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SF Community Land Trust |
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SFCLT is a membership-based organization whose mission is to create
permanently affordable, resident-controlled housing for low- to
moderate-income people in San Francisco through community ownership of the
land.
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"Reaching for the American Dream Chinatown renters unite to own homes"
Vanessa Hua, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
For a decade, Ji Jian-guang and his wife feared losing their cramped, two-bedroom Chinatown apartment.
Their home, where their adult sons share a bunk bed and thick tape holds a bathroom window inside its rotting wood frame, is typical of other apartments in the neighborhood, but families like the Jis have few housing options. Ji says he couldn't live outside this neighborhood where community groups and businesses cater to more than 18,000 residents -- many monolingual immigrants like him.
So this spring, Ji, his wife, Ru Mei Peng, and a dozen other families joined a land trust designed to improve living conditions for the poor and make home ownership a financial possibility.
In May, the San Francisco Community Land Trust purchased the
dilapidated building where the Jis live. To help make ownership
affordable, the trust will own the land beneath the building and each
of the 21 households will pay $10,000 to own a unit at 53 Columbus Ave..
The Chinatown project is the first project for the San Francisco
Community Land Trust, founded in 2001. The trust is also talking with
tenants in other San Francisco neighborhoods about adding other
projects.
Housing land trusts have been around since the
1970s but became increasingly popular in California during the
recent housing boom. Of more than 200 housing-oriented land trusts that exist
in the country, the first large-scale one started in Burlington, Vt., in 1982. Others have
started in Florida, Alaska, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
"The first land trusts were commune-kind of
people, experimenting with different forms of ownership. Then they started to
do it in urban areas with serious housing problems, run-down places no one
wanted to invest in," said Rick Jacobus, a Bay Area land trust consultant
working on projects from Point Reyes to Irvine. "It shifted from being a
counterculture land-reform movement to being a housing strategy."
The land trust, with help from city-funded
programs and private financing, is cobbling together $4.5 million to $5 million
for the necessary renovations and seismic upgrades at the Chinatown building. The Asian Law
Caucus, which also helped organize residents, will contribute more than
$850,000 for renovations and help pay down the property's mortgage. The
organization also plans to move into the building's ground-floor office space.
"The idea is to create a community-owned
and -used building," said Malcolm Yeung, a staff attorney.
The residents will
own a limited-equity stake and
will not be allowed to sell for market rate,
which in Chinatown currently runs up to $500,000 for two-bedroom
tenancies-in-common. The resale price will be tied to inflation and the cost of
living to keep the units permanently affordable.
The co-op will be run by an elected group of
resident-owners, whom the trust will train this fall to manage the property.
The project is slated for completion by the beginning of 2008.
Over the past decade or so, other San Francisco neighborhoods have been redeveloped and renovated, driving up
rents. That gentrification largely bypassed Chinatown -- keeping rents
comparably affordable but also failing to improve most of the housing. About 60
percent of all Chinatown rental units are single rooms without bathrooms or kitchens; very
few people own their homes.
Affordable-housing experts say several factors
have kept away new development. Chinatown is unattractive to developers because many of the lots are small,
forcing them to broker multiple deals to buy enough property.
And the neighborhood has dozens of fraternal and
other benevolent associations that own roughly a third of the property in Chinatown, collecting rents on
buildings paid off long ago.
The old guard has the mentality that "it's
good enough," said Warner Wong, 50, a retired architect who advises on
real estate issues for Wong Family Benevolent Association, which owns Chinatown buildings. "A leaking
toilet is no big deal. 'Hell, I lived without a toilet.' "
Many of those community leaders are also wary of
incurring debt, said Gordon Chin, executive director of the Chinatown Community
Development Corp., which advocates for and manages affordable housing.
"Chinese are very debt-averse," Chin
said. "Also, they are making money downstairs and upstairs. Any time you
remodel, you relocate people and you lose rent."
The Chinatown tenants were organized and committed, said
James Tracy, the land trust board president. "They really wanted to go for
broke and fight for affordable housing on principle. They were not interested
in fighting for a better relocation
deal. They wanted to take a stand for the
community."
The residents at 53 Columbus have
fought to stay for the past decade. City College of San Francisco bought their building with plans to build a new Chinatown-North Beach campus. In
2003, the residents sued the college, arguing that the proposed campus would
push them out, violating previous assurances and state law. School officials
eventually decided against making costly earthquake-retrofit repairs and sold
the building to the land trust for $1.5 million.
After emigrating from China as a boy, tenant Larry Lee toiled in laundries and restaurants in
Chinatown and the Central Valley. Lee, 82, has lived in the building since 1992.
"Most of my life I work during the day and
sleep at night. It's a nonstop cycle. I was so tired, I slept most of my free
time," said Lee, 82, now confined to his bed. A portrait of his mother and
framed scrolls of Chinese calligraphy hang in his tiny living room. "I don't
know of any other place I could call home."
Over the years, he watched Chinatown shrink as housing
disappeared under the Financial District. He became a tenant leader back when
the battle began with City College.
"The Chinese are like a pan of loose sand.
They never stick together. No one in Chinatown likes to stick their head out," Lee said. "I try to
show the Chinese do have complaints. If I do something, maybe someone else will
follow."
Tenant partnership
In May, the San Francisco Community Land Trust
purchased the building at 53 Columbus Ave.; each of the 21 households there will pay $10,000 to join a
co-op. The land trust is now cobbling together $4.5 to $5 million for the
renovations and seismic upgrades with city-funded programs and private
financing.
E-mail Vanessa Hua at
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San Francisco Community Land Trust | P.O. Box 420982 | San Francisco, CA 94142 
