“Discrimination … in the sale of Standard homes can connect San Francisco in the eyes of the world with the mob violence which segregation has brought about in the South.” — The Bay Area Catholic Interracial Council, quoted in the SF Examiner, May 31, 1961.
The year was 1961, and the city was in an uproar. At least some of its residents were.
Civil rights activists, including a young lawyer who would go on to become California’s powerful Assembly speaker and San Francisco’s first Black mayor, were protesting in a new neighborhood on the wooded flanks of Mount Sutro.
Forest Knolls was built by the Gellert Brothers, among the handful of developers who turned western San Francisco into single-family suburbs. Their company, Standard Building, had also developed a reputation for barring people of color in their planned communities.
Contrary to San Francisco’s long-held self-regard as a bastion of progressivism and tolerance, the city has a sordid history of redlining — the systematic refusal of loans to those deemed a poor financial risk — who were mainly people of color and poor folks.
Forest Knolls became a focal point for local liberal activism, where decades of racist housing practices finally sparked sit-ins, picket lines, and condemnation from groups like the Bay Area Catholic Council. It also launched political careers along the way.
A lot has changed in Forest Knolls (and in San Francisco) since the 1960s. But a lot hasn’t. We’re still fighting over housing and, by extension, who has the right to live in this city. Wide swaths of the city remain limited to single-family homes. Many of their owners have the means to pursue policies, like the exclusion of apartments and other affordable housing, that maintain their property values.
In Forest Knolls, the opposition to housing no longer is overtly about the color of people’s skin or economic status. As part of a major expansion, UCSF is poised to replace the 1950s-era Moffitt Hospital and build more than 1,000 new student housing units. In neighborhood forums and message boards, protest centers on the fate of the surrounding Sutro Forest, which Forest Knolls neighbors consider their idyllic escape, with miles of hiking paths to trek.
The construction breaks ground this year. Meanwhile, other parcels of land, representing more than 100 units, are under consideration by private developers.
What can a sliver of a quasi-suburban neighborhood, perched on the slopes of SF’s second-highest mountain, teach us about the city today and its decisions for tomorrow? Here’s the view from Forest Knolls.
BLM, now and then
Once a Republican bastion, only 13 to 15 percent of Forest Knolls voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. (That’s still a few points higher than the city total of 10.75 percent.) According to 2010 census data, parts of Forest Knolls that border on the UCSF campus were still 97 percent white, though sections further down the hill show signs of diversity, falling between 60 and 70 percent white.
Race, like anywhere else in the world, still matters in Forest Knolls. Three years ago, an Asian American family in the neighborhood was harassed for placing a Black Lives Matter sign in their window. On a positive note, homeowners at the top of the hill last summer painted a vibrant mural demanding justice for Sean Monterrosa and Breonna Taylor on the outer fence of their home. It remains intact to date.
The harassment and the mural are two sides of the same historical coin. They’re milestones in a timeline that reaches back decades.
Blanche Brown told the SF Chronicle in 1961 that she and her friend Dorothy Lincoln went to view a home for sale in Forest Knolls “on a lark.” When they, two Black women, arrived, the real-estate agents ran out through the garage.
Left alone, she picked up the telephone and dialed her husband, a young attorney named Willie Brown. He told them to wait and see what happened, so they did — three whole hours, until a Black caretaker was sent to tell them they were no longer going to show the home.
The whole family went back after church the following Sunday; reporters had been alerted and were waiting. They noted that Blanche Brown was dressed in a bonnet and ankle-length skirt. “But for the color of her skin, she could have been Jackie Kennedy,” according to a 1996 biography of Willie Brown by James Richardson.
Neighbors “didn’t dare come out, but we got a lot of phone calls that were very, very insulting,” Blanche Brown now recalls. “The people who moved into those neighborhoods were people with money, doing whatever they do, and they didn’t believe there were a lot of Black people who did the same things. If you walked up there, they assumed you couldn’t afford it.”
Protesting the development became a popular political battle. Dianne Feinstein (whose last name was Berman at the time) recalled in a 1993 political fundraising film that her “stroller bumped up against the heels of the man in front of me in line, and it was Terry Francois,” the first African American on the SF Board of Supervisors.
Housing discrimination wasn’t the only way Forest Knolls residents tried to keep a lock on their neighborhood. The housing design itself was exclusionary, clearly created for automobile owners — it’s one of the few SF neighborhoods where most homes have a two-car garage. In 1961, the city proposed to extend the 37 bus route into the neighborhood, but residents blocked its approval with complaints of “noxious odors” and excessive noise. (Hat tip to the SF history podcast Outside Lands for finding the Chronicle clip.)
Here’s one sign of progress: In recent years, the neighborhood has fought SFMTA to keep a section of the 36 bus route that now loops through the neighborhood.
Register Republican
Lulu Carpenter has lived in Forest Knolls since 1987 and is particularly active on the neighborhood’s Facebook page.
She told me that the neighborhood was still dominated by conservatives a generation ago. She remembers being turned away from registering to vote in the 1990s because she wasn’t going to register as a Republican. “I was floored,” she says.
“When we moved here, there were mostly original residents who are [now] slowly going to care homes or passing on,” says Carpenter, and more families are moving in. Walking around, it’s hard to miss the strollers and FaceTiming teens.
