Evictions

More than a memorial

Sasha Cuttler
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More than a memorial

When Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk were assassinated in their City Hall offices on Nov. 27, 1978, San Francisco changed in innumerable ways. Among those ways is the city lost two of the leading progressive advocates for renters and affordable housing ever elected here.

Today, as San Franciscans mark this tragedy with their annual memorial march, organizers and activists have broadened and elevated the event by enlisting the support of 20 community organizations now doing work to combat the eviction, gentrification, and affordable housing crises that are gripping the city.

“We wanted to make this even more than just a candlelight vigil,” David Waggoner, one of the organizers of the event, told the Guardian. “We want to use this time to remember Harvey and George’s legacy in really fighting for the underdog.”

He noted that attendance at the march has waxed and waned from year to year, but the coalition putting this one together promises to have a strong turnout this year because of the surging progressive activism around housing issues and the need to organize the community to save the soul of the city.

“There is very little to stop what’s happening with the rapid gentrification,” Waggoner said, but he also noted, “By building coalitions, the same way Harvey and George did, we can fight.”

“We’re not only honoring the history of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, but we’re honoring their legacy by making them relevant today,” Brian Basinger, head of the AIDS Housing Alliance/SF, told us. “The Milk March is going to be very exciting. We have over 20 community groups invited and helping us put it together.”

Basinger said the progressive activism will continue through the 25th annual World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, and that participants in both events will be asked to present their demands to the city for dealing with the AIDS and housing crises. That list will be presented at City Hall during a noon rally on Dec. 2.

He said that affordable housing issues are LGBT issues given that nearly 30 percent of the city’s homeless population identifies as LGBT, while that identification makes up just 15 percent of the overall city population.

“Those of us who are lucky enough to talk to the folks who knew Harvey remind us that it’s about coalition-building,” Basinger said, noting that many of Milk’s contemporaries are now being forced to leave the city by evictions or economic displacement.

One voice from that era who is still around and active is gay activist Cleve Jones, who was an intern in Milk’s office at the time of the assassination and wrote a poignant guest editorial in the Nov. 21 issue of the Bay Area Reporter about what Milk and Moscone advocated.

“They fought for renters, honored labor, and built coalitions to connect, not divide, us from each other,” Jones wrote. “They would, I’m sure, be pleased by the progress that has been achieved on some of the issues they cared about. But they would be alarmed by the growing chasm between rich and poor, they would be angered by the evictions of the elderly, disabled, and people with AIDS. They would be fighting to keep City College open and they would be outraged by the violence and despair experienced by so many in our city’s neighborhoods.”

Organizers of the event say they think this is just the kind of memorial that Milk and Moscone would have wanted.

“We want the housing crisis to be front and center,” Waggoner said. “We want this to be a time for people to connect with the legacy of Milk and Moscone in a very direct way.”

The march begins at 7pm in Milk Plaza, Castro and Market streets, and continues with a rally outside City Hall.

 

Activists organize, and some journalists chronicle, a progressive resurgence in SF

Sasha Cuttler
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Activists organize, and some journalists chronicle, a progressive resurgence in SF

While Mayor Ed Lee jets around the world, still too focused on fueling the economic fire that is gentrifying San Francisco and displacing its diverse population — and as the San Francisco Chronicle and other downtown boosters niggle on the margins of the city’s biggest issue — local activists and some media outlets are paying attention and pushing back.

The New York Times ran an excellent Sunday piece about the growing populist backlash here against Mayor Lee’s economic policies and his friends and benefactors in the tech industry, a story that the Santa Rosa Press Democrat also put on its front page, but which the Chronicle only briefly mentioned today on its business page in a short story wrapping all the high-end housing now coming online. Instead, on Sunday the Chron ran this pro-landlord garbage. 

Meanwhile, as we report in tomorrow’s edition of the Guardian, more than 20 local organizations have combined forces this year to organize and promote tomorrow’s (Wed/27) annual memorial march marking the 1978 assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk in City Hall, which will this year focus on their legacy of advocating for renters and keeping this city affordable by and welcoming of the working class and outsiders of all types.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: this is a struggle for the very soul of San Francisco, and it’s a struggle that we at the Guardian renew our commitment to with every issue we print. See you all on the streets tomorrow night starting at 7pm in Milk Plaza and Castro and Market.    

Eviction epidemic spurs legislative solutions

Michael Redmond
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Tenants, organizers and residents impacted by Ellis Act evictions packed the Board of Supervisors Chambers at San Francisco City Hall Nov. 14 for a hearing on eviction and displacement in San Francisco. As more and more residents face ousters only to be priced out, lawmakers and advocates are floating legislative fixes to try and reverse the trend before it reaches the soaring levels of the displacement epidemic that impacted the city during the first dot-com boom.

“It seems to me that we have a tale of two cities,” Sup. David Campos, who requested the hearing, said at the start of the discussion, held at the Board of Supervisors’ Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee. “We must act urgently to address this crisis, which I believe is a crisis,” he added. “We are fighting, I think, for the soul of San Francisco.”

Fred Brousseau of the San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office shared his recent analysis on eviction and displacement trends across the city.

Overall evictions in San Francisco rose from 1,242 to 1,716 over the past three years, he said, reflecting an increase of 38.2 percent. Ellis Act evictions rose by 169.8 percent in that same time frame.

Almost 42 percent of individuals impacted by eviction had some form of disability, Brousseau noted, while 49 percent had incomes at or below the federal poverty level. On the whole, a total of nearly 43 percent of San Francisco households are “rent-burdened,” a term that officially means devoting more than 30 percent of household income toward rent, the study found.

Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union emphasized that tenant buyouts, frequently offered in lieu of an eviction, are also driving displacement, although those transactions aren’t reflected in city records. “There are about three of them for every Ellis Act eviction,” he said. “When you consider them in combination with Ellis, the numbers are very dramatic.”

Throughout the afternoon, tenants shared their stories and fears about getting frozen out of San Francisco by eviction. “I’m looking at shopping carts, and I’m terrified,” one woman told supervisors during public comment. “You have to do something. It might not be enough for me right now, but you can’t do this to any more people.”

