Evictions

Best of the Bay 2012: BEST NEW GROWTH FOR OLD ROOTS

Andrew Lam
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0

BEST NEW GROWTH FOR OLD ROOTS

There were the decadent early years as the apex of luxe accommodations for 1930s travelers, and there was the ignominious segregationist past. There were mid-century decades as a soppy, swinging, jazz, funk, and blues-infused cultural mecca, and there was the descent into disrepair and the tenure as over-crowded and under-loved SRO. From evictions to an ultimate rebirth, Oakland’s iconic Hotel California has weathered many seasons. Now a low-income housing development, the landmark boasts the Hotel California Garden, a thriving greenhouse enterprise and farm which, in partnership with the People’s Grocery, sponsors programming and events, and acts as a hub for community building and gathering. The garden has supported the emergence of a resident’s council, hosts volunteers for work days, and employs hotel residents to grow and tend edible plant starts which are sold at an affordable price throughout the larger community. Most definitely a spring-like awakening.

3501 San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 652-7607

Guardian voices: The zombie condo converters

Zelda Bronstein
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28
Guardian voices: The zombie condo converters

What is the shelf life of  a really bad public policy concerning housing in  San Francisco?

When it comes to condo conversions of existing rent controlled apartments, the answer is that there is no limit on how many times this bad idea is taken off the shelf. Like a bad summer zombie movie, this undead keeps  walking, no matter what San Franciscans say.

A little history.  In 1982 Supervisor Willie Kennedy, not a bomb-throwing tenant advocate by any stretch, sponsored legislation that limited the  conversion of existing apartments to condos to no more than 200 a year. The measure did not touch new constriction, allowing unlimited condominium construction. Indeed, from 1983 to 2000, some 12,200 new condos were built, an average of some 680 units a year. Since 2000, nearly 100 percent of all new residential constriction is built as condos; there is no limit on renting a condo, but an annual limit in converting an existing apartment. Clearly, condos are a tenure type of housing that is dramatically expanding.

The reason Kennedy and the at-large elected Board of Supervisors voted for the annual limit was to protect rent-controlled apartments, a type of housingthat can’t be expanded. San Francisco’s 1978  rent control ordinance exempted all new construction from being under rent control. So rent-controlled apartments were a fixed number — all apartments built before 1978 — banned by law from ever being expanded. 

Yet those apartments are the largest number of affordable housing units available to moderate and middle income households. Thus, there’s a rational desire to preserve them by a public policy that limits their conversion to condos because they are declining in numbers.

And San Francisco voters understand and support this very rational policy.

In 1989, realtors and speculators tried to overturn the annual limit, proposing a measure that said if 51 percent of a building’s existing tenants voted for a conversion, then the building could be converted with no annual limit. This proposal laid out a future of a Hobbesian society here in San Francisco with one set of well-to-do tenants fighting another set of less-well-off tenants, building by building. San Francisco voters defeated the measure 63-37.

But in the land of the living dead condo converters, no is never the answer.
 
In 2002, Gavin Newsom, Tony Hall and Leland Yee, Plan C, and the Chamber of Commerce placed another measure on the ballot to repeal the annual limit. It too, was  rejected: 60 percent voted no, and 40 percent yes. The measure was defeated in all of the supervisorial districts except  Newsom’s D2, Tony Hall’s D7, and Leland Yee’s D4.

Tenant and affordable housing advocates were not unmoved by the desire of tenants, especially in privately owner rental housing facing Ellis Act and TIC evictions, to seek the protection of home ownership. In 2008 they supported an amendment to the Subdivision Code carving out from the annual limit conversions of apartments by nonprofit, limited equity housing
co-ops.

Now were are confronted again by a desire to allow more conversions of rent controlled units by private buyers who bought into the TIC dodge around the annual condo conversion limit.

Since TIC’s do not require a sub-division map, creating legally recognized separate units, they became “grey market” condos. With hot mortgage money flowing during the bubble, TIC owners could get financing. Now, banks are actually following some laws and will not lend to buy a legally grey TIC.  Thus the move to get them converted to legal condos.
 
This is, in its most basic form, yet another bailout caused by speculative capitalism. We seem to no longer believe in the market as an economic system, in which bad economic decisions result in economic loss for the folks involved. We now seem to believe in the “market society” — in which those with money get to keep it no matter what bad decisions they make.

What this is all about is not really homeownership but about home sales. After all, if you have a TIC you already have a home. You want to convert it to a condo not to live in, but to sell. To make it easier to sell TICs would make it harder to sell the thousands of already approved but stalled new condos.

Mayor Lee administration want to stimulate these stalled condo developments, claiming they will create constriction jobs. The Farrell and Wiener condo conversion plan undercuts these efforts and, of course, will create no jobs for anyone but realtors and moving companies.

This is called a “contradiction of capitalism,” when one set of capitalists seek, to the disadvantage of another group of capitalists, to get the government to intervene on their behalf.  But it does prove once again that Lenin was right when he said that one could count on one set of capitalists to compete with each other to sell rope to hang another set.

It’s really bad economic policy, and even worse housing policy.

Why I hope Sup. Farrell is wrong about condos

Zelda Bronstein
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213
Why I hope Sup. Farrell is wrong about condos

So Sup. Mark Farrell thinks the Board of Supervisors is ready to turn its back on the tenants movement and vote for legislation that would increase evictions, eliminate rental housing and undermine one of the most important pieces of tenant legislation to come out of City Hall in decades?

Gawd, I hope he’s wrong.

From the Examiner:

Similar proposals have gone nowhere at City Hall. Farrell acknowledged it has been a “third rail,” but he suggested the political climate has shifted. “This is a different Board of Supervisors and this is a different time,” Farrell said.

Yeah, it’s a different Board of Supervisors. Five years ago, the 8 Washington project would never have been approved in its current form. Five years ago, Ed Lee wouldn’t have been elected mayor.

But I don’t think this board is ready to abandon the tenant vote.

Making condo conversions easier is a huge deal. When San Francisco put a limit on condo conversions more than 20 years ago, it was a landmark law that put the preservation of affordable, rent-controlled housing over the needs of speculators. Over the past decade, the single greatest threat to tenants in this city is Ellis-Act evictions done to create tenancies in common. And the only check on more of that happening is the disincentive posed by the limits on condo conversions.

If Farrell gets his way, and TIC owners can bypass the conversion lottery, tenant organizations will be furious. There are, at best, five reliable pro-landlord votes on the board, so It’s not going to happen without either David Chiu, Christina Olague or Jane Kim siding with Farrell. A lot of things suprise me in local politics, but that would be a shocker.

 

SF needs healthy housing

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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19

My greatest frustration as a tenants’ rights and affordable-housing advocate in San Francisco is that, despite all the good efforts by a lot of good people, we never address the root cause of our housing crisis. We routinely enact laws and ballot initiatives, organize endless demonstrations and elect progressive politicians, but in the final analysis, these efforts are just a Band Aid on a bad system that leaves a lot of people without a roof over their heads.

A few years ago, Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance and I pushed “no fast pass to eviction” legislation to stop the eviction of seniors and people with AIDS and other disabilities through the state Ellis Act.

Ellis allows a landlord to override just-cause eviction protections and evict all of the tenants in a building. It’s often used by speculators to flip properties — that is, buy them, evict the tenants, and create a tenancy-in-common (where there’s the same number of owners as there are apartments). The new owners apply for condo conversion so that, instead of sharing a percentage in the building, they actually own their own units.

No Fast Pass says that if someone uses Ellis to evict tenants, then the building can’t convert to condos for ten years. If any of those tenants are seniors or disabled, it can never be converted. The legislation helped. There was a drop in Ellis evictions. Unfortunately, landlords and speculators now employ intimidation, harassment and buy-outs to get rid of tenants, so that they don’t have to Ellis.

It’s time to get beyond Band-Aids. Housing should be a human right, guaranteed for all, as healthcare is in other nations.

When former Supervisor Tom Ammiano realized that 65,000 San Franciscans (15% of the population) were without health coverage, he (not former Mayor Gavin Newsom, who takes credit for it) introduced legislation to create what is now “Healthy San Francisco,” our city’s version of universal healthcare. It’s not perfect, but it tackles the problem the way it should be tackled: by making healthcare a human right and not a luxury.

The same needs to be done for housing.

