DiGiPHOTO

Spring 2010

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Introducing the 2010 SFCLT Board of Directors

Board Members from left to right: James Tracy, Kori Chen, Fred Lambright, Alice Liu (behind), Luis Barahona, Bruce Wolfe, Benjamin Emery, Mira Luna (behind), Steve Woo, Tracy Parent

On March 20, 2010 SFCLT members gathered to elect the 2010 Board of Directors.  Here are profiles of the 2010 Board:

Kori Chen

Kori first heard about the SFCLT during its amazing campaign a few years ago that brought together the residents of 53 Columbus Ave, the Asian Law Caucus and others to stop the displacement of low-income families of color and form the Columbus United Housing Cooperative. He is inspired by the SFCLT’s approach to grassroots empowerment and stabilization through self-governance and community land ownership. It is a tremendous honor for him to have the opportunity to further the organization’s work as a member of the board.

Currently, he works as a community organizer for TURN (The Utility Reform Network), a consumer rights organization that has fought off utility bill rate increases for over three decades and saved Californians billions of dollars in the process. He is a graduate of the Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program (MAAP), which has trained hundreds of organizers of color in the art and science of community organizing.

Mira Luna

Mira is the Director of Bay Area Community Exchange, an organization that develops local currencies, and the Coordinator for a local time exchange. She holds an MA in Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community with an emphasis in Activism and Social Change and a BA in Environmental Studies. Mira has worked for over 13 years as an environmental and social justice activist on issues such as sustainable and urban agriculture, sweatshops, nuclear waste, toxics, the precautionary principle and GE foods. She has worked at many nonprofits, as a state level legislative policy analyst, consultant to environmental agencies, and as faculty and program coordinator at New College. She also helps coordinate JASecon and the Really Really Free Market and works with the US Solidarity Economy Network. Her interest in community land trusts, cooperatives, and affordable housing comes from a holistic approach to solving economic problems that includes the necessity for more collective, local landownership by a broader section of the population (especially lower income, minority and differently-able people) to make other economic and social change possible.

Rhea L. Serna

Throughout her educational and professional career, Rhea has worked towards increasing economic, financial and social justice for low income and people of color communities. She began her career as a rural planner for the Taos County Planning Department, where she worked with over 30 unincorporated communities to develop and implement the County’s first zoning code and comprehensive land use plan. As a result of her work, she helped transform the relationship between residents and the planning department, creating a feeling of partnership. Next, as a project manager for the City of Albuquerque, she worked with the Sawmill Community Land Trust to create the first CLT housing and economic development project in New Mexico. Later she worked with the Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) where she worked with rural affordable housing organizations to complete self help housing projects.

Most recently, she served as the Program Director of the Mission Asset Fund / Fondo Popular de la Misión. She worked with immigrant entrepreneurs to create worker owner cooperatives and also conducted research on the financial attitudes and behaviors of Latina/o immigrants. In 2007 she briefly served on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Community Land Trust (SFCLT). She is honored and pleased that the Board and staff has invited her to serve on the Board once again. She believes strongly in the mission of the SFCLT as well as the CLT and co-operative principles. As a Board member she will use her past professional experiences with CLTs and worker owner co-operatives to further SFCLT projects that ultimately allow low and income residents to realize their dreams of homeownership.

Luis Barahona (returning Board Member) - Current Board Vice President

Luis has been an organizer for the last seven years. He worked for five years as an affordable housing organizer in the Tenderloin, and now works as a community organizer with families in the Mission at the Jamestown Community Center. He has served on the land trust board for two years now and hopes to continue working with the land trust in fulfilling its mission. He truly believes that affordable housing is essential to creating a San Francisco for all, and believes in what SFCLT is doing to address this issue. In addition to being on the board he is also a member of organizing and outreach committee and the executive committee. He believes that the SFCLT is at an exciting stage in its organizational life, and would like to continue working in helping the SFCLT reach its goals for this year, and the future.

