Tax Breaks Archives — Page 2 of 10 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Michael Redmond

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January 14, 2014

When is a public opinion poll a valid representation of how people feel? That turns out to be a tricky and ever-evolving question, particularly in San Francisco — thanks to its prevalence of tenants and technology — and even more particularly when it concerns the approval rating of Mayor Ed Lee.

Traditionally, the central requirements for public opinion polls to be considered valid is that respondents need to be representative of the larger population and they need to be selected at random. Polls are often skewed when people need to opt-in, as is the case in most online polls.

So the Guardian took issue with claims that 73 percent of voters approve of the job that Mayor Lee is doing, a figure derived from an opt-in online poll focused on “Affordability and Tech” that was conducted by University of San Francisco Professors Corey Cook and David Latterman and released to the San Francisco Chronicle on Dec. 9. That figure quickly wallpapered the comment section of the Guardian’s website as the answer to any criticism of Mayor Lee, his policies, or the city’s eviction and gentrification crises.

“Any survey that relies on the ability and/or availability of respondents to access the Web and choose whether to participate is not representative and therefore not reliable,” is how The New York Times Style Guide explains that newspaper’s refusal to run such polls, a quote we used in our Jan. 10 Politics blog post on the subject, and we quoted an academic making a similar point.

We also interviewed and quoted Latterman discussing the challenges of doing accurate and economical polling in a city with so many renters (64 percent of city residents) and so few telephone landlines. “San Francisco is a more difficult model,” Latterman told us. “So Internet polling has to get better, because phone polling has gotten really expensive.”

So we ran our story dubbing the poll “bogus” — and the next day got angry messages from Cook and Latterman defending the poll and educating us on efforts within academia to craft opt-in online polls that are as credible as traditional telephone polls.

“The author is so quick to dismiss the findings of the study, which is based upon accepted methodology, and which had nothing to do with mayoral approval scores, that he actually misses the entire thrust of the study — that voters in San Francisco are deeply ambivalent about the current environment, concerned about the affordability crisis, and not trusting of local government to come up with a solution,” Cook wrote in a rebuttal we published Jan. 13 on the Politics blog.

Cook told us the survey’s methods are endorsed by the National Science Foundation and peer-reviewed academic papers, including a Harvard University study called “Does Survey Mode Still Matter?” that concludes “a carefully executed opt-in Internet panel produces estimates that are as accurate as a telephone survey.”

That study went to great lengths to create a sample group that was representative of the larger population, while Cook and Latterman both admit that their survey’s respondents had a disproportionate number of homeowners. But they say the results were then weighted to compensate for that and they stand by the accuracy of their work.

Yet Cook also notes that the mayoral approval rating number wasn’t even part of the package they developed from this survey, it was just a finding that they decided to give the Chronicle. “I don’t think the 73 percent means anything,” Cook told us, noting that snapshot in time doesn’t reflect Lee’s actual popularity going forward, despite how Lee supporters focused on it. “The number they use politically is not a meaningful number.”

What Cook found more significant is the “tepid support” for Lee indicated by the poll, including the 86 percent that expressed concern about affordability in the city, a concern that cuts across all demographic groups. Most respondents had little faith in City Hall to address the problem and many felt the tech industry should be doing more to help, particularly companies that have received tax breaks.

The Rise of Candidate X

Erica Hanna

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January 1, 2014

52

EDITOR’S NOTE:

As we move through tumultuous times in San Francisco and start a year with infinite political potential, we decided to stretch our imaginations a bit. While this is clearly a work of satire that appropriates some local media voices and perspectives, we hope that even its most fantastical moments will give this parable some resonance with our readers. Happy new year!

EDITORIAL The most exciting and promising political development we’ve seen in a long time in San Francisco is the sudden emergence of so-called Candidate X, who has quickly parlayed groundbreaking populist efforts to reform Muni and housing development into a full-blown campaign for mayor.

While the election is still 22 months away — an eternity in electoral politics — we’re going to go out on a limb here and offer the Candidate X campaign our early endorsement. Political movements like this one are once in a generation opportunities, and it will only be successful with strong, early support.

There’s just too much at stake for politics as usual, or to trust Mayor Ed Lee’s sudden recognition that his economic development policies and deference to market-rate housing developers were hurting San Francisco’s vitality and diversity and igniting a popular uprising, which Candidate X suddenly emerged to help lead.

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last month, 2014 began with an explosion of progressive activism that finally began to bridge the gap between longtime San Francisco communities and a group of fairly apolitical but Internet-savvy new arrivals, many of whom work in the technology industry, which had been increasingly vilified as elitist and out-of-touch with the city’s values and history.

A mysterious, masked figure calling himself or herself (nobody is quite sure) Candidate X used social media on New Year’s Day to announce bold plans to “disrupt the streets of San Francisco,” calling for vaguely defined meet-ups at a dozen key spots around the city on the morning of Jan. 3.

The multi-pronged response was overwhelming and surprisingly coordinated, perhaps an indicator of offline organizing that exceeded the viral online phenomenon. Google and other corporate buses were commandeered into free public service (with the collusion of many drivers and regular riders) while Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other online funding drives raised at least $10 million for Muni to expand its service, a potent mix of fiscal and people power. And that epic day ended with an unpermitted rally of at least 10,000 people in Civic Center Plaza.

A week later, Candidate X followed up with a similar effort to jumpstart affordable housing construction in the city, using a combination of carrot and stick (humanist appeals to project backers and direct action at construction sites) to persuade a half-dozen market rate developments to substantially increase their affordable housing mix. And the candidate helped organize a mass mobilization that brought thousands of tenants to City Hall — and generated 10 times as many emails and calls — to force the supervisors to support a measure raising the relocation fees on Ellis Act evictions so high that the speculators were almost instantly driven out of the city.

Candidate X is now talking about raising even more money for Muni by quadrupling the mitigation fees developers pay to construct new offices.

Those campaigns were coupled with hundreds of activists using hoes, picks, and shovels on public land that was part of the 8 Washington luxury condo proposal, removing the parking lots and grading the land by hand for a communal housing project they intend to build on the site.

The next week, with the Candidate X movement gaining momentum at astonishing speed, Candidate X announced his/her intention to run for mayor in the November 2015 election, starting now. The campaign has already announced a series of radical but smart positions, from banning cars on Market and other key streets to reclaiming Treasure Island and Hunters Point Shipyard from Lennar’s control, and promising many more to come.

In some ways, it seems like a marriage between the surging housing rights movement — which has been challenging evictions and gentrification and fighting for the soul of San Francisco — and the social media-driven Batkid outpouring back in November. But rather than an apolitical one-off, this feels like a broad movement focused on shaping San Francisco in the public interest over the long term.

The whirlwind of exciting political energy has left many speechless, and we can only say: Candidate X for mayor!

While the Candidate X phenomenon has certainly captivated San Franciscans and attracted national media attention, giving the city’s far-left progressives a glimmer of hope in capturing the Mayor’s Office next year, those close to Mayor Ed Lee say they aren’t worried.

“Everybody’s having fun with this now, but at the end of the day, voters are going to prefer a proven leader like Mayor Lee and his successful jobs agenda to some kind of strange masked comic book character,” a source in the Mayor’s Office told us. “Whatever this thing is, it’ll be a footnote in the mayor’s race.”

The source cited internal polling indicating the Mayor Lee’s approval rating holding steady at more than 70 percent and unaffected by the last three months’ worth of headline-grabbing antics by Candidate X and his or her campaign. The polls also found the public is turned off by the candidate’s mask and secret identity.

Candidate X has certainly proven adept at using social media and other technological tools to generate support, but Angel investor Ron Conway and his sf.citi collaboration of technology industry leaders have pledged to help make tech-driven outreach and voter identification a centerpiece of Lee’s reelection campaign.

“Entrepreneurs have made this city what it is, and we’re not going to let this Candidate X creature undermine our agenda for San Francisco,” Conway said. “Let them have their fun for now, we’re not worried.”

Sometimes, revealing the fakers in politics can be easy.

And so it goes with the so-called “Candidate X.” The self-stylized Progressive Hero is a multi-racial, gender ambiguous second coming of Christ for the city’s super-lefties. The narrative began with a PR move that undoubtedly had Willie Brown weeping into his Wilkes Bashford handkerchief.

Brown promised to fix Muni in 100 days, and Candidate X fixed it with one glorifyingly stupid stunt.

Masked and spandex clad, Candidate X straddled two Muni buses while doing the splits, Van Damme style, between them. X rode the buses spread eagle, laughing like a demented Santa Claus, as streams of San Franciscans ran behind them down Geary Boulevard. Using the ploy to call for Kickstarter of America’s Worst Transit System, millions of streaming video gawkers nationwide flocked to and knocked out the crowd funder’s website.

The silliness ended before you could say “back door!”

It was seemingly successful. Defying the history of failed fixes from every ex-San Francisco mayor since forever, X single-handedly raised enough money to “expand Muni for the next three decades,” progressives claimed.

Some played it as a progressive spurning of Mayor Ed Lee’s proven political tactic — ignore Muni’s issues and glorify the Google buses. Some portrayed it as a socialist takeover of an already red or dead leaning City by the Bay. Your humble narrator knew better.

X is a ludicrous candidate no sane citizen would back, and that stunt was clearly that — a stunt. But still the quixotic charade marched on.

Last week, X sat Mark Zuckerberg and a team of star studded tech oligarchy down with progressive activists. The previously evicted Lee family was there, arm-in-arm with former Mayor Art Agnos and a cadre of lefty power in San Francisco, or what’s left of them anyway. With Candidate X in the center of the two contentious camps, the tableau was vaguely reminiscent of the Last Supper, save for the presence of Mission District burritos.

San Francisco’s problems were tastily tackled one by one.

Housing problems? Hacked and solved. The homeless? Software solutions streamlined shelters in a day. Even hunger among the city’s poor was licked, as the techies and lefties together crafted solutions mind-melding the best ideals of both. All throughout, a time bomb ticked away like a demented clock ready to strike “I told you so!” at midnight.

It’s difficult to watch impending doom stare well-meaning people in the face. Literally staring, as the problem came the person posing for all the cameras: Candidate X.

Last week the candidate’s violent history was revealed, and although the SF Weekly doesn’t have a stock of X-ray glasses, your humble narrator still saw this coming a long way back. X is a fraud. A charlatan. A wannabe in progressive clothing. And now we all know why.

In police records obtained by the City Attorney’s Office, Candidate X was revealed to be one of the Occupy San Francisco and Oakland protesters, maybe even from the pernicious Black Bloc. Way back when, the Bay Area was captivated by martyred rallier Scott Olsen and others who were wronged by the not-so-mighty Oakland Police Department. OPD tear gassed and grenaded the Occupy pests. At the same time, a more intimate, frightening drama played out across the bay in San Francisco’s Embarcadero.

The SFPD was mostly kind to their own Occupy camp, but one boy in blue was not: Officer Alex Murphy. He paid dearly for it. One night, sleeping in his tent at the Occupy camp, Candidate X was roused by Murphy and ushered to leave. Does that translate into the officer deserving a beating within an inch of his life? It seems Candidate X thought so, although he also seems to have got as good as he gave, and ended up in the hospital.

The Black Bloc folks aggressive ways led the public to link Occupy with violence, from hippies to rage rousers. Black Bloc and Candidate X were kindred souls. Even his heart was black.

X yanked Murphy behind the fountain at Justin Herman Plaza, and punched him repeatedly, savagely, in the face, Murphy said in police reports, eventually pinning the officer to the ground before he got his.

