Affordable Housing

Mayoral meltdown

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joe@sfbg.com

When he launched an unexpected mayoral bid in 2011, Mayor Ed Lee campaigned on a platform of changing the tone of San Francisco politics. The appointed mustachioed mayor claimed he put the civility back in City Hall, marking a sharp departure from the divisive tone of city politics as progressives battled former Mayor Willie Brown, followed by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

“We’ll continue the high level of civility in the tone we’ve set since January, and solve the problems with civil engagement,” he told Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, then his mayoral opponent, at a 2011 debate.

Yet over the past two weeks, Mayor Lee has started swinging hard against supervisors who have introduced measures that go against his own priorities. So much for civility at City Hall.

 

COMPROMISE EVERYTHING

When asked about the outcome of her newly revised affordable housing measure, Sup. Jane Kim did not sound enthusiastic.

“It was definitely a compromise,” Kim said. But compromise is a word you use when you find a middle ground. By most accounts, Mayor Lee weakened the measure by hammering the right pressure points.

Kim crafted a novel solution to the city’s housing affordability crisis for the November ballot. Her initial Housing Balance Requirement would have established controls on market-rate housing construction, requiring a reevaluation whenever affordable housing production falls below 30 percent of total construction. The goal was to ensure that a certain amount of affordable housing would be built — but it was unpopular with housing developers.

Lee immediately drummed up a ballot measure in opposition to Kim’s, the Build Housing Now Initiative. The nonbinding policy statement asked the city to affirm his previously stated affordable housing goals. So what was the point?

It contained a poison pill which would have killed Kim’s Housing Balance Requirement. If Lee’s measure was approved, Kim’s would fail. The two politicians were in heated negotiations, trying to diffuse this ballot box arms race up to the very moment Kim’s measure went before the Board of Supervisors for approval at its July 29 meeting.

By the end of that process, Kim’s measure had been gutted.

Mirroring the mayor’s Build Housing Now Initiative, the new Housing Balance Requirement is a nonbinding policy statement asking the city to “affirm the City’s commitment” to support the production or rehabilitation of 30,000 housing units by 2020, with at least 33 percent of those permanently affordable to low or moderate income households.

Kim said she’d won funding pledges and promises for a number of affordable housing projects from the mayor. But Lee did not sign any agreement.

Essentially, the revised measure is a promise to promise, a plan to plan. Kim told us flatly, “We didn’t get the accountability we wanted.”

Political insiders told us the Mayor’s Office put pressure on affordable housing developers, who backed the original measure but later asked Kim to revise it to reflect the mayor’s wishes. The Mayor’s Office allegedly threatened to cut their funding next year, or divert projects to other affordable housing organizations.

Everyone acknowledged the mayor was pissed.

Tenants and Owners Development Corporation, an affordable housing developer in SoMa, sat in on the negotiations. The city paid $170,961 in contracts to TODCO last year, according to the City Controller, and over $250,000 the year before. John Elberling, president of TODCO, and Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, denied the mayor influenced them to ask Kim to revise her measure.

“I didn’t hear my phone ringing saying we’ll pull funding for affordable housers if you don’t do X, Y and Z,” Cohen told us. Yet he acknowledged the mayor “brought certain leverages to bear” in the closed-door negotiations to “compromise” on Kim’s ballot measure. Then everything changed.

“Yes,” Cohen said, “we then convinced the lead supervisor to change her position.”

Despite being labeled as a “compromise,” many observers read this as a sign that Lee had prevailed. Now the same hammer is coming down on Sup. Scott Wiener.

 

BALLOT BATTLE

“I agree with the mayor on many things,” Wiener told us. But the mayor is targeting Wiener’s new Muni funding ballot measure, hoping to knock it off the ballot.

“It’s not personal,” Wiener said. “It’s a policy disagreement.”

The mayor has a transportation bond on the ballot, asking voters to pony up $500 million to fund Muni. But Lee already blew a $33 million hole into Muni’s proposed budget when he decided to pull a Vehicle License Fee measure off the ballot. When that measure began to poll badly, he got cold feet, and withdrew it.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s budget outlined a doomsday scenario if the funding ballot measures failed to pass. It would be impossible to improve transit travel time, reliability, or to fund pedestrian and bike safety projects, the SFMTA staff noted in recent budget presentations.

Seeing the potential fallout due to the mayor pulling the VLF measure, Wiener placed his own measure on the ballot, tying expansion for Muni funding to the city’s growing population. If passed, Muni could see a $22 million bump just next year.

Openly, the mayor told reporters he would hold the supervisors who supported Wiener’s ballot measure “accountable.” Lee then initiated a conversation about slashing funding to city programs, signaling that supervisors’ favored projects could be jeopardized.

“Last week, the Board of Supervisors sent a measure to the ballot that the budget does not contemplate,” Kate Howard, the mayor’s budget director, wrote in a memo. She directed departments to cut their budgets by 1.5 percent, and asked for “contingency plans” including a “revisit” of hiring plans and scaling back existing programs and services.

Wiener issued a statement describing the move as “an empty scare tactic.”

“For whatever reason,” he wrote, “the Mayor’s Office felt the need to issue these emergency instructions now — a full year before the fiscal year at issue, in the middle of an election campaign, without even knowing whether the measure will pass.”

John Elberling, president of TODCO, recalled when then-Mayor Willie Brown used the same schoolyard-bully tactics to ensure his favored measures passed.

“The punchline is there were competing ballot measures, one from our side and one from Willie’s side,” Elberling told the Guardian. “There was an effort to reach a compromise, but that failed. I was in the meeting where he shot it down.”

“He said ‘I will make the decisions,’ quote unquote. ‘There is no compromise unless I say there’s a compromise.’ That was quite memorable,” Elberling recalled.

When things didn’t go his way, “Willie Brown took a housing project away from us,” Elberling said.

But Mayor Lee’s bluster and anger is new, and Elberling said it should be taken with a grain of salt. “Is it a bluff? That’s always a question. Real retaliation like Willie did, that’s a real thing. But huff and puff, that goes on all the time.”

 

Kim’s affordable housing ballot measure gutted then approved

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Housing is out of whack in San Francisco, and Sup. Jane Kim’s affordable housing ballot measure would’ve gone a long way towards fixing it. But that was then. Now, things are more uncertain. 

At yesterday’s [Tues/29] Board of Supervisors meeting, the board unanimously approved Kim’s Housing Balance proposal. But this was not her original ballot measure: it was gutted. Or as Kim told the board, “We were not able to come to an agreement on everything I wanted to see.”

Her originally proposed ballot measure required new housing developments to provide 30 percent affordable housing, with an opt-out mechanism possible through a hearing. Currently, developers can provide on-site affordable housing or pay money into a pot of affordable housing funding. That’s the system we’ve got now, and you can check San Francisco’s soaring rents and home prices to see how well that’s working out.

The 30 percent requirement was a strong, clear ask which may have spurred much-needed housing for middle and lower-income San Franciscans. Too strong, apparently. 

Kim’s negotiations with the affordable housing community and Mayor Ed Lee hit more than a few snags, sources told us. The mayor, frankly, didn’t like it. 

We reached out to the Mayor’s Office but didn’t hear back from them before press time. But it doesn’t take a soothsayer to see the mayor wanted the measure dead: He sent a strong signal by creating a rival ballot measure, which, if approved by voters, contained a “poison pill” which would’ve killed Kim’s measure.

We were still negotiating down to the last minute what we’re announcing today,” Kim told the board. 