As long as housing is a commodity, affordable only to those who have the dough, there will always be people left out in the cold — literally. Our city has more than 10,000 homeless people, not to mention scores of others living (through no choice of their own) in deplorable conditions. The city builds more market-rate housing than it needs, while units for those below 50 percent of the city’s median income fall far short of the demand.

A mandate to house everyone in the city has never been tried. I don’t have an exact plan, but a “Housing SF” (like Healthy SF) might be created by pooling together all of our housing resources and aggressively working to pull in more. If the proposed Housing Trust Fund happens, it should be initially used only for those who need it most — the homeless and the poor, remembering that shelters are not housing, even if they’re considered such under Care Not Cash.

Put a moratorium on market-rate housing. Turn all abandoned properties (both city and privately owned) into affordable units. Raise money by letting the big businesses (including the tech companies) cough up some dough. Use land trusts as much as possible to keep the new places affordable into perpetuity.

It’s time to dream big.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, is a longtime affordable housing advocate.

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

WEDNESDAY 16

Occupy the Auction, City Hall steps, 1 Dr Carlton B Goodlett Pl, SF; www.occupytheauctions.org. 1:45pm, free. This event may not be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — organizers at Occupy the Auction have been showing up the City Hall every single weekday since April 27 — but it‘s definitely worth checking out. Occupy the Auction works with people facing unjust evictions from their property, including homeowners that have been fraudulently foreclosed on and renters facing eviction because of their landlord‘s mortgage issues. Talk about focused and effective: this campaign stops the majority of home auctions it targets.

THURSDAY 17

Beautiful Trouble & Organizing Cools, Planet Sub-mission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.tinyurl.com/pmpress. 7pm, free. This is a book launch for two books at once. Beautiful Trouble is part history and part manual for activism, art, and creative protest. Organizing Cools the Planet is a pamphlet on environmental organizing that has won praise with the likes of Vandana Shiva and Noam Chomsky. Celebrate the books and rock out to the Brass Liberation Orchestra at this event. There will also apparently be “super special surprise happenings.“

FRIDAY 18

Decolonized Yoga, 16th and Mission BART Station Plaza, SF. 5-7pm, free. The Occupy movement in San Francisco is tumultuous and ever-changing, but the yogis and radicals who host decolonized yoga have maintained a calm and consistent outdoor free yoga practice for months now. If you’ve ever wanted to do yoga for free with talented teachers and guides, and you don’t mind doing so on colorful rugs laid out next to the BART steps, decolonized yoga could be the best way for you to decompress Friday evening.

SATURDAY 19

Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival, San Antonio Park, 1701 East 19th St, Oak; www.eastsideartsalliance.com. Free. Fun for the whole family at a truly grassroots festival by and for East Oakland. The annual festival honors Malcolm X on his birthday and features an impressive lineup of local musicians, dancers and performers and community activists, along with a children‘s section and food stands.

SUNDAY 21

Straight Outta Hunters Point 2, Bayview Opera House, 4705 Third St, SF; www.tinyurl.com/kevinepps. 2-5pm, free. The film, a sequel to 2003’s Straight Outta Hunters Point, once again showcases filmmaker Kevin Epps’ ability to capture the mood and story of the neighborhood he grew up in. The film screened in theaters in February, but now Epps partners with the SF Arts Commission for a screening at the Opera House. As Epps said in a press release: “As a filmmaker and activist, this is the most important screening of all, premiering the film in the neighborhood where it all started.” The event will also showcase local organizations such as the San Francisco Black Film Festival and will be catered by Old Skool Café.

Eco-sexual hike, Redwood Park, 7867 Redwood Rd, Oak; www.tinyurl.com/sprinklemarks. 1pm, $25. Annie Sprinkle has helped shape San Francisco’s sex activist and cultural world for years. Now an advocate of eco-sexuality, Sprinkle will host Kim Marks, owner of a new all-green sex shop in Portland for an eco-sexual hike right here in SF. Explore the redwoods and your sexuality with this eco-sexy hike.

Long Haul oral history project: The Rodney King riots, Long Haul infoshop, 3124 Shattuck, Berk; www.thelonghaul.org. 7:30-9pm, free. The Long Haul provides a center for anarchist and radical media and organizing in the Bay Area, and produces the famous Slingshot newsletter. They also have an oral history series on the third Sunday of every month, discussing Bay Area events “with people who were there recalling what happened and how lessons we might have learned then could apply to the struggle now.“ This Sunday, the focus is on the Rodney King riots in the Bay Area, where 1400 were arrested and a 9pm citywide curfew declared all the way back in 1992.

The really bad news about the state budget

Zelda Bronstein
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24
The really bad news about the state budget

There’s no way to put a good spin on the new budget figures released by the Guv. No matter what happens in November, people who need help are going to get screwed in this state. Public schools will lose money. Health-care for the poor will be near collapse. Cities and counties will struggle to preserve the local safety nets. It’s just a disaster, and there’s no other way to look at it.

Of course, if we don’t approve Jerry’s tax plan in November, it will all be much, much worse. And he seems to be doing the right thing to promote the idea, making it clear just how deep the cuts will be and where they will hit.

But the tax plan is nowhere near enough, not even enough to keep the state at its current austerity level, much less to repair some of the damage and replace the funding that’s already been eliminated. And while the notion of cutting state workers back to a four-day week, or of mandatory furloughs, may sound better than cutting specific services, think about what it means:

First, all that money that the state workers give up will instantly disappear from the economy. Most of these folks aren’t wealthy, and they spend what they earn. That’s a hit to already-depressed demand. Then there’s the impact on the rest of us. Try getting an appointment at the DMV. (You think it’s bad now? Take away 20 percent of the employees.) Try getting a court date if you’ve been injured. (Oh, but if you’re a landlord, don’t worry — evictions won’t be slowed down at all.) This is going to be awful.

Here’s what I would say to Jerry: Push not only for your tax measure but to elect enough Democrats to pass taxes without going to the ballot. There’s no reason this current measure needs a vote of the public; the Legislature has every legal ability to pass all of those taxes. And if it weren’t for a handful of Republicans who drink the no-tax Kool Aide, it would be happening.

Closing a few corporate loopholes and instituting an oil-severance tax would solve much of the remaining deficit. Reinstating Schwarzenneger’s cuts to the vehicle license fee would solve the rest. And all of that can be done without a ballot fight.

The moderate Democrats in Sacto annoy me as much as the Republicans sometimes, but if Brown and Legistlative leaders make it clear that they’re helping candidates in swing districts, but that they expect them not to be obstructionist on taxes, there could be much better news in the years ahead.

 

Why three families, who never missed a rent payment, may face eviction

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Alma Sierra has been living in her home at 490 Athens for three years. Sierra, her nine year old son, and two other mothers with their children share a rental unit. They have diligently paid their rent, and her son goes to school across the street. But last year, US Bank foreclosed on the small-time landlords that owned the property- now, the tenants face eviction.

“We’re three single mothers with children. We don’t have the means to just up and leave,” Sierra, a part-time domestic worker, told me through a translator from Causa Justa, an organization that works for tenants’ rights.

Their work helped pass the Just Cause eviction policy for which the organization is named last year.

Under city law, a landlord needs one of 14 reasons to justly evict a tenant. The reasons include failure to pay rent and trashing the property, as well as owner move-in and Ellis Act evictions.

But the foreclosure crisis has brought on a wave of bank-owned properties. These are tricky situations legally; banks generally want to sell the property, a task made more difficult if there are pesky tenants living there.

“The banks want to get rid of the tenants. The realtors for the banks always tell them they can get more money if there aren’t any tenants in it. Because that way they would have to do an owner move-in eviction,” said Tommi Mecca, a long-time tenants’ rights advocate in the city.

According to Mecca, US Bank has been pressuring the three families to leave the building, although no eviction papers have been filed yet. The Guardian is awaiting calls back from US Bank representatives.

In fact, it was only recently that the tenants even learned about the change of ownership, and contacted Causa Justa to ask for assistance.

The San Francisco Housing Rights Committee (SFHRC) got involved, as well- and discovered that the foreclosure had likely taken place in March of 2011.

“We got no notice about it,” said Sierra.

She added that she and the other tenants had continued to pay their rent to the former landlords for almost a year– even after the landlords no longer owned the property.

