Broken Legacies: Ongoing Impacts of Racist “Urban Renewal”

Guest Blog Written by Member Liz Miller

Tiffany’s, since 1837. Levi Strauss & Co, since 1973. We Americans love legacy.

Imagine if these slogans included: “Serving you barbecue since 1946, even though the City demolished our restaurant!!” Or “Live music since 1953, despite City seizure of our property!”

This unjust destruction and seizure really happened to thriving San Francisco businesses. They did not survive, and so we don’t see such slogans. The San Francisco government destroyed nearly a thousand businesses and almost 5,000 homes from the 1940s through the 1970s. Those affected remain largely uncompensated.

Leola King came to San Francisco from Los Angeles in 1946. In the Fillmore District, she bought land and built a barbecue restaurant which she owned and operated. It was a smashing success, open from 10AM to 4AM daily. It continued for only one year before the San Francisco City Government forcibly closed her business and removed her from the premises under the so-called “Urban Renewal” program. These programs took place around the country in the middle of the 20th century.

After generations of government and financial institutions conspired to keep Black families near toxic dumps, out of most neighborhoods - away from public investment, bank credit, jobs, or pay equality - governments used eminent domain to remove “urban blight,” which the governments and financial institutions themselves had created with these racist policies. As Stanford University’s Law and Policy Lab has put it, officials in San Francisco and many U.S. cities adopted “urban renewal” programs specifically to evict lower-income and African American families. Leola King was just one of tens of thousands of those affected in San Francisco.

In 1953 King opened the Blue Mirror Lounge, which quickly became famous for hosting such jazz luminaries as Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne. In 1962, San Francisco once again seized King’s license and evicted her. They did the same to another club she started in 1964. King was later forced to declare bankruptcy and lost her San Francisco home as well. While King eventually received money for the land she had bought, she was never compensated for the equity, equipment, or revenue she had lost - nor was she offered any relocation assistance.

Owning real estate is another form of legacy familiar to Americans. Families who were able to buy affordable homes during the 1940s and 1950s had the opportunity to see their investments grow, and to pass the resulting wealth onto future generations. But this opportunity for legacy was not available to all.

Today, buying a new home in the Bay Area is a luxury available only to the extremely wealthy. In the 1940s and 50s, however, white people earning average incomes such as teachers or construction workers could buy them. During that time, African American families were explicitly forbidden from buying into many Bay Area communities.

Even worse than this: where African Americans were allowed to buy property and live, they were disproportionally targeted for eviction and demolition of their own property during the “urban renewal” movements of the 1940s through the 1970s.

Hubeline Jasper’s family was one of the thousands of people that the San Francisco Government evicted. Jasper’s family received from the city a “Certificate of Preference” which was supposed to help them with alternative housing. San Francisco never honored this certificate however, and to this day has rejected her claims for recompense.

Each of us needs a stable home, and deserves the opportunity to provide for future generations. It is important that we acknowledge those who were denied that opportunity. Even though these practices occurred years ago, the systematic discrimination broke legacies that might otherwise have benefitted current generations.

KQED described what happened in The Fillmore District:

“Jazz clubs were shuttered. Businesses torn down. Two-lane Geary Street turned into a giant expressway, Geary Boulevard, slicing through the heart of the neighborhood. Residents were forced out of their homes, often without much warning or adequate compensation.”

Think about that for a moment. To estimate the value that was lost, consider the following: real estate in the Fillmore sells conservatively for around $1.1 M per family today. In 1950, the typical California home price was $10K. Adjusted for inflation, that $10K translates to $130,000.

It may be hard to believe that back in 1950 the typical California single-family home sold for the equivalent of $130,000 in today’s money - but that’s what it was.

Now consider the average family that was unjustly evicted from the Fillmore between roughly 1948 and 1968. From the figures above, it follows that each of these families could have eventually received $1.1 million minus $130,000 - or $970,000 - if they had simply been allowed to keep their homes and continue their legacies. This of course does not include any additional money that could have been made with investments and re-selling of property along the way. It also does not take into account that, according to The Guardian, over 80% of families were not compensated in any way.

Estimates vary, but according this KQED article, 20,000 people were impacted by the Fillmore evictions, or between 4,000 and 5,000 families. This means that, based on the above, over $4 billion in today’s money was siphoned from African Americans and funneled to the government and others who profited from the new construction. This applies to The Fillmore alone. Similar programs occurred in cities all over the nation, and so the systemic oppression is multiplied yet again.

I think about this every time I see a slogan like “Since….!” And I think everyone should. Not because the legacies that have endured don’t deserve credit. They do. It’s rather because that opportunity should have been available to all of us. The fact that it wasn’t continues to negatively impact lives today. Leola King died in 2015. Neither she nor her surviving family have been adequately compensated for her immense contributions to society and culture - much less the value that she built in her businesses and her home. Nor has Hubeline Jasper or her family been made whole.

San Francisco should re-start efforts to seek out the families affected by government seizure and destruction of property. It should also issue reparations, which then-Mayor London Breed shelved in 2023.

San Francisco should also welcome more diverse families to its communities by building housing of all kinds - including subsidized-affordable and public housing. In most of San Francisco, it is illegal and/or bureaucratically extremely difficult to build dense housing. These restrictions have their basis in keeping out Black families, whom government and financial institutions had already economically repressed for many generations with lower pay, unequal investment of services, and denial of opportunity and of loans. You can read more here and here about how making dense housing illegal has a racist legacy of keeping Black families from moving into communities. Finally, please also read YIMBY Action’s proposed solutions for undoing many generations of racist housing policy.

San Francisco should work to repair the past legacy of removing and discriminating against Black families, and should continue to acknowledge the ongoing harm caused by these legacies it broke. We need the City to legalize and streamline dense housing in the Fillmore and throughout the city.