Kim’s new ballot measure no longer includes the 30 percent affordable housing requirement. In exchange for dropping the strong mandate, Kim said she wrested a number of concessions from the mayor, including: 

 

  • Pledges of a 33% affordability housing goal for all new development in Central SoMa and future area plans
  • Interim planning controls in the Central SoMa to prevent displacement in advance of the approval of the Central SoMa Plan
  • The creation of a Neighborhood Stabilization Trust to fund Affordable Housing Acquisition & Rehabilitation program
  • Commitment to identify new revenue to accelerate affordable housing projects languishing in the City’s pipeline and land acquisition strategies, including tiered in-lieu fees
  • Pledges to find sufficient funding to jumpstart public housing rehab and HOPE SF –without tapping the Affordable Housing Trust Fund
  • A legislative path forward to continue goals of Housing Balance Act, including unit count

 

Peter Cohen, co-director of the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations, put the compromise this way: What the supervisor ended up doing [through negotiation] is forcing the city to commit itself to substantive policies for real action, in exchange for that conditional use trigger [contained in the original legislation, which would have subjected market-rate projects to addition scrutiny when affordable housing dropped below 30 percent].”

“Obviously,” Cohen said, “some people think thats a bad tradeoff.”

So Kim lost the 30 percent trigger, but gained a number of compromises. So were they a big win for affordable housing advocates? 

Sources told us the Neighborhood Stabilization Trust is a long sought-after goal of the affordable housing community, but so far no plans have been revealed about how the trust (or any of the other proposals) would be funded. The ballot measure may offer Kim some leverage to make sure those promises are funded by Lee, especially considering San Francisco’s impending 2015 mayoral race. 

We’re presenting [voters] a ballot measure that constitutes our core values and memorializes the agreement,” Kim told the board. “Housing balance had a large journey, and it does not stop today. Thirty percent: this is a goal we should commit to as a city. Our voters want this.”

Earlier Tuesday, Kim stood with Lee at the unveiling of 60 new affordable housing units on Natoma street. Now, without a mandate, the only guarantee the city will build more affordable housing is the mayor’s word.

Article details bullying and retribution by the Mayor’s Office

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People are talking about this article from Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle about how much three fall ballot measures will cost the city, but many progressives and political outsiders are more focused on the juicy details lower down in the article about the spiteful, bullying political tactics practiced by the Mayor’s Office these days.

Mayor Ed Lee and his top aides are said to be “fuming” that Sup. Scott Wiener and five of his colleagues placed a measure on the fall ballot that would give Muni more money as the city’s population increases — and that “the mayor’s office seems to be hinting that it will target programs important to the six supervisors who voted to place Wiener’s proposal on the ballot.”

The measure is retroactive to 2003, the last time Muni had an increase in its funding from the city General Fund, so it would mean an immediate funding bump of $20 million or more, which the mayor is disingenuousnessly casting as budget buster. Keep in mind this same mayor unilaterally ended Sunday meters this year, costing Muni about $10 million a year, and supports corporate welfare programs that cost the city $17 million last year.

This spiteful and retaliatory approach to public policy by Lee, the elected official with the most control over the city’s pursestrings, and his minions was also a big factor in Sup. Jane Kim’s capitulation to the Mayor’s Office on her housing balance measure. Sources tell the Guardian that affordable housing advocates were threatened with reduced city funding from the Mayor’s Office if they continued to push for Kim’s original measure.

The Chronicle article was based largely on a Controller’s Office memo claiming the three ballot measures — the Muni measure, a proposal to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2018, and reauthorization of the Children’s Fund — would be the “largest voter-directed increase in general fund spending in a single election in city history,” costing $104 million by 2018.

More than half of that is from the minimum wage increase, which will increase the city’s cost of contracting low-paid nonprofit workers to perform public services. But in this increasingly expensive city, does anyone really think $15 per hour is an unreasonable wage? Should the city itself be exploiting workers?

After the city recently slashed building and planning fees charged to developers, and in a city that continues to coddle big corporations and landlords rather than tax them fairly, the Mayor’s Office ire over policies that help low-wage workers and Muni riders is particularly telling of its values and priorities.  

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.

Will San Francisco voters give Muni more money to serve a growing population?

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Beating up on Muni and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is a perennial pastime for many San Franciscans, who will be given the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are this November. Will they be willing to give Muni the money it needs to serve its growing ridership, even at the cost of other city programs and priorities?

The Board of Supervisors yesterday [Tues/22] voted narrowly to place Sup. Scott Wiener’s Muni funding measure on the fall ballot. It would increase General Fund contributions to the SFMTA as the city population increase, retroactive back to 2003 when the current rate was set, giving the agency an immediate $20-25 million boost to serve the roughly 85,000 new residents the city has added since then.

“For too long City Hall has been slow to prioritize transit funding,” Wiener said in a press release. “We are a growing city, and we need to take firm steps to ensure that our transportation system keeps up with that growth.  Improving transit reliability and capacity and making our streets safer are key to that goal.”

While everyone says they support Muni — even David Looman, the proponent behind the Restore Transportation Balance initiative that seeks more SFMTA funding for cars, which will also appear on that ballot — Wiener has been the rare strong advocate locally for actually giving the agency more money.

Mayor Ed Lee created a $10 million hole in the SFMTA budget by demanding the repeal of charging for parking meters on Sunday this year, and then he dropped his support for a local increase in the vehicle license fee this year, prompting Wiener to introduce his Muni funding measure, which the mayor would have the authority to terminate if voters approve a VLF increase in 2016.

A $500 million general obligation bond transportation measure backed by Lee and the full Board of Supervisors will also appear on the November ballot, but it will go mostly to cover Muni’s capital needs, not the growing demands on its operating budget.

Wiener’s Muni funding measure yesterday barely got the six votes this charter amendment needed to qualify for the ballot: those of Wiener and Sups. London Breed, David Campos, David Chiu, Malia Cohen, and Jane Kim (Sup. John Avalos was absent).

In recent years, there’s been a rift in the city’s progressive coalition between environmental and transportation activists on one side and affordable housing advocates on the other, who sometimes battle over city funding they see as a zero sum game. So it will be interesting to watch how the politics surrounding this measure shape up going into the fall campaign season.  

Anti-Eviction Mapping Project highlights Urban Green’s record of displacement

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The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s latest creation illustrates the eviction history of Urban Green Investments, a San Francisco-based real estate company that was recently put in the spotlight with its controversial attempted eviction of 98-year-old Mary Elizabeth Phillips.

The Mapping Project’s graphic shows the properties owned by Urban Green and its affiliates, assets that number 385 units in more than 15 buildings. According to the Mapping Project, they have displaced “numerous tenants in the San Francisco Bay Area,” led by the efforts of CEO David McCloskey.

“The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project created this map to expose how large and interconnected the Urban Green and McCloskey network is,” said Erin McElroy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. “We have been shocked at how many tenants they have pushed out and in how many cities they are flipping properties.”

Urban Green’s website advertises the company as a “fully integrated real estate company with brokerage, property management and development capacities.” The company’s strategy is to acquire property, then add value by “increasing efficiencies, enhancing entitlements, and employing carefully calibrated green renovations.”

In recent years, Urban Green has been busy displacing tenants, including in October 2012, when it purchased a multi-family portfolio with 130 units in San Francisco. According to the Mapping Project, the company is involved in around 40 LLCs, “many of which they use to evict tenants and then flip buildings.”

“Companies like Urban Green wouldn’t be evicting tenants like Mary Phillips if we stopped the profiting of buying up then evicting whole buildings just to sell them quickly,” San Francisco Tenants Union Director Ted Gullicksen said in a statement. “We need to pass a surtax on transfers of apartment buildings within five years of last sale this November if we are to stop these displacement practices of speculators like Urban Green.”

Gullicksen referred to the anti-speculation tax that tenant activists and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors has place on the November ballot. Representatives of Urban Green have not returned Guardian calls for comment, but we’ll update this post if and when we hear back.  

Even residents outside the Bay Area have not escaped the reach of the McCloskey family, which has a long history of evictions. Urban Green is currently a subsidiary of the business run by David McCloskey’s Thomas McCloskey: Cornerstone Holdings. The family owns property in Colorado (where Cornerstone is based), New York, Hawaii, and California, according to the Mapping Project. Perhaps most controversially, the family owns 300 acres of land in Hawaii, called Kealia Kai, which greatly angered the Kaua`i people in the 1990s. After buying the land for $17 million, McCloskey unsuccessfully attempted to build a private beach community with his land.

