Fair housing now/ 2008 worst of S.F. awards

Add the owners of Parkmerced to the list of award winners. Since 1999.
approximately 2000 units (70%) have been flipped by these scumbags
using illegal tactics to evict renters, many of them long-time residents.

The main objective in this scheme is to get the City to approve their
plan to build 6000 luxury condos, all at the expense of current and future
Parkmerced renters. Call your supervisor and tell him or her to oppose
this planned demolition and stop taking campaign contributions from
these crooks.

Didn't the gay community, of which I am part, move into the Castro, drive up rent prices, open up small boutiques, embrace chi chi restaurants, and install swanky bars? Now they are crying "Stop Gentrification"?
What do you call what the gay community did to that neighborhood? "Renovations"?

The "gay community" is far from being monolithic. I don't know much about the Castro, but I'd hazard a guess that part of the gentrification that happened there involved the displacement of poorer queers by richer queers. Gentrification is a complicated thing, and the small business owner who starts a boutique or the young couple looking for an affordable home aren't necessarily the ones to blame. I applaud this action for targeting the greedy landlords, corporations, politicians, and NIMBYs who are to blame.

It was a very confusing action. Was it about housing for all? Was it about how homelessness was a queer issue? What it about how the Castro has always been more or less a middle class white male playground and now it's a retirement community for richer white males? Was it a ritual to publicly remind ourselves how evil landlords and speculators are? I am curious purple.

All it impressed on me was that even at its racist, white male privileged height, the Castro was an attempt to create a new kind of community... one that had never happened anywhere before. A tiny ounce of that spirit is worth four hundred tons of radical bitching and finger pointing.

The Castro has not always been a gay community. Not that long ago, up until the early 70's, it was a very working slightly lower to middle class family community. When the gay community realized that there were great little houses and that the rents were lower in that area they started moving in, displacing the businesses along Castro, 18th and Market, and started offering more housing then the people already living there. The gay community came in and not only changed the community, they moved it somewhere else.

It's the same story as what has happened in Chelsea in NYC. The gays moved in, made it nice and clean and up to date, and now the yuppies that want to be where the cool stuff is are moving in and offering more. So the gays are now moving to Hell's Kitchen.

The gay community is very good at finding fixer upper neighborhoods. Only thing is they fix them up too good.

Worst of SF Mission Statement: To raise awareness and galvanize San Francisco communities that are inspired by local current and critical issues by use of targeted, public action.

Perhaps you could take a chance to read the information at worstofsf.org if you are confused. Gentrification is not only a gay issue. The worst of SF attempted to bring some light (in a tongue and cheek way) to what is happening all over SF... this includes the Polk, Mission, Bay view and other areas where many working class, minorities, seniors, and disabled people are being forced out of their homes to make way for Wealthier tennants. Much of this is being done with manipulative tactics or down right illegally.

Harvey Milk Plaza was a natural choice because Harvey was evicted from his camera shop by real estate speculation. He referred to these speculatores as "blood suckers".

Basically A grass roots coalition of organizations came together to focus on the specific issues of gentrification, real estate speculation and land lord greed. This was a piece of street theater intended to get people talking and interested in community issues.

I am one of the participants in the awards ceremony. I have been a tenant attorney and poverty rights activist for 15 years in SF. Gentrification is the phenomenon wherein one group displaces another group. As it manifests in large urban centers--particularly NYC and SF today--gentrification is the displacement of the poor, working class, and middle class by the wealthy. Because gays, lesbians, the disabled, the elderly, and people of color make up a greater portion of the poor, working class, and middle class than the wealthy, gentrification often appears as wealthy, white, straights moving to SOMA and displacing queers, moving to the Mission and displacing the Latinos, or moving to the Fillmore and displacing the African Americans. Our event was inclusive. We included issues of Latino and African American displacement and poor and middle class queer displacement from Polk and SOMA as well as displacement in the Castro. The most severe end product of displacement is the death of the ghetto. The contributions of the ghetto to culture are often understated in our corporate media. Whether it is jazz in the Fillmore, mural art in the Mission, or theater in the Castro, the ghetto is an essential component of the cultural product. If you want to help save San Francisco's ghettos, there is something you can do. Go to www.queerantidisplacementcoalition.org and sign up! We meet every Saturday at 2 p.m. at 377 Hermann Street.

there's something ironic in all of this...