Elvira y Refugio Nieto, mother and father of Alex Nieto who was killed by the SFPD in March 2014, reflect on the loss of their son.

Interview by Eva Mas Silberstein and Marko Muir

Elvira y Refugio Nieto

Fredrick Douglas Kakinami Cloyd was born in Japan shortly after the U.S. Occupation officially ended. His African-American/Cherokee father was an occupation soldier in Korea and Japan while Fredrick’s mother—a Japanese/Chinese/Austro-Hungarian girl of the war-ruins was from Japan. Transnational racisms and sexisms during the rise of U.S. and Japanese global stature presents a foundation through which Fredrick weaves his stories of memory and family history. After his doctoral program was displaced from his university, Fredrick ended up homeless. He now lives in an SRO on 6th Street.

Interview by Erin McElroy

Fredrick Cloyd

Tiye Silon Shepard was born and raised in the Mission District of San Francisco. Her parents moved from the South to San Francisco for work, as many African Americans did in that generation. As a San Francisco native, recent University of San Francisco graduate, and a woman of color, she has a unique perspective on gentrification and displacement. Here she details the impact that rapidly changing neighborhoods have had and could potentially have on people close to her that belong to queer, low-income, undocumented, and other marginalized communities. Tiye currently lives on 18th and Florida St. Here she is interviewed by Caleb Smith.

Tiye Silon Shepard

Edwin was born in San Francisco’s St. Luke’s Hospital and grew up in his grandmother’s home in Bernal Heights. His grandmother transferred the home to a relative who immediately began trying to evict the family. “I mean 21, 22 years...and I thought this is insane. The greed has gotten so much that not even blood is even thicker than the greed.” For him, Bernal “...was a community where people knew each other and helped each other out.” Edwin has been made to feel like an outsider in his own community by the wealthy new homeowners. He has had the police called on him for taking out the trash at his own home. Now, his father has been displaced and lives in the East Bay where he is experiencing "root shock." Edwin is sleeping on a friend's couch in the Mission.

Interview by Samantha Kaplan

Edwin Lindo

Lotta is a senior living at 632 Guerrero who was Ellised last year by serial evictor Sergio Iantorno. She had been a nurse for most of her life and ran a daycare from her unit for 4.5 years, and her husband is a creative map-maker. She tells her current story of eviction and refers to her previous eviction some 30 years ago from Noe Valley, drawing a parallel between how her Mission Dolores neighborhood is changing much in the same way that NV did as it began to gentrify back in the day.

Interview by Jin Zhu


Lotta Garrity

What do you see as the major issues around housing in San Francisco?

How have you seen your neighborhood change?

Describe the home from which you were evicted.

How did you come to live in San Francisco?

In this interview, Rahel reflects on how neighborhood residents, particularly in NYCHA housing, who were already struggling with inequality and a broken food system have been further impoverished by the pandemic. She describes how mutual aid efforts, while impacted by the anxiety and politics during COVID times, also demonstrates the strength of community networks and groups in filling the void caused by disorganized government support at federal and city levels.

Rahel Biru Shortclip

Interview W Rahel

Ariella is a Bushwick resident and G-Rebls member of Comida Pal Pueblo (Food for the People). Comida Pal Pueblo is an initiative collectively led by three Bushwick-based grassroots organizations: New York Boricua Resistance (NYBR), G-Rebls, and Mi Casa Resiste. Together, they work to distribute free fresh produce, prepared meals, PPE, clothing, and other essential items bi-weekly on Humboldt Street in between Moore & Varet in Bushwick, NY. This effort is organized by Bushwick natives and residents that know the struggles immigrant, latinx, and black families face not only from COVID-19, but also by poverty, systemic racism, and police oppression.

Ariella

Pati is a founding member of Mi Casa Resiste, an anti-capitalist collective of New Yorkers based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, using art and direct action to build a visible resistance to gentrification and the displacement of poor Black & Brown families in NYC and beyond.