“It can take many months, in some cases longer, to actually sell property,” said Sarah Shortt, an organizer with the SFHRC.

“So in the meantime the bank is the landlord and they haven’t been responsible in lending or as landlords. They tend to disregard tenants’ rights and trample over the needs and concerns of renters.”

Even when tenants are made aware that the property they live in has been sold back to bank, it can often be difficult to determine who to turn to for repairs, complaints, or even the right address for rent checks.

“One of the things we see a lot of is, the bank acquires the property and then they’re just MIA. Tenants come to us and say, we don’t know who owns our building, where to pay rent, who to ask to fix leaky ceiling. We help them research to find who owner is,” said Shortt.

These situations often end with buy-outs, in which the bank pays the tenants to leave the property. The amount ranges, but according to Mecca, it can often be insubstantial.

“They start at $1,000, $3,000, something really insulting. And it’s only if tenants walk in somewhere like [the SFHRC] that we tell them, wait a minute, your tenancy is worth so much more than that.”

As for Sierra and her roommates, they are determined not to leave.

“We don’t want to leave,” said Sierra. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

At a press conference in front of a branch of US Bank on 16th and Mission today, more than 40 supporters came out to support the tenants in their attempts to stay in their home. In compliance with police, they left an aisle for pedestrians and blocked neither the sidewalk nor the street, and made efforts to allow customers room to enter and exit the bank. The manager opted to lock the doors anyway.

Once the door had been locked, some of the children who live in the unit taped letters they had hoped to deliver inside to the doors. One letter reads in part, “We have nowhere to go. None of our families can afford to move. And we shouldn’t have to. As tenants, we have rights in San Francisco.”

The letters cites a recent report which states that 2.3 million children in the United States have lost their homes to foreclosure  that one in eight children in the United States has been affected by foreclosure (based on data for loans that were made between 2004 and 2008.)

And supporters plan to keep up the pressure on banks in these and other cases of foreclosure and eviction- there’s hardly a lull before an “occupy the auctions dance party” planned for tomorrow.

For Shortt, the housing issue fits squarely into heightened protest activity launched by occupy protesters last fall.

“I think that’s one of the most important pieces of the occupy movement, starting to educate ourselves and each other about how ubiquitous the toll that’s been taken on cities, neighborhoods, communities by banking industry and one percent,” said Shortt.

“Any of these cases we talk about homeowners, renters, it’s the 99 percent we’re talking about, and tends to be the lower tier of the 99 percent, low income people are being disproportionately hit by this.”

Activists hope to turn resolution into real foreclosure suspension

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On April 10, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution calling for a temporaray suspension on foreclosures in San Francisco.

The resolution “urges city contractors and all mortgage and banking institutions to suspend foreclosure activities and related auctions and evictions until State and Federal measures to protect homeowners from unfair and unlawful practices and provisions for principle reductions are in place.”

This comes after a report from Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting found that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco in the past three years involved faulty paperwork and, likely, fraud.  

The resolution does not require anything, but instead urges the city to work on behalf of constituents swept up in the foreclosure crisis. 

It urges all city departments, “including but not limited to, the offices of the Mayor, the Assessor-Recorder, the City Attorney, the District Attorney, and the Sheriff, to take proactive steps and measures to ensure that the City and County of San Francisco prevents and protects its resident form illegal foreclosures, auctions, and evictions.”

“The controller is supposed to audit every case beyond what was in Phil Ting’s report. Based on that information the glaring illegal activity for the banks, the district attorney and city attorny should sue the banks and file an injunction to stop foreclosures. I think those are some of the steps we could take,” said Julien Ball, an anti-foreclosure activist with Occupy Bernal. 

The resolution also “urges the Mayor to direct…our city lobbyists in the California State Capital to prioritize support for California Homeowners Bill of Rights state bills.”

This series of bills, proposed by state attorney general Kamala Harris, would include efforts to stop dual tracking- when homeowners still in the process of a loan modification are simultaneously tracked for foreclosures. The package also includes a ban on robosigning and other practices that can constitute fraud in foreclosure proceedings. 

Sups. Avalos and Campos sponsored the resolution, and Kim, Mar, Olague and Cohen co-sponsored. 

Occupy Bernal’s goal remains a city-wide moratorium on foreclosure, and towards that end, the resolution represents an important step.  It puts San Francisco on record as being against unfair foreclosures and related evictions,” said Ball, “and its something we can use to put pressure on the banks and public officials to act.”

“That involves exposing and shaming banks through public protests, blasting them with phone calls, calling out their board members, its necessary if we have to stand in front of somebody’s home to stop them from being evicted we’ll do that to,” said Ball.

They plan to escalate these tactics April 24, when a coalition of groups has declared that it will “shut down” an April 24 Wells Fargo shareholders meeting in San Francisco.

Heading East: The flight from San Francisco

Andrew Lam
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EDITORIAL There is no simple free-market solution to gentrification and displacement. There’s no way a crowded city like San Francisco can simply rely on the forces of supply and demand to protect vulnerable populations. And there’s no way the city’s flawed housing policy can prevent the loss of thousands of San Franciscans — particularly young, creative people who help keep a city lively — from fleeing to a town where they can actually afford the rent.

Richard Florida, the famous social and economic theorist who coined the term “creative class” argues that artists and writers and geeks and musicians are the forces that drive modern economies. His pioneering 2002 essay in the Washington Monthly was titled “Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race.”

Florida’s something of an elitist and he ignores the contributions that tens of thousands of others (including retired people, union members and nonprofit workers) make a community. He idolizes tech culture and often ignores issues like class and race.

But he’s got a point: Nobody who’s doing anything cool wants to live in a city where everyone is rich and everything is clean and boring. And that’s the danger San Francisco faces.

Just go over to Oakland for a few days and talk to all the people who were once part of this city’s cultural scene. They’ll tell you what anyone with any sense knows: You don’t attract creative people to a city by giving out tax breaks for corporations and building fancy office space. The rock bands that Florida talks about aren’t going to stay in a city because it has high-end jobs for people with advanced degrees. Artists need a place where they can afford the rent.

San Francisco is still a great urban center, by any possible standard, and has all the qualities of diversity, openness, energy, politics and fun that have made generations of immigrants from all over the world want to make it their home. But at a certain point, housing becomes more important than all of the other development issues that local government can address.

Take Andy Duvall, a musician we interviewed who was part of San Francisco for 15 years before he was literally priced out of town. For half of what he was paying in the Mission, Duvall has more than twice the space in Oakland — and the situation is just getting worse. While most of the country is still mired in a deep housing slump (and parts of San Francisco are facing a foreclosure crisis), rents in this town are soaring, beyond the affordability of almost anyone who currently lives here. According to the city’s own statistics, only about 10 percent of San Franciscans can afford the rent on a median market-rate apartment. That means if they’re evicted or lose their homes, they have to leave town.

The supervisors held a hearing April 9 on affordable housing, and the message was profound: “Affordable housing preserves the neighborhood in more ways than one; residents are the foundation on which the economy is built. From any angle, if we can’t afford to live here, there is no city,” observed Val Sinckler, a Western Addition resident.

But while the mayor is working to attract companies that will pay high-end salaries to people who can afford to pay far more rent than the average San Franciscan, he’s a long way from coming up with the money to even begin to mitigate the problem.

An effective policy to preserve San Francisco requires strict regulation (to prevent evictions and displacement), a mandate that commercial developers build housing for their workforce and that residential developers meet the needs of low- and moderate-income residents — and a large investment of public money in affordable housing. If Lee isn’t willing to talk serious about those three crucial elements, then he’s presiding over the decline of one of the world’s coolest cities.

Editorial: The flight from San Francisco

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EDITORIAL There is no simple free-market solution to gentrification and displacement. There’s no way a crowded city like San Francisco can simply rely on the forces of supply and demand to protect vulnerable populations. And there’s no way the city’s flawed housing policy can prevent the loss of thousands of San Franciscans — particularly young, creative people who help keep a city lively — from fleeing to a town where they can actually afford the rent.

Richard Florida, the famous social and economic theorist who coined the term “creative class” argues that artists and writers and geeks and musicians are the forces that drive modern economies. His pioneering 2002 essay in the Washington Monthly was titled “Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race.”

Florida’s something of an elitist and he ignores the contributions that tens of thousands of others (including retired people, union members and nonprofit workers) make a community. He idolizes tech culture and often ignores issues like class and race.

