San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Marin complex’s renters should decide own future
From the patio filled with potted plants to the neat stacks of history and architecture books in the living room, it’s clear that Royce McLemore takes pride in her Marin City apartment. But in the kitchen, the 78yearold public housing resident only sees what needs fixing.
“It floods in here because of the problems with the plumbing. I had to figure out a while ago how to get water off the floor quickly,” she said. “That happens a lot.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual at Golden Gate Village.
The 60yearold public housing complex has 700
lowincome residents. Sixtyfive percent of them are Black, says McLemore, who serves as president of the Golden Gate Village Resident Council.
She and other residents have been complaining for years about mold and rat infestations, electricity issues and neglected landscaping. The Marin Housing Authority is legally responsible for the complex’s upkeep. The tenants say their calls for critical maintenance have largely gone ignored. The MHA points to financial constraints as part of the reason for the lack of repairs.
But four years after a county consultant estimated it would cost $63 million to bring the aging housing units up to federal standards, the MHA is now mulling a $387 million plan to upgrade the complex and build two highrise buildings and tear down 16 units by partnering with a private developer. But the repairs that residents are clamoring for would happen after construction of the new units, which the MHA is considering making available to renters of varying income levels.
During a teleconference board meeting on June 22, MHA’s Executive Director Lewis Jordan said the “redevelopment plan will not displace anyone and rents will stay the same,” the Marin Independent Journal reported.
The housing agency’s assurances haven’t assuaged Golden Gate Village’s tenants, who filed a classaction lawsuit last year and worry that “revitalization” means gentrifying them out of their homes.
“Nothing we’ve seen, nothing they have said over the years has made it feel like they truly want us to remain here,” McLemore said.
Residents have laid out their own revitalization plan, which the MHA has largely ignored. The group has not publicly shared its cost, but the most important element is a call to turn the property into a community land trust. This would facilitate a path toward home ownership for the residents. In America, home ownership is a way families can build generational wealth.
MHA’s leadership has been openly skeptical of the idea and has said turning federally owned land over to residents is not something that would be supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides funding for Golden Gate Village.
“This has always been a place where you felt safe. I’ve never thought about possibly not living here one day.”
Jorge Campos, Golden Gate Village resident
Black roots run deep in Marin City, an unincorporated community where 22% of the 3,100 residents are Black.
The small valley town was created during World War II, when local shipyards recruited migrant workers to the area. After the shipyards closed, white families left to pursue other economic opportunities. Because of racist housing covenants and job discrimination, Black and other minority families were prevented from leaving.
In 1960, 15 years after World War II ended, Golden Gate Village was built as part of an urban renewal project.
This history comes from a 2017 report that Marin County officials commissioned to weigh options for rehabilitating the aging public housing complex.
Terrie Daniels has lived some of this history. Her family moved into Golden Gate Village in the 1960s after leaving Texas. Generations have grown up there, Daniels said.
“The people who have called this place home for a long time, they know they can go to their neighbors when they need something and they’ll get help,” she told me.
It’s clear that the residents of Golden Gate Village see a home worth fighting for. I saw that during a recent visit. I spoke with 71yearold Hattie Cook on her back patio. Just a couple of steps from her fence is an open space where she hosts Easter egg hunts and community dinners.
“People say this has been the kind of place where you could leave your doors open because everybody knows each other, and that’s the truth,” Cook said. “For a lot of us, our lives, everything we do, happens here.”
Up the hill behind Cook’s apartment lives 31yearold Jorge Campos. He moved into the complex with his family in the early 2000s and attended summer camps there.
“This has always been a place where you felt safe,” he said. “I’ve never thought about possibly not living here one day.”
The story of a deteriorating public housing complex isn’t new. Insufficient funding from the federal government has left many of these complexes with a backlog of repairs and maintenance needs. But nobody knows the needs of Golden Gate Village better than the residents themselves.
Allowing them to move from being renters to owners at a public housing complex they’ve occupied for decades would only benefit the property. Nobody is saying this would be an easy transition to make. But life hasn’t been easy for Black residents of Marin City for a long time.