SF Tenants protest at Rick Holman's Home as part of 'Eviction Free Summer'

Tenants facing eviction from the historic 17 Reasons building by developer and landlord Rick Holman protested outside of his home in South Park in San Francisco this Tuesday. Since the start of the eviction process, Holman has used a variety of tactics such as illegal lockouts of tenants, harassment from security guards, as well as a web of surveillance systems against those paying rent at the building that he wants gone. During a recent block party against gentrification in the Mission District, Holman also worked closely with the police to ensure that the building would not be "occupied" by protestors, and also issued an 'unlawful detainer' to residents inside on the day of the event. How many times have we all had landlords come to our homes, walk around, issue demands, and threaten us? Landlords hold great power over our lives and also take massive amounts of money out of our hands that we make by our labors and put it into their pockets. Thus, it's great to see people taking the fight to their doorsteps and raising a ruckus in their bourgie neighborhoods. Often, most people are too afraid to stand up to the cops, the landlords, and the developers, but we need only keep in mind that are all united in our experiences and our desire to live freely. Hopefully, this is just the start! According to the group, Eviction Free Summer:

Our first action was a smashing success!! With a crowd of over fifty, we loudly took over the narrow SOMA street of South Park, where landlord Rick Holman does business. Neighbors and park dwellers looked in curiosity as tenants from Holman’s building  on 17th St. at Mission (and their supporters) took to the mic to give Holman a piece of their minds. The street reception was mixed, but many passers by were more than willing to take a flyer asking them to call Holman directly. Holman is a local investor, who recently purchased the 17th Street property. Since the beginning of the eviction process Holman has used intimidation tactics, such as locking out his tenants, hiring private security, and installing hidden security cameras.

The Fog City Journal posted an article on the protest which states:

Packing the upscale South Park neighborhood with protest signs, loud chants of “No more evictions!” and flyers calling for landlord Rick Holman to “stop evicting San Francisco tenants,” more than 50 tenants and supporters launched their “Eviction-Free Summer” campaign Tuesday to put landlords, developers and speculators on notice that they will defend tenants who are being pushed out.
 
Fed up with the epidemic of evictions plaguing The City, tenants and activists have organized the Eviction-Free Summer campaign to support tenants fighting evictions while pressuring landlords to stop displacing city residents.

Today’s target: landlord Rick Holman, who is evicting a group of tenants at the historical “17 Reasons Why” building at 17th & Mission. The tenants, many of them lifelong Bay Area residents, are part of In The Works, Rincón, and Food Not Bombs collectives—groups that organize a weekly soup kitchen and support community-building projects in the Mission. Holman, a partner at Asher Insights, Inc., a company described as “security brokers and dealers,” owns several properties in The City and across the Bay and has a history of evictions and tenant conflicts.

Holman recently bought the historic Mission District building and immediately began trying to drive out the tenants, both through legal eviction and by changing locks, installing cameras, and hiring uniformed guards to harass them.

A member of one of the collectives, fearing reprisals if he gave his name, said: “It’s time that San Franciscans push back and let landlords know that enough is enough. We’re not selling out, we’re not surrendering, we’re staying right here in San Francisco. We’re going to fight to defend our spaces, our homes and our city from those who only want to make profit.”

Angel, a member of the In The Works Collective, added, “We’re a part of what makes San Francisco a beautiful, flourishing city. Shame on people like Rick Holman who force us out for the sake of profits.”

The tenants from 17 Reasons learned Tuesday that their eviction settlement conference had been delayed until July 24, and their trial date pushed back to July 29—allowing them more time to pressure Holman to end the evictions.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, longtime housing rights activist, added: “Tenants and homeowners are fed up with the evictions and foreclosures happening all over the city, displacing us and our friends and neighbors and we’re not going to take it anymore. We’ve taken enough.”

Mission Gears Up for 'Eviction Free-Summer': Marches, Graffiti and Meetings

Residents march through Mission on history tour of Ellis Act evicted properties.

Graffiti outside of Adobe Books

Tonight while on a walk in the Mission District, I came across this graffiti outside of Adobe Books on 16th Street which reads, 'Fuck Liz Claiborne.' The message is a direct reference to the landlords who pushed out Adobe Books, raising their rent from $4,500 to $8,000 before finally pulling the plug on the business, a mainstay in the Mission. The upscale clothing store, 'Jack Spade,' is slated to take the place of the used bookstore. Support for the Adobe Books Collective has been high, with it even raising up to $60,000 in funds to help pay it's rent. Esta Noche, a bar about a block away on the same street is also threatened with eviction as well. The graffiti comes after a recent march through the Mission which was a history tour visiting various businesses that had been closed and homes where Ellis Act evictions had gone through. View a march route with stops of interest here.