But he’s got a point: Nobody who’s doing anything cool wants to live in a city where everyone is rich and everything is clean and boring. And that’s the danger San Francisco faces.

Just go over to Oakland for a few days and talk to all the people who were once part of this city’s cultural scene. They’ll tell you what anyone with any sense knows: You don’t attract creative people to a city by giving out tax breaks for corporations and building fancy office space. The rock bands that Florida talks about aren’t going to stay in a city because it has high-end jobs for people with advanced degrees. Artists need a place where they can afford the rent.

San Francisco is still a great urban center, by any possible standard, and has all the qualities of diversity, openness, energy, politics and fun that have made generations of immigrants from all over the world want to make it their home. But at a certain point, housing becomes more important than all of the other development issues that local government can address.

Take Andy Duvall, a musician we interviewed who was part of San Francisco for 15 years before he was literally priced out of town. For half of what he was paying in the Mission, Duvall has more than twice the space in Oakland — and the situation is just getting worse. While most of the country is still mired in a deep housing slump (and parts of San Francisco are facing a foreclosure crisis), rents in this town are soaring, beyond the affordability of almost anyone who currently lives here. According to the city’s own statistics, only about 10 percent of San Franciscans can afford the rent on a median market-rate apartment. That means if they’re evicted or lose their homes, they have to leave town.

The supervisors held a hearing April 9 on affordable housing, and the message was profound: “Affordable housing preserves the neighborhood in more ways than one; residents are the foundation on which the economy is built. From any angle, if we can’t afford to live here, there is no city,” observed Val Sinckler, a Western Addition resident.

But while the mayor is working to attract companies that will pay high-end salaries to people who can afford to pay far more rent than the average San Franciscan, he’s a long way from coming up with the money to even begin to mitigate the problem.

An effective policy to preserve San Francisco requires strict regulation (to prevent evictions and displacement), a mandate that commercial developers build housing for their workforce and that residential developers meet the needs of low- and moderate-income residents — and a large investment of public money in affordable housing. If Lee isn’t willing to talk serious about those three crucial elements, then he’s presiding over the decline of one of the world’s coolest cities.

 

 

Brown says Lee shouldn’t have taken Mirkarimi’s pay away

Sasha Cuttler
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Brown says Lee shouldn’t have taken Mirkarimi’s pay away

As Mayor Ed Lee continues to duck questions about why he suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi without pay or due process, even former Mayor Willie Brown – who helped elevate Lee into Room 200 – is second-guessing the decision and its legality.

In his Willie’s World column in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, entitled “Ross Mirkarimi needs cash in struggle to keep his job,” Brown wrote, “And on the salary point, I agree with Mirkarimi: He should not be suspended without pay. He should continue to get paid unless and until he ultimately is found guilty of misconduct by the Board of Supervisors.”

The issue isn’t just one of fairness or of Lee trying to coerce Mirkarimi into resigning to avoid city hearings that will determine whether grabbing his wife’s arm during a New Year’s Eve conflict constitutes official misconduct, as Lee charges. It’s also a specific legal issue, particularly to lawyers like Brown.

Mirkarimi’s attorney, David Waggoner, said it’s not surprising to see Brown publicly undercutting the mayor on this issue. “He’s simply stating what the applicable law is on the subject,” Waggoner told us. In this case, it was the Supreme Court, hearing the case Skelly v. State Personnel Board in 1975, that said an executive can’t just unilaterally take away someone’s livelihood.

“If you’re going to fire public employees, you have to give them notice, you have to let them respond, you need to observe due process,” Waggoner said.

That’s one of three causes of action that Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn will consider in a hearing set for April 18 at 9:30 am, where Mirkarimi is asking the courts to reinstate him and restore his salary pending hearings before the Ethics Commission and Board of Supervisors that could take months.

Given the pressure being applied by anti-domestic violence groups and many mainstream media voices, Lee may have felt like he had to remove Mirkarimi and that he could just blame supervisors or the process if it didn’t work. But if the courts find Lee acted illegally while attempting to put supervisors in such an untenable position, it could be a serious blow to Lee’s reputation and governing authority.

UPDATE 5 PM: I also placed a call on the issue to former Mayor Art Agnos, who just back to me and he agreed that Lee acted in a way that was unfair and probably illegal. “I think it’s heavy-handed,” said Agnos, who has been supporting Mirkarimi through the ordeal.

Agnos noted that former Sheriff Richard Hongisto served several days in jail for contempt of court for refusing to carry out the evictions of International Hotel tenants, and he never had his pay docked or faced official misconduct charges. “And here, we see the sheriff being charged with something that occurred before he even took office, and it’s a low-grade misdemeanor that he accepted a plea deal on.”

According to Agnos, Mirkarimi told him that during his brief conversation with the mayor, he offered to tell his side of the story and have Lee talk to his wife, Eliana Lopez, as well, but the mayor wasn’t interested. “When you’re the mayor, you like to hear both sides before making a decision,” Agnos said. “But Lee wasn’t interested.”

Lee’s charges against Mirkarimi leave questions unaddressed

Sasha Cuttler
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UPDATED BELOW WITH “RESPONSE” FROM LEE’S OFFICE: Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was formally suspended today and served with “Written Charges of Official Misconduct” that for the first time outline why Mayor Ed Lee believes Mirkarimi should be removed from office, although they leave unaddressed many questions that Lee has been so far been avoiding answering.

The eight-page legal document prepared for Lee by the City Attorney’s Office briefly lays out the process (a hearing before the Ethics Commission, its recommendation, then action by the Board of Supervisors within 30 days thereafter) and the definition of official misconduct, focusing on this phrase: “conduct that falls below the standard of decency, good faith and right action impliedly required of all public officers.”

That vague language is fairly new and has never been considered or interpreted by any court, and the city acknowledges there are at least “two reasonable interpretations” of its meaning: “This phrase could be either (a) an example of misconduct that, by definition, relates to the duties of all public officers, or (b) an independent, alternative category of official misconduct that does not require a connection to an officer’s official.”

Lee’s attorneys argue that they don’t think a direct connection to an official’s duties is required, but they acknowledge that’s how it could be interpreted, so they try to make that connection as well, often by relying on evidence and testimony that hasn’t been vetted by the courts or by making connections likely to be challenged by Mirkarimi’s new attorney, David Waggoner.

The document recounts the “Wrongful Conduct by Sheriff Mirkarimi,” starting with his “acts of verbal and physical abuse against his wife, Eliana Lopez” on New Year’s Eve, continuing through the criminal charges filed against him on Jan. 13 with a focus on allegations that he dissuaded witnesses and “encouraged them to destroy evidence” and with his March 19 sentencing for false imprisonment, concluding the section with a reference to the newspaper quote from Don Wilson, president of the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association, that the plea had hurt morale in the department.

The DSA actively opposed Mirkarimi’s election, just as it did his predecessor and mentor, Michael Hennessey, in every contested election in the legendary progressive sheriff’s 32-year career, so it seems a little strange to rely on such a self-serving assessment. But that isn’t the only point that raises questions and potential challenges, particularly as they try to argue that Mirkarimi’s actions related to his official duties.

Part of Mirkarimi’s sentence included one day in jail, for which the judge said his booking qualified, meaning that he never actually was inside a cell. But Lee’s attorneys argue without explanation that, “Sheriff Mirkarimi’s one-day sentence to county jail undermines his ability to receive inmates and to supervise the County jails.” It certainly didn’t seem to for former Sheriff Dick Hongisto, who was jailed for several days after being held in contempt of court for refusing to carry out the International Hotel evictions, but who never faced sanctions from the mayor.

The first and seemingly strongest connection it makes between his actions and official duties listed was, “Sheriff Mirkarimi misused his office, and the status and authority it carries, for personal advantage when he stated to Ms. Lopez that he could win custody of their child because he was very powerful,” a charge taken from the videotaped testimony that Lopez gave to his neighbor Ivory Madison.

Lopez’s attorneys have noted that she made the video to paint Mirkarimi as abusive in case there was a custody battle, as she says on tape, and that she was seeking confidential legal help from Madison and never intended for it to be released. But her and Mirkarimi’s attempts to retrieve it are labeled in the charges as efforts to “encourage the destruction of evidence regarding criminal activity,” which they argue also relates to his duties as a law enforcement officer. This issue is likely to be a matter of serious debate during the Ethics Commission hearing.

