The tech worker waved a piece of paper in front of Hugo Vargas and his friends.
“We paid $27,” the man said, while another clapped his hands together and then motioned for the teenagers to leave a field near 20th and Valencia streets where they had been playing a pick-up game of soccer.
They refused.
“Just because you have money doesn’t mean you get to book the field for an hour,” said Kai, one of the local players, to the group of tech workers who were kicking them off the Mission playground field because they had paid for a permit to reserve it for an hour. “If you want to play pick-up, you play pick-up like the rest of us.”
A video recording of the September 2014 incident went viral, and Vargas and his friends suddenly found themselves at the forefront of a movement to save Mission Playground and other public spaces from a reservation system that they saw as denying them access. They attended a protest at City Hall that drew a crowd and they lobbied for change.
Soon after, the city’s Recreation and Parks Department announced that it would end the permit program that had allowed players to purchase playtime at Mission Playground. With that experience, something inside of Vargas shifted.
“We know now that we have our community on our side,” said Vargas. “[Before] I thought, we are just teens, no one is going to listen to us. We don’t have a voice.”
Confronting Gentrification
Others in City Hall took note and this month David Campos appointed the 17-year-old Vargas to the city’s Youth Commission. The latter advises the city’s Board of Supervisors and Mayor on youth-related legislation.
“I would not be surprised to see Hugo become supervisor one day,” said Hillary Ronen, legislative aide to Campos.
Vargas said his story reflects the realities of many others in his community who are carrying the weight of the city’s issues – a vanishing middle class, the loss of public spaces and the criminalization of those who can’t afford to pay to use them, and astronomical rents that have displaced many families, including his own.
At City Hall, Vargas hopes to use his voice to make a difference for them.
“The city is just unfair to its communities, to the people who pay their taxes, to the people who work to survive like my parents,” said Vargas. “There are tax breaks for tech companies who don’t even give a cent back to the community but expect more from the city than any of us.”
Lito Sandoval, President of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club, which organized the rally at City Hall after the Mission Playground incident, called the incident a “rude awakening for the kids” in terms of the ramifications of gentrification.
“It wasn’t just people getting kicked out of their homes and being replaced by wealthier people. They found that the places they normally would go to were changing also,” said Sandoval. “At the same time, they learned that they don’t have to accept that as ‘the way it is.”
After Eviction Came Displacement
For Vargas, the confrontation at Mission Playground was the moment he “figured out what gentrification was.”
“It became a physical and visual thing that I experienced, and it scared the hell out of me,” he said. “People who are privileged…can pull out money whenever they want and say ‘I can pay for this, this is not a problem.’”
And with this realization, Vargas said he became aware of the ways in which the city had failed him and his family.
“It’s profits before people,” he said. “Mission playground was a big thing to show what the city is really about.”
It also politicized him and introduced him to his own potential – one that he did not see living in a 10×10 foot Single Room Occupancy Hotel with his parents, two younger sisters, and a dog for some three years.
“Most people who watched that [Mission Playground] video don’t know that Hugo was returning to an SRO room that day,” said Chirag Bhakta, an organizer with the Mission SRO Collaborative, who managed Vargas family’s case and became something like a mentor to the teenager.
“If people went through the trauma that he went through, the anger of the [soccer field] incident, some people his age might direct that anger differently,” he said.
In 2012, Vargas’ family was evicted from their Twin Peaks apartment after his father lost his job as a car mechanic. Unable to pay the market-rate rents, the eviction was quickly followed by the family’s displacement from San Francisco.
“My dad started getting depressed, having anxiety. He couldn’t sleep at night,” Vargas remembered.
The family moved to Richmond, but the commute was grueling and costly for the three children, who still attended schools in the city. Within six months, the Vargas family moved back to San Francisco, into an SRO near 16th and Mission streets.
Vargas, who began suffering from insomnia, described this chapter in his life as “terrible.”
He credits mentors like Bhakta with seeing him through. “He would come to our SRO to check-up on us, and he would text me to ask if I was going to school.”
Future Plans
Vargas’ perseverance was again tested when he was tasked this summer with navigating the city’s affordable housing lottery.
