02/06/2026
IN THE BEGINNING:
June 23, 2000 (SF Examiner)
Activists preserve affordable housing
By Kathleen Sullivan /OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
It's easy to see why 83-year-old Baoyan Chan calls the Notre Dame
Apartments "our dream house."
When she walks through its wrought iron entrance, Chan can stop and sit
awhile, choosing one of the green benches on a manicured lawn shaded by
pine trees.
If it's an early Tuesday or Friday afternoon, Chan meets other residents
for coffee hour in the recreation room.
In the evening, she reads aloud articles in Chinese from Sing Tao Daily to
friends who never learned how to read.
The Notre Dame is home, its residents an extended family.
In recent years, Chan and the other elderly residents of the Notre Dame
feared the owner would sell the building and they would lose their
subsidized homes.
Now tenants, nonprofit groups and The City have united to preserve the
Russian Hill building as affordable housing.
The unique deal they hammered out is likely to save nearly 800 apartments
and residential hotel rooms - at the Notre Dame and four buildings in the
Tenderloin - for The City's low-income, disabled and elderly residents.
Chan had only good things to say about the Notre Dame, where she has lived
for 11 years.
"Everyone wants to come here," Chan said, speaking through translator Anna
Chang, an organizer at the Chinatown Community Development Center. "This
is the best."
Last week, Security Properties Inc. agreed to sell the five buildings for
$28.3 million to nonprofit housing developers - through a deal negotiated
by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.
The agency will buy the land and assign building rights to nonprofit
groups, which will use public and private money to buy the buildings, said
Sean Spear, a development specialist in the agency's affordable housing
preservation program.
The Redevelopment Commission is scheduled to vote on the purchase
agreements at its Tuesday meeting.
A Security Properties executive declined comment, saying the company
doesn't discuss pending transactions.
Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, Security Properties had received mortgages with very low
interest rates on the buildings, in exchange for providing affordable
housing for low-income families.
Residents in these so-called "project-based Section 8" buildings paid 30
percent of their income in rent: the federal government picked up the
balance.
But Security Properties' long-term contracts have expired, and recent
changes in federal law allowed the firm to renew year by year - or opt out
of the program entirely.
Warner Wilson, a disabled resident at Maria Manor, a residential hotel on
Ellis Street that will be purchased under the deal, learned about the
situation 21/2 years ago.
"It was a big wake-up call that we were in jeopardy of losing our
housing," said Wilson, 53.
The Redevelopment Agency's Spear said 17 buildings subsidized by HUD in
San Francisco are considered most at risk to drop their status as
affordable and become market-rate housing.
But, if all the pieces fall into place - and participants warn there are
complex financial deals still to be completed - the five buildings owned
by Security Properties will rest securely in nonprofit hands in about six
months, Spear said.
The deal represents a hard-won victory for the Redevelopment Agency, which
has been negotiating with the owner for about two years, and residents,
who have been working behind the scenes with nonprofit groups and tenant
activists to save the buildings.
"It's a huge, huge victory," said Rob Eshelman, a tenant organizer at
Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco.
"Here we are, in the face of a housing crisis in San Francisco and the
greater Bay Area, fending off conversion of affordable housing to
market-rate rentals," he said. "We're preserving permanent affordability
and making residents partners in the ongoing operation of these
buildings."
Eshelman said one word sums up the efforts of the elderly and disabled
tenants who fought for their buildings: heroic.
The 14-story Alexander Residence looms above Eddy Street in the heart of
the Tenderloin.
Patrick Murphy, who has lived in the Alexander for 61/2 years and is
president of its tenants association, said residents persevered despite
age, infirmities and illnesses.
"We're all medicated," said Murphy, who is disabled, as he glanced around
the lobby of the 73-year-old building. "Most of us don't want to be
bothered."
But in the face of losing their homes, they acted.
"Residents have been really involved in the fate of this building," Murphy
said. "We have 70 to 80 people showing up at our general membership
meetings."
Two years ago, the Alexander's residents won a $25,000 grant from the
Redevelopment Agency's Preservation Grant Program, which funds efforts to
educate and organize tenants in HUD-subsidized buildings.
The grants were designed to help tenants prepare for a possible change in
ownership or rental assistance, to evaluate the condition of their
buildings, and to determine if it were financially feasible for tenants or
nonprofit housing developers to buy their residences.
With the grant, the Alexander's tenants hired a project development leader
from the nonprofit Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., which hired
architectural, financial and legal consultants to advise residents, Murphy
said.
Murphy, 50, said he became a tenant activist because he wanted to help
shape the fate of the building - and give tenants a hand in running it.
After two years of intensive work, though, he's ready to take a break.
"If this deal goes through, I can go back to my easy cha he said.
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Copyright 2000 SF Examiner