Finally, the document argues that because the Sheriff’s Department can enforce protective orders in domestic violence cases and funds programs for domestic violence perpetrators – and because it sometimes interacts with the Adult Probation Department, given Mirkarimi’s three-year probation – that the charges directly relate to his official duties.

Clearly, these are complicated issues that raise a variety of questions, which is why it was disconcerting yesterday when Lee announced the charges to a room packed with journalists and refused to take any of our questions. City Attorney Dennis Herrera didn’t speak at all, simply standing behind Lee looking stone-faced and perhaps a bit uncomfortable.

Earlier today, I sent Lee and his Office of Communications a list of questions that I think he has a public obligation to address given the drastic action that he’s just taken against an elected official. I haven’t received a reply yet, but I’m including my comments here for you to consider as well:

 

I was disappointed that Mayor Lee took no questions during yesterday’s press conference, because I had several that I’m hoping you can address for a long story we’re writing on the Mirkarimi affair for our next issue. I’m hoping to get answers by the end of the workday on Friday.
– Will Mayor Lee release the memo he received from the City Attorney’s Office on Ross Mirkarimi and whether his crime rises to the level of official misconduct? [Note to reader: That advice memo is different than the charges I discuss above.] It is solely under Lee’s authority to waive attorney-client privilege and release the memo, as even Willie Brown urged him to do in his Chronicle column on Sunday. And if he won’t release it, can he explain why?
– Lee told reporters last week that he would explain why Mirkarimi’s action rise to the level of official misconduct if concluded they did, but Lee didn’t offer that explanation yesterday. Why does Lee believe actions that Mirkarimi took before assuming office, which were unconnected to his official duties, warrant his removal from office? Is Lee basing his decision primarily on the crime Mirkarimi committed on New Year’s Eve or his actions and statements since then? What specific actions or statements by Mirkarimi does the mayor believe rise to official misconduct?
– Why didn’t Lee consult with Eliana Lopez or her attorney before making this decision? None of the purported evidence in this case has been scrutinized by the courts as to its veracity or completeness (that would have happened at the trial). The only two people who know for sure what happened that night are Ross and Eliana, so why hasn’t Lee asked either of them what happened?
– Why did Lee set a 24-hour deadline for Mirkarimi to resign or be removed? Did Lee offer Mirkarimi anything in exchange for his resignation, such as another city job?
– Who did the mayor consult with about whether Mirkarimi should be removed before making this decision? Were any members of the DSA or SFPOA consulted? How about Rose Pak or other members of the business community? How about Michael Hennessey? Did he seek input and advice from John St. Croix or anyone from the Ethics Commission?
– It’s my understanding that the mayor wasn’t required to remove Mirkarimi from office without pay pending his official misconduct hearings, that Mirkarimi could have either remained in the job or been suspended with pay. Why did Lee feel a need to place this additional financial pressure on Mirkarimi to abandon the office that voters elected him to? Is he concerned about the impact of his decision on Eliana Lopez and Theo?
– Mayor Lee has prided himself on being someone focused on “getting things done” without creating unnecessary political distractions. So why does he want to drag out this distracting political drama for another few months? Why does he believe that it’s a good use of the city’s time and resources to be a forum for airing details of a sordid conflict that has proven to be a divisive issue? Is he worried about exposing the city to liability in a civil lawsuit if his charges against Mirkarimi are later found to be without merit?
– Does Lee intend for Vicki Hennessy to be the permanent replacement for Mirkarimi if the official misconduct charges are upheld? Will he take into account the will of the voters in electing Mirkarimi, someone who had pledged to uphold and continue the legacy of progressive leadership of the Sheriff’s Department as embodied by the long career of Michael Hennessey? Given that the DSA consistently opposed Hennessey at election time, and that in this election voters rejected the DSA’s choices, why is Lee substituting his own judgment and political preferences for those of San Francisco’s voters? Why did Lee feel a need to take preemptive action against Mirkarimi rather than simply allowing voters to launch a recall campaign, which is the typical remedy for removing politicians who have gone through some kind of public scandal?

UPDATE 3/26: Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey told the Guardian that we would have answers to these questions by Friday, but then sent the following message as a response late Friday afternoon: “Steve, After looking at your questions, it seems Mayor Lee addressed much of this in his comments on Tuesday. After Sheriff Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to a crime of false imprisonment, Mayor Lee made a thorough review of the facts, reviewed his duties under the Charter and gave the Sheriff an opportunity to resign. When that did not happen, he moved to suspend the Sheriff. For any information regarding what is in the charges, I will refer you to the City Attorney’s office and their website that has all of the public documents posted.”

For the record, Lee has not addressed these questions nor made any public statements on whether he will release the advice memo (as even Willie Brown publicly urged him to do) or explained why he’s keeping that document secret. And we haven’t even had the opportunity to ask the mayor these questions directly because he hasn’t held any public events since announcing his decision to remove Mirkarimi.

Supervisors hope to halt foreclosures with new resolution

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John Avalos introduced a resolution today urging support for homeowners facing foreclosure in San Francisco. The resolution calls for several actions, including suspending all foreclosures until state and federal measures to protect homeowners are in place.

Sponsors of the resolution Avalos, David Chiu, Jane Kim, Eric Mar, and Christina Olague joined a coalition of community organizations to explain the resolution at a press conference.

The resolution would call for support of a statewide Homeowners Bill of Rights, a series of bills that would address predatory loans and robosigning, as well as California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s campaign for a statewide suspension on foreclosures in properties controled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It also “urges all city and county officials and departments to work proactively to ensure that San Francisco residents do not fall victim to unlawful foreclosure practices,” as Avalos explained.

Supervisors cited a report released in February by Assessor Phil Ting as one of the reasons for the resolution. The report found “irregularities” in 99 percent of foreclosure documents in San Francisco between 2009 and 2011, and “what appear to be one or more clear violations of the law” in 84 percent of cases. 

The resolution’s language also names “predatory banking practices that disproportionately targeted racial and ethnic minority communities, especially working class African Americans and Latinos” as an impetus for the resolution, noting that “from 2007 to 2008, Wells Fargo, and mortgage lenders it has since acquired, was 188 percent more likely to put African American borrowers and 117 percent more likely to put Latino borrowers into higher-cost, subprime loans.”

“What we see around foreclosures is that we have a systemic problem,” said Campos. Over 1,000 homes in San Francisco are currently in the process of foreclosure, 

Supervisor Kim connected the issue to another systemic problem affecting San Francisco, that has been a recent topic of discussion at City Hall: family flight. 

“We do have many low-income families that are actually homeowners in the city, primarily in the southeast sector. But how they afford to buy homes is by squeezing often two to three families in these homes in the southeast. So we’re talking about not just one household when we foreclose on a home, we’re often talking about two, three families with multiple youth and seniors,” said Kim.

“This is something that has been an important issue for many of our supervisors across the political spectrum, is how to retain families in San Francisco. Stopping foreclosure has to be a key part of that.” 

A few supervisors congratulated community organizers for focusing on the foreclosure crisis.

“I want to thank Occupy Bernal for not only shedding light on what’s happening in Bernal Heights, but realizing that the foreclosure crisis that we’re facing is something that involves all of us. Every single neighborhood,” said Campos.

The resolution was introduced to the Board of Supervisors March 20. It will be discussed further at the Land Use and Economic Development committee meeting April 2. 

If it eventually passes the Board of Supervisors, the resolution will be non-binding; a citywide foreclosure moratorium is likely not imminent. Yet many supporters expressed urgency and commitment for city action to address foreclosures. 

“When speaking with the sheriff about how we can stop evictions, what struck me most was he said that sometimes when we walk into these homes, we’ve found that people have committed suicide before the sheriffs even come in,” said Supervisor Kim. “This is a life and death issue for many of our residents.”

 

Lee and the foreclosure crisis

Andrew Lam
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EDITORIAL More than 1000 homes in San Francisco are either in foreclosure or at the start of the process. Some 16,000 homeowners are underwater, and as many as 12,000 may face foreclosure in the next 12 months. A report by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment shows that the city could lose $115 million from the reduced property taxes and the costs of carrying out evictions.

That’s a crisis — and while the mayor has no direct control over home foreclosures, he ought to be speaking out and joining the protesters who are fighting this cascade of often-fraudulent bank actions.