More than 2,000 miles of sea separate Hawaii from Phillips’ apartment, but the residents of both areas are suffering similar fates at the hands of the McCloskeys. And though Urban Green stated last week that it would not continue its attempt to evict Phillips, attorney Steve Collier of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic issued a statement making it clear that the company’s efforts are not over. According to Collier, Urban Green’s new strategy is to force out Brant, which would remove Phillips by default because she relies on Brant’s care.

“This has been my home for over 40 years and I don’t want to leave. . . I am just too old,” said Phillips, according to the Mapping Project’s website. “I didn’t sit down and cry, I just refused to believe it. They’re going to have to take me out of here feet first. Just because of your age, don’t let people push you around.”

Housing supply and demand theory on trial at City Hall

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The November ballot is shaping into a housing supply theory showdown, and yesterday’s [Thu/17] Board of Supervisors Rules Committee hearing was the first round.

The committee hosted two hearings on rival housing proposals for the November ballot: Sup. Jane Kim’s City Housing Balance Requirement and Mayor Ed Lee’s Build Housing Now initiative. The two purport to set similar goals for building affordable housing, but Lee’s proposal contains a poison pill that would invalidate Kim’s measure. 

The mayor’s philosophy on housing, a strict supply and demand argument, was on full display. 

“[Housing] is a competition based on who has the most dollars in their pocket, and the ones with the most dollars win,” Olson Lee, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing said at the hearing. “If we limit the supply, the people with the most dollars will win.”

The arguments are a little complicated, but let’s try to break them down: Kim’s initiative lays out a requirement for new construction to build 30 percent affordable housing and 70 percent market-rate housing. Currently, new construction projects can build on-site affordable or pay a fee into a pot, known as the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. If new construction needs to be exempt from the balance requirement, under Kim’s measure, that can be decided by the Planning Commission. 

But the mayor and his deep-pocketed development allies are shrinking away from this like the Wicked Witch of the West from water. Affordable housing doesn’t make a dime for developers, and the mayor fears Kim’s policy will slam the breaks on market-rate housing construction. 

Activist and San Francisco historian Calvin Welch argues supply and demand housing theories won’t solve the San Francisco housing crisis, via 48hills.

Yet Kim’s measure is based on what many progressives in San Francisco believe: San Francisco’s housing market is hot, profits are high, demand is insatiable, and building lots of market rate housing that will never be affordable to most San Francisco won’t solve the city’s affordable housing crisis. The construction pipeline won’t slow down with a few dings to profit margins, she argued. 

“I just have to say if building 30 percent affordable housing will halt development, we’re in a whole lot of trouble,” Kim said to her critics. “We have to build. Even people that make money leave San Francisco every day.”

No one is saying Kim doesn’t believe more housing needs to be built. But Lee’s staffers emphasized a belief that more housing construction alone is the solution to the city’s ills, a strategy that hasn’t exactly netted stellar results recently. They also defended the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, as the Mayor’s Office of Housing is funded about “40 percent” from developer’s fees, Olson Lee said. Sarah Dennis Phillips, from the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, argued sharply that any hit to developer’s fees, even marginal ones, would result in a loss of dollars for the city’s General Fund, the funding pot feeds most city services.

The mayor’s ballot initiative essentially asks for a vote of confidence in his plan to build or rehabilitate 30,000 housing units by 2020, which some in the press have pilloried as depending heavily on already-existing units. While 30,000 sounds like a lot, the Controller’s Office said San Francisco would need as many as 100,000 housing units to even make a dent in San Francisco’s skyrocketing housing prices, according to the SF Examiner (though he has since written the Examiner to say his sentiments were misconstrued). The city’s Civil Grand Jury recently released a scathing report of the mayor’s 30,000 housing unit goal, saying “While the residential real estate market is enjoying a strong recovery, it is doubtful the city can build its way out of the current affordability crisis.”

Meanwhile, people are losing their homes and fleeing the city. Some who are holding on by a thread came out to speak at the dueling hearings. 

“I have health challenges including cerebral palsy,” Justin Bennet said during public comment. He spoke with a difficulty in his jaw, haltingly and with much effort. He said the housing market made it difficult to move from the dangerous areas of the city he calls home. “I’ve been robbed outside several residences I’ve lived in, so I’m hoping for a change in my housing situation in the future. Thanks for letting me speak.” 

A family came up to the podium to speak, with two young housing activists, a brother and sister, 9 and 6, saying they didn’t want to see so many lose their homes.

Advocates from the SEIU 1021, South of Market Community Action Network, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and the Chinese Progressive Association, to name a few, were on hand at the hearing. They were also on hand for a press conference on the steps of City Hall shortly before the hearing. Ed Donaldson from ACCE called out the mayor’s housing measure, saying its only intent was to torpedo Kim’s. 

“I say we should play chicken with the mayor,” Donaldson said at the podium. Metal bands have sung with less volume than the baritone he used while booming, “Let’s see if he has the gall.”

Inside the hearing, Patrick Valentino (who championed luxury development on the waterfront) and Tim Colen of the Housing Action Coalition spoke, defending the mayor’s measure.

“As San Francisco, as a city in affordability, we’re failing. Our rate of failure is accelerating,” he said flatly. He criticized Kim’s plan and asked, “Where’s the money? No one disagrees we need it. The shortcoming I see in the housing balance measure is its premise that if we increase restrictions on market rate housing, it helps subsidize housing.” 

He argued instead to gather more stakeholders together (i.e. deep pocketed developers) to negotiate more private funding, a strategy he said that worked in the past. 

As others came to the podium to argue against developer greed, Colen watched on, shaking his head, seemingly in disagreement. When someone in public comment argued that developers so far have shirked their responsibilities to build affordable housing, he shook his head again and left the hearing room. 

There’s a stark divide in housing philosophy, and supply and demand’s ability to save San Francisco will soon see a trial by voter if Kim’s charter amendment can win six vote at the full Board of Supervisors. 

The mayor’s policies seem to be more of the same, Kim said, and now the city seems to be fighting over the crumbs of developers’ fees. Despite opposition from the mayor, Kim told the Guardian she’s open to new ideas from the mayor. 

But she also said she won’t back down. 

“We’re on a two-fold path right now. If there’s a compromise to get [the city] to 30 percent affordable housing, like new revenue, we’re open to that compromise,” she said. “But we always intended this to go to the ballot.”

SF bankers now exporting tenant-displacing TIC loans

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Fractional mortgage loans used to convert apartments into owner-occupied tenancies-in-common have fed the eviction and displacement crisis in San Francisco, where the median home price just surpassed $1 million for the first time. Now, some of the same San Francisco banks that pioneered fractional loans here have started offered them in the East Bay and on the Peninsula.

TIC housing is an ownership model for multi-unit buildings, where each unit is independently owned. This option appeals to would-be homeowners because it’s cheaper than a condominium, but less fraught than a traditional loan shared by various owners in a TIC building, which does not allow for independent ownership of each unit.

TICs local have grown in popularity in San Francisco as housing prices continue to skyrocket, since they help homeowners find something affordable, although that benefit usually comes at the cost of evicting all the tenants in the building, often including seniors, those with disabilities, and low-income people in rent-controlled units.

Previously, fractional TIC loans were only accessible in SF. Now, as people seek affordable housing outside of expensive San Francisco, the demand for fractional TIC loans has grown. And San Francisco bankers have stepped up to meet that demand, according to a recent article in the San Francisco Business Times (“High-priced SF housing market exports fractional tenants-in-common loans,” June 28).

Sterling Bank & Trust has become well-known for providing fractional TIC loans (more than $480 million worth so far, according to the Business Times), and is the first company to offer the loans outside of San Francisco. “We’re helping the firefighter and school teacher, or what I like to call the ‘non-tech’ buyer, purchase a home,” Stephen Adams, senior vice president of Sterling Bank & Trust, told the Business Times.

