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Housing ballot measures would weaken city policy

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EDITORIAL Under the misleading guise of encouraging the development of more affordable housing in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee and Sup. Jane Kim have sponsored a pair of fall ballot measures that actually weaken existing housing policy in San Francisco. It’s a ruse that shouldn’t fool politically savvy San Franciscans.

Lee has the authority to place his Build Housing Now measure on the ballot, although he may withdraw it under his backroom deal with Kim. But the Board of Supervisors should reject Kim’s City Housing Balance measure, a once-promising proposal that she last week made toothless and counterproductive. What she called a “compromise” was actually a capitulation to developers and the Mayor’s Office [Editor’s Note: The board was scheduled to consider Kim’s measure on July 29 after Guardian press time, which is why we posted this editorial early at sfbg.com, where print readers can check for an update].[UPDATE: The board unanimously approved the amended measure.]

Kim’s original measure called for market-rate housing developers to get conditional use permits and perform additional economic studies on their projects when affordable housing production falls below 30 percent of total production. She then weakened it with several exemptions, yet it was still a check against runaway development of luxury housing.

But her new measure, much like Lee’s, is little more than a wishful policy statement calling for the city to seek the goal of 33 percent of housing affordable by moderate income San Franciscans and below (usually defined as those making 120 percent of area median income or less) and 50 percent by the more vaguely defined “working middle class.”

While neither measure includes any enforcement or funding mechanism to help reach that goal, it’s noteworthy that the goals themselves weaken those the city set for itself in the Housing Element of the General Plan, which call for 60 percent of new housing construction to be affordable to those with moderate incomes and below. The board adopted an amended version of this Housing Element just last month.

This is politics at its very worst: Politicians claiming to be doing one thing in order to score points with voters and appear responsive to their concerns, while they actually do just the opposite and try to disguise that fact with disingenuous rhetoric.

Kim’s allies in the labor and progressive political communities tell us they’re disappointed in her capitulation at such a crucial moment in determining whether San Francisco becomes a city of the rich or whether it can retain its socioeconomic diversity.

We were also disappointed, although we weren’t surprised. There’s an ugly, money-driven brand of politics being practiced at City Hall these days, and Kim has repeatedly shown herself to be more concerned with her future political prospects than living up to the progressive values she has long espoused.

Photo Gallery: Skaters love new SoMa West park

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Chances are, you’ll find Jonathan Dean at the SoMa West skatepark. Dean, 23, is a San Francisco native who spends the majority of his free time at the newly opened skatepark located on Duboce Avenue between Valencia and Otis.

“I’ve been here every single day, except the first day the park opened,” Dean told the Guardian. “Everybody here loves this park. It feels like you’re skating on a street.”

The hum of overhead traffic on the freeway makes conversation difficult at times, though many of the skaters aren’t here to talk. Some stand off to the side smoking or drinking 40s in paper bags. But in the end, everyone comes to the park to skate. There’s constant activity, never a moment without someone flying into the air or grinding on a ledge, and the sound of skateboard wheels screeching on sharp turns regularly pierces the air.

The park itself is spacious, covering an entire block. Graffiti lines some of the walls and ramps, but the majority of the park has been left untouched, at least for now.

“I remember when I was 13, 14, dreaming about this park, and now it’s finally here,” said Flash Canet, 20, a San Francisco native. “I’ve been doing this since like the 7th, 8th grade, and it’s all I know, really. This is my life, this is my passion.”

The park cost more than $2.2 million, according to the Department of Public Works, which initiated the conceptual planning phase in March 2009. But already, problems are beginning to spring up, even though the park opened on July 1. For one, the graffiti that has started to line the walls and ramps is hazardous for the skaters.

“When you take krylon [a type of aerosol paint] and put it on glassy concrete, your wheels are not going to stick on it,” said Ryan Barlow, 22, a skater who moved to the area eight months ago. “It’s not even that the graffiti looks bad. It’s just really dangerous.”

Barlow says the graffiti issue will inevitably turn into a bigger problem, as is the case with many skate parks, but the skaters mostly seem to love the new park.

“It’s really easy to meet people here,” Canet said. “Skateboarding brings so many different kinds of people together to form a common bond, and that’s the beautiful thing about it. It’s like music, it just brings people together.”

All photos by Tim Daw Photography.

Alerts: July 23 – 29, 2014

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THURSDAY 24

 

Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress

First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, 1187 Franklin, SF. steveearly.org/book. 7-9pm, free. Drawing on his 40 years of experience as a labor reporter, Steve Early has compiled his personal experiences into a new book, Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress. He’ll speak at the Unitarian Universalist Society, exploring the question of what strategies labor can and should employ in 2014.

 

 

Community forum with SF Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguía

Modern Times Bookstore Collective, 2919 24th,SF. moderntimesboostore.com. 7-9pm, free. Alejandro Murguía, longtime literary activist and San Francisco’s sixth Poet Laureate, has dedicated 40 years to writing about the Mission District. His nonfiction book, Medicine for Memory, chronicles the 1970s Nicaraguan Solidarity movement. In addition to his literary accolades—three other novels, numerous poetry collections, and two American Book Awards—he founded the Mission Cultural Center and the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade. In other words, nobody is better qualified to head a panel of authors and activists confronting resident displacement in San Francisco’s most culturally vibrant areas. He will be joined by Representatives from San Francisco Community Land Trust (SFCLT) and Californian’s for Community Empowerment (ACCE).

 

SUNDAY 27

 

Seventh annual Laborfest Bookfair

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. laborfest.net. 10:30am-9pm, free. Spend the day soaking up the knowledge and wisdom shared by authors and labor leaders, and participate in discussion about workers’ rights. Speakers include Al Rojas, a founder of the United Farmworkers who grew up as an agricultural worker in California; Seth Holmes, author of Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, who conducted five years of research in the fields following migrant workers from Oaxaca to their agricultural jobs in the U.S.; and Professor Bu-Wei, of the Beijing Institute For Journalism and Communication with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who studies migrant workers in China.

Refugee crisis hits home

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joe@sfbg.com

In the small, colorful Precita Valley Community Center, a woman clutches a black ceramic goblet, circling a teenage girl with wisps of incense, and repeats the act with the 60 or so attendees. The spiritual cleansing ritual is much needed. Afterward, the San Franciscans will set their minds to saving the lives of children.

Nearly 50,000 Central American children crossed the Mexican border since October, according to federal data, fleeing targeted violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. This recent surge has hit home, as hundreds of those young refugees, often unaccompanied, seek asylum through immigration courts in San Francisco.

The courts often decide between life and death: Do the children stay in the safety of our sanctuary city, or return to countries from which they fled violence and chaos?

Jose Artiga, executive director of the Salvadoran Humanitarian Aid, Research and Education Foundation, told the crowd a story of life in El Salvador.

“A boy of only 11 years old waited for his grandfather one day,” he said, in Spanish. “A gang captured him, and the community organized to search for the boy. They found the child, but in six parts. The grandfather said, ‘How can I bring my grandchild back to his mother in six parts?’ This was a child. The gang showed up at the funeral, and would not let the community bury him.”

Some say the rising power of gangs sparked this surge in immigration. As President Barack Obama struggles with a bitterly partisan and gridlocked Congress to find a solution, US cities are dealing with the impacts of the overburdened immigration court system.

Now politicians of all partisan stripes, activists, and families are coming together to help the child refugees. Just last week, Sup. David Campos’ resolution to find additional aid for overburdened immigration services unanimously passed the Board of Supervisors. The next step, he told the Guardian, is to determine how best to use funds to help these children.

At the Precita Valley Community Center and beyond, activists call for that funding to reach attorneys, without which these kids will almost certainly be sent home into harm’s way.

 

OVERBURDENED

The refugees travel far. Children fleeing violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala trek through Mexico to cross the US border, and some die in the attempt. Those who live and are discovered by Border Patrol officers along the Southwest border are held temporarily in crowded, cold detention centers in McAllen, Texas, or Nogales, Ariz.

Images of these detention centers show groups of children lying on hard floors in thin blankets, and some advocates for the refugees reported feces and urine soaking the floors. The young refugees tell officials where they have family connections, and are flown to immigration courts across the country.

One such court is in San Francisco.

In 2005, San Francisco had 227 new active deportation proceedings for unaccompanied children, according to federal data obtained by Syracuse University’s TRAC Immigration project. That number was stable until 2012 when it jumped to 450 new cases. In 2013, the number jumped again, to 820.

San Francisco now has over 1,900 pending juvenile immigration cases, according to TRAC. Most of those children are Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatemalan. The surge is pushing organizations that help these children to the breaking point.

Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, knows one thing for sure: “Things have been crazy.”

CARECEN is one of many organizations providing legal representation to Central American child refugees in San Francisco. Two attorneys and two paralegals handle the bulk of cases, which jumped from 20 children a month to 60.

“All a child is given is a court date,” Dugan-Cuadra told the Guardian. “While the US guarantees the right to court, it does not guarantee the right to representation.”

While US citizens have a constitutional right to representation by an attorney, noncitizens in Immigration Court do not. And when organizations like CARECEN can’t provide an attorney, the child loses.

“We’ve heard cases where a 6-year-old will go before a judge having to represent themselves,” she said. “The judges are throwing their hands up saying ‘Are you serious!?'”

Data obtained by TRAC Immigration backs up her claim.

Nationwide, only 52 percent of unaccompanied children are represented by an attorney in deportation court proceedings.

With an attorney, judges rule in a juvenile’s favor to stay about half the time, TRAC’s research found. Without an attorney? Only one in 10 children are granted asylum.

No legal representation means no hope. The ACLU filed a class-action suit against the United States earlier this month on behalf of unrepresented child immigrants, alleging just that.

“The onus has been hard on nonprofit providers and pro-bono attorneys,” Dugan-Cuadra said, because they know the stakes. Legal Services for Children, Catholic Charities, and the Asian Law Caucus are among the organizations calling for more aid.

Many of the attorneys are experiencing burnout. One we talked to was on a vacation for her mental health. Studies by the American Bar Association show judges are burning out too, and things are only getting worse: California has 77,000 pending immigration cases backlogged in its courts.