Candidate X put up the usual defenses. “Murphy was near murderous with protesters all night, he’d gone vigilante,” Candidate X told scads of TV crews in Aaron Sorkin-esque walk and talks, last week. Protesters said he saved their lives, hailing his heroism. San Francisco shouldn’t buy the story. It’s malarkey, plain and simple.

But good reasons or no, is a violent wacko the kind of candidate you want leading the new progressive movement? Not surprisingly, it seems the new progressive era is like the old one. Big dreams, empty promises, and a lot of rhetoric that will soar nowhere.

And no one, especially not your humble narrator, was surprised.

The electoral landscape today is much different than it was only last week, when the revelation of Candidate X’s brawl with police had pulled the mayoral hopeful’s poll numbers into the ground.

Now a new viral video released by members of the San Francisco Occupy camp from 2011 confirms X’s side of the story: Officer Alex Murphy broke ranks with the generally peaceful SFPD. Police Chief Greg Suhr had a mostly “hands off” policy, allowing the Occupiers their right to free speech.

Murphy did not follow those directives, however, and the video shows the officer swinging his baton wildly, throwing punches, and injuring several protesters in the night, only to be fought off by Candidate X.

The story of X’s fight with an SFPD officer during the Occupy encampments had many saying the candidate’s campaign was over.

“That’s not someone I’d trust to be the leader of San Francisco,” said Mayor Ed Lee Press Secretary Christine Falvey.

The release of the video casted doubt on Murphy’s side of the story, and changed the electoral climate in the city going into next month’s election, when five seats on the Board of Supervisors are on the ballot.

Progressives in San Francisco scored big victories in last night’s election, winning seats on the Board of the Supervisors that a year ago seemed secure for the incumbents, thanks largely to a populist surge triggered by the mysterious Candidate X mayoral campaign.

Although neither Mayor Ed Lee nor Candidate X will appear on the ballot until next year, this year’s legislative races clearly got caught up in the enthusiasm of that race, with David Campos defeating David Chiu in their Assembly race and three members of the Board of Supervisors replaced by progressives.

Attorney David Waggoner took Sup. Scott Wiener’s District 8 seat and previous political unknowns Jennifer Wong and Betty Jones scored improbable victories in the Districts 2 and 10, defeating Mark Farrell and Malia Cohen.

District 6 incumbent Jane Kim appears to have narrowly won reelection after being strongly challenged by three candidates to her left, who criticized her ties to Mayor Lee and her sponsorship of the big tax break for Twitter and other mid-Market businesses almost four years ago. But Kim appeared to blunt that criticism by leading this year’s repeal on that and other business tax breaks and firmly aligning herself with Candidate X.

Kim’s vote in favor of raising fees on Ellis Act evictions and more than tripling the fees charged to office developers for Muni and affordable housing almost certainly saved her seat — and the refusal of Farrell and Cohn to support the tenant and economic fairness agenda were major factors in the campaigns that unseated them.

Candidate X defies easy categorization, and confusion surrounding this political dynamo’s gender identity is just the tip of the iceberg.

Since announcing her candidacy, she’s been the subject of rampant speculation among the city’s political insiders. Is she a native Spanish speaker, or did she grow up speaking Cantonese? Was she born and raised in San Francisco, or is she a transplant from the Midwest, or a foreign-born resident? Which supervisorial district does she live in? What is her annual income? Does Candidate X have any tattoos?

For all the questions this rollercoaster-like campaign has raised, Candidate X has left little doubt about his stance on certain issues. He frequently spouts a philosophy of “radical inclusion,” which he says could be put into practice in San Francisco city government by creating an online platform where all residents could log in and vote directly on discretionary funding allocation. He’s proposed eliminating the system of mayoral commission appointments altogether, instead allowing residents to digitally cast votes for commissioners. And he’s floated the idea of making every single public document tagged, searchable, and readily available, to anyone, the moment it’s created.

Candidate X’s unique method of campaign fundraising has spurred several economic studies. She’s created partnerships with a wide network of independently owned, San Francisco small businesses to allow customers to chip in a bit extra when they make a purchase, then used her considerable social media reach to encourage supporters to shop at those businesses. The approach has helped her tap a broad pool of donors, while sending new clientele through the doors of struggling proprietors in every corner of the city, many of whom have been losing ground in the face of rising rents and competition from national chain stores.

Candidate X has also organized campaign fundraising events with sliding scale admission fees. They are rumored to draw large, diverse crowds and occasionally last until sunrise, with attendees lingering for impassioned political discussion long after the performers have left. The events tend to start early in the evening with talks by local artists and authors, followed by aerial circus arts performances and live sets by Bay Area bands spanning a wide range of musical genres.

Candidate X has met with experts on climate change and used their input to produce a comprehensive plan for developing city-owned renewable energy infrastructure, which she says could be staffed with graduates of a job-training program created for at-risk youth. She’s also undertaken a project of identifying every abandoned property in the city that could be converted to residential use, as part of a plan to open up new transitional housing for homeless residents, to be staffed with a veritable army of substance abuse counselors and mental health professionals.

Earlier this month, when baristas organized a citywide protest against gentrification — by withholding coffee and shutting down Wi-Fi networks — Candidate X rode his bike from café to café to stand with the aproned employees while bleary-eyed patrons lined up outside the doors in confusion, clutching their laptops.

“Today, you are going to have to make your own coffee and work from home,” Candidate X told the bewildered patrons, after baristas shared personal stories of facing eviction or anxiety over losing rental housing.

“These baristas have taken a courageous stand for economic justice, to defend San Francisco against real estate speculators and developers who hold no regard for this city’s long tradition of inclusion and equality. They will not make your Ethiopian pour-over coffee with complex flavors of lilac and lavender while you connect to their free Wi-Fi — until you join in the fight against real-estate speculators whose actions have threatened this city as a haven for people of all incomes and identities.”

Since then, rumors have surfaced that someone in the tech community who heard the baristas’ stories that day has since started collaborating with the San Francisco Tenants Union, to create an app to help apartment-hunting tech workers boycott landlords who are known to carry out evictions and harassment — and to track evictions and alert house-hunters to join in refusing to bid on properties emptied by eviction.

So it seems that Candidate X has done the unthinkable, and gotten the younger voters of San Francisco to actually give a damn.

In his (her? their?) latest headline-grabbing move, Candidate X registered nearly 100 percent of voters age 18-30 in San Francisco just in time for the next election.

How’d X do it? The SF Examiner explains:

“In what could become a regular afternoon ritual, Candidate X stopped by college campuses, hip coffee shops, and Dolores Park this week with representatives of the tech industry and every San Francisco constituent group in tow.

The elderly, the homeless, new immigrants and others volunteered their time to convince every young voter, one by one, why it was worth their time to register to vote.

“I’ve never felt like I had a reason to give a damn, really,” said Martin Collins, 22. “Maybe it was X’s energy, which felt like (President) Obama’s campaign… or maybe it was because Macklemore was there. Either way, I’m voting next election.”

There you have it folks. X is so revolutionary. All you have to do is bring famous people to your voting drive, or you know, tout “hope and change.”

That always works. Last time Ed Lee ran for mayor, only around 30 percent of San Franciscans turned out to vote. Now Lee really has something to worry about.

Candidate X has been an enigma from the beginning, a vessel of progressive hopes for finally winning the Mayor’s Office. And at tonight’s triumphant election night party, we learned that we’re all Candidate X.

As exciting as the political victory was the hope that the masked Candidate X would reveal her or his identity after winning the race, which the current 15-point margin all but assures. That made for a big moment when Candidate X came onstage in Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to address the large crowd.

“This election was a fight for the soul of San Francisco and beyond. It was a referendum on the belief that we should leave this great city and others like it to the mercies of market forces, and the people have now said they want to be in control. Politicians often claim their victories are really victories for the people, but tonight, that’s finally true,” Candidate X said.

At that moment, dozens of nearly identical Candidate Xs — with the ubiquitous mask, cape, and costume, that image that has so captivated the country over these last 22 months — streamed out from backstage and filled the stage.

“1, 2, 3,” they all said in unison, all of them pulling off their masks at the same moment, revealing themselves to be a broad cross-section of city residents: young and old, men and women, attractive and plain, black and white and every shade in between.

“You see,” said the Candidate X who had originally come to the microphone, who appeared to be an Asian woman around 40 years old. “From the very beginning of this campaign, there’s never been a single Candidate X. We’ve all worn the mask at different times, we’ve all stood on the stump to proclaim the progressive values that this election was about, and we’ve all run this race.”

“Some of us have been doing this for a long time,” said a costume-clad Tom Ammiano, the longtime local legislator who last ran for mayor in 1999, “and we knew this moment needed to be about more than just one leader. So we created a vehicle that we could all ride into Room 200.”

Ammiano told the Guardian that he had been part of the large team that conceived of Candidate X during a series of secret meetings in late 2013. He said the campaign hopes and believes that its entire X Factor Leadership Team will be allowed to legally govern the city, but that just in case the Lee team challenges the unconventional arrangement in court, Ammiano last year legally changed his name to Candidate X and that he will serve as the figurehead for that governing structure if necessary.

“To turn this city around and restore it as an example for the world is a job for all of us, not any one person or faction,” said another Candidate X, who appeared to be African American woman in her early 20s. “We face challenges ranging from unaffordable rents here to global warming and loss of biodiversity everywhere. And it’s going to take all of us, working and standing together, to solve these problems and create a just and inclusive society, today and for future generations.”

“Todos somos Candidate X,” declared an elderly Latino Candidate X. “We are all Candidate X.”

*All new items written by Steven T. Jones, Rebecca Bowe, and Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

Year of Evictions

Erica Hanna

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December 31, 2013

30

This New Year’s Eve we take a look back at a hard year for many San Franciscans, what many in the future may call our Year of Evictions. After reading our retrospective, check out our interactive timeline below, where we chronicle flashpoints in the year of evictions and San Francisco’s tech culture war. Did we miss something? If you’d like to submit an event and date for the timeline, email joe@sfbg.com.

San Francisco’s political dynamics shifted significantly in 2013 as concerns about affordable housing, gentrification, and displacement shot to the top of city’s agenda, forcing elected officials to scramble for solutions.

The growing urgency of these issues can be tracked by the evolving statements and positions of Mayor Ed Lee over the course of the year, as well as the increasingly assertive actions of the progressive movement for housing justice, which caught fire and began to garner national headlines on a regular basis by the year’s end.

It’s true that affordable housing and cost-of-living issues were already a major concern a year ago, on the heels of voter approval of Proposition C and the creation of the city’s Affordable Housing Fund in November 2012. That compromise measure was created by Lee and his downtown allies, working with Sup. John Avalos and progressive groups.

But early in 2013, it became clear that the measure wasn’t enough to prevent rapid, escalating displacement of low and middle-income San Franciscans, and that the overheating real-estate market — driven by an influx of new employees at technology companies that Lee had courted and supported with big tax breaks — was rapidly changing the face of the city. Meanwhile, Lee’s administration also faced a Housing Authority imbroglio as a former director parted ways amid allegations of corruption, while the agency’s deep financial troubles left dilapidated public housing units in disrepair.

Lee and his allies at first tried to stay the course, giving only lip service to the affordability problem early on.

“Though some may wish otherwise, we cannot defy the law of supply of demand within our City limits,” Lee said during his state of the city address on January 28. The tone of his speech was triumphant as Lee emphasized the growth of the tech sector.

