Something to help themselves: Tenant organizing in San Francisco's public housing, 1965-1975

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 418-442

  Baranski, John ^a  

^a FORT LEWIS COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

Public housing; San Francisco; Social movements; Social policy; Tenants

Indexed keywords

CIVIL RIGHTS; HOUSING POLICY; POLICY MAKING; SOCIAL MOVEMENT; SOCIAL POLICY; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HOUSING;

CALIFORNIA; NORTH AMERICA; SAN FRANCISCO; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33847756037     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144206297136     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Helen O. Little to Rev. Hamilton Boswell, Chair of the San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) Commission, letter, June 2, 1967, in SFHA, Minutes, June 7, 1967.
2. Ronald Lawson with the assistance of Mark Naison, The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904-1984 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986); Rhonda Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles against Urban Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2004); Sean Purdy, "By the People, for the People: Tenant Organizing in Toronto's Regent Park Housing Project in the 1960s and 1970s," Journal of Urban History 30, no. 4 (2004): 519-48.
3. By the 1960s, public housing is often characterized as little more than warehouses for poor African Americans mired in a culture of poverty. For discussion of the culture of poverty and the underclass, with explicit and implicit connections to public housing, see Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum (Chicago: Aldine, 1970); John Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); John Bauman, "Public Housing, Isolation, and the Urban Underclass: Philadelphia's Richard Allen Homes, 1941-1965," Journal of Urban History 17 (May 1991): 264-92; and Howard Husock, America's Trillion Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003). For the relationship of poverty knowledge to social policy and inequality, see William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Michael Katz, ed. The Underclass Debate: Views from History
4. SFHA, Minutes, April 21, 1960; "Housing Head Defends His Regime," San Francisco Chronicle, October 10, 1965; and California Historical Society, San Francisco (CHS), Transcript of interview with [SFHA commissioner] Stephen Walter, Folder 17, Box 3, California League of Women Voters MS 1272.
5. SFHA, Minutes, May 20, 1965, and August 5, 1965.
6. Quotes in SFHA, Minutes, October 7, 1965. Also see "Housing Head Defends," San Francisco Chronicle, October 10, 1965, and "Housing Chief Out-Kane Gets Job," October 23, 1965.
7. "Housing Head Defends," San Francisco Chronicle, October 10, 1965, and "Housing Chief Out" October 23, 1965; CHS, oral interview of Eneas Kane conducted by League of Women Voters, September 8, 1966, Folder 18, Box 3, California League of Women Voters MS 1272.
8. "Housing Chief Out" San Francisco Chronicle, October 23, 1965; SFHA, Minutes, November 4, 1965.
9. SFHA, Minutes, May 9, 1968.
10. San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA (SFPL), Eneas Kane to Mayor Joseph Alioto, July 7, 1969, "HUD Workable Program Correspondence, 1 of 2, 1968-1969," Box 11, Alioto Papers.
11. SFHA, Minutes, May 19, 1966.
12. SFHA, Twenty-ninth Annual Report, 1966; SFHA, Minutes, August 4, 1966; SFPL, Eneas Kane, "The Fabulous Machine Called Public Housing," Confidential, Folder "Housing Authority, 1967-1969," Box 16, Alioto Papers,.
13. SFHA, Minutes, November 4, 1965, May 19, 1966, and May 18, 1967.
14. SFHA, Minutes, 1967-1970, especially March 21, 1968; [SFHA Commissioner] Caroline Charles, "The action and passion of our times," interview conducted by Gabrielle Morris, 1974-1978, ROHO, University of California, Berkeley. The SFHA leadership in 1965 did not have intellectual roots in the Modern Housing movement of the first part of the century, though Kane had familiarity with the democratic, economic, and urban goals of housers such as Catherine Bauer. For the Modern Housing movement, see Catherine Bauer, Modern Housing (Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1934); Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996); and Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
15. SFHA, Twenty-Ninth Annual Report, 1966. John F. Bauman writes that many local housing authority officials were dismayed by HUD's emphasis on citizen participation. See his Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), chap. 9, especially p. 191.