People gather in Adobe Books

Since the Anti-Gentrification Block Party in the Mission last month, talk about the start again of a movement against evictions and displacement has been simmering. The SF Bay Guardian recently published a map showing Ellis Act evictions that have taken place in the neighborhood over the past year - one that is at a record high. The numbers are clear. Rent in most cases have gone up, sometimes doubling. In working class areas, Ellis Act evictions have displaced those with rent control and entire neighborhoods have changed while thousands have been forced to leave the city. From the Guardian article:

Ellis Act Evictions in SF

In 2011, San Francisco rents were 34 percent higher than they had been 2003; by 2012, they had jumped to 53 percent higher, according to a market analysis prepared by The Concord Group. According to San Francisco Rent Board data, 1,757 eviction notices were filed from March of 2012 to February of 2013, reflecting a 12-year high. It's as if there's no longer any room for the working class — the people who, for example, keep the city's number one industry (that's hospitality and tourism, not tech) functioning. It's terrifying. Neighborhood after neighborhood is losing affordable rental housing as landlords cash in on soaring prices. And there's a huge human cost.

In another recent article about projected development and growth from local elites, the Guardian points out how much developers and city planners are already planning on the city growing, and us leaving. As the article states, "Regional planners want to put 280,000 more people into San Francisco — and they admit that many current residents will have to leave."

Someone used to live here.

With the gentrification pandemic reaching such a high point and more and more people starting to get involved again in thinking about resisting the current wave of evictions - a group is calling for a meeting to plan an 'Eviction Free-Summer' this Saturday at the historic Red Stone Building. In a sick Ironic way, the plot right behind the building is set to be turned into condos. Facebook event is here. The text reads:

MAKE 2013 AN EVICTION FREE SUMMER!

We invite you to come out and be a part of this critical first meeting of a citizen driven anti-eviction league, whose purpose is to directly confront the serial evictors taking us away from our homes.

During the meeting, we hope to bring out a lively and diverse crowd ready to take on some serious strategizing. The purpose of the group is anti-eviction home defense, which can mean a lot of different things (phone calls, direct action, petitioning). We can't wait to hear your ideas!

Join us in getting people reeved up for and excited for this new group! Bring your family and friends, and share this invitation widely. And, most importantly, come to the REDSTONE BUILDING
2926 16th STREET AT CAPP,
3rd FLOOR
from 1pm to 2:30pm
ON SATURDAY JUNE 8TH

Police Pour Into 16th and Mission during Anti-Gentrification Block Party

Police Shut Down BART Entrance; Pour Into Mission during Block Party against Gentrification

Kids space at the plaza.

On Tuesday, April 30^th, police were stationed across Valencia, in cars, on foot, walking the beat. No, they weren’t involved in a massive Sit/Lie sting, they weren’t out looking to find the next Kenneth Harding evading a fare on Muni, they were trying to, “Prevent another May Day riot,” as they told a friend of mine who they questioned about their presence. Another person that was interviewed stated that they were questioned by police, “Why were they wearing black?” Last year, marching from Dolores Park, anarchists wearing black with masks to cover their faces from police and video cameras, attacked affluent shops and police along Valencia Street, seen to many as the epicenter of the hipster invasion of the Mission and an extreme symbol of gentrification of what used to be a largely lesbian enclave in a working-class Latino neighborhood. 
 

Eddie Falcon

Several weeks after the riot, I sat down with a friend that had grown up in the Mission and asked him what he thought of the riot, which quickly was understood as an attack on gentrification based solely on targets alone. “I thought it was fucking great,” he remarked. “Fuck the caviar Left and their denunciations, everyone I know understood it exactly what it was, a riot against gentrification in the area.” Flash forward to present day, several weeks ago I stood in a donut shop on Mission Street, staring at a poster for an upcoming block party against gentrification. An older white man noticed me looking at it and I asked him his thoughts were. “Have you been to Valencia lately?,” he asked me. “It’s fucking disgusting. Those people just sit there on their phones. They’re destroying the Latino culture here.” It’s clear that the police agreed, and they chose very clearly what side they are taking. In the aftermath of the riot, affluent business owners were furious that the police, who have a substation on Valencia, seemed to be powerless during the assault on their property. Several months later, anarchists again rampaged in the neighborhood, attacking the police station, businesses, and banks after SFPD shot a young man close to 16^th and Mission. Judging from the police presence that was stationed on the street on Cinco de Mayo, May 5^th, police weren’t pulling any punches this time, or should I say, letting anyone else throw them. 

