rest of their lives.
The SFRA's achievements in the Fillmore are high-rises surrounded by fast food restaurants, Subway and Foot Locker. By contrast to such superimposed artificiality, businesses like Marcus Books, Rasselas Jazz Club, Powell's Place, "The Look" Beauty Salon, Terry's Creations Boutique and the New Chicago Barbershop, along with the homes owned by African Americans at King Garvey, represent the heart and soul of the community.
Spenser knows the social power in his thriving barbershop business. And he understands that "the things that will help rebuild the community are schools, jobs, and owner-occupied housing. We have to rebuild the community ourselves."
Videotape
Part Three
Exposing a 'Mutually Developed Strategy'
The energetic Sharon Jones has a global understanding of the community history of Martin Luther King Marcus Garvey Square Cooperative in the Fillmore. A devout Roman Catholic and shareholder since 1982, she vowed to help right the wrongs perpetrated on the co-op. She represents a core group determined to retain homeownership.
Trained by the Peace Corps and Montessori educators, Jones taught pre-school and elementary school. She received an M.A. in English from the University of Michigan, where she met her husband, her adopted daughter's African American father.
This residential community of low-income African American and Korean American families and senior women are shareholders with Section 8 subsidized affordable rents, paying down their mortgage year by year to buy their own homes. Developer Michael Strausz estimated their accumulated equity at $46 million.
Barbara Meskunas, the board chair of the National Association of Housing Cooperatives, lives across the street. She helped connect King Garvey with a funding source, the National Cooperative Bank.
"Two hundred homeowners live in my neighborhood," Meskunas said. Because they "own shares of a limited equity co-op, (they are) better neighbors than if they were renting."
Many believe that King Garvey's troubles began in 1968 when HUD loan officer William H. Harrison oversaw its construction. Years later, in 2002, Harrison became management agent and participant at a nexus of serious problems.
Sharon Jones, a member of the King Garvey board since 2000, described 37 years of confusing events, implicating the S.F. Redevelopment Agency and HUD.
1. Shareholders' requests for repairs were ignored by HUD-approved agents.
2. Payments of inflated sums were made to staff hired by HUD-approved agents.
3. HUD threatened to terminate King Garvey's Section 8 contract if shareholders installed a board elected to replace a corrupt one.
4. In 1998, the "urban myth" that the co-op was a "cesspool of drugs, gangs, and guns," made the news, inviting HUD foreclosure for unsafe conditions. A combined SFPD, State, and Federal narcotics squad burst in early one morning at 5:30 a.m. and cut off the cooperative's power. Flash-bang grenades blew doors off hinges. Officers held at gunpoint and handcuffed seniors and children with no criminal records, arresting 11 youths. They "uncovered" three pot leaves, seeds, and three unloaded guns. The "gang" was a basketball team organized by Daniel Landry.
Over the years, HUD-approved management agents let the place fall into disrepair. Even with four HUD property inspections per year, one man had a door-sized hole in his roof, and beleaguered Bridgette Daniels, raising children in a unit with asbestos, mold, and mildew, was forced to cook under a ceiling leaking raw sewage in one of 10 homes the fire department evacuated.
Harrison's staff relocated Bridgette Daniels' family to four co-op units that turned out to be equally bad. Jones believes they hoped Daniels' loud complaints would spur the board to approve a tax credit plan that Harrison had proposed to fund home repairs. It would reduce these homeowners to renters without equity.
Desperate, Ms. Daniels, followed by 40 others, ran to the S.F. Health Department and Human Rights Commission investigator, Emil de Guzman, who contacted the Justice Department's Booker T. Neal, the Mayor, City Attorney, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, HUD officials and SFRA staff.
Later, Jones learned that these frantic visits to city departments tripped off "secret meetings," in person and by phone, between HUD, SFRA, and City officials.
With curious simultaneity, a HUD property evaluation score, reported two months earlier, dropped from 10 above passing to 22 below passing.
On March 8, 2005, Mayor Gavin Newsom wrote to HUD Regional Director Richard Rainey, requesting that HUD "not terminate rental assistance or foreclose" in order to allow "time to enable the City to work with the residents to address the massive problems existing at the project."
On March 24, Rainey responded with these words: "It appears from your letter that the City no longer wishes to pursue our mutually developed strategy," including "the terminating of the Section 8 project-based contract initiating foreclosure."
With those words, Rainey exposed a partnership which "mutually developed" a strategy to foreclose on the King Garvey cooperative. Rainey expressed "appreciation for the cooperation of the City and County, and (Mayor's Office of Housing Director), Matt Franklin, (Redevelopment Department Director), Olsen Lee, and District 5 Supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi.
