Join HANC, community gardeners, and the urban agriculture community, at our general meeting on Thursday, July 12, beginning at 7:00 pm, downstairs at the Park Branch Library, 1833 Page Street.

Within the last year, community garden and urban agriculture sites in San Francisco, including the Free Farm (at Gough and Eddy), Hayes Valley Farm (at Oak and Laguna) and the Kezar Gardens and Ecology Center (at 780 Frederick), along with the more high profile Gill Tract (on UC Berekley property in Albany in East Bay), have all had to reckon with the uncertainty of tenure and permissible use for growing food for people. Each of these sites has its own story of impending change of land use, displacement or eviction of farming activities in favor of housing and commercial development except in the case of Kezar Gardens and Ecology Center which is being faced with the possibility of being evicted in favor of another community garden. At the HANC general membership meeting on Thursday July 12th we will hear from community members involved with these sites and learn more about the current status of these sites and solicit discussion from members about land tenure and community gardens and urban agriculture.

The Free Farm is currently on a vacant lot owned by St. Paulus church at the corner of Gough and Eddy. Earlier this year, St. Paulus signed an agreement with Maracor Development to go ahead with a plan of selling the land to them and having it developed for market rate housing and a new church building for St. Paulus. The Free Farm has some 24-36 months until “entitlement” or when the city gives final approval for the building project. This will include an environmental impact report, community meetings with the neighbors, coming up with a design, and dealing with all legal and building issues. Once entitlement is reached the church signs the property over to the developer. Maracorp Development has required that the Free Farm be removed from the site 6 months before entitlement happens. The Free Farm is currently searching for a new location (or locations) in the city.

Hayes Valley Farm has been grown on portions of Parcel P and Parcel O in Hayes Valley between Fell and Oak and Octavia and Laguna for 2 and half years. At the membership meeting we will learn about the latest updates about the development proposal that was planned to go before the Planning Commission for approval in June to construct a new mixed-use building with 182 dwelling units, 3,800 square feet of retail space, and 91 off-street parking spaces, situated over a subterranean parking garage on Parcel P the south half of the lot that Hayes Valley Farm has occupying. City officials expect that they will serve the farm its 60-day eviction notice by Dec. 1, requiring it to vacate the site by February, but the timeframe is still uncertain and there is still uncertainty about potential tenure of the north half of the site (Parcel O).

At the meeting there will also be a representative from the Kezar Gardens and Ecology Center to provide an update on the three judge hearing in June about San Francisco's Recreation and Parks Department to evict the community garden in favor of implementing a Recreation and Parks Commission approved plan to implement, yes you are reading this right, a community garden. Over the last year HANC has transformed the operation and site at 780 Frederick to include over 50 community garden plots with over 100 active community gardeners – at no cost to the city. This last seems especially poignant in consideration of the seemingly difficult and uncertain task of finding municipal funding for a popularly supported urban ag ordinance (read more here).

And, of course, there is the Gill Tract. While not in San Francisco proper it might be difficult to host a membership meeting about urban agriculture and land use without sharing information about the recent Occupy the Farm endeavor on a 10-acre parcel in Albany that University of California, Berkeley intends to sell rights to the tract to commercial and residential property developers. From April 22nd to May 12 community members farmed and held workshops on the soil of the Gill Tract until, using a mixed force made up of eight UC campus police forces, along with Alameda County Sheriff's Department, police blocked traffic, barricaded the Gill Tract, and arrested nine people. Two of the arrested had entered the farm after the raid began, to water plants. Seven additional people were arrested while watching the police operation from San Pablo Avenue. It is unclear and uncertain if the direct action will result in any change in planning on the part of UC Berkeley and the City of Albany.

It may be that this confluence of displacement and eviction activities are a temporal coincidence or it may be that the public support for food security, healthy, local urban agriculture is being forced to find its place in a built environment where land use seems to be determined by the interests of highly profitable commercial and residential development. HANC members and neighbors are invited to share their thoughts, feelings and aspirations about urban agriculture, community gardens and land tenure at the July meeting.