DATELINE–Southside

A group of Southside residents forms a coalition to screen wealthy prospective tenants who are forcing them out of the neighborhood.

“I’m a community-type person, I have a steady job and I’m interested in learning Spanish.” These are Bruce Landing’s closing words, spoken to a predominantly Latino audience that fills the gymnasium of Southside’s Earl Warren High School. By the time Landing sat down, another candidate was already at the podium, ready to begin her own presentation.

Landing’s five minute speech was the final step of an interview process that began when the 32 year-old software consultant decided to move to Southside with his fiance Jeannie Blanchard. The couple, along with some 40 other candidates, are competing for the chance to move into one of a dozen vacant residential units in the mostly working-class and Latino community of Southside.

Most of the candidates presenting their case at tonight’s meeting are white collar professionals in their late twenties and early thirties. They have agreed to participate in a four month long selection process that began with nearly 600 candidates. Despite a taxing schedule of paperwork, interviews and workshops, Landing and Blanchard consider themselves “two of the lucky ones.”

So far the couple has only had to pay a one-time $25 application fee. “Most of our friends,” says Landing, “are having to put exorbitant [real estate] broker’s fees on their credit cards to find a decent place in the city. What we’re doing is the only reasonable option.”

Though others may disagree with Landing’s logic, it¼s become apparent that there is no other alternative for anyone wishing to move into the Southside district. Only eight months ago, Landing and his fellow apartment hunters could have scooped up a spacious apartment in Southside by dealing directly with a landlord, management company or property owner. Not surprisingly, it was money that did most of the talking in those days.

According to the local real estate board, from January of 1997 to August of 1999 over two hundred units changed hands in Southside, with incoming tenants typically paying rents two to three times higher than that of their predecessors. In a matter of months, rents in Southside were escalating almost exponentially and the neighborhood’s largely immigrant and blue-collar residents were seeing themselves pushed out, at times literally, by the sudden gentrification.

But in November of 1998, a coalition of Southside residents, housing activists, and church leaders successfully petitioned City Hall for the right to create a “community co-op". The ordinance allowed long-term residents of Southside to form a semi-autonomous committee operating under the aegis of the City Planning Commission.

After several weeks of door-to-door canvassing, the Southside Neighborhood CO-OP was formed with official sanction to screen prospective tenants and enforce a limited rent protection clause applicable to low-income residents. In addition, CO-OP members are invited to make recommendations to the Planning Commission on disputed business permits and parking grievances.

Octavio Chinchilla, a key proponent for the Southside Neighborhood CO-OP, argues that the organization has given the community a chance to influence its own transformation. The former supervisor and housing advocate cites the growing number of Southside residents in attendance at weekly CO-OP meetings as evidence that the organization is working.

“Clearly no law is going to reverse the bullet train of gentrification,” argues Chinchilla, “but at least this is putting on the brakes and slowing things down to a rate where old people and working class people can get on and off without hurting themselves.”

Despite its popularity among the residents of Southside, the CO-OP is being challenged in the courts. Property owners and, in one case, a libertarian political group, have filed lawsuits against the city legislature contesting the CO-OP’s legality under federal civil rights statutes. The lawsuits claim that the CO-OP denies renters fair access to the housing market and, in many cases, amounts to “reverse discrimination.”

Victor Miller, one of the CO-OP’s founding members, strongly disagrees with these accusations. A 43 year-old Vietnam veteran, Miller has lived in Southside all of his life, working as a handyman and mechanic. He says he had been planning to move out of Southside before joining the CO-OP. Now he plans to stay and urges other long-term residents of Southside to do likewise and participate in the CO-OP.

Says Miller, “For years we’ve been trying to get the City to help us clean up the neighborhood and nothing ever happened. Now, because of the rich people who want to move here and the CO-OP, we’ve got a handle to make things happen.”

Tonight Miller is sitting just a few seats to the right of Landing and Blanchard. As the final votes are tallied, there is some intermittent coughing and the quiet sounds of people shifting in metal folding chairs. Finally, the CO-OP secretary Gloria Portillo stands up and begins speaking. She invites those applicants who will not be accepted to reapply and reminds those who have been accepted of their responsibilities as the newest members of the Southside community. Finally, she reads the list of accepted applicants.

Landing and Blanchard leave the room beaming.