Campos is working with Assembly Member Tom Ammiano on a proposal to grant San Francisco the authority to place a moratorium on Ellis Act evictions. He’s also pursuing legislation that would create a mechanism at the San Francisco Rent Board to allow tenants to register formal complaints about landlord harassment and other kinds of pressure.

“I am eager to introduce a bill in January,” Ammiano noted. “One option might be a law that will allow the local jurisdictions, like San Francisco, to suspend the Ellis Act or establish a moratorium, because of the emergency housing situation. Another possibility is working to make sure that landlords are not skirting Ellis eviction requirements by improperly pressuring tenants to leave. We must do something, but we have to work together to make it successful.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Lee recently announced that he is working with Sen. Mark Leno on legislation to curb Ellis Act evictions by requiring additional permits or hearings before they proceed. They’re also contemplating floating more stringent regulations on the sale and resale of properties where tenants have been evicted under Ellis.

At the end of the day, it’s clear that housing advocates are gaining momentum as the spike in tenant ousters continues in pricey San Francisco, where rents are the highest in the nation.

 

Albany Bulb squatters lose in court and turn to direct action to resist evictions

Sasha Cuttler
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4
Albany Bulb squatters lose in court and turn to direct action to resist evictions

Yesterday marked a big day for Albany Bulb residents. The Bulb, a closed landfill turned homeless encampment, has been under the threat of eviction by the Albany City Council for the last month. 

After an afternoon in a San Francisco courtroom, Judge Charles Breyer of the US District Court for the Northern District of California denied a stay away order filed by the residents’ attorneys seeking to prevent an imminent eviction by the City of Albany. Later that day, after an Alban City Council meeting, residents and activists marched to the Bulb and set up a permanent occupation in protest of the impending eviction.

The stay away order was filed last week in order to prevent eviction during the winter. Osha Neumann, one of the residents’ attorneys and a longtime artist whose work is represented at the Bulb, said that it was unusually cruel to make the residents, some with severe disabilities and mental health issues, move off the Bulb without any homeless shelters or temporary housing available in Albany.

“They haven’t said what is the urgency or need to do it in the middle of winter,” Neumann said of the city, “It’s nonsense.”

Albany Housing Advocates was also a plaintiff, along with 10 of the Bulb residents in the lawsuit.  Julie Winklestein, the president of the AHA was in the court audience, said she hoped that the stay away order would be given: “We decided for a temporary restraining order to keep the conversation going.”

And while that conversation was put to a halt, another has started.

According to a press release issued by area activists and Bulb residents sent early this morning, “activists say they will be participating in trainings, hosting workshops, and planning more actions targeting the City of Albany, as well as the Sierra Club and Citizens for East Shore Parks, recreationalist organizations that are sponsoring the eviction.”

Based on information obtained in court documents, $570,000 was allocated to remove the Bulb residents, based on an Albany City Council decision made on October 21, with $171,000 spent on the cleanup of the campsites and the remainder spent on two portable trailers with bunk beds to serve as transitional housing for six months.

 Many of the campers, such as six-year resident Amber Lynn Whitson, believe that the transitional housing isn’t responsive enough for disabled people, as they believe it would not be open during the day.

“It’s ridiculous that they say they don’t know of any specific disabilities,” said Whitson about the city’s attempt provide transitional housing.

“If I’m not back there, I’m on the streets,” Kris Sullivan, an 18-month Bulb resident said about the encampment. “We’re safe back there.” 

Hundreds attend hearing to call for action on evictions

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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247

Tenants, organizers and residents impacted by Ellis Act evictions packed the Board of Supervisors Chambers at San Francisco City Hall today, Thu/14, for a hearing called by Sup. David Campos on eviction and displacement in San Francisco.

“It seems to me that we have a tale of two cities,” Campos said at the outset of the hearing, which was held by the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee. “The vast majority of individuals are struggling to stay in San Francisco. We must act urgently to address this crisis, which I believe is a crisis.” He added, “We are fighting, I think, for the soul of San Francisco.”

Tony Robles of Senior and Disability Action, who showed up at the hearing wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with pobre (the Spanish word for “poor”) printed across the front, expressed his frustration with the surge of evictions taking place in the booming economic climate. “We have been overlooked – the workers, communities of color … it’s almost as if we are an afterthought,” he said.

Fred Brousseau of the San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office delivered a report on his recent analysis of eviction and displacement trends across the city.

Overall evictions in San Francisco rose from 1,242 in 2010 to 1,716 in 2013, reflecting an increase of 38.2 percent, according to San Francisco Rent Board Data highlighted in Brousseau’s report. 

Ellis Act evictions in particular increased by 169.8 percent in that same time frame, he said, with the most recent data showing a total of 162 Ellis Act evictions over the twelve months ending in September 2013. That number reflects units evicted, not how many tenants were impacted.

Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union emphasized that tenant buyouts, frequently offered in lieu of an eviction, are also driving displacement even though these transactions aren’t reflected in city records.

“We need to get in control of these buyouts,” he said. “There are about three of them for every Ellis Act eviction. When you consider them in combination with Ellis, the numbers are very dramatic.”

Brousseau also showed a slide profiling the people who’ve been impacted by evictions citywide. Almost 42 percent had some form of disability, the data revealed, while 49 percent had incomes at or below the federal poverty level.

On the whole, Brousseau said, a total of nearly 43 percent of San Francisco households are “rent-burdened,” a term that officially means devoting more than 30 percent of household income to monthly rental payments.

Throughout the afternoon, tenants shared their stories and fears about getting frozen out of San Francisco by eviction. “I’m looking at shopping carts, and I’m terrified,” one woman told supervisors during public comment. “You have to do something. It might not be enough for me right now, but you can’t do this to any more people.”

Hene Kelly noted that elderly tenants are being disproportionately impacted by Ellis Act evictions. “They don’t have the reserves, they don’t have the jobs, and they don’t have the money to be able to move if they are evicted,” she said. Referencing landlords and speculators who are driving displacement, she added, “It makes me think of cabaret. Money, money, money, money, money makes the world go round.”

