"21 units,
affordable forever"
Sarah
Phelan
SF Bay Guardian
May 23, 2006
After eight
years of stressing about being evicted from the rent-controlled Fong Building on Columbus Street, Chungyau Poon, 77, can
finally relax.
On May 16,
in its first deal since incorporating three years ago, the San Francisco
Community Land Trust purchased the historic 21-unit building, where Poon has
lived for three and a half decades in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid.
About 50 Cantonese people, including seniors and their families, reside in the
building.
The way the
deal will work: The trust will own the land under the building and residents
will collectively own and manage the housing units. The housing will be
affordable forever: If a resident wants to sell, the resale price will be
limited and not subject to market forces and speculation.
The deal
marks the final chapter in a saga that began in 1998, when City College planned to demolish the Fong Building to build a new campus, and
ended last week, when the college sold the building to the SFCLT for $1.5
million.
Referring
to the I-Hotel, which housed a Filipino community before its demolition a third
of a century ago, Sup. Aaron Peskin said the Fong Building's conversion to a land
trust "ensures history doesn't repeat itself."
The SFCLT's
executive director, James Tracy, credits the Fong Building residents, Asian Law
Caucus, Asian Neighborhood Design, Chinatown Community Development Corporation,
and Board of Supervisors for making the deal possible.
Ted
Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union wants the land-trust group to
focus on housing that isn't already rent-controlled. But he agrees that CLTs
could play a role similar to that of environmental land trusts. "Instead
of preserving wetlands and wildlife, they'd be preserving housing stock at an
affordable level," he said.
CCDC
housing development director Susie Wong says that opportunities like the one
presented by the Fong Building are "pretty
rare." She adds, "All along, the Fong residents wanted to stay
together. They are like a village within a building." SFBG
|
San Francisco Community Land Trust | P.O. Box 420982 | San Francisco, CA 94142 
