Children swing from a green water hose knotted around blue jungle gym beams at the center of the quad on Middle Point Road. Zulaikha Khalil sits talking with a friend on cement steps nearby and looks over her shoulder mid-sentence to check on her son Deshawn. A group of six young men in over-sized sweatshirts and black jeans play Black Jack — placing their bets on an overturned trashcan in front of rows of ground-level apartments that surround the courtyard. It’s still a couple hours before the sun sets, and Jackie Page is hunched over on a concrete bench facing her black metal front door and the playground. She removes her nostril tube to light a brand-less cigarette. Inhaling she says, “My generation got along better. We fought amongst each other—but it was less.”

“Hey Jackie, how you doin’ today?” asks an older neighbor peering down at her with blue-ringed dark eyes.

“Oh-I’m goood, Lee,” she responds squinting up at him from her seat, her gaze leveled at his waist. “Whatchu think about the kids runnin’ around these days?”

“There’s a lot-a youngsters who’s are not seeing twenty one, twenty two, or twenty three,” Lee answers while smoothing out his white curly-cued black beard. “Today it’s blacks killing blacks, I call it the BKKK: the Black Ku Klux Klan, because they’re killing each other. I’m forty-seven years old— I’m lucky, but that still doesn’t mean I’m safe. I don’t even like to stand at the bus stop.”

“NO. I don’t feel safe,” interjects Page. “We’re all targets— sssittin’ducks” –PAH. PAH. PAH. Three gunshots sound in the distance like the pop of a bottle rocket.

“Time-to-go,” she says grabbing her cord and pink pillow, and scurries into her corner apartment.

“Let’s go De-shaawn. Now,” yells Khalil. She grabs his hand and they run down the cement steps. The betting men look around asking, “Where you think that’s coming from?”

PAH. PAH-PAH. As three more shots echo throughout the courtyard moms and kids hurry indoors. The green and blue jungle gym is left empty.

“Kheee, hhhhoooo,” Page inhales and says, “It’s everyday, any given moment.”

Page and Khalil live in the bug and mold-infested Section 8 housing in Hunters View, on the southeastern hilltop between the old Navy shipyard and the recently shut down PG & E power plant. They live in the poorest part of Hunters Point, where the land is plagued with toxins that were dumped into the soil during WWII. Bayview Hunters Point is a neighborhood that’s been neglected— where 80 percent of the city’s waste is dumped, where death and gang violence make the headlines, and kids don T-shirts that read “R.I.P.” below faded silk-screened photos of boys with a macho smirk. But today, San Francisco’s Redevelopment of Bayview Hunters Point is a master plan in the works to clean up the district and make up for years of health and housing neglect.

The MUNI T-line paves the way to renovation— old buildings are being demolished along Third Street and gated empty lots show images of future apartments. The T-Train stops short at Evans Street, which winds through the PG&E power plant up to the old Navy shipyard that surrounds the Hunters View neighborhood.

The shipyard land, which covers 500 acres of land, is where the Lennar Corporation and the Navy is cleaning one section – parcel E – and they’re deciding whether to cap the area or excavate it. On a different section known as parcel A, Lennar Corp. is laying out the foundations to build 1,600 diverse – market rate, affordable, and mixed income – homes on two million square feet, which will include space for green-supporting businesses. Lennar hopes to attract people of diverse incomes and is also thinking of building a San Francisco 49ers stadium on the land.

Hunters Point thrived in the 1940s with many of the residents working on the shipyard, but after 1974 the shipyard closed down and people were left jobless. Today the unemployment rate is more than double the citywide rate, and according to a 2004 study by Greenaction, an environmental justice organization, 40 percent of residents have an annual income below $15,000. So most Bayview residents won’t be able to move into the new homes. However, the homes will attract new residents of high and average incomes.

Some residents fear that relocation comes with renovation. Will renovation bring diversity and make crime go down, or will people move out permanently in the process?

Original residents of predominately African American communities like Fillmore and Western Addition have been pushed out because of rising property taxes following redevelopment. Is Bay View Hunters Point on its way to being gentrified, too?

Under Hope SF, a venture to better public housing, the John Stewart Building Company is in the initial stages of planning the rebuilding the area where Page and Khalil live. The project, which is expected to start in 2009, proposes to tear down and rebuild 267 dilapidated units in Hunters View. The 550 residents of the 175 occupied homes will be relocated to vacant on-site apartments.

“Maa-mi. C’mere,” yells Deshawn Khalil to his mother as he flings the bathroom door open. Clear water spills over the porcelain toilet seat to the floor. This is the third time it’s happened in the past year.

“Omigod!” says Khalil as she gets the plunger and pushes down and pulls up to clear the toilet hole. But it’s too late, she and her son stand two inches deep in shit-smelling liquid that has already made its way into the living room, kitchen, and their bedrooms.

“I always have to get rid of a bunch of clothes and this time I had to throw out furniture,” she says referring to a brown and orange couch with yellow flowers.
Outside, the air is still thick from the sun’s afternoon heat, and broken glass crystals shine on the dry dirt. Khalil sweeps the gray water out onto her front porch and mops it up. By dusk, she closes the door and sleeps with the windows open.

Zulaika Khalil is excited about this project because she’s tired of the flooding and the mold in her home.