“We have given renewed confidence to leading high technology companies like Salesforce, Yelp, Zynga, Twitter, Square, Autodesk, Riverbed, Airbnb and so many more to stay and grow in our City,” Lee said during the speech. “We’re even attracting growing companies … to pull up stakes and move to the new gravitational center of Silicon Valley — San Francisco.”

But by the time November rolled around, even the New York Times was noting that “As the center of the technology industry has moved north from Silicon Valley to San Francisco …income disparities have widened sharply, housing prices have soared.” (“Backlash by the Bay,” NYT, 11/24/13).

It took almost an entire year, but the mayor’s ardent embrace of tech is starting to give way to the realization that a growing movement for equitable housing was steadily gaining ground and that it was something the city’s politicians would ignore at their peril.

Steering transportation funding

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December 17, 2013

20

STREET FIGHT The coming year will be a critical one for shaping transportation in San Francisco. Mayor Ed Lee’s Transportation Task Force, comprised of SPUR, city agencies, and labor and transportation organizations, is floating a package of proposals to finance transportation infrastructure that includes a general obligation bond, fees on cars, and a sales tax increase. Some permutation of the elements in the package will ultimately go in front of voters by November 2014.

It’s important to take a look at what’s being proposed and what’s at stake, right now, because whatever goes forward to the November ballot must be certified by June 2014. In the next six months, progressives have an opportunity to offer better ways to shape the city’s transportation future. Here are some things to consider.

First, whatever one thinks of this decidedly development-oriented mayor and his policies, the Transportation Task Force Report, issued to the public last month, makes a clear case for raising the $10 billion we need for transit, cycling, and pedestrian infrastructure. Proclaimed as the “first of many steps,” it can be considered a conversation starter that is open for modification and amendment.

The report points out the need to replace all of Muni’s 1,050 buses and trains by 2030 (costing $228 million in local matching funds) and implement the Transit Effectiveness Project ($282 million required), while also showing that Muni needs over $800 million in order to avert transit crowding as the city approaches a population of 1 million.

It considers the costs of implementing a citywide bicycle network ($108 million to get to 10 percent mode share for bicycling, or $215 million to approach 20 percent). It envisions making 70 miles of streets safer for pedestrians, and it shows what it will take to make Market Street a signature transit-bike street.

Mayor Lee’s plan includes a progressive funding proposal: A citywide vehicle license fee. The VLF, which needs majority approval by voters, would repair the past damage wrought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Republicans, who gutted state education, transportation, and social funding by slashing the fee in 2004.

State legislation last year enabled San Francisco to re-establish the fee for local transportation needs. Collecting 1.35 percent of the market value of registered vehicles in the city can raise $73 million annually for transportation programs. Since it’s based on the value of the vehicle, luxury car owners pay more. Progressives should rally around this proposal.

While the VLF is promising, the other two funding schemes proposed by the task force are dubious. Increasing citywide sales taxes by a half-cent, proposed for the November 2016 ballot, is regressive. Based on taxes as a share of household income, low-income households pay a disproportionately higher portion of their income in sales taxes relative to wealthier people.

Innocuous on the surface, the use of a sales tax to spread the burden reflects a neoliberal tactic to divert attention from more equitable taxation such as increasing annual assessments on commercial property owners who are reaping huge windfalls from the real estate boom. This takes us to the General Obligation Bond (GO Bond) proposal.

GO Bonds are a long-term debt financing tool whereby the city borrows to build transportation infrastructure and future property tax revenue repays the debt. Rather than raising property taxes, the scheme proposed by the task force ensures that tax rates remain below 2006 levels and the city would only issue new debt as other debt is retired.

Progressives should look carefully at this. While this scheme would effectively create a dedicated fund for Muni (a good thing), by locking-in this revenue source, there may be negative impacts on future social, education, or housing funding. And the GO Bond will only raise $55 million annually. (Raising property taxes, which no one is talking about as a mechanism to finance Muni, could yield much more.)

Bonding is also a boon to bankers, and ultimately uses already scarce transportation funds to pay interest on debt. Moreover, none of the proposals address Muni’s operating cost, which is $861 million today but must expand with additional capacity and operators.

Nobody knows better than downtown land owners that public transit is the keystone for making San Francisco functional and profitable. In the 2.5-square-mile downtown area, half of workers — 170,000 — take public transportation, more than those who drive alone. Every day, 200,000 riders use surface transit on Market and another 350,000 pass through the four downtown BART/Muni Metro stations.

Hundreds of thousands of workers use transit to access one of the densest concentrations of office, hotels, and retail space in the country. Transit is what makes this density work and what generates value and profit to real estate investors. It’s why Twitter and others choose to be downtown.

Almost 20 years ago, a coalition of progressives advocated for the creation of a downtown transit assessment district (TAD), an annual property assessment on downtown commercial property, excluding retail and hotels, that would provide revenue for Muni operations. Had it been established, it would have generated up to $54 million its first year. In today’s dollars, this would amount to over $85 million. Considering the new developments since the 1990s, by now TAD revenue could have likely approached $100 million annually. For comparison, the Task Force suggests a general obligation bond would raise $54 million, a sales tax increase $69 million, and a vehicle license fee $73 million annually (these can only be used for infrastructure and not operations).

But a transit assessment district has been all but erased from the menu of possibilities for funding Muni. For the past 20 years, neoliberal developers and real estate speculators have captured the discourse of how transit can be financed, and have instead offered lucrative tax breaks to new tech firms such as Twitter, raised Muni fares, and allowed destructive deferred maintenance of the fleet. In this latest round of funding proposals, the assessment district remains off the table, while a regressive sales tax and a paltry GO Bond are promoted.

Meanwhile, Sup. John Avalos and his progressive cohort (Sups. David Campos, Jane Kim, Eric Mar, and Norman Yee) have offered a “Transit Equity” amendment. But it only nibbles at the edges. Their proposal limits future Muni fare increases and future transit impact fees on low-income social service providers receiving public money. This is commendable and should be adopted by the board.

Yet while progressives are spot-on to emphasize equity, they’ve not offered a financing scheme such as a transit assessment on the tech boom. Avalos’s plan to direct $70 million of the city’s general fund to low-income transit riders looks good on paper, but as proposed it might actually siphon funds from one funding pot to another. Like the GO Bond, this may have implications for other important social programs progressives care about.

This will be a critical year for setting the trajectory of transportation finance for a generation. Progressives should direct the legislative analyst to analyze the nexus between downtown real estate value and Muni capacity in order to better inform the debates. We have six months to illuminate a more equitable path that asks more from the tech boom and real estate speculators.

PARKING METER CIRCUS

If the recent debacle over parking meters is any indication, progressives will start 2014 on a clunky, disjointed, and rudderless transportation platform.

In the case of parking meters, last month progressives joined the bandwagon of pandering to motorists and voted to block the expansion of parking meters, a proven source of revenue that could help avert future fare hikes or service cuts. It is also a key to managing the public right-of-way as Muni seeks to implement important improvements. What seems to be happening now is that the supervisors are taking transit riders for granted while pandering to a conservative ideology of unfettered free parking.

It’s no surprise that conservative-leaning supervisors such as Mark Farrell oppose the expansion of parking meters. Conservative ideology holds that the government accommodates unfettered, cheap automobility at all costs, and Farrell said bluntly that he does not like paying for parking.

The impacts on Muni, on pedestrians, on bicyclists, and on the planetary environment are secondary to free parking. But progressives are becoming increasingly disoriented on this issue. While they decry parking meters, they haven’t offered a way to better manage streets so that we can improve Muni, bicycling, and walking.

Maybe it’s time to champion a citywide, omnibus residential parking permit strategy in all neighborhoods (as Sup. Kim hinted). Or are supervisors willing to champion the better alternative: just take away parking without a management strategy? Perhaps even better, can they champion the removal of travel lanes now open to private cars and keep the unmetered curbside parking? These options won’t bring in revenue (except maybe more tickets) but would certainly make space for a reliable Muni and a citywide cycletrack network, both progressive goals.

Speaking of parking, there’s rumors that the two-acre Plumber’s Union Hall on Market Street might be developed. Hey Building and Trades Unions, how about a car-free, family-oriented affordable housing development smack dab in the middle of the city so some of your members don’t have to commute from Tracy?

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, an urban geography professor at San Francisco State University.

Tech leaders must engage their critics

Michael Redmond

-

December 10, 2013

33

EDITORIAL It’s time for San Franciscans to have a public conversation about who we are, what we value, and where we’re headed. In the increasingly charged and polarized political climate surrounding economic displacement, the rising populist furor needs to be honestly and seriously addressed by this city’s major stakeholders.

Whether or not the technology industry that is overheating the city’s economy is to blame for the current eviction crisis and hyper-gentrification, it’s undeniable that industry and it’s leaders need to help solve this problem. They are rolling in money in right now, including tens of millions of dollars in city tax breaks, and they need to offer more than token gestures to help offset their impacts.

As we were finalizing stories for this issue on Dec. 9, the Guardian newsroom was roiled by our rollercoaster coverage of a protest blockade against a Google bus, which has become a symbol for the insulated and out-of-touch nouveau-riche techies in the emerging narrative of two San Franciscos.

Our video of an apparent Google-buser shouting at protesters “if you can’t afford it, it’s time for you to leave” went viral and burned up the Internet (and our servers) even as we discovered and reported that he was actually a protester doing some impromptu street theater.

But there was a reason why his comments resonated, and it’s the same reason why The New York Times and other major media outlets have been doing a series of stories on San Francisco and the problems we’re having balancing economic development with economic security, diversity, infrastructure needs, and other urban imperatives.

Rents have increased more than 20 percent this year, the glut of new housing coming online now is mostly unaffordable to current residents, even that new construction has done little to slow real estate speculators from cannibalizing rent-controlled apartments, and the only end in sight to this trend is a bursting of the dot-com bubble, which would cause its own hardships.

We need this city’s political leaders to convene a summit meeting on this problem, and Mayor Ed Lee and his neoliberal allies need to bring tech leaders to the table and impress upon them that they must engage with their critics in a meaningful way and be prepared to share some of their wealth with San Franciscans. Not only is the future of the city at stake, so is its present, because the housing justice movement won’t be ignored any longer. The good news is that San Francisco has a golden opportunity to test whether democracy can help solve the worst aspects of modern capitalism, offering an example to others if we succeed. But if our political leaders don’t create good faith avenues for meaningful reforms, San Francisco may offer a far messier and more contentious lesson.

Mantra from the Milk/Moscone memorial march: “Fight back!”

Michael Redmond

-

December 3, 2013

10

Hundreds of activists and progressive San Franciscans marked the 35th anniversary of the Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk assassinations on Wednesday night in the Castro with fiery speeches urging the crowd to “fight back!” against displacement and gentrification, conjuring the words and spirit of those slain leftist leaders.

“Gotta have hope just to stay alive,” the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang of Milk and his message on the 35th anniversary of that chorus’ first performance, on the steps of City Hall on the day of the tragedy, belting out the refrain, “Gotta give ’em hope.”

Despite the onslaught of evictions triggered by real estate speculators and the city’s current economic development policies, such as the tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks extended to Twitter alone, the defiant message from this podium did have an undercurrent of hope.

But that hope was predicated on people’s willingness to organize and engage in “a fight they started,” Tom Temprano, president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, said of Milk and Moscone, “a fight against gentrification and displacement.”

Yet Temprano also said that people have to feel stable and secure to really have hope: “You can’t have hope without a roof over your head. You can’t have hope without affordable housing. And that’s why we’re marching today.”