Campos noted that he is working with Assembly Member Tom Ammiano on a proposal to grant San Francisco the authority to place a moratorium on Ellis Act evictions.

He’s also working toward legislation that would create a mechanism at the San Francisco Rent Board allowing tenants to register complaints of harassment or other forms of pressure from landlords seeking to drive them out.

His proposal also envisions doubling the amount of relocation assistance that landlords would have to provide to tenants, in the case of no-fault evictions. He also mentioned the possibility of regulating buyouts, by requiring landlords to record these transactions with the rent board, and possibly prohibiting property owners from charging market-rate rent directly after completing a tenant buyout.

Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Lee recently announced that he is working with Sen. Mark Leno on legislation that is meant to reduce Ellis Act evictions. That proposal would require additional permits or hearings before an Ellis Act eviction could go forward, and place more stringent regulations on the sale and resale of properties where tenants have been evicted under the state law.

Just a couple weeks ago, a coalition of housing advocates proposed a sweeping package to turn the tide on evictions.

At the end of the day, it’s clear that housing advocates are gaining momentum as the spike in tenant ousters continues in pricey San Francisco, where rents are the highest in the nation.

“We’ve never been late on our rent,” noted Beverly Upton, executive director of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium, who is battling an Ellis Act eviction. “We’ve paid for every improvement ever done in 25 years. And now we have to leave.” She appealed for legislators to take action for the sake of the city’s future, asking, “Once the advocates and the organizers and the people who care are gone, who will be left in our city?”

Filipino group snubs mayor over evictions

Michael Redmond
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The board members of a local Filipino heritage organization, with ties to a high-profile eviction defense battle at San Francisco’s International Hotel in the late 1970s, have declined to an accept an award that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee had planned to extend to them as part of a Filipino American History celebration because they are angry about a growing trend of senior evictions.

In a written statement sent to the media by board member Tony Robles, the Manilatown Heritage Foundation explained that it couldn’t accept the award as long as “elders are being preyed upon, evicted and given a de facto death sentence thereof.”

The Manilatown Heritage Foundation board members were informed by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu that Lee had planned to recognize the I-Hotel as part of an annual cultural history celebration at City Hall, the statement noted.

“Part of the occasion was to honor the I-Hotel and its many tenants and activists for its contribution to Filipino American history,” board members explained.

In 1976, the I-Hotel was targeted for demolition, prompting a historic eviction defense battle led by housing activists who rallied to the defense of the impacted tenants. As a young attorney who worked with the Asian Law Caucus, Ed Lee was involved in that fight — as an activist defending tenants’ rights to stay. He frequently referred to this chapter of his personal history while running for mayor in 2011, to demonstrate his sensitivity to concerns about affordable housing.

But now that Lee is well into his mayoral term, a surge of evictions of low-income seniors is worsening on his watch. Tenant defense organizations such as Eviction Free San Francisco are showing up outside landlords’ homes and offices to protest eviction notices that threaten to push low-income seniors with few options out of the city.

“The I-Hotel fight was for dignity and it lived by the premise that housing is a human right,” the group’s statement explained. “The fight for the I-Hotel galvanized the community around the fight for affordable housing, particularly for seniors who sacrificed much and on whose shoulders we stand. The fight included tenants, elders, activists, artists and students who recognized that the real estate developers and financial interests were out of control—power unchecked.” 

Angered by senior evictions, Filipino American activists decline award

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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The board members of a local Filipino heritage organization, with ties to a high-profile eviction defense battle at San Francisco’s International Hotel in the late 1970s, have declined to an accept an award that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee had planned to extend to them as part of a Filipino American History celebration because they are angry about a growing trend of senior evictions.

In a written statement sent to media by board member Tony Robles, the Manilatown Heritage Foundation explained that it couldn’t accept the award as long as “elders are being preyed upon, evicted and given a de facto death sentence thereof.”

The Manilatown Heritage Foundation board members were informed by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu that Lee had planned to recognize the I-Hotel as part of an annual cultural history celebration at City Hall, the statement noted. “Part of the occasion was to honor the I-Hotel and its many tenants and activists for its contribution to Filipino American history,” board members explained.

In 1976, the I-Hotel was targeted for demolition, prompting an historic eviction defense battle led by housing activists who rallied to the defense of the impacted tenants. A significant fixture in what was once a predominantly Filipino neighborhood known as Manilatown, the I-Hotel housed 196 tenants, predominantly low-income Filipino immigrants. 

“The I-Hotel fight was for dignity and it lived by the premise that housing is a human right,” Manilatown Heritage Foundation members explained in the written statement. “The fight for the I-Hotel galvanized the community around the fight for affordable housing, particularly for seniors—who sacrificed much and on whose shoulders we stand. The fight included tenants, elders, activists, artists and students who recognized that the real estate developers and financial interests were out of control—power unchecked.” 

The fight dragged on, at one point more than two thousand people surrounded the building to blockade the doors in an effort to prevent an eviction from going forward. The battle over the I-Hotel also brought on a famous San Francisco episode in which then-Sheriff Richard Hongisto served five days in his own jail for refusing to carry out the eviction order. In the end, the tenants were finally ousted. But the epic battle ultimately helped to produce a different outcome, many years later: The property became the site of low-cost senior housing, complete with a commemorative display in the interior documenting the dramatic I-Hotel fight.

As a young attorney who worked with the Asian Law Caucus, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was involved in that fight – as an activist defending tenants’ rights to stay. He frequently referred to this chapter of his personal history while running for mayor in 2011, to demonstrate his sensitivity to concerns about affordable housing.

But now that Lee is well into his mayoral term, a surge of evictions of low-income seniors is worsening on his watch. Tenant defense organizations such as Eviction Free San Francisco are showing up outside landlords’ homes and offices to protest eviction notices that threaten to push low-income seniors with few options out of the city. Some evictions have caught the attention of mainstream media, such as the ouster of elderly Chinatown couple Gum Gee Lee and Poor Heung Lee and their disabled daughter, Shiuman Lee.

Some advocates have proposed legislative solutions; meanwhile, the situation has evidently become so criticial that even city’s Human Services Agency is seeking outside assistance to provide eviction prevention services for elderly and disabled tenants facing Ellis Act evictions.

