Henry Alvarez Archives — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Privatization of public housing

Michael Redmond

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April 8, 2014

news@sfbg.com

Like so many San Franciscans, Sabrina Carter is getting evicted.

The mother of three says that if she loses her home in the Western Addition, she’ll have nowhere to go. It’s been a tough, four-year battle against her landlord — a St. Louis-based development company called McCormack Baron — and its law firm, Bornstein & Bornstein. That’s the same law firm that gained notoriety for holding an “eviction boot camp” last November to teach landlords how to do Ellis Act evictions and sweep tenants out of rent-controlled housing.

But Carter’s story isn’t your typical Ellis eviction. Plaza East, where she lives, is a public housing project. Public housing residents throughout the country are subject to the “one-strike and you’re out” rule. If residents get one strike — any misdemeanor or felony arrest — they get an eviction notice. In Carter’s case, her 16-year-old was arrested. He was cleared of all charges — but Carter says McCormack Baron still wouldn’t accept her rent payment and wouldn’t respond to her questions.

“I was never informed of my status,” she said.

That is, until her son was arrested again, and Carter found herself going up against Bornstein & Bornstein. She agreed to sign a document stipulating that her eviction would be called off unless her son entered Plaza East property (he did). It was that or homelessness, said Carter, who also has two younger sons.

“They criminalized my son so they could evict my family,” Carter said.

McCormack Baron and Bornstein & Bornstein both declined to comment.

On March 12, Carter and a band of supporters were singing as they ascended City Hall’s grand staircase to Mayor Ed Lee’s office.

“We’re asking the mayor to call this eviction off. Another black family cannot be forced out of this city,” Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, co-founder of Poor Magazine, said at the protest.

Nearly half of San Francisco’s public housing residents are African American, according to a 2009 census from the city’s African American Out-Migration Task Force. These public housing residents represent a significant portion of San Francisco’s remaining African American population, roughly 65 percent.

Carter’s eviction was postponed, but it raises an important question: Why is a public housing resident facing off with private real estate developers and lawyers in the first place?

PUBLIC HOUSING, PRIVATE INTERESTS

Plaza East is one of five San Francisco public housing properties that was privatized under HOPE VI, a federal program that administers grants to demolish and rebuild physically distressed public housing.

The modernized buildings often have fewer public housing units than the ones they replaced, with private developers becoming their managers. San Francisco’s take on HOPE VI, called HOPE SF, is demolishing, rebuilding, and privatizing eight public housing sites with a similar process.

US Department Housing and Urban Development is rolling out a new program to privatize public housing. The San Francisco Housing Authority is one of 340 housing projects in the nation to be chosen for the competitive program. The city is now starting to implement the Rental Assistance Demonstration program. When it’s done, 75 percent of the city’s public housing properties will be privatized