As Gentrification Persists in San Francisco, Evictions Take New Forms

[marmar]

(Truthout) Last year, the mainstream press swarmed to San Francisco to cover the tech bus protests, gentrification, and activists' disdain for Silicon Valley and "tech." Those stories have largely died down, but the underlying grievances of many San Franciscans have not. Evictions continue. The battle being waged by residents of one building in the Mission District, which is currently facing eviction, demonstrates the persistent intensity of the attacks on low-income tenants.

On a sunny Monday afternoon in early March, tenants from Station 40, an affordable housing complex in San Francisco's rapidly gentrifying Mission District, joined with activists from the Housing Rights Committee and Anti-Eviction Mapping Project to hold a press conference condemning one of the latest evictions happening in the city. In late February, Station 40 tenants were slapped with an eviction notice from their landlords, Ahuva, Emanuel and Barak Jolish.

The complex houses more than a dozen tenants at 3030B 16th Street in the Mission. It sits right across the street from the 16th Street Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stop. Station 40 has provided affordable housing for its residents for the past 11 years. It is also known for housing members of activist groups like Food Not Bombs, which shares home-cooked, free meals on the 16th Street BART plaza every week, and Coffee Not Cops, which shares free coffee and pastries at the same plaza and organizes against police patrols in the area.

"Station 40 has been home to anarchist, queer and transgender refugees, broke people, veterans against war, those healing from the prison system, lifelong San Franciscans, immigrants, people with disabilities, and those who were previously homeless," according to the groups' press statement. Station 40 has also "hosted and/or organized hundreds of anticapitalist-oriented events, including fund-raiser, critical discussions, film screenings and performances, assemblies, book releases, art shows and workshops, and indie media projects, contributing to the rebel spirit of the Bay Area." ..................(more)

http://truth-out.org/news/item/29737-as-gentrification-persists-in-san-francisco-evictions-take-new-forms

[davidsilver]

1. Countless studies have proven that "gentrification" creates more homeless people.