But locally, the children bear the worst of this: TRAC Immigration’s data shows only 71 of the new 830 unaccompanied children in San Francisco were represented by an attorney as of June 2014.

And without representation, many will be sent home to violence.

 

REFUGEES OR IMMIGRANTS?

The United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said the children fleeing Central American countries should officially be considered refugees in need of asylum, a claim with legal ramifications President Obama so far has hesitated to make.

“We’re witnessing a complex situation in which children are leaving home for a variety of reasons, including poverty, the desire to join family, and the growing influence of trafficking networks,” Shelly Pitterman, UNHCR’s regional representative in the United States, said in a press statement. “Within this movement there are also children who are fleeing situations of violence at the hands of transnational organized criminal groups and powerful local gangs.”

Those fleeing violence and persecution, said Pitterman, will require access to asylum determination procedures and will need long-term protection. Others should be sent home, she said, and assisted with reintegration.

But some can’t find refuge anywhere at home, no matter where they go.

“My brother’s son was kidnapped eight years ago by extortionists,” one Salvadoran woman at the Precita center told the Guardian, declining to give her name out of fear for her family’s safety. Her brother moved to other cities, but the gangs continued to harass him and his family in provinces throughout El Salvador.

“He got letters threatening to kidnap his child. ‘We know where you live, we know where your child goes to school,'” she said. Her nephew is now 14. The last time she visited him she saw something that chilled her.

“He was approached by gangs to be recruited. I witnessed that. One day after when we were in the car, my nephew saw the gangs in another car. He hid on the floor and started to shake.”

The woman turned her head away and held back tears.

“My brother said ‘I have to take you out of here.'”

Now her nephew is somewhere safe in the United States, she said, though she would not say where. But the reason he left is clear.

“These kids don’t want to be the next dead body on the street,” Clarisa Sanchez, a Board of Immigration’s representative from Catholic Charities CYO told the Guardian.

Nationally, Republicans are calling for the mass deportation of these children. “I won’t stand idly by while our citizens are under assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said this week, as he announced deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops along the Texas border.

But many pin the origins of the crisis squarely on the United States.

 

DRUG LEGACY

Salvadorans are familiar with violence and cruelty. In 1932, more than 30,000 Salvadorans were slaughtered in a peasant revolt called la matanza: the slaughter. Nearly 75,000 civilians died in El Salvador’s bloody civil war, from 1980-1992.

The US government intervened in that war, sending government aid to the Salvadoran government. Now the US has a hand in today’s violence in Central America, some say, as our country’s drug habits fuel cartels throughout the region. Those cartels are arming Central American gangs, whichObama admitted in a press conference last year.

“The United States recognizes that we’ve got responsibilities; that much of the violence in the region is fueled by demand for illegal drugs, including in the United States,” the president said.

Obama requested $3.7 billion emergency funding that would bring at least $64 million to immigration courts, but also at least $1.5 billion to border security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a troubling addition to needed funding.

Back at the Precita Valley Community Center, Jose Cartagena pled for legal aid at the border. Cartagena is intimately familiar with the need: He fled El Salvador’s civil war over 30 years ago. As he crossed the Tucson desert, 13 of his fellow border-crossers died in the blazing southwestern heat. Only Cartagena survived. Now he’s a representative for the National Network of Salvadorans in the Exterior in San Francisco.

He called for justice.

“We have to help these kids find their families or sponsors,” he said. “If we don’t provide legal support now, the Obama administration may deport all of them. We can’t wait until it’s too late.”

If you’d like to help the efforts around the Central American child refugees, you can contact CARECEN, Catholic Charities, or Superivsor David Campos’ office.

Clean energy and better infrastructure: a great combination

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OPINION Achieving a more sustainable San Francisco means a city running on clean power. It also means maintaining our infrastructure to keep San Francisco functioning.

Right now, our city can do better on both fronts, and legislation we are sponsoring will help move us in the right direction by increasing our use of clean, hydroelectric power while generating more revenue for infrastructure investment in our streetlight and power systems.

San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy power system produces a massive amount of clean, hydroelectric power, yet our city uses very little of this energy despite our stated goal of moving toward 100 percent clean power by 2030. Moreover, the operator of this power system, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC), has massive unmet infrastructure needs. Our streetlights, most of which are owned by the PUC, are badly in need of upgrade, and PUC’s power delivery system has almost a billion dollars in deferred maintenance.

To address these challenges, we are authoring legislation to bring more revenue-generating, clean power to San Francisco.

For over 100 years, the PUC has provided 100 percent clean, hydroelectric power to municipal agencies, including Muni, the San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco General Hospital, police and fire stations, libraries, and our public schools. Using this clean public power saves taxpayers millions versus what we would pay if we were to purchase PG&E power. Hetch Hetchy generates 1.43 million megawatt hours of clean power a year and is 100 percent greenhouse-gas free. This is a tremendous asset, but it has been underutilized.

Any excess public power that the PUC generates and doesn’t use for governmental customers is now sold on the wholesale market at a significantly reduced rate. Retail rates are around four times higher than wholesale rates. This means that with every megawatt sold at wholesale rates, the PUC is losing out on significant revenue to address its aging infrastructure needs.

If the PUC obtains more customers paying retail rates, we can generate more revenue to upgrade and improve our failing streetlight system and address the power system’s massive deferred capital needs. The PUC estimates that for every 10 megawatts sold to new retail customers — rather than selling that power on the wholesale market — we will see a net revenue increase of $4 million per year.

That is why we are sponsoring legislation to bring the PUC more retail customers and hence more infrastructure investment. The legislation provides the PUC with the right of first refusal to be the power provider for new development projects in San Francisco, including large private projects. This will allow the PUC to determine if it feasibly can serve as the power provider for these new developments, and in doing so expand the agency’s retail customer base.

Allowing the PUC the flexibility to add retail customers will move us toward a more financially sustainable public power system, while providing 100 percent greenhouse-gas free power to our city and generating significant resources for infrastructure investment, including for our streetlight system.

Some have raised questions about what this legislation means for the future of CleanPowerSF, our previously approved clean energy program that has been stalled by the PUC Commission’s refusal to set rates. These two public power measures are not in any way mutually exclusive, and both can move forward. We are both supporters of CleanPowerSF, and we want it to succeed.

We know the PUC can provide reliable, greenhouse-gas-free power that works for its customers. Anyone who disagrees can just look at San Francisco International Airport. If the PUC can reliably provide power to serve one of the most significant airports in the world, powering new housing and commercial developments won’t be a problem.

A sustainable, clean energy future requires a broad range of solutions. This proposal is one that will deliver our city more clean power and make our power enterprise stronger by redirecting energy revenues back into the system. Let’s put our clean power to work for San Francisco.

Scott Wiener and London Breed are members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

King of the commons

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steve@sfbg.com

When Susan King attends the Aug. 24 Sunday Streets in the Mission District — the 50th incarnation of this car-free community gathering, coming the week before her 50th birthday — it will be her last as director of an event she started in 2008.

That successful run was made possible by King’s history as a progressive community organizer who also knew how to do fundraising, a rare combination that has made Sunday Streets more than just a bicycle event, a street faire, or a closure of streets to cars that the city imposes on its neighborhoods on a rotating basis.

Instead, King took the ciclovia concept that started in Bogota, Colombia in the late ’70s — the idea was creating temporary open space on streets usually dominated by cars (See “Towards Carfree Cities: Everybody into the streets,” SFBG Politics blog, 6/23/08) — and used it as a tool for building community and letting neighborhoods decide what they wanted from the event.

“I regard the organizing as community organizing work rather than event organizing, and that’s significant,” King told the Guardian. “We’re creating the canvas that community organizations can use.”

San Francisco was the third US city to borrow the ciclovia concept to create open streets events — Portland, Ore, was the first in June 2008, followed quickly by New York City — but the first to do one that didn’t include food trucks and commercial vending, which Sunday Streets doesn’t allow.

“It’s not a street fair, it’s about meeting your neighbors and trying new things,” King said, referring to free activities that include dance, yoga, and youth cycling classes and performances. “It’s a really different way of seeing your city. A street without cars looks and feels different.”

Now, after seeing how Sunday Streets can activate neighborhoods and build community, and watching the concept she helped pioneer be adopted in dozens of other cities, King says she’s ready for the next level.

“I want to apply what I know on a larger scale, ideally statewide,” King said of her future plans. “This really opened my eyes up to the possibilities.”

 

WORKING WITH COMMUNITIES

After a lifetime of progressive activism — from grassroots political campaigns to city advisory committees to working with the Green Party — King knew the value of listening to various community stakeholders and earning their trust.

“We try to be culturally competent and work with each neighborhood,” King said. “We want to work with the neighborhood instead of dropping something on the neighborhood.”

That distinction has been an important one, particularly in neighborhoods such as Bayview and the Western Addition, where there is a long history of City Hall officials and political do-gooders trying to impose plans on neighborhoods without their input and consent.

“We worked really closely together and she gave me a lot of leeway to do Sunday Streets in a way that it worked for the community,” said Rebecca Gallegos, who managed public relations for the Bayview Opera House 2010-2013. “I can’t say enough great words about Susan. She was a truly a mentor to me. They’re losing someone really great.”

The first Sunday Streets on Aug. 31, 2008, extended from the Embarcadero into Bayview, opening up that neighborhood to many new visitors. King cited a survey conducted at the event showing 54 percent of respondents had never been to Bayview before.

“Susan wore a lot of hats. Not only did she create community in all the neighborhoods in San Francisco, but she knew how to go after the money,” Gallegos told us. “She walks the walk and doesn’t just talk the talk.”

Meaghan Mitchell, who worked with the Fillmore Community Benefits District, also said King’s skills and perspective helped overcome the neighborhood’s skepticism about City Hall initiatives.

“Susan came in and was very warm and open to our concerns. She was a joy to work with,” said Mitchell, who went on to work with King on creating Play Streets 2013, an offshoot of Sunday Streets focused on children.

The neighborhood was still reeling from a massive redevelopment effort by the city that forced out much of its traditional African American population and left a trail of broken promises and mistrust. Mitchell said King had to spend a lot of time in community meetings and working with stakeholders to convince them Sunday Streets could be good for the neighborhood — efforts that paid off as the community embraced and helped shape the event.