Temprano then played an old news clip of Milk talking about his own eviction from the camera store and apartment where he lived on Castro Street, the result of similar economic forces that are overtaking the city today.

Milk explained how San Francisco’s economy relies on local residents being able to earn a living wage and not pay too much of their incomes in rents. But when landlords gouge their tenants, they have less to spend in local businesses, “and sooner or later, that’s going to crunch the economy locally.”

One of the more fiery speeches of the evening came from Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance, who used one of Milk’s signature lines when he said, “I’m Brian Basinger and I’m here to recruit you. I’m here to recruit you into a movement for housing justice that goes back decades.”

He cited the recent successes of that movement, from suing to stop CitiApartments from abusing and exploiting its tenants to stopping the 8 Washington luxury condo project when the voters overwhelmingly defeated Props. B&C this month.

“Housing rights are human rights,” Basinger said.

Housing activist Tony Robles, a board member of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, recalled being a student at Mission High School when the news of the assassinations was announced, an event that profoundly affected him. He said they represented “the spirit of community and the spirit of fighting for what is right.”

Robles called out Sup. Scott Wiener, a Milk successor representing the Castro, calling Wiener unworthy of that legacy, citing his legislation allowing more apartments to be converted to condos and with closing the parks at night. “You were no Harvey Milk when you made that move, brother,” Robles said, closing with this hope: “Let the poetry of Harvey Milk’s struggle live on in the streets of San Francisco.”

Wiener and other politicians, including Mayor Ed Lee, Sen. Mark Leno, Board President David Chiu, and state Democratic Party head John Burton, spoke earlier in the day at a City Hall memorial. But they pointedly weren’t invited to the more raucous evening event (although Sup. David Campos, whose Assembly race against Chiu the Milk Club has endorsed, did show up to offer his silent support).

“Fuck you, we are staying!” was the message Shannell Williams, a San Francisco native and a rising young activist who came from the Save City College movement, had for the city’s landlords and those who say low and middle income earners should just move to Oakland.

She and others recalled the message of love and inclusion that were hallmarks of Milk and Moscone’s political philosophy, as well as their belief in building coalitions to defeat powerful economic interests.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the SF Housing Rights Committee cited recent successes the movement has had in fighting back against evictions and said, “It’s because of the power we have as tenants when we unite and we fight back.”

He said that was Milk’s central message: “If we unite and fight, we can win.” And Mecca said San Francisco “doesn’t belong to greedy landlords, it belongs to all of us.”

Cleve Jones, an longtime LGBT activist who was an intern for Milk at the time of the assassinations, noted, “There are some who will question our desire to raise political points tonight,” recognizing this occasion has usually been a solemn memorial march.

But he said that using this occasion as a vehicle for political organizing is the best way to honor the legacy of Milk and Moscone, who Jones said would be appalled by what’s happening in this city. Jones told the story of an aging gay activist who was recently depressed about being displaced from the city, and Jones tried to comfort him by saying, “It’s hard to get old in this town and see all the changes.”

It didn’t help: Days later, Jones said his friend committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.

“It’s not rhetoric and it’s not hyperbole. This destroys lives,” Jones said. It was a message repeated on a large banner carried by those leading the march to City Hall, which read, “Eviction=Death.”

The rally was closed out by members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who cited a long list of “weird, kooky artistic innovators” from San Francisco’s past, and said, “They never could have afforded to live here today.”

Then the Sisters offered an invocation they called the “Rosary of Housing Evils,” asking the crowd to repeat the mantra “Save us from the speculators” between each of their prayers and observations for the city, which included:

“Harvey Milk was evicted from his home.”

“Extend rent control to all residential and commercial units.”

“Forty percent of queer seniors cannot afford their rents.”

“Rent has risen 21 percent this year.”

“We all need to stay together or they’ll pick us off one by one.”

Mantra from the Milk/Moscone memorial march: “Fight back!”

Sasha Cuttler

-

November 29, 2013

146

Mantra from the Milk/Moscone memorial march: “Fight back!”

Hundreds of activists and progressive San Franciscans marked the 35^th anniversary of the Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk assassinations on Wednesday night in the Castro with fiery speeches urging the crowd to “fight back!” against displacement and gentrification, conjuring the words and spirit of those slain leftist leaders.

“Gotta have hope just to stay alive,” the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang of Milk and his message on the 35^th anniversary of that chorus’ first performance, on the steps of City Hall on the day of the tragedy, belting out the refrain, “Gotta give ‘em hope.”

Despite the onslaught of evictions triggered by real estate speculators and the city’s current economic development policies, such as the tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks extended to Twitter alone, the defiant message from this podium did have an undercurrent of hope.

But that hope was predicated on people’s willingness to organize and engage in “a fight they started,” Tom Temprano, president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, said of Milk and Moscone, “a fight against gentrification and displacement.”

Yet Temprano also said that people have to feel stable and secure to really have hope: “You can’t have hope without a roof over your head. You can’t have hope without affordable housing. And that’s why we’re marching today.”

Temprano then played an old news clip of Milk talking about his own eviction from the camera store and apartment where he lived on Castro Street, the result of similar economic forces that are overtaking the city today.

Milk explained how San Francisco’s economy relies on local residents being able to earn a living wage and not pay too much of their incomes in rents. But when landlords gouge their tenants, they have less to spend in local businesses, “and sooner or later, that’s going to crunch the economy locally.”

One of the more fiery speeches of the evening came from Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance, who used one of Milk’s signature lines when he said, “I’m Brian Basinger and I’m here to recruit you. I’m here to recruit you into a movement for housing justice that goes back decades.”

He cited the recent successes of that movement, from suing to stop CitiApartments from abusing and exploiting its tenants to stopping the 8 Washington luxury condo project when the voters overwhelmingly defeated Props. B&C this month.

“Housing rights are human rights,” Basinger said.

Housing activist Tony Robles, a board member of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, recalled being a student at Mission High School when the news of the assassinations was announced, an event that profoundly affected him. He said they represented “the spirit of community and the spirit of fighting for what is right.”

Robles called out Sup. Scott Wiener, a Milk successor representing the Castro, calling Wiener unworthy of that legacy, citing Wiener’s legislation allowing more apartments to be converted to condos and with closing the parks at night. “You were no Harvey Milk when you made that move, brother,” Robles said, closing with this hope: “Let the poetry of Harvey Milk’s struggle live on in the streets of San Francisco.”

Wiener and other politicians, including Mayor Ed Lee, Sen. Mark Leno, Board President David Chiu, and state Democratic Party head John Burton, spoke earlier in the day at a City Hall memorial. But they pointedly weren’t invited to the more raucous evening event (although Sup. David Campos, whose Assembly race against Chiu the Milk Club has endorsed, did show up to offer his silent support).

“Fuck you, we are staying!” was the message Shannell Williams, a San Francisco native and a rising young activist who came from the Save City College movement, had for city’s landlords and those who say low and middle income earners should just move to Oakland.

She and others recalled the message of love and inclusion that were hallmarks of Milk and Moscone’s political philosophy, as well as their belief in building coalitions to defeat powerful economic interests.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the SF Housing Rights Committee cited recent successes the movement has had in fighting back against evictions and said, “It’s because of the power we have as tenants when we unite and we fight back.”

He said that was Milk’s central message: “If we unite and fight, we can win.” And Mecca said San Francisco “doesn’t belong to greedy landlords, it belongs to all of us.”

Cleve Jones, an longtime LGBT activist who was an intern for Milk at the time of the assassinations, noted that, “There are some who will question our desire to raise political points tonight,” recognizing this occasion has usually been a solemn memorial march.

But he said that using this occasion as a vehicle for political organizing is the best way to honor the legacy of Milk and Moscone, who Jones said would be appalled by what’s happening in this city. Jones told the story of an aging gay activist who was recently depressed about being displaced from the city, and Jones tried to comfort him by saying, “It’s hard to get old in this town and see all the changes.”

It didn’t help: Days later, Jones said his friend committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.

“It’s not rhetoric and it’s not hyperbole. This destroys lives,” Jones said. It was a message repeated on a large banner carried by those leading the march to City Hall, which read, “Eviction=Death.”

The rally was closed out by members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who cited a long list of “weird, kooky artistic innovators” from San Francisco’s past, and said that, “They never could have afforded to live here today.”

Then the Sisters offered an invocation they called the “Rosary of Housing Evils,” asking the crowd to repeat the mantra “Save us from the speculators” between each of their prayers and observations for the city, which included:

“Harvey Milk was evicted from his home.”

“Extend rent control to all residential and commercial units.”

“Forty percent of queer seniors cannot afford their rents.”

“Rent has risen 21 percent this year.”

“We all need to stay together or they’ll pick us off one by one.”

Dick Meister: The jobless need help. Now!!

-

November 25, 2013

58

Dick Meister: The jobless need help. Now!!

By Dick Meister

Guardian columnist Dick Meister, former labor editor of the San Francisco
Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than
a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes several hundred of his
columns.
It’s time for Congress to help the many jobless Americans an estimated
450,000 in the next three months alone who are about to be denied
federally- funded Unemployment Insurance benefits.

What Congress must do and must do quickly is once again expand the
emergency program that was established during the Great Recession in 2008 to
provide benefits averaging $300 a week to the steadily growing number of
jobless. Congress has until only January 1 to block the first cutbacks of
extra benefit weeks that could continue until at least 2015 unless Congress
Acts.

President Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing measures that would
lengthen the benefit payout period through 2014 at a cost of about $25
billion on top of the $225 billion spent so far on the program. But given
the congressional haggling over economic measures, the chance of agreement
before Congress adjourns December 31 is slight.

Meanwhile , the number of Americans unable to find jobs they need for
survival remains in the millions. Already, there are four million who have
been seeking jobs for more than six months and many others who have stopped
looking.

Particularly hard hit are aging as well as younger workers, and women and
minorities. Their number and need for unemployment benefits is certain
to grow, most likely at a rapid pace.

All this is happening, of course, at the same time that banks, corporate
interests and other wealthy Republican friends continue raking in huge
profits. Money gained from relaxing the tax breaks given such political
friends, for instance, could very well go into funding further Unemployment
Insurance payments and other steps to help U.S. workers.

Ironically, cutting the federal benefit program could actually lead to more
unemployment. That’s because workers denied benefits naturally have less to
spend and that could in turn cause those who rely on the laid-off workers’
business to cut back operations.

The need for extending the federal benefit program should be obvious to
anyone outside the powerful circle of GOP & friends. Listen to what Gene
Sperling, Obama’s chief economic adviser, told the New York Times’ Annie
Lowrey:

“There has not been a time where the unemployment rate has been this high
where you have not extended it. Why would you not expand now, when you’re
dealing with the nearly unprecedented levels of long-tern unemployment
coming off such a historic recession? “

Why not, indeed?

Guardian columnist Dick Meister, former labor editor of the San Francisco
Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than
a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes several hundred of his
columns.

Protesters to gather outside Twitter on IPO day

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

November 4, 2013

63

Those who stand to become instant millionaires from Twitter’s initial public offering might as well be worlds apart from a coalition of senior advocates, students, tenant organizers and union members planning to rally outside the tech company’s San Francisco headquarters on the day of the IPO.

Beginning at 6:30am on Nov. 7, when company shares will officially be open for trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the group will hold a press conference and rally to “call attention to corporate tax breaks and the tech company’s role in the San Francisco eviction crisis,” according to a media advisory.

At noon, the activists will stage a rally outside 1355 Market Street, where the company has its offices in a landmark Art Deco building.

