Hunters View was built as public housing, intended to provide affordable homes for low-income families. Over the decades, the buildings deteriorated as funding for maintenance dried up, creating conditions that no family should have to endure: leaking roofs, mold, broken elevators, and the social isolation that comes from concentrating poverty in a single location. The views from the hilltop were beautiful; the living conditions were not. Hunters View became a symbol of the gap between public housing's aspirations and its reality.

The redevelopment of Hunters View replaces the deteriorating public housing with new mixed-income housing, combining subsidized units for former residents with market-rate homes intended to create a more economically diverse community. The model -- called HOPE SF, one of the city's signature anti-poverty programs -- promises existing residents the right to return to the rebuilt site. Whether that promise will be fully honored remains an open question. Redevelopment in San Francisco has a history of displacing the communities it claims to serve, and Hunters View residents have reason to be skeptical.

The Hunters Point community watches the redevelopment of Hunters View with a mix of hope and wariness earned through decades of broken promises. The neighborhood has endured the naval shipyard's contamination, the power plant's pollution, and the failures of its public housing without receiving the investment that other San Francisco neighborhoods take for granted. Hunters View's redevelopment is a test: can San Francisco build new housing in one of its poorest neighborhoods without pushing out the people who lived through the worst of it? The answer will determine whether the city's commitment to equity is real or rhetorical.