Adams is also president of the San Francisco Small Business Commission, presiding over what critics say is a shift in that commission toward rubber-stamping initiatives from the Mayor’s Office rather than defending small business interests. When we contacted Adams to ask about the evictions and displacement caused by fractional loans, he told he had “no comment to make at this time.”

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, the director of counseling programs at the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, said that he doesn’t know how the TIC loans might affect those in the East Bay. But he does know they’re bad news for San Francisco, where there’s now a 10-year moratorium on new condo conversions but few controls on the creation of new TICs.

“They’re scary,” Avicolli Mecca told us. “It’s a disaster for San Francisco. Basically, if you’re buying a tenancy in common, you don’t need to condo convert. It used to be that you wanted a condo conversion so you could have a separate mortgage on what you own. With a fractional loan, you have your own mortgage from the start.”

He added that the loans make it easier for sellers to convert buildings into any size that they can market to home buyers. With the loans, combined with the state Ellis Act allowing owners to remove apartments from the rental market, evicting tenants becomes even more profitable.

The Bank of San Francisco confirmed that it also offers TIC loans in the East Bay. The bank will be making them more attractive with interest-only payments, fractional financing for buildings with more than 12 units, and loans up to $2 million.

Dylan Desai, a spokesman for the Bank of San Francisco, told us that the bankers “do not extend financing to buildings where there has been an eviction” and, to their knowledge, they never have. “We’re sensitive to tenant rights.”

Hopefully the other banks offering these loans will be just as sensitive as they branch out into communities in the region that have already been absorbing an influx of working class former San Franciscans.

City will turn Francisco Reservoir into a park, with no affordable housing

San Francisco is getting a new park – but the deal has left some wondering why a small portion of the new parkland couldn’t have been set aside to build housing for teachers and firefighters.

On July 8 members of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously, amid a flurry of congratulatory exchanges, to transfer the Francisco Reservoir to the Recreation and Parks Department. Nearly everyone who weighed in during public comment praised the decision to convert the reservoir site into open space for the surrounding neighborhood. Located near Russian Hill on Hyde Street just above Bay Street, the Francisco Reservoir has gone unused for the better part of century.

One speaker did offer some balance. “We have the mayor and the Board of Supervisors constantly hitting us over the head saying we need housing,” she pointed out. “We have to start somewhere.” 

Under city law, publicly owned “surplus property” – as the Francisco Reservoir is categorized – must be considered for affordable housing before city departments may let it go for any other use.

Yet during years of discussion between neighbors and city officials to discuss this 4-acre parcel, the idea of building affordable housing apparently didn’t even receive minimal consideration.

Instead, the affluent neighbors wanted a park – and managed to raise nearly $10 million in private funding through several neighborhood associations to help make it happen. That money has been pledged for a park endowment, to cover development and maintenance purposes.

According to City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey, the city’s “enterprise agencies” are exempted from the affordable housing requirement in the surplus property ordinance – this applies to surplus parcels under the ownership of the Port, the SFPUC, the SFMTA, and the Recreation & Parks Department.

A memorandum of understanding approved by the SFPUC, which must win the approval of the Board of Supervisors and the mayor before being finalized, grants some $10 million from the Recreation and Park Department’s open space fund to purchase the Francisco Reservoir from the SFPUC.

Open space is generally a wonderful amenity in an urban environment, particularly for land that hasn’t been used in decades. As Jan Blum noted at the hearing, the parkland will provide environmental benefits such as “habitat for migratory birds, as well as local wildlife.”

But the city’s decision to convert surplus property to open space comes just as Mayor Ed Lee is seeking to build 30,000 new housing units to stem the affordability crisis.

John Stewart, a prominent affordable housing developer appointed to serve on Lee’s affordable housing task force, told the Guardian that he got nowhere when proposing the idea of affordable housing construction for a small portion of the Francisco Reservoir parcel.

Stewart, who emphasized to the Bay Guardian that his company has no financial ties nor interest in developing a project there, penned an editorial for the San Francisco Business Times earlier this year on the Francisco Reservoir transfer, asking, “Why not expand the conversation to include the subject of housing?”

The idea was not well received. “I did not even propose tax-credit, tax-driven, very low income housing,” Stewart noted. “I proposed moderate-income, for teachers and nurses.”

The neighborhood plan showed the area at the end of the parcel, where Stewart thought housing could go, as a dog run.

Sup. Mark Farrell, who represents District 2, where Francisco Park would be located, was deeply involved in discussions about converting the reservior into a park. Farrell’s office didn’t return calls seeking comment, nor did the SFPUC.

“Sup. Farrell didn’t want me speaking to these groups,” Stewart said. “Nobody said, come by, come to our coffee klatch, make the case and we’ll at least talk it over. Nobody wanted to discuss it – that was clear. There was polite silence. But there was silence,” he said. “And their view is – and it’s understandable – they really want to have the whole thing.”

Angry building owners threaten lawsuit over anti-speculation tax

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Opponents of the anti-speculator tax that will appear on the November ballot blasted the proposal in a City Hall hearing yesterday [Thu/10] — pledging to defeat the measure in court even if voters approve it — but they were overwhelmed by a strong turnout from supporters who said real estate speculation drives up the cost of housing without adding any value.

“We can sue you in court on the many of the unconstitutional aspects of this and we will do that,” Janan New, director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, said of the measure that would charge a 24 percent tax on properties flipped within a year of purchase down to a 14 percent tax if flipped within five years.

New and other allies — including San Francisco Association of Realtors, Small Property Owners of San Francisco, and Sup. Katy Tang — claimed that the measure is illegally retroactive because it affects those who recently bought property and that it doesn’t account for people who need to sell their properties because of job loss or other life changes.

“This is almost tantamount to a confiscation of property,” Peter Rich of SPOSF said at the hearing.

But Sup. David Campos — who placed the measure on the ballot along with Sups. Eric Mar, Jane Kim, and John Avalos — refuted allegations that the measure isn’t legally sound and carefully questioned City Attorney’s Office staff to clarify the laws that allow for the measure.

“I know there’s a lot of ulterior motives here because we do know this is going to be challenged in court, so I want to be very clear,” Campos said in response to a line of questioning from Tang, who continued to maintain, “So it’s retroactive in a sense” after being told by the deputy city attorney that it wasn’t retroactive because the tax only applies to future property sales.

The anti-speculation tax was first introduced by then-Sup. Harvey Milk shortly before his assassination in 1978 (Dianne Feinstein killed the measure after becoming acting mayor), and it was revived this year during a series of tenant conventions and sponsored by Mar.

“What we’re proposing is very reasonable to deal with the affordable housing crisis,” Mar said at the hearing, noting that it exempts single-family homes, projects larger than 29 units, and sales triggered by the death of the property owner. “It’s been crafted with enough exemptions to protect the small guy and really go after the profiteers.”

During the public comment period, where supporters on the measure vastly outnumbered opponents, several speakers referenced Harvey Milk and said housing in San Francisco wouldn’t be so expensive today if the measure had passed back then, a time when evictions and displacement were also on the rise.

“He was assassinated before it came to fruition. The parallels to that time and today are striking,” testified Tom Temprano, president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, who urged supervisors to “honor the legacy of Harvey Milk by passing this thoughtful and well-crafted legislation.”

Brian Basinger, head of the AIDS Housing Alliance, played old video footage of Milk talking about the measure back in 1978, shortly after he was evicted from his Castro Street camera store by a landlord seeking higher rents, noting that profiteering forces San Franciscans to spend too much on housing and have too little left over for other needs.

“So when you look at that, it’s going to affect the larger economy,” Milk said of real estate speculation.

Gen Fujioka, who works at Chinatown Community Development Center and spoke for San Franciscans Against Real Estate Speculation, cited recent evidence of properties snapped up by speculators and quickly flipped for profits of 50 percent of more.

“Basically, what we’re seeing today is an escalation in the sales prices of multi-unit buildings beyond what people can pay in rent,” Fujioka testified, noting how that essentially forces landlords to evict rent-controlled tenants to make the investments pencil out. “That kind of price escalation is causing instability in our communities.”