16. SFHA, Minutes, April 21, 1966.
17. SFHA, Minutes, September 1, 1966, and January 5, 1966.
18. See National Archives Records Administration, College Park, MD (NARA/ CP), HUD Circulars dated November 11, 1967, April 4, 1968, and March 22, 1968, in Folder "Poor People's March 1968," Box 6, Secretary Weaver's Subject Files, 1960-69, RG 207.
19. SFHA, Minutes, December 12, 1968, and March 27, 1969.
20. SFHA, Minutes, April 21, 1966.
21. SFHA, Minutes, September 1, 1966, and January 5, 1966.
22. SFHA, Minutes, especially July 11, 1968, and February 2, 1968. Quote in SFHA Minutes, February 2, 1968.
23. "Programs' Stifle a Lofty Ghetto," The Washington Post, August 28, 1966; SFHA, Minutes, October 6, 1966; Arthur Hippler, Hunters Point: A Black Ghetto (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
24. SFHA, Minutes, October 20, 1966.
25. SFHA, Minutes, November 17, 1966, and January 5, 1967; John Sullivan, SFHA Counsel, Report in SFHA, Minutes, February 2, 1967. Also see NARA/ CP, exchange George Earl to Robert Weaver, October 19, 1966; Marie McGuire, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary HUD, to George Earl, November 17, 1966; and Louis Ambler Jr., HAO, Reg. VI to Abner Silverman, Director Management Division, HAA, November 14, 1966, all in Folder "480 Housing Assistance Admin, Aug-Nov," Box 16 1966, General Correspondence, RG 207.
26. Quote in SFHA, Minutes, January 19, 1967.
27. SFHA, Minutes, January 19, 1967, March 16, 1967, and April 20, 1967. See NARA/CP, George Earl to Robert Weaver, October 19, 1966; Marie McGuire, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary HUD, to George Earl, November 17, 1966; and Louis Ambler Jr., HAO, Reg. VI to Abner Silverman, Director Management Division, HAA, November 14, 1966, all in Folder "480 Housing Assistance Admin, Aug-Nov," Box 16 1966, General Correspondence, RG 207. Quote in SFHA, Minutes, June 7, 1967.
28. SFHA, Minutes, September 7, 1967.
29. SFHA, Minutes, December 17, 1964; "Programs' Stifle," The Washington Post, August 28, 1966; quote in SFHA, Minutes, January 21, 1965.
30. SFHA, Minutes, March 4, 1965.
31. SFHA, Minutes, February 4, 1965.
32. SFHA, Minutes, March 4, 1965.
33. For the connection of civil rights to housing and liberalism, see Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Arnold Hirsch, "Massive Resistance in the Urban North: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953-1966," Journal of American History 82, no. 2 (1995): 522-50; Bauman, Public Housing; William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990); Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Thomas Sugrue, "Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism in the North, 1940-1964," Journal of American History 82, no. 2 (1995): 551-78; Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); and Jennifer Frost, "An Interracial Movement of the Poor": Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s (New York: New York University Press, 2002).
34. Frederick Wirt, Power in the City: Decision Making in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974);; Chester Hartman, The Transformation of San Francisco (New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984); Michael Kazin, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984); William Issel and Robert Cherny, San Francisco, 1865-1932: Power, Politics, and Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); William Issel, "Liberalism and Urban Policy in San Francisco from the 1930s to the 1960s," Western Historical Quarterly 22, no. 4 (1991): 431-50; Phillip Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Public Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California, Press, 1995); Albert Broussard, Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900-1954
35. SFPL, Eneas Kane, "The Fabulous Machine Called Public Housing," Confidential, Folder "Housing Authority, 1967-1969," Box 16, Alioto Papers; San Francisco Examiner, May 27, 1968; and "New Laws on Housing Advocated," The Phoenix Gazette, May 27, 1968. The talk went over well with the audience and housers who read it. See NARA/CP, Marie McGuire to Eneas Kane, June 10, 1968, Folder "SA-SH 1968," Box 19-1968, "Subject Correspondence 1966-1978, RG 207.