“During the process of getting a new apartment, it was taking forever to get the paperwork we needed,” said Vargas, who then took it upon himself to involve the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
An investigation into his family’s case showed that their SRO’s building manager had failed to sign off on necessary paperwork to move the process along.
“It was a big role I had to take, to help my parents get a new apartment so they don’t feel stressed out,” said Vargas, whose parents immigrated from Mexico. “A lot of immigrants are afraid to ask for help.”
Five weeks ago, as Vargas was preparing to start his senior year, his family moved into a two-bedroom apartment on Polk Street.
“Things aren’t always going to go right for you, but you can do something about it,” said Vargas, adding that he will bring this experience to the Youth Commission, where he plans to make the issue of youth homelessness his priority.
When asked if he could one day see himself in politics, Vargas said “definitely,” but only if a career as a pro athlete doesn’t pan out. Soccer still plays large in his life – already, Vargas received a recruitment offer for a Midwestern college’s soccer team.
Good luck kid. Hopefully you’ll realize that it’s not just about “gentrification” but about class, that your position at city hall is meant to bring you into a system that denies this, and that your more radical impulses toward justice and equality will be suppressed with the language of “process”, gradualism, the “slow gears of democracy” etc. But great job showing those yuppies on the ball field that day!
Hugo Vargas is an amazing kid. His parents must be so proud of him–and all of us who live in San Francisco should be grateful for having teens like this in the Mission.
If you want to do a piece on the city failing its families, how about investigating why Campos/Ronen allow SF to push the brunt of the city’s homeless encampments into D9? And why Campos/Ronen do absolutely nothing to resolve this issue (and indeed, exacerbate it), while the law abiding, taxpaying citizens of D9 continually seek their help for some sort of relief? Ditto for the organized street prostitution rings perpetrated by pimps from the East Bay that occur nightly on Capp and Shotwell.
Am I missing something, or was the “privatization” of the soccer field mentioned above actually an attempt by the city to organize (and collect additional funds on) public time allotted for public resources?
Some papers print two sides of a story…the other side might go something like: a group of people wanted to play soccer, so they consulted (I’m assuming) a city website, saw that the city (run by people just like Campos/Ronen) was willing to guarantee playtime at a public park, in exchange for a fee. They paid the fee (on top of whatever taxes they pay). They arrived at the time allotted by the city to play. They were confronted by a group that did not want to play by the rules the city set up, who refused to leave. Complaints were made by the offending party, and the city reversed its policy.
Without analyzing the race or income (known or perceived) of the parties involved, the story takes on a much different hue.
I coached little league baseball for 10 years and always had to get a permit to reserve field time. In the Mission over 25years ago, so it’s nothing new.
In regard to your comment “They were confronted by a group that did not play by the rules the city set up” I’d tell you that the city “forgot” to notify “this group” that a playground that they have been enjoying for some generations and that they have have been sharing with no problems for years, all of a sudden became “private property”. And it looks to me that there is not asking of a different hue, it’s the city being greedy and pleasing tech people, plain and simple.
Eugenia, according to you “the city forgot to notify this group that a playground they’ve been enjoying for some generations” had become private suddenly.
Hugo Vargas is quoted as saying, “It was a big role I had to take, to help my parents get a new apartment so they don’t feel stressed out,” said Vargas, whose parents immigrated from Mexico. “A lot of immigrants are afraid to ask for help.” According to Hugo’s admission, he does not represent “generations” who have been enjoying the playground forever and a day. Hugo was forced to take on this “big role” regarding the family’s housing due to the fact that his parents do not speak English. The entire family are, very likely, fairly recently arrived illegal aliens; they are not immigrants. Hugo and his peers do not have an inalienable right to that playground; they have no more right to it than an any other newly arrived group, even techies.
SF has a huge budget each year and there are specific groups the city is forced to provide services for that are extremely costly. Many people feel that some of these groups are inordinately costly. Many people who receive these services have come from other cities and states that don’t provide the extensive services SF does, nor does nature provide the kind of weather we are blessed with here. I’m referring to the homeless population here.
The other group I’m referring to are the illegal aliens and they come from several other countries, primarily south of our border. These people come by the millions and, in spite of the fact that they have no legal right to be here, they access a variety of services that we have become obliged to provide to them and their families. This is all common knowledge in countries south of the border where, by the way, none of the services we offer here are available and that is why they continue to arrive here.
