http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/kalw/detail?entry_id=69416
By Ben Trefny
August 04 2010
For many San Franciscans, what happened with the International Hotel
and Manilatown became a symbol of the urban casualties that can come
with redevelopment. But for the Filipino community, whose members
occupied most of the units in the original I-Hotel, the event has
been a lasting inspiration to fight for affordable housing and
preserve their neighborhoods.
That's the case for Roy Recio, whose grandfather and father walked up
and down Manilatown's Kearny Street in the days of the original
I-Hotel. Recio is the president of the Manilatown Heritage
Foundation, an organization that promotes equal access for Filipinos
in the U.S. The foundation also supports the International Hotel
Manilatown Center, a community space that is on the ground floor of
the new I-Hotel senior housing complex.
KALW's Ben Trefny sat down with Roy Recio to look back at the I-Hotel
protest, and at how it shaped the fight for fair housing today.
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ROY RECIO: Well, you know part of it had to do with the activists at
the time really. Their game-plan strategy wasn't really there to
lose. They weren't thinking about a plan B. And so, during that time
it was really tumultuous, as you can imagine. But it really set the
tone to actually game-plan and strategize to actually be part of the
program, be part of city hall politics, be part of a growing
coalition of likeminded activists and progressives who really thought
about preparing your elders for housing opportunities and getting
them on point to try and maneuver through the complex San Francisco
housing scheme, which is really kind of tedious because, as you know,
it really depends on your income.
BEN TREFNY: Before the I-Hotel, it seems like there was a lot of
disappointment by the activists in how they expected the city to
respond. When the call was made for evictions, they seemed very
surprised that the powers that be in the city, the authorities, ended
up taking such violent action on them. Were things different then, up
to that moment, and did they change?
RECIO: Well, part of it was also a coming of age, a social movement
per se, of the Asian American voice through such struggles as San
Francisco State's student strike as well as the third world
liberation front movement...
TREFNY: All in the 70s...
RECIO: Right, so in the 70s you have to look at in the big picture in
regards to the anti-war movement, gay rights uprising, as well as
with the culmination of the Jimmy Jones movement and obviously the
Harvey Milk movement. People were really upset, you know. People were
really concerned, but also shaped the character and face of San
Francisco saying that we're not going to stand for people to be
discriminated against as well as being racist.
TREFNY: But right at that moment, I mean, all these activists were
kind of beaten down at the I-Hotel, so they didn't win the battle.
RECIO: Right, I can say that's true. But there were also other
movements at the time where people were beaten down - a prelude to
the future generations that you have to really fight for what you
believe in, and you have to lay your body out on the line and struggle.
TREFNY: So what did people learn then from that? How did they learn
that they needed to fight for affordable housing in San Francisco?
RECIO: Well, we just always talk about the I-Hotel being the mother
ship of all land use issues and fighting for what you believe in is
important. But we also saw the growing need of elders - particularly
you know who weren't recognized by the V.A., for example - who were
World War II veterans or who weren't getting social security or
Medical or anything like that.
TREFNY: So did we see a lot more sustainable, affordable elder
housing units come online in San Francisco in the years after the
I-Hotel went down?
RECIO: We did. So, we saw the development of the financial district
obviously on Kearney Street, but then those elders and then the
patterns of Filipino migration also went south of Market. So there
was an organization called Tenants Owners Development Corporation,
now it's called TODCO, and they had fought for low-income housing.
TREFNY: We're talking with Roy Recio. He's the board president of the
Manilatown Heritage Foundation. So with a lot of different parts of
town that have single room occupancy hotels, that have people living
on top of themselves - in Chinatown, for example - what do you, as an
affordable housing advocate, what are some of your target areas where
you're actually seeing differences made or you think that more
attention needs to be paid specifically?
RECIO: Well, that's a struggle. I think that what's happening is that
people are moving out of San Francisco. You can see that really in
the census, which will be coming out soon. You know as far as the
Latino, the African American community, the Filipino community moving out.
Ironically, the Chinese community is growing. And we're just seeing
in housing advocacy that when we have a housing unit that's coming up
online - for example, we have one right now on 7th Street and it's
going to be above the South of Market new health care center there.
We have 40 units, roughly, for family housing, and we're going to
have well over 5,000 applicants for those 40 units, to give you an
idea of the breadth of what we need to do to accomplish fortified
housing for those in the working class communities.
TREFNY: As an affordable housing advocate, when you're looking at
places like the I-Hotel, which is primarily Filipino Americans, if
you're in Chinatown and you're looking at a lot of Chinese Americans
or recent immigrants, what role does cultural preservation play in
your fight to retain affordable housing?
RECIO: Oh, it's a big struggle. One thing we're fighting for in the
South of Market is to try and designate SOMA as SOMA Filipinas, which
is really a launching point for Filipino immigrants to come to. They
feel like there's a plaza there, if you will, because there's the
Filipino education center, there's a veterans' equity center. There's
united players, and there's also other service agencies like the
South of Market Health Care Center to really address the culturally
and linguistically appropriate needs of the community. So there's an
infrastructure there we're trying to get recognized. We can do it
socially, but when we talk about trying to preserve it physically,
it's really challenging.
TREFNY: So when you look back to August 4, 1977, what do you think
about when you think about the International Hotel?
RECIO: Well, one of our staunchest advocates and fellow who lived at
the I-Hotel, who just passed three years ago, his name was Bill Sorro
and he's a legend in San Francisco affordable housing circles. But he
knew that San Francisco was a challenging place to be. He also knew
it had a lot of racist overtones as well.
For housing advocates, the struggle continues. It'll always continue
underneath the capitalistic structure that we live in. When we talk
about the new I-Hotel, too, you know, people lost lives there. People
lost livelihoods. And we lost a lot and to say that because it got
resurrected that we're ok with it - we're not ok with it because we
lost too much there. And all we have now is just a hotel that should
have never been torn down. And we have a Manilatown Center that's
full of love, but yet it's not enough to really measure how much we had lost.
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