On Saturday, April 10th at 12pm at 1654 Sunnydale Avenue, in front of the San Francisco Housing Authority office at Sunnydale, residents of the Sunnydale housing projects will hold a protest to oppose the HOPE SF plan to privatize and redevelop all of Sunnydale. The SFHA, Mercy Housing, and Related California plan to demolish residents’ homes and replace them with mixed income Mercy Housing units. In other words, the plan is to eliminate public housing through privatization.
Residents at Sunnydale and Hahn received 90-day notices from SFHA stating that they have to leave their homes by April 13th, 2021 so they can be demolished for the next phase of the redevelopment. Residents are opposing the redevelopment because they know it will lead to everyone at Sunnydale being displaced. Residents don’t want to be forced out of their homes. Residents don’t want to move into the new poorly constructed Mercy Housing apartment buildings and live under a private landlord.
The federal government and Housing Authorities across the country purposefully let public housing like Sunnydale fall into disrepair and seriously threaten residents’ wellbeing in order to justify privatizing public housing. We have seen privatization happen on a massive scale over the past decade across the country with programs like the HOPE VI and the RAD program, which have had disastrous results for people living in public housing. The city of San Francisco says that the HOPE SF plan is different, but residents know that it is more of the same.
Sunnydale residents and the United Front Against Displacement are holding this protest to expose the true nature of the HOPE SF plan. On March 9th, residents and activists rallied in front of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development and City Hall, and on February 13th in front of the SFHA office at 1815 Egbert Avenue. Together, the people will continue to oppose the plan to privatize Sunnydale.
The United Front Against Displacement is an anti-gentrification organization that resists gentrification and struggles against attempts to criminalize and displace people.
The United Front Against Displacement 