Tag: Midtown Tenants’ Association

Three years into our campaign for self-management and ownership and we have achieved our first goal: Demolition of Midtown is off the table! We have had both verbal and written agreement from both Mercy Housing and the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) that they are no longer planning to demolish any of Midtown’s six buildings. This is because last year, head of the MOH Kate Hartley was forced to agree that there would be no demolition without majority tenant support.

It was Saturday, June 30. We were gathered in the courtyard of Midtown Garden Apartments. Bobby Webb carefully removed his sax from the black bag and took the stage. It didn’t take long for us to realize we were in the presence of a master virtuoso, immediately demonstrating his versatility. In retrospect, Bobbie (Spider) Webb may have been playing his own epitaph on that Saturday at the end of June. Less than three months later, Bobbie Webb left the world stage he had graced so brilliantly.

The Midtown Tenants’ Association would like an opportunity to respond to the op-ed published in the BayView that discredits the struggle for equity and self-management that Midtown tenants have been engaged in over the past four years. We have experienced broad support from the wider community concerned with gentrification and the displacement of Black and working class people from San Francisco. Contrary to what the op-ed claimed, living at Midtown under Mercy Housing is not “much better now.”