And today, the board of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation drew a line in the sand to send Lee a clear message by refusing to accept the honor of recognition in the current housing climate. So far, mayoral spokesperson Christine Falvey has not responded to the Bay Guardian’s request for comment in response to the Manilatown Heritage Foundation’s statement.

“Given the current state of San Francisco housing by forces out to make a killing by killing our communities, we as the torch bearers of the I-Hotel struggle and in the memory of its displaced elders and advocates Al Robles, Bill Sorro, Felix Ayson, Wahat Tampao and others, cannot, in good consciousness, accept any honor or award while elders are being preyed upon, evicted and given a de facto death sentence thereof. And it doesn’t matter if the honor is bestowed by Mayor Lee, President Obama or the pope. We have to say no.”

Here’s the full statement from the Manilatown Heritage Foundation. Here’s an historical essay about the I-Hotel from Shaping San Francisco’s digital archive at FoundSF.org.

Fight back to save your home

Sasha Cuttler
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36

By Tommi Avicolli Mecca and Fred Sherburn-Zimmer

OPINION The good news from San Francisco these days is that tenants are fighting back in a big way to save their homes. Speculators and investors intent on making a killing in a sizzling real estate market are not always having an easy time getting rid of those who stand between them and obscene profits.

While tenant resistance has become a hot ticket item in the local mainstream media, legislators are introducing a slew of new laws aimed at curbing speculation and the housing crisis. Even the Mayor’s Office has gotten into the act, intervening in at least two recent high-profile evictions: the Lee family and 1049 Market.

A low-income elderly Chinese couple and their disabled daughter, the Lee family chose to stay and fight when the Sheriff’s Department gave them notice that it was coming to lock them out after an Ellis Act eviction. Hundreds showed up in support, with a large number of people willing to block the door and risk arrest. TV went live from the protest. Within no time at all, the Mayor’s Office stepped in to negotiate with the landlord for more time so that the Lees could find an affordable place to live. While the Lee family didn’t ultimately get to stay, their struggle brought public attention to what is happening here in San Francisco.

When the tenants in the artist live/work lofts at 1049 Market received letters from their new landlord saying that the city was forcing him to evict them because of an outstanding code violation from 2007 that he inherited when he bought the building, they didn’t take it lying down. It wasn’t true that the city was making him evict anyone. He had the option to bring the building up to code, something he found “economically infeasible.”

Tenants from 1049 Market contacted Housing Rights Committee where we work, and we helped them organize. We were afraid the landlord’s other two buildings on the same block might meet the same fate. The story made the cover of the San Francisco Examiner about a week later.

Suddenly, the Department of Building Inspection announced that it had discretion in terms of the code violations, especially the costliest of them. DBI’s deputy director sent the notice of violation back to its staff for review. The city began meeting with the landlord to try and prevent the tenants from being evicted.

Negotiations are still in progress, but the fact that the City has stepped in so aggressively on the side of the tenants is a major victory. Of course, it’s due to tenants fighting back when so many people told them they couldn’t win.

Jeremy Mykaels, a gay disabled man who’s lived in the Castro for the past 40 years and in his current apartment for almost 18, decided not to move when new owners (investors from Atherton and Union City) threatened him with an Ellis eviction. They went through with it after he turned down a buyout.

Eviction Free San Francisco, a direct action group, organized protests in SF, Atherton, and Union City. Attorney Steve Collier of Tenderloin Housing Clinic challenged the eviction in court. A judge just threw out the eviction on a technicality. The jury is out on whether the investors will start the process all over again. Fight back. It could save your home. 

Tommi Avicolli Mecca and Fred Sherburn-Zimmer work at the Housing Rights Committee.

Shit happened (Oct. 23-29)

Sasha Cuttler
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Shit happened (Oct. 23-29)

Tenant proposals and Guardian forum address eviction crisis

Tenant advocates have proposed a sweeping set of legislative proposals to address what they’re calling the “eviction epidemic” that has hit San Francisco, seeking to slow the rapid displacement of tenants by real estate speculators with changes to land use, building, rent control, and other city codes.

“In essence, it’s a comprehensive agenda to restrict the speculation on rental units,” Chinatown Community Development Center Policy Director Gen Fujioka told the Guardian. “We can’t directly regulate the Ellis Act [the state law allowing property owners to evict tenants and take their apartments off the rental market], but we’re asking the city to do everything but that.”

The package was announced Oct. 24 on the steps of City Hall by representatives of CCDC, San Francisco Tenants Union, Housing Rights Committee of SF, Causa Justa-Just Cause, Tenderloin Housing Clinic, UNITE HERE Local 2, Community Tenants Association, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

“San Francisco is falling into one of the deepest and most severe eviction crises in 40 years,” SFTU Director Ted Gullicksen said. “It is bad now and is going to get worse unless the city acts.”

The announcement came a day after the Lee family — an elderly couple on Social Security who care for their disabled daughter — was finally Ellis Act evicted from its longtime Chinatown home after headline-grabbing activism by CCDC and other groups had twice turned away deputies and persuaded the Mayor’s Office to intervene with the landlord.

But Mayor Ed Lee has been mum — his office ignored our repeated requests for comment — on the worsening eviction crisis, the tenant groups’ proposals, and the still-unresolved fate of the Lees, who are temporarily holed up in a hotel and still hoping to find permanent housing they can afford.

The package proposed by tenant advocates includes: require those converting rental units into tenancies-in-common to get a conditional use permit and bring the building into compliance with current codes (to discourage speculation and flipping buildings); regulate TIC agreements to discourage Ellis Act abuse; increase required payments to evicted tenants and improve city assistance to those displaced by eviction; require more reporting on the status of units cleared with the Ellis Act by their owners; investigate and prosecute Ellis Act fraud (units are often secretly re-rented at market rates after supposedly being removed from the market); increase inspections of construction on buildings with tenants (to prevent landlords from pressuring them to move); prohibit the demolition, mergers, or conversions of rental units that have been cleared of tenants using no-fault evictions in the last 10 years (Sup. John Avalos has already introduced this legislation).

