Join the Center for the Living City and the Tenderloin Museum for the fifth discussion in the 2021 Jane Jacobs Lecture series around the Kind of Opportunity a City Is. This discussion, led by Kathy Looper and Randy Shaw, explores the nature of true neighborhood preservation by examining a transformative period of tenant activism in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district in the 1980s.
While often maligned for its history as a vice district and its ongoing struggle with drug use and street crime, the Tenderloin most importantly has a history as the city’s densest residential neighborhood. Over the decades, it has proved to be a vital urban enclave that is home to the working class, seniors, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ+ folks, and all stripes of outsiders and misfits. Unprecedented community organizing in the 1980s protected the neighborhood’s ample supply of single room occupancy (SRO) hotels from market rate redevelopment or conversion to tourist hotels. Tenderloin residents fought and won to preserve housing stock for low-income residents in a city dogged by increasingly exorbitant rents and property values, unscrupulous real estate speculation, and fierce gentrification. This tenant movement shaped the unique ecosystem of nonprofit-controlled housing, supportive social services, and innovative land use that has maintained the Tenderloin as the last bastion of truly affordable housing in San Francisco.
Both Looper and Shaw were key figures in the shaping of today’s Tenderloin. Kathy, along with her late husband Leroy, converted the Cadillac Hotel into non-profit supportive housing, the first of its kind on the West Coast and a model for the region. Randy co-founded the Tenderloin Housing Clinic to provide legal aid to embattled Tenderloin tenants, and eventually developed THC into one of the Tenderloin’s major non-profit supportive housing organizations. Their work is part of a broader movement and milieu that leveraged several key Jacobsian tenets--in particular the preservation of old and historic buildings--to serve the poor and working class, redefining the Tenderloin as a neighborhood that ensures there is a place for everybody in San Francisco. Learn more by attending the Jane Jacobs Lecture Series’ True Neighborhood Preservation in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.
Space is limited but the event will be recorded and available on our website and YouTube channel afterwards.
The Jane Jacobs Lecture Series is free and open to the public, but your support makes our work possible. Please consider donating to support future lectures. A special thank you to Marywood University’s School of Architecture and AIA NEPA for sponsoring this lecture.
Panelists
Kathy Looper is the Executive Director of Reality House West, Inc., a non-profit that operates the historic Cadillac Hotel and provides drug rehabilitation services, housing for low income seniors and youth offenders, plus community and economic development work in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. She is also the co-founder and owner of Chateau Agape, a nationally recognized residential care home for 27 severely mentally ill low income adults, and is the President of the Tenderloin Museum’s Board of Directors.
Randy Shaw is the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Editor of Beyond Chron, and founder of the Tenderloin Museum. He has worked in the Tenderloin for over forty years and participated in many neighborhood struggles Shaw also led the effort to create the national Uptown Tenderloin Historic District, which includes 409 historic buildings. Shaw is the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco as well as other books on neighborhood activism and grassroots empowerment.
Lecture Partner
Tenderloin Museum celebrates the pioneering activism and fierce resistance woven deeply into the story of our 31-square-block neighborhood through history exhibitions, resident-led walking tours, community programs, and the presentation of original artwork. TLM's mission is to promote the history and character of the Tenderloin neighborhood by offering educational, artistic, and charitable activities that support the neighborhood's current vibrancy, future potential, and enhanced economic development.
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Jane Jacobs Lecture Series Sponsors