BART Station was shut down.

Walking up to 16^th and Mission on May 5th, I was not prepared for the amount of police. I’ve been going to protests and demonstrations in the San Francisco bay area for over ten years. I remember the marches after 9/11 decrying the invasion of Afghanistan that now continues via Obama’s drone strikes and somewhat secret “kill-lists.” The mass marches against the Iraq war (round 2), which continued Clinton’s string of extended air strikes and sanctions which left hundreds of thousands dead and shut the city down when the war started. I handed out flyers to bus drivers and riders against MUNI fare hikes; I took the streets against the police killings of Kenneth Harding and when BART tried to shut down limited cell phone and internet service after people raged following the police murder of a homeless man. I’ve seen the police in this city do a lot of shit, but for a block party? 

View from the plaza.

In the run up to the block party, internet blogs such as ‘Uptown Almanac,’ played up the fact that there would be ‘Google Bus Piñatas,’ instead of the fact that this would be the first public demonstration in the Mission District specifically against gentrification in several years. One person even emailed the group asking, “Where can I buy a ‘Google bus piñata’ for my own party?” Reading the reports on Uptown Almanac and others that did cover the block party seemed to focus solely on this aspect: the Google bus piñatas, so much so that they miss the whole story of the event, the police repression that it brought, and what made it interesting. According to the Almanac blog, only 30-40 people attended, which is way off the mark. By around 1:30pm, about 50 people had gathered in the plaza, and throughout the 3 hours that the block party went on, up until about 4:30PM or so, over 150 people had passed through the space and enjoyed the food, speakers, and music. It seemed that what media was there, was mostly only interested in a photo op of the Google bus smashing. At the plaza, people had placed banners up throughout the square, in both Spanish and English. Banners read, "No Condos in the Mission," "Stop Evictions and Displacement," "Ellis Act is Racist," and "Save the 17 Reasons Building." Various groups had tables, including anarchist distros, the newspaper FireWorks, SF Needle Exchange, Homes Not Jails, and the Housing Rights Committee.

SFPD

At around 1PM, the same time that the block party was to start, police were built up around the 17 Reasons building, which was recently bought by a new landlord who is currently trying to evict some of the tenants. The landlord, Rick Holman, was close by, chumming it up with the cops, and also stationed private security which checked id’s at the building and placed surveillance cameras around it. One of the spaces there, In the Works (ITW), which is a ‘Community and (Anti) Art Space,’ was served with an unlawful detainer. During the block party, large amounts of police were stationed all around the building, perhaps in their minds, to prevent an occupation of the building. Clearly, there was a level of coordination between the landlord and the police in trying to keep the block party from happening and also trying to attack ITW at the same time. Police kept a strong presence around the building throughout the day, as well as across Valencia Street. Police were trying to attack the block party and hinder people from participating in it.  

Tommie Mecca

The block party itself drew in a lot of people, both from the street, who were already in the plaza, and who had come just for the party itself. Dee Allen, a long-term anarchist and poet who has published several works of poetry was the MC for the event. Several people performed and also spoke. Among the first people to perform was Tommi Mecca, of the Housing Rights Committee. Tommi unfortunately played several acoustic songs about gentrification. I say unfortunately, because his song with the chorus that goes, “Yuppie, yuppie, yuppie, stole my pad, yuppie, yuppie, yuppie, bad, bad, bad!,” is still in my head. Tommi’s recent editorial that ran in The Guardian, sums up the spirit of much of the entire event. 

“Where is the building-by-building organizing of renters? Where is the street outreach in every neighborhood? Where are the blocked doorways of those being forced out of their apartments by pure greed? Where are the direct actions against the speculators and investors who are turning our neighborhoods into a monopoly game? Where is the pressure on the Board of Supervisors to pass legislation to curb speculation and gentrification rather than approve tax breaks for dot-com companies? Where is the pressure on state legislators to repeal the Ellis Act and other state laws that prohibit our city from strengthening rent control and eviction protections? Every moment we wait, more people are displaced from their homes, more neighborhoods become upscale, more small businesses are lost….It's time to take back what's left of our city.”

