Freedom West Redevelopment Project Moves Forward In Western Addition

A long-stalled plan to transform four blocks of the Western Addition into a dense, highrise residential neighborhood is moving ahead, as the co-op that owns the land secures funding for an initial phase of affordable housing.Freedom West Homes is one of several church-led housing developments in the Western Addition that were built in the late 1960s and 1970s in the wake of the controversial urban renewal efforts that decimated the Fillmore neighborhood, in the name of redevelopment. The complex, completed in 1973, includes 382 co-op units on four blocks bounded by Gough Street, Fulton Street, Golden Gate Avenue, and Laguna Street, all surrounding the historically African American Bethel A.M.E. Church.The complex has around 1,000 co-op owners today, about half of whom are seniors, and many are from the families who originally helped develop Freedom West as an equitable means of staying in the neighborhood.In 2020, we learned that Freedom West Homes Inc. was proposing a massive, whole