The Real Bayview-Hunters Point:
Everything the media has told you is wrong – (part one of three parts)

Ken McCarthy

An affordable home with a view, a backyard, and a place to park your car, in a quiet, safe community with friendly neighbors. The impossible dream if you live in San Francisco, right?

Not if you live in Bayview-Hunters Point. That’s right, Bayview/Hunters Point!

Far from being the desperately poor, “inner city ghetto” that San Francisco’s media portrays it as – an image Willie Brown & Co. cynically exploited during the stadium campaign – Bayview-Hunters Point, the last stronghold of San Francisco’s black community has:

* the highest percentage of home ownership of any district in the city
* one of the lowest crime rates
* no shortage of employers

In short, it’s a great place to live – except on days when there’s a football game.

What homeowner in his or her right mind would want to see this road packed with daily mall traffic?

Even worse, it is not unheard of, especially in black neighborhoods, for the city to take property by “eminent domain.” And if there was ever a candidate for eminent domain, it is the dozens of houses lining the access roads to the stadium/supermall.

The Fillmore, once the city’s third largest commercial district and largest Afro-American neighborhood, was “disappeared” this way not long ago as part of a program of “urban renewal.” In the space of a few short years, hundreds lost their homes and businesses.

Bayview/Hunters Point is one of the most stable communities in San Francisco. Espanola moved here in 1948 and raised her family here. She’s owned this home since 1968. Debra has lived in the neighborhood for all of her 41 years and she’s raising her family here as well. Neither has any desire to leave.

Why should they?

Unfortunately, my camera could not do justice to the stunning views the homes in this neighborhood enjoy.