But opponents lashed out at the measure and the characterization that they were profiteering in ways that hurt people. “It’s a housing tax and it doesn’t make sense to have a housing tax in the most expensive city in the country,” said Jay Chang of the Association of Realtors.  

Aaron Jones said he and his wife invested their children’s college savings in a small apartment building, and that they’re good landlords who should be able to sell the property when they want to without penalty.

“We can’t sell until 2017 with this retroactive, punitive tax,” Jones said, saying there were many other small investors like him who were afraid to speak up because “in San Francisco, to be an investor — not a speculator — is to be the devil.”

But supporters of the measure say their intention isn’t to demonize property owners but to do something about the eviction and displacement crisis that is changing the face of the city, and to create a disincentive to bad behavior.

“It’s really the most vulnerable people who are being affected by evictions,” said Erin McElroy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, citing her group’s research showing 72 percent of recent evictions have been of the elderly or disabled.

“Speculation is the commodification of housing and housing is essential,” said Chris Durazo of the Veterans Equity Center.

Campos said most landlords should support the measure as check against speculators that are pushing up the price of housing, triggering evictions, and creating a divisive politcal climate: “Speculators are giving landlords in San Francisco and property owners in San Francisco a bad name.”

Events: July 9 – 15, 2014

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Listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

WEDNESDAY 9

LaborFest 2014 Meet at SW corner of Geary and Laguna, SF; www.laborfest.net. 3-4:30pm, free. “Union Sponsored Affordable Housing in San Francisco: St. Francis Square Cooperative” walking tour.

Kim Stolz Book Passage, 1 Ferry Bldg, SF; www.bookpassage.com. 12:30pm, free. The author and media personality discusses Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I’ll Never Do.

THURSDAY 10

Kjerstin Gruys Books Inc, 601 Van Ness, SF; www.booksinc.net. 7pm, free. The sociologist discusses her memoir Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall: How I Learned to Love My Body By Not Looking at It For a Year.

LaborFest 2014 518 Valencia, SF; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, donations accepted. “FilmWorks United: International Working Class Film and Video Festival:” Black and White and Dead All Over (Foster, 2013), followed by a discussion on the newspaper industry. Also: Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center, Berk; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, free. “FilmWorks United:” Coming for a Visit (Tourette, 2013).

Jervey Tervalon Book Passage, 1 Ferry Bldg, SF; www.bookpassage.com. 6pm, free. The author discusses his new thriller, Monster’s Chef.

FRIDAY 11

LaborFest 2014 First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin, SF; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, donations accepted. “FilmWorks United: International Working Class Film and Video Festival:” ASOTRECOL, The Struggle Against Transnationals in Colombia (2013).

“Off Shore: A Live Drawing Event and Fundraiser” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.soex.org. 6pm, $15-20. Southern Exposure’s annual “Monster Drawing Rally” fundraiser presents 120 artists drawing in shifts in front of a live audience.

“Punk: Convulsive Beauty” iHeartNorthBeach Art Gallery and Gifts, 641 Green, SF; www.pmpress.org. 5-11pm, free. PM press presents its new book, Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, The Early Years, by Alex Ogg, featuring photographs by Ruby Ray and art by Winston Smith. Ray and Smith will also be exhibiting their artwork capturing the punk scene, circa 1977-1981.

SATURDAY 12

Tony Gilbert Green Apple Books, 506 Clement, SF; www.greenapplebooks.com. Noon, free. The author reads from Hannah and the Secret Mermaids of San Francisco Bay, alongside a display of original art from the story painted by Gail Weissman.

LaborFest 2014 Meet at 75 Folsom, SF; www.laborfest.net. 10am, free. “San Francisco Waterfront Labor History Walk,” with Lawrence Shoup and Peter O’Driscoll. Also: meet in front of Bill Graham Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.laborfest.net. 10am, $20. “WPA Bus Tour.” Also: Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, free. Class War CD release party with Redd Welsh. Also: First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin, SF; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, donations accepted. “People’s Voices for a World of Harmony, Peace, and Justice.”

“Writers With Drinks: An Evening of Oversharing About Money” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.writerswithdrinks.com. 7:30pm, $5-20. With J. Bradford DeLong, Carol Queen, Farhad Manjoo, Frances Lefkowitz, and Charlie Jane Anders.

SUNDAY 13

“Bookish Beasts” Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF; www.sexandculture.org. Noon-6pm, free. Zine fest featuring authors whose work takes on sexuality, gender, and erotica.

MP Johnson Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia, SF; www.borderlands-books.com. 3pm, free. The author reads from Dungeons and Drag Queens. Attending in drag encouraged!

LaborFest 2014 ILWU 34 Hall, 801 Second St, SF; www.laborfest.net. 10am, free. “Staples, Our Public Post Office, Privativation, and Trust” panel discussion. Also: Manilatown Center, 868 Kearny, SF; www.laborfest.net. 4-7pm, donations accepted. “Revisiting the History of California Agricultural Workers and Filipino Labor” with a variety of speakers.

TUESDAY 15

Anoop Judge Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The author discusses her Bay Area-set novel, The Rummy Club.

LaborFest 2014 Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, Southern Heights at De Haro, SF; www.laborfest.net. 10am, free. Potrero Hill history walk. Also: Modern Times Bookstore, 2919 24th St, SF; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, free. LaborFest Writers read their work. Also: San Jose Improv, 62 Second St, San Jose; www.sjimprov.com. 8pm, donations requested (make free reservations online). “LaborFest Comedy Night” with Will Durst and others. *

 

Taxing speculators

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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.”

Google Bus sewers

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STREET FIGHT With most city officials supporting the accommodation of private transit in some form, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is now vetting where tech workers should board and egress the private corporate commuter buses that ply the 101 and I-280 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley suburbs. A list of proposed bus stops was circulated in June, and the first round of bus stop proposals is set for approval in August.

Short of a proper environmental study, which is the subject of ongoing litigation, the list deserves more scrutiny and deliberation because certain areas of the city — such as Hayes Street in the Western Addition and 18th Street in the Mission — might be effectively made into Google Bus sewers.

I hope SFMTA is open to reconsidering some of these proposed bus stops.

Rather than jamming oversized interstate highway-scale coaches on human-scaled, walkable, and bikeable streets with important Muni routes, SFMTA ought to steer them where they are more appropriate: on the wider, car-oriented streets that bifurcate the city.

For example, the current proposal for private commuter buses in the Western Addition is to have these mammoth and incongruent buses running on Hayes Street using Muni stops at Clayton, Steiner, Laguna, and Buchanan.

This is bad news for passengers on the 21-Hayes, a key neighborhood-serving electric trolley bus that has gotten short shrift in the city planning process. With 12,500 boardings daily, the 21-Hayes is often at capacity every morning before it crosses Van Ness.

Just last week, I was on a packed 21 that was blocked (illegally) by a huge corporate bus on Hayes. With an already dense and slow traffic situation, this added at least 30 seconds to the trip before the 21 could access its stop. Repeat that multiple times in the morning and afternoon and you can see that this will be a mess. It’s not worth the dollar the SFMTA collects for such stops, that’s for sure.

Concentrating the private buses on the 21 line (or the 33 in the Mission) will block Muni where Muni is already slow, unreliable, and overcrowded. It will also diminish walkability and bicycle safety on Hayes and other streets identified in the current list (including the commercial corridors on Divisadero and 18th Street in the Mission.)

Rather than streets such as Hayes, SFTMA should redirect the private buses to the multilane, one-way couplet on Fell and Oak streets, only one block south. Along the corridor, SFMTA could collaborate with the private systems to establish new bus stops (red paint) at Clayton, Masonic, Divisadaro, Fillmore, and near Octavia. This scheme would limit clunky turn movements onto neighborhood streets by oversized buses and contribute to traffic calming.

In the mornings, the buses would pick up passengers on Oak Street, starting along the Panhandle, then travel towards Octavia Boulevard before swinging onto the freeway southbound. In the evenings the buses would exit the freeway at Octavia, and stop at drop-off hubs on Fell, between Octavia and Laguna, and then stop incrementally toward Golden Gate Park.