Pati

Pati (5 min clip)

Riapos (5 min clip)

Edwin was born in San Francisco’s St. Luke’s Hospital and grew up in his grandmother’s home in Bernal Heights. His grandmother transferred the home to a relative who immediately began trying to evict the family. “I mean 21, 22 years...and I thought this is insane. The greed has gotten so much that not even blood is even thicker than the greed.” For him, Bernal “...was a community where people knew each other and helped each other out.” Edwin has been made to feel like an outsider in his own community by the wealthy new homeowners. He has had the police called on him for taking out the trash at his own home. Now, his father has been displaced and lives in the East Bay where he is experiencing "root shock." Edwin is sleeping on a friend's couch in the Mission.

Interview by Erin McElroy


Edwin Lindo Full Interview

Edwin was born in San Francisco’s St. Luke’s Hospital and grew up in his grandmother’s home in Bernal Heights. His grandmother transferred the home to a relative who immediately began trying to evict the family. “I mean 21, 22 years...and I thought this is insane. The greed has gotten so much that not even blood is even thicker than the greed.” For him, Bernal “...was a community where people knew each other and helped each other out.” Edwin has been made to feel like an outsider in his own community by the wealthy new homeowners. He has had the police called on him for taking out the trash at his own home. Now, his father has been displaced and lives in the East Bay where he is experiencing "root shock." Edwin is sleeping on a friend's couch in the Mission.

Interview by Erin McElroy

Edwin Lindo 5 Min Clip

Interviewed by Carla Wojczuk 
Edited by Micropixie

Anon ("Star Trek") Full Interview

Marla Knight’s family has been in San Francisco for four generations and she’s been in the same North Beach apartment since 1966. From her bay window over Lombard St., Marla has seen the city change time and time again. This wave of changes, however, have threatened her right to that very view.

Interview by Devin McCutchin


Marla Knight Full Interview

Neil Martinson is a DJ and a show producer who grew up in New York’s Greenwich Village and moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s. In his interview, he describes what initially drew him to San Francisco, and how this cultural quirkiness is being threatened by the City’s latest wave of newcomers and the yuppification of its neighborhoods. He discusses the vital need for “money people” to support artists and creatives in order to salvage San Francisco’s bohemian identity. He calls upon these cultural consumers to step out of their comfort zone, to understand the significance of San Francisco’s history as a haven for “freaks”, and to contribute to this unique, kooky, wonderful essence that brought them to the Bay in the first place.

Interview by Nick Castro

Neil Martinson 5 Min Clip

Marie’s building sold to new owners in late November 2013. The new owners apparently lost their home in a foreclosure and thus are moving into her home with their family (in addition to raising Marie’s rent before doing so). She and her roommate didn’t have an official move-out date as the new owners want to "negotiate" with them to see if they would move out informally vs. via a legal eviction process. Her roommate was currently unemployed and the eviction was extremely stressful. Marie had lived there for 11 years. After battling her landlord for about 10 months, Marie lost her hearing and was eventually kicked out in September 2014. The tenants board stated that even though no inspection had ever been made they knew that Marie was living in an illegal unit, they were going to uphold the landlords permit. Marie misses her apartment dearly but she is staying with family temporarily in Pacifica. Her kitty has been living next door with her old neighbor for now, and she visits her often. 

Interview by Carly Wais

Marie Morales 5 Min Clip

Natalia is a recent Lowell high school graduate, born and raised San Francisco. Currently in her first year at UC Santa Barbara, here she discusses gentrification in San Francisco, and experiences being a youth in a changing city.

Interview by Andrew Szeto

Natalia Arguello-Inglis  5 Min Clip

Nietos 5 Min Final Edit

Lotta is a senior living at 632 Guerrero who was Ellised last year by serial evictor Sergio Iantorno. She had been a nurse for most of her life and ran a daycare from her unit for 4.5 years, and her husband is a creative map-maker. She tells her current story of eviction and refers to her previous eviction some 30 years ago from Noe Valley, drawing a parallel between how her Mission Dolores neighborhood is changing much in the same way that NV did as it began to gentrify back in the day.

Interview by Jin Zhu

Lotta Garrity 5 Min Edit

Greg Ivanov is a Russian immigrant who has grown up in San Francisco’s Richmond district. He has traveled all over the Bay Area in his recently concluded career as a Ballet dancer and recently was evicted from his home on Connecticut Street. 