“It was nice to know the Fillmore corridor could be included in something like this because we were used to not being included,” Mitchell told us. “Community organizing is not an easy job at all because you’re dealing with lots different personalities, but Susan is a pro.”

 

ROUGH START

It wasn’t community organizing that got King the job as much as her history with fundraising and business development for campaigns and organizations, ranging from the San Francisco Symphony to the San Francisco Women’s Building.

At the time, when city officials and nonprofit activists with the Mode Shift Working Group were talking about doing a ciclovia, King was worried that it would get caught up in the “bike-lash” against cyclists at a time when a lawsuit halted work on all bike projects in the city.

“I thought that would never fly,” King said. “We started Sunday Streets at the height of the anti-bike hysteria.”

But her contract with WalkSF to work on Masonic Avenue pedestrian improvements was coming to an end, she needed a job, and Sunday Streets needed a leader who could raise money to launch the event without city funds.

“I know how to raise money because I had a background in development,” said King, who raised the seed money for the first event with donations from the big health care organizations: Kaiser, Sutter Health/CPMC, and Catholic Healthcare West. And as a fiscal sponsor, she chose a nonprofit organization she loved, Livable City, for which Sunday Streets is now a $400,000 annual program.

King had a vision for Sunday Streets as an exercise in community-building that opens new avenues for people to work and play together.

Immediately, even before the first event, King and Sunday Streets ran into political opposition from the Fisherman’s Wharf Merchants Association, which was concerned that closing streets to cars would hurt business, and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors who were looking to tweak then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose office helped start the event.

City agencies ranging from the Police Department to Municipal Transportation Agency required Sunday Streets to pay the full costs for city services, something that even aggressive fundraising couldn’t overcome.

“We were in debt to every city department at the end of the second year. It was the elephant in the room going into that third year,” King said.

But the Mayor’s Office and SFMTA then-Director Nat Ford decided to make Sunday Streets an official city event, covering the city costs. “It was the key to success,” King said. “There’s no way to cover all the costs. The city really has to meet you halfway.”

King said that between the intensive community organizing work and dealing with the multitude of personalities and interests at City Hall, this was the toughest job she’s had.

“If I would have known what it would be like,” King said, “I would never have taken the job.”

 

SUNDAY STREETS SOARS

But King had just the right combination of skills and tenacity to make it work, elevating Sunday Streets into a successful and sustainable event that has served as a model for similar events around the country (including at least eight others also named Sunday Streets).

“The Mission one just blew up. It was instantly popular,” said King, who eventually dropped 24th Street from the route because it got just too congested. “But it’s the least supportive of our physical activity goals because it’s so crowded. It was really threatening to be more of a block party.”

That was antithetical to the ethos established by King, who has cracked down on drinking alcohol and unpermitted musical acts at Sunday Streets in order to keep the focus on being a family-friendly event based on fitness and community interaction.

Even the live performances that Sunday Streets hosts are required to have an interactive component. That encouragement of participation by attendees in a noncommercial setting drew from her history attending Burning Man, as well as fighting political battles against the commercialization of Golden Gate Park and other public spaces.

“It was my idea of what a community space should look like, although I didn’t invent it…We really want to support sustainability,” King said. “We’re not commodifying the public space. Everything at Sunday Streets is free, including bike rentals and repairs.”

As a bike event, the cycling community has lent strong support to Sunday Streets, with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition strongly promoting it along the way.

“The success of Sunday Streets has been a game changer in showcasing how street space can be used so gloriously for purposes other than just moving and storing automobiles. At every Sunday Streets happening we are reminded that streets are for people too,” SFBC Director Leah Shahum told us. “Susan’s leadership has been such an important part of this success.”

Guardian Intelligence: July 23 – 29, 2014

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J-POP ROCKED

The annual J-Pop Summit in Japantown drew a lively crowd of anime and other Japanese pop culture treasures to Japantown last weekend (including Shin, pictured). This year’s festivities included a Ramen Festival portion, featuring noodle cooks from around the world — and lines up to two hours long to sample their rich, brothy creations. PHOTO BY REBECCA BOWE

DA LOBBYIST

Former San Francisco Mayor and current Chronicle columnist Willie Brown, often just called Da Mayor, is widely acknowledged to be one of the most politically influential individuals in San Francisco. But until recently, he’d never registered as a lobbyist with city government. Now it’s official: Brown has been tapped as a for-real lobbyist representing Boston Properties, a high-powered real-estate investment firm that owns the Salesforce Tower. News outlets (including the Bay Guardian) have pointed out for years that despite having received payments for high-profile clients, Brown has never formally registered, leaving city officials and the public in the dark. Da Mayor, in turn, has seemed unfazed.

GAZA PROTEST

On July 20, marked as the deadliest day yet in the Israeli-Gaza conflict, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in San Francisco to march against the ongoing violence. Waving flags, participants chanted “Free, free Palestine!” and progressed from the Ferry Building to City Hall. It was just one of hundreds of protests staged worldwide in response to the bloodshed. As of July 21, the Palestinian death toll had risen to about 500, while 25 Israeli soldiers were killed. PHOTO BY STEPHANY JOY ASHLEY

PET CAUSE

Last year, the SF SPCA (www.sfspca.org) assisted with over 5,000 cat and dog adoptions. With its new adoption center near Bryant and 16th Streets, which opened June 13, it aims to increase capacity by 20 percent — saving 1,000 more furry lives in the process. The new facility features improved condo-style enclosures rather than cages, a small indoor dog park, and SF-themed climbing structures for cats. (So far, there’s a Golden Gate Bridge, a Transamerica Pyramid, a cable car, the Sutro Tower, and the SF Giants logo; a Castro Theatre design is in the works.) These improvements make the shelter life more comfortable for the animals, but they also help entice visitors, making the adoption process “a fun, happy experience,” says SF SPCA media relations associate Krista Maloney. See more kitties and puppies at the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com. PHOTO BY CHERY EDDY

MIX IT UP

The quarterly SF Mixtape Society event brings together people of all, er, mixes with one thing in common: a love of the personally curated playlist. This time around (Sun/27, 4pm-6pm, free. The MakeOut Room, 3225 24th St, SF. www.sfmixtapesociety.com) the theme is “Animal Instinct.” You can bring a mixtape in any format to participate — CD, USB, etc. (although anyone who brings an actual cassette will “nab a free beer and respect from peers.”) Awards will be given in the following categories: best overall mixtape, audience choice, and best packaging. Hit that rewind!

CODERS FOR KOCH

This week San Francisco plays host to the Libertarian conference/slumber-party Reboot 2014, aimed at — you guessed it — tech workers. Conservatives and government-decrying libertarians are natural allies, wrote Grover Norquist, scion of the anti-tax movement, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Uber swerves around transportation regulations, Airbnb slinks under housing regulations. It’s no wonder politically marginalized libertarians are frothing at the mouth to ally with Silicon Valley’s ascendant billionaires. Reboot 2014 speaker Rand Paul’s recent meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, and Peter Thiel should have liberals all worried.

BART CLEANSING

BART announced via a press release they’d begin “ensuring safe evacuation” of downtown BART stations. By this they mean they’ll start sweeping out anyone sitting or laying down in the stations, clearly targeting the homeless. Deflecting those accusations, BART said they are one of the few transportation agencies with a dedicated outreach and crisis intervention coordinator, as if that gives them a pass.

CLIFF JUMPING

At 66, Jimmy Cliff put on one of the most energetic live shows we’ve ever seen on Saturday, July 19 at the Fillmore, high-kicking through newer songs, like “Afghanistan,” an updated version of eternal protest song “Vietnam,” as well as the classics: “The Harder They Come,” “Many Rivers to Cross,” etc. Check the Noise blog at www.sfbg.com for a full review.

 

Appealing to San Francisco values

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EDITORIAL When lawyers become politicians, and when those politicians assume offices where they can exercise discretion about when to appeal judicial rulings, the decision to do nothing can be as big and impactful as the decision to file a lawsuit.

Luckily for California, it is progressive-minded attorneys from the Bay Area who have found themselves in the position of advancing public policy through wise decisions about when to let rulings stand and when to challenge them. And it is our hope that Attorney General Kamala Harris remembers her Bay Area roots when making a couple of important pending decisions on appealing some high-profile recent rulings.

Harris was already weighing whether to appeal a judge’s ruling striking down teacher tenure laws (see “Pride and prejudice,” June 24) when another judge ruled that California’s death penalty is unconstitutional (see “Death sentence for executions?” Page 16).

Her opponent in fall runoff election, Republican Ron Gold, has called for Harris not to appeal the teacher tenure ruling — and he would almost certainly make great political hay of a decision by Harris not to challenge the death penalty ruling. But Harris should easily defeat this also-ran challenger in November and she should maintain the courage of her convictions in making these decisions.

We urge Harris to aggressively appeal the teacher tenure ruling and not be swayed by the judge’s fallacious argument that teacher tenure hurts urban schoolchildren. And on the death penalty, which Harris has long opposed, we urge her to help end the barbaric, expensive, and ineffective executions (which could mean appealing the recent ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then not appealing a favorable ruling there, which would serve to end capital punishment in California).

That kind of selective use of the Attorney General’s Office discretion on appeals would follow in the tradition of Gov. Jerry Brown, when he was attorney general, choosing not to appeal the ruling striking down Prop. 8 and instead helping to legalize same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, we’re happy that City Attorney Dennis Herrera decided to “aggressively defend” Prop. B, which requires voter approval for projects that exceed current height restrictions on the San Francisco waterfront, against a lawsuit by the State Lands Commission.

Likely prompted by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of three members of that commission and someone who has long been friendly to big investors and developers, this lawsuit should have never been filed — and Herrera was right to say so and pledge a vigorous defense of the measure.

The people of San Francisco and California are lucky to have Harris and Herrera in the position to make these important decisions.

Last chapters?

27

news@sfbg.com

The tale of the threatened independent bookstore, quivering under the might of Amazon, is nothing new.