Additionally, the city needs to consider a space for the underpaid, nonunionized drivers to pull over and rest before and after long segments of freeway driving. We want these buses to be safe.

Similar arrangements should be made to spare 18th Street in the Mission from reverting to a Google bus sewer, with emphasis on private corporate bus stops on South Van Ness or Guerrero-San Jose. Surely there are other examples in other parts of the city.

The urgent affordable housing crisis aside, this could be a win-win from a transportation perspective. Tech workers would no longer get blamed for blocking Muni and they can know that while waiting for their bus, they are contributing to calming erstwhile hazardous streets.

There’s a lot of opportunity to combine these new bus stops with traffic calming at dangerous intersections such as Fell and Masonic or Oak and Octavia, all without mucking up Muni or diminishing the walkable human scale of nearby neighborhood commercial streets. And hey, since this is all a “pilot program,” no pesky and expensive EIR is needed — right?

Thinking long-term, this scheme could be a template to jumpstart making this ridiculous private transit system into a regional public bus system modeled on AC transit or Golden Gate Transit, a service open to all. Our car-centric streets are ripe for express bus service and this would help relieve parallel lines like the N-Judah, while enabling the city to attain its aspiration of 30 percent mode share on transit.

And for Mayor Ed Lee and pro-tech-bus members of the Board of Supervisors, it helps with their “vision zero” rhetoric of increasing pedestrian safety because placing the buses on car-centric one-way couplets can help calm traffic.

With a little cajoling by the mayor, he could get his tech sponsors to underwrite streetscape and beautification at the bus stops along these kinds of streets.

After all, Mayor Lee needs to find the money, because last month he betrayed pedestrian and bicycle safety and Muni when he abandoned support for increasing the Vehicle License Fee locally this fall, all the while misleading the public about the important role of Sunday metering. Perhaps it’s time for a tax or license fee on the ad hoc private transit system?

SLOWING DOWN

Speaking of vision zero, Sup. Eric Mar deserves hearty thanks for proposing to reduce speed limits citywide. This is one of the most effective ideas to come from the progressive wing of the Board of Supervisors in a long time and should be implemented yesterday. Higher speeds maim and kill, and the faster cars go the more voracious the appetite for both fuel and urban space.

With reduced speed, the motorist would still be able to drive, just more slowly, perhaps with less convenience than now. But over time the options of cycling, of walkable shopping, and improved public transit would synchronize more seamlessly as car space is ceded to separated cycletracks and transit lanes.

My suggestion is to make the city navigable by car at no greater than 15 miles per hour, a speed deemed not only to be comfortable on calmed pedestrian streets, but also to minimize injury and fatalities when there are collisions. Ultimately, our efforts to curb global warming, reduce injury and death from automobility, and make the city more livable obliges us to slow down, so looking at speeds is a step forward.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University and the author of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco.

Trying to have hope

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OPINION I get it, as Harvey Milk famously said: “You gotta give them hope.” But how do you do that when the LGBT community you love so much is being priced and evicted out of the city?

When immigrants, people of color, artists, the poor and working-class, people with AIDS, seniors, persons with disabilities, and so many others are being pushed out — like you, Harvey, were forced out of your camera store and apartment on Castro Street when your rent was tripled. Just before an assassin’s bullet took you from us, you were preparing an anti-speculation tax to deal with the rising rents and displacement caused by speculators and real estate investors.

We tried to curb their dirty work via a state bill limiting use of the Ellis Act, but Democrats buckled in to pressure from the real estate industry that owns them. Shame on Democratic House Speaker Toni Atkins from San Diego, an out lesbian, whose inaction on the bill helped kill it.

Our only hope is the anti-speculation tax on the November ballot. Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance is calling it the Harvey Milk Anti-Speculation Tax.

The stakes are high right now. Our housing crisis is destroying our community. According to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, which tracks displacement throughout the city, District 8 (which includes the Castro) has the highest rate of Ellis Act and Owner Move-In evictions, almost 2,000 units emptied since 1997. That doesn’t include buyouts and threats of evictions, de facto evictions that have pushed out many more, most of them tenants with AIDS. Far too many people with AIDS are homeless in a city that used to be called the “model of caring.”

The motive for these evictions is obvious. A two-bedroom across the street from my Castro apartment rents for $4,200. An apartment above the new Whole Foods at Sanchez and Market can cost you as much as $8,000. A month! I don’t want to upset you, Harvey, so I won’t tell you how high commercial rents are, and how poorly neighborhood businesses are faring these days.

The economic disparity has never been greater. Two Williams Institute studies show that our community is as poor as, and in some instances poorer than, other communities. In our city’s latest homeless count, 29 percent of respondents identified as LGBT and an additional 3 percent as transgender. Other reports say that 40 percent of the city’s homeless youth are queer.

Forget Altoona, that homeless queer kid in the Haight or Castro needs a sense of hope. We have a sit/lie law similar to the one you opposed that prevents these kids from getting subsidized housing if they have an unpaid citation. They sleep in the park because they’re not safe in the shelters. Sadly, Human Rights Campaign and Equality California have never made them — or the poor — a priority.

Cranes and rainbow flags may be all the rage in Upper Market these days, but what’s being built will not be affordable to homeless, poor, or working class (even some middle-class) people. The Castro has only one affordable housing project in the pipeline: 110 units for LGBT seniors at 55 Laguna. Our D8 supervisor and City Hall have let us down big time.

Harvey, I want to think that 10 years from now, our community will still have the Castro as a refuge. I want to believe that poverty, homelessness, and hunger will be greatly reduced. That we can stop the evictions. That we can give young people a piece of the dream. That we can provide seniors a secure place to spend their final days. That we can have elected officials who truly represent us, as you did.

I really want to have hope.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a longtime queer and housing rights activist (and an organizer of the first Philadelphia Pride march in 1972), is a grand marshal of this year’s Pride Parade.

Supervisors consider affordable housing half-step

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While the Board of Supervisors today considers placing a measure on the fall ballot that would slow market rate housing projects when affordable housing development drops below 30 percent of total production, it is also slated to quietly approve another item showing San Franciscans actually need more than double that amount of housing.

The 30 percent ballot measure by Sup. Jane Kim is covered by the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, an article that includes Chicken Little quotes from developers and their biggest cheerleaders, who fear the sky will fall if the current flood of luxury housing development is slowed even a little bit.

But those fears are unlikely to materialize given that Kim seems to have steadily weakened her measure since its introduction last month, responding to allies who deceptively warn of a “housing civil war.” The measure doesn’t create the moratorium that many affordable housing advocates have called for, simply a bit more paperwork for developers, and even then it exempts projects with less than 25 units and those bigger developers who file applications by the end of this year.

That sort of tepid approach to building the housing that current San Franciscans actually need belies the official city policy of seeking to build more than 60 percent of new housing for those earning 120 percent of the area median income or below, as spelled out in the Housing Element of the city’s General Plan.

Ironically, the board is scheduled to re-adopt the 2009 version of that plan today. Its approval of that plan in June 2011 was challenged in court by neighborhood groups, and in December the court ruled that the city needed to shore up its analysis of alternatives to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. That work is now done, so the board today will repeal its 2011 action and re-approve the 2009 Housing Element.

The changes weren’t terribly significant — and besides, the city seems to essentially ignore its Housing Element anyway, even though cities and counties are required by state law to complete them and build their fair share of the affordable housing needed in their region. In rare cases, cities and counties can be fined by the state for not doing so, as was the case with Folsom many years ago when it built only market rate housing.

“Plan for the full range of housing needs in the City and County of San Francisco, especially affordable housing,” reads Policy 1.1 of the Housing Element.

Later in the plan, it spells out just how much housing that should be in San Francisco, based on the Regional Housing Needs Assessment done by the Association of Bay Area Governments: “A total of about 18,880 units, or 61 percent of the RHNA target, must be affordable to households making 120 percent of the area media income (AMI) of less.”

