Filipino American History Month should be recognized year-round, so as we close out October, SV@Home would like to recognize Filipino Americans for their contributions to the housing movement. SV@Home organized a visit for the Community Roots Collaborative (CRC) to San Francisco’s Chinatown Community Development Center (CDC) back in April and learned about how the 1960s Manilatown set its roots in community organizing for tenant rights and sowed the seeds of community development in Chinatown.

The CRC stood right in front of what once was the International Hotel (I-Hotel) off of Kearny/Jackson Streets in an area formerly known as Manilatown and intently listened to the Chinatown CDC tour guide explain that we were practically at the birthplace of Chinatown CDC itself. We learned that predominantly elderly Filipino tenants of a Single-Occupancy Room (SRO) housing building fought and lost a nine-year anti-eviction campaign between 1968 and 1977 alongside a widespread coalition of students, artists, and local grassroots organizations. The tenants were largely farmworkers, merchant marines, and service workers with no other way of affordably remaining in San Francisco.

In the end, the tenants were forcibly removed, and the building was later demolished for further “urban renewal” projects that countless communities of color were experiencing across the country at the time. Although the battle was lost, it started a movement among Asian Americans in San Francisco for grassroots, community-led development that is highly revered across the United States. 

We highly recommend watching Vox’s How San Francisco Erased a Neighborhood and reading Estella Habal’s San Francisco’s International Hotel to learn more about how Filipino Americans contributed to affordable housing, tenant protections, and community development movements through the history of the I-Hotel. 

So, to all our fellow housers reading and learning about this, remember to always pay homage to Filipino Americans and the I-Hotel in October. Happy Filipino American History Month!