It’s only been two months since Marcus Books was evicted from its Fillmore District location. Both Adobe and Forest bookstores fled the Mission’s 16thh Street last year. But ebook sales growth is shrinking, and sales for many of San Francisco bookstores are up.

Instead, the tale of the struggling indie bookstore has become less about Amazon and more about a different monster: gentrification. San Francisco’s rising rents, demand for commercial space by deep-pocketed chains, and lack of commercial rent control are putting the squeeze on the city’s remaining bookstores.

Take Bibliohead, for instance. Its owner has recently been forced to relocate in spite of her bookstore’s success. Bibliohead is an easily navigable, highly curated, and tiny book jungle — more like a carefully manicured garden, really. The whole store can be explored in minutes, and there’s a gumball machine that dispenses poetry out in front once the book-happy are satisfied.

Its size has served it well. Sales at Bibliohead — Hayes Valley’s only bookstore — have risen solidly 7 percent each year since the store opened 10 years ago.

“We’re small, but mighty,” Melissa Richmond, Bibliohead’s owner, told the Guardian. “Although recently we haven’t been feeling so mighty. I’m kind of a wreck.”

In May, Richmond learned that she has until January 2015 to leave her store for four months while her building undergoes mandatory earthquake retrofitting. The landlord will double Richmond’s rent after the retrofitting, and has asked Richmond to pay for further renovations to the building when she returns.

“It’s off the table that I can stay here,” Richmond said. “I will not be offered a new lease. I don’t hate landlords, but I want a landlord who will contribute to the spirit and creativity of San Francisco.”

On June 22, Richmond launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the $60,000 she’ll need to move and attract new customers. So far, with a little less than a month to go, she’s raised almost $3,000.

“What really breaks my heart is when a new customer walks in,” Richmond said. “They ask you how you’re doing after they’ve fallen in love with the place a little bit. Then you have to break their hearts by saying you don’t know what’s in store for your future right now.”

 

DISPLACEMENT TREND

Richmond is not the only bookseller in San Francisco forced to relocate. Last year, Adobe Books and Forest Books were forced out of 16th Street within three months of each other when their rents increased. Forest Books slipped quietly off to Japantown, and has since experienced an increase in sales. Adobe Books’ anticipated closure was met with an invigorating Kickstarter campaign that raised $60,000. It was enough to keep the store alive, but not on gentrifying 16th Street.

Nowadays, Adobe is re-branded as Adobe Books and Art Cooperative at its 24th Street location. The original Adobe’s charming, lackadaisical, and no- structured structure has been traded for alphabetized and carefully curated books. There are only two staff members, and its used books are selling far faster than in the old location, despite its shrunken size.

“It’s strange. A lot of the times I was not sure if it would work at all, and now here we are in this shop,” Brett Lockspeiser, a member of the Adobe Books and Art Cooperative, told us. “Things are running differently, but it’s still Adobe.”

Adobe will soon be celebrating its first anniversary in the new spot. The store might not be making any profits, according to Lockspeiser, but the cause for celebration is that it’s survived.

There has been discussion among the collective members about whether or not Adobe should try to sell eReading devices, like Green Apple Books has done without much success for almost two years with the Kobo eReader. Adobe’s collective voted against Kobo, preferring not to use the same weapons as its competitor.

“I’m pretty technology positive, but I think some people in the group thought it was an ‘us or them’ kind of thing,” said Lockspeiser. “Like either you’re a book reader or you’re a techie who reads on a Kindle.”

Besides, it seems that ebooks’ incredible growth rate has finally simmered down. According to the Association of American Publishers, ebooks accounted for 27 percent of all adult trade sales in 2013. While that was up from 23 percent in 2012, it marked the first year ebook growth was down to the single digits. In January, a Pew study reported that among adults who read at least one book in the past year, just 5 percent said they read only an ebook.

Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, reports that book sales throughout San Francisco bookstores have increased overall in the past two years. Green Apple Books, an expanding bookstore with an growing collection of books and records, is even poised to open another location in the Sunset below beloved video rental store Le Video on Aug. 1.

Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books, said he recently got a call from Bibliohead’s owner asking for advice on potential neighborhoods and techniques for negotiating with landlords. But he can’t always explain his own store’s success.

“Some of it is just the economy. All that money floating around South of Market is maybe trickling over here,” he told us. “Or maybe the waiters are getting better tips. I don’t know what it is, but things have been better for us.”

The growth of bookstore sales, Landon said, is mainly because Barnes & Noble has been cast out of San Francisco. Last year, Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, reported that its revenue decreased by 8 percent in the final quarter. The company’s Nook division, meanwhile, slid down 32 percent.

Yet Joe Marchione, who owns Mission Street’s Valhalla Books, still places the blame for his diminishing foot traffic on Amazon, which has made his hard-to-find books pretty easy to locate online. In 1998, when his store opened, 90 percent of Valhalla’s business came from people browsing through his odd and unique assortment of rare and used books. Now, 95 percent of his business is online.

“People forgot the joy of browsing,” Marchione told us.

As soon as his landlord makes him commit to a lease, he says he’s going to have to leave the business. “When we first opened, we were smug. We said there was no way trendy was ever going to come to Mission between 17th and 18th [streets]. Get real!” he said. “But trendy creeps in closer by the week. There’s no problem with that, except it’s forcing us out.”

 

“TRENDY CREEPS IN”

It’s even forcing successful booksellers, like Bibliohead’s owner, to worry. Her faith in the printed word remains strong. “I find that there’s a whole core of people who are relieved to feel something in their hands, to flip the pages of really cool, beautiful books and kind of remember with their bodies what reading is like,” Richmond said.

When Kate Rosenberger opened a fourth bookstore in 2011 — Alleycat Books on 24th Street — many questioned her sanity, the owner said. The store has only recently been able to pay its own bills, having been relying on Rosenberger’s other store, Dog Eared Books, for survival. But the rent at Dog Eared Books is set to increase, and that means trouble.

“You can talk about e-readers, and people being distracted. You can talk about people slipping out since the Gutenberg press was invented, and all that’s true, sure,” Rosenberger told us. “But when you get hit with a huge increase in your rent, how do you deal with that? When the lease is up, you can pretty much figure you’re gone.”

These days, you deal with it by setting up a crowdsourcing campaign, and crossing your fingers that people with money like you. Or maybe you transform into an art cooperative. Or you just go somewhere else. But Richmond doesn’t want to leave San Francisco.

“I would like to preserve the culture of the city,” Richmond said. “I still think there’s something really special here.”

Barnes & Noble might be gone, ebook sales might have stabilized, and the printed word might just still be alive — but for San Francisco’s booksellers, that no longer means anyone in the book business is safe.

Alerts: July 16 – 22, 2014

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THURSDAY 17

 

Comedy and music fundraiser for David Campos

El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. davidcampossf.com/elrio. 7-9pm, $7 minimum donation requested. This is a fundraising event for California Assembly candidate David Campos, featuring comedians Yayne Abeba, Frankie Quinones, Steve Lee and Lisa Geduldig; and music by Candace Roberts (and Larisa Migachyov); and Dr Loco y Sus Cuates (featuring The Pena Goveas, Tomas Montoya and Francisco Herrera). El Rio will match and donate $7 for the first 75 tickets.

 

 

Laborfest: FilmWorks United International Working Class Film Festival

518 Valencia, SF. laborfest.net. 7-9pm, free. LaborFest was established to institutionalize the history and culture of working people in an annual cultural, film and arts festival. This screening will feature four short films. The Plundering, by Oliver Ressler, documents extreme privatization during the transformation of the former Soviet republic Georgia towards independence and capitalism. Made In The USA, Tom Hudak’s Plan to Cut Your Wages, by Bill Gillespie, exposes the ideology of “open shop” states that seek to prevent unionization. Judith: Portrait of a Street Vendor, by Zahidi Pirana, tells the story of one of the thousands of immigrant workers in major U.S. cities who make their living as street vendors. High Power, by Pradeep Indulkar, offers a glimpse into the lives of workers at India’s Tarapur nuclear power plant, built 50 years ago in a poor rural community.

 

FRIDAY 18

 

Fourth Annual San Francisco Living Wage Awards Dinner

SEIU 1021 Hall, 350 Rhode Island, SF. livingwage-sf.org. 6:30pm, $35 in advance; $50 at the door. In addition to dinner and cultural performances, this event will honor activist and San Francisco Labor Council board member Maria Guillen as Labor Woman of the Year, and Allan Fisher, activist with AFT Local 2121 and delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, as Labor Man of the Year.

 

SUNDAY 20

Meeting: Mayhem in Iraq and the U.S. Role

New Valencia Hall, 747 Polk, SF. globalexchange.org/events. 1pm, free. $8 donation requested for brunch, served at 12:15pm. Hosted by the Bay Area Freedom Socialist Party, this forum will explore questions on the latest turn of events in Iraq. What are the factors behind the new crisis? What responsibility does the U.S. bear, given the interests of oil and armament industries in the Middle East? Does the massive damage from the first Gulf War impact the current situation? What can we do to help? Bring your ideas and participate in this lively discussion.

Why I drive a taxi

14

 

By Beth Powder

OPINION I left a 17-year career in film to become a taxi driver. I just wanted to be here full time, drive a taxi, and write.

I’ve taken cabs in several cities and countries over the last 20-odd years. When I got here in 1998, it took two hours for a taxi to get to my house on 43rd Avenue. I still never would’ve gotten into anyone’s personal car and paid them for a ride, no matter how hard it was to get a cab sometimes. Not in San Francisco. Not in Jamaica. Not in Jamaica, Queens.

I’m from Toledo, Ohio originally. We always went on road trips. Maybe being in such close proximity to Detroit, some of that car mojo rubbed off on us. My mother is the kind of woman who, at 70 years old, will drive cross-country alone, stopping to call me at 3am from deserted truck stops outside Amarillo, Texas. You might see why I’d drive a taxi.

I have a feeling that a lot of the anti-taxi contingent now in this city haven’t taken too many cabs. Cabs could never put me off because I’d taken so many of them and I knew I was safer in one than standing in a crosswalk. I’ve been hit by cars on foot and on my bike but I’ve never been in an accident in a cab. Not in London. Not in Los Angeles. Not here.