The rally is being sponsored by a host of community-based organizations including Manilatown Heritage Foundation, Jobs With Justice, POOR Magazine, SEIU United Service Workers West and others.

“As Twitter readies to profit millions from its IPO and continues to benefit from tax breaks, people left behind – dealing with widespread evictions, cuts to vital services, diminished public transportation resources and underfunded schools and colleges will join together to ask Twitter: what is your public offering to the people of San Francsico?” The event announcement notes.

Among investors, Twitter’s highly anticipated IPO is a source of intrigue and speculation, with demand on the rise and the high end of its price range increased in response to a high level of interest.

Twitter’s presence in mid-Market has encouraged real estate developers to descend on the neighborhood surrounding the company headquarters, to entice tech company workers with nearby housing. According to a recent article in the New York Times, Miami developer Crescent Heights is building the area’s largest new residential high-rise right across the street:

“After Twitter announced it was moving to the area, the developer scrapped its original plans and tailored the apartments for the tech workers who would be employed nearby. Residents of NEMA, short for New Market, as the development is called, will have amenities like a saltwater pool, landscaped terraces, valet parking and dog-walking services.”

#ThrownOutbyTwitter – November 7 Day of Action | San Francisco Rising http://t.co/CccW8RLlCl

— sussie lozada (@rebirthlovely) November 4, 2013

Yet the company’s presence has intensified a debate about the tech industry’s role in an ongoing housing affordability crisis that is rapidly changing the cultural feel of San Francisco. As the Guardian has recently reported, evictions in the mid-Market area coupled with higher-than-anticipated revenue losses from the city’s mid-market payroll tax break have led many to question whether the company’s presence has brought the benefit that was promised or just resulted in harm by driving displacement.

With a hint of irony, activists titled the media advisory about the Nov. 7 rally #ThrownOutByTwitter.

Join the movement

Sasha Cuttler

-

October 29, 2013

201

EDITORIAL San Francisco is headed for a showdown. Those who see the city as primarily a place to make money and who want to leave its fate to the mercy of market forces are being confronted by a growing and increasingly well-organized movement demanding aggressive action on the related issues of evictions and gentrification.

The former group, led by Mayor Ed Lee and a handful of his wealthy benefactors and supportive media voices, has so far been content to just plow forward with what they euphemistically call their “jobs agenda” while throwing some token bones to average income San Franciscans.

But there are signs that the pendulum is swinging against the economic elites, who could pay a heavy political price for being so heedless of populist concerns, just as they did at the height of the last dot-com boom in 2000, when progressives won a majority on the Board of Supervisors and held it for almost a decade.

Even pro-growth cheerleaders like SPUR are now decrying the “hyper gentrification” of San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a front page article Oct. 27 questioning whether the city was receiving enough benefits for the $56 million tax break it gave to Twitter a couple years ago — tax breaks the newspaper wholeheartedly supported at the time. The San Francisco Business Times has finally joined the Bay Guardian in calling for Airbnb to stop stiffing the city and pay its transient occupancy taxes, in an Oct. 11 editorial calling the company’s intransigence “difficult to defend.”

Those chinks in the armor of establishment San Francisco are a recognition of how bad things have gotten and how tone-deaf the tech industry and its political supporters have been in responding to it. And that recognition was forced by the rising tide of populist outrage at what’s happening to the city of St. Francis.

As we report in this issue (see “Tenant proposals and Guardian forum address eviction crisis”), tenant advocates have proposed an ambitious but reasonable legislative package to address evictions, and we enthusiastically support it.

San Francisco is facing a moment of crisis, as this eviction epidemic compounds the last one to alter the future of this city in unacceptable ways, and our politicians will need to decide which side of history they want to be on. That moment of truth is coming faster than they may appreciate.

Mayor Lee needs to decide whether he’s still the same person who started his career defending tenants in the International Hotel. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi may soon be faced with the difficult choice of whether to refuse to carry out a legal but unjust eviction, as his predecessor Richard Hongisto did with the I Hotel.

San Francisco is at its best when it acts boldly in defense of progressive values, as it has done on immigration, medical marijuana, and marriage equality. So now is the time to aggressively defend this city’s tenants and low-income residents from real estate speculators, greedy landlords, and predatory corporate interests.

Were Twitter’s SF tax breaks worth it?

Sasha Cuttler

-

October 29, 2013

54

Twitter’s San Francisco tax breaks are back in the spotlight again as the tech-darling’s IPO is ready for its first public offering. In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, tech columnist James Temple asked the questions we wish the Chronicle would’ve asked more effectively two years ago: “On the whole, who’s getting the better end of the deal? Twitter and its employees, or San Francisco and its residents?”

He notes that San Franciscans are getting priced out as the tech boom raises the rents in the city ever higher, bringing new anti-eviction movements to the fore (Elderly activists and SF natives march to preserve Mission culture at Our Mission: No Eviction, Oct.), an issue we’ve covered many a time. But when looking at Mayor Ed Lee’s tax subsidies to Twitter, you have to understand two sets of context: The dubious successes of tax breaks nationwide, and job growth in California as a whole.

The New York Times investigated the success and failure of tax breaks on a nationwide scale. From its December 2012 article: “A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains.”

But although localities often tout job growth as their reason for doling out generous tax exemptions, like Mayor Lee has, many of the benefits are not tracked. From the New York Times:

“A full accounting, The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid.

“Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors.”

And of course, that was the fear. Twitter supposedly had one foot in Brisbane, just south of San Francisco, when Lee was negotiating for Twitter to remain in the city. It’s a scenario the Times said has played out all over the nation, but San Francisco comes in first.

The Times created a database of 150,000 tax awards, and in California the top of the list, with the biggest subsidy, is none other than Twitter. But according to the Chronicle, that initial estimate of $22 million in breaks may actually be closer to $56 million when you count the legislation ending tax breaks on stock options — money that San Francisco is missing out on.

A New York Times database explores tax subsidies in the United States. The recorded revenue localities and states have gotten back for their trouble is not exactly a ringing endorsement for tax breaks.

And much like the scenarios seen in the NY Times article, the San Francisco Public Press reported that even with 14 city agencies working on employment initiatives, the city isn’t tracking its own job growth (an issue that Guardian News Editor Rebecca Bowe reports on in this week’s Guardian as well). From the Public Press:

“Without a common citywide strategy, no one has been able to measure accurately how many or what kinds of jobs are being filled, or how much is spent to prepare unemployed San Franciscans for new careers.”

And any job numbers that the mayor did cite haven’t been clearly separated from state job growth numbers, making claims that job growth is attributable to tech questionable at least.

Again, from the Public Press:

“In a flood of speeches and press releases, Lee has boasted that the city added 31,000 jobs since he became mayor in 2011. The claim is based on data showing a similar employment recovery across the state. Yet the mayor’s office was unable to point to more specific information about how many of those jobs originated through city-sponsored programs.”

Give Temple’s piece on the Twitter tax break a read, but check out the Public Press and New York Times articles first for the full context on the only question that matters: “Was it worth it?”

Meister: The Legislature shows Congress how

-

October 27, 2013

3

Guardian columnist Dick Meister has covered labor and political affairs for more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which contains several hundred of his columns.

Forget for a moment what’s happened or not happened - in Congress. Concentrate instead on what’s meanwhile gone on in the State Legislature, much of it for the benefit of California’s working people.

The State AFL-CIO cites, for instance, the Legislature’s passage this year of more than a dozen decidedly worker-friendly bills sponsored by the labor
federation and strongly backed by the federation’s Democratic Party allies in Sacramento.

The most important of the bills will raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10 an hour by January of 2016. Other key laws:

*Require overtime pay for domestic workers, who are currently excluded from
most labor laws.

*Will make it easier for immigrant workers to get drivers’ licenses and
protect them from retaliation when they speak out about poor pay and working
conditions.

*Should make it easier for workers with criminal records who are denied jobs
despite their rehabilitation.

*Give corporate tax breaks to employers who create jobs.

*Increase the legal protections for the state’s notably exploited farm
workers and car wash employees.

*Strengthen current laws that require builders holding state contracts to
pay their crews the prevailing wage for construction work in their areas.

*Encourage Employers and workers “to identify and minimize the risk of
workplace violence.”

*Expand the law granting paid family sick leaves to workers caring for ill
parents and children to also include work time lost while caring for sick
parents-in-law, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren.

*Ease the unjust impact of current immigration law enforcement on workers
and families by limiting the state’s cooperation with the federal “Secure
Communities” program.

Art Pulaski, the State AFL-CIO’s chief officer, rightly claims that with
passage of the laws, California undoubtedly has become “the national leader
in sporting workers and their families.”

What’s more, says Pulaski, passage of the laws marked a crucial start of
“the essential work of rebuilding the state’s middle class.”

If only we could expect even a fraction of such important work from our
squabbling federal legislators.

Guardian columnist Dick Meister has covered labor and political affairs for
more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator.
Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which contains several
hundred of his columns.

City Hall must address rising rents

Michael Redmond

-

September 24, 2013

73

EDITORIAL Another flurry of public concern over rising rents in San Francisco — driven by one-bedroom apartments listed for almost $4,000, a well-attended forum on gentrification in the Mission, fresh residential and commercial evictions, and a poll showing 63 percent think the city is building too much luxury housing — has been ignited. And once again, it’s falling on deaf ears at City Hall.

Working class residents, small businesses, and nonprofits are being driven out of San Francisco, unable to keep up in a city that increasingly caters to chain stores, wealthy residents, and tourists (both vacationers and conventioneers).

When Mayor Ed Lee and kindred politicians, who have fueled the rising rents with tax breaks and pro-landlord policies, are asked about the problem, they mouth stale rhetoric about job creation, change the subject (gee, we now have bike share!), or cite far-off and insufficient solutions like the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

San Francisco’s landlords are doing great — despite the sob stories published recently by tone-deaf local media outlets such as San Francisco Magazine — and they’ve actually been emboldened to start attacking rent control as somehow hurting renters, threatening the last lifeline of diversity in the city.

The whole debate has gotten so surreal that it would be funny if it weren’t so serious. The future of San Francisco is at stake, yet nobody at City Hall with any clout seems to be taking it seriously. So here are a few places where our policymakers could start:

– End corporate welfare. Twitter is valued at $1 billion as it prepares its initial public stock offering, so it doesn’t need a $22 million multi-year tax break from city taxpayers. In 2012, city tax breaks nearly quadrupled, reaching $14.2 million (and that’s not even counting the $2 million annually that Airbnb is simply refusing to pay). Enough! We need that money more than Wall Street does.

– Hold developers accountable. Lennar Urban has been sitting on public land in southeast San Francisco for a decade while housing officials just let it slide. Lennar should front-load affordable housing or lose its land. Threaten a citywide moratorium on all market-rate housing permits until more low-income units come online and watch what happens. And protect existing rent control apartments from illegal subletting.

– Stand with people, not capital. Put the clout of San Francisco behind Richmond’s threat to buy underwater mortgages, using eminent domain if necessary, as Sup. David Campos proposed. Mayor Lee’s Housing Authority “reforms” should cater to residents rather than developers. Push for state-level reforms like pro-tenant changes to the Ellis Act, a Prop. 13 split role, and the right to control commercial rents and vacancies.

It’s time to change the conversation.

Corporate welfare booming

Michael Redmond

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September 17, 2013

10

rebecca@sfbg.com

Business tax breaks instituted by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and other corporate-friendly local politicians to stimulate growth in tech, biotech, and cleantech, diverted roughly $14.2 million from city coffers in 2012, records show. That’s a staggering increase from 2011, when the city’s corporate welfare programs amounted to roughly $4.2 million.