“The evidence is clear. We are facing not only an eviction crisis but also a crisis associated with the loss of affordable rental housing across the city. Speculative investments in housing has resulted in the loss of thousands affordable apartments through conversions and demolitions. And the trend points to the situation becoming much worse,” the coalition wrote in a public statement proposing the reforms.

Evictions have reached their highest level since the height of the last dot-com boom in 1999-2000, with 1,934 evictions filed in San Francisco in fiscal year 2012-13, and the rate has picked up since then. The Sheriff’s Department sometimes does three evictions per day, last year carrying out 998 court-ordered evictions, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told us, arguing for an expansion of city services to the displaced.

At “Housing for Whom?” a community forum the Guardian hosted Oct. 23 in the LGBT Center, panelists and audience members talked about the urgent need to protect and expand affordable housing in the city. They say the current eviction epidemic is being compounded by buyouts, demolitions, and the failure of developers to build below-market-rate units.

“We’re bleeding affordable housing units now,” Fred Sherburn-Zimmer of Housing Right Committee said last night, noting the steadily declining percentage of housing in the city that is affordable to current city residents since rent control was approved by voters in 1979. “We took out more housing than we’ve built since then.”

Peter Cohen of the Council of Community Housing Organizations actually quantified the problem, citing studies showing that only 15 percent of San Franciscans can afford the rents and home prices of new housing units coming online. He said the housing isn’t being built for current city residents: “It’s a demand derived from a market calculation.”

Cohen said the city’s inclusionary housing laws that he helped write more than a decade ago were intended to encourage developers to actually build below-market-rate units in their projects, but almost all of them choose to pay the in-lieu fee instead, letting the city find ways to build the affordable housing and thereby delaying construction by years.

“It was not about writing checks,” Cohen said. “It was about building affordable units.”

Discussion at the forum began with a debate about the waterfront luxury condo project proposed for 8 Washington St., which either Props. B or C would allow the developer to build. Project opponent Jon Golinger squared off against proponent Tim Colen, who argued that the $11 million that the developer is contributing to the city’s affordable housing fund is an acceptable tradeoff.

But Sherburn-Zimmer said the developer should be held to a far higher standard given the obscene profits that he’ll be making from waterfront property that includes a city-owned seawall lot. “Public land needs to be used for the public good.”

Longtime progressive activist Ernestine Weiss sat in the front row during the forum, blasting Colen and his Prop. B as a deceptive land grab and arguing that San Francisco’s much ballyhooed rent control law was a loophole-ridden compromise that should be strengthened to prevent rents from jumping to market rate when a master tenant moves out, and to limit rent increases that exceed wage increases (rent can now rise 1.9 percent annually on rent controlled apartment).

“That’s baloney that it’s rent control!” she told the crowd. (Steven T. Jones)

Students fight suspensions targeting young people of color

Sagging pants, hats worn indoors, or having a really bad day — the list of infractions that can get a student suspended from a San Francisco Unified School District school sounds like the daily life of a teenager. The technical term for it is “willful defiance,” and there are so many suspensions made in its name that a student movement has risen up against it.

The punishment is the first step to derailing a child’s education, opponents said.

Student activists recognize the familiar path from suspensions to the streets to prisons, and they took to the streets Oct. 22 to push the SFUSD to change its ways. Around 20 or so students and their mentors marched up to City Hall and into the Board of Education to demand a stop of suspensions over willful defiance.

A quarter of all suspensions in SFUSD for the 2011-12 school year were made for “disruption or defiance,” according to the California Department of Education. Half of all suspensions in the state were for defiance.

When a student is willfully defiant and suspended, it’s seen as a downward spiral as students are pushed out of school and onto the streets, edging that much closer to a life of crime.

“What do we want? COLLEGE! What are we gonna do? WORK HARD!” the students shouted as they marched to the Board of Education’s meeting room, on Franklin Street.

They were dressed in graduation gowns of many colors, signs raised high. They smiled and danced and the mood was infectious. One driver drove by, honked and said “Yes, alright!” Assorted passersby of all ethnicities cheered on the group. The students were from 100% College Prep Institute, a Bayview tutoring and mentoring group founded in 1999 aiming to educate students of color in San Francisco. Their battle is a tough one. Though African American students make up only 10 percent of SFUSD students, they accounted for 46 percent of suspensions in 2012, according to SFUSD data. Latinos made up the next largest group, at 30 percent. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Techies to NSA: Stop spying on us!

Thousands of privacy and civil liberties activists, including many from the Bay Area, headed to Washington DC for an Oct. 26 rally calling for surveillance legislation reform, in response to National Security Agency spying programs. It was organized by more than 100 groups that have joined together as part of the Stop Watching Us coalition. The group has launched an online petition opposing NSA spying, and planned to deliver about 500,000 signatures to Congress. Many of the key drivers behind Stop Watching Us, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Mozilla, are based in San Francisco. (Rebecca Bowe)

Tenant groups propose sweeping package to ease the “eviction epidemic”

Sasha Cuttler
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Tenant advocates today proposed a sweeping set of legislative proposals to address what they’re calling the “eviction epidemic” that has hit San Francisco, seeking to slow the rapid displacement of tenants by real estate speculators with changes to land use, building, rent control, and other city codes.

“In essence, it’s a comprehensive agenda to restrict the speculation on rental units,” Chinatown Community Development Center Policy Director Gen Fujioka told the Guardian. “We can’t directly regulate the Ellis Act [the state law allowing property owners to evict tenants and take their apartments off the rental market], but we’re asking the city to do everything but that.”

The package was announced this morning on the steps of City Hall by representatives of CCDC, San Francisco Tenants Union, Housing Rights Committee of SF, Causa Justa-Just Cause, Tenderloin Housing Clinic, UNITE HERE Local 2, Community Tenants Association, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

“San Francisco is falling into one of the deepest and most severe eviction crises in 40 years,” SFTU Director Ted Gullicksen said. “It is bad now and is going to get worse unless the city acts.”

