Marin Housing Authority Residents & Employees Are Standing Together Against Contracting Out!
Contractors have been harming Marin Housing Authority (MHA) residents.
MHA's use of contractors is harming Marin County's most vulnerable. Residents are already living with rats, mold, lack of heating, problematic plumbing, and dubious electrical wiring. Make no mistake, the toll is not only physical but mental and spiritual. To then have to deal with third-party contractors, some of whom live as far away as Florida and New York, is unconscionable.
MHA management and SEIU 1021 (the union that represents MHA employees) have recently reached a tentative agreement that is an admirable first step towards realizing the Board’s vision of bringing contracted out work back in-house. The fight to make MHA an employer capable of attracting adequate levels of union staff is a fight for human decency, safety, and a commitment to MHA's stated mission.
While this is a moral fight, it is also about the long-term financial health of MHA. It is laudable that MHA has agreed to phase out its most abusive contractor Nan Mackay. The proactive phasing out of Nan Mackay avoids situations such as those at San Francisco Housing Authority, in which San Francisco Housing Authority is currently suing Nan Mackay for $32.4 million for failing to provide promised services. Third-party contractors are wholly unaccountable and lack the intimate on-the-ground knowledge that union employees have to protect our most vulnerable.
We wish to see the MHA Board of Commissioners, MHA management, and MHA union employees continue to work together to bring contracted work back in-house. Ultimately, this is how we will best serve MHA’s residents.
MHA residents and union employees’ fight to bring contracted out work back in-house is a racial justice issue.
Caset Cep of The New Yorker reports that “of the more than ninety-five thousand entries on the National Register of Historic Places – the list of sites deemed worthy of preservation by the federal government – only two percent focus on the experiences of Black Americans." This makes Golden Gate Village a rarity in this regard – for far too often our elected officials have forgotten the racist, violent history that has marred our country's collective march towards freedom and justice for all.
In this spirit, let us restate the context for why the overwhelming majority of the residents of Golden Gate Village are black.
During World War II – a war in which more than 400,000 Americans sacrificed their lives to stop the specter of worldwide fascism – nearly 6,000 civilians signed up to help build Liberty ships in the Marin shipyards. Following the war, the majority of the white shipyard workers left Marin, having secured financial prosperity from their labor. Black workers, however, were largely left behind and impoverished, a direct result of the County's redlining practices.
This is the historical context in which Golden Gate Village was built: to house the black patriots whom this County failed.
We failed Marin County’s black population during World War II, and we are continuing to fail our County’s black population today.
In one of the wealthiest counties in California, we should not be subjecting our black public housing residents to living conditions with rats, mold, problematic plumbing, lack of heating, and dubious electrical wiring. In doing so, we are lunging a knife into scars, opening wounds, and deepening the structural racism MHA's mission stands against.
We wish to see the MHA Board of Commissioners, MHA management, and MHA union employees continue to work together to bring contracted work back in-house. Ultimately, this is how we will best serve MHA’s residents.