Dee Allen’s opening speech was also on point: 

"Since the 1990’s, we have seen thousands of people displaced, evicted, pushed out, and gentrified from the Mission and in the greater San Francisco era. Using tools such as the Ellis Act, landlords have been able to remove whole families from buildings and then covert them into condos – making millions. In recent years, these evictions have only gone up, not down, with the Mission one of the hardest hit neighborhoods. Local businesses have closed due to high rents, while others have been forced to declare bankruptcy and shut their doors. AIDS patients, those on a fixed income, senior citizens, and the working poor are especially hard hit, and many have become homeless.”

POOR Magazine

Also speaking at the event were representatives from POOR Magazine, Esperanaza Gardens, a community garden which is facing destruction from developers who want to turn the area into condos, as well as Homes Not Jails, who weekly meets to find housing for homeless people through the illegal act of squatting vacant buildings. Having gone to several of their meeting, I know that every week they go out, seeking to place in vacant homes homeless people who are interested in starting and keeping squatted spaces. I especially enjoyed the talk given by Kevie, a San Francisco native, who talked about the history of gentrification in the city, as well as background info on the developers who recently bought the 17 Reasons building. Performing at the event where two anarchist hip-hop acts, MC Lovelle and Eddie Falcon of the 40 Thievez. I’ve seen Eddie perform at 16^th and Mission several times, the last time being outside of the part of the anarchist bookfair several months ago and Lovell at a graffiti festival in Modesto last year. Both of the artist’s game has improved a lot, and the crowd definitely loved both. I talked with Falcon after the performance, and asked him what the local 16^th and Missioners thought. “I got a lot of support. A lot of people asked for cd’s,” he responded. Many of Falcon’s songs reference the Mission area. Eddie is a long term member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and became an anarchist after returning to the US following tours of duty in the army in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

MC Lovelle

Food not Bombs also was on hand, doing a fine job of feeding the gathering with homemade tacos and donated pizzas from the worker-cooperative Arizmendi, which is part of the NoBAWC group, which includes worker owned businesses ranging from ‘Mendi which slings pizzas, to the union strip club, ‘The Lusty Lady,’ made famous from the documentary, ‘Live Nude Girls, Unite!’ Food not Bombs, which has a rich history in San Francisco, and also helped spawn Homes Not Jails in the early 1990’s, serves free food in the 16^th and Mission plaza several days a week.

By around 4:30pm however, the police had had enough. Just as the last Google bus piñata was being dramatically smacked down by a large wooden stick and Dee Allen was delivering a fiery set of poetry, the gas on the generator run out. Police then stepped in and stood in front of the generator – and also confiscated the gas can. When asked why they had also decided to shut down part of the BART station, they replied, “Someone threw a bottle at us.” It was clear that the police were done with the event and were ready for it to come to an end. As event organizers tried to squirrel away sound system before the police could take it away as “evidence,” around 20 police officers spilled into the plaza, in effect, shutting the event down. What was saddest of all was that talking with people that were there at the event, the open mic portion was about to start and many people who came to share their thoughts did not get to do so. I wish that more people had come to the event, and that even more would have stayed. It’s clear that the high numbers at the start of the block party kept police at bay for the first several hours of the event. Unfortunate as it is that the open mic did not happen due to police harassment, still a clear message was articulated to the Mission neighborhood on May 5^th: condos are coming in, gentrification hasn’t stopped – it’s gotten worse. Ellis Act evictions aren’t a thing of the dot-com past, they have continued and this year, reached their highest yet. Clearly the police presence in the neighborhood and also around the 17 Reasons building is a clear reminder that the state understands and supports the side of wealth and power. They are organized and have made their plans. Those that stand with poor and working people have got to start making theirs. 

Food Not Bombs serving food.

It’s important to keep in mind that displacement and removal of people – and resistance to that displacement and removal in the Mission District is nothing new. Ohlone people fought and died in what is now the Mission District to stop colonization and being forced onto Missions. Radical labor organizers and militants have called the mission home for decades, using the neighborhood as a staging ground for action and resistance, including the San Francisco general strike. Since the 1950’s, people have clashed with everyone from BART to yuppies to stop the flood of upper-class residents and developers in the neighborhood. Using and collection of tactics from marches, to arson, to postering, people have fought the removal of thousands of poor and working people from their homes in the Mission District and struggled against Ellis Act evictions and landlord greed. What happened on Cinco de Mayo isn’t anything new, but it is part of a history of resistance against something that poor and working people have been fighting against for a decades. 

Read more on the history of resistance in the Mission here and recent history of the fight against gentrification here.