Interview by Ian Sanger

Greg Ivanov

Pauli Gray is a long-time San Francisco resident, musician, and harm reduction activist.  His former residence, fondly known as the KooKoo Faktory, was home to a rare and ever more endangered species of DIY/art/punk/weirdo solidarity and culture.  Located in the heart of the Mission District, on Stevenson Alley between Mission Street and Valencia Street, Pauli’s home was the nexus and safe haven of a small social ecosystem comprised of hundreds of people of all ages and all walks of life who otherwise would not have mixed; who together created a culture of art and enterprise and a community informed by the love of free expression and the experiences of recovery and redemption.  Not only the refuge of the down-trodden and disenfranchised, the KooKoo Factory was the setting of many informal artistic endeavors and exhibitions- everything from the audio to the visual arts- a dream Pauli worked hard to preserve as part of a promise to a beloved and now deceased friend.  As part of that promise, Pauli routinely opened his doors to those who needed places to go in times of trouble, yoga and meditation classes, twelve step meetings, the Homeless Youth Alliance, and all those who felt alone everywhere else.  Once a safe-house on the underground railroad of counter culture and self discovery, a singularly San Francisco experience was lost forever when the KooKoo Faktory was destroyed.

Interview by Elisheva Feinberg

Pauli Gray_Full Interview

Fredrick Cloyd _ Clip

Fredrick Douglas Kakinami Cloyd was born in Japan shortly after the U.S. Occupation officially ended. His African-American/Cherokee father was an occupation soldier in Korea and Japan while Fredrick’s mother—a Japanese/Chinese/Austro-Hungarian girl of the war-ruins was from an elite nationalist family in Japan. Transnational racisms and sexisms during the rise of U.S. and Japanese global stature presents a foundation through which Fredrick weaves his stories of memory and family history. After his doctoral program was displaced from his university, Fredrick ended up homeless. He now lives in an SRO on 6th Street.

Interview by Erin McElroy

Fredrick

Leslie Isaac grew up in Connecticut and Vermont, but spent quite some time traveling around the U.S. after graduating from college and eventually settled in the Bay Area in 1987. Upon coming here, she lived in many different neighborhoods in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Pablo. She never thought that she would live in the Mission, but upon moving there, she found a welcoming community and soon came to think of it as home, staying in her last place for 17 years. In 2013, her landlord sold the building to Urban Green and they threatened all of the tenants with Ellis Act evictions if they didn’t decide as 5 units to accept a buyout. The situation pitted the neighbors against each other and it got kind of ugly when one of the neighbors decided that he couldn’t accept the buyout because he was a senior and disabled person. In the end, they accepted just 4 units taking the buyout. Leslie talks about the good things that came out of this change, but also describes this as one of the hardest times in her life. She currently lives in Emeryville. 

Interview by Winnie Vien

Leslie Isaac_Clip

April Squires is a retired educator living in Alameda actively involved with the Alameda Renters Coalition. Although April's own rental unit is not eligible for rent control, April has been fighting for stronger renters' protections since learning of the mass eviction at 470 Central, an apartment complex in her community that houses many Filipino families with school-age children and their grandparents. April describes herself as a "reluctant soldier" who never expected to get so deeply involved with community activism in her retirement. In the interview, April reflects on why she feels compelled to fight as well as the role of city government and individuals in protecting a community's interests.

Interviewed by Mary Shi

Mary Shi's Album

April Squires clip

Donald French

Berenice is a hard working single mother who came to the US from Mexico and has worked in Fremont for 18 years.  She connects with poor people’s struggle for housing, talks about class struggle with the professional class and people’s fear to speak out.  Bernice speaks out about the injustices that come from living in a part of Fremont forgotten by the government and in a building neglected by her landlord where her children have developed asthma.  She talks about how the city tries to ignore and cover the plight of low income residents for dignified housing. She’s not afraid of fighting for her right to housing. 

