Rent has skyrocketed in just the past three years. Long-time residents are getting displaced by affluent young professionals. And crime -- though much better than a few years ago -- is still a big problem.
If you think we're talking about the state of the Lower Haight today, you'd be about 35 years off.
No, that's how the neighborhood was described in a New York Times article from August 6, 1978. Yesterday, reader David R. tipped us to the story, which is titled "2 San Francisco Areas Make A Comeback." It discusses how the Haight-Fillmore District (i.e. the Lower Haight) and Hayes Valley were changing rapidly in the late '70s due to an influx of "white gays" seeking to snap up the area's old Victorians. "[T]he Castro Street homosexual neighborhood 'is moving north' into Haight-Fillmore and Hayes Valley," the article paraphrases one realtor as saying. It goes on to quote him thusly:
No, that's how the neighborhood was described in a New York Times article from August 6, 1978. Yesterday, reader David R. tipped us to the story, which is titled "2 San Francisco Areas Make A Comeback." It discusses how the Haight-Fillmore District (i.e. the Lower Haight) and Hayes Valley were changing rapidly in the late '70s due to an influx of "white gays" seeking to snap up the area's old Victorians. "[T]he Castro Street homosexual neighborhood 'is moving north' into Haight-Fillmore and Hayes Valley," the article paraphrases one realtor as saying. It goes on to quote him thusly:
"You can't touch a Victorian for twice the price in other neighborhoods... The opportunity to own a Victorian in an area that has good public transportation and is convenient to both downtown and Castro Street has made the area popular."With that migration came a 61 percent jump in the average rent in the area between 1973 and 1976. One resident quoted in the article bemoans the fact that the rent on his five-room apartment had increased from $149 a month two years earlier to... brace yourself... $300. (For what it's worth, that would be about $1,068 in today's dollars.) With the increasing housing prices, "many longtime residents are being displaced... [and] tension is rising between longtime black residents and newcomers," the article claimed. As that same $300-rent-bemoaner bemoaned, "Many new owners and tenants are gay... I like rehabilitation, but I don't like to see poor blacks pushed out. Tensions are increasing as more blacks get priced out of the neighborhood. Some blame the gays." However, the new gay residents get credit for working with police to help clean up the neighborhood. One startling claim made by a police officer: "For years the block of Haight Street near Fillmore was the scene of the worst narcotics trafficking and the largest number of violent crimes in all of northern California." All of northern California! The situation improved with the arrest of 50 people on the block in an operation the previous year, and with the help of the aforementioned gays. It's really quite an article, but to read the full thing, you'll have to either be a New York Times subscriber, or cough up $3.95 over on the NYT website. (Or, you can just take a look at the screenshot David posted on our Facebook page.)
