Nationality American Name M. Herman | Died 1971 | |
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Occupation head of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency | ||
M. Justin Herman (died 1971) was an American public administrator. From 1951 to 1959 he was head of the regional office of the Housing and Home Finance Agency in San Francisco, California.:18 From 1959 until his death in 1971 he was head of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. Under his administration, large areas of the city were redeveloped; thousands of residents, many of them poor and non-white, were forced to leave their homes and businesses.:132
Contents
Career
Herman was appointed executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency by George Christopher in April 1959. He was an experienced administrator with significant connections in the federal government and an extensive knowledge of urban redevelopment. He had the support of the Bay Area Council, of the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee and of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association. He greatly expanded the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, from about 60 employees before he took office to 462 shortly after his death.:18
Herman was responsible for the redevelopment, in two phases, of the Western Addition and for the transformation of Geary Street into Geary Boulevard. In the second phase of the Western Addition project, 10,000 people were displaced and more than 60 city blocks cleared by 1970. The agency also aggressively acquired land in Chinatown, the Golden Gateway, the port area, South of Market and the Tenderloin, expropriating poor people from those areas.:19
Herman died of a heart attack in 1971.
Reception
The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials makes an annual M. Justin Herman Award. Justin Herman Plaza, opposite the Ferry Building, is named for him.
While Herman's actions were largely supported by the elite of the city and by banks, businesses and the city government, his reputation among those he displaced from their homes was very low. Thomas Fleming described him in 1965 as the "arch-villain in the black depopulation of the city",:19 while Hannibal Williams of the Western Addition Community Association said "We didn't know who the devil was. But we knew who Justin Herman was and that was the devil for us".:133
In July 2017, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced a resolution which would temporarily rename Justin Herman Plaza to Embarcadero Plaza until a new permanent name could be attached, citing Herman's role in displacing poor and minority residents from the Western Addition, Fillmore, Chinatown, and South of Market neighborhoods. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the resolution unanimously on September 19, 2017. The name Embarcadero Plaza will be temporary until a new official name can be decided upon. The new name would need to be decided by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission, which has jurisdiction over naming public spaces. Peskin stated the site's owner, Boston Properties, told him they would cover the cost (estimated at US$5,400) of replacing the plaque bearing Herman's name.