The problems are legion: An audit released in February by Assessor Phil Ting shows that more than 80 percent of the foreclosure notices filed in San Francisco contain at least one legal irregularity, and many contain multiple. Banks back-date documents, use faulty information, and in some cases clearly and directly break the law when they move to seize property — often because of bad-faith loans that were more the fault of the banks than the homeowners.

A group from Occupy Bernal, the well-organized, sophisticated operation that’s been intervening in foreclosures and evictions in the Southeast neighborhoods, visited us recently, and the stories we heard were alarming. Some told of bankers who promised to make loan modifications — then went ahead with foreclosure anyway. Some people spend weeks just trying to figure out who actually owns the mortgage — and while the financial institutions are ducking calls and hiding from responsibility, they’re moving forward to toss people out of their homes.

ACCE and Occupy Bernal have had some successes — they slowed down foreclosure actions, forced banks to come to the table and in some cases saved homes. But the activists are up against big corporations and big numbers — too many homes on the block, too many financial institutions, and not enough people and money.

The Ting report showed enough violations of law that we’ve already urged the city attorney and the district attorney to start taking action.

But we’ve heard little beyond silence from the office of Mayor Ed Lee.

Lee’s the city’s chief executive, the person who has to handle the financial fallout of the foreclosure crisis as well as the human impacts — families evicted from their homes have a high chance of winding up on the streets, putting additional pressure on already-stressed social services.

Besides, this is a tragedy — and a lot of the problem is simply unaccountable, unreachable financial institutions. If Occupy Bernal and ACCE, through volunteer organizing and community pressure, can prevent a fair number of evictions, thing what the mayor of San Francisco could do — just by speaking out.

Lee ought to show up at some of the Occupy Bernal actions, but that may be too much to ask. But it’s not too much to suggest that he publicly support the foreclosure fighters and call on the banks to work with local homeowners.

The city keeps its multibillion-dollar short-term cash accounts in institutions like Bank of America, which is responsible for more than 10 percent of all foreclosures in the city. Wells Fargo, with its headquarters right here in town, is responsible for 22 percent of the local foreclosures. Lee ought to let the banks know the city won’t keep doing business with bad actors.

With a little visibility, the mayor could help save hundreds, maybe thousands of families from facing homelessness. This crisis calls for leadership; where’s the mayor?

Editorial: Mayor Lee: Ease off Mirkarimi and help stop the foreclosure crisis

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And so the downtown gang (Willie Brown/Rose Pak, PG&E, the Chamber, the big developers et al) used Ed Lee to outmaneuver the progressives and roll Lee into the job of “interim mayor” on condition Lee not run for mayor.  Then Lee kept lying for months about his intentions and saying over and over that he would not run for mayor–until the downtown gang convinced him to run as a way to further damage the progressives. And now, according to news reports, Mayor Lee is poised to file misconduct charges against Mirkarimi for his gulty plea of false imprisonment in the Mirkarimi domestic violence case.

This could lead to an explosive and polarizing scenario where the Board of Supervvisors, in an election year, would be asked to remove Mirkarimi, a former fellow supervisor and political ally, as sheriff or side with him on what has turned out to become a toxic political issue. This would affect at minimum Mar, Avalos, Campos, and Olague in the supervisors’ races and Mar, Avalos, and Campos in the upcoming Democratic County Central Committee race. It would also affect any candidate in any race that said a nice word about Mirkarimi.  If anybody thinks the mayor and the downtown gang would be unhappy with this prospect, think again. I recommend that Lee hold off on Mirkarimi, and work to uphold his position as a “unifier,” and not become a polarizer and promoter of media and City Hall circuses. Instead of taking on Mirkarimi and the progressives, he should concentrate on such important and timely issues as helping stop the foreclosure process on the thousands of homes facing foreclosure in San Francisco. More: he should go after the big foreclosure banks, starting with the Bank of America and its multi-million dollar short term cash account with the city, and  Wells Fargo, with its national headquarters here in town.b3

More than 1,000 homes in San Francisco are either in foreclosure or at the start of the process. Some 16,000 homeowners are underwater, and as many as 12,000 may face foreclosure in the next 12 months. A report by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment shows that the city could lose $115 million from the reduced property taxes and the costs of carrying out evictions.

That’s a crisis — and while the mayor has no direct control over home foreclosures, he ought to be speaking out and joining the protesters who are fighting this cascade of often-fraudulent bank actions.

The problems are legion: An audit released in February by Assessor Phil Ting shows that more than 80 percent of the foreclosure notices filed in San Francisco contain at least one legal irregularity, and many contain multiple. Banks back-date documents, use faulty information, and in some cases clearly and directly break the law when they move to seize property — often because of bad-faith loans that were more the fault of the banks than the homeowners.

A group from Occupy Bernal, the well-organized, sophisticated operation that’s been intervening in foreclosures and evictions in the Southeast neighborhoods, visited us recently, and the stories we heard were alarming. Some told of bankers who promised to make loan modifications — then went ahead with foreclosure anyway. Some people spend weeks just trying to figure out who actually owns the mortgage — and while the financial institutions are ducking calls and hiding from responsibility, they’re moving forward to toss people out of their homes.

ACCE and Occupy Bernal have had some successes — they slowed down foreclosure actions, forced banks to come to the table and in some cases saved homes. But the activists are up against big corporations and big numbers — too many homes on the block, too many financial institutions, and not enough people and money.

The Ting report showed enough violations of law that we’ve already urged the city attorney and the district attorney to start taking action.

But we’ve heard little beyond silence from the office of Mayor Ed Lee.

Lee’s the city’s chief executive, the person who has to handle the financial fallout of the foreclosure crisis as well as the human impacts — families evicted from their homes have a high chance of winding up on the streets, putting additional pressure on already-stressed social services.

Besides, this is a tragedy — and a lot of the problem is simply unaccountable, unreachable financial institutions. If Occupy Bernal and ACCE, through volunteer organizing and community pressure, can prevent a fair number of evictions, think of what the mayor of San Francisco could do — just by speaking out.

Lee ought to show up at some of the Occupy Bernal actions, but that may be too much to ask. But it’s not too much to suggest that he publicly support the foreclosure fighters and call on the banks to work with local homeowners.

The city keeps its multibillion-dollar short-term cash accounts in institutions like Bank of America, which is responsible for more than 10 percent of all foreclosures in the city. Wells Fargo, with its headquarters right here in town, is responsible for 22 percent of the local foreclosures. Lee ought to let the banks know the city won’t keep doing business with bad actors.

With a little visibility, the mayor could help save hundreds, maybe thousands of families from facing homelessness. This crisis calls for leadership; where’s the mayor?

Just longing for sameness

Andrew Lam
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0
Just longing for sameness

[An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Paul Robeson as Renee Gibbons’ lover, when in fact it was William Marshall. We regret the error]

caitlin@sfbg.com

IRISH Yesterday she and her husband received notice that it would soon be converted into a condo. But for the moment, it is still hers. We are sitting in Irish author Renee Gibbons’ rent-controlled North Beach apartment of 31 years and she is telling me about the time she saw Van Morrison walking down Columbus Street in the 1970s.

“I was looking pretty foxy,” she remembers. Gibbons still recalls what she was wearing: a woven Irish sweater, hippie skirt, and knee-length camel-colored boots.

Morrison had always been one of those celebrities who she knows — she just knows — would fall in love with her if only they knew each other. So imagine the scene: a pretty girl and a boy pass each other, walk on, and then turn with their entire bodies to look at the other. Only then he resumed his journey and the moment was over.

Not that Gibbons hasn’t had enough torrid love affairs to fill a book. In fact, she’s done just that with Longing For Elsewhere: My Irish Voyage Through Hunger, History, and High Times (self-published, 250pp, $16.95). And though she took William Marshall for a lover at the age of 19, and was a fashion model in Paris, Longing‘s short folk stories revolve around places, not people. It’s her first book, though she did write a column in the Irish Herald for 13 years.

An inveterate traveler, Gibbons and husband, 84-year old retired radical longshoreman Lew, have made their home in the North Beach neighborhood, which to Gibbons has the feel of a small village. But the evictions are rampant on their block, and the day before our interview the daughter of Gibbons’ landlord sent her a letter stating their intention to convert the building into condos. The couple pays $1200 a month for their space. The letter said they could buy their unit for $2 million.

