Bayview-Hunter’s Point Communities Fight “Revitalization”

By Leticia Miranda Dec 18, 2009

Local Bayview and Hunter’s Point residents are trying to fight off Lennar Corporation, a luxury homebuilding enterprise, from building new posh condos and apartments that would displace hundreds of mostly poor and low-income residents from their long-time homes. Lennar is the biggest homebuilder in California based on revenue and units built, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. After gentrifying parts of Los Angeles and Vallejo, the corporation set its eyes on San Francisco and now owns a majority of the city’s undeveloped land. Community members led by POWER (People Organized for Workers’ Rights) are trying to push Lennar out of the Bayview Hunter’s Point, a neighborhood that has historically been the home to mostly poor and low-income Black and Latino families. Lennar, with the full backing of the city’s Redevelopment Agency, is planning on building a business and recreation district right in the middle of an old shipyard in the Bayview Hunter’s Point neighborhood. Redevelopers and city officials call it a "superfund site," the EPA’s term for an "abandoned hazardous waste site." Not only are they building over a toxic waste site to build luxury condominiums, apartments and pricy restaurants, but their plan doesn’t include a plan for proper clean up of the site, transportation for residents or protection of five sacred Ohlone burial sites on the land, according to an organizer with POWER. The city hearing on the Environmental Impact Report has been extended to January 15. POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) is planning to testify against Lennar’s Environmental Impact Report before the January 15 end date. Check out this short film below about Lennar’s take over of the Bayview and Hunter’s Point neighborhoods.

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