Remembering the I-Hotel evictions

San Francisco’s International Hotel was more than just a residence. It’s a symbol: the culmination of an era of activism that changed the way a city saw redevelopment. The story of the I Hotel includes big-time real estate developers, elderly immigrants, Berkeley activists and even the leader of the People’s Temple: Jim Jones.

But for those who fought to protect the low-income residents living at the corner of Jackson and Kearny Streets, the night of August 4th, 1977 was not an immediate success. It was a tragedy. Reporter Evan Roberts has the story of how the I-Hotel became a symbol for tenant’s rights.

*     *     *

EVAN ROBERTS: Manilatown was a thriving community of Filipinos and Chinese that ran the length of San Francisco's Kearny Street from Market north to Broadway. From the 1920s, it was home to Filipino barbershops, drug stores, nightclubs, restaurants, pools halls and, most importantly, rooming houses and hotels.

Those were important because, at the time, immigrants from China and the Philippines weren’t allowed to own land or buy property. The International Hotel, on the corner of Kearny and Jackson, was a place for them to call home—a cultural hub for the community. In the 1920s and 30s, the Filipino population was nearly 40,000 men—and only men. Before 1965, the immigration laws allowed entrance only to single men without families. They were commonly seasonal farmers, longshoremen and factory workers.  The I-Hotel was where they came home to get their mail, have a home-cooked meal with friends and rest.

But urban renewal came to their neighborhood, and San Francisco wanted to redevelop the financial district and become a stronger presence in the global marketplace.

ARCH BOOTH (Clip from DYNAMIC AMERICAN CITY, 1956): Hello. I’m Arch Booth, the Executive Vice President of the National Chamber, an organization which is deeply and vitally interested in your problems. This is Fred Baskaw an outstanding and respected real estate consultant. He has put together on film, the story of the dynamic American city. Now Fred, this motion picture shows graphically the trends and forces working constantly in all our towns and cities. Does it not?

FRED BASKAW: Yes, I think it does. The American city has been amazingly dynamic despite powerful built-in limitation on land use. We see this on the West Coast in a city like San Francisco. Basically, of course, you want to make your city a better place in which to live.

By the late 60s, the pool halls and nightclubs of Manilatown were gone and all that was left of the community was the International Hotel. In 1968, the building was sold to the Milton-Meyer Company, a developer that wanted to clear the lot for parking. Despite full occupancy at the I-Hotel, all the tenants were given eviction notices. 

DAVID PROWLER: It was a symbol of change that people didn't want to see. It was a symbol of tenant's rights. It was a symbol of the last stand for an ethnic community, for the Filipino community.

David Prowler was working for San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission at the time.

PROWLER: It was a real roller coaster. I was so involved in it emotionally.  It someone would say to me, "Oh hi, how are you?" If my parents would say, "What's going on?" You know, I was 20, something like that. I'd say, "Well, we got a stay of execution” or, “We'll know from the judge Tuesday." I associated my well being with the International Hotel, so I was very, very invested in it.

The Hotel was a landmark building right at the border of an expanding financial district.

PROWLER: And here was this little hundred-and-fifty room hotel full of elderly Filipinos that was just right in the way of progress. It was a symbol really of the excess of capitalism and what the brutality of unregulated capitalism can be.

EMIL DE GUZMAN: It was like a David and Goliath.

Emil de Guzman was a student in the late 1960s and got involved in the fight for the I-Hotel early on.

DE GUZMAN [Clip from “The Fall of the I-Hotel” (1977)]: From today until Wednesday January 19, the whole block, both the International Hotel and its commercial tenants are subject to eviction at any time, day or night. This is the most critical stage of the struggle to save the International Hotel!

And here is Emil de Guzman today:

DE GUZMAN: A very powerful influential real estate tycoon versus this small community. But I think what was really important, it was like the times, there was anti-war. There was a strong movement against redevelopment, there was the civil rights movement, all these things contributed to giving leverage to the tenants and their fight.

UNNAMED ACTIVIST [Clip from “The Fall of the I-Hotel” (1977)]: We've got this notice right here, we got some matches right here. You know what we think of this notice? You know what we think of this whole eviction plan?

De Guzman was part of the United Filipino Association that was organized to negotiate the lease with the landlord. The hotel was eventually sold to a Thai businessman who had no interest in letting the elderly tenants stay. A last-minute effort by Mayor George Moscone to enact a "Buy Back" Plan that would effectively take the building by eminent domain and give it to the tenants failed, but the fight to stave off the eviction continued.

DE GUZMAN: I think that being able to buy or rent the building gave us a lot of time. That maybe the owner underestimated that this hotel struggle would dissipate over time, but it actually grew stronger and stronger until we were faced with eviction in 1977.

Residents and activists were on edge for months, suspecting an eviction could come at any moment. They set up security units around the building that would watch for the police. Estella Habal, then a 28-year-old mother of three, was there.

ESTELLA HABAL: I did some of that for many months, from three to six am in the morning, watching the door. It was a feeling of being in a siege. We were aware of that, but we always had an element of hope, because it was such a moral struggle. People could grasp very easily, that to evict these elderly men would mean surely death for some of them. Everyone knew, even at that time, that there really wasn't any another place for them to live. It was one percent occupancy in the city. There were really no alternatives.

