San Francisco hopes to reverse black flight
SAN FRANCISCO — Wayne Cooksey joined the flight of African-Americans from this city last year to escape soaring rents and buy a home. Michael Higgenbotham left six years ago for a safer neighborhood and better schools for his three children. Adell Adams retired and wanted to downsize but knew her home's equity wouldn't go far in a market where decent condos start at $500,000.
Aubrey Lewis was among the first to go, to nearby Oakland in 1977. "We left because of the housing situation," says Lewis, 77. "And that was early. It hasn't gotten much better."
African-Americans are abandoning this famously progressive city at a rate that has alarmed San Francisco officials, who vow to stop the exodus and develop a strategy to win blacks back to the city. In June, Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed a task force to study how to reverse decades of policies — and neglect — that black leaders say have fueled the flight.
Black flight can alter a city's character. "It's important for a city's future that it be a diverse place, and San Francisco is drifting toward being an upper-middle-class city," says Ed Blakely, director of Katrina recovery for New Orleans.
According to Census estimates, the number of blacks here shrank from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to just 6.5% in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline in any major American city.
Other cities are losing blacks to the suburbs — Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, Washington and Oakland among them — but none has seen anything like what's happening here. The actual number of blacks has dwindled to about 47,000 out of a population of roughly 744,000.
In Los Angeles, the proportion of blacks is 9.9%, just over half what it was in 1970, although the number of blacks remains relatively high — 366,000, according to 2005 Census estimates. And in Chicago an estimated 1 million blacks remain — about one-third of the population — even though more than 55,000 have left since 2000, says Kenneth Johnson, a Loyola University Chicago demographer who analyzed 2005 Census data.
"The flight is certainly more intense in San Francisco than elsewhere," says Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California here.
No single cause explains the continuing exodus, according to city officials, leaders in the black community, demographers and current and former black residents. The high cost of housing — one of the highest in the nation — is a dominant theme, but there are other factors:
•The loss in the 1950s and 1960s of a key black enclave to urban renewal.
•High crime rates in some of the city's surviving black neighborhoods.
•Substandard public housing, as acknowledged by city officials.
•Dissatisfaction with underperforming urban schools.
"Black people really don't matter in San Francisco. It's what this generation of political leadership inherited," says Chuck Collins, president of the YMCA of San Francisco. "There's been a very uneasy truce with the black population."
Link to full story
-VG
SAN FRANCISCO — Wayne Cooksey joined the flight of African-Americans from this city last year to escape soaring rents and buy a home. Michael Higgenbotham left six years ago for a safer neighborhood and better schools for his three children. Adell Adams retired and wanted to downsize but knew her home's equity wouldn't go far in a market where decent condos start at $500,000.
Aubrey Lewis was among the first to go, to nearby Oakland in 1977. "We left because of the housing situation," says Lewis, 77. "And that was early. It hasn't gotten much better."
African-Americans are abandoning this famously progressive city at a rate that has alarmed San Francisco officials, who vow to stop the exodus and develop a strategy to win blacks back to the city. In June, Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed a task force to study how to reverse decades of policies — and neglect — that black leaders say have fueled the flight.
Black flight can alter a city's character. "It's important for a city's future that it be a diverse place, and San Francisco is drifting toward being an upper-middle-class city," says Ed Blakely, director of Katrina recovery for New Orleans.
According to Census estimates, the number of blacks here shrank from 13.4% of the population in 1970 to just 6.5% in 2005 — the biggest percentage decline in any major American city.
Other cities are losing blacks to the suburbs — Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, Washington and Oakland among them — but none has seen anything like what's happening here. The actual number of blacks has dwindled to about 47,000 out of a population of roughly 744,000.
In Los Angeles, the proportion of blacks is 9.9%, just over half what it was in 1970, although the number of blacks remains relatively high — 366,000, according to 2005 Census estimates. And in Chicago an estimated 1 million blacks remain — about one-third of the population — even though more than 55,000 have left since 2000, says Kenneth Johnson, a Loyola University Chicago demographer who analyzed 2005 Census data.
"The flight is certainly more intense in San Francisco than elsewhere," says Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California here.
No single cause explains the continuing exodus, according to city officials, leaders in the black community, demographers and current and former black residents. The high cost of housing — one of the highest in the nation — is a dominant theme, but there are other factors:
•The loss in the 1950s and 1960s of a key black enclave to urban renewal.
•High crime rates in some of the city's surviving black neighborhoods.
•Substandard public housing, as acknowledged by city officials.
•Dissatisfaction with underperforming urban schools.
"Black people really don't matter in San Francisco. It's what this generation of political leadership inherited," says Chuck Collins, president of the YMCA of San Francisco. "There's been a very uneasy truce with the black population."
Link to full story
-VG
