Anti-Eviction Mapping Project

Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
Name	Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
Formation	2014
Headquarters	San Francisco, California
Founders	Pam Tau Lee; Vanessa Turner; Sam Stein; Johanna Hedva
Type	Nonprofit; advocacy; research
Focus	Housing rights; eviction mapping; tenant organizing

Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is a grassroots research collective and mapping initiative based in San Francisco that documents displacement, eviction, and housing precarity through spatial data, oral histories, and community organizing. The project combines digital humanities, cartography, and participatory research to support tenant advocacy and policymaking in urban contexts. Its work intersects with journalism, law, urban planning, and social movements.

History and Origins

The project originated in 2014 amid debates following the passage of Proposition 13-era housing trajectories and municipal responses to the 2008 financial crisis that influenced eviction patterns in San Francisco, Oakland, and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Founders drew on networks including University of California, Berkeley researchers, Stanford University fellows, and community organizations such as Coalition on Homelessness and Tenants Together. Early collaborators included artists and scholars linked to Museum of the African Diaspora, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and independent collectives influenced by the tactics of ACT UP, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. Initial datasets were compiled alongside legal advocates at Legal Services for Children and tenant unions associated with Service Employees International Union locals and Worker Centers in the Bay Area.

Mission and Activities

The collective states goals of making displacement visible to support tenant organizing, influence litigation, and inform policymaking in contexts such as San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearings, California State Legislature briefings, and municipal planning commissions. Activities include producing interactive maps for use by Public Advocates Office staff, digitizing eviction court records from San Francisco Superior Court and housing documentation used by legal clinics at University of California, Hastings College of the Law and Golden Gate University School of Law. The project collaborates with Asian Pacific Environmental Network, La Voz Latina, Eviction Free San Francisco, and research groups at Columbia University and New York University when addressing eviction trends comparable to those in New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

Data and Mapping Methods

Methodologies combine scraped datasets from county recorder offices, archived documents from San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times reporting, crowd-sourced tenant reports, and spatial analysis using tools drawn from Esri software, QGIS, and open-source platforms like GitHub repositories maintained by civic technologists. Mapping workflows incorporate oral histories collected with partners including StoryCorps, Local History Project archives, and community radio stations such as KQED and KPFA. The collective applies data standards discussed in forums at Open Data Institute, National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, and academic conferences hosted by Association of American Geographers. Data is used in legal contexts alongside filings in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and cited in reports by advocacy groups like National Low Income Housing Coalition and Urban Displacement Project.

Impact and Advocacy

Findings have informed organizing campaigns, policy proposals before bodies such as the San Francisco Rent Board and California Public Utilities Commission-adjacent hearings on housing affordability, and litigation by tenant lawyers with ties to Eviction Defense Collaborative and Bay Area Legal Aid. The project’s maps and reports have been cited in coverage by The Guardian, The Atlantic, ProPublica, and local outlets including San Francisco Examiner and have been used in teaching modules at University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. The collective’s interventions intersect with ballot measure debates like Measure F and state initiatives on rent control debated in Sacramento.

Criticism and Controversies

Critics from municipal agencies, real estate trade groups such as Urban Land Institute affiliates, and some scholars have questioned methodology, arguing about attribution of causation between evictions and redevelopment projects like those promoted by Transbay Joint Powers Authority and private developers including Tishman Speyer and Related Companies. Concerns have been raised about privacy and the use of court records in public-facing maps by advocates linked to tenant organizing, prompting debate in forums like Electronic Frontier Foundation panels and ethics discussions at American Sociological Association conferences. Some housing policy analysts from Brookings Institution and Urban Institute have critiqued narrative framing while tenant attorneys and organizers from Causa Justa :: Just Cause defended the project’s role in litigation and community education.

Notable Projects and Campaigns

Notable initiatives include an interactive eviction map of the San Francisco Bay Area that correlated eviction filings with demography data from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, oral-history campaigns in partnership with Asian Law Caucus and San Francisco Tenants Union, and collaborative reports used during displacement crises in Mission District and Bayview–Hunters Point. Campaigns targeted specific developments such as redevelopment near Mission Bay and transit-oriented projects around BART stations, and coordinated with coalitions like Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and national networks exemplified by Right to the City Alliance.

Category:Housing rights organizations Category:Organizations based in San Francisco