Signed inside front cover to previous owners - 

"Jerry and Mel

- To the '80's

?

Xmas '79"

In the 1970s, the photographer Ira Nowinski captured the transformation of the South of Market neighborhood. This was an era when redevelopment programs were sweeping across America eradicating vernacular architecture and displacing residents. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency sought to create a convention center, hotels, housing, and retail, but this action required the relocation of working class and elderly citizens, mostly men, who lived in safe, low-rent housing. In 1971, these local residents formed Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TOOR) in protest of redevelopment pressures. A political and legal battle ensued in which the residents immobilized the project, delaying it for twenty years and resulting in new affordable housing units under TOOR. Today the Yerba Buena Center houses a convention center and other cultural amenities. Nowinski made these photographs beginning in 1971, when the San Francisco Chronicle headline “Ninety-six Citizens Thrown Out of Hotel” compelled him to document the dismantling of the South of Market district and the hotel residents displaced by redevelopment. They are published in No Vacancy: Urban Renewal and the Elderly.