36. Kane, "Fabulous Machine."
37. Kane, "Fabulous Machine"; "New Laws on Housing," The Phoenix Gazette, May 27, 1968; and Lawrence Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), chap. 4.
38. Chester Hartman, Housing and Social Policy (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1975), 170-170. Hartman's suggestion that housing research needed to focus on the structural housing problem is similar to critiques of social science scholarship that has focused on individual failure rather than structural problems of capitalism. Hartman wrote what ordinary people said about the housing and labor market. Again and again, they put the lack of housing and jobs at the top of the list of problems that required government attention. See letters in NARA/CP, General Correspondence Files in RG 207; O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge.
39. Hartman, Housing and Social Policy, 160-160.
40. In 1964, after California voters passed Proposition 14, which put property rights before fair housing, thirteen state legislatures soon passed similar legislation. Quadagno, Color of Welfare, 95-103.
41. Hartman, Housing and Social Policy; Bauman, Public Housing, 200-200; Quadagno, The Color of Welfare, chap. 4; and Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects, 234-38.
42. William Berman, America's Right Turn: From Nixon to Bush (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); R. Allan Hays, The Federal Government and Urban Housing: Ideology and Change in Public Policy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); Bruce Shulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001), chap. 1; and Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
43. NARA/CP, Allan Jacobs to Lawrence Cox, HUD, March 13, 1969, Folder "REL 8 Recommendations, Suggestions and Views from the Public, March 18-25," Box 70-1969, Subject "Correspondence, 1966-1978," RG 207.
44. SFPL, Joseph Alioto to Richard Nixon, April 18, 1969, folder "US President, 1969-1971," Box 7, Alioto Papers; A. Scott Henderson, Housing & the Democratic Ideal: The Life and Thought of Charles Abrams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 206-7; and Alice O'Connor, "Swimming against the Tide: A Brief History of Federal Policy in Poor Communities," in Ronald Ferguson and William Dickens, eds., Urban Problems and Community Development (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999).
45. SFHA, Minutes, October 23, 1969.
46. See the breakdown of federal housing spending in Hays, Federal Government and Urban Housing, 154-154. It is worth noting that these outlays for poor and nonwhite tenants paled in comparison to federal subsidies and assistance to mostly white homeowners. See Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); and Thomas Hanchett, "The Other 'Subsidized Housing': Federal Aid to Suburbanization, 1940s-1960s," in John Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
47. SFPL, Mayor Alioto to President Nixon, April 18, 1969, Folder "U.S. President, 1969-1971" Box 7, Alioto Papers.
48. Federally subsidized redevelopment is a major theme in urban history because it highlights the power of the state and architecture to reshape working-class and usually nonwhite communities in the service of large-property owners, capitalists, and local political leaders. See Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage, 1961); Bauman, Public Housing; Robert Fairbanks, Making Better Citizens: Housing Reform and the Community Development Strategy in Cincinnati, 1890-1960 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Raymond Mohl, "Making the Second Ghetto in Metropolitan Miami, 1940-1960," Journal of Urban History 21 (1995): 395-427; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Hirsch, "Massive Resistance in the Urban North"; Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage, 1992); and Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects. For San Francisco redevelopment, see Wirt, Power in the City; John Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1983)
49. "Roaches, Rents, & Repairs: Tenants are Striking All Over...' They Won't be Pushed,'" San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 17, 1970; CHS, San Francisco League of Women Voters, Low and Moderate Income Housing in San Francisco, Folder 8, "1969 A Report to Members," Box 7, LWV 1271; Hartman, The Transformation of San Francisco; and Mollenkopf, Contested City.
50. SFPL, Justin Herman to Richard Ludwig, July 17, 1970, "HUD Workable Program, 1971, Midterm Review, 1 of 2, 1970," Box 11, Alioto Papers.
51. A 1970 report by the Comptroller General reported that urban redevelopment had, in 324 cities, demolished "88,000 more units than had been constructed under all other HUD programs." Quote and description of report in Hartman, Housing and Social Policy, 170. Also see SFHA, Minutes, January 8, 1970. For San Francisco redevelopment, see Hartman, Transformation of San Francisco; and Wirt, Power in the City.