Benjamin Emery (returning Board Member) - Current Treasurer

Benjamin made his career in non-profit management (including affordable housing property management) and currently works as a financial and management consultant to non-profit organizations in San Francisco. Benjamin has been involved with housing coops for over 15 years as a resident, director and manager. He served on the Board of Directors for NASCO and NASCO properties, bi-national membership organizations that own, operate and support cooperative housing in the US and Canada. He studied social science in college at Michigan State University, and received his graduate degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago. Since then, Benjamin has completed coursework in accounting at the University of California. He joined the SF Community Land Trust (SFCLT) in 2004 to help create high-quality, resident-controlled, permanently affordable housing. Having worked in the affordable housing industry for many years, his interest is to find an alternative to the HUD and Tax Credit models currently used. As a housing activist, he wants to fight displacement, gentrification and real estate speculation. In 2005 he stepped-up his involvement with the SFCLT and joined the Board of Directors, his goal was to help partner the Housing Cooperative model with the Land Trust model. In 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 he was elected Treasurer of the Board of Directors, and has focused his work on upgrading the financial management and reporting systems for the organization.

Fred Lambright (returning Board Member)

Fred is the Principal at F Lambright Consulting, providing consulting services in the areas of affordable housing, economic development and compliance monitoring. Prior to starting his company, Fred worked for 12 years at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and his last assignment was as a Senior Community Investment Consultant. Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Fred has a son, Freddie Lambright III. He received a Bachelors of Science in Applied Economics, from the University of San Francisco. Fred enjoys traveling and has visited places in Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific.

Alice Liu (returning Board Member)

Alice lives in the Baker's Dozen, a project of the SFCLT and has worked collectively with her housemates for several years to prepare for becoming homeowners. She also works as a nurse practitioner in a homeless immigrant resource center and is active in a number of social justice and anti-oppression groups. Being on the Board is, for Alice, an extension of her commitment to the new land trust and to affordable housing in general. It's also a chance to share some of her experience of the sometimes scary, but often exciting work of trying to become homeowners collectively.

Tracy Parent (returning Board Member) - Current Board President

Tracy has been honored to be on the Board of SFCLT since October 2006. She serves on the Fundraising Committee, Executive Committee and occasionally attends Finance Committee meetings when necessary. Tracy Parent has been working in the field of affordable housing and community development in the Bay Area since 1992. She has over 15 years of fundraising experience and 6 years working with affordable homeownership. Currently working with the Affordable Housing Program of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, Tracy is skilled in the areas of financing and fundraising. Prior to the FHLBSF, Tracy was a bilingual homeownership counselor with the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA). Other prior experience includes working with Religious Witness with Homeless People, Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, and the Public Policy Institute of California. Tracy is a licensed real estate agent, speaks Spanish fluently and lives in the Bernal Heights neighborhood.

James Tracy (returning Board Member)

James is an organizer with the Community Housing Partnership in San Francisco. He has twenty years of experience working for housing rights and economic justice. During the nineties he partnered with public housing residents demanding a voice in the HOPE VI process through the Eviction Defense Network. This work altered local housing policy in regards to the revitalization of public housing. Working with the Coalition on Homelessness, he helped successful campaigns to expand tenant rights for residents of Transitional Housing and build new affordable housing on city-owned land. He is the co-founder and current President of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. Tracy has co-developed community organizing curriculum based on these experience called “We Are All Organizers”. He specializes in the complexities of alliance building and asset-based organizing. He has authored articles on organizing and social change for, Dollars and Sense, Shelterforce, Race Poverty and the Environment, and Maximum Rock and Roll. His book, the “Civil Disobedience Handbook: A Brief History and Practical Advice for the Politically Disenchanted” has been used by community groups and college classes alike. In the fall of 2010 he will release “Getting Ready for the Firing Line: Working Class Whites, Radical Politics and the Original Rainbow Coalition” on Melville House Publishing.

