News & Info Newsletters Summer 2010 Newsletter
Inside this issue:
SFCLT begins work at the Midtown Park Apartments
Save the Date: Community Congress
SF Mourns the Passing of Rene Cazenave
A Piece of History: The First CLT
Summer 2010
SFCLT Begins Work at the Midtown Park Apartments
This May, SFCLT began a two year collaboration with the SF Mayor's Office of Housing and the Midtown Park Apartments in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco. The Mayor's Office of Housing is contracting with SFCLT to conduct organizing, outreach and training activities with the residents and the Board of Directors of the Midtown Park Apartments to assist the residents there to make decisions about the future of their housing development. Built in the 1960's as affordable rental housing for Western Addition residents, the Midtown Park is currently owned by the Mayor's Office of Housing. The Board and many residents at Midtown are eager to pursue cooperative ownership as a way to stabilize their housing forever.
SFCLT is pleased to announce the addition of Annette Lewis as the newest staff person at SFCLT. Annette has begun working as Community Organizer with the Board and residents at Midtown Park Apartments. Annette brings over twenty years experience working with an affordable housing cooperative, Diamond View, in Diamond Heights of San Francisco. Having lived in the SF Bay Area for over forty years, Annette has a deep commitment to this city. She recently retired from a twenty year career in education and is excited to work for more affordable housing cooperatives in San Francisco. She has been a leader in her cooperative, Diamond View, for over twenty years and will bring her wisdom and experience to her work with the Board and residents at Midtown Park.
Annette commented, "My experience with coops began with the conversion of 58 units in the Diamond Heights area of San Francisco. This was a unique experience for me and the residents, and some 20 years later we are doing well and have gained a wonderful reputation within the city as being an outstanding coop. I look forward to working with the San Francisco Community Land Trust and helping to make history once again with the Midtown Park conversion." We are excited to be working with Annette and the resdients at Midtown Park!
Save the Date: Community Congress 2010
New Deal for the City - Community Congress
August 14-15, 2010
Join in building a progressive agenda for housing, economic development, health & human services, and transit. Open to all. More information to follow.
San Francisco Mourns the Passing of Rene Cazenave
On June 29th, San Francisco lost a true warrior for social and economic justice with the passing of Rene Cazenave. Rene Cazenave was the co-founder of the San Francisco Information Clearing House and the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO), which provide technical, information and advocacy assistance to San Francisco community-based organizations involved in progressive community development and empowerment of lower income residents. A Vietnam-era Navy veteran, Cazenave dedicated himself to economic and racial justice fights upon discharge.
He served on the board of Directors of Senior Action Network and Community Housing Partnership. Cazenave cut his political teeth combating the displacement of the Western Addition and other communities facing forced redevelopment. He was also a co-founder of KPOO radio, a community-based radio station serving the Western Addition/Fillmore area.
Mr. Cazenave is a graduate from the University of San Francisco with a B.S. in International Economics and a Masters in Community Development and Public Administration.
To read more, see this obituary in the July 7th edition of the SF Bay Guardian:
http://www.sfbg.com/2010/07/
A Celebration will be held for Rene Cazenave
Saturday, July 31st, 2 PM
Fromm Hall (Corner of McAllister and Parker Ave.) University of San Francisco
(behind St Ignatius Church) MUNI access to Fromm Hall, USF
5 Fulton (Fulton and Shrader)
21 Hayes (Fulton and Shrader)
31 Balboa (Turk and Parker)
33 Stanyan (Stanyan and Fulton)
A Piece of History: The First CLT
While we work to expand and grow the San Francisco Community Land Trust, it is important to remember the rich history that we are building on. The Community Land Trust movement is the result of a century of innovations, thinking, writing and experimentation in alternative forms of land tenure. From emerging industrial communities in England in the early 1900's to rural India in the 1950's to African American communities in the deep south of the United States in the 1960's, the model that came to be known as a community land trust is an example of putting radical politics to practical results. These politics question land ownership and an individual's relationship to their community. It seeks to find ways of combating poverty by changing land ownership structures to favor both the community's common good and the needs of low income families.
The E.F. Schumacher Society website states "The first community land trust was formed in 1967 in Albany, Georgia by Robert Swann and Slater King, seeking a way to achieve secure access to land for African American farmers. The movement has grown to include over 200 community land trusts throughout the US and is widely understood as the best model for developing permamently affordable homeownership opportunities in regions of escalating land prices."
The partnership of Robert Swann and Slater King was a powerful merging of grassroots leadership, vision, theoretical foundations of land reform and economic justice, and practical skills in home building. John Emmeus Davis writes in his recent book, The Community Land Trust Reader, "By the time of their initial meeting in 1964 both (Swann and King) had begun to shift the focus of their thinking and activism, asking themselves 'What comes next?'. Both were looking for ways to move beyond the 'protest movement' to what Ghandi called the 'constructive movement'. They both had reached a point in their lives where they were grappling with questions like 'how are the gains of struggle to be secured' 'how is a new society to be built within the shell of the old?'". (Davis, 2010)
The result of these questions was what became the first community land trust in the United States. With the aim of supporting African American farmers gain permanent access to rural farm land, Swann and King sought to create a secure basis for economic livelihood and community. With support from the National Sharecroppers Fund, Robert Swann and Slater King, a cousin of Martin Luther King, Jr., developed New Communities, Inc. in Albany, Georgia. Their Articles of Incorporation describe New Communities, Inc. as "a nonprofit organization to hold land in perpetual trust for the permanent use of rural communities." They used a model that included individual leaseholds for homesteads and cooperative leases for farmland. The group purchased a 5,000-acre (20 km2) farm in rural Georgia, developed a plan for the land, and then leased it to a group of African-American farmers. Their original legal documents have been tested and refined since the 1960s, and hundreds of Community Land Trusts now exist across the United States, with many others in the planning stage. "The perseverance and foresight of that team in Georgia, motivated by the right of African-American farmers to farm land securely and affordably, initiated the CLT movement in this country." (Wikipedia)
It is fitting to remember this history as SFCLT begins working with the mostly African American residents at the Midtown Park Apartments in the Western Addition to assist them in researching cooperative ownership of their development. As so many African American families are leaving San Francisco, it is crucial that we work together to create permanently affordable housing for this generation and those to come in the future.
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