By Treasure Island resident : sfbayview – excerpt
As the reader may or may not be aware, just beneath the Bay Bridge, about halfway to the East Bay coming from San Francisco – or vice versa if you prefer – there is a manmade island that was once a former naval base known somewhat ironically as Treasure Island. And if the reader is already aware of this, he still may or may not know that there are somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 people living on this island, as there have been for the last 25 or 30 years.
Ten-minute drive to the Third World
This is a low income neighborhood, as the cost of living here has – for those 25 or 30 years – been remarkably low due to its status as a former federal military base and due to the fact that it isn’t the most convenient place to live. There are various “quirks” that must be tolerated by those who live there, ranging from frequent power outages, even when the weather is just fine, to things like how you can’t dig in the soil because radiation and other pollutants have been found over the years. This is not surprising because the island itself is a Navy Superfund cleanup site…
There are many other grievances that the residents of Treasure Island would tell you about if you were willing to take a minute to listen. Bad cell phone reception. Scarce amenities and resources. Being 100% reliant on a solitary Muni bus line to get on and off the island at all times of day or night, since you can’t cross the Bay Bridge on foot without getting stopped by CHP.
You can always spend your every last dime on Uber rides. Of course, there’s no guarantee that you’ll find a driver willing to stop on the island. It’s a whole 5 minutes out of the way if you are already crossing the bridge. But try telling that to the Uber drivers that often can’t be begged or even bribed to stop and pick up on the island. Many a resident has tried…
The Treasure Island Development Authority is planning to charge people $5 tolls to enter and exit the island
To catch you up to speed, the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA), the agency that runs the island, in a effort to pay for transportation improvements for the wealthy residents who will be living in the luxury condos once the redevelopment is complete, is planning to put a $5 toll both coming to and leaving the island. They are planning these tolls while the low income residents currently living on the island still have a few years to go before they are displaced from the Island via an ill conceived eviction lottery…
Publicity stunt?
When he sees a thousand or more people being maligned by a group of powerful developers, their investors and the city officials they have in their pocket who enable them – real, actual living people literally about to be made homeless by something as arbitrary and callous as an eviction lottery, does he care? Does he find a way to keep it from happening, even if he can’t hold the developers and city officials behind it accountable for even thinking about doing something so shitty?
He may want to keep his name off of it, even if he doesn’t much care about it – if it starts happening while he’s in office. I mean if he’s elected, that is. If he needs to do it for his own benefit, I’m OK with that, too.
If I wake up at 7 a.m. to go to that meeting and he lets us down, I may have to ask him to leave.
“Matt. Door. See?”
To contact this Treasure Island resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, contact the Bay View at 415-671-0789 or editor. …(more)
Avaible public transit seems to be very much a challenge for this situation