Bayview, San Francisco

If you have lived in the Bay Area since 2000, then you have no doubt heard about the proposed plans to revitalize this area of the city. This used to be a naval shipyards but when they got closed down, jobs left and, well, this neighborhood pretty much fell into the dumps. Abandoned buildings, high unemployment, drugs and crime. Since 2000 there has been one plan after another to try to bring this area back. Every two or three years or so there seems to be a big push to try to bring things back.

But then, nothing happens and except for the latest news of shootings or drug busts, Bay View falls off the horizon. I was watching the 49ers game this weekend and got me thinking about Candlestick and the neighborhoods right around there. People rarely move this far south, but I wondered if there are maybe some okay neighborhoods where you can live for relatively cheap.

So I took a look around and noticed that the prices are pretty varied in this neighborhood. Living so close to Candlestick Park would be kind of cool. There are even individual rooms for as low as $450.

There are also a lot of pretty good restaurants in this area—maybe because of the nearby stadium. If you like Soul Food you should try Auntie April’s. And you can find some really good, semi-authentic Mexican food here too.
There are lots of signs however that this is not a very good neighborhood however. Bret Hart Elementary for example, which is literally within view of the Candlestick parking lot, is ranked at the very bottom in terms of achievement scores. According to standardized test scores, students rank in the bottom quarter in almost all subject across grades. The highest scores are only barely above average in one or two disciplines. (Pretty dismal.)

Crime is still definitely a problem. According to a recent article, this summer has been especially violent with this neighborhood leading the way with 41 shootings as of midyear. (Though murders overall in SF are pretty much the same as they were last year—unlike Oakland across the Bay where they were up past 70 murders at midyear, 20 more than last year.) And assaults and burgularies are also way above average.

All this points to the fact that this is simply too dangerous a neighborhood—which explains the low rents, I suppose. Maybe if I were single—but I definitely would not want to take this kind of gamble with my kid.

Like Hunters Point, its neighbor to the east, the Bayview District has an image problem. Though by no means as bleak as the area immediately surrounding the abandoned naval shipyard, Bayview nevertheless has pockets of blight, some of its streets forlorn with empty lots and vacant, boarded-up houses. Though it is one of the city’s last predominantly African American enclaves, its makeup and existence are challenged by the harmful legacy of an industrial past in the 20th century and the challenges presented by the compelling development issues it faces in the 21st.

But, also like Hunters Point, it wasn’t always this way. When the area’s economic engine (primarily, the shipyard and the industrial base it attracted) was humming, so was the neighborhood. Many of those who came here in search of opportunity were part of the “Great Migration” of blacks from the Deep South who found work in the Bay Area with the Defense Department. During and after World War II, according to the website Bayview Hunters Point Historical Footprints: “With money in their pockets, African American’s were bringing a unique new vibrancy to the neighborhood. Eateries featured Southern foods. Nightclubs pulsed with jazz and blues, star entertainers, and young people living the life. Homes became centerpieces of family investment. Small businesses and churches grew to serve the newest population. … [T]he breeze carried a collective optimism for racial harmony, the rise of the black middle class, and distance from the history of pain and struggle in this country for people of African descent.”

In the 1960s, many other African Americans settled here, pushed from the Fillmore and the other districts where they had established homes and livelihoods by the wholesale razing of blocks brought on by unenlightened urban “renewal.”

But when the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was unplugged in 1994, the lights started going out around the neighborhood. Many of the locals pulled out and fled to communities around the Bay Area with more jobs. The ones who stayed watched as the life drained from the area, the once-vibrant restaurants and stores and clubs along the Third Street corridor sapped of clients. In the last 20 years, San Francisco has lost almost half of its African American population, according to figures from the mayor’s office of community development, as families and individuals have moved across the Bay, down the Peninsula, and even to the Santa Clara Valley and San Jose.

Furthermore, as a result of its military/industrial past, Bayview has a third of the city’s hazardous waste sites, with the naval shipyard having achieved Superfund site ignominy. The health repercussions of these toxic polluters are being felt to this day: 10 percent of all residents have asthma, with 15 percent of all children under the age of 14 affected, according to a San Francisco Department of Public Health Study, almost twice the rate in the general population. Other health department studies have shown a higher-than-average incidence of infant mortality and birth defects.

