Residents, community groups and faith leaders will hold a rally for justice to protest the proposed sale of the 104-unit Frederick Douglass Haynes Gardens’ apartment complex. Residents are facing possible eviction or relocation from their longtime homes. The rally is Sunday, 6:30 p.m., at Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister St., San Francisco.
The board of directors for the nonprofit running F.D. Haynes Gardens at 1049 Golden Gate Ave. has gone rogue, threatening to sell a complex that was built specifically for affordable housing and to displace our city’s most vulnerable residents.
Gardens residents, many of whom hold Section 8 vouchers, were for months told their apartments would not be sold, but were recently informed their homes are indeed for sale. Their units were marketed to buyers as potentially worth $3,000 to $7,000 in monthly rents, an impossible amount for current tenants to afford.
We are stunned that the nonprofit, installed by Third Baptist Church nearly 50 years ago specifically for the purpose of creating affordable housing in the neighborhood, could resort to this level of secrecy and greed. On Sunday, we will make it loud and clear that this board will no longer be able to work in the dark while it sells out its own people.
Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, pastor of the Third Baptist Church and president of the NAACP San Francisco Branch, will lead the vigil. Among the speakers will be Rev. Dr. Frederic Douglass Haynes III, pastor of Friendship Baptist West, Dallas, Texas, and the social activist grandson of the late revered pastor Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes Sr., for whom the complex was named. Dr. Haynes will join in our growing call to end the greed that has permeated a nonprofit that has lost its way.
Joining the rally will be residents from Freedom West Homes, 820 McAllister, along with other tenants and representatives from the Chinatown Community Development Center, Council of Community Housing Organization Committee and Save the Mission, the group behind a ballot measure to launch a moratorium on market-rate housing, so that the face of our city and its unique neighborhoods are not changed overnight.
To learn more, contact Rev. Dr. Amos Brown at dramoscbrown@thirdbaptist.org.