I don’t drive for Lyft or Uber because San Francisco cab drivers receive workers compensation and TNC drivers don’t. Because Lyft mustaches look unprofessional to me. I went to taxi school, got fingerprinted, had a background check, and got licensed.

My taxi has 24/7 commercial livery insurance. My company pays the bills if there’s an accident. San Francisco taxi companies don’t have bylaws stating that passengers cannot hold them liable. San Francisco taxi companies don’t have bylaws stating that passengers take taxis at their own risk. San Francisco taxi companies don’t have bylaws that can be legally interpreted to allow discrimination against passengers of any persuasion. We have to accept pets. And we have to be green.

San Francisco taxis pick up bartenders, sweet old ladies at the hospital who don’t have smart phones, teachers, lawyers, wheelchair users, people of color, San Francisco Giants, former mayor Willie Brown, hookers, trannies, ballerinas, and limo drivers. Everybody. You don’t need a smartphone, but you can always hail a cab using an app called Flywheel.

I’m not a fan of the smugness emanating from Lyft, Uber, et all. Perpetuating spurious claims that cab drivers are all scary or awful is neither cute nor clever. And it certainly isn’t true.

It’s far more likely for a passenger to physically attack a cab driver than the opposite. About a month ago, several men took a cab from my fleet to San Mateo and severely beat up the driver. We have video cameras in every single San Francisco cab, but that still didn’t guarantee this driver’s safety. Nonetheless crime and accidents in taxis are down significantly.

We’re mothers, fathers, grandparents, students, artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs. Cab drivers give companionship, counseling, and safe passage to their passengers.

I want to know how we can have faith in TNCs when drivers aren’t commercially licensed, fully insured, and packing security cameras. How should we feel about droves of these Uber and Lyft phones being shared by multiple drivers, when only one is on record? What happens when a TNC is wrapped around a pole and the driver is held responsibility for their own safety and well-being. These brand new cars won’t be paid off before we start to witness incidents such as this.

How’s a “young mother just trying to make some extra pocket money” going to feel when she has her wages garnished into perpetuity because she rear-ended someone? She’s personally liable with the TNC company. She’s your friend with a car who absorbs all legal responsibility whether she’s found at-fault or not.

As long as there’s a taxi industry, I’ll keep proudly driving my taxi in the city I love. I’ll pick up sweet and not so sweet old ladies, people in wheelchairs, people with dogs, and whomever else needs a ride wherever it is they need to go.

Beth Powder is a cab driver and writer.

 

Beyond the bros

11

EDITORIAL

San Francisco’s rapid economic growth is increasingly being framed in reference to the Tale of Two Cities, and signs of its staggering wealth gap are ubiquitous. Luxury retailers are gravitating to the South Bay to cater to the tastes of newly minted millionaires, the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported, while low-wage workers on opposite sides of the Bay are charging forward with campaigns to increase the minimum wage, since soaring rents and a rising cost of living have made it tricky to achieve basic economic survival.

And while sidewalk graffiti delineating “real San Franciscans” from “techies” has raised some eyebrows, a stark and growing disparity does exist between the abundant tech sector and the day-to-day struggle of lower-paid residents to maintain a foothold. When it comes to the youth being raised in the economic margins — including the thousands in San Francisco public schools — that contrast has disturbing implications. Can the kids who weren’t born into wealth hope to someday raise families of their own in San Francisco?

Some tech companies have signaled that they wish to do the right thing — or at the very least, they’ve taken seriously their commitments under a deal with the city that requires community givebacks in exchange for a sweetheart tax break. Zendesk, which unveiled its newly renovated, plush corporate headquarters July 9, has promised to welcome Mid-Market residents into its palatial building for community dinners and events, with an emphasis on youth programming.

But to create real opportunities for up-and-coming generations to sustain themselves, the thriving tech industry needs to go a lot farther than welcoming the poor kids into the gleaming office space. If tech wants to coexist in harmony with the community members who are bearing the brunt of this dramatic economic shift, then tech needs to act like a community member.

That doesn’t mean spreading wealth around here and there, to placate local anger. Nor does it mean checking a box to fulfill obligations. It means seeking community partnerships, finding ways to hire local, racially diverse applicants, and partnering with educational institutions to carve out reliable pathways for disadvantaged youth to connect with decent-paying jobs.

This week’s cover story turns its gaze upon the “brogrammer,” that stereotypically white tech-sector worker perceived as self-absorbed, clueless about sexism, and unaware of his fantastic privilege. The “brogrammer” is the boastful, misogynistic brat who has it all, thanks to his connections and his programming skills.

In the current climate, the “brogrammer” may as well represent the aristocracy in San Francisco’s own version of the Tale of Two Cities. But if tech manages to grow up a bit and make a concerted effort to solve its own diversity problem, the industry could open a new chapter in its relationship with San Francisco.

 

Alerts: July 9 – 15, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 9

 

Talk on gun control

Commonwealth Club SF Club Office, 595 Market, SF. 6pm, $20 non-members, $12 members, $7 students. Michael Waldmanpresident of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and author of The Second Amendment: A Biography will recount the raucous public debate surrounding the Second Amendment and gun control policy in the United States. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual right to gun ownership. Waldman argues that our view of the amendment is set, at each stage, not by a pristine constitutional text, but by the push and pull, the rough and tumble of political advocacy and public agitation. Moderated by Mark Follman, Senior Editor of Mother Jones.

SATURDAY 12

 

Survival Adaptations

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, 3031 24th St., SF. www.rootdivision.org/071214. 7-10pm, free. This exhibition explores “the creative ways in which artists are responding to the challenge” presented by the changes in the Bay Area’s socio-economic landscape, and what the relocation of cultural administrators and institutions means for San Francisco’s future. The purpose of the project is to “reflect on our changing city” and “celebrate those who have chosen to stay and fight.”

 

Laborfest: SF waterfront labor history walk

Meet at Hills Brothers Coffee, 75 Folsom, SF. www.laborfest.net. 10am-noon, free. Join this walk and learn the stories of San Francisco’s labor struggles, affecting the maritime industry from 1835 until 1934. Labor historian Larry Shoup will discuss the 1901 transportation workers strike, led by the Teamsters, which the San Francisco police failed to quell.

Sunday 13

 

Greening the Economy, the Emerging Green Job Sector and Making Your Own Life Eco-Friendly

First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, MLK Room, 1187 Franklin, SF. http://tinyurl.com/qhw7jjq. 9:30am, free (light breakfast offered for a slight fee). Sierra Club managing editor Tom Valtin will give a talk on how our economy is becoming increasingly “green” and how to live a more eco-friendly life. Part of the society’s Sunday FORUM Speaker Series, this event will highlight new opportunities in the ever-growing green job sector.

San Francisco to provide right to counsel for tenants facing eviction

34

OPINION San Francisco is the second most unequal city in the nation. Working and middle-income people and families are being forced to flee the city they love. Between 2010 and 2013, Ellis Act evictions alone increased by 170 percent.

In 2013, a total of 3,662 San Franciscans were served with eviction notices. Over 1,000 of these tenants went to court without lawyers. According to court statistics, 90 percent of landlords hire attorneys, while only 10 percent of tenants have a lawyer. This inequity has made it more difficult for tenants to adequately assert their rights.

To level the playing field, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee just designated $1 million to fund 10 nonprofit housing attorneys to perform full scope legal services for any tenant facing eviction in San Francisco. We teamed up with tenant rights organizers and attorneys to fight for this budget allocation in order to address San Francisco’s affordability crisis. This funding will ensure that all San Franciscans facing eviction will receive legal assistance if they need it.

Crucial to ensuring economic diversity in this city is protecting our rent-controlled housing stock. Every time a tenant is evicted from his or her apartment, we lose another unit of price-controlled housing that is safe from the current astronomical market rental and sale prices. The board has passed local legislation that helps tenants remain in the city after an eviction, including Sup. Campos’ legislation increasing relocation assistance amounts after an Ellis Act eviction.

However, only the state Legislature has the power to change the law in a manner that would make a large impact on the frequency of evictions. Sadly, last week, Sen. Mark Leno’s bill that would have curbed Ellis Act evictions died in the Assembly Housing Committee. Leno said he will not further pursue the bill this year. Therefore, we must continue to act locally to deal with our housing crisis.

Legal representation for tenants is a crucial part of the fight against displacement. Several academic studies have shown that tenants are five to 10 times more likely to stay in their homes after receiving an eviction notice if they are represented by an attorney throughout the eviction process. Furthermore, having an attorney protects the tenants against abusive practices by landlords.

Tenant advocates report that illegal harassment by landlords is on the rise in an effort to force out tenants without having to resort to the formal eviction process. It is common practice for landlords to attempt to “buy out” tenants by offering a monetary sum to vacate a unit outside of the legal process. Vulnerable tenants, including immigrants and tenants who live in Section 8 housing, are often forced out of their units because they do not understand or assert their rights. Even if the action results in the tenants leaving, an attorney can help tenants avoid having an eviction on their record, which makes it much more difficult for the tenants to rent again.

We are fortunate to have 14 excellent nonprofit organizations in San Francisco that provide no- or low-cost legal services to tenants. However, these organizations have been woefully underfunded and do not have sufficient staff to address this housing crisis. The budget allocation of $1 million to fund 10 additional tenant attorneys will have a profound impact on San Francisco’s housing crisis. It will also make San Francisco one of the first cities in the country to provide a right to legal assistance to tenants facing eviction. Just as the Constitution allows an attorney for a person accused of a crime, a person threatened with the loss of his or her home should have legal assistance. San Francisco can and should lead the way when it comes to providing legal assistance to those tenants who need it.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi and Supervisor David Campos are elected officials in San Francisco.

Taxing speculators

18

steve@sfbg.com

Political tensions over evictions, displacement, real estate speculation, and rapidly rising housing costs in San Francisco are likely to heat up through the summer and autumn as a trio of November ballot measures are debated and combated by what’s expected to be a flood of campaign cash from developers and other real estate interests.

