04/22/2026
This past Saturday, our staff and board stopped to look back.
We toured the homes SFHDC has helped build since 1988 — affordable homeownership projects and multi-family communities from the Bayview to the Western Addition to Ocean Beach. Decades of investment. Thousands of lives changed.
Neighborhoods that are still here because people fought for them.
This Sunday, the SF Chronicle published a block-by-block account of the displacement of Black families in San Francisco since the 1970s. Citywide, the Black population has fallen from 13.4% to 5.4%. In our own neighborhoods, the loss is even sharper — Black residents once made up 50% of the Fillmore and 69% of the Bayview. Today: 16% and 25%. Redlining, redevelopment, the Shipyard's closure, gentrification — the forces behind that loss are well known. Living with them is another thing entirely.
SFHDC was founded in 1988 to help stem this tide of displacement. Though much work remains to be done, and much greater investment is needed in our African American neighborhoods and residents, we are grateful and proud for the lives we have been able to touch. To date, we've delivered 2,392 affordable homes across 33 properties and served more than 31,000 families across San Francisco. We support 1,700+ households at 14 affordable housing communities, operate a HUD-certified Financial Empowerment Center, and uplift BIPOC entrepreneurs through In The Black, a retail marketplace in the Fillmore.
We are not done dreaming. What could the next several decades look like for the Bayview, the Fillmore, and for African American and other communities of color and low-income families across this city — with the right investment, the right partnerships, and the collective will to make it real? We believe that future is possible. Let's dream and build it together!