Steering from that painful subject, I ask Gibbons where — since this is the St. Patrick’s Day issue of the Guardian after all — people should go to see the real (read: not green beer) Irish community of San Francisco.

She recommends bars, primarily. Irelands 32 and the Plough and the Stars in the Richmond, Berkeley’s Starry Plough, where she and her daughter used to sing (a natural talent, her daughter now tours with Prince), O’Reilly’s down the street from her home. The Irish Castle Gift Shop is also a hub, a place where the San Francisco Irish can shop for Barry’s Irish tea, fishermen’s sweaters, Irish baked beans, and “the real” kind of Cadbury’s chocolate, and travelers can dip in for some Éire hospitality. “They take the time to chat and all that,” Gibbons says.

Longing is a self-narrated look at the life of a radical bohemian, a woman who came from poverty unheard of in this country (she calls this part of the book “Angela’s Ashes without the dead babies.”) to become an adventurer. Gibbons and Lew once traveled from Santiago, Chile to Dublin — without flying on an airplane. The journey took them to Argentina, Africa, Istanbul, and they did it in two months.

So she doesn’t limit her community to the Irish and Irish Americans in town, relating more to the activist set. She and Lew been occupying with the best of them (“I have a photograph of Lew on his cane giving the cops in riot gear the whatfor,” she tells me. “They were trying to stop him from protesting in front of the docks where he used to work!”) When the two alit on San Francisco, the city fit them like a glove.

She’s prepared to fight for her right to stay in North Beach, where every morning she does tai chi in Washington Square, where she celebrated Nelson Mandela’s release from prison with her daughter, and where she can always depend on the local green grocer for the block’s gossip.

“But we’re not going quietly,” she says. “I told the landlord the only way we’re leaving here is in urns or pine coffins.” Gibbons doesn’t drive, and honestly has no desire to live anywhere in the United States besides San Francisco. Maybe she’ll go back to Ireland, she says. They take care of their elderly there better than we do.

“North Beach is known as a bohemian community. There’s hardly any poets or artists left in the neighborhood.” It may just be that the San Francisco she loves is in its last days. Maybe it’s always in its last days, making it doubly important that all its remaining freaks and artist-types get record of their lives on paper. 

LONGING FOR ELSEWHERE: RENEE GIBBONS AUTHOR READING

Fri/16 7 p.m., free

Books Inc.

601 Van Ness, SF

www.renee-gibbons.com

 

The struggle for housing money at City Hall

Zelda Bronstein
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The struggle for housing money at City Hall

It’s barely March, and the next election isn’t until June and that’s just primaries and the Democratic County Central Committee, but we just started getting political mail anyway. It’s a piece from the Board of Realtors, denouncing plans for an increase in the real-estate transfer tax “to provide subsidized housing to people who want to live in San Francisco but don’t have the means to do so.” Mayor Ed Lee, the flier says, is backing this “outrageous” plan.

What, exactly, is going on here?

Well, for starters, the mayor is distinctly NOT pushing for an increase in the transfer tax, not right now, anyway. What he is doing is meeting with housing advocates and legislators and trying to come up with a stable source of funding for affordable housing — yes, for families and low-income people, many of them longtime residents who are being forced out by Ellis Act evictions, others of them people who work in the city and would rather live here than commute from Pinole, which everyone with any sense agrees is a good idea.

The problem: For years, San Francisco used Redevelopment Agency tax-increment money for affordable housing. Now that money’s gone, since the governor abolished redevelopment agencies. Actually, the money’s not gone, technically — the increased tax revenue from redevelopment project areas still exists. It’s just that the state is now taking a bunch of it, and other taxing entities like BART and the school district get some of it, and now it’s impossible to send bonds and borrow money against it. So what was once tens of millions for affordable housing is now a few million.

“We might have $20 million a year in the general fund,” said housing activist Peter Cohen. “But that’s compared to the $40 million or $50 million we had in the past, and it still leaves housing short.”

Lee has promised repeatedly to fix that problem, to find a way to make sure that there’s enough money that the nonprofits who build housing can plan and develop for the long term. Right now, it’s being called a Housing Trust Fund, but nobody knows exactly how it will actually work.

Remember: The city’s own General Plan states that 60 percent of all new housing should be available at below market rate. All of the regional growth projections say that San Francisco needs to build more housing — for its own workforce, not just for the rich. (And the local workforce, for all the tech jobs the mayor keeps hyping, is still mostly public-sector workers and service employees, most of whom can’t possibly afford the soaring rents and housing prices in this city.)

A lot of the existing affordable housing money comes from the city’s inclusionary housing law, which mandates that market-rate developers set aside a percentage of their new units (usually 20 percent) for lower-income people. Most developers eschew allowing poor people into their condo enclaves, so they pay a fee into a city fund instead.
But if we’re aiming for 60 percent, and we’re getting (at most) 20 percent, we’re a long ways off. Oh, and the developers are starting to argue that the 20 percent rule is too onerous and they can’t build enough condos for the rich if they have to throw scraps to the poor and middle-class, too.

And some supervisors are squawking about building more housing for the middle class, and right now in a zero-sum game, that means less for low-income people.
This all adds up to a mess for the mayor, and it’s no wonder some advocates are talking about raising the transfer tax — which, after all, is paid by the seller of a residential or commercial building, and while there are absolutely some houses underwater in San Francisco (and there should probably be an exemption in the tax for that situation), overall home prices are rising again, and many, probably most home sales these days involve substantial profit. It’s not a perfect tax, but it’s a tax on a class that is (generally) better off to support a class that is typically not so well off.

Here’s the problem: If the mayor supports a transfer tax, and that’s part of the final package, the realtors and the commericial building owners will no doubt put huge amounts of money into defeating it. That would mean Lee would have to raise a bucket of money and campaign really hard to pass it. But Lee’s demonstrated that he’s not the fighting type; he wants something that nobody serious will oppose. Which is why my sources at City Hall say that he wants the transfer tax off the table.

That could mean that the Housing Trust Fund will be a basic set-aside, a budgetary mandate that a certain amount of money go into a reliable fund for housing. That’s one of the city’s most pressing needs (really, if this becomes a city of just the rich, even those of us who own houses or have rent-controlled apartments won’t want to live here any more. Mayor Larry Ellison? Eeew.) So I’m okay with that. I’m not a big fan of set-asides, but this is the whole future of San Francisco we’re talking about.

So the realtors can take a chill pill — the mayor doesn’t want to get in a fight with you. Sigh.

The right to a civil lawyer

Zelda Bronstein
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10
The right to a civil lawyer

I like Sup. David Chiu’s idea of giving indigent plaintiffs in civil cases the right to a lawyer. It’s one of those legal and political issues that’s been hanging around for decades: Everyone accused of a crime has the Constitutional right to counsel, but if you’re sued and have no money, you could very well be  SOL.

Now, there are a few places that some people can get help — nonprofit legal groups that help seniors, tenants, and others, but there aren’t enough of those lawyers to meet the need, and some people don’t qualify for any of the available help. Under the law, a poor person who gets sued has no guaranteed right to any assistance at all, and can wind up representing him- or herself in court, even if he or she has no legal background or experience.

That’s one reason landlords tend to win eviction cases against low-income people: If the tenant can’t find free legal help, it’s high-priced landlord lawyer who knows all the tricks against poor tenant who has no idea how to respond to a summons and complaint.

The supervisors have approved Chiu’s resolution, which asserts than San Francisco is a “right to civil counsel” city, but there’s not a whole lot of money around to fund it. He’s asking for a modest pilot program costing no more than $100,000 and focusing on eviction defense, which is a great place to start. His idea is to get the big law firms in the city to help out — to devote some of their time and money to pro bono work in the city’s indigent civil defense program.

And some of them will, and that’s great. But what we really need is a funding source for this — and it seems to me that the lawyers of the city are a logical place to start.

Yes, there are unemployed lawyers and lawyers who barely make rent. But as a whole, the class of people licensed to practice law in San Francisco is better off than most of the rest of us. The state bar hits every lawyer up for about $400 a year to fund bar operations, and the interest that lawyers earn on client trust funds has to go to indigent legal defense.

