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by Griffin Jones
Today was the ninth day an all-Black crew was denied work at a construction site in their backyard.
At 6:45 a.m. sharp on Sept. 24, a group of 12 men and women in hard hats and work boots gathered on the corner of Beatrice Lane and Espanola Street in Hunters Point. Some walked over from their homes around the corner; a few carpooled. They chatted, sipping from McCafe cups. They were ready to work.
An hour later, a dozen or so cars swooped into the tucked away street, carrying upwards of 30 workers from outside the neighborhood. The newcomers quickly got to work prepping the first three apartment buildings on Beatrice Lane for renovations.
Some in the group of 12 walked over to the site’s foreman to see if there was work. The answer, as it had been every day, was no.
By 12:45 p.m., the group dispersed.
Behind the renovation project is Related Companies, the corporation that, through a number of subsidiaries and partners, owns and manages the 597 units in Shoreview, LaSalle, Bayview and All Hallows affordable and Section 8 apartments in Hunters Point.
The renovations are long overdue. Critical upgrades had already been put off for several years, sparking protests and sowing mistrust between Related and residents, as reported by Mission Local in 2022.
Jeffrey Allen, vice president of Related Management, traveled earlier in the summer from Related’s headquarters in New York to talk with residents in a series of meetings at nearby Double Rock Baptist Church. In the meetings, Allen said that Related would be employing a percentage of people living in the properties to work on the two-year renovation project under the main contractor, Fremont-based Regency General Contractors.
To coordinate residential hire, Related brought on San Francisco Black worker-focused organization Aboriginal Blackman United (ABU) to team up apprentice and journeyman laborers. ABU works to get representation on crews all over San Francisco. They and the SF Hyper Local Building Trades Contractors Collective are typically the sole voices advocating for Black hires.
A project like this renovation could net an entry-level laborer over $80,000 a year — with the added security of two years employment.
But residents have been ready and waiting since Sept. 12, to no avail.
This morning, Jeff West, who grew up around the corner, stood bundled up along with the rest of the crew. Many had known each other their whole lives.
“I started out as a carpenter in 2007; now I’m a journeyman laborer,” he said, sipping coffee. Over the years, West, 56, has secured a few jobs in his home neighborhood — but only after prolonged petitioning like recent weeks.
Construction projects in Hunters Point have not been made easy for residents to join. West and the crew spend almost as much time strategizing and fighting for work that is legally theirs as they do working on the job site. It begs the question: why are they doing petitioning work that is federally required to be done by developers?
“We get the work eventually,” West acknowledged. “But it’s always this first.”
When the work comes, it’s rewarding. Every local job West has gotten, he’s worked on neighbors’ homes, which feels good.
“It makes a difference. Somebody coming from outside might not really care about what they’re gonna do. They gotta do what they gotta do. Say it’s a senior citizen here that I know. I’m gonna take special care of what I do, because I know who lives there.”
While low-income housing residents in the trades struggle to get consistent, high-paying work that lasts more than a year, Related Companies’ portfolio has grown to 50,000 affordable homes collectively valued at over $5 billion. Acquiring dilapidated homes for renovation has huge financial incentives for companies like Related.
A fellow local journeyman laborer drove up to get an application from Janice Smith, a lifelong resident and ABU organizer. Smith urged the young man to come back the next morning with his finished application.
“They tell us we will get to work tomorrow at 8 a.m.,” said Smith. “But they told us the same thing last week, and nothing. If they don’t let us tomorrow — we shut it down.”
Residential hire is a federal rule
Related’s four properties, along with the dozen or so others on the hill, were originally built in the mid-1970s, with around $40 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This was possible entirely due to the unrelenting work of Hunters Point matriarchs known as the Big Five, who traveled to Washington D.C. in 1973 to demand HUD fund better housing in their neighborhood to replace the blighted, decades-old Navy barracks they called home.
HUD brought in private companies to run the housing on the hill back in 1990, after letting the homes fall into deep disrepair. Now, the complexes are segmented off into ownership by a maze of companies, banks and state and federal funds. In other words: It’s messy.
Any HUD-funded project like this has a nationwide legal requirement called Section 3. The rule’s newest iteration states that 25 percent of total project hours for any renovation or new development must be done by Section 3 workers from around the city, and 5 percent of total project hours must be done by what they term “targeted Section 3 workers,” meaning, residents of the project.
So: a journeyman can, hopefully, work on a neighbor’s home and walk away with good money — at least temporarily.
