Filipinos up in arms vs. new San Francisco building project
Angelica Cabande, director of the South of Market Community Action Network, explaining her group’s opposition to the 5M Project in San Francisco. PHOTO BY SUP. JANE KIM’S OFFICE
SAN FRANCISCO – Scores of Filipinos trooped to the Planning Commission and for more than 10 hours urged it to disapprove a new massive development project they fear would push out low-income residents, but to no avail.
The commission decided to green light the 5M Project, to the disappointment and frustration of many in the Filipino community. Property owners Hearst Corporation and developers Forest City are pushing for the four acre development on Fifth and Mission, which would build over 600 units of market rate housing and over 650,000 square feet of office space, with only 8.5 percent (58 units) of affordable housing units.
Filipinos erupted in anger over the Planning Commission’s approval of the 5M Project. In the first ever “mike check” at Planning Commission, Filipina leaders yelled, “Who are you building for?” and “Plan for people, not for profits!” backed by dozens of community members in a “people’s filibuster” of the hearing. The protest delayed the meeting for an hour.
The commission recommended the Board of Supervisors approval of the project agreement between the developer and The City, but it called for setting up a small sites acquisition fund and a stabilization fund for displaced residential and commercial properties. It also recommended the inclusion of $300,000 toward a Filipino Cultural Heritage District.
Vivian Zalvidea Araullo, executive director of West Bay Multi-Services, protesting during the San Francisco Planning Commission meeting. FACEBOOK/MARILOU SANTOS RAGASA
The 5M Project will cause the “third wave of displacement” of Filipino residents, says Angelica Cabande, director of the South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN), a lead organization in the citywide community coalition, SoMa Action Committee (SMAC).
The coalition claims that gentrification is “racialized,” displacing low income people and causing the out-migration of longtime residents, many of whom may be renters, low-income residents, and people of color. The highest concentration of Filipinos in San Francisco live in the South of Market, site of the proposed 5M Project.
Filipinos were first displaced from Manilatown adjacent to Chinatown in the evictions from the I-Hotel in a decade long struggle beginning in the late 1960s. Then Filipinos were displaced in the 1980’s through redevelopment to create what was misidentified as a “new neighborhood to be called Yerba Buena that turned a once dilapidated area of the city into an urban oasis.”
“We resent the fact that once again, the City and developers are treating a working class community filled with people of color as blight. We are a thriving community that supports diversity, families and the cultural heritage of Filipinos who have called SoMa home for generations. Instead, we’re treated like second class citizens whose existing community planning efforts and legitimate concerns are completely ignored,” Cabande says.
Artists also denounced the 5M project, especially because of the lack of community outreach and involvement. “It is at the end of the process where so much of the decisions have already been decided and our suggestion are only taken in advisement and not consideration. It feels as if we are just another diversity box to be checked.” says Lorna Velasco, artistic director of Bindlestiff Studio, a 26-year-old theater space in SoMa. “We should be invited a place at the table where we could be heard from the very beginning of the process, not near the end where we are an afterthought,” she says.
Protesters complained that while efforts to pass the Filipino Heritage District have been sidelined since 2008, the 5M Project sailed through “exception after exception.”
The nearly 400-foot massive office building proposed at 5M is on a Youth and Family Special Use District and will completely destroy any protections afforded by this zoning.
“We demand an anti-displacement and stabilization plan,” was a repeated refrain from the residents, artists and staff of community-service organizations of the South of Market.
Protesters accused the Planning Commission of ignoring the contributions of low-income residents “by exempting 5M from the planning process through ordinances, a Special Use District and Development Agreement before any meaningful community engagement,” says Marlayne Morgan of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods and Neighborhood Network.
Not all the Planning Commissioners were in support of the project. “We greatly appreciate the support we received from Commissioner Dennis Richards, who put forward a motion to continue the project, and Commissioners Kathrin Moore and Cindy Wu for voting down the project,” says Theresa Imperial of Veterans Equity Center.
“It’s disappointing, yet to be expected that the four mayoral appointees, President Fong, and Commissioners Johnson, Antonini and Hillis, all voted in favor of the project and against a continuance. We know that Mayor Ed Lee has been pushing hard for the project and we’re disheartened that after being a tenant lawyer in the I-Hotel struggle, Mayor Lee is now turning his back on Filipinos,” Imperial added.
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