Topping the list is a tax measure to discourage the flipping of properties by real estate speculators. Known generally as the anti-speculation tax — something then-Sup. Harvey Milk was working on at the time of his assassination in 1978 — it was the leading goal to come out of a citywide series of tenant conventions at the beginning of this year (see “Staying power,” 2/11/14).

“To be in a position to pass the last thing Harvey Milk worked on is a profound opportunity,” AIDS Housing Alliance head Brian Basinger told us, arguing the measure is more important now then ever.

The measure has been placed on the ballot by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim, and Eric Mar and is scheduled for a public hearing before the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee on July 10 at 2pm.

“It’s an absolutely key issue for San Francisco right now. Passing this measure will create a seismic shift in what we’re seeing with evictions and displacement in the city,” Sara Shortt, director of the Housing Rights Committee, told the Guardian.

The measure creates a supplemental surcharge on top of the city’s existing real estate transfer tax, a progressive rate ranging from a 24 percent tax on the sale of a property within one year of its purchase to 14 percent if sold between four and five years later.

In addition to levying the tax, the measure would also give the Board of Supervisors the power to waive that tax “subject to certain affordability-based restrictions on the occupancy of the real property,” giving the city leverage to expand and preserve deed-restricted affordable housing.

Meanwhile, there’s been a flurry of backroom negotiations surrounding the City Housing Balance Requirement measure sponsored by Sup. Jane Kim, which would require market rate housing projects to get a conditional use permit and be subjected to greater scrutiny when affordable housing falls below 30 percent of total housing construction (with a number exemptions, including projects with fewer than 24 units).

That measure is scheduled for a hearing by the Rules Committee on July 24 and, as an amendment to the City Charter, it needs six votes by the Board of Supervisors to make the ballot (the anti-speculation tax is an initiative that requires only the four supervisorial signatures that it now has).

Mayor Ed Lee and his allies in the development community responded to Kim’s measure by quickly cobbling together a rival initiative, Build Housing Now, which restates existing housing goals Lee announced during his State of the City speech in January and includes a poison pill that would invalidate Kim’s housing balance measure.

Together, the measures will draw key battle lines in what has become the defining political question in San Francisco these days: Who gets to live here?

 

COMBATING SPECULATORS

In February, Mayor Lee and his allies in the tech world, most notably venture capitalist Ron Conway, finally joined housing and other progressive activists in decrying the role that real estate speculators have played in the city’s current eviction and displacement crisis.

“We have some of the best tenant protections in the country, but unchecked real estate speculation threatens too many of our residents,” Lee said in a Feb. 24 press release announcing his support for Sen. Mark Leno’s Ellis Act reform measure SB 1439. “These speculators are turning a quick profit at the expense of long time tenants and do nothing to add needed housing in our City.”

The legislation, which would have prevented property owners from evicting tenants using the Ellis Act for at least five years, failed in the Legislature last month. So will Lee honor his own rhetoric and support the anti-speculation tax? His Communications Director Christine Falvey said Lee hasn’t yet taken a position on the measure, but “the mayor remains very concerned about real estate speculators.”

Peter Cohen of the Council of Community Housing Organization said Lee and his allies should support the measure: “It seems so clearly aligned with the same intent and some of the same mechanics as Ellis Act reform, which had the whole city family behind it.”

“I think it would be very consistent with their position on Ellis Act reform to support the anti-speculation tax,” Shortt told us. “If the mayor and tech companies went to bat for the anti-speculation tax, and not against it, that would show they have real concern about displacement and aren’t just giving it lip service.”

Conway’s pro-tech group sf.citi didn’t returned Guardian calls on the issue, nor did San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, but their allies in the real estate industry strongly oppose it.

“As Realtors, our goals are to increase housing availability and improve housing affordability,” San Francisco Association of Realtors CEO Walk Baczkowski told the Guardian. “We don’t believe the proposal from Sup. Mar, which is essentially a tax on housing, will accomplish either of those goals.”

But supporters of the measure say real estate speculation only serves to drive up housing costs.

“We have been successful at bringing people around on the issue of real estate speculation,” Basinger told us. “But of course, there will be financed opposition. People will invest their money to protect their interests.”

“We know it’s going to be a fight and we’ll have to put in a lot of resources,” Shortt said, adding that it’s a fight that tenant activist want to have. “Part of what fuels all of this [displacement] is the rampant real estate speculation. We can’t put profits above people.”

 

MAYOR’S MEASURE

Falvey denies that Lee’s proposal is designed simply to negate Kim’s measure: “Build Housing Now specifically asks the voters to adopt as official city policy the Mayor’s Housing Plan to create 30,000 new homes by 2020 — the majority within reach of low, moderate, and middle income residents. This is not a reaction, but a proactive measure that lets voters weigh in on one of the mayor’s most important policy priorities.”

Yet the most concrete thing it would do is sabotage the housing balance measure, an intention it states in its opening words: “Ordinance amending the Planning Code to prohibit additional land use requirements such as conditional use authorizations, variances or other requirements on housing projects…based on a cumulative housing balance ratio or other similar criteria related to achieving a certain ration of affordability.”

Beyond that, it would have voters validate Lee’s housing goal and “urge the Mayor to develop by December 31, 2014 a Housing Action Plan to realize this goal.” The measure is filled with that sort of vague and unenforceable language, most of it designed to coax voters into thinking it does more than it would actually do. For example, it expands Lee’s stated goal of 30 percent of that new housing being affordable by setting a goal of “over 50 percent within reach of low and middle income households.”

But unlike most city housing policies that use the affordable housing threshold of those earning 120 percent of area median income (AMI) and below, Lee’s measure eschews that definition, allowing him and his developer allies to later define “middle income households” however they choose. Falvey told us “he means the households in the 50-150 percent of AMI range.”

The measure would also study the central premise of Mayor Lee’s housing policy, the idea that building more market rate housing would bring down the overall price of housing for everyone, a trickle-down economic argument refuted by many affordable housing advocates who say the San Francisco housing market just doesn’t work that way because of insatiable and inelastic demand.

“Within 60 days of the effective date of this measure, the Planning Department is directed and authorized to undertake an economic nexus analysis to analyze the impact of luxury development on the demand for middle income housing in the City, and explore fees or other revenue sources that could help mitigate this impact,” the measure states.

Shortt thinks the mayor’s measure is deceptive: “It’s clever because for those not in the know, it looks like a different way to solve the problem.” But she said the housing balance measure works well with the anti-speculation tax because “one way to keep that balance is to make sure we don’t lose existing rental stock.”

And advocates say the anti-speculation tax is the best tool out there for preserving the rental housing relied on by nearly two-thirds of city residents.

“It’s the best measure we have going now,” Basinger said of the anti-displacement tax. “Mayor Ed Lee and his tech supporters were unable to rally enough support at the state level to reform the Ellis Act, so this is it, folks.”

Garbage game

8

San Francisco elected officials frequently celebrate the ambitious citywide goal of sending zero waste to the landfill by 2020, an environmental feat widely viewed as attainable since the current waste diversion rate stands at a stellar 80 percent.

Official city numbers — based on reporting by Recology, a company that has a monopoly on trash collection and curbside recycling in San Francisco — demonstrate that only 20 percent of all city dwellers’ trash ends up in a landfill, that unenlightened dead end for matter discarded from our lives, never to be reprocessed.

Yet a lawsuit against Recology exposed some inconsistencies in the company’s record keeping. It also shed light on how some material counted as “diverted” is routinely sent to a landfill anyway, a practice that muddies the concept of the city’s Zero Waste program but is nevertheless legal under state law.

On June 17, a San Francisco jury determined that Recology misrepresented the amount of waste diverted from the landfill in 2008, enabling it to collect an incentive payment of $1.36 million for meeting the goal. The verdict compels Recology to pay the money back to the city, since it was obtained after submitting a false claim.

The outcome of this lawsuit — brought by a former manager of the Tunnel Road recycling Buy Back facility, who also claims he was retaliated against for trying to expose fraud — highlights some larger questions. Was this inaccuracy unique to 2008, or are Recology’s numbers always a little fuzzy? Are there adequate safeguards in place to prevent the company from fudging the numbers, particularly when both company and city officials have an incentive to exaggerate the diversion rate? And if what’s on paper doesn’t quite square with reality, is San Francisco really keeping as much garbage out of the landfill as the city’s Department of the Environment says it is?

Attorney David Anton, who represented the former Recology employee, Brian McVeigh, said he found it odd that San Francisco officials didn’t show much interest in collaborating to recover the bonus money, even though millions of dollars was potentially at stake. Since damages are trebled under the False Claims Act, cited in the lawsuit, Recology could ultimately be made to fork over the incentive payment three times over.

“The city’s representative in the Department of the Environment actually testified that he hoped this lawsuit would be unsuccessful,” Anton recounted. He guessed that officials remained on the sidelines because in San Francisco’s political power centers, “relationships with Recology are so close and tight. It was a very strange thing,” he went on, “to be pursuing this lawsuit, trying to get money to the city, and the city’s representatives are saying, ‘we don’t want it.'”

Recology has filed post-trial motions in a bid to have the penalty reduced, “asking the court to decide whether there was any evidence at trial that there were public funds in the Diversion Incentive Account, and if so, how much,” explained Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner. “We expect a ruling this summer.”

Department of the Environment spokesperson Guillermo Rodriguez told the Guardian that Robert Haley, manager of the department’s Zero Waste team, was unavailable for comment before press time. With regard to the lawsuit, Rodriguez noted, “The city has been following the trial closely and is awaiting the judge’s ruling on post-trial motions before determining any reaction.”

 

FALSE CLAIMS

The False Claims Act is designed to recover damages to government when false statements are made to obtain money or avoid making payments. It has a provision allowing whistleblowers, such as McVeigh, to lead the charge on seeking civil enforcement action. The whistleblower may be eligible to receive a share of recovery.

Under the bonus incentive program, Recology sets aside extra cash — collected from garbage customers’ payments — in a segregated account. But it cannot withdraw funds from that account unless it hits the city’s established waste-reduction targets. Recology submitted paperwork to the city in 2008 showing that it met the diversion goals, so it was allowed to withdraw the money.