Interviewed by Nando Jimenez

Luis Gutierrez-Mock's Album

Berenice Deras clip

Tigray Kahsai is an Oakland native and daughter of two Ethiopian immigrants. She reflects on growing up in Oakland with the community that formed around her father's Ethiopian community center in West Oakland. She also reflects on the changes that gentrification has brought to her home, changes that are only accessible by affluent newcomers, and that may force her to leave in the very near future. Interview by Brenda Cruz.

Tigray Kahsai_clip

Of El Salvadorian decent,  Diana was born in East Los Angeles and raised in Koreatown. She works as a coordinator for the community engagement department in Occidental College alongside student, faculty and staff who are invested in their neighborhood.  When Diana isn’t  strumming her ukulele or guitar, she’s baking or hanging out with her unfriendly cat, Icarus.
Diana loves her neighborhood. Her little pocket of Koreatown is predominantly inhabited by people of color and working class folks. However, those demographics are rapidly changing as gentrification sweeps through Los Angeles. She has watched as the shops and businesses she’s been frequenting her entire life close doors and coffee shops pop up in their place.  And in her housing case, she has experienced landlords jumping at the opportunity to profit – all at the expense of long-standing community members. This has motivated her to join the neighborhood council, her tenant’s union local, and the community land trust.
Diana has spent the last 14 years in her current apartment with her mother and brother. They moved into their home as a result of a previous no-cause eviction in Koreatown – a classic case of a change of ownership and the new owners flipping for profit. Sadly, Diana and her family are currently experiencing the same situation, with the exception that they are currently not protected by RSO laws, making everyone living in the building very vulnerable. She is currently fighting her eviction.

Diana - Clip 1

You can see Sally Juarez driving around the streets of Eagle Rock in her stunning 1966 Chevelle Malibu. She’s been a resident of this town since 1973, which is also when  she became a teacher, a profession that lasted decades until her retirement. She has a green thumb she puts to use in her beautiful garden, volunteers at the school she once taught at, and she loves walking into thrift stores. She enjoys spending time with her six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
She has lived in the same sixteen-unit building, living in the 17th unit as a manager since 1978. When the building sold in last 2017, the new owners let her go as the manager, and have since been trying to evict her without cause. She formed a tenant’s association within her building and has been fighting developers looking to renovate and purchase the building, evicting and intimidating long term residents in the process.
Sally became an active member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union since her first point of harassment from her landlord in 2018. She is loved and revered by all in the NELo Local.

Sally Juarez - Clip 3

Sally Juarez - Clip 2

Sally Juarez - Clip 1

Sally Juarez - Full Interview

Zerita Jones is a lifetime resident of the South Central Area. She has never lived outside of the 405/110/105/10 freeway enclosed area.  Zerita lives with her mother who is 77 (and losing her hearing) to help her with the day to day. She lives across the street from the high school she graduated from and within 1 mile from the 3 groceries stores she managed for decades. She is a mother of 5 children and grandmother who enjoys motorcycle riding (very cool) and traveling. She is also a writer, working on several book projects.

Zerita Jones - Clip 2

Zerita Jones is a lifetime resident of the South Central Area. She has never lived outside of the 405/110/105/10 freeway enclosed area.  Zerita lives with her mother who is 77 (and losing her hearing) to help her with the day to day. She lives across the street from the high school she graduated from and within 1 mile from the 3 groceries stores she managed for decades. She is a mother of 5 children and grandmother who enjoys motorcycle riding (very cool) and traveling. She is also a writer, working on several book projects. 

 Zerita’s building complex along with almost 1500 other tenants on Chesapeake is under the Nuisance Abatement Act, which was filed by the City of Los Angeles. The tenants were not notified of this filing, and discovered it when NBC came out to do a story of their buildings.  The news broadcast told a misleading story of their buildings and as a reaction to the NAA filing and this story, the buildings formed a Tenants Association.  This tenants association made a declaration against the filing and the story on NBC, and due to this organizing were able to intervene on court case regarding this filing.