So why not set up a San Francisco lawyer’s fee — say, $50 a year for everyone practicing in the city — to fund the city’s civil legal defense program? I don’t know exactly how many lawyers we have, and I can’t find anyone at the state bar who can answer that, but I’ve seen published reports in the past suggesting that the city has more lawyers per-capita than anywhere else except Washington, D.C. One story that ran years ago in the Examiner put it at one per 70 residents — which would mean more than 10,000 lawyers in the city. So a $50 fee would bring in half a million dollars –plenty to set up an office and hire a couple of lawyers and have a director who could spend time running down pro bono counsel to help.

I have no idea if the city can legally do that; I checked with the folks in the City Attorney’s Office, and they have no simple answer. So Chiu would have to request a legal opinion on the question.

But if it’s possible, it’s a great idea, and I suspect even most lawyers in the city would support it. 

 

UPDATE: The state bar folks pointed me to the right place on the bar website, and it turns out there are 17,000 lawyers in SF. That’s $850,000 a year.

 

Save our homes

Andrew Lam
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Save our homes

yael@sfbg.com


This story has been edited


Bay Area activists, fueled in part by the Occupy movement, have recently taken stands against police brutality, for the rights of the homeless, against the corporate power of banks, and much more. But, arguably, nowhere has the movement been more successful than in the fight against foreclosures and evictions.


With the support of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and the Bayview Foreclosure Fighters, several Bayview residents whose homes had already been sold continue to occupy them, and in some cases sales have been rescinded. Occupy Bernal has used civil disobedience to postpone six housing auctions, keeping their neighbors in their homes that much longer. They secured a meeting with Diana Stauffer, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage senior vice president, and David Campos, District 9 supervisor, to delay foreclosure proceedings.


But the activists are pushing for a full moratorium on foreclosures and evictions in San Francisco. Such a moratorium is not without precedent. In recent years, sheriffs have stopped evictions and foreclosures in Wayne Country, Michigan; Cook County, Illinois; Butler County, Ohio; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.


When Cook County Sheriff John Dart imposed his moratorium in 2010, he said, “I can’t possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can’t say for sure everything was done properly. I need some kind of assurance that we aren’t evicting families based on fraudulent behavior by the banks.”


San Francisco seems ripe for a similar stance, as Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting recently released a report revealing widespread lawbreaking in foreclosure proceedings. The report found that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco over the last three years involved faulty paperwork, some of it amounting to fraud.


Representatives from the District Attorney’s and the City Attorney’s offices told the Guardian that they are concerned about the report. These bodies may be starting the process of further investigating findings. Last week, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, whose office carries out the county’s evictions, said he has begun an initiative to collect and analyze the city’s foreclosure data.


But Mirkarimi’s hands may be tied. As he told Ann Garrison of KPFA radio Feb. 25, “I don’t have the latitude or discretion, much as I would like, because there would need to be a change in state law that empowers municipal sheriffs to be able to use that discretion.”


Occupy Bernal formed just a couple months ago, but it has emerged as a powerful advocate for homeowners facing foreclosure. The neighborhood-based branch of the Occupy movement chose to focus specifically on preventing the evictions of Bernal Heights residents, where over 100 homes face foreclosure.


They kept the pressure up Feb. 25, when a group of supporters convened at 1090 Chestnut Street, the residence of John Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo. That bank owns the majority of mortgages on Bernal homes facing foreclosure.


The protest wasn’t meant to block the street and no one tried to enter the building where Stumpf owns three of the 14 floors. But police decided that the group of about 150 warranted blocking off the entire block to traffic, to the annoyance of many neighbors.


“You collected $43.7 billion in taxpayer money and have since made record profits at the expense of low-income communities, while repeatedly breaking your legal and moral obligations as a creditor. You have failed to comply with loan modification requirements under your own lending agreements,” said a blown-up “foreclosure notice” outside Stumpf’s home.


In the spirited street theater scene, activists dressed as an auctioneer and a larger-than-life John Stumpf played out a fake auction of Stumpf’s property.


Dexter Cato, a father of four whose wife was recently killed in a car crash in the midst of months-long loan modification proceedings, faces foreclosure from his Bayview home of 40 years.


“Stumpf, we want a new address for you,” said Archbishop Franzo King of the Western Additions’ John Coltrane church, “850 Bryant Street!”


The crowd then proceeded to chant this address: the San Francisco Hall of Jusice and County Jail.


“We understand that some of our customers are going through difficult times during this economic recovery,” said Jim Foley, president of Wells Fargo’s Greater Bay Area region, in a press release responding to the Feb. 25 protest. The company plans to hold “Home Preservation Workshops” in Richmond March 7 and 8 to help homeowners facing foreclosure.


Public officials may be a long way from locking up CEOs for foreclosure fraud, but some have taken notice of complaints against the banks. On Feb. 2, the Berkeley City Council voted not to extend its contract with Wells Fargo to manage $300 million in city assets, citing its foreclosures on city residents.


On a national level, activists have been successful in persuading people to transfer their money to local banks and credit unions in recent months. Javelin Strategy and Research came out with statistics that 5.6 million Americans have switched bank service providers in the past 90 days, three times the normal transfer rate. Bank Transfer Day in early October was specifically cited as the trigger by 610,000 of those people.


The recent $25 billion settlement between the five largest banks and attorneys general in California and other states over mortgage fraud made big headlines, but activists note that it allocates a measly $2,000 to some people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. Occupy Bernal’s Buck Bagot said people need more protection from powerful banks. “Banks suckered people into this stuff, and they have made billions,” Bagot said. “We’re not saying people shouldn’t have to pay off the money they borrowed, but it took two to tango.”

After Pressure from Occupy Bernal, Wells Fargo execs fly across country to meet with Bernal Heights man

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People facing eviction and foreclosure often report hardly being given the time of day by banks and lenders. But yesterday, three top Wells Fargo executives flew to San Francisco to meet with Alberto Del Rio, a Bernal Heights resident facing foreclosure.

Del Rio’s parents purchased their home in 1973. The home was refinanced multiple times, he says “for a better life” for his family. The most recent refinance, in 2007, was a result of lenders convincing Del Rio’s mother that refinancing would be an easy to pay for some of her retirement. 

“It sounded really great because my mother had no monies for retirement. The loan officers told her pull out some cash and reinvest it so she could have a better retirement. They told her, ‘after two years, you’ll be able to refinance out of this,’” said Del Rio.

The loan she got was a pick-a-pay loan, one of the most notoriously predatory loans that banks offered in the years leading up to the 2008 crash.

After continued requests from Bernal resident Alberto Del Rio and support from that neighborhood’s foreclosure-focused branch of the Occupy movement, Del Rio was finally given the time of day- by top executives in the Wells Fargo home preservation department.

The executives, including Sharon Zuniga and Shawn Woods, who flew in from Wells Fargo’s headquarters in Texas, met with Del Rio Feb. 22 at the San Francisco offices of Consumer Credit Counseling Services for about an hour and a half.

Del Rio says they gave him three options: to move out of his home and convert it into rental units, allow a short sale on the house and accept $3,000 to move, or let foreclosure proceedings continue as planned.

“They flew a guy here all the way from Houston to try to bully him into giving up,” said Buck Bagot, an organizer with Occupy Bernal.

But the fact that they took the time to do that was a result of continued pressure from Del Rio and his supporters.

“It was a good thing,” said Del Rio.

“But it also felt like they were trying to pressure us into doing something they wanted us to do rather than what we wanted to do.”

Del Rio says he’s grateful to Occupy Bernal for supporting him thus far. And when the Wells Fargo executives pled with him to give up his home, he refused.

“I’ve made up my mind. I told them, if I’m going to lose the house I’m going to lose the house to a fight, to what I want.”

His perseverance worked to a degree; the bankers agreed to give Del Rio 90 days to “increase his income,” and then, potentially, work towards loan modification. Del Rio, an independent contractor, thinks its possible.

Meanwhile, Occupy Bernal will continue to struggle others who, often, are ignored by banks when they express their need for loan modification.

“Looking at everybody that I’ve been meeting that’s going through foreclosure and eviction, every single person is either a person of a minority group, a senior citizen, disabled, or someone else that would be easily influenced when approached with a better life, a better financial life. It can be seen in all their faces,” Del Rio told me.

Occupy Bernal has help postpone and prevent dozens of evictions, including that of Monica Kenney yesterday morning. They are planning a forum tonight on foreclosures to be held at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center.

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