So, tell me again, who are the “greedy” ones here? The costs of supporting these groups is astronomical and has, or will very soon, become impossible to sustain. Although I feel that the situation we’re in having to support all these people has taken on insane proportions, I am certainly not going to go so far as to vote for Donald Trump in the hope that he might rectify it to some degree. But I do wish more people would wake up to the reality of the situation.
Eugenia, according to you “the city forgot to notify this group that a playground they’ve been enjoying for some generations” had become private suddenly.
Hugo Vargas is quoted as saying, “It was a big role I had to take, to help my parents get a new apartment so they don’t feel stressed out,” said Vargas, whose parents immigrated from Mexico. “A lot of immigrants are afraid to ask for help.” According to Hugo’s admission, he does not represent “generations” who have been enjoying the playground forever and a day. Hugo was forced to take on this “big role” regarding the family’s housing due to the fact that his parents do not speak English. The entire family are, very likely, fairly recently arrived illegal aliens; they are not immigrants. Hugo and his peers do not have an inalienable right to that playground; they have no more right to it than an any other newly arrived group, even techies.
SF has a huge budget each year and there are specific groups the city is forced to provide services for that are extremely costly. Many people feel that some of these groups are inordinately costly. Many people who receive these services have come from other cities and states that don’t provide the extensive services SF does, nor does nature provide the kind of weather we are blessed with here. I’m referring to the homeless population here.
The other group I’m referring to are the illegal aliens and they come from several other countries, primarily south of our border. These people come by the millions and, in spite of the fact that they have no legal right to be here, they access a variety of services that we have become obliged to provide to them and their families. This is all common knowledge in countries south of the border where, by the way, none of the services we offer here are available and that is why they continue to arrive here.
So, tell me again, who are the “greedy” ones here? The costs of supporting these groups is astronomical and has, or will very soon, become impossible to sustain. Although I feel that the situation we’re in having, to support all these people, has taken on insane proportions, I am certainly not going to go so far as to vote for Donald Trump in the hope that he might rectify it to some degree. But I do wish more people would wake up to the reality of the situation.
Yes, I agree totally with you. If the City did not post their policy at this location, they were definitely at fault, though the reservation system in and of itself never transferred public property into private hands.
At any rate, you’re right: Failure on the part of the City, including the office of Campos/Ronen, who should have known better. City officials definitely being greedy in charging anyone (tech person or otherwise) for the use of public resources, already paid for by citizens’ tax dollars. Shameful.
Thanks for the feedback. Clarified phrasing around the reservation of the field space.
Fantastic story, Laura. Vargas learned an important lesson early –– people can make a difference, if they try. Laws can work. The system can, sometimes, work. His experience demonstrates that.
I hope he stays in SF as long as he’s able.
Just what we need, more people who want to have everything provided for them subsidized and never have to bother to provide for themselves. I see Venezuela in the future. You know their little socialism experiment has resulted in starvation there.
You’re a cruel and mean-spirited person with a small mind.
Wow, you read a lot more into things than are in the article. So, a hard working family wants everything provided for them subsidized? You don’t make any sense. Losing a job is not something a family can recover from instantaneously if they are living paycheck to paycheck, especially in an expensive area like SF. Try removing the cynical, brain-washed, uber conservative, angry lens with which you see the world, Bob. You might be a lot less disgruntled with life in general. And keep taking those BP meds because I bet you don’t.
A small percentage of people would need social programs to go by, if greed was not so great in SF and Bay Area. Maybe you can lay $7000 a month for 2bd apartment, or afford a $500 raise rent monthly every year as these things are becoming horrible normal in SF. But, just in case you don’t realize it, the majority of people CAN NOT AFFORD THAT.
Your comments are despicable and un-American.
Yeah, socialism here in Northern California has really driven businesses here into the ditch. The economy is so weak that we are barely scraping by.
Lol you’re just another bitter bigoted old man.
This is awesome news. Way to go Hugo Vargas!!
That playground is already being paid by the Taxpayers of San Francisco, so yeah is being subsidized, by property taxes. Go whistle dixie angry little man.
Just what we need, another greed-infested techie who thinks everything on this earth was placed here for just HIM and his money.