Gavin Newsom, flanked by his sister, Hillary Newsom Callan, her two young daughters and his fiancee, Jennifer Siebel, prepares to be sworn in for a second term as Mayor of San Francisco by his father, retired Judge William Newsom.
Promises, promises. Newsom takes the oath, using an old family Bible, held by Siebel.
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2008 inaugural address under City Hall’s caverous domed rotunda looked like a rehearsal for his upcoming wedding to actress Jennifer Siebel, what with the choir trilling, the reverend pronouncing his blessings, the family Bible, the bucket loads of roses, and Newsom’s sister’s cute little kids running all around.
Siebel clutches Newsom’s niece, Talitha Callan, while the Mayor listens to event emcee Carlos Garcia, before launching into his hour-long inaugural address
Less adorable was the fact that Newsom’s speech contained a not so thinly veiled attack on the November 2008 charter amendment, which seeks to set aside $2.7 billion in city funds for affordable housing over 15 years.
The amendment would give affordable housing the same baseline of funding that the city already allocates to the Recreation and Park Department Fund and the Library Preservation Fund—and less than it already sets aside for the Children, Youth and Families Fund.
Sounds reasonable to those of us who have no hope of owing a home in San Francisco and are either having difficulty cobbling together the rent each month for our lowly studio/room/apartment/shack in the City, or are already displaced to the East Bay.
It’s a point that a super majority of the Board of Supervisors, along with State Senators Carole Migden and Leland Yee, and Assemblymembers Mark Leno and Fiona Ma, all seem to get, given their support for the affordable housing set aside.
But not, apparently, Newsom, who smeared this amendment as “a political gambit,” while pushing a Lennar-backed measure that promises to build 10,000 housing units at Candlestick Point, but does not specify what percentage of these units would be below market rate, for rent, or affordable, to people who currently live in the Bayview.
“In the next four years we are going to keep offering real solutions on affordable housing, not fall prey to political gambits that offer attractive promises but not sound policy,” Newsom said, during his address.
But is the newly resworn-in Mayor’s resistance to the Board’s affordable housing charter amendment rooted in the fact that it would require the Mayor’s Office of Housing to prepare an affordable housing plan every three years, present an annual affordable housing budget and do so before the rest of the Mayor’s annual budget proposals are finalized?
All these steps are crucial, in terms of transparency, accountability–and ensuring that the affordable housing needs of low-income and working class folks get top priority, instead of becoming an annual political football. They are also logical steps, for those seeking sustainable solutions to homelessness and climate change, as Newsom claims to be doing.
But instead, Newsom continues to lend his support to the Lennar-backed measure on the June 2008 ballot, even though Lennar broke its promise to build rentals at its Hunters Point Shipyard Parcel A site, where it is constructing 1,500 condominiums, and failed to live up to its promise to proactively protect local residents from asbestos dust.
Let’s Newsom sees the light, uses his political capital to support the affordable housing charter amendment, and thus lives up to his promise to protect all of the City’s residents, for the next four years.