How San Francisco erased a neighborhood

[Applause] it was the night of August 4th 1977 thousands of protesters gathered in San Francisco and formed a human barricade around this building to protect its residents police are on their way now police are on their way it was about eleven o'clock and some inside person called us and said they must be doing something that eviction is probably gonna happen hundreds of police in riot gear forced their way into a condemned hotel in San Francisco today demonstrators formed a human barricade but it did not prevent police from using clubs and night sticks their orders evict the last of the people living there [Applause] for nearly ten years this building known as the International Hotel had been at the heart of a historic battle for fair housing in San Francisco this is not just a ordinary building you know what was battles were fought right on that it housed hundreds of Filipinos who fought for their right to have a place to call home in a city where they lived for decades what happened that night changed the community and the shape of the city forever [Music] while it's now a part of Chinatown this area used to be Manila town one of the country's first Filipino American communities but it wasn't your typical immigrant community it was made up of mostly men and that stemmed from a relationship between the US and the Philippines that ran deep after a brutal war over a century ago the u.s. colonized the Philippines and controlled up until 1946 during that period two major waves of Asian immigration occurred in the u.s. first Chinese and then largely Japanese migrants came to the u.s. to work in mines factories on railroads and on farms but over time both Chinese and Japanese immigrants faced racist backlash and were eventually barred from entering the country that created a demand for cheap labor so the u.s. turned to a new group Filipinos in the 1920s and 30s the prospect of financial security lured over 100,000 Filipino men to the US when the US took over the Philippines they were American nationals they felt like they were living the American dream but the reality of it was that they were extremely exploited and wages were really low exploitation had many forms one of the most damaging repercussions for Filipino men settling in the US was isolation US policies kept the workers from bringing their families over and also stopped them from marrying white women they did build roots I call it social castration but this was a way of again trying to keep them under control and being able to abuse their lives and that's where the gender imbalance begins many of the Filipino men settled along the west coast in San Francisco about 30,000 of them started forming a community here on a ten block stretch right along the spine of Chinatown on Kearney Street it was the start of Manila town outside of this area Filipino workers found it hard to find any affordable housing and that was by design the city at large was strictly racially segregated as soon as they crossed the borders of Manila town like here past Broadway and into surrounding white communities they were shut out and denied apartments and even if you walked two blocks that way you could get beat up even killed they had white seal antique groups that would hunt them down trying to take them out of town that forced Filipino men to stay within the boundaries of Manila town but despite the constraints they found a way to build a home for themselves by the 1950s they were part of an entire generation of aging men who lived out their lives in the u.s. they were called the Monde own generation ma Nome is is a Filipino word it's a sign of endearment and respect to an older person in San Francisco's Manila town many of the mono mended up living in residential hotels like this one called the International Hotel or I Hotel the AI hotel housed nearly 200 people largely Filipino men but some Chinese men and women too they lived in confined spaces often in poor conditions even so the AI hotel and Manila town provided a sense of community and belonging to the residents there were parlors barber shops places where people could play pool just places where they could just call home being around with we called kebab lions like a brother so then the hotel's become these places were it's like family to them but their neighborhood was caught in the middle of a changing San Francisco San Francisco has consistently been called one of the most expensive cities in the world to live with the influx of tech companies in recent decades it struggled with massive affordable housing shortages but the problems of urbanization didn't start with Silicon Valley it started in the 1950s with what was called the Manhattan ization of this heart of downtown the city wanted a Wall Street of the West and to make room for it they came up with a master plan for the redevelopment of San Francisco this plan for urban renewal called low-income neighborhoods blighted districts and slums and asked for these areas to be razed and rebuilt along modern lines in the Western Addition and Fillmore districts the city evicted around 12,000 largely black and Asian American residents and here in the South of Market area roughly 4,000 people were evicted the residents of Manila town right at the border of the growing financial district knew they'd be targeted next in 1968 the owner handed the tenants of the eye hotel their first eviction notice the real estate company wanted to demolish the building to make space for a parking lot but the tenants resisted Filipino community leaders and businesses joined the fight along with a growing number of local activists Estella was one of the young activists on the front lines these are pins from 1968 to 1984 and that's a plug lava means fight for international hotel after months of protests the owner and tenants agreed to a