Come Together, Speak Out, Fight Back! Defending public housing in the Bay Area

Join public housing tenants from Cypress Village and Lockwood Gardens in Oakland and Sunnydale in San Francisco in a discussion about recent tenant organizing efforts. The San Francisco and Oakland Housing Authorities, just like Housing Authorities across the country, have been forcing tenants to live in dangerous conditions in order to justify selling public housing off to the highest bidder. Tenants at the few public housing projects left in the Bay Area are coming together to fight back.

Learn about the nationwide plan by the politicians, the developers, and the banks to eliminate all public housing by handing it over to private developers and management companies, and what tenants in the Bay Area are doing to stop it! There will be a brief presentation and some roundtable discussion about how people can work together to fight against the privatization of public housing and gentrification locally and nationally.

In Oakland, tenants have been organizing at the last two public housing developments in the city: Cypress Village in West Oakland and Lockwood Gardens in East Oakland. Cypress and Lockwood are not currently facing privatization but residents have been organizing to form independent tenant unions to fight for residents’ interests and be prepared to fight against privatization.

In San Francisco, there is a citywide privatization plan called HOPE SF. The city government, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Google, Kaiser Permanente, and foundations in the city are working together via the HOPE SF scheme. HOPE SF’s plan is to eliminate the last public housing in San Francisco (Sunnydale, Potrero, Double Rock/Alice Griffith, and Hunters View) by destroying it and building mixed income developments owned and managed by different private developers like Mercy Housing, the John Stewart Company, and BRIDGE Housing.

There are only two remaining public housing developments still under the San Francisco Housing Authority: Sunnydale and Potrero. Tenants at Sunnydale have been organizing to resist the privatization and destruction of their homes, to not be bullied into signing leases with the private developer Mercy Housing, and to speak up about the truth that these private developers are just going to make the situation worse for residents and leave them more vulnerable, as we’ve seen in developments that have been privatized in the Bay Area and across the country. Sunnydale residents have been working with residents at Potrero and privatized developments like Double Rock.

Watch the recording of an event held May 4, 2021 which featured activists and public housing residents from across the country discussing their experiences and sharing updates from the struggle against the privatization of public housing: https://youtu.be/_US9KIuvYmc

This event is sponsored by the United Front Against Displacement, the Cypress Village Tenant Union, and the Residents of Sunnydale.

Email: wewontgo [at] riseup.net
Text/call: 510-815-9978
Website: theufad.org
Social media: @theufad