Lula Jackson, 78, and Alveries Harper, 85, have been friends for more than 40 years, living a few doors down from each other at the Martin Luther King-Marcus Garvey Square Cooperative Apartments. Like the Fillmore neighborhood that surrounds it, the co-op was once filled with Black residents. Now, Harper and Jackson are two of only a few dozen Black people living at the 211-unit co-op.

On March 16, Harper received an eviction notice, taped to the front door of her four-bedroom townhouse. So did 15 other co-op residents — all of them Black, some disabled, most senior citizens. Domus Management, which manages the townhouses and apartments that comprise the co-op, claimed that Harper owed more than $10,000 in back payments. Domus was hired by the co-op’s board to manage the property and technically works on behalf of its residents. 

The potential displacement of longtime Fillmore residents occurs amid a surge of evictions across San Francisco, where home prices and rents have soared to record levels amid the AI boom. According to the Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, 1,488 eviction notices were issued from March 2025 through February, a 40% increase over the same period a year earlier. A 2025 city-funded study (opens in new tab) of access to housing singled out the Fillmore neighborhood as suffering a disproportionate number of evictions. 

According to Harper, shortly before she received the eviction notice, Domus informed her that she owed $93,000 — approximately 51 months’ worth of her carrying fees. But when the eviction notice arrived, it stated that she owed $10,073. Another resident facing eviction was initially told he owed $100,000, only to receive an eviction notice that put the amount at $21,000. 

While Harper and other residents acknowledge they might be in arrears, they say Domas’ inability to determine the amount owed or even identify a consistent monthly payment leaves them vulnerable to expulsion and unsure how to prevent it.

“ How are you gonna tell me today that I owe $93,000? And then you gonna send me an eviction notice for $10,000?” Harper said. “How did you come up with that?”

Nikki Love, director of legal services with Open Door Legal, a nonprofit that is representing seven of the co-op residents facing eviction, professed to being confused about how much her clients owe, or what grounds the management company has to evict them.“We’re still trying to figure out what’s happening,” Love said, “but it’s a mess.”

That mess is due in part to the co-op’s unusual ownership structure. The King-Marcus Garvey Square Cooperative was established in 1978, shortly after HUD took over ownership of the financially distressed property, with the explicit intention of providing low-income Black residents with a path to earning real estate equity. Each resident became a shareholder in the co-op, with HUD providing a subsidy that paid 70% of the monthly carrying fees, which go to upkeep of the property. Per HUD regulations, shareholders are able to sell or pass on their ownership stakes to family members, a crucial tool for building generational wealth.

To continue receiving the HUD subsidy, co-op residents must re-certify their assets every year. The subsidy prohibits co-op residents from owning other real estate, which HUD confirms during recertification. Responsibility for ensuring recertification falls on Domus, which acts as a go-between, collecting information from residents and providing it to HUD.

But Harper, Jackson, and several other residents who spoke to The Standard said Domus hasn’t ensured recertification with HUD for at least two years. Some residents said the previous property manager also didn’t recertify them, leaving them unsure of how much they owed every month.

Representatives of Domus did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did representatives from HUD. 

“I know you’re supposed to pay 30% of your income, so that’s what I started paying,” Jackson said. But she admitted that she was essentially ballparking the amount of her monthly payment. Other residents, including the octogenarian Harper, were equally unsure of what they owed.

Two years ago, another group of Black King-Garvey residents were served eviction notices after living there for decades. All six were eventually evicted.

‘A slap in the face of the Black community’

Harper left her native Amarillo, Texas, in 1960 to follow her brother to San Francisco, participating in the Great Migration that led millions of Black people to leave the racially segregated South for a better life in northern states and California.

After living on Haight Street, she moved to King-Garvey in 1978. There, she raised four children, who later gave her grandchildren, one of whom lives with her.

Asked about a black-and-white picture of a young woman that sits atop her fish tank, Harper confidently said, “Yes, that’s my beautiful self.” Another frame held an image of one of her three great-granddaughters.

The King-Garvey co-op was created in part to ensure that Harper’s family and other Black shareholders would inherit ownership rights in a neighborhood where Black people had been forcibly removed. Starting in the 1960s, the Fillmore and Western Addition underwent so-called “urban renewal,” a wholesale destruction of housing that displaced 20,000 people in what had previously been known as the Harlem of the West. 

The apartments and townhouses in Harper’s complex were made a cooperative in the late 1970s as a way to offer the benefits of homeownership to members of the Black community.

How residents can be evicted from a co-op in which they are shareholders is unclear to Harper, other residents, and even the lawyers representing them. “Co-ops are super rare in San Francisco,” Love said. “We’re asking for legal help from other organizations, because we don’t fully understand it ourselves.”

Nevertheless, Love said, in light of the co-op’s creation as a corrective to the harmful displacement of Black people, the slew of evictions is wrong. “This is a slap in the face of the Black community,” Love said.

The eviction of the co-op residents could exacerbate a larger trend of Black people leaving San Francisco. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Black people made up 11% of the city’s population in 1990. By 2020, that number had dropped to 5.3%.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Unlike most court proceedings, evictions happen quickly. Some of the 16 residents have already received summons to appear in civil court. After that, they could be forced out of their homes in as little as three months. Love describes the legal efforts to stop the evictions as a race against time to prove that Domus failed at recertifying HUD subsidie — all before the sheriff comes around to lock people out of their homes. 

“The juggernaut is moving forward no matter what,” Love said. “Even if this is all based on some mistake in the system.” 

The residents and their lawyers have been in communication with representatives of Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood to ask for help. 

“For weeks, we have been in active conversations with both building management and tenant protection attorneys, and we have learned that unlawful detainers were recently filed with the court — contrary to what building management had informed us,” Mahmood said in a statement. “It is clear there has been a breakdown in trust and communication, and we will continue these discussions in the days and weeks ahead to work toward a resolution that keeps every resident safely housed, especially our seniors and residents with disabilities.”

Domus told Mahmood’s office that it was “unaware of any eviction notices served.” 

The Standard confirmed that the eviction notices, delivered on behalf of King-Garvey management, were authentic. The Standard also confirmed that King-Garvey filed unlawful detainer (eviction) suits against Harper and eight other residents on May 1. It’s unclear if suits have been filed against the other seven residents who received eviction notices.

Harper receives $2,400 a month from a pension she earned during her years as a Muni driver. Her grandson receives $2,400 a month in income. She worries that they won’t be able to pay the $10,000 they owe before they’re evicted. When asked what she would do if she owes the $93,000 she was initially quoted, she said, “I’ve never seen that much money in my life.”

Imagining her friend's possible eviction, Jackson teared up. A few minutes later, the women were joined by a third co-op neighbor, Dede Hewitt, an activist who connected Harper with Open Door Legal. “I’m the baby of the group,” said Hewitt, 56. “I’ve only been here since the ’90s.” 

The three friends quickly fell into reminiscing about joys and sorrows they’ve shared over the years. Jackson’s special-needs son, who she adopted at age 16 and whom Harper loves like one of her own. The corn on the cob Harper cooks and that Hewitt openly salivates over. The wild era of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, once housed just a few blocks away. The declining health of one of the men facing eviction, who uses a wheelchair.

“This community would lose a lot of its history,” Hewitt said of the impending evictions. “These women are like libraries.  And they’re treated like they’re expendable [because they’re] African American, disabled, and elderly.”

Harper is trying to find money to cover her payments while she sorts out what she actually owes. Asked where she will go if she is evicted, she was blunt: “I have no idea.”