So the supervisors probably shouldn’t stretch too far in patting themselves on the back for a loophole-ridden half-step toward meeting its affordable housing obligations, although we’re happy to see at least some progress in the right direction. 

Extra! Extra! Sunshine advocates beat the Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall

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 By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so the  Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall, which for two years has been conducting a nasty vendetta against the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force,  capitulated quietly at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting without a fight or even a whimper.

The capitulation came in a two line phrase  buried in item 28 in the middle of the board’s agenda.  It was a report from the rules committee recommending  the Board of Supervisors approve a motion for  unnamed nominees to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. “Question:  Shall this Motion be approved.”

Board Chair David Chiu asked for approval in his usual board meeting monotone. And the approval came unanimously, with no dissent and no roll call vote and not a word spoken by anybody.  He banged the gavel and that was that. And only a few veteran board watchers knew that this was the astonishing  end to a crucial battle that pitted the powerfuf Anti-Sunshine Gangs against the sunshine forces and the citizens of San Francisco. It was a battle that would decide whether the task force would remain an independent people’s court that would hear and rule on public access complaints.  Sunshine won.

It was ironic and fitting that Chiu presided over the capitulation. For it was Chiu as board president who orchestrated  the deal to demolish Park Merced and then orchestrated the  infamous 6-5 board vote  in September 2010 approving  a monstrous redevelopment  project that would evict lots of tenants, and destroy most of the affordable housing. This was a big deal because the housing crisis was heating up and Park Merced was the largest affordable community in the city and one of the largest In the nation. This is where tens of thousands of young people, young married couples, students and faculty at nearby San Francisco State, older people, and middle class people had come for generations with their families to live in affordable housing in an  “urban park,” as Park Merced promo once put it.

And it was Chiu as board president who was charged by the Sunshine Task Force, along with Supervisors Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar with violating the Sunshine Ordinance and the state’s open meeting law (Brown Act) when they approved the project with blazing speed.. 

Wiener, Cohen, and Mar were on the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee when they voted on the contract. Literally minutes before the committee vote, Chiu introduced 14 pages of amendments to the contract. The deputy city attorney at the meeting blessed the amendments by saying, gosh, golly, gee, no problem, the amendments do  not substantially alter the contract and therefore the description of the item on the agenda was still apt and the committee could act on it. Bombs away! The full board approved the contract the same day by one vote.

This sleight of hand and pellmell approval process meant that Park Merced was going,going, gone and in its place would be a project that “has no hindsight, no insight, or foresight,” as Planning Commissioner Kathryn Moore was quoted as saying in a scathing Westside Observer column by landscape architect Glenn Rogers. “It is not a project of the 21st century.  It is the agenda of a self-serving developer.”

 The Observer, to its immense credit, was the only media in town to blast away at the project. (Read its coverage and weep, starting with a June piece by Pastor Lynn Gavin who wrote that the Park Merced owners did not disclose to her or her family that they “were going to demolish the garden apartment that was our home.”)  Gavin and her neighbors took the formal complaint to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and got a unanimous 8-0  ruling condemning Chiu, Wiener, Cohen, and Mar for open government violations.

It was a historic ruling by the task force and demonstrated once again in 96 point tempo bold the irreplaceable value of the people’s court.  The ruling also had impact because it amounted to a stinging  expose of how government often works in San Francisco with big money and big development and how one vote can add gallons of high octane petrol to the housing crisis. It angered the hell out of the six supervisors who voted for the project.

 And in effect, it gave rise to what I call the Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall whose response to the ruling was, not to apologize and change their illegal ways, but to start a vicious vendetta against the task force for doing the right thing at the right time.  The six votes were David Chiu, Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, Mark Farrell, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu. Elsbernd has gone on to Sen. Diane Feinstein’s office in San Francisco and Chu to becoming assessor. But the gang picked up other allies along the way, notably the city attorney’s office.

Two years ago, when the task force members came to the board for reappointment, the Anti-Sunshine Gang retaliated and swung into action by “launching a smear campaign aimed at purging the eight task force members who had unanimously voted to find the violations,” according to Richard Knee, a 12 year veteran of the task force, in a June column in the Observer.  Knee, who represents the local chapter of the Society of Professonal Journalists, also wrote that “the mayor and the Board of Supervisors…made sure that the panel gets minimal funding, staffing and resources, and the board has refused to fill two long standing vacancies, making It difficult at times to muster a quorum since task force members are volunteers with outside responsibilities such as family and work.

“Two year ago, the board’s failure to appoint a physically disabled member forced the task force to take a five month hiatus, exacerbating a backlog of complaints filed by members of the public.This year, Knee wrote,  the start of the appointment process was “farcical and ominous.”  He explained that, at the May 15 meeting of the board’s rules committee, which vets applicants for city bodies, the two supervisors present chair Norman Yee and Katy Tang (David Campos had an excused absence) “complained that there weren’t enough racial/ethnic diversity among the 13 candidates. “That didn’t deter them from recommending the reappointments of Todd David, Louise Fischer, and David Pilpel, all Anglos.”

Before the full board five days later, Yee complained again, “this time that lack of a regular schedule and frequent switching of meeting dates were making attendance difficult for task force members. Either Yee had no clue of the facts or he was lying.” Knee explained that the task force normally meets the first Wednesday of each month and its subcommittees usually meet during the third week of the month.

“Meeting postponements and cancellations are the result, not the cause, of difficulties in mustering a quorum, due to the vacancies—which now number three.

“In gushing over David, Fischer, and Pilpel, at the board’s May 20 meeting, Wiener offered no evidence or detail of their alleged accomplishments and ignored the fact that David has missed six task force meetings since March 2013, including those of last February and April. Until the board fills the other seats, the five remaining incumbents—Chris Hyland, Bruce Oka, David Sims, Allyson Washburn, and yours truly—stay on as ‘holdover’ members.”

Meanwhile, by the next session of the Rules Committee on June 5, the sunshine advocates had rallied and put together an impressive mass of sunshine power. Testifying at the hearing were representatives from SPJ and the journalism community, the League of Women Voters, the ACLU, the sunshine posse, the Library Users Association, the Bay Area News Group, the Inter-American Press Asociation, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the First Amendment Coalition, the  Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Observer and neighborhood activists, and other sunshine allies and FOI groupies. It was quite a show of force. 

SPJ placed a pointed, timely op ed in the Chronicle (“SF Supervisors block Sunshine Ordinance Task Force,” good of the Chron/Hearst to run it but better if the paper didn’t black out local sunshine issues.) Members of the posse peppered the gang with public record requests aimed at tracking skullduggery and they found it. Reps from the groups lobbied the supervisors by email, phone, and personal office visits. And the word that the Anti-Sunshine Gang was back and on the gallop shot through the neighborhoods and around town and into election campaigns and among constituents of the gang.

SPJ and its vigorous Freedom of Information Committee under co-chairs Journalist Thomas Peele, of Chauncey Bailey fame, and Attorney Geoff King  were particularly effective. Peele is an investigative reporter with the Bay Area Newspaper Group, a lecturer on public records at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and author of a respected book on Chauncey Bailey, a black journalist murdered on his way to work.

The word got around that the supervisors were blocking strong pro-sunshine candidates for the task force and that their first three nominees were the weakest of the lot. Campos, a stellar sunshine advocate, was back at the committee meeting, making the right calls and shepherding the strong nominees along through the committee and the Board of Supervisors.  Great job.

The cumulative weight and force  of the presentations of the nominees and the sunshine advocates made the proper political point:  any supervisor who voted with the Anti-Sunshine Gang was going to face their constituents and voters with the brand of being anti-sunshine and anti- government accountability.  More: they would have to answer some embarrassing questions: Who lost Park Merced? Who voted to turbo charge evictions and middle class flight from the city for years to come? Who tried to cover up the outrage and who did it? And who led the retaliatory vendetta against the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force for doing the right thing on behalf of sunshine in San Francisco?