It’s unclear if the current 30-odd workers toiling each day on Beatrice Lane are Section 3 or not. Related did not respond to requests for comment, and HUD wasn’t able to respond to the Bay View in time for the article’s publication.
As the day wore on, the mostly Spanish-speaking workers hauled loads and cleared debris from the Shoreview residences. Yoel, a worker born in Mexico, told the Bay View in Spanish that he and the others came from the Mission and southern areas of the city to work at the site.
“We’re just here to work,” said Yoel. “We need the money.” He added that he didn’t want bad blood with anyone, gesturing to the group across the street.
Maika Pinkston, another lifelong resident and ABU organizer, agreed that everyone needs work. But proximity matters, she said.
“They could be Black, white, Latino. But they should be living here on the hill, a part of the community.”
Related Management receives around $5 million in federal tax credits per property each year. That’s well over the $200,000 threshold for projects that qualify for Section 3. So, there’s no question they are supposed to be hiring residents.
Each city has its own system for keeping developers and contractors accountable to Section 3. But, a developer is only required to make “a good faith” effort to award Section 3 contracts.
In San Francisco, if a developer is found to be in violation, they pay a fee — maybe. That fee is determined by the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which is also responsible for enforcing Section 3. Unfortunately, the city’s Section 3 data only goes back to 2014. Before that? “Section 3 information was submitted by paper,” one OEWD representative stated in an email.
According to Benson Tran, an OEWD communications rep, it’s far less likely the city will force contractors to commit to local hiring for a renovation. “Rehab projects use small, specialized crews in phases, which limits the opportunities for new hires,” Tran wrote in an email.
But San Francisco can’t totally take the blame for what looks more and more like a nationwide lack of enforcement. A note on HUD’s website states: “The Section 3 Performance Evaluation and Registry System (SPEARS) is no longer active.” While other departments within HUD have absorbed the work, there is now no dedicated office.
In 2014, the New York City Comptroller audited the city’s housing authority for Section 3 compliance. It found that the rules had been egregiously ignored for decades. The housing authority denied all of the comptroller’s findings.
It appears Section 3 has faded into an idea.
So, the crew is used to waiting. “Sometimes it takes a month or two,” said West. “We’ll come out every day if we have to. We’ll barbeque in front of your house!” The others laughed.
Dominique Forks, 39, a fellow laborer and Hunters Point native, agreed that the crew will do whatever they need to keep each other motivated and engaged in the long haul.
“Everybody’s on the same page striving toward the same goals. We’re here and we have each other’s backs,” he said.
Wage theft, bad renovations: 2007
West recalled a situation with the previous property owner, Apartment Investment Management Company (AIMCO), which performed widely criticized renovations in 2007. One resident in her 70s returned to her home to find her new cabinets 9-feet high in the air after a renovation.
West shook his head. “It wouldn’t have been like that if we did it. We know she can’t reach that.”
Although residents on the 2007 project had been hired per AIMCO’s agreement with the city’s First Source Hiring Program — which is one way to prove good faith attempt at Section 3 adherence — conditions were not good. A lawsuit following the 2008 AIMCO renovations cited numerous accounts of racist practices and wage theft from residents and others hired for the project.
“They had us working as roofers,” remembered Rone, 39, standing next to West, his cousin. Rone worked as a laborer in the 2007 renovation and grew up on the hill.
“On paper, we were down as carpenters. And they were taking the pay off the top.” Roofers are typically paid more than carpenters on job sites.
On the same job, added Rone, “Some of the [Latino workers] were being paid cash. The supervisors would cash their checks and take their money.” In December 2007, Rone and 27 others in his crew, all Black and Latino, filed a collective lawsuit against AIMCO and several contractors. In 2011, Judge Claudia Wilken ruled in their favor.
The lawsuit details that contractors had openly pitted Latino and Black workers against each other — a common occurrence on and off job sites. Think: presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent assertion that immigrants from central and South America are “taking Black jobs.”
The state of community leadership on the hill these past few decades has been rocky, to say the least — fragmented by exhaustion, generational divides and handouts from developers. But the current players appear to be boldly working toward the common good of Bayview residents.
“I just want the right thing to be done,” said Pinkston. “I could give a damn about anything else.”
Griffin Jones is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. She formerly worked at Mission Local, the San Francisco Bay View and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She can be reached at griffinforrestjones@gmail.com.