The beneficiaries, mostly representing sectors that are enjoying supercharged growth buoyed by venture capital at a time when much of the economy is still foundering in the wake of the Great Recession, qualified for the tax breaks in exchange for doing business in San Francisco or setting up shop in the Central Market/Tenderloin area.

When the latest spate of business tax cuts was launched in early 2011 to keep Twitter here and stimulate economic growth around its headquarters on mid-Market Street, critics took aim at Lee for sapping city resources with needless corporate giveaways. A 2012 New York Times analysis showed that the $22 million Twitter is expected to save over the six-year tax break makes it the largest incentive granted to a company in California, based on data going at least as far back as 2002.

The various payroll-tax exclusions — they’re available for green technology and biotech firms, as well as companies operating in designated “enterprise” zones — waive a 1.5 percent tax on employee compensation expenses. Collectively, the forgone revenues from 2012 reflect taxes not collected on more than $680 million in employee compensation.

With more businesses than ever lining up to take advantage of the handouts, and two additional tax-breaks enacted since 2011, the amount given away has surged. The Treasurer & Tax Collector’s Office submitted the final figures in annual reports to the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 13.

The giveaways included $3.3 million for two companies claiming exclusions for stock-based compensation. In 2011, only Zynga qualified for this stock-based exclusion program, saving $1.5 million in taxes. In 2012, a second company qualified for this break, more than doubling the amount given away as the value of Zynga’s tax break soared.

A Central Market / Tenderloin payroll tax exclusion program waived payroll taxes for 14 businesses operating last year in that neighborhood — a long-impoverished area where tech and venture capital firms have been snapping up commercial office space. While the Central Market tax exclusion resulted in corporate giveaways totaling just $34,000 in 2011, the incentive resulted in about $1.9 million in forgone revenues in 2012.

Meanwhile, about $5.4 million stemmed from programs that didn’t specifically benefit tech firms or mid-Market transplants. There was a payroll-tax exemption crafted to aid small business, and a surplus business tax credit, which distributed $500 to each of the 6,781 businesses that paid the payroll tax.

Speaking onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference on Sept. 9, Mayor Lee touted the tech sector’s soaring job growth, using an info-graphic to spotlight the city’s 1,892 tech companies and 45,493 jobs that were recently added.

The eye-popping statistics prompted conference host Michael Arrington to query Lee on what is being done for San Franciscans who are finding it increasingly unaffordable to remain in the city. The mayor, who was sitting beside billionaire tech investor Ron Conway, acknowledged that Arrington had “a good point,” and referenced an affordable housing trust fund approved by voters last year.

But at the end of the day, despite the growing imbalance, the current economic climate appears to be the exact effect Lee’s administration had hoped for when it created these corporate welfare programs.

Ilan Moscowitz contributed to this report.

Challenge Mayor Lee and his lies

Michael Redmond

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September 17, 2013

67

EDITORIAL In the long history of San Francisco political corruption caused by Pacific Gas & Electric’s willingness to do and spend whatever it takes to hold onto the energy monopoly that it illegally obtained generations ago, in violation of the federal Raker Act, there have been countless ugly and shameful episodes, many of them chronicled in the pages of the Bay Guardian.

Mayor Ed Lee’s misleading Sept. 10 testimony to the Board of Supervisors, where he deliberately distorted CleanPowerSF and defended the dubious actions of his appointees to kill the program, ranks right up there with some of the worst episodes (see “Power struggle,” page 12). If there were any doubts about Lee’s lack of political integrity and independence, about his unwillingness stand up to his corporate benefactors on the behalf of the people he was elected to serve, this appalling performance should settle them.

It was bad enough when PG&E used money from San Francisco ratepayers to bury public power advocates under an avalanche of lies, fear-mongering, and the testimony of paid political allies every election when its monopoly was being challenged, making it virtually impossible to have an honest conversation about the city’s energy and environmental needs.

But now that advocates for consumer choice and renewable energy have spent more than a decade developing a program that doesn’t require a popular vote, is competitive with PG&E’s rates, would create city-owned green energy projects serving residents for generations to come, and which was approved by a veto-proof majority on the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Lee has stooped to new lows in a desperate and transparent ploy to stop it.

Once again, as he did during his rash decision to remove Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office before even investigating his most serious official misconduct allegations, Mayor Lee has blithely created what Sen. Mark Leno calls a “Charter crisis.” Then, it was over the question of when one elected official should remove another; now, it is whether a trio of mayoral appointees can usurp the authority of the elected Board of Supervisors, the top policymaking body under the City Charter.

Relying on tortured logic and Clinton-esque legalese backflips doesn’t justify the SFPUC commissioners refusal to do their jobs — and it would be deemed official misconduct by a less corrupt mayor. But this mayor sees his job as simply carrying water for the people who put him there, whether that be Willie Brown and his longtime client PG&E, or venture capital Ron Conway and the companies that Lee is heaping with unprecedented tax breaks (see “Corporate welfare boom,” page 14). Please, isn’t there someone out there willing to challenge this corruption and run for mayor? This city, and the future generations living in the warming world we’re creating, deserve better.

Corporate welfare boom: SF’s business tax breaks jump to $14.2 million annually

Erica Hanna

-

September 16, 2013

116

Corporate welfare boom: SF’s business tax breaks jump to $14.2 million annually

Business tax breaks instituted by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and other corporate-friendly local politicians to stimulate growth in tech, biotech, and cleantech, diverted roughly $14.2 million from city coffers in 2012, records show. That’s a staggering increase from 2011, when the city’s corporate welfare programs amounted to roughly $4.2 million.

The beneficiaries, mostly representing sectors that are enjoying supercharged growth buoyed by venture capital at a time when much of the economy is still floundering in the wake of the Great Recession, qualified for the tax breaks in exchange for doing business in San Francisco or setting up shop in the Central Market/Tenderloin area.

When the latest spate of business tax cuts were launched in early 2011 to keep Twitter in San Francisco and stimulate economic growth around its headquarters on mid-Market Street, critics took aim at Lee for sapping city resources with needless corporate giveaways. A 2012 New York Times analysis showed that the $22 million Twitter is expected to save over the six-year tax break makes it the largest incentive granted to a company in California, based on data going at least as far back as 2002.

The various payroll-tax exclusions — they’re available for green technology and biotech firms, as well as companies operating in designated “enterprise” zones — waive a 1.5 percent tax on employee compensation expenses. Collectively, the forgone revenues from 2012 reflect taxes not collected on more than $680 million in employee compensation.

Since 2011 the amount given away has swelled as even more businesses lined up to take advantage of the handouts, and two additional tax breaks were made. The Treasurer & Tax Collector’s Office submitted the final figures in annual reports to the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 13.

Ed Lee creates jobs in San Francisco. Endorse him for Mayor at http://t.co/7LZZNTGY

— Ron Conway (@RonConway) October 24, 2011

Some of the tech companies receiving tax breaks are investments of venture capitalist Ron Conway, a behind-the-scenes power player with Ed Lee’s ear. Read more of our coverage on Conway here.

The giveaways included $3.3 million for two companies claiming exclusions for stock-based compensation. In 2011, only Zynga qualified for this stock-based exclusion program, saving them $1.5 million in taxes. In 2012, a second company qualified for this break, more than doubling the amount given away as the value of Zynga’s tax break soared.

A Central Market / Tenderloin payroll tax exclusion program waived payroll taxes for 14 businesses operating last year in that neighborhood — a long-impoverished area where tech and venture capital firms have been snapping up commercial office space. While the Central Market tax exclusion resulted in corporate giveaways totaling just $34,000 in 2011, the incentive resulted in about $1.9 million in forgone revenues in 2012.

Meanwhile, about $5.4 million stemmed from programs that didn’t specifically benefit tech firms or mid-Market transplants. There was a payroll-tax exemption crafted to aid small business, and a surplus business tax credit, which distributed $500 to each of the 6,781 businesses that paid the payroll tax.

Speaking onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference on Sept. 9, Mayor Lee touted the tech sector’s soaring job growth, using an info-graphic to spotlight the city’s 1,892 tech companies and 45,493 jobs that were recently added.

The eye-popping statistics prompted conference host Michael Arrington to query Lee on what is being done for San Franciscans who are finding it increasingly unaffordable to remain in the city. The mayor, who was sitting beside billionaire tech investor Ron Conway, acknowledged that Arrington had “a good point,” and referenced an affordable housing trust fund approved by voters last year.

But at the end of the day, despite the growing imbalance, the current economic climate appears to be the exact effect Lee’s administration had hoped for when it created these corporate welfare programs.

Ilan Moscowitz contributed to this report.

This report has been corrected from an earlier version.

Stand up for the little guy

Michael Redmond

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August 6, 2013

15

OPINION Last week, my partner and I journeyed early one morning to Sacramento to sign documents at the Secretary of State. We did this to take the very personal step of opening my campaign for State Assembly to fill Tom Ammiano’s seat after he is termed out in 2014.

The next day, as I rode a Muni bus with a large group of youth from 24th and Mission down to City Hall to make my candidacy official, I realized why it’s so personal. These children fought in the battle to get free Muni after their school buses were cut. For them, politics isn’t about an “issue” or a “campaign.” It’s about getting to school.

It’s a good lesson to remember. Politics isn’t really that complicated. It boils down to a simple, clear dictum: stand up for the men, women and children who need help the most. Stand up for the “little guy.”

For me, that starts with quality public schools — the key to opportunity for California youth. I know, because I immigrated to California as a 14 year-old who didn’t speak English, graduated from public high school and earned scholarships to Stanford University and Harvard Law.

In San Francisco, I’ve fought to prevent teacher layoffs, helped win a $30 million Promise Neighborhoods grant for district schools, and battled to secure that free Muni pass for low-income kids. In Sacramento, I will scrape together every penny we can for public schools — to restore the cuts students and teachers have endured, and to prevent tuition hikes that put public universities out of reach and students deep into debt.

Another priority will be fiscal and economic equity. I stood with neighbors to prevent foreclosures. Fought wage theft. And opposed the controversial Twitter Tax Break as economic favoritism for a billionaires’ industry. Instead, I pushed for equal tax breaks for the small businesses that also create jobs. I will approach the California budget the same way — making sure our fiscal policies help the taco stand owner, not just the big enchiladas.

Health care has been and will remain one of my biggest concerns. Here, I helped negotiate the CPMC agreement that kept St Luke’s open, treated nurses fairly, and won real community benefits. I worked with Planned Parenthood to protect women from being harassed at an abortion clinic. And, I stood up against restaurant owners who were pocketing customer health care surcharges instead of providing employee health care.

Now some of these same business owners are using ObamaCare as an excuse to abandon their employees once again. I am opposing their efforts. In Sacramento, implementing the Affordable Care Act in a way that realizes its full potential and minimizes its failings will be one of my top priorities.

As we in the LGBT community enjoy the victory of same-sex marriage, I’m also thinking about the need for strong LGBT representation in Sacramento as the right wing fights back. This district elected Carole Migden, Mark Leno, and Tom Ammiano, and I would be proud to continue the LGBT tradition started in 1996. I would also be proud to be the first Latino ever elected to the State Assembly from San Francisco.

But I would be proudest of all to keep standing up for the little guy.

