25 San Francisco Families Move Into Improved Public Housing In Hunters Point

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — San Francisco City officials marked the completion of phase one of the reconstruction of a public housing complex once deemed among the worst in the country.

25 families moved into the first building completed as part of the new Hunters View housing complex in the city’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.

Alice Gutierrez was among the residents who got to move into their new homes. She has lived at the complex for nine years and said her new home is immensely better than the old.

“My unit wasn’t up to date it was bad; the plumbing, the electricity,” she said.

19 of the complex’s old buildings were demolished in the federally funded redevelopment two years ago. It is the first of five public housing sites in San Francisco to receive the treatment by the federal government.

Mayor Ed Lee said the eventual 750 units will be part of a mixed-income community.

“The bunkers that were built in the ‘50s that represented Hunters View for many, many years were actually built for the military. They weren’t really meant for long-term, dignified, respectful housing that this community deserves,” he said.

The director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing, Olsen Lee, said other housing projects to be rebuilt include Sunnydale, Potrero Hill and West Side Courts in the Western Addition as part of Mayor Lee’s HOPE SF initiative.

(Copyright 2013 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)