Can changes in buildings and land use make a significant positive impact on people living in public housing? The HOPE SF program included in Mayor Newsom’s proposed budget takes up the challenge of initiating radical change for families living in public housing sites in San Francisco’s southeast neighborhoods.

HOPE SF proposes a $100 million investment, $5 million from the City budget and $95 million from a proposed bond, to significantly change public housing by rebuilding 2,500 apartments for public housing residents and building 3,500 new market-rate and affordable homes on seven public housing sites. The City expects to leverage federal and private funds for the majority of its costs.    

The HOPE SF program, modeled on the federally funded HOPE VI program, is aimed at transforming distressed public housing sites into communities that feature a mix of family incomes. The rebuilt communities will no longer be isolated from the city around them, but will feature architecture and design that reconnect them to the surrounding neighborhoods.

In the past decade the SF Housing Authority, in partnership with private and non-profit housing developers, successfully completed six HOPE VI projects in North Beach, Hayes Valley and the Mission district. These projects were noteworthy in many respects, not the least of which is the fact that San Francisco bucked the national trend by requiring one for one replacement of units so there was no reduction in the number of public housing units available. However, due to severe cuts over the past six years, this federal housing program is no longer a financial resource for San Francisco.

HOPE SF proposes a financing plan that directs $5 million from the City’s budget and issues a $95 million revenue bond to provide a total of $100 million in financing to be leveraged by other private sources. Proponents of the program believe that the developments could be rebuilt at a density similar to the neighborhoods in which the sites are located to allow for the inclusion of new market-rate and affordable homes.

The proposed final mix of homes for families would be 40% public housing residents, 40% market-rate housing and 20% affordable and ownership homes. The new market-rate homes would help pay for the new public housing apartments. The rebuilding of the 2,500 public housing apartments on public housing sites would occur in phases to allow relocation of residents within the sites so that improving the physical environment does not result in “poor people removal.”

The data from the initial COO test site, Alice Griffith public housing, a complex of 250 dilapidated apartments fenced off from the 49ers Stadium, looks promising. “Alice Griffith shows that in that community, larceny, burglary and drug-related crimes are down 40%, 25% and 7% respectively. Teachers reported that parent involvement is up 65% and 150 residents got new jobs, including 95 who have moved into long-term employment,” Jones said.

For the next stage, COO targeted four public housing sites: Alice Griffith, Hunters Point, Hunters View and Sunnydale, where more than 500 residents joined COO to receive services including youth programs, employment, health access, safety programs and environmental improvements. Mayor Newsom remarked, “By becoming COO members these residents have joined us in changing the ineffective and outdated top-down service delivery system.”

Twelve neighborhood based organizations, including the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation (SFHDC), a private nonprofit housing developer that provides one-on-one financial education to low and moderate-income families, were selected by the COO residents to provide on-site services beginning this summer and fall. SFHDC plans to implement the 620 Circle Club, an intensive hands-on financial fitness program to build credit worthiness and $10,000 net worth in savings and investments for each participant. “This is not your dad’s anti-poverty program,” says SFHDC Housing Counseling Program Director, Ed Donaldson.

If the HOPE SF survives the budget cutting floor this year and the resident gains achieved at Alice Griffith can be met at the other COO public housing sites, perhaps the hopes and dreams of the revitalization of southeast neighborhoods can be realized as a human revolution for thousands of families and their neighbors.