In tech-dominated Mid-Market, arts center beats the odds

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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July 9, 2013

5

In tech-dominated Mid-Market, arts center beats the odds

Is there a place for community theaters and nonprofit arts and education programs in pricey San Francisco? The 950 Center for Art and Education, a project that will be housed on the corner of Market and Turk streets in San Francisco, has gained a foothold against the odds.

Two years in the making, the center will provide permanently affordable performance facilities for the Lorraine Hansberry and Magic theaters, and create affordable space for art education organizations including Youth Speaks, the American Conservatory Theater and All Stars Project. Other groups, such as Lines Ballet, the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club and others previously unsure whether they could continue to rent in the Tenderloin/SoMa area will get the chance to expand their performance and programming capabilities at the center.

Because the neighborhood is in such high demand in the wake of recent tax breaks and incentives designed to bring tech businesses to SF, it took the Tenderloin Economic Development Project, a part of the North of Market Neighborhood Improvement Corporation, at least two years to secure the property for the arts and education complex. Until very recently, the project’s fate was hanging in the balance, with many groups uncertain whether they would be able to remain in the city.

Three-quarters of the project space that TEDP had long set its sites on is located at 970 Market, and was initially owned by Lone Star, a Texas-based hedge fund. The remaining project space, at 950 Market, was under the ownership of the Thatcher family, known for philanthropy.

Initially, TEDP “had a deal with the hedge fund,” says TEDP director Elvin Padilla, but after property values rose, “they basically walked away from the negotiating table. The crisis moment was, who’s going to control the land – and will they collaborate with us?”

Padilla credits Gladys Thatcher, founder of the San Francisco Education Fund, as “the reason we decided to make the attempt [to acquire these spaces for the 950 Center] in the first place.”

When TEDP first pitched the idea to her several years ago, “she gave us her blessing we decided to make a go of it,” he explained.

Thatcher is trustee and former board member of the San Francisco Foundation, which worked alongside TEDP and the Rainin Foundation to secure the lion’s share of the land needed for the 950 Center, by facilitating a purchase of the 970 Market Parcel from Lone Star.

On June 7, the property was transferred from Lone Star to Group I, a San Francisco-based real estate development firm that Thatcher is friendly with. Now that the sale has gone through, the space will be devoted to the arts and education programming that TEDP had long envisioned. The San Francisco Foundation plans to facilitate development of the center through the creation of a new sponsoring organization that will be housed at Community Initiatives, a nonprofit.

While he is grateful for the community support, Padilla likened their quest to gain 970 Market to a climb up Mt. Everest.

A 2011 payroll tax exclusion zone introduced by Mayor Ed Lee vastly increased the property value in the mid-Market area. Although Lee had a soft spot for the 950 Arts and Education Center and even organized events to support bringing that use to mid-Market, his new policy left the project facing an uncertain future in a suddenly pricey strip along Market Street. “He doesn’t have any real authority over private sector transactions,” Padilla says, so all the Mayor could do was stipulate the city’s interest in using this land for “arts and education.”

The city doesn’t offer public funding for projects like 950 Center for Arts and Education. To “subsidize on the front end,” as Padilla puts it, the center will have to rely on the backing of individual investors, philanthropic groups and new market tax credits to reduce and eliminate the debt entirely, so the organizations that will be housed at the center don’t have to carry a mortgage.

In the end, it was only through the efforts of wealthy and connected individuals that plans for the center were nailed down rather than extinguished. “Mid-Market is going through a very rapid transformation,” says Dr. Sandra R. Hernández, Chief Executive Officer of the San Francisco Foundation. “We’re just lucky that Group I, the developer, shares this vision with us for an arts center.”

Looking back on the years of effort it took to piece the plan together, Padilla noted, “When we started this, it was before the tech boom. Now, the pressure on the real estate is many times what it was when we conceptualized the 950 project.”

That uncertainty finally came to an end for Padilla’s organization when Group I closed the deal with Lone Star on June 7. “That really [did] start the project officially,” Hernández says. “We’re now working with a number of the organizations that have expressed interest in having permanent space or accessible space for their programming or rehearsals for their theater production.”

Crapitalism

-

June 16, 2013

35

Happy Father’s Day! Be good to your dad (assuming he’s alive/you know who he is) and enjoy your kids (assuming you have any/know who they are).

A remarkable story crossed my monitor this week. From back in the sacred Motherland of Massachusetts. Apparently, a pair of tandem parking spaces were auctioned off behind a toney Commonwealth Ave (Boston) condo for a whopping 560K–they’re shown in the photo. That’s over a half a million dollars in prime real estate yer gazing at.

Bid up from a sort of reasonable 42K and sold to a party that allegedly owns three spaces there already, this is the kind of story that makes one’s eyes glaze over in amazement. As primo as the location is, that tiny and stained bit of asphalt you’re looking at is not worth that price under any circumstances.

As that part of Boston is tightly zoned, it isn’t like it was bought to expand a brownstone. Nope, this is conspicuous consumption run completely amok or as a friend of mine back there put it, ”this could only have happened to people for whom money has no meaning”. (I suspect that the purchase was made as a “business expense” for a corporation, more to be revealed).

For 560 grand, you can still buy a modest home in Boston’s most desirable suburbs (all of which have better public schools than Boston and are cleaner and not plagued with unbearable traffic). And the property is but ten minutes on foot from downtown and the business district, cabs and car services are plentiful, therefore, why bother? As a possible long term investment? (Not a great idea as you will see).

This neighborhood, the Back Bay, was the first place I had my own digs. Adjusted for inflation, that apartment should go for about 420.00. It is now a million dollar and up condo and what was it? One gigantic room, likely the dining room of a three story home back in the 1800’s. And I still have friends in that neighborhood. Tellingly, all of them have been there at least 25 years and they could never afford it now.

By pricing all but the top of the top out of what once was an artist friendly neighborhood, the same neighborhood has the ripple effect of driving real estate values in adjacent neighborhoods past reason. Boston and San Francisco–joined at the hip by being the satellite cities to America’s twin powerhouses–are now unaffordable.

A piece in the same paper that ran this story last year said it all. People aged 35-54 –which used to be an enormous demographic in Boston–no longer live there in large numbers. After university they just up and go because first jobs don’t pay enough to raise the scratch for a down payment. When a slab of concrete not even big enough to be a bedroom in a rooming house goes for 560K, it says that “what the market will bear” is not applicable.

This isn’t “free market capitalism”, it’s “crapitalism”. The laws of supply and demand have been so perverted by so few having so much, they almost don’t apply anymore. And my beautiful hometown–once a funky seaport with the best local music scene outside CB’s/Max’s–is now an overly exclusive playpen for folks that have brought back the Brahmin Age, only on ‘roids. Same as in SF—two small peninsulas whose essential character is being clobbered by venal plutocrats. Crapitalism couldn’t exist without tacit aid from the government–in SF, it’s in the form of tax breaks, in Boston, tax free academia is swallowing their city whole, reducing the amount of living units and artificially raising land value. That isn’t “supply and demand”.

The utlimate irony of this ridiculous transaction is that the Back Bay, like the Marina, is atop a landfill. The Charles River already overflows its banks and floods the basements of these expensive edifices more than it used to–so the parking spaces in question may be useless a fair amount of the time (of course, crapitalism being what it is, MA taxpayers will surely be stuck for the bill of seawalls and the like).

Bailouts, cronyism, loopholes–instead of an economic boom, we have Marie Antoinette style madness in our major cities. Pretty pitiful.

The Chron’s token conservative on tech hegemony

Zelda Bronstein

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June 6, 2013

9

The Chron’s token conservative on tech hegemony

It’s always fun when things are so screwy in town that the leading conservative writer at the Chron starts to agree (even just a little) with the crazy commie at this blog.

Debra Saunders is unhappy with the way the Apple store is moving into Union Square. Not because she hates Apple; she’s a Republican who loves all business. Not because she wants to save the fountain or thinks the urban design is ugly; she’s all for new development.

The problem she has is the same problem so many of us have with Sean Parker’s wedding: The technoriche don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else:

But I think some locals object to the plan because Apple gets kid-glove treatment. Small business owners have to jump through many hoops to accommodate the Special City’s sensibilities – or else. There’s an ordinance, for example, that prohibits chain stores in certain neighborhoods. Yet when the high-tech money knocks, the door is wide open.

Yep. Small businesses don’t get special tax breaks out of the Mayor’s Office. Local merchants don’t get these kinds of special exemptions when they want to open or build something. (Try to open a nightclub in this town.)

When hi-tech money knocks, the door is wide open. And even the conservatives are getting sick of it.

Banned by Facebook

Andrew Lam

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June 4, 2013

10

steve@sfbg.com

Facebook and other popular gathering places on the Internet are fast becoming the equivalent of a public commons, where many of our essential personal, professional, and governmental interactions take place, and a portal through which we access a large and growing variety of goods and services.

Yet I have no right to access or remain in this corporate-controlled space, from which I can be ejected at any moment for any reason, with no meaningful ability to appeal that decision, plead my case, or even learn about what prompted my corporate masters to cast me into exile.

That’s what I learned last week when Facebook mistakenly removed a page that I created two years ago to promote my book, The Tribes of Burning Man — ostensibly for “bullying” — and then temporarily suspended my personal posting privileges. My inquiries to find out what happened were ignored until I threatened to turn up the journalistic heat, and even then I couldn’t get any explanation beyond Facebook’s admission that “The removal was a mistake.”

Not that I expected any real substance or accountability. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from covering the technology industry over the last few years — from challenging the tax breaks designed to keep Twitter in town two years ago to my recent revelations that Airbnb is refusing to pay the Transient Occupancy Tax it owes the city — it’s that these companies address issues of public access, rights, and equity on their terms or not at all.

That’s even the case in the emerging realm of wiring cities with fiber to offer high-speed Internet access to all citizens, where Google is moving quickly to short-circuit municipal broadband efforts like the plan San Francisco is now considering. GoogleFiber is making Kansas City and other cash-strapped jurisdictions offers they can’t refuse, while simultaneously undermining the long-established principle of requiring telecommunications companies that use public rights-of-way to offer universal access.

“Telecommunications remains a utility,” says Matt Wood, policy director for Free Press, which works on net neutrality and municipal broadband issues .

I heard Wood speak in a May 24 conference call that The Media Consortium organized for journalists. He was joined by a Kansas City official and Institute for Local Self-Reliance member. Google refused to provide a representative.

Wood emphasized “the need for a public oversight role and commitment to universal access” by Google and other companies that contract with cities to lay fiber, similar to how phone companies were required to serve every household, and he told us that “no rules will apply if certain companies get their way.”

But even though the federal government created the Internet and still has clear legal authority to regulate telecommunications access and fairness — and even though Facebook’s billion-plus users give it unrivaled market share and power — Wood (a Harvard Law School graduate) doesn’t think private citizens have any rights in that realm or expectations of accountability.

In other words, in the virtual world it created — regardless of how extensively and aggressively it partners with other companies to make Facebook membership a prerequisite to accessing goods and services offered by hundreds of companies — Facebook is in charge, period.

SEEKING ANSWERS

I’ve read stories about Facebook users futility fighting decisions to ban posts that should enjoy free speech protections — from breastfeeding photos and diagrams of female reproductive systems to radical political speech — while allowing content that is racist or misogynist, and their difficulties in getting the company to explain its decisions.

But I began to experience the problem first-hand on May 28 when I was notified by Facebook that my page had been removed for violating it terms of service, specifically the ban on bullying, and that I could appeal by pressing the “appeal” button, which I did.

