30,000 units of housing by 2020 and James Baldwin looks at race relations in 1963 San Francisco

Last December, SF Mayor Ed Lee announced a Mayoral Executive Directive ordering all city departments with jurisdiction over housing permitting to prioritize housing construction, particularly for affordable housing, and his state of the city address in January called for 30,000 units of new housing by 2020 with 1/3 of them built as permanently affordable. Come hear about the effort  and the new policies that have been put into place. I know you have questions, so please stay until the end when the panel will take inquiries from the audience.

I will be moderating and the panel will include:

  • Jeff Buckley / Senior Adviser on Housing to Mayor Ed Lee
  • Tom Hui / Director, San Francisco Department of Building Inspection
  • John Rahaim/ Director, San Francisco Planning Department

Also, I urge you to watch this public television documentary on race relations in San Francisco filmed in 1963 as author James Baldwin is toured around the city as Redevelopment of several city neighborhoods is underway. Here is part of the description from Vimeo:

KQED’s mobile film unit follows author and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he’s driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community. He is escorted by Youth For Service’s Executive Director Orville Luster and intent on discovering: “The real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present.” He declares: “There is no moral distance … between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham. Someone’s got to tell it like it is.”

Take This Hammer from SF Bayview on Vimeo.

By Mark

Mark is an architect in San Francisco.