And so the Board of Supervisors was dragged kicking and screaming into the sunshine of June 2014 and beyond. The supervisors ended up nominating what looks to be one of the strongest pro-sunshine task forces: Attorney  Mark Rumold and journalist Ali Winston from SPJ, Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters, Attorney Lee Hepner, Journalist Josh Wolf, and holdover Chris Hyland. Plus Bruce Oka who looks to be a late holdover in the disabled seat. Congratulations for hanging in and winning, hurray for the power of sunshine, on guard,  B3

P.S. l: PG&E institutionalizes City Hall secrecy and corruption:  The pernicious influence of the Anti-Sunshine gang hung heavy over the rules committee.  Tang tried to force every candidate to take a pledge of allegiance to the city attorney. Tang is the kind of neighborhood supervisor (Sunset) who has a 100 per cent Chamber of Commerce voting record. Her city attorney pledge demand was laughable on its face, given the fact that the city attorney refuses to move on the PG&E/Raker Act scandal and thus has helped institutionalize secrecy and corruption in City Hall on a multi-million dollar scale for decades. Which is reason enough for the city to always maintain a strong, enduring Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, to help keep tabs on how PG&E keeps City Hall safe for PG&E and its allies. (See Guardian stories and editorials since 1969.)  

Tang and Yee continued the gang’s hammering on Bruce Wolfe, a worthy candidate for the disabled seat whose main sin was that he was one of the Honorable Eight who voted condemnation.  The gang knocked out Wolfe as a holdover candidate the first time around and they were at it again at the committee meeting. Oka says he wants to resign from the task force but only when the board finds a good replacement. Wolfe, who was an effective and knowledgeable sunshine task force member, is the obvious replacement but he is still on the purge list.  Stay tuned on this one. . 

There are three things that no one can do to the entire satisfaction of anyone else: make love, poke the fire, and run a newspaper. William Allen White, 1917, line atop the editorial page of the Durango Herald, Durango, Colorado. 

Housing crisis requires creative thinking

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EDITORIAL Does the construction of brand new high-end towers represent the only possible opportunity for new affordable housing in San Francisco? To hear the arguments of those bemoaning the passage of Proposition B, the ballot measure overwhelmingly approved June 3 requiring voter approval for increased building heights along the waterfront, one would think so.

Shortly after Prop. B had been decided, the Washington Post ran a headline proclaiming: “Voters in one of America’s most expensive cities just came up with another way to block new housing.” The idea seems to be that by making it harder for developers to build waterfront towers incorporating a small percentage of affordable units, San Francisco has sealed itself off from any new affordable housing, forever.

To buy this argument, you must resign yourself to a world where the only conceivable pathway for housing average-income people is to hope high-end developers decide to incorporate them into massive complexes for the wealthy on a narrow strip of waterfront property. Which just isn’t a terribly creative solution.

Surely, alternatives exist. The city is brimming with clever people who are skilled at creative thinking and aren’t afraid to dream big. Why not apply some brainpower to the housing crisis? Here are a few ideas.

• Change city law to allow people to build their own backyard cottages to rent out at affordable prices. Here we must holler at the Public Press, which is hosting a conference Fri/13 called “Hack the Housing Crisis,” and recently calculated that San Francisco could theoretically add another residence to each of its 124,000 single-family lots if the city were to legalize backyard cottages. That would increase the total number of households by 33 percent; no luxury towers required.

• Make the most of public land holdings. A Budget and Legislative Analyst’s report dating back to March of 2012 determined that city agencies have in their possession at least 27 underutilized “surplus” properties. Under the Administrative Code, the top priority for such lands is affordable housing, yet they go unused. Why not prioritize the transfer of these parcels for 100 percent affordable projects?

• Figure out some alternative financing schemes. Recent changes to federal law sanction crowdfunding for real-estate projects, an option that didn’t previously exist. Say some affordable housing people got together, started an online fundraising campaign, bought vacant properties for conversion into affordable units, and secured public funding to make the whole thing pencil out. Real estate investors won’t give a project a green light unless they’re guaranteed a stupidly high return; maybe under this scenario, thousands of nontraditional investors who care about the city they live in could reap small bonuses for pitching in.

And by the way, developers are still free to propose highly affordable projects under Prop B. In fact, voters might be much happier to sign off on that idea than high-end luxury condo towers.

 

Ethics complaint says chair of DCCC deliberately tried to confuse voters

NOTE: This post has been updated from an earlier version.

Right down to the wire, a complaint filed with the San Francisco Ethics Commission today [Tue/3] – election day – alleges that Democratic County Central Committee elected chair Mary Jung authorized phone calls that were meant to deliberately confuse voters on Proposition B.

The ballot measure, which would require voter approval for waterfront height limit increases, is officially backed by a committee called “No Wall on the Waterfront, Yes on B.”

But according to the Ethics Commission complaint, opponents of Prop. B falsely portrayed No Wall on the Waterfront as being against Prop. B in a bid to confuse voters.

A transcript of the call included in the complaint notes that a live caller opened the communication by saying, “I’m calling about the No Wall on the Waterfront Campaign,” without saying they were calling in opposition to that campaign, and seemingly posing as being affiliated with it. Callers also made statements such as, “Prop B is about environmental loopholes, against affordable housing,” and “No on B endorsements — the Democratic Party, Alice Toklas democratic club, labor.”

“This act by Ms. Jung was a devious and deceptive plan to trick San Francisco voters,” complainant Geraldine Crowley, formerly a DCCC member herself, charged in the filing. “While I realize she employed as a highly paid lobbyist for the San Francisco Association of Realtors – who oppose Prop. B – it crosses the line for Ms. Jung to violate the ethical codes and San Francisco law in this manner.”

We reached Jung by leaving a message on her phone line, listed on the San Francisco Association of Realtors website, next to her job title: “Director of Government and Community Relations.” (Which is really a very convenient arrangement for the real-estate crowd, when you think about it. Who better to relate to the “community” and the “government” than the chair of one of the most politically influential organizations in town, which endorses candidates for elected office?)

When she called us back, Jung confirmed, “We were calling people to vote No on Prop. B.” But what about the allegation that those calls were intentionally deceptive, falsely painting No Wall on the Waterfront as being against Prop. B? “I have not seen the complaint,” Jung told us. She added, “I don’t have a copy of the script” used by callers when they contacted voters. To get a copy of the script, she said, we would have to call political consultant Eric Jaye, who is handling communications for the opposition to Prop. B. We tried calling Jaye but couldn’t reach him.

[UPDATE: Jaye just returned our call. He said Crowley’s complaint is “frivolous” because the callers said they were calling “about” the No Wall on the Waterfront Campaign. “This was what they named their campaign,” Jaye said repeatedly. “It’s not deceptive.” But we asked him multiple times if he would provide a copy of the full call script, and he refused to do so, without offering any reason why he couldn’t.]

What’s more, according to Crowley’s complaint, is that the paid phone calls to DCCC members appear to have originated with venture capitalist Ron Conway, who made a $25,000 donation to the DCCC on May 30. A few days later, Ethics Commission filings show, Jung authorized expenditures totaling $12,281.13 for “membership communication calls.”

Jung denied having had any conversation with Conway about it, and said “the Democratic Party has done a lot of fundraising in the past three months,” and that she could not link a specific donation with a specific DCCC expenditure. She then said she had to go.

Officially, “you can’t give to the party and officially say the donation is for some purpose, but anyone who’s worked in San Francisco politics knows … it’s designed to make something happen,” said Jon Golinger, who heads up the “No Wall on the Waterfront, Yes on B” committee.

He added, “They’re literally using our name to further an agenda that is the opposite” of what the Yes on B campaign has been organizing for.

Some members of the DCCC are reportedly seeking copies of that script, since there seems to have been little awareness of what was being told to voters in the Democratic committee’s name.

But the idea that Jung herself did not know what was being said in the calls, when she authorized the expenditure for membership calls and works in the same office as Prop. B opponents, raises questions about what sort of leadership she’s actually providing.

In the meantime, here’s the Ethics Commission complaint.

Ethics Complaint Against Mary Jung by Rebecca Bowe