When Janey Delaney arrived in San Francisco's SoMa District in the late '70s, her rent cost $250 a month. Neighbors knew each other by name. But change came quickly.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
One late fall night, Delaney (pictured) watched a demolition crew take out a hotel from which dozens of poor and elderly residents had been removed. It was her wake up call.
She decided to photograph the people who worked and lived in SoMa, before new developments claimed the neighborhood. The Moscone Center drove that momentum.
Originally conceived of as a sports arena, the convention hall (which today stretches 600,000 square feet) sparked a long-fought battle from the city's low-income residents.
Among the hardest hit communities would be the blue-collar workers and immigrants who lived in hotel dwellings called SROs, some of the only truly affordable housing in the city.
Source: Central City SRO Collaborative
The movers and shakers in city government argued the Moscone Center would bring in good business, Delaney remembers. San Francisco was already a popular tourist destination.
"They wanted to bring San Francisco into the — before the word was invented — the global market," Delaney says. "They succeeded. But at what cost?" she says.
Delaney set out on foot to discover interesting places in her new city. Once she found a place she liked, she would set up her tripod and stake out until she got her shot.
"Some of the small business owners lived on the streets where the business was, so there was this kind of intimacy," Delaney says.
Many of her subjects are seen looking directly at the camera, which adds drama and character. It makes the neighborhood's original settlers much harder to ignore.
After her camera equipment was stolen, she set out to know everyone on her street." I wanted to know who I could trust," Delaney says. It helped her project along.
When the Moscone Center opened in 1981, SoMa was nearly unrecognizable. "It was built like a fortress because the surrounding area was so destitute," Delaney says.
Today, the tech industry has co-opted the neighborhood. Google, Twitter, Zynga, Salesforce, Yelp, Adobe, Reddit, Zipcar, and even Burning Man have offices there.
Source: Google Maps