History We Won't Move Yerba Buena

“We Won’t Move”: The Yerba Buena Redevelopment Fight and the Birth of TODCO

Building and Redeveloping Housing in SoMa

Eight SoMa residences and nearly 1,000 homes

To understand TODCO, you have to start with a moment in San Francisco history when poor and elderly residents refused to be erased.

In the 1960s, the City of San Francisco approved the massive Yerba Buena Center Redevelopment Project. The plan would demolish Third Street’s “skid row,” clearing out existing housing to build a convention center district. For planners and developers, it was modernization. For many residents, it was a direct threat: the loss of homes, community ties, familiar streets, and survival networks that made life possible.

The people most at risk were also the people most likely to be ignored—low-income residents and elders.

They organized anyway.

A Neighborhood Draws a Line

SoMa residents rallied around a vow that captured both urgency and dignity:

“We won’t move!”

That phrase wasn’t a slogan. It was a declaration that the community would not accept displacement as a “cost of progress.”

Residents demanded what redevelopment plans too often avoided: decent relocation housing and a real commitment to replacing what was being destroyed.

The Lawsuit That Changed the Deal

The residents’ organizing led to a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit demanded relocation housing that met basic standards—because the alternative was displacement, hardship, and the unraveling of lives.

The legal challenge brought the project to a halt for four years.

Four years is an eternity in the timeline of a major city redevelopment project. It meant the residents had forced the City to reckon with what redevelopment would do to real people—not just to a map.

The City’s Legal Obligation: Replacement Housing and Financing

Ultimately, the City was legally required to provide four sites in Yerba Buena Center to replace demolished housing and to provide tax funds to finance development.

That legal requirement was more than a policy adjustment. It was a recognition that redevelopment could not simply remove low-income residents and call it “renewal.”

It also created an opening: if replacement housing had to be built, it needed an organization rooted in the community to do it.

The Birth of TODCO

Out of that moment, Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO) was born as one of San Francisco’s first nonprofit, community-based housing development corporations.

It is hard to overstate what that means.

TODCO was created to make sure that low-income residents, hotel residents, elders, immigrants, families, and people who lived below the poverty line would not be treated as disposable. It was created to build, preserve, and advocate for a SoMa where residents remained part of the neighborhood’s future.

TODCO began as a vehicle for community survival—an institution built from organizing, legal action, and a demand for dignity.

From Origin to Ongoing Work

The conditions that created TODCO did not disappear. San Francisco continued to grow. SoMa continued to evolve. Market pressures and development cycles continued to create displacement risk.

But the founding lesson remained: community voice is not optional. It is the difference between a neighborhood that remains diverse and a neighborhood that becomes exclusive.

Building and Redeveloping Housing in SoMa

Following its founding, TODCO went on to build and redevelop eight buildings in SoMa that now provide almost 1,000 living units for:

  • elders,

  • people experiencing homelessness,

  • hotel tenants,

  • people with disabilities,

  • and others whose housing stability might otherwise be threatened.

These buildings are part of the community’s infrastructure—stability anchors that protect residents from being pushed out during waves of redevelopment and gentrification.

A Continuing Commitment: Benefit Rather Than Displace

TODCO’s mission is explicit: SoMa residents should be “always benefited rather than displaced by renewal.”

That mission grew directly from the Yerba Buena fight. It is the living thread that ties today’s housing development, resident programs, and advocacy back to the vow that started it:

We won’t move.

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Last updated: 2025