Hunters View redevelopment struggles to hire locally

In the 1940s, San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point was home to one of the most important shipyards on America’s West Coast. The shipyard employed nearly 20,000 workers. They were mostly African-American migrants who came to San Francisco, lured by the Navy’s promise of steady work. The buildings they lived in were meant to be temporary – but after the war ended, they became permanent parts of the landscape.

People kept living in them even after the shipyard closed in the 1970s, and the neighborhood became one of the city’s poorest.

Now, San Francisco wants to redevelop the area for market-rate housing. And that means demolishing some of those old buildings. New construction means new jobs, but residents are wondering just how many of those jobs are for them. Deia de Brito reports.

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DEIA DE BRITO: It’s a Saturday afternoon, and residents of the Hunters View housing project are gathered around a fold-out table, learning about new job trainings in their neighborhood. Hunters View is slated for a $450 million redevelopment project, which means lots of new construction.

SHAMAN WALTON: There’s no guarantee of jobs. We just guarantee good training and we work hard to train people and place them.

That’s Shaman Walton, executive director of Young Community Developers, the organization handing out information. YCD is one of several groups trying to help neighborhood residents get prepared for those new jobs.

WALTON: There’s definitely an extra push. We’re highly aware of the opportunities that will be available in this community, particularly in the next six months to a year.

JASON YOUNG: That’s prime real estate. That’s one of the best views in the city.

Jason Young has lived in Hunters View his whole life, and he says the area isn’t only known for the view.

YOUNG: You had drugs and gang banging. From there it got to the point where it is now. The slums – the purposely forgotten-about side of town until they want to do some beautification.

By 2015, city officials want Hunters View to be completely redeveloped as a vibrant mixed-income community. They’ll rebuild the public housing – but they’ll also build hundreds of brand-new market-rate homes.

At a groundbreaking ceremony last spring, former mayor Gavin Newsom promised residents jobs – and a neighborhood no longer isolated from the rest of the city.

GAVIN NEWSOM: Two hundred sixty-seven units will be replaced. Hundreds of additional units will be built with the highest level of green building standards. We will be focusing on creating jobs for residents here at Hunters View.

Jason Young got one of the first jobs. He spent most of last October in an orange vest, work boots and a hardhat, working right across the street from his public housing unit. 

YOUNG: Digging trenches, setting boxes, putting in conduits and back-tying electricity...

Young is lucky: he’s one of about 20 Hunters View residents – out of a total 62 San Francisco workers who were hired to start tearing down the old public housing. They made some progress last fall, but since then things have moved slowly.

Around the same time Young was out working, dozens of other residents waited in the community center at the top of Hunters View to meet with a representative from Urban Strategies. It’s a new group that connects people with construction training programs.

MONICA SMITH: I want to be a part of whatever is being reconstructed to rebuild it.

Job seekers like Monica Smith responded to signs announcing the upcoming construction at Hunters View.

SMITH: That’s what I want to do – that’s why I’m here. I really need a job anyway, but that’s why I’m here.

Terrence Silas Junior was also looking for work, his dreadlocks neatly tied back.

TERRENCE SILAS JUNIOR: You know, just looking for a job, trying to get hired, trying to find a place to get employed at. They say the residents get the first pick. I’m a resident and I was wondering how that was going.

Residents are supposed to get first pick, but there are only a few jobs available. So far, more than 100 people have shown interest. Kelly Dearman, the senior project manager with Urban Strategies, says people who want jobs will have to get trained soon. And in order to start training, they have to meet a lot of requirements.

KELLY DEARMAN: You have to test clean, you have to have a GED, and you have to have an ID and a social security card.

Dearman says for a lot of residents, these are pretty big hurdles.

DEARMAN: What we are doing is ensuring that people can meet those requirements, trying to direct our residents to GED classes. We have people coming here to address the drivers license issue and getting that reinstated. We offer a weekly support group to deal with the drug and alcohol issue, so that when these jobs become available they should be the first ones online.

That’s what jobs seekers are hoping too – they say they’re eager for work, but not quite sure how to translate that enthusiasm into employment.

For Crosscurrents, I’m Deia DeBrito.

Deia de Brito is a reporter at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Tune in for our second part in the series on the challenges of local hiring at Hunters View, tomorrow at 5 p.m. And share your thoughts and stories on our Facebook page.