But the lawsuit demonstrated that Recology actually fell short of those goals — and apparently, nobody in city government ever followed up to check whether the reporting was accurate.

A key reason the jury ruled against Recology on this particular claim, according to Anton, was that it was found to have misclassified some construction and demolition waste as “diverted” material. Under state law, when ground-up construction debris is used to cover the top of a landfill — to prevent pests, fires, and odors, for example — it’s counted as “alternative daily cover.” Trash in this category winds up in a landfill, just like any other trash. But state law allows garbage companies to count it as “diverted,” just as if it were an aluminum can tossed into the blue bin.

The lawsuit claimed that Recology tried to count a great many tons of construction and demolition waste as “alternative daily cover” when in reality, it should have been counted as just plain trash.

Solano County records show that a landfill inspector had flagged an “area of concern” after discovering solid waste mixed in with construction debris Recology shipped to a landfill for use as that top layer. “It looks like they didn’t do a good enough job of cleaning out that material,” CalRecycle spokesperson Mark Oldfield noted as he pulled up the report from 2008 at the Guardian’s request.

Had the material gone to the landfill as just plain garbage, instead of “alternative daily cover,” Recology would have had to count it as waste sent to the landfill, instead of waste diverted from the landfill. That would have meant falling short of the waste diversion goal, hence losing out on the $1.36 million.

“Recology kept this completely secret from San Francisco,” according to Anton.

Potashner said it was actually a bit more complicated — the company challenged the inspector’s findings, he said. “The local enforcement agency in Solano County had questions about that material,” but Recology never received a cease-and-desist order, he added. “When we had talked to jurors after the fact, that was the issue that seemed to sway them. In 2008 we didn’t make that bonus by that much. They thought we shouldn’t have been able to count that as diversion because of this issue.”

Either way, the incident exposes a strange reality: When San Francisco city officials trumpet the citywide success of “diverting” 80 percent of all waste from the landfill, some portion of that 80 percent actually winds up in a landfill anyhow. Whether the construction debris counted as “alternative daily cover” has trash mixed into it or not, it’s still destined to wind up in a big, environmentally unfriendly trash heap.

 

CONCRETE NUMBERS

The lawsuit highlighted a few other red flags, too, raising more questions about the city’s true diversion numbers. For instance, the suit claimed that Recology was involved in a system of digging up concrete from its own parking lots, to be handed over to concrete recyclers as “diverted” waste.

“Recology facilities have large areas of concrete pads,” the complaint noted. “Management of Recology … directed Recology work crews in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 to cut out sections of concrete pads and deliver the removed concrete to concrete recyclers, to falsely inflate the diversion incentive reported to SF.”

The waste management company then “solicited cement companies to deliver and dispose of excess and rejected concrete loads to Recology, to fill in the removed concrete pad sections,” according to the complaint. Those shipments were brought in on trucks that weren’t weighed at entry, and then placed in the concrete pads. Management then had work crews remove the same concrete that had been delivered, shipped it to the concrete recyclers, and reported it “as diverted from being disposed in a landfill,” the complaint noted.

This account was corroborated by a Guardian source unrelated the lawsuit, but nonetheless familiar with the inner workings of the company. “They would take the concrete across the road — right across the street,” this person confirmed.

Asked to provide an explanation for this, Recology’s Potashner said, “it is clear, and wasn’t even challenged by the plaintiff at trial, that recycled concrete is diverted, whether it had been from Recology’s lots or anywhere else.”

McVeigh’s case stemmed from his realization, while working as a manager at Recology’s Tunnel Road recycling buyback facility, that employees there were routinely marking up the weights of recyclable materials brought in, in order to pay out certain customers more than they were actually owed. The suit suggests that these routinely inflated California redemption value (CRV) tags contributed to Recology missing its waste-diversion targets, but the jury ultimately sided against the plaintiff on this question since it amounted to a financial loss for Recology, not the city.

The complaint included tag numbers and logs of scale weights that didn’t match up, showing a pattern of fraudulent dealings at the buyback center. In November 2007, for example, “ticket reports showed that 23.4 tons of aluminum CRV cans were purchased at the Bayshore Buyback Center, yet only 16.56 tons existed and were shipped.”

Asked about these claims, Potashner acknowledged that there may have been some “knuckleheads” involved in messing with the scales at the buyback center, but asserted that such activity had since been addressed. He added, “If there were any staffing issues around theft, that was actually affecting Recology’s books,” not the public.

Oldfield, the CalRecycle spokesperson, noted that a long list of paperwork violations had been recorded in 2010, but he said the company appeared to have been in compliance since then — based on logs from inspectors’ visits once a year.

Another problem uncovered in the trial, Anton said, had to do with Recology misrepresenting tons of garbage from out of county, so that it would be counted outside the parameters of the waste diversion program. Potashner said that had been corrected, adding, “the out-of-county waste is really a small volume.”

But he confirmed that yet another practice brought to light in this lawsuit is ongoing, revealing a surprising end for some of the stuff that gets tossed into the green compost bins.

 

MANY SHADES OF GREEN

According to every colorful flier sent out by Recology, the stuff that goes into the green bin gets composted. The green bin is for compost. The blue bin is for recycling. The black bin is for trash that goes to the landfill. This is the fundamental basis of Recology’s waste collection operation and, taking the company and the Department of the Environment at face value, one would assume that 80 percent of all waste was being processed through the blue and green waste streams.

Instead, some of what gets tossed into green bins makes its way to a landfill.

The green-bin waste is shipped to a Recology facility where it’s turned into compost, a process that involves sifting through giant screens. But some of what gets processed, known as “overs” because it isn’t fine enough to drop through the screens, is routinely transferred to a nearby landfill, where it’s spread atop the trash pile. Once again, this six-inch topper of neutralizing material is known as “alternative daily cover.”

Although Recology could convert 100 percent of its green-bin waste into soil-nourishing compost, the practice of using partially processed green-bin waste for “alternative daily cover” is cheap — and it’s perfectly legal under California law. Roughly 10 percent of what gets tossed into the compost bins is used in this way, Recology confirmed.

“There are some people who will say using green waste isn’t really diversion,” acknowledged Jeff Danzinger, a spokesperson with CalRecycle, which oversees recycling programs in California counties. “There’s some people who say we should stop that practice because that just incentivizes a landfill solution for green waste. But if somebody’s saying green waste shouldn’t go into a landfill and get counted as diversion, it’s an opinion.”

Nor is it something the city objects to. The Department of the Environment is aware of this practice, Recology’s Potashner told the Bay Guardian. Yet the city agency has never raised formal concerns about it, despite a mandate under its composting program agreement that the company use green-bin waste for the highest and best possible use.

But there’s no incentive for anyone in city government to complain: Recology may legally count this discarded material as “diverted” in official reporting, thus edging it closer to an annual bonus payment. San Francisco, meanwhile, may count it as part of the 80 percent that was successfully diverted — thus edging it closer to the ambitious Zero Waste program goal.

“It’s great PR to say you’re the highest recycling,” noted the person who was familiar with the company, but wasn’t part of the lawsuit. “It’s almost a movement more than reality. But who’s really watching for the public on these numbers? There’s no watchdog. It’s all about bragging rights.”

 

Recology is “a political business”

Recology’s political connections in San Francisco run deep. Years ago, when former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown served as speaker of the California Assembly, he also worked as a lawyer for Recology, which was then known as Norcal Waste Systems.

Campaign finance archives show that when Brown ran for mayor in 1995, he received multiple campaign contributions from Norcal employees in what appeared to be a coordinated fashion.

Brown continues to be influential in the city’s political landscape due to his close relationship with Mayor Ed Lee, who himself came under scrutiny in his capacity as head of the Department of Public Works in 1999 when he was accused of granting Norcal a major rate increase as a reward for political donations to Brown.

In 2010, when Recology submitted a bid for a lucrative waste-disposal contract proposing to haul waste to its Yuba County landfill, Lee reviewed its proposal in his then-capacity as city administrator. As the Guardian reported (see “Trash talk,” 3/30/10), Lee recommended far higher scores for Recology than his counterparts on the contract review team, a key to the company winning the landfill contract over competitor Waste Management Inc. Before Lee declared his mayoral candidacy in 2011, news reports indicated that powerful Chinatown consultant Rose Pak had worked in tandem with Recology executives on a campaign effort, “Run Ed Run,” organized to urge Lee to launch a mayoral bid. Company employees had also been instructed to help gather signatures to petition Lee to run for mayor, news reports indicated, but Pak publicly denied her role coordinating this effort. David Anton, the attorney for Brian McVeigh, emphasized that Recology’s close ties to powerful city officials might have something to do with the city’s lack of interest in targeting the company for the improperly received incentive payments. Yet Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner called this assertion “completely untrue. Recology meets with the various city departments and regulators weekly. We are constantly improving our controls and practices for handling the city’s ever-changing waste stream; often at the behest of city regulators.” Recology and its predecessor companies have maintained the exclusive right to collect commercial and residential refuse in San Francisco since 1932, and rates are routinely raised for city garbage customers, based on the company’s own reporting that its costs are increasing. “I can tell you today, there will be another significant increase on July 21, 2016” — five years after the last rate increase — “because they have a monopoly,” said neighborhood activist and District 10 supervisorial candidate Tony Kelly, who previously worked on a ballot measure that sought to have the city’s refuse collection contract go out for a competitive bid. “When you have a closed system … then it’s entirely a black box. It’ll all be self-reported. It’s too powerful of an incentive.” An industry insider familiar with Recology echoed this point, adding that cozy relationships with local officials make it easier for the self-reporting to escape scrutiny. “It’s a political business,” this person said. “In San Francisco, they’re really a political organization.” Since the rate is guaranteed, this person added, the mentality is that there’s plenty of wiggle room for financial losses and expenditures such as generous political contributions. “If you’re losing any money, you just ask for it back when you do your next rate increase. The city doesn’t have any objection. The ratepayers just get stuck with it.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Stop Big Tech sprawl

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EDITORIAL The footprint of Big Tech companies and their employees continues to spread through San Francisco, gobbling up the vast majority of commercial office space this year, driving up rents, and creating pressure to build ever more office towers. With Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors focusing so much wealth on this one economic sector, in this one once-dynamic city, this trend is threatening to squeeze out every other civic interest and sector in its path.