The package includes: require those converting rental units into tenancies-in-common to get a conditional use permit and bring the building into compliance with current codes (to discourage speculation and flipping buildings); regulate TIC agreements to discourage Ellis Act abuse; increase required payments to evicted tenants and improve city assistance to those displaced by eviction; require more reporting on the status of units cleared with the Ellis Act by their owners; investigate and prosecute Ellis Act fraud (units are often secretly re-rented at market rates after supposedly being removed from the market); increase inspections of construction on buildings with tenants (to prevent landlords from pressuring them to move); prohibit the demolition, mergers, or conversions of rental units that have been cleared of tenants using no-fault evictions in the last 10 years (Sup. John Avalos has already introduced this legislation).

“The evidence is clear. We are facing not only an eviction crisis but also a crisis associated with the loss of affordable rental housing across the city. Speculative investments in housing has resulted in the loss of thousands affordable apartments through conversions and demolitions. And the trend points to the situation becoming much worse,” the coalition wrote in a public statement proposing the reforms.

Evictions have reached their high level since the height of the last dot-com boom in 1999-2000, with 1,934 evictions filed in San Francisco in fiscal year 2012-13, and the rate has picked up since then. The Sheriff’s Department sometimes does three evictions per day, last year carrying out 998 court-ordered evictions, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told us, arguing for an expansion of city services to the displaced.

At “Housing for Whom?” a community forum the Guardian hosted last night in the LGBT Center, panelists and audience member talked about the urgent need to protect and expand affordable housing in the city. They say the current eviction epidemic is being compounded by buyouts, demolitions, and the failure of developers to build below-market-rate units.  

“We’re bleeding affordable housing units now,” Fred Sherburn-Zimmer of Housing Right Committee said last night, noting the steadily declining percentage of housing in the city that is affordable to current city residents since rent control was approved by voters in 1979. “We took out more housing than we’ve built since then.”

Peter Cohen of the Council of Community Housing Organizations actually quantified the problem, citing studies showing that only 15 percent of San Franciscans can afford the rents and home prices of new housing units coming online. He said the housing isn’t being built for current city residents: “It’s a demand derived from a market calculation.”

Cohen said the city’s inclusionary housing laws that he helped write more than a decade ago were intended to encourage developers to actually build below-market-rate units in their projects, but almost all of them choose to pay the in-lieu fee instead, letting the city find ways to build the housing and thereby delaying construction by years.

“It was not about writing checks,” Cohen said. “It was about building affordable units.”

Last night’s discussion began with a debate about the waterfront luxury condo project proposed for 8 Washington Street, which either Props. B or C would allow the developer to build. Project opponent Jon Golinger squared off against proponent Tim Colen, who argued that the $11 million that the developer is contributing to the city’s afforable housing fund is an acceptable tradeoff.

But Sherburn-Zimmer said the developer should be held to a far higher standard given the obscence profits that he’ll be making from waterfront property that includes a city-owned seawall lot. “Public land needs to be used for the public good.”

Longtime progressive activist Ernestine Weiss sat in the front row during the forum, blasting Colen and his Prop. B as a deceptive land grab and arguing that San Francisco’s much ballyhooed rent control law was a loophole-ridden compromise that should be strengthened to prevent rents from jumping to market rate when a master tenant moves out, and to limit rent increases that exceed wage increases (rent can now rise 1.9 percent annually on rent controlled apartment.

“That’s baloney that it’s rent control!” she told the crowd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lee family quietly leaves home as activists pledge to push reforms

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Lee family quietly leaves home as activists pledge to push reforms

Members of Lee family quietly moved out of their longtime home in Chinatown last night, a day before their latest scheduled Ellis Act eviction, which had been postponed twice before thanks to headline-grabbing progressive activism that turned away deputies and persuaded the Mayor’s Office to intervene with the landlord.

But this time, the Mayor’s Office has been mum about the case (officials haven’t responded to our requests for comment) after failing to find a solution to the Lees – an elderly couple using Social Security to care their disabled 48-year-old daughter – still unresolved situation. With help from the Asian Law Caucus and Chinatown Community Development Center, the Lees moved their belongings into storage while they are staying in a hotel.

“The family is staying at a hotel in the city for the next few days as they try to finalize on a couple of potential rental units here. They’ll be paying over twice the amount that they had been paying for their rent-controlled unit. Their SSI won’t be enough to make ends meet, and so they will be spending down their relocation compensation, which may be depleted in the next several months,” Asian Law Caucus attorney Omar Calimbas told us. “Hopefully, the family will be able to find subsidized housing by then, or they will be in a precarious state of affairs again.”

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told us yesterday that he’s been waiting for word from the Mayor’s Office and hoping to avoid this evicting the family. “We’re duty bound. It’s a court order,” Mirkarimi said of his eviction obligation. “The eviction is on the books, but we’ve been expecting an alternative plan by the Mayor’s Office after he intervened in this case.”

The San Francisco Examiner, which had earlier given splashy credit to Mayor Ed Lee for stalling the Lee family’s eviction – to the irritation of some activists that probably deserve more credit than anyone in the Mayor’s Office – had the only journalist on the scene with the Lees last night, but the paper didn’t have any comments or updates from the Mayor’s Office.

Weeks before Mayor’s Lee’s headline-grabbing Sept. 25 intervention in the Lee case, Mirkarimi had his Eviction Assistance Unit contact the Lees and try to help them avoid being turned out with no place to go. But in a city where his office performs around 1,000 evictions per year – it executed 998 court-ordered evictions last year — the single full-time staffer in that office is overwhelmed.

“We need more staff to assist when it gets to this point,” Mirkarimi told us. But his budget request last year to add another position to the unit was denied by the Mayor’s Office and Board of Supervisors, a request that Mirkarimi renewed in a Sept. 30 letter to Mayor Lee.

“When there is a determination, our EAU attempts to support individuals and families facing eviction, not just Ellis Act evictions, but all evictions. This unit is comprised of one full time deputy sheriff and the partial time of another deputy.  Based on [the current eviction] trend, our EAU staffing is insufficient and ill-equipped to assist qualified individuals and families who may be at risk of becoming homeless,” Mirkarimi wrote. “With renewed focus on the consequences of evictions in San Francisco, I return to our FY 2013-2014 budget request to enhance our EAU with one full time clinical outreach worker.”