Bruce M. Wolfe, MSW (returning Board Member)

Bruce has been on the Board for 5 years. He is the Chief Information & Technology Officer for Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog, monitoring predatory marketing practices to youth. Bruce is a disability and workers’ rights advocate who serves on the City of San Francisco's Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, the SF Unified School District's School Enrichment Fund Advisory Committee, Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and DogPAC. From 1995-2004, he served on SF City College and SF State University student governments. As SFSU student body president, he helped create student cooperative housing and earned his BA and MA in Social Work with an emphasis on Social Development. He frequently supervises Social Work students at their internships. Currently, he a member of the Sierra Club, National Organization of Women, SF Electric Vehicle Association and National Assn. of Social Workers. He is the lead organizer for the city's Community Choice Energy program and citywide Internet Broadband Fiber Optic plan. In the past, Bruce has been a NY State peace officer for a child abuse protection agency and as an instructor of T'ai Chi and martial arts for over 30 years. In this next term, he plans to seek out new projects and properties to help extend our reach and capacity, and continue management of our website. The land trust model is the last vestige against evictions for many renters in the city, provides a level of vacancy control and permanency for our many low-income, disabled and senior residents.

Steve Woo (returning Board Member) - Current Secretary

Steve currently works for Tenderloin Neighborhood Development as a community organizer, organizing low-income seniors, immigrants, and formerly homeless tenants to achieve grassroots change. Current campaigns are CPMC/Good Neighbor, neighborhood food justice, and a complete count for the 2010 Census.

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SFCLT Board Members Represent in New York City

San Francisco Community Land Trust Board members Alice Liu and James Tracy were featured panelists at the "No More Housing Scams" conference at Hunter College (NYC) on March 27th. The conference brought together both Urban Studies academics and grassroots housing activists to explore issues of land reform and social justice in the global city. Participating organizations included Picture the Homeless, the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, and The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence. The conference was sponsored by Hunter's College Center for Community Planning.

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Thank you Tom Wetzel

All of us at SFCLT would like to thank Tom Wetzel for his many years of hard work to building this organization. Tom has been involved in the Columbus United Cooperative project from the beginning and was a member of the SFCLT board since it was first incorporated in 2003. He has worked as a writer and college teacher and some of his contributions to this organization have been in writing and editing, and in giving many community presentations for the SFCLT.

During the past decade Tom's political activity has mainly been focused on housing, land-use and public transit politics. He did community organizing at the time of the big eviction epidemic in his neighborhood in San Francisco in 1999-2000, working with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition. Some of the people involved in that effort then decided on a strategy of gaining control of land and buildings by helping existing tenants convert their buildings to limited equity housing cooperatives. To do this he worked to build the San Francisco Community Land Trust of which he was president for two years.

Tom stepped down for the Board of Directors this March.  Thank you Tom for all your work, your vision, and your dedication to just living and working conditions for working class and poor people.

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Extended Member Benefits with City Car Share

City Car Share has extended benefits for all SFCLT members until the end of 2010.  Any SFCLT member who is current with their membership dues can access $30 of driving credit with City Car Share.  Please contact Jamie Spector to get the promotion code for this member benefit.  You can reach Jamie at 415-399-0943 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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CLT Homes Help Build Assets

Individual homeownership has long been considered the favored strategy in the US for building individual assets -- the foundation of the “American Dream.” However, the recent foreclosure and credit crisis has revealed the extreme risks associated with individual homeownership and mortgage financing, especially among low-income communities. The San Francisco Community Land Trust’s combined community land trust/limited-equity housing coop model provides the opportunity for low-income households to receive the benefits of homeownership with much lower up-front costs and less financial risk and with a more gradual, more patient, and more secure return on equity. This research paper, by Rick Jacobus and John Davis, explores the potential for growing assets through shared-equity homeownership in ways very similar to the SFCLT’s approach.

To read this article, "The Asset Building Potential of Shared Equity Home Ownership", click here.

 

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