Zerita Jones - Clip 1

Deborah Dickerson_5 minute clip

Martha was born and raised in Queens, NY and is currently the Farm Manager at the Bushwick Grows Community Farm, a permaculture farm and community education space.  In this interview, she describes how COVID-19 has put food insecurity on the map, and how her community has responded by growing and distributing food locally. “In chaos, there is opportunity”, she says. Amidst the gravity of the crisis, she sees an opportunity for people to reconnect to the soil, to interrogate our relationship as humans to nature, and to make bold changes to the current laws and systems that produce massive social inequality. She also touches on how COVID-19 is intersecting with gentrification in her community, and her concerns and hopes for the future.

Martha Ma_Full interview

In this interview, Kim Statuto reflects on the systemic, dehumanizing process of eviction that benefits profit-seeking landlords at the expense of tenants and their families. Now a 25-year resident of the Bronx, she organizes with CASA (Community Action for Safe Apartments) to fight for affordable housing in her community and maintain safe living conditions in her own home.

Kim Statuto_5MinuteClip

In this interview, Samuel Nemir Olivares, District Leader for NY Assembly District 53 and co-founder of Bushwick Ayuda Mutua (BAM), talks about mutual aid efforts to support neighbors and fellow community members in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He reflects on his organizing work at the intersection of housing, food access, and education- before and during the COVID-19 pandemic- and he shares how the current health emergency magnifies the eviction crisis that residents have been fighting for decades.

Samuel tells us about the logistical and operational details of the huge collective that BAM has become, emerging very quickly at the beginning of Covid-19. According to him though, mutual aid practices have “been at the DNA of the community” for decades, as neighbors in Bushwick have cared for one another during times of government disinvestment and neglect. In his work as District Leader, as a member of BAM, as a housing rights activist, Samuel calls on NYC elected officials to prioritize housing as a human right that is absolutely essential for all residents in order to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. This interview is part of the COVID-19 mutual aid oral history project, which is a collaboration between Cities For People, Not For Profit and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP).

Samuel Nemir Olivares 5 Minute Clip

In this interview, tenant organizer Amy Collado shares the story of her family’s violent eviction from their home on January 27th, 2008. While Amy chose to highlight this one instance of her family’s eviction, growing up low-income in East New York for her was, “a world of constant, continuous displacement.” She emphasizes that the impacts of an eviction do not begin and end with the moment that City Marshalls enter a home; rather, there is a “whole story” of before, during, and after an eviction that speaks to underlying conditions of exploitation in housing and of predatory landlords that perpetuate the eviction crisis and dehumanize tenants.

Amy Collado_Full Interview

Amy Collado_5 Minute Clip

In this interview, Rahel Biru talks about her work in mutual aid efforts as a staff member at MayDaySpace. She remembers how the neighborhood’s vibrancy, atmosphere and affordability have changed over time because of gentrification, and how she became involved in housing activism and community work in Bushwick. 

Rahel reflects on how neighborhood residents, particularly in NYCHA housing, who were already struggling with inequality and a broken food system have been further impoverished by the pandemic. She describes how these challenges are caused by a fragmented healthcare industry, lack of consistent access to care and food security, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. She describes how mutual aid efforts, while impacted by the anxiety and politics during COVID times, also demonstrates the strength of community networks and groups in filling the void caused by disorganized government support at federal and city levels.

She discusses how new tactical strategies and increased civic engagement need to be enacted at municipal and local levels to help address community needs. 
This interview, conducted by Cynthia Tobar, is part of the COVID-19 mutual aid oral history project, which is a collaboration between Cities for People, Not For Profit and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP).

Rahel Biru 3 minute clip

In this interview, Ariella Riapos, a Bushwick resident and G-Rebls member of Comida Pal Pueblo, describes how mutual aid workers have come together during COVID moving through this crisis with persistence and resilience.

Ariella also shares that despite the frustrations she encounters in this work that her comrades still show up for the community, demonstrating the strength of New York. This interview, conducted by Cynthia Tobar, is part of the Nos Cuidamos oral history project, which is a collaboration between Cities For People, Not For Profit and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.

Ariella Full Interview

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is a data-visualization, data analysis, and digital storytelling collective documenting the dispossession and resistance of Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York residents upon gentrifying landscapes.

Please do not use these narratives for your own work without first contacting us and gaining permission!

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