City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco

5. Into the Courts

76 5 Into the Courts HUD’s unwillingness to provide administrative relief to Yerba Buena relocatees gave the South of Market residents no choice but to turn to litigation . On November 5, 1969, represented by a half-dozen named individuals and TOOR, they filed a complaint in federal district court against both HUD and the Redevelopment Agency, contending that the agency had not located decent, safe, and sanitary housing for displacees according to rights set forth in the 1949 Housing Act. The WACO Case The decision to bring suit against the YBC project was inspired by a partly successful action the year before, which the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation filed against the Western Addition A-2 project . The Western Addition Community Organization (WACO) had begun a drive in the mid-1960s to exact from the Redevelopment Agency guarantees of decent housing for all displacees. Failing these guarantees and having experienced the havoc wrought by the Western Addition A-1 project, WACO enlisted SFNLAF’s aid and filed for an injunction against relocation, demolition, and federal funding in Western Addition A-2 pending a valid relocation plan. SFRA and HUD responded by claiming that residents of renewal areas lacked standing (i.e., had no legal right) to challenge inadequacies in relocation plans, and that HUD’s decision on the adequacy of such plans was at the sole and unreviewable discretion of the HUD Secretary. The court rejected these patently unjust claims.There was no cogent agency explanation as to why residents of HUD-assisted renewal areas were not al- Into the Courts / 77 lowed to defend their own interests, nor was there any reasonable argument why the Secretary of HUD should be protected from judicial review (which didn’t stop the agency from advancing the same two arguments in its response to TOOR’s subsequent Yerba Buena relocation suit). WACO’s case was aided by strong evidence of inequities. HUD’s own records revealed that its approval of relocation in Western Addition A-2 hinged upon satisfying several stipulations. Finding that these conditions had not been satisfied, Federal Judge William T. Sweigert held in December 1968 that HUD’s approval was arbitrary, capricious, and therefore invalid. Under these circumstances, the judge found it necessary, in order to avoid irreparable injury to residents, to halt the project until a plan could be lawfully and unconditionally approved by HUD.1 Judge Sweigert dissolved his preliminary injunction less than four months later, when the agency filed and HUD unconditionally approved a slightly revised relocation plan. The court’s Western Addition decision, while a useful precedent for the Yerba Buena litigation, was by no means a far-reaching protection of people ’s rights. The court did not rule on the substance of the agency’s relocation plan, nor did it agree that the courts should preempt the HUD Secretary ’s judgment on these matters. It merely ruled that HUD must comply with its own regulations and with federal statutes.2 Nonetheless, for the first time in the twenty-year history of urban renewal , a court had actually enjoined an urban renewal project3—and that was more than enough to inspire TOOR and its attorneys. A Quest for Compromise The November 1969 lawsuit seeking adequate relocation housing for the South of Market residents was accompanied by a motion for immediate injunctive relief. The residents had obtained as counsel two lawyers from the SFNLAF central office—Sidney Wolinsky (who had brought the WACO suit) and Amanda Hawes—and as co-counsel J. Anthony Kline of the National Housing Law Project, one of the specialized government-funded “back-up” centers for local Legal Services offices, then part of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. At the core of the residents’ plea were flaws in the turnover formula underlying the YBC relocation plan. More than three years had passed since HUD’s original approval of the plan, and since 1966, the city’s low-rent housing supply had actually decreased, contrary to the turnover formula’s projections. TOOR filed some compelling exhibits: agency building inspectors’ records showed that many “approved” relocation resources were in poor 78 / Chapter 5 physical condition, had illegal wiring, an absence of dual means of egress and fire exit signs, locked doors preventing access to fire escapes, and other serious infractions. Most of this evidence had been available to HUD in 1966; it evidently chose...