52. SFPL, Citizens Emergency Task Force for a Workable Housing Policy, The Shame of San Francisco, Folder "The Shame of San Francisco," Box 11, Alioto Papers; CHS, San Francisco League of Women Voters, Low and Moderate Income Housing in San Francisco, Folder 8 "1969 A Report to Members," Box 7, LWV 1271; SFPL, Housing, October 1969 Report," Folder "Interagency Committee on Urban Renewal, 2 of 2," Box 10, Alioto Papers; San Francisco Department of City Planning, Residence Strategy and Programs, December 1973, SFSU Government Documents.
53. NARA/CP, Kathryn Keeble to George Romney, January 27, 1969, Folder "Pro 7 Low-rent Public Housing, Feb. 1-18" Box 59-1969, "Subject Correspondence 1966-1978," RG 207; NARA/CP, John Reidy to the President of the United States, May 16, 1968, Folder "REL 1-1 Admission to Public Housing, April 26-May 31," Box 12 1968, "Subject Correspondence, 1966-1978," RG 207; and Hartman, Housing and Social Policy.
54. SFHA, Minutes, September 12, 1968. A 1950 state law required all California housing authorities to submit ballots to expand the number of permanent public housing units. This made it more difficult to add public housing, though San Francisco residents regularly authorize more units.
55. A 1969 city report emphasized that nonwhites faced systemic racial discrimination in employment, housing, and social and city services. SFPL, "October 1969 Report," Folder "Interagency Committee on Urban Renewal, 2 of 2," Box 10, Alioto Papers. The SFHA waiting list had a disproportionate number of African Americans because of the continuation of discrimination and their lower incomes. See CHS, San Francisco League of Women Voters, Low and Moderate Income Housing in San Francisco, Folder 8, "1969 A Report to Members," Box 7, LWV 1271; San Francisco Department of City Planning, Residence Strategy and Programs, December 1973, SFSU Government Documents; and SFHA, Minutes, November 9, 1972, and May 10, 1973. An excellent account of urban deindustrialization is Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis.
56. Quotes in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society, San Francisco, California (GLBT), Western Addition Area Community Action Program of the EOC, Annual Report, March 1968-February 1969, Folder "Western Addition Area Annual Report, Feb 1969," Box 4, Donald Lucas Papers. For discussions of Community Action Programs, see Frances Fox Pivon and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979 edition); O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge; and O'Connor, "Swimming against the Tide."
57. Quotes in San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 16, 1969, and April 17, 1970. For insight into tenant organizing in other parts of the nation, see NARA/CP, A. E. Rosfeld, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary, HUD, to William Burton, St. Louis Rent Strike Leaders, April 19, 1969, Folder: "PRO 7 Low- Rent Public Housing April 3-24," Box 59-1969, "Subject Correspondence, 1966-1978, RG 207; Lawson, Tenant Movement; Ronald Brooks, "Tenant Intervention in Los Angeles' Public Housing Program" (diss., UCLA, 1993); Peter Marcuse, "Housing Movements in the United States," Housing, Theory, and Society 16 (1999): 67-86; Williams, Politics of Public Housing; and Purdy, "By the People."
58. SFPL, Effie Robinson, Director of Human Relations, SFHA, Critical and Urgent Need for Services for Relocatees from South of Market, June 1970, Folder "HUD, Yerba Buena Center, 1 of 3, 1970-1973," Box 10, Alioto Papers; and David Rochefort, From Poorhouses to Homelessness: Policy Analysis and Mental Health Care (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997), chap. 3 and 4.
59. SFHA, Minutes, March 27, 1969.
60. SFHA, Minutes, July 11, 1968.
61. SFHA, Minutes, May 23, 1968, and March 26, 1970; and NARA/CP, Thomas Hum, MD, Chairman North East Medical Services, to George Romney, May 29, 1969, Folder "PRO Programs Administration, June 17-27," Box 49-1969, "Subject Correspondence, 1966-78," RG 207.
