San Francisco razed its ‘Harlem of the West’. Detectives seek those who lost homes

Decades after the city displaced thousands of mostly Black families, private investigators are helping them reclaim housing

When Hubeline Jasper was a child, her family was kicked out of their San Francisco apartment - but her mother was determined to stay. Even after the landlord turned off the utilities, they remained in their home in the Fillmore district, the city's thriving Black cultural and economic hub. To make it work, her mother cooked over an open fire in the dining room, using skills she had learned growing up in rural Texas, and daisy-chained extension cords to borrow electricity from a neighboring building.

In those days, families had to look out for each other," Jasper recalled.