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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"Progress" putting the squeeze on America's Chinatowns

What would happen if Chinatown disappeared? Imagine San Francisco's Grant Avenue without the souvenir stores, Chinese restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses lining the street. 

Gone would be the housewife bargaining with the butcher in Cantonese. Gone would be the exotic smells (some wonderful, some of questionable origins). Gone would be the kung-fu students and their dancing dragons and fire-crackers to chase away the evil spirits. Gone would be the dim-sum and herbs sold in little shops. 

UPDATED: April 16, 2019 for clarity and new photos.

Also, gone will be the homes, jobs and businesses of thousands of immigrants, elderly living on limited incomes and long-time families who make Chinatown their home, their cultural and emotional Mecca.

It is ironic that like the other ethnic enclaves such as the Little Italy's and Manilatowns, the Chinatowns that were formed as a result of racist attitudes towards the Chinese, discriminatory laws and real estate practices are now in danger of disappearing because those racial "ghettos" are now being eyed as attractive places to live. Chinatowns are in close proximity to city attractions and most importantly, they offer relatively cheap living accommodations.

The entrance to Grant Avenue, San Francisco, USA

For the last decade, Chinatowns in the cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC have been fighting a long, drawn-out battle against the forces of the market place. Even the biggest Chinatown in the U.S., San Francisco's Chinatown, is fighting what might seem an inevitable fate.

The culprits: landlords and developers aren't satisfied with the low rents and see an opportunity to lease the units to people willing to pay higher rents or razing the old residential hotels like the International Hotel for fancier, more expensive condos or apartments.

The victims: The Chinese elderly and newly arrived immigrants who find the familiarity of the food, language and community as a refuge from the larger society. Most importantly, the residential hotels offer affordable rent. and who still find the relatively low rents or low price of the older residential hotels, a bargain compared to other ritzier parts of the cities.

The gentrification of the low-rent ethnic enclaves are just too noticeable to be ignored anymore.

"Local governments drove areas of accelerated gentrification and have encouraged and assisted the gutting of Chinatowns," said a report conducted by Asian American Legal Defense Fund focusing on Boston, New York and Philadelphia.  "

Government policies have changed these traditionally working class, Asian, family household neighborhoods into communities that are now composed of more affluent, White, and non-family households. From the expansion of institutions like universities and medical centers in Boston, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s massive rezonings promoting development in New York, and the government’s encouragement of luxury condominiums and casinos in Philadelphia, local governments have dramatically transformed what these immigrant neighborhoods look like."

“We’re slowly being gentrified out of existence,” said University of Massachusetts professor Andrew Leong, who coauthored a 2013 report on Chinatowns. “You’re talking about displacement of those kinds of people that have rented from these unattractive units for decades.”

In Boston, only 46 percent of Chinatown residents are Asian.

According to some estimates, only 300 Chinese live in Washington DC's Chinatown. A new development project would eviscerate the heart of Chinatown. That is in the middle of fight between the low-income tenants and preservationists vs. a big development firm who wants to do away with the Section 8 housing and build condominiums that would sell for $800,000 each.

In San Francisco, the financial district encroaches on Chinatown. 

Across the country, the landlords of the low-rent residential hotels, long the backbone of living units in San Francisco's Chinatown, see the possibilities of higher profits. High-salaried tech workers who are attracted to the city can't find enough housing in the city with one of the country's highest cost of living.

DIOKNO

New York City's vibrant Chinatown.

The story is repeated in New York's Chinatown where now, the majority of residents are non-Chinese and the residents and merchants are fighting off gentrification of their neighborhood.

In cities like San Francisco and New York which have rent regulations - the landlords can't raise the rents until a unit is vacant. So some landlords or managers are trying to make life difficult for the long-time tenants: citing them with minor infractions like hanging laundry out their windows, putting up unpermitted Chinese New Year decorations or changing the locks on the doors while tenants are out. In essence: make life so miserable that the tenants move out.

“I’ve never seen a situation where they just don’t even file the papers, they just change people’s locks. That’s almost unheard of,” tenants rights attorney Alex Lemieux told a KQED reporter.

Even after many of the Chinatowns, especially in the larger cities, have become tourist attractions and important sources of revenue by contributing to the economies of the host cities, Chinese/Americans still can't avoid returning to them for celebrations, worship or to visit with friends. It is a place that they still consider home, even after they've moved to the suburbs. 

For the newly arrived, Chinatown serves as a way station of comfort and familiarity as they become accustomed to the customs of their new country. Many families have stayed put for generations because ... well, because its home. Services like banks and healthcare are steps from their door. Friends and family are nearby. They know the grocer by his first name. And jobs in the restaurants, small businesses and garment factories, are right around the corner.

Some argue that the young people and start-up companies will be what saves the Chinatowns that we've all grown up with. But that argument sounds counterintuitive.