Immediately, I scanned The Tribes of Burning Man page, which had been largely dormant in recent months, and I could find nothing that might even remotely be considered bullying. The next morning, I was informed by Facebook that my appeal had been denied, my page was permanently removed, and my posting privileges were suspended for the day will I reviewed Facebook’s terms of services.

There was no way of knowing what the offending post might be or what prompted my ban, and I fruitlessly searched for a way to speak with someone by phone, eventually settling for sending electronic messages to Facebook as both a user and a journalist working on story.

No reply came, so I made plans with a videographer to go to Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters the next morning to try first-hand to reach a human being. But I decided to delay my trek by a day when I woke up that morning to discover that not only had by posting privileges returned — but my “permanently banned” page was back.

Yet I still didn’t know why. Had I been sabotaged for critical coverage of the tech community? Did my blog post, Twitter tweets, and other journalistic pressure force a change in heart? Was it just a random glitch? Facebook wasn’t saying.

TECH-LOVING POLITICIANS

San Francisco’s tech-loving mayors have only emboldened these corporations’ most imperious tendencies. Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom was an early adopter of Twitter, using it to promote his official pronouncements, which I was able to follow until early 2009 when he blocked me for asking an impertinent question.

His successor, Ed Lee, has been an even biggest tech cheerleader and enabler, repealing the law that Newsom signed to subject corporate stock options to the city’s payroll tax and giving technology companies a pass on paying other taxes as well.

For months now, I’ve been trying to get answers from Airbnb officials about why the corporation is refusing to collect and pay the city’s 14 percent Transient Occupancy Tax on the room rentals that it administers, shirking an annual tax debt to the city of more than $1.8 million.

My media brethren have been slow to pick up on this important and fairly outrageous act of corporate stonewalling — which has been abetted by Mayor Lee, who shares a financial benefactor with the company: venture capitalist Ron Conway.

KQED’s Forum host Michael Krasny did ask Lee to respond to my stories and the company’s dodging of its tax debt during the May 28 program, and Lee replied, “They’re not so much dodging it, they’re making arguments, like any business would, about what applies to them and what doesn’t.”

Actually, that simply isn’t true. The company and its allies did make those arguments last year as part of public hearings and processes held by the Tax Collector’s Office to determine if the tax applies, and our elected Treasurer/Tax Collector Jose Cisneros determined that the company does, indeed, owe it.

Airbnb and its allies could have gone to the Board of Supervisors to make arguments for changing the law, but didn’t. It could have sued the city to challenge its ruling, making arguments in court, but didn’t. It could have even launched a public campaign, perhaps even sponsoring a candidate to challenge Cisneros and make its arguments publicly, but it didn’t do that either.

Instead, the company just ignored its tax debt and hoped that nobody would notice. And when I noticed and started writing about the issue, the company refused to return my calls or make any reasonable public arguments for its behavior.

Large, wealthy corporations already enjoy huge advantages over the rest of us when they do decide to make arguments and engage in public discussions about the implications of their actions on the public commons. We need them for jobs and for access to vital public services, and they have the money and media access to make sustained arguments and implied threats that can prove very compelling.

But when they choose to refuse to have that discussion, and when they stonewall legitimate questions involving public interest, then they undermine the concept of democracy. And it’s just fucking irritating.

FACEBOOK RESPONDS

Facebook restored my service, but I still wanted to find out what happened and was having no luck. Finally, in the early afternoon, I sent another message to press@fb.com to reiterate my questions, and this time I let them know of my plan to show up on their corporate doorstep the next morning.

Within minutes, I finally got a response from Facebook’s Frederic Wolens: “Thanks for reaching out, and I apologize for the delay. We made a mistake removing content, and have restored it,” continuing for another paragraph of boilerplate corporatese.

I responded that I appreciate the response and apology, but that I was still trying to find out what happened and get answers to the questions that I sent him. I asked if we could please speak by phone and listed some of my unanswered questions, such as what triggered the removal, why my appeal was denied, and how my page suddenly came back.

He ignored my request to talk, and offered me links and answers that still didn’t address my questions, such as “we use a combination of automated and manual review systems and a mistake was made in the review of your Page causing it to be deleted, but it has now been restored. Unfortunately, we can not go into more detail.”

Finally, I just asked to talk to a live person, him or someone else, either by phone or I could come on down to Facebook HQ.

“Unfortunately, despite the size of our user base, we are a small company and won’t be able to provide a spokesperson at this time,” he responded.

“Apologies that we could not be of more help for the moment.”

A small company. With a market capitalization of $57.66 billion. Seems the folks that run it could afford to answer media questions — if they wanted to.

Lee budget avoids cuts, but some say too few benefit from the boom

Sasha Cuttler

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May 31, 2013

13

Mayor Ed Lee today released his proposed 2013-15 city budget in the Board of Supervisors Chambers at City Hall, a $7.9 billion spending plan that he said reflects the “San Francisco values of fiscal responsibility, social responsibility, and investment in our city’s future.”

It is the biggest budget in city history, divided almost equally between a $3.9 billion General Fund budget and self-supporting enterprises such as the airport and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and it has been buoyed by increasing tax revenues from the vibrant economy and progressive reforms such as a hike in the real estate transfer tax.

That latter tool for improving the city’s usually bleak budget picture was something Lee didn’t mention in his speech, focusing instead on his “strategic investments in job creation,” which have actually been a mixed fiscal bag given the tax breaks used to support them, such as the Mid-Market Payroll Tax Exclusion that Twitter and other tech firms have taken advantage of to avoid paying taxes on new hires.

Lee has used some of the improving revenue stream to avoid the cuts to social services that mayors have routinely proposed in recent years, which the supervisors then work to undo in a budget dance that has gotten tiresome for many of the players involved. “This year, I proposed a budget that protects our social safety net,” Lee said.

But some supervisors and social service providers say the mayor didn’t go far enough, and they say the improving fiscal situation should be used to restore some of the deep budget cuts made under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration, as well as to provide better services to the neighborhoods.

“There’s a lot more money in the budget, but it’s not being shared,” Sup. John Avalos told us. “People around San Francisco expect that if the budget is growing they’ll see tangible benefits.”

Avalos, a former budget chair who spearheaded the successful campaign to increase the city’s real estate transfer tax two years ago, said it appears that too much city spending is still focused around downtown. “All the people who opposed the increase in the real estate transfer tax will gladly spend the money,” he said.

Board President David Chiu echoed Avalos’ point that the benefits of this budget aren’t being broadly shared in a city with a rapidly rising cost of living. “We continue to hear about a lot of unmet needs with San Franciscans who are still struggling,” Chiu told us.

Reacting to a Guardian question about the supervisors’ comments, Lee told us, “Actually, I think it’s quite spread out,” but that he’s open to working with supervisors to ensure the needs of city residents are met. “There are going to be discussions about other things we could do,” he said during a press briefing outside his Room 200 office. “Each of [the supervisors] gave me their lists to take a look at and we couldn’t fund them all.”

Sup. Mark Farrell, who chairs the Budget & Finance Committee that will begin hashing out the final budget next week, told us, “The devil is in the details, and I’ll have some fun reading over the weekend, and then we’ll get to work.”

Ed Lee’s “no social service cuts” budget

Zelda Bronstein

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May 29, 2013

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Ed Lee’s “no social service cuts” budget

So Mayor Ed Lee is going to spare social services, and apparently at least part of the Department of Public Heath, from any further budget cuts. That’s good. Lives will be saved.

Lee — like Willie Brown before him — has the luck of serving as mayor during a period of growth, not recession. We don’t know how long the boom is going to last, or what will happen when it ends (as these things always do), but right now, in Sacramento and San Francisco City Hall, there is joy over the fact that revenues are up.

(Lee’s supporters on this blog and elsewhere will say it’s because of the mayor’s “pro-jobs” policies that we have all this new revenue. But remember, he promised tax breaks for Twitter and other tech firms that are moving into mid-Market, so we’re not getting much extra payroll tax revenue there. SF is a disgustingly hot real-estate market right now and more people with more money are moving in, so that’s absolutely a factor. So is the general California recovery.)

Either way, I’m always happy to hear about “no-cuts” budgets. But I have to keep raising the question:

If you’ve already cut about a billion dollars worth of services — which is about what most people on all sides of the political spectrum agree has happened in SF in the past decade — and now you’ve agreed not to cut any more, are you really making progress?

At what point do we need to start planning to restore all the services that are gone?

Censored by Facebook and I don’t know why

Sasha Cuttler

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May 29, 2013

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Censored by Facebook and I don’t know why

UPDATED Today I got banned from posting on Facebook and I don’t know why, but it has left me feeling very unsettled about this brave new world we find ourselves in, one where a few large technology corporations have ever more power over our lives and liberties.

I’ve been a full-time newspaper journalist for almost 22 years, and this is the first time I’ve been censored. Facebook has managed to do something that the government agencies I’ve critically covered could never dream of doing, shut me up, and it did so without even having to explain why or face any accountability for how it uses the power it wields.

Here’s what I do know: Yesterday, I was notified by Facebook that some piece of content on the page I created two years ago for my book, The Tribes of Burning Man, had been flagged for violating its terms of services, specifically the ban on bullying. That was very strange because the page has been fairly dormant for months, and when I reviewed all the posts, I didn’t see anything that might even vaguely be considered bullying. Shameless self promotion? Sure. Links to stories that had sometimes critical coverage of Black Rock City LLC. Yeah. But there wasn’t even any harsh language or communications targetted at any individuals, let alone bullying.

Facebook didn’t indicate which post had been flagged, it just let me hit an “appeal” button, which I did. Then today, Facebook notified me that my “appeal” — a strange label for a process that didn’t allow me to make arguments or even know what I was defending — had been denied, my page removed, and that my personal posting privileges were suspended for 12 hours while I review Facebook’s terms of service.

The list of suspects who might want to sabotage me is a long one, considering the work I do and particularly my recent critical coverage of the technology industry, including venture capitalist Ron Conway’s cozy relationship with Mayor Ed Lee and the tax breaks that have been given to Twitter, Zynga, Airbnb, and other tech corporations. Or maybe it was someone in the Burning Man world unhappy with how I’ve covered the leadership of that event, a subject that I’ve returned to recently for a story in next week’s paper.

Who knows? All I know for sure is that I’ve been cut off from a communications medium that has made itself increasingly central to our lives through its ubiquity and the strategic partnerships it has made with a wide variety of other corporations that offer essential services such as transportation, housing, business development, and access to job opportunities and government officials.

But I’m going to spend some time this week trying to get to the bottom of this, and I’ll let you know what I learn — as well as offering some thoughts on what it means to have unaccountable corporations mediating our social, professional, and civic interactions with little regulatory oversight — in next week’s paper.

UPDATE 5/30 11am: This morning, just as I was preparing to head down to the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, my Tribes of Burning Man page reappeared without explanation. Still no replies from Facebook, neither to my user inquiry nor my journalistic contact, but I decide to delay by trip down the peninsula by a day to see whether I hear back. Stay tuned…

UPDATE 5/30 11:45AM: After a second email inquiry to the Facebook press office, in which I said that I planned to show up at its headquarters with a videographer tomorrow if I didn’t hear from someone today, I got this response (I’m still waiting to hear back with answers to the many follow-up questions this raises): “We made a mistake removing content, and have restored it. Our dedicated User Operations Team reviews millions of pieces of this content a day to help keep Facebook safe for our nearly billion users. Our policies are enforced by a team of reviewers in several offices across the globe. This team looks at hundreds of thousands of reports every week, and as you might expect, occasionally, we make a mistake and remove a piece of content we shouldn’t have. Sorry again.”