Rainey casually cc'd this letter to the King Garvey Co-op Board. Sharon Jones showed it to Ulysses Montgomery and Michael Strausz.The two developers recalled a meeting in January 2005 with Olsen Lee who confided: "The Agency intends to re-acquire all of San Francisco's African American-owned housing projects." Later, Lee appeared in March 2005 co-op task force meetings, at which he offered his "help" without mentioning SFRA's intentions to take over these housing projects.
HUD provides federal funds, and often "double teams" on projects with the S.F. Redevelopment Agency, which provides state and city bond money. In his letter, HUD's Rainey promised to "consider delaying any further actions (pending) a realistic plan that solves the Project's long-term problems."
If King Garvey did not cure its "physical, financial, and security issues," Rainey's "strategy" advised a four-step plan:
1. Cancel Section 8 rent subsidies.
2. Foreclose and reacquire the property.
3. Hand over the King Garvey co-op to the Redevelopment Agency.
4. "The City could create a mixed-use development embracing affordable home ownership, rental housing, and units for the homeless."Sharon Jones reported that King Garvey residents were not informed about this "mutually developed strategy" by HUD officials, the S.F. Redevelopment Agency, or Mayor Newsom.
Instead, beginning March 12, 2005, City Task Force "helpers" met with shareholders, facilitated by Neal and De Guzman. Present were officials from Mayor Newsom's office, Mirkarimi's and Nancy Pelosi's aides, Redevelopment Department Director Olsen Lee's A-2 management staff, Health Department asbestos experts, pro bono attorneys, and supportive community members.Raymond Washington videotaped these meetings.
Supervisor Mirkarimi and Olsen Lee described the arduous road ahead. They had two months to devise a "plan." Lee committed Redevelopment staff and funds to work on solving financial, security, and environmental problems acceptable to HUD, though HUD could reject it.
Characteristically, the SFRA hired consultants. Asian Neighborhood Design estimated the cost at $56 million total, with $26 to $30 million for repairs, basing their report on a visitation of six units. They claimed friable asbestos necessitated complete rehabbing of all 211 units. However, not all units had asbestos problems.
A 2003 structural assessment by a King Garvey-paid engineer, Thomas K. Butts, estimated the cost of repairs as only $16 million, a far lower amount. Jones said that Asian Neighborhood Design nearly quadrupled the figures in the Butts report, ignoring the completed work.
After months of meetings, sometimes three times a week, in which shareholders were subjected to role-playing games wearing little hats, on June 28, 2005, HUD Operations Officer J. Patrick Goray arrived to drop the hammer.
"You are not keeping up your end of the bargain," he told shareholders. "The property deteriorated because there wasn't enough money for operating expenses or to maintain the project. But, you said, 'Give us a chance. We will fix the problems.'"
Goray gave the residents good news and bad news. The good news, he said, was they had "invited in good management, made operational improvements, raised the rent," and hired an architect to do an analysis and identify needed repairs. Then came the bad news: "Unfortunately, you didn't take the next step -- follow through to get repair money and do repairs."
Surprised King Garvey board members wondered why both Asian Neighborhood Design and Goray overlooked the repairs quickly done by Harrison after Bridgette Daniels brought in inspectors.
Goray ordered shocked shareholders to identify needed repairs and present a strategy to HUD showing how they would acquire $26-30 million. Goray told the residents that this plan must be on his desk by Monday or he would foreclose.
The residents were alarmed that they would end up evicted, sitting in the street with their belongings.
Goray further shocked the King Garvey board by citing the four options prescribed by Connoly Consulting, a firm hired by the SFRA. Only one of these four options could raise sufficient money to cover the millions in costs: a tax credit plan depriving the King Garvey residents of homeownership.
Sharon Jones called Goray's presentation "evil." She explained that it would be impossible for low-income shareholders to raise that much money over one weekend.
" Instead of moving, shareholders lived in squalor," Jones said. "They aged and became sick, believing one day they would own this property. For 30 years they begged HUD for repairs." Inspectors walked through, ignoring the need for repairs. Now, the very same damage that had been ignored by inspectors for so long was used to threaten eviction.
HUD, the SFRA and City officials appeared to have led them by the nose into a set-up, with the "mutually developed strategy" of foreclosure decided in advance.
On the video, Daniel Landry wistfully watches the action. Jones had watched Dan Landry survive his at-risk teenage years, then become a parent, a business owner, run for District 5 Supervisor and courageously confront the City about Western Addition police brutality. He survived Redevelopment trashing his neighborhood. To be effective, he must live securely in his cooperative home.
Like Sharon Jones, Bridgette Daniels, Raymond Washington and Landry, most owners are determined to keep their property. Attorney Sheldon Schreiberg, a HUD regulations expert, is helping develop a plan pro bono to safeguard their housing - and their right to go on living in San Francisco.
Note: The reporter expresses deep appreciation for the assistance of Michael Strausz in the preparation of this segment.
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