62. SFHA, Minutes, February 26, 1970.
63. SFHA, Minutes, March 12, 1970.
64. SFHA, Minutes, March 12, 1970.
65. SFHA, Minutes, August 13, 1970.
66. SFHA, Minutes, January 14, 1971.
67. SFHA, Minutes, April 8, 1971. For comparison, see Lawson, Tenant Movement.
68. SFHA, Minutes, April 22, 1971, and November 9, 1971.
69. The CETA grant led to a National Endowment for the Arts grant to film those who worked on the murals and gardens. SFHA, Minutes, October 9, 1973.
70. SFHA, Minutes, May 27, 1971.
71. SFHA, Minutes, October 28, 1971.
72. SFHA, Minutes, August 12, 1971.
73. SFHA, Minutes, August 12, 1971, and August 27, 1970.
74. SFPL, Eneas Kane to Joseph Alioto, June 29, 1972, "Departments under Mayor - Housing Authority, 1972," Box 12, Alioto Papers.
75. SFHA, Minutes, February 25, 1970, and October 28, 1971; Hays, Federal Government and Urban Housing, chap. 4.
76. SFHA, Minutes, October 14, 1971.
77. SFHA, Minutes, September 28, 1972, and October 26, 1972.
78. Donald Critchlow, "Think Tanks, Anti-statism, and Democracy: The Nonpartisan Ideal and Policy Research in the United States, 1913-1987," in Michael Lacey and Mary Furner, eds., The State and Social Investigation in Britain and the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge; Shulman, Seventies; and McGirr, Suburban Warriors.
79. San Francisco scholars have found a politics of hyperpluralism in San Francisco's neighborhood and interest-group politics, but the ideas and actions of public housing tenants also suggest a vision of politics and rights that goes beyond narrow self-interests. For discussions of pluralism and policy making, see Frederick Wirt, Alioto and the Politics of Hyperpluralism (Berkeley: University of California), Institute of Governmental Studies 36 (April 1970); Issel and Cherny, San Francisco, 1865-1932; Issel, "Liberalism and Urban Policy"; Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1979); and Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram, Policy Design for Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997). For the dominant view of the shift in liberalism in this period, see Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); Thomas Byrne and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: Norton, 1992
80. NARA/CP, Cecilia Keough to George Romney, January 30, 1969, Folder "PRO 8 Urban Renewal and Development, Feb. 1-10," Box 61-1969, "Subject Correspondence, 1966-78," RG 207.
81. For a few examples of the ways direct action has transformed consciousness, see Peter Winn, Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile's Road to Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Pivon and Cloward, Poor People's Movements; and Barbara Kingslover, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). Quote in San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 16, 1969.
82. For the connections between the "underclass" and public housing, see note 3
83. SFHA, Minutes, August 23, 1973.
84. SFHA, Minutes, July 11, 1968.
85. SFHA, Minutes, January 10, 1974.
86. SFHA, Minutes, December 20, 1973, and February 2, 1974; NARA/CP, correspondence among Elouise Westbrook, James Lynn, Cleo Wallace, in Folder "PRO 8 Low Rent Public Housing, January, Box 14 Subject Correspondence, 1975, "Subject Correspondence, 1966-1978," RG 207.
87. SFHA, Minutes, February 14, 1974. For a discussion of HUD's programs, see Hays, Federal Government and Urban Housing; and Chester Hartman, ed. America's Housing Crisis: What Is to Be Done? (Boston: Institute for Policy Studies, 1983).
88. SFPL, Eneas Kane to Joseph Alioto, June 29, 1972, "Departments under Mayor - Housing Authority, 1972," Box 12, Alioto Papers; NARA/ CP, SFHA Commissioner George Evankovich to Carla Hill, HUD Secretary, July 16, 1975, Folder "PRO 8 - Low Rent Public Housing Sept-October," Box 14 Subject Correspondence, 1975, "Subject Correspondence, 1966-1978," RG 207; Kane's quote in SFHA, Minutes, October 25, 1973; and Alexander von Hoffman, "The Curse of Durability: Why Housing for the Poor Was Built to Last," Journal of Housing and Community Development 55 (September/October, 1998): 34-38.
89. SFHA, Minutes, February 13, 1975.