new three-year lease in 1969 but it was a temporary fix by the 1970s redevelopment efforts moved further and further into Manila town it nearly swallowed the entire community and threatened the I hotel once again all the other hotels where many of the other elderly lived were already being demolished they were already being evicted so it was like domino and then some in some ways in 1973 the owner of the eye hotel sold the building to a developer from Thailand and that reignited the eviction battle for the next four years inside the court room and on the streets protestors fought three more eviction notices Asian American groups religious groups labor rights groups and dozens of others all came together in a show of solidarity for low-income housing but for Filipino residents it was also a fight to claim what little space they had in a city that was trying to erase them in the summer of 1977 the tenants of the I hotel were served another eviction notice on August 3rd a news reporter leaked information to tenants and supporters that the police might actually be coming that night the police and the Sheriff's Department were gathering it was still a threat but yet we thought maybe this is it because if they're gathering somewhere and it's in the middle of the night it's probably going to be a surprise I was the president of the International Tennis Association I felt that a lot of us felt fear but I had to calm people I had to tell them that this is what standing up means we've met what was said well we're not going to move you don't have to carry yourself the sheriff's are just simply going to have to drag us out of this building they're going you know that's on the night of August 4th tenant leaders set off a red alert and over 2,000 protesters gathered on Kearney Street many formed a human barricade locking arms outside of the eye hotel while others were stationed inside with the remaining.i hotel tenants when the police arrived on foot and on horses they launched into the crowds with batons I was upstairs inside the building and so was email and we also locked arms inside here when I started hearing that of the horses that's when I knew that it was something was afoot it was really scary we had mattresses on the windows and on the doors people were saying we won't move we won't move [Music] [Applause] eventually using a fire truck ladder the police entered the building through the roof and we hear shouting and screaming from upstairs but because everything is closed off it's kind of like muffled once inside the police were confronted by more protesters including a meal just be enough dragged down the stairs dragged down the street after making it through the crowd of protesters the police used axes to open up the doors to rooms in the end to put a stop to this rampage the tenants decided to stand down they walked out one by one each elder accompanied by an activist by the next morning the streets were cleared out Emile's face was plastered all over the national newspapers this is the actual photo of an eviction I mean the next day he sees in the New York Times and Boston Globe I mean you see this all over people carried from the building were young demonstrators who had occupied some of the vacant rooms tenants were rushed out of the building many of them so quickly they left everything behind but the national attention was too late it couldn't change what happened that night or its repercussions the fight to save the last remnant of Manila town was shut down and the I Hotel tenants were homeless the city claimed to have set up replacement housing for the tenants but there were no such accommodations that was a lie it wasn't a place for them to go they were kicked out into the street we had to find makeshift places where they could sleep some of them collapse and I think what really saw more than anything is how brokenhearted they were because their family you know their community was destroyed the I Hotel remained vacant for nearly two years before it was demolished tenants were scattered throughout the city and Manila town was destroyed we don't have the presence in the city we've been here over 100 years but we're overshadowed we kind of still remain very invisible in 2005 nearly 30 years after the original battle for the I hotel Manila town and Chinatown activists accomplished a decade's long effort to build a new AI hotel today it contains 104 units of dedicated affordable housing for senior citizens this building carries the legacy of its community and its struggle one that still resonates in a city with a deepening affordable housing crisis the failure of the city always was that they failed to build affordable housing decent housing it's the failure of a system that prioritizes property rights over human rights I feel hopeful because I know that there's a new generation who's thinking about these things but it's only possible if you have that idea that housing is a human right [Music]

Channel: Vox

Views: 1,081,888

Rating: 4.9069424 out of 5

Keywords: san francisco, international hotel, filipino, gentrification, Vox.com, vox, explain, explainer, Emil De Guzman, Estella Habal, urbanization, housing wars, affordable housing, housing crisis, Manhattanization, Manong, Manong generation, Curtis Choy, Fall of the I-Hotel, residential hotels, senior citizens, city planning, hotel, Manilatown, Philippines, Filipino-American, history, documentary, manilatown, san francisco hotel, san francisco history, activism, san francisco protest

Id: tcsdglJFT0M

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/napdragon421]

Wow did not even know a Manilatown existed there having lived near Chinatown for 30+ years...you learn something new everyday.

[u/rauh]

I used to frequent Grasslands across the street. I'm sad to report that San Francisco is still erasing neighborhoods using similar methods.