Local newspapers began running sympathetic articles. Residents of the I-Hotel found support from labor unions, churches, students, gays and lesbians, even Jim Jones' People's Temple.

HABAL: People tried to mobilize and help us and it did stop those evictions. We felt hopeful in that way. With the masses of people behind us, maybe we could stop it every time. But that night when it happened, it caught us by surprise.

On August 3 around 10 o'clock at night, they heard that the police were mobilizing and heading toward the International Hotel.

HABAL: What? They're coming? How is that possible, they’re coming? Because this was only a day after the election, and he won—Moscone won. And Moscone was a supporter of the I-Hotel. So we were wondering what was going on. Was he feeling so pressured from the real estate forces to evict us, what happened there? What changed? And why so quickly?

PROWLER: I went down there and there were thousands of people in front of the hotel, chanting. I remember that there were so many walkie-talkies—this was before cell phones—there were so many walkie-talkies in that area that there was no communication. They just all jammed each other. The police couldn't communicate. The sheriffs couldn’t communicate. And then this fleet of police cars and sheriff's cars with sirens and lights, coming up Kearny street—Kearny street was closed. And it was like an invasion. The red lights, bouncing off the buildings, the sirens, and then horses. It was like an invasion.

HABAL: It actually happened by 11 o'clock. They brought the fire truck. They had these flood lights. They brought the police. The sheriff was waiting behind them. The police action was to open up the door and beat on those people in the front.

DE GUZMAN: Well, the outside, people had fortified themselves outside in the human barricade and the police were just running their horses into the crowd, and they were beating people. It was a massacre. They were beating people indiscriminately; It didn't matter if you were a man or a woman.

PROWLER: I don't know if that was a strategy to shock people, but they were pinning them and charging them into the building. Instead of clearing the building, they were pushing them into the doorway and against the building with horses and clubs.

Estella Habal was stationed in a room inside the hotel with a resident. From the window, she could see thousands of people outside, chanting and being beaten, but not retaliating.

HABAL: When I looked over, out through the window, I could see and hear thousands of people chanting: "We won't move, no no no, stop it,” things like that. We had chants planned, but in that kind of pandemonium that was going on, people were saying "Stop it, no." And you could hear all of that stuff. I was really, really scared. It made me cry, basically, I was crying uncontrollably.

HABAL [singing “We Shall Overcome]: We shall not, we shall not be moved. We shall not, we shall not be moved, just like a tree standing by the water. We shall not be moved.

HABAL: So we sang that over and over again. It gave us strength and courage, actually. Because it's a united singing. The sheriff then is now pulling people away and part of the drama that non-violent resisters create is to show that unity. And so specifically their arms are locked, with each other, like in a chain.

DE GUZMAN:  I got choked. I got my leg jumped on. I got dragged down the stairs. I got dragged up the street. It was horrible.

HABAL: And the whole point of that was to show the brutality—the police against the people. So no matter how hard they hit you, you were there to just take it.

PROWLER: And then they cleared all the supporters out, and then Dick Hongisto had an axe.

HABAL:  They finally took us all out. It took hours. And I was still crying. So we went into the rooms while that was happening. The drill was that you just stay in. But, if they say, “will you come out?” it's up to you.

SHERIFF HONGISTO [Clip from “The Fall of the I-Hotel” (1977)]: “Hi, I’m the Sheriff of San Francisco, we’re here for the eviction and I’d appreciate it if you would come out so we could empty the hotel.”

HABAL: So by the time they finished, it must have been about five hours…four o'clock in the morning.  It was a cold morning and we were just shocked. We didn't expect it. And they pushed us off to the street. They didn't have anything for us. So we regrouped at St. Mary's church on Washington street, which is a couple blocks away and cried again. Not just me, but probably everybody there was crying, because we all felt like, how could this happen?

The International Hotel was demolished four years later in 1981. The lot stayed vacant for decades until it was sold to the Roman Catholic Archdioceses.

In 1977, thousands of San Franciscans came to the aid of elderly Filipinos, defended their home, and demanded the city take responsibility for low-income housing. David Prowler suggests the eviction of the I-Hotel has a far-reaching legacy for the city of San Francisco.

PROWLER: I think we're a more compassionate city as a result of what happened there. I think the boundaries of discussion of what property owners can do has really shifted. And we're much more comfortable requiring developers to include affordable housing, saying you have to save residential hotels. And understanding, I think, the value's of preserving Chinatown, preserving parts of South of Market, preserving parts of the Western Addition, and not just letting private or public redevelopment run roughshod.

Obviously we didn't succeed in our goal of preventing the eviction and saving the building, but the legacy of the International Hotel is that it couldn't happen again. And maybe it took that kind of shock, the image of elderly people being let out at dawn. The sheriff smashing down their doors. The cops on horseback charging into the crowds. Maybe it took those images to really understand what was at stake here. We lost the hotel, we lost the battle, but it's not going to happen again.

Special Thanks to filmmaker Curtis Choy at www.chonkmoonhunter.com for permission to use audio from his documentary “The Fall of the I-Hotel.” You can find him at www.chonkmoonhunter.com. We also want to thank the staff at the Manilatown Cultural Center.

This story originally aired on August 4, 2010.