Filipinos divided; big project OKd for San Francisco's SoMa

An artist's rendering of what the open space in the 5M Project might look like.

LIKE the fight for the International Hotel, home to Filipino and Chinese elders came to symbolize the fight for tenants rights in San Francisco, working class Filipinos find themselves in the center of another struggle for affordable housing in the South of Market.

Last Tuesday (Nov. 17), the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the 5M Project that - depending on who you believe - could provide jobs, open space and housing for low and middle-income city residents in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, or it could be another blow leading to the eventual demise of another Filipino neighborhood.

The meeting, which last hours, pitted developers vs. housing advocates, Tenderloin housing advocates vs. SoMa activists, city planners vs. neighborhood activists, and Filipinos vs. Filipinos. Little children read their arguments. Elderly Filipinos testified. Eventually, the project was approved 8-3, with Supervisors John Avalos, Eric Mar and David Campos voting against it.

“It’s a Filipino heritage zone but if we are going to get Filipinos displaced out of the community then it’s a graveyard,” said West Bay Pilipino Multi Service Center Executive Director Vivian Zalvidea Araullo.

“There’s nothing to compare with 40 percent housing,” countered Ray Balberan of United Playaz, a SoMa youth group. “There’s nothing to compare with $10 million going directly into the community, into direct community services. There’s nothing like that and jobs for the community. We want it to go forward and we will fight for it to go forward.”

Earlier negotiations between 5M executives and Supervisor Susan Kim, who represents SoMa, was able to gain more open space, less parking, less office space and increased the affordable housing to at least 40% of the new housing. In addition, millions would be given to maintain and improve Victoria Manalo Draves park, Bessie Carmichael School and the yet to open Filipino Cultural Center.

“It’s not about tearing down buildings, it’s about rezoning an area and what the impact that is going to be on the people already there,” Avalos told the San Francisco Chronicle.  “I want to stand on the right side of history.”

A rendering looking down 5th Street, the office buildings will tower over the Chronicle Building.

San Francisco has some of the highest real estate prices in the nation caused by the high demand/low supply dynamic and is seeing most of its neighborhoods that have traditionally provided housing for the working class fall victim to gentrification. What's happening is that a lot of highly-paid tech workers brought in by all the high-tech companies wanting to locate in San Francisco. Silicon City is competing with Silicon Valley. 

Developers and landowners, taking advantage of the market, want to fill that need by building new projects or raising rents, driving out the low-wage workers and their families to the outlying cities and suburbs. Most big cities would kill to have San Francisco's  problem.The direction the city is moving now would eventually choke the diversity and energy that makes San Francisco unique and so attractive to tourists and 21st century companies. 

UPDATE: A discussion on this project, SoMa and the Filipino neighborhood seems to have broken out at reddit. 

The 5M Project is huge and it's right smack in the middle of SoMa, which planners would like to turn into a Filipino Heritage District. What critics fear is that the project would raise the value of the land surrounding it, causing landlords to find ways to evict tenants to raise rents and landowners to consider more profitable projects. 

Sure, it may bring in construction jobs in the short term but what about after the project is built? Will they provide job-training to the remaining residents so that they can work in the financial and high-tech sector? Will they donate laptops to the students at Bessie Carmichael to inspire the children to loftier goals? Will there be any Filipinos left in 10 or 15 years?

Construction of the 5M Project should begin within a year. When the construction dust clears, there will be 400 luxury units and 241 below-market-rate units, most of it blocks away from the project site.

Once again, Filipinos are being forced to become the source of housing so the rich can live in San Francisco. Will SoMa suffer the same fate as Manilatown?

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Filipino district proposed for San Francisco; may help preserve SoMa neighborhood

Streets named after Philippine heroes include Rizal, Mabini and Tandang Soro are in SoMa district,
the proposed neighborhood that would receive a heritage designation.

ONCE AGAIN, a Filipino neighborhood is fighting to survive modern market forces. Some call it gentrification, others call it progress. Still others, like the thousands of Filipinos living in the South of Market area, call it displacement.

Like the old Manilatown that grew organically next to Chinatown, big money, high rents and skyrocketing living costs are pressuring the modest homes of working class Filipino  immigrants and Filipino/Americans in San Francisco.

To help preserve the Filipino nature of the neighborhoods and save the affordable housing provided by the apartments, row houses and  residential hotels that dot the SoMa area of San Francisco, a plan that has been in the works for years, was proposed last week to create a cultural heritage district called SoMa Pilipinas, a district that would highlight more than 25 historic buildings, sites and objects that preserve the neighborhood's Filipino character.

An 8-story mural on the San Lorenzo Ruis Center
marries Filipino and Filipino/American history.