“Uh-huh, I’m ready. My unit is terr-i-ble,” says Khalil who lives with her son and daughter.

Khalil understands why people don’t trust builders, but she is not worried that she will be displaced because they’re putting it in writing.

“A lot of people up here don’t trust these companies that want to build ‘cuz of what’s happened in the past,” she says.

Community Activist Espanola Jackson does not trust the developers. She says that only 30 percent of the original tenants were able to return to their homes in the Bernal Dwellings project on Cesar Chavez and 26th Street. According to Jackson, a friend had to draw her name out of a lottery in order to stay there.

“I don’t know about that specific case, but the housing in North Beach is fully occupied, crime has decreased, and we were able to move 50 percent of the former residents in,” says Margaret Campbell, Hunters View Project Manager. “The other 50 percent were relocated to other housing, and a small percentage moved outside of the city."

“They want our property, from Third [street] to the bay, they want this to be a new community. That’s why they want to tear us down,” says Espanola Jackson. “They’re trying to tell us that after years of ignoring us and our health woes – our bad housing – to trust them.”

It took years for the City to catch up on public housing maintenance, and it took over 50 years to shut down the power plant that emitted 600 tons of pollutants per year when it was open. San Francisco's lack of support has cost it the community’s trust. But this distrust is unnecessary, says Campbell.

“We’ve made the commitment in writing, if they are in good standing they are guaranteed the right to return and pay the same rent. We will replace 100 percent of all units with three guiding principles: they have to be in good standing with lease, have to pay rent on time and not get involved in criminal activity,” says Campbell.

Likewise, the San Francisco Housing Authority (S.F.H.A.) works with developers to engage the community.

“We work very hard with residents to relocate them off the property and keep them up to date. In the past we gave them a choice of other assisted housing, public, or Section 8 where they can pay up to 30 percent of their income. This enables people to choose from a bigger pool of units,” say Barbara Smith, the S.F.H.A. Housing Development and Modernization Administrator. According to Smith, approximately two-thirds moved to other public housing in the city. And two or three households per development bought homes in the outer bay area.

Hope SF is Mayor Gavin Newsom’s local model of Hope VI, which was created in 1992, providing funds to dismantle and rebuild public houses. In San Francisco, that included houses and apartments in North Beach, the Valencia Gardens and Bernal Dwellings projects in the Mission district and Hayes Valley in the Western Edition.

The $325 million Hunters View project will include affordable housing as well as market-rate and mixed-income housing which will include a total of 690 units. Of that 690, an estimated 300 market-rate for-sale units will be built to provide financing for the Section 8 homes. They will also build 80 affordable rental and 80 affordable for-sale homes. John Stewart Developers want to attract first-time buyers of households who make approximately 60 to 80 percent of the Hunters Point Bayview median income. They believe that the affordable rates will not only attract Hunters Point residents, but also reel in outside buyers and renters.

The cost of living, crime and unaffordable housing in San Francisco contribute to the African American population moving out of San Francisco to neighboring Bay Area cities like Antioch, Oakland and Richmond. Based on census tract data from 1990 to 2000, the African American population decreased at double the rate as the white population. As of 2000, the African American population is 7.8 percent of the total San Francisco population, which is less than the Asian (33.1 percent), Hispanic (14.1) and white (49.7) populations, according to a San Francisco African American Out-Migration Study, which SF State Africana studies professor Dr. Antwi Akom, and student Michael Levesque are working on.

“Out-migration is rooted in the historical marginalization of the African American community and culture. If the community still feels that racism is very much alive in San Francisco, then economic redevelopment may not be the solution to the declining African American population,” says Levesque, sociology and research assistant on the project.

Hope SF plans to create a diverse housing market; but it may send people packing.

“By relying on the goodwill of corporations to give you your home back, you’re making people on the ground level – the poor people, the most marginalized people – structurally vulnerable to the whims of corporate America,” says Dr. Akom.

Jackie Page grew up at the ground level. She had bronchitis from an early age, and in her 30s, it developed into asthma. Like most of Hunters Point residents, Page developed breathing and respiratory problems early on because of heavy pollution from the PG&E power plant, and the city’s polluted air blowing in from the west. Today, she uses an oxygen machine because her smoking makes her asthma worse. She is trying to quit, but she can’t always afford to buy the $40 pack of Nicorette with her Social Security check.

Page’s five siblings, and over fifteen nephews – too many for her to count – live in Hunters View. Her daughter Sharee Beard lives in the Jackie Robinson apartments just over the hill on Cashmere Avenue.

James Brown plays on the Soul and R & B classics station on the television in Page’s room. “I got ants in my pants and I want to dance. You hear that?” sings Page, sipping red Kool-aid.

Through most of her life, Page had a difficult time with depression, but she maintains a calm happiness. “I felt from an early age that I’m inhaling…I’m exhaling, I’m breathing in, I’m breathing out, but I’m not living. I look at my grandbaby Alsharee and she’s my inspiration. When she sleeps, she looks just like my daughter did,” she says.

Page sees hope in Alsharee’s eyes – the same hope and warmth that is taken away from community members like her. Her community is marginalized and placed in a category of dysfunction, when at the core she and her neighbors are raising families, acting, breathing – aspiring for something better.