Meanwhile, the activists say they won’t wait for the next budget cycle or rely on the Sheriff’s Department for help with imminent evictions. They say that they plan to propose a package of reforms for dealing with the eviction crisis as soon as this week.

“Overall, the several weeks of reprieve from the eviction that were won after an incredible display of community solidarity with the Lees were very important in giving them time to find a temporary fix,” Calimbas told us. “Stay tuned in the next day or so for the next move by a growing coalition of community organizations, housing advocates and labor in pushing for a comprehensive package of legislative reform to curb the outbreak of displacement-based speculation.”

Guardian Staff Writer Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez contributed to this report.

 

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 23

An Evening with the Authors of DOLLAROCRACY First Congressional Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berk. 7:30-9:30pm, $15. John Nichols and Robert McChesney will discuss their new book, DOLLAROCRACY: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America. The authors will address issues such as the forces they believe have robbed national elections of their meaning, the far-reaching and drastic consequences of these developments for the American democratic process, and proposed solutions.

 

THURSDAY 24

8 Washington Debate First Unitarian Universalist Society, Martin Luther King Room, 1187 Franklin, SF. Doloresmp@gmail.com. 7-9pm, free. Jon Golinger, campaign manager of No Wall on the Waterfront, will debate Alec Bash, supporter of the 8 Washington project. The luxury waterfront development is the subject of Ballot Propositions B and C, which will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot. Golinger is an attorney and environmental activist; Bash is a former city planner. The San Francisco chapters of Progressive Democrats of America and Unitarian Universalists for Peace are sponsors of this event.

 

FRIDAY 25

 

MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. www.misleadmovie.com 2-5pm, FREE. Screening of the new feature-length documentary directed by Tamara Rubin, an Oregon mother whose sons were poisoned by lead. The film follows Rubin as she travels around the country meeting with experts and other parents of poisoned children. It showcases the on-the-ground effects of the lead-poisoning epidemic and investigates how lead poisoning was ever allowed to become such a serious problem in the US. Free lead check swabs will be given to all attendees and the event will include an educational session on how to properly use the swabs. SATURDAY 26 Our Mission: No Eviction! Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF. tinyurl.com/noevict. 8pm, $10–$35. An evening of art, performances, and tributes to Mission artists Rene Yañez and Yolanda Lopez. All proceeds will go to the artists’ legal expenses in fighting their eviction from the Mission home where they have lived for thirty-five years. Their plight is part of a rash of evictions of artists and working class communities from San Francisco in recent years, especially in the Mission District. Yañez and Lopez are pillars in the San Francisco arts community, and rallying around them is an opportunity to protest the larger issue of evictions throughout San Francisco.

Guardian forum examines who San Francisco is building housing for

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Our original intention for “Housing for Whom?” — a Bay Guardian community forum tomorrrow night (Wed/23) at the LGBT Center — was to look at the hottest items on an otherwise lackluster fall election: Propositions B and C, which would allow a controversial waterfront luxury condo project to be build at 8 Washington St.

So we booked key proponents on the each side the measure: Jon Golinger, president of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers and a key opponent of the project; and Tim Colen of the Housing Action Coalition, one of three proponents of Prop. B. We’re excited to hear what they have to say and to discuss the measures.

But in the weeks since then, there’s been explosion of public concern over the related issues of gentrification and evictions, accompanied by a renewal of progressive activism that has scored some notable victories, all of its set against a skylight of construction cranes building a glut of high-end housing in Upper Market and other areas.

So we’ve decided to broaden our discussion to look at the implications of the city’s current housing and economic development policies, examining what the San Francisco of the the future will look like if we continue on our current course and what can be done to control our destiny.

To help guide that discussion, our panel will also include Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, an activist with the Housing Rights Committee who recently went through her own personal eviction battle; and Peter Cohen of the Council of Community Housing Organization, who will offer an overview of the housing now being built and the challenges in meeting the needs of current city residents.

We’ll also be turning to you, Guardian readers, for your input and observations. And to help with that, the crowd will include veterans of the successful recent campaign to prevent high-ending clothing chain Jack Spade from opening a store in the Mission and the struggles to prevent the Lee family eviction and a mass eviction on Market Street that would be the biggest single eviction since the I Hotel.

Moderating the discussion will be yours truly, Editor Steven T. Jones, and News Editor Rebecca Bowe. So come join us from 6-8pm at on the fourth floor of the LGBT Center, 1800 Market St.   

The Performant: Cheers for fears

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The Performant: Cheers for fears

If you consume the news at all you’ll find a lot to be afraid of that seems endemic to the modern age: swine flu, restless leg syndrome, Ellis Act evictions, terrorist sleeper cells, compromised data privacy, zombie attacks. But despite its almost constant presence in our lives, this kind of fear merely creates a continuous low-grade malaise, an emotional state which appears to benefit only the evolution of pharmaceutical companies and the self-help book publishing trade.

So it’s no wonder that in our search for “real” sensation, we often turn towards a more primal state of fear. The sort of fear that compels us to skydive out of airplanes, ride roller coasters, and surf giant waves, activities designed to trigger that survivalist fight or flight instinct that we then harness for our own adrenaline-generating, sensation-seeking purposes. The kind of fear that compels us to visit that most seasonal of attractions: the haunted house.

There are haunted houses designed to make you laugh and haunted houses designed to make you scream, and ideally a bit of each, a giddy state of being which San Leandro’s Fear Overload makes a considered effort to provide.

Conveniently located just steps away from the Bayfair BART, in an innocuously suburban shopping center, the R-rated Fear Overload contains two separate labyrinths for its patrons to struggle through: “Ward 9” (a supposed asylum for the criminally insane), and the macabre Abusement Park. Both are equally blood-drenched and disorienting, and are welcome throwbacks to the glory days of haunted houses where the highest-tech prop on display was a guillotine, and the real scares came from the all-too human element lurking in the shadows ready to pounce. Let’s just say ironic detachment won’t get you very far in Fear Overload, and thank goodness for that.