The people who live here protest that they are victims of environmental racism, and zoning and various other municipal decisions make it easy to see why: Pollutants are emitted by many of the light industries and depots for numerous chemical companies among the rows of boxy warehouses that line the blocks on the eastern edge of the neighborhood. The city maintains a huge sewage treatment facility on Jerrold Avenue (near Third). Though it is mostly sequestered behind a high brick wall, the massive project is nevertheless a source of pollutants, many aerosol-ized by the churning of waste water. The plant has little visual or street appeal, other than the murals attached to the sides of the brick wall, contributing to the so-called visual pollution of Bayview as well.

You can’t consider Bayview’s overall picture without also taking into account its higher-than-average level of crime, including more than two dozen homicides in the last three years. Although the San Francisco Police Department has made significant progress of late in curbing gang-related crimes, assaults are still common, and the area follows the city trend, with high incidence of vehicle thefts and automobile break-ins. Also significant is the frequency of vandalism as well as disturbing the peace.

In spite of these aggravating circumstances, many people nevertheless call the neighborhood home. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Bayview (as separate from the Bayview-Hunters Point agglomeration) has about 25,000 residents: nearly 50 percent of them African American, 22 percent Asian and Pacific Islanders, 27 percent white (with 17 percent of that number claiming Hispanic ethnicity), and a little more than 1 percent American Indian. Income levels are lower here than in the rest of San Francisco, and unemployment rates significantly higher for the community as a whole: More than 30 percent of Bayview residents have annual incomes below $15,000 (only 20 percent of San Francisco’s overall population have incomes that low), and the unemployment rate is upward of more than twice as high as the city as a whole (which could have something to do with the fact that only 60 percent of the residents over age 25 have finished high school). Still, nearly 60 percent of all residents own their homes, a source of pride to many residents who consider home ownership a first step to upward social mobility.

The Third Street “T” streetcar arrived in the Bayview in 2007 to much fanfare: It would bring this isolated community back into the mainstream, its promoters said, and turn the thoroughfare on which it travels from the city’s southern boundary to the Embarcadero into a thriving commercial and commuter zone. Although it has unquestionably brought noticeable changes to Third Street as it cuts through the district (especially in terms of the landscaped medians and neat and tidy elevated platforms that serve as stations for the line), it is debatable whether the new form of transit has transformed the area into a bustling place. For instance, Third Street has yet to attract a major grocery chain or even department store (although markets like Aloudi Abdulsalam—formerly Super Save at McKinnon—and Walgreens in Bayview Plaza at Evans as well as another store on Williams, along with Mazzei Hardware at Thornton) give residents of the area some shopping options. The construction of numerous condos and multi-unit housing along Third has the potential to bring the area’s population density and demographics up to a level to attract more businesses to the area and keep the local economy afloat.

Given the number of establishments with parking lots and the number of homes with garages, parking in the area is fairly easy (though high rates of break-ins and theft make long-term overnight parking on the streets unadvisable).

Bayview has a number of Muni bus lines for transit within the district, including the No. 54, which zigzags from one end to the other; the Nos. 29, 23, and 19, which carry passengers on more or less east-west trajectories as they cross Third Street; and the No. 44, which circles through the north and central part of the neighborhood before continuing west and then north all the way to the Inner Richmond.

The neighborhood is served by two public schools: Bret Harte Elementary (next to the Gilman Playground on Gilman Avenue), which got a 1 out of 10 GreatSchools rating; and Kipp Bayview Academy, on Key Avenue and Third Street, a charter middle school run by the Kipp Foundation that got a 5 out of 10 rating from GreatSchools. A private school—the Muhammad University of Islam, with locations on Third Street and on Kiska Street—gives pre-K through 12th-grade students an alternative to the area’s public schools, with religious instruction and attention to basics in a disciplined environment.

