SAN FRANCISCO — Sister Bernie Galvin looks at the Presidio, the nation's newest and most costly national park, and sees the solution to San Francisco's chronic housing shortage.
Scattered across the onetime Army fort's historic slopes are homes ranging from the elegant mansion once inhabited by the camp commander to the peeling Wherry apartments that served the enlisted ranks. All told, there are 1,900 units--enough, Galvin argues, to make a huge difference in a city where the vacancy rate hovers at 1% and rents are among the nation's highest.
"There is suffering in this community because of this crisis in housing," said the 64-year-old Galvin, who lives and works among the poor in the city's Tenderloin district. "Other cities have housing shortages, but we're the only city in the nation that has the solution right at our own front door."
The Catholic nun's crusade has become a public relations nightmare for the seven-member board President Clinton appointed to run the first national park given a congressional deadline for becoming financially self-sufficient.
Trust members say most of the park's housing must be rented at market rates to help raise the $35 million a year needed for the park to pay its way.
But Galvin and a coalition of community groups have put a measure on the June 2 ballot that requires the city to "encourage" the Presidio Trust board to preserve its housing and rent it to San Franciscans of all income levels.
Opponents warn that the measure's passage would infuriate Congress and jeopardize $25 million a year in federal funding for the sprawling 1,480-acre park, which sits at the mouth of San Francisco Bay.
Congress has set a 15-year deadline for the Presidio to pay its bills, and will cut back funding unless the board does everything possible to produce revenues, warns Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
"I don't want Congress to think that the elected officials who fought for this don't understand the commitments we made about the Presidio," said Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat who spent eight years persuading lawmakers the Presidio should become a national park. "We made commitments that it would be a park and that we would try to move to self-sufficiency."
The Presidio board, backed by Pelosi and California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, unveiled plans last week that it says would transform the park into a city within a city. Under the plan, businesses would be able to rent both commercial property and homes in the park for many workers.