For example, city officials have long-struggled with how to preserve light industrial spaces in the city, known as Production Distribution and Repair (PDR) in the parlance of planners, who recognize the importance of such jobs and services to a city, even though they have a hard time competing with other economic sectors on rent. Indeed, despite efforts to protect it, San Francisco now has one of the lowest proportions of PDR uses of any big city in the US, a worrying sign for future economic prosperity.

Nonetheless, the new out-of-town investor-owners of the PDR-zoned San Francisco Design Center are trying to improperly use a loophole to evict most of its tenants to let Pinterest take over most of the building (which it bought at a bargain because of the zoning). Only the political will of politicians — who crave the campaign cash of capitalists — stands in the way of perversions like this. And without that will, which is severely lacking in the city right now, the economically strong will roll over everyone.

Let’s call it: Big Tech sprawl. Like urban sprawl — in which developers covered the cheapest land with housing and shopping malls, then let the public sector subsidize the roads and other infrastructure to serve it and passed the environmental costs on to future generations — the Big Tech firms favored by the Mayor’s Office will continue to expand ever outward if left unchecked.

Even conservative City Economist Ted Egan has warned against the city putting too many eggs in the basket of an industry known for its volatility and boom-bust cycles, repeatedly calling for the city to diversify its economy. As in nature, healthy ecosystems are marked by their diversity, while monocultures can be quickly destroyed by shocks to the system. Just like housing developers will build nothing but luxury condos if we let them — capital always seeks to maximize its returns, the most basic law of economics — Big Tech will continue to sprawl outward, greasing its path with political contributions, if San Franciscans don’t fight to maintain this great city’s diversity.

Recycle-pocalypse

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Joe@sfbg.com

Red explosions and yellow starbursts lit the sky, accompanied by the requisite oohs and aahs.

San Franciscans sat by the beach at Aquatic Park celebrating our nation’s independence, eyes fixed upwards. But all around them, a team of independent scavengers, mostly ignored, methodically combed the wharf, plucking cans and bottles from the ground and overflowing trash bins.

Often derided as thieves or parasites, these workers are cogs in a grand machine instituted by California’s Bottle Bill in 1986, forming a recycling redemption economy meant to spur environmentalism with market principles.

The concept is simple. Taxpayers pay an extra five cents when they buy a can or bottle, and may redeem that nickel by trading the used can or bottle in at a recycling center. Thus, more recycling is spurred.

But now a wave of recycling center evictions is causing San Francisco’s grassroots recycling economy to crumble, and newly released numbers reveal just how much stands to be lost by the trend.

San Franciscan recyclers may miss out on millions of dollars in redemption, local mom-and-pop stores could wind up on the hook for millions of dollars in state fees, and neighborhoods stand to be besieged by recyclers flocking to the few remaining recycling centers.

Recycling activists and local businesses are pushing for change, but NIMBY interests are pushing for more of the same.

 

SOLUTION IS THE PROBLEM

San Francisco Community Recyclers is on the parking lot of Safeway’s Church and Market location, and after months of legal entanglement, the recycling center’s eviction draws near. Still, SFCR is making a show of resistance.

The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department is set to evict the recycling center within a week or so, as the rebel recyclers have so far refused to vacate voluntarily.

Sup. Scott Wiener says he’ll be glad to see them gone.

“This recycling center caused enormous problems in our neighborhood,” he told the Guardian. This particular Safeway lies within the boundaries of his district, and Wiener says his constituents complain the recycling centers draw too many unruly patrons, who are often homeless.

“There is problem behavior around the center in terms of camping and harassing behavior, defecation, urination in a much more concentrated way,” he said.

This animation shows the areas around San Francisco where recycling centers remain, which are often overburdened with customers as other centers close. The red zones indicate areas where supermarkets are mandated by state law to host recycling centers, but have chosen to pay fees instead.

But others say the not-in-my-backyard evictions only serve to create a ripple effect. The catalyst is a story we’ve reported on before: As well-heeled Golden Gate Park neighbors complained of homeless recycling patrons and waged a successful campaign to shutter the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center two years ago, the clientele adjusted by flocking to the Church and Market recycling center. New numbers illustrate this outcome.

Susan Collins is the president of the Container Recycling Institute, a nonprofit that conducts analysis on recycling data. On average nationwide, Collins said, one recycling center serves about 2,000 people.

But since 2012 the number of recycling centers in San Francisco has been reduced from 21 to 7, causing Church and Market’s service population to boom closer to 40,000, a difference that has more to do with the closures than the density of the area. Data from CalRecycle shows almost half of the city’s populace lacks a recycling center within close proximity, forcing patrons to overwhelm the few remaining centers.

“This makes it a chicken and egg process,” Collins told us. “For people to have the perception that the site is attracting so many people, they have to realize it’s because there are so few sites to begin with.”

Late last month, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano wrote to Safeway Chief Executive Officer Robert L. Edwards, urging the grocery chain to reverse its decision to evict San Francisco Community Recyclers from the Church and Market Safeway.

“Safeway has such a long history of supporting sustainability efforts,” Ammiano wrote, “and I truly believe that it can do so again.” Safeway, however, has other concerns.

“As curbside recycling has increased in San Francisco and around the state,” Safeway Director of Public Affairs Keith Turner wrote to Ammiano, “Safeway’s focus on recycling has evolved as well.”

Safeway is now also flouting local and state laws to throw recyclers off its back. CalRecycle, the state’s recycling agency, performed an inspection in April of the Diamond Heights Safeway. It found that the grocer failed to accept recyclables and offer state guaranteed redemption, despite signing an affidavit with CalRecycle pledging to do just that. CalRecycle cited that location and two other San Francisco Safeways for noncompliance with the bottle bill.

And that’s just the violations CalRecycle has documented so far. Ed Dunn, owner and operator of San Francisco Community Recyclers, has initiated his own investigation into Safeway statewide, filing complaints with CalRecycle alleging that as many as 75 Safeway stores aren’t following the mandates of their affidavits and offering redemption for recyclables.

On the other side of the fence, Safeway and other recycling-center critics (such as Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius) are essentially saying, who cares? Don’t we all just use blue bins nowadays?

The short answer: Nope.

 

MAKING GREEN, GOING GREEN

“Why do we need recycling centers if we have curbside recycling?” Sup. Eric Mar asked the deputy director of recycling at CalRecycle, point blank.

Jose Ortiz responded in less than a beat. “While some communities think curbside operations ensure the state’s goals of collecting [recyclables], the reality is that 90 percent of recycling volume is collected through recycling centers, not curbside programs,” he said from the podium.

That number came as a shock to many at the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee June 19, including Sups. Mar, David Campos, and Norman Yee. Only 8 percent of recycling statewide comes through blue bins, CalRecyle confirmed to the Guardian.

Nor is that limited to California: Data from the Container Recycling Institute shows that the 10 states with recycling redemption laws produce such a high rate of return that they account for 46 percent of the nation’s recycling. And since California Redemption Value recycling is pre-sorted, experts note, the bottles are often recycled whole (as opposed to broken) which can be used for higher-grade recycling purposes.

So for the city with a mandated goal of zero waste by 2020, the case for keeping recycling centers open is an environmental one. It’s also fiscal.

San Franciscans make $18 million a year selling back recyclables, Ortiz said, most of which went directly into the pockets of recyclers. Those scavengers at the Fourth of July festivities may have only collected five cents per can, but that’s enough to buoy the income of many poor San Franciscans.

At the recycling hearing, David Mangan approached the podium to speak. His red hat was clean and his grey sweatshirt was ironed, but his face was worn with worry-lines and creases.

“I can’t walk more than about eight blocks at a time, and I’m unemployable because of my disabilities,” he told the committee. Recycling centers are a lifeline, he added. “I need this job, I’m on a limited income. I need the help they offer. I need them to stay open, please.”

Critics say some poor and homeless depend on a black market of recycling truck drivers who trade drugs for cans and bottles, then turn to recycling centers to make a profit. But those at the hearing said the extinction of recycling centers actually helps the mobile, black market recycling fleets bloom, as motorists have an easier time shuttling recyclables across the city.

So recyclers are increasingly forced to rely on these so-called “mosquito fleets” for far-flung trips to cash in their bottles.

 

SMALL BUSINESS BUST

Meanwhile, recycling center evictions are becoming a source of anxiety within the small business community.

State law establishes a half-mile radius called a “convenience zone” around any supermarket that annually makes more than $2 million. The supermarket is mandated to provide recycling on-site, accept recyclables in-store, or opt to pay a $100 a day fee.

With the eviction of SFCR from Church and Market, Safeway may opt to pay the fee. But that gap would leave surrounding businesses inside that convenience zone with the same options: accept recyclables in-store or pay $36,000 a year.

Miriam Zouzounis of the Arab-American Grocer Association said those options are daunting for liquor stores and mom-and-pop grocers.

“We just don’t have the space for [recycling],” she said at the hearing. If SFCR were to close, the total of small businesses shouldering the burden of state recycling fees would jump from 100 to more than 360, said Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the city’s Office of Small Business.

All told, San Francisco small businesses would be made to send $12.96 million in annual fees to California coffers because a few supermarkets didn’t want to handle recyclables. Mar is now calling upon all involved to step up and solve this glaring problem.

 

SOLUTIONS ON THE WAY

This week the Board of Supervisors is tentatively set to vote on a moratorium of recycling center evictions, introduced by Mar on June 24. The pause would give Mar time to form a work group with those involved: Department of the Environment, Department of Public Works, CalRecycle, local supermarkets, grocers, the Coalition on Homelessness, and others to come together to form a compromise solution.

Department of the Environment proposed a mobile recycling center, which Wiener called an equitable solution that would help distribute recycling responsibility evenly across the city. While that agency did not provide a timeline on the creation of a mobile recycling center before our deadline, it’s been in the works since 2012, when then-District 5 Sup. Christina Olague said it was the answer to the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center’s closure.

It’s been a long wait for a solution. And in the meantime, many more stand to lose.