Debates over development and other community changes thrive, like any neighborhood, with a handful of passionate neighbors on sites like Nextdoor and Facebook. “There’s a diversity of opinion,” summarizes resident Brian Byrne. An Australian, he gives the side-eye to American two-party politics and says “thank God” the neighborhood isn’t as conservative as it once was. “You’ve got dyed-in-the-wool, fairly old conservative white people, and then you’ve got a pretty nice diversity after that.”
Back-and-forths over housing, though, are a constant theme. One multi-unit site, where development plans date back to 1963, finally seemed poised for dozens of homes last decade. But nothing has risen on the site because of a plethora of problems, from neighbor concerns over traffic and parking to logistical issues from the steep (and relatively unstable) hill it claimed.
Now a development on the neighborhood’s south flank near the Laguna Honda Reservoir, originally purchased in 1972, will almost certainly cause more controversy. It’s zoned for only one single-family home, but developers want to change the zoning to permit 80 units, according to SocketSite.
The biggest change in the neighborhood is one where development opponents have no sway: The UCSF Parnassus campus is going to expand both its hospital and student housing units, and the plans are moving swiftly.
Inadequate medical space means thousands of patients are turned away every year, according to the Chronicle, and there’s a need for more affordable housing. In January, UCSF agreed to build 1,263 units for students, faculty, and staff, 40 percent of which will be priced for those making less than 120 percent of local median income. Half of those homes will be limited to 90 percent median income by 2050. UCSF says it plans to keep the expansion “within the existing campus footprint,” though multiple reports say they will bust through the previously agreed-upon space ceiling.
Surrounding communities, not just Forest Knolls, have pushed back. Sup. Dean Preston, whose District 5 includes the Haight-Ashbury and Inner Sunset, but not Forest Knolls, sought a delay but was rebuffed. Sup. Myrna Melgar, whose District 7 includes Forest Knolls, is concerned about UCSF sticking to its affordable housing commitments.
Forests and feel
As our former president made clear last year, talk about preservation of neighborhood character cannot be separated from talk about class and race.
In person and online, some residents make the same argument, whether it’s subconscious or not. One resident, who declined to be named, was fairly candid when stopped along his evening walk. Asked what he thought about UCSF’s housing plans, he said pointedly, “It’s density, and density changes the character of the neighborhood.”
Much of that concern revolves around the forest, planted with eucalyptus and other nonnative trees 140 years ago by Adolph Sutro. All residents who spoke with The Frisc said they at least partly moved to Forest Knolls for its natural beauty.
One resident agreed density is more environmentally friendly than sprawl, then argued that Forest Knolls might not be right for more housing because ‘it’s poorly connected by public transport, so nearly all residents have cars.’
In addition to cutting down trees to make way for housing, UCSF has been thinning eucalyptus in recent years and planting native trees, because drought has threatened the safety and longevity of the reserve. The SF Forest Alliance, with many vocal members living in Forest Knolls, has for years countered the university and native-plant advocates, arguing that eucalyptus removal is more of a fire hazard, not less, and hurts native species like hawks.
One petition claims UCSF will cut down 30,000 trees, or 90 percent of the forest. (A UCSF spokesperson said via email that they have only identified 3,500 dead or dying trees to cut, removed 2,500 of them, and already replanted 642 native seedlings with more coming this winter.)
On the neighborhood’s Facebook page, commenter Tony Holiday summarizes the thinking: “Why don’t they expand out near Third St. etc. [where UCSF has its Mission Bay campus], where they have more room to expand and that will not harm this endangered forest … Disgusting.” (In another post, he said the city should “defund” the UC campus because of the proposed expansion.)
Not everyone feels the same way. One resident who was out for an evening stroll acknowledged that some of his neighbors “don’t want the expansion or any of the negatives that could come with it without looking at the positives.” he said. He recently moved to the neighborhood and declined to give his name.
This type of community concern perpetuates San Francisco’s housing crisis. Theo Gordon, chair of San Francisco YIMBY, draws a swift comparison: “You know how we talk about first wave, second wave, third wave feminism? There’s also first wave, second wave, third wave environmentalism,” he says. Though the arguments may be rooted in environmentalism of generations past, Gordon adds, they ignore the importance of “infill” — building more densely in urban settings — to reduce emissions and fight climate change, which should be the highest environmental concern.
In response, resident Rupa Bose, who helps run a Forest Knolls website, agreed that density is more environmentally friendly than sprawl — then, citing concern for the forest, reverted back to a pro-sprawl argument: Forest Knolls might not be right for more housing because “it’s poorly connected by public transport, so nearly all residents have cars.”
A privileged location
Walking around Forest Knolls, it could easily be an updated version of an older San Francisco. People are friendly. There’s that Black Lives Matter mural. While some houses are large and often boast incredible views, they aren’t “monster home” ostentatious. And yes, the green space that San Franciscans cherish is basically their backyard. Discreet trailheads lead up into a dense forest. It’s easy to understand why a neighborhood in such a privileged location (average annual income is about $150,000) may be resistant to change.
The main barrier to homeownership these days is money. While that isn’t overtly racist, the end result is basically the same. If a neighborhood like Forest Knolls, or any neighborhood in the city, is resistant to new housing, especially affordable housing, it can’t live up to the progressive, inclusive goals it espouses.
“I’m sure there are a few people of color, but I don’t think it has changed all that much,” Blanche Brown says now of Forest Knolls, when asked if her actions 50 years ago have made a difference. As we wrapped up our conversation, she left me with one thought: San Francisco, she said, “has grown some, but not as much as it could.”