Real-estate prices here have been depressed since before the recent economic downturn. According to Trulia, home prices have dropped by almost 25 percent in the last year, with the average two-bedroom, one-bathroom home going for about $250,000. New-construction condos that will soon come on the market should fetch anywhere from $210,000 to $500,000, depending on size and amenities. Rentals are cheaper than the average elsewhere in San Francisco, with studios starting at $600, multiple-bedroom homes and condos going for as little as $2,000.

In spite of mostly bleak reports about the district, especially during the latest economic downturn, a walk or drive through Bayview reveals many bright spots, including: Quesada Gardens Initiative, a neighborhood pitch-in project that has seen nearby residents plant flowers and shrubs on the median of Quesada Street between Third and Newhall Streets; the Bayview Opera House, which offers after-school and summer arts programs for children as well as a restored performing arts venue for rent; the new Martin Luther King Jr. swimming pool, with its Blue Dolphins youth swim team; and Portola Place, a new single-family housing subdivision across from the Bayview Police Station, built on the site of a former brewery and offering some of the city’s most attractive low-income homes.

On other fronts, the local Bay View newspaper/web site serves its watchdog purpose well, providing reporting on politics and city government as they affect the area, and organizations like Bayview Hunters Point Foundation have numerous programs and initiatives in place to serve the area’s residents. Additionally, Hunters Point Shipyard Artists and Islais Creek Studios now provide inexpensive work studios for artists in the repurposed warehouses and industrial buildings of the defunct shipyard and related businesses.

Finally, a real sign of progress came this year, when PG&E finished dismantling its infamous Hunters Point power plant (at Evans and Innes avenues) and cleaning up the decades of toxic waste that accumulated there. The site, with its restored shoreline and views of the San Francisco Bay, offer a glimpse of how the damage this area has suffered can be reversed

Bayview has a bad reputation of gang activity in the district. Although the whole district is not under fire by gang activity, only certain parts, and with that said, I cannot tell you the definite area of this activity as I tend not to visit Bayview often. But I have done some construction work in Bayview within the past year or two. The area I worked at wasn’t too bad with the gang activity, although I did see a group of people walking around the streets at times looking pretty gang-like. As long as you know where to go and how to avoid trouble you’ll be fine. There is also a good number of homeless people lurking around Bayview as well.

One thing I really want to address is the feel of Bayview. Of the times I’ve worked at Bayview I always got a gloomy feeling, maybe it could be because it was a wet cloudy day. But none the less, the empty residential streets plus the overall reputation of the district didn’t make me want to voluntarily return to this neighborhood.

I also wouldn’t recommend living here, or raising a family here. Although the affordability is cheap, think about the district that lies right next to Bayview, Hunters Point.

Bayview consists of affordable and primarily owner-occupied, single family homes, interspersed with manufacturing and warehouses, making it a little less family friendly than other neighborhoods in San Francisco. Also, the school ratings give Bayview about a 3 on a scale from 1-10.

The close knit community of Bayview is known for its local activists, often found at Sam Jordan's bar. Activists seem to always be threatening to secede from the City and save and renovate historic buildings, such as the Ruth Williams Memorial Theater. Seemingly just a bunch of hot air.

The circa-1888 Bayview Opera House offers theater productions and classes, and the Bayview
Hunters Point Foundation provides legal, mental health and youth services to residents.

A nice place to visit, but not sure I would want to live there.

This area of town is quite industrial. I used to live here in a hidden away artist studio, but shhh! don't tell the city! It's a dream for artists with lots of space to spread out and make noise, doing highly industrial projects. It was also always pretty easy to find a place to spin fire outside because traffic dies down at the end of the day.

Enjoy the wonders of "Scrap" -- a store where you can get recycled parts for art projects. I use the term "store" loosely because it's much more like a co-op or warehouse in feel than a store, which is apt because it is in this industrial neighborhood.

If you're on foot, watch yourself in the underpass where 101 meets Cesar Chavez -- you can find a homeless community there, so it's good to know before you head there.

If you're into the nightlife you might be able to connect with other's at Club 550 which can be found at 550 Barneveld. It seems to have gone through many changes over the years and I'm not even sure if it's still open, though the space has been a really great place to enjoy events.