The proposal was announced Oct. 27 by Jane Kim, the city supervisor representing SoMa. “Historically, the Filipino-American community has made the South of Market their home,” Kim said. “There’s a lot of history of nonprofit community-based services and organizations, as well as small businesses, that have served this community.”

The transformation of SoMa, formally a home for Irish immigrants, into a Filipino district was a long process that may have started in the 1950s but it really took off after the 1965 Immigration Reform Act was passed by Congress, thus replacing the former immigration policy that favored European countries. The more equitable policy allowed more Filipinos to immigrate to the U.S. but Filipinos also discovered that it gave preference to family reunification and those with special skills that would benefit the United States. 

With the demise of the former Manilatown, the new immigrants found the low rents offered in South of Market Street fitting their needs as they adjusted to their new country.

As a result of this huge immigrant influx, St. Patrick's Catholic Church founded by immigrant Irish on Mission Street became predominantly Filipino with Filipino priests and masses celebrated in Tagalog.

Bessie Carmichael Elementary School houses the Filipino Education Center and most of its teachers are bilingual in English and Filipino dialects to teach the large Filipino student body.

By the early-1970s, the Filipino population reached a critical mass and were able to convince San Francisco and the Federal government to fund programs that could serve the needs of newly arrived immigrants and elderly Filipinos. HUD funding financed The Dimas Alang House, renamed the San Lorenzo Ruiz Center, a home for Filipinos senior citizens. The streets around the housing project were also named after Filipino heroes: street names such as Lapu-lapu, Bonifacio, Mabini, and Rizal. . 

The area is also the home of the headquarters of Gran Oriente, which along with Caballeros de Dimas Alang, were the social/fraternal societies created by the first wave of Filipino immigrants. 

The proposed Filipino district would cover these blocks in San Francisco

Nonprofits and businesses catering to the Filipino residents are scattered throughout the neighborhood. There is a 2-acre park named after Filipino/American Vicky Manalo Draves, an Olympic diving champ who grew up in SoMa. 

Despite the obvious presence and history behind the neighborhood, it has been under siege from planners and developers who tout the sunnier weather, the flat land and close proximity to the shopping and financial districts. 

Filipino  residents were once again displaced, along with artists and small businesses, lost a big chunk of real estate when the Yerba Buena Center and the Moscone Convention Center was built across from St. Patrick's Church in the 1970s. The project opened the door to the high-end hotels, expensive condominiums and offices catering to the high-tech industry with Twitter and Facebook leading the way followed by dozens of startups taking over the warehouses and light industry spaces.

NEW THREAT

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote  later this year on the 5M project that has divided the Filipino/American community. The giant project will combine offices, apartments, condos and open spaces right in the middle of the proposed district along the 5th Street corridor.

There are some Filipinos who believe that you need to fight the project now or else it will be like a domino effect impacting the hotels and apartments nearby. Owners will raise rents or remodel into high-rent  housing units.

An artist's rendering of a new park in the proposed 5M project.

The 5M project would divide the proposed Filipino Heritage District.

Filipinos opposed to the project have jammed public hearings. Their efforts have caused changes in the original proposals, bringing in more open space and more dedicated affordable housing. But critics say the project will raise rents in the area forcing many low-income residents to find other housing in a city that has the some of the highest rents in the country.

It's uncertain what the impact would be on any future projects if SoMa was declared a Filipino Heritage District but it may be a case of too little, too late. Any such designation would not take effect for about a year at the earliest. The new 5th Street development project could be approved by the Board of Supervisors before the end of the year.

“This is discrimination against Filipinos. No community should be treated this way,” said Vivian Zalvidea Araullo, executive director of the West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center.

After nine hours of public testimony, the Planning Commission approved the recommendation in a narrow 4-3 vote. (UPDATE: Nov. 4, the vote was corrected from earlier versions of this post.)

“They want to work on stopping and preventing displacement of families, seniors, residents, as well as small businesses that they are worried are leaving South of Market due to how expensive real estate is becoming,” said Supervisor Kim. 

Kim hopes the proposed district designation will help prevent further displacement as well.

Although the idea of a special district is a long-time coming and it may be too late to affect the 5M project, it could be helpful in keeping low-cost housing in SoMa, so crucial to the  immigrants and the working class residents of SoMa.

TAKE ACTION

A petition to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, a lawyer who got his start defending the International Hotel, was started in change.org urging him to recommend to the supervisors to opposed the 5M project.

It reads in part:

"Your office, the Board of Supervisors, the Planning Department, the Planning Commission, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development cannot continue to ignore the concerns of the Filipino community by supporting the proposed 5M Project. Otherwise there will be no more Filipino community left in SoMa."

You can sign the petition, here.

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