The historic Chinatowns are not going quietly. They have their supporters. There are efforts to preserve the neighborhoods and their affordable housing. There is no way San Francisco will allow Chinatown to disappear. The Chinese New Year Parade alone brings in millions of tourists and untold dollars to the city's coffers. Mayor Ed Lee cut his legal teeth fighting for the International Hotel in the 60s and 70s and he has issued warnings to landlords trying to evict tenants by harassment.

At a recent rally in Washington DC, Micahel Kane, NAHT’s executive director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants, said: “What the (developer) is doing amounts to ethnic cleansing: removing communities of color from the city to make room for a high-rise.”

“This is not only a struggle to save our homes. It’s a struggle to save our cities, to save the principles of inclusion, community, justice, and values that we all reflect,” Kane added.

In Boston, a Chinatown Land Trust is submitting buildings to the National Register of Historic Places which would put up barriers to any attempt to tear down the structures. “The city is committed to preserving Chinatown,” said Sheila Dillon, Boston’s housing chief and director of the Department of Neighborhood Development. “It’s a wonderful neighborhood and the city is better for it.”

DIOKNO

Life goes on in the alleys of San Franciscco's Chinatown.

RELATED: Saving San Francisco's Chinatown

The housing market growing influence on the U.S. Chinatowns comes at a time when immigration from China and the rest of Asia is the highest it has ever been surpassing immigration from Mexico. Movement to the suburbs or neighboring cities have taken a lot of pressure off the traditional Chinatowns and new enclaves have developed outside the historic Chinatowns.

Zoning tactics, rent control laws, tenants rights groups and sympathetic politicians are doing what they can, but will those strategies and allies be enough to beat back the opportunistic landlords and market forces nibbling away at what have become American institutions?  I don't know. The question I posed at the beginning still needs answers: What if there were no more Chinatowns?

I do know that if something isn't done, all we'll be left with are some old buildings behind a Chinese gateway -- newer perhaps, the smells and chatter of Mandarin mixing with Cantonese and English will be gone  - but they'd  just be empty shells with no heart or soul.

FOR MORE INFO: Google "Saving Chinatown" or "gentrification of Chinatown" and you'll discover that the phenomenon happening around the world: in Riverside, CA, Honolulu, Vancouver, B.C. and London.

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The International Hotel lives on: funding needed for community programs

IT HAS BEEN 38 years since the forceful eviction of scores of elderly Filipinos and Chinese from San Francisco's International Hotel, the last bastion of old Manilatown.

The Manilatown Heritage Foundation was founded in 1994 to preserve the legacy of the historic Manilatown district of San Francisco and to preserve the legacy of the 1977 International Hotel Eviction. 

The foundation currently produces family-friendly, working-class affordable and community-sustaining educational programs in the areas of Arts & Culture, Historic Manilatown History & Legacy, Health & Wellness and Affordable Housing Advocacy.

In order to continue to offer these services and programs the foundation has launched a fundraiser through Booster, so even if you're in Europe, Alaska, Chicago or the Eastern Seaboard, you can help keep these programs free. The goal is to raise $5000 by August 18. The first 50 donations will get a commemorative yellow t-shirt with the iconic I-Hotel logo used during the struggle to preserve the hotel.

Originally used in the 1970s as a symbol of community solidarity around the I-Hotel eviction protests, the Tiger Logo is an iconic symbol for the I-Hotel community. The yellow and red T-shirt being featured this summer matches the Tiger Logo textile used during the 1977 protests and which continues to be displayed at the I-Hotel Center as one of its beloved artifacts. 

With the August 4th Eviction Commemoration just days away and with 2015 being the 10-year anniversary of our new International Hotel, this shirt would be a great way to show your continued support for affordable housing and tenants rights.

August 4th is an important historical date that ignited the Tenants Rights Movement in the United States. Over 3,000 people created a human barricade on August 4, 1977 to prevent the eviction of 196 mostly Filipino and Chinese low-income senior tenants of the International Hotel residential complex.

Equally important was that the I-Hotel became a rallying cry for scores of young Asian Americans by honoring their elders and learning about their past; all of which was nurtured by the growing Asian American student movement on college campuses that led to the Third World Student Strikes in the late 1960s and eventually to the creation of ethnic studies at various U.S. colleges.

The hotel struggle touched a nerve with many young people of the day. Among the veterans of that youth movement are current San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who was a young lawyer at the time of the evictions, and Superior Court Judge Rod Quidachay, who was a student leader at San Francisco State. Many others entered into careers in education, social services, journalism and politics to continue serving the community. 

Ultimately, the I-Hotel was torn down and remained as an empty pit for decades (So what was the rush in tearing it down?). Ironically, on the site today is affordable housing. That is where MHF has its home base as the I-Hotel Manilatown Center, located at the site of the original International Hotel: 868 Kearny Street, San Francisco, California. 

Long live the I-Hotel.

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