At the door to Ward 9, my companion T and I are handed an almost completely useless flashlight and bid a hearty farewell, the door slamming behind us like a butcher’s cleaver. To navigate the dark and claustrophobically narrow corridors with a pencil-thin beam of intermittent light proves both unnerving and hilarious, and as each twist of the path leads to room after room of blood-splattered furniture, swinging doors and rattling cupboards, rotting corpses with dramatically gory headwounds and severed limbs, dungeon walls lined with bodies in straitjackets, oh, and living monsters who delight in leaping out of random corners our anticipation grows into a kind of delightful dread.

I’ve chosen the right partner for this foray into fear. T’s suspension of disbelief is willing and open, her cool quotient, like mine, hovers close to zero, and she is more than happy to let me hold the flashlight, which I figure could at least serve as a makeshift bludgeon should it come to that. In the FAQ comes the promise that the actors won’t touch you, at least not intentionally, but there’s no promise that won’t get in your face, and we wind up getting pretty close and personal with a lot of great makeup jobs and mask designs. Their timing, I have to say, is mostly impeccable. We scream every time.

From a theatrical standpoint, both haunted “houses” are a scenic designer’s wet dream, full of intricately-conceptualized nooks and crannies filled with scenes of extreme splatter gore. In Ward 9 we find the disturbingly shambolic nursery and the “morgue” inhabited by a double-jointed creature that slithers as much as crawls into our path to be especially evocative, and in the Abusement Park, our theatre-geek hearts are filled with admiration for the atmospheric boiler room and the horrifyingly stark and bloody women’s room, which also proves the hardest room to find our way out of (tip: ask a monster for help).

Sure, there’s not a lot of character development per se, or at least not enough to compel us to stick around and hunt for backstory, but as the protagonists of our own survival story, we make it through to the final xit relatively intact, which is really the only storyline that matters when confronting fear as a means of accessing fun.

Through Nov. 2, $19.50-35

Fear Overload Scream Park

Bayfair Center

15555 East 14th St., San Leandro

(510) 730-2221

www.fearoverload.com

Commodifying urban real estate hurts the culture of big cities

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Commodifying urban real estate hurts the culture of big cities

When urban real estate is turned into merely a commodity — or just another safe place for the wealthy to park their cash in uncertain economic times, while also providing pied-a-terres in which to crash a few times a year — it tears at the social fabric of big cities such as San Francisco, New York City, and London.

That’s been the message in some excellent, widely circulated articles in the last week or so — including David Byrne’s Guardian article about New York City and “London’s Great Exodus” in Sunday’s NY Times — and it’s one that San Franciscans should be thinking about as we work through current eviction and gentrification battles and vote on the 8 Washington project through Props. B&C in a few weeks.

It’s also something that we’ll be discussing at Housing for Whom?, a free community forum that the Guardian is sponsoring on Oct. 23 from 6-8pm at the LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street, featuring opponents and proponents of those measures along with other activists and experts.

While both London and New York City may be ahead of the curve in letting capitalists and the real estate market drive away creative types and destroy what once made those cities great, San Francisco isn’t far behind, particularly given its current housing and economic development policies.

Another striking article on the issue comes from San Francisco Urban Research Association Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf, who wrote an article published in The Atlantic on Monday. It repeats his previous calls for San Francisco to build 5,000 new housing units per year and opens with a line many of us have uttered: “My friends keep moving to Oakland.”

But Metcalf (who hasn’t yet returned my calls for comment) also takes this familiar observation and his promotion of market rate housing a step further, basically calling for San Francisco and Oakland to start acting as one city: Rich people in SF, cool people and workers in Oakland, ala Brooklyn and Manhattan.

“If we were one city, San Francisco could spend some of its incredible wealth on the things Oakland needs, like hiring more cops and teachers, not to mention more transit connections between the two cities,” Metcalf writes. “This is not an argument for annexation but a call to think about the answers to our problems from a regional perspective. We can’t solve affordable housing or transit access within the limits of any one city.”

Actually, I’d argue that we can and should solve these problems within our borders rather than just ceding San Francisco to the wealthy. Yes, regional planning is good, and yes, there are things that San Francisco can do for Oakland (perhaps starting with not poaching it professional basketball team).

But regionalism isn’t the same thing as plutocracy — and San Francisco is still worth fighting for rather than just letting it go to the highest bidders.

 

Watch this depressing time-lapse visualization of Ellis Act evictions

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A series of red circles explodes on the screen, each representing another rental unit where tenants were driven out by an eviction through no fault of their own.

With a new time-lapse visualization of San Francisco Rent Board data spanning from 1997 to August of 2013, viewers can instantly grasp the cumulative impact of Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco.

It was created by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a newly hatched volunteer effort started to raise awareness about the rising trend of displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Watch it here.

A landlord doesn’t need just cause to oust a tenant under the Ellis Act; the law permits a property owner to stop renting units, evict all tenants, and sell the building for another purpose. The recent wave of tech startups and resulting influx of highly paid employees has fueled a spike in Ellis Act evictions as demand for housing has increased.

Working in collaboration with the San Francisco Tenant’s Union, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project volunteer Erin McElroy teamed up with core volunteers Olivia Jackson, Jennifer Fieber and a team of several others to analyze and map data from the San Francisco Rent Board.

The Ellis Act visualization is the first of several planned by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. The size of the circles that pop concurrently with each date corresponds with the number of units displaced.

“We started it with the idea of making a comprehensive map that would show things that weren’t being documented by the Rent Board,” McElroy explained. To that end, the project team has spearheaded a survey to gather data on tenant buyouts, harassment by landlords, rent increases, and bogus attempts to use the Ellis Act to carry out an eviction. The survey is available in Spanish and English, with a Chinese version coming soon. 

“We also want to map where people relocate to, in order to display the current and pending gentrification of other areas – particularly the East Bay,” she added.

In the next few weeks, the team will release maps based on data showing owner move-in evictions and foreclosures.

“We don’t have funding or anything like that,” McElroy explained, but the Tenants Union has allowed them use of its office space for meetings. The effort took several months of research and programming, and the result is a story of the displacement of 3,705 housing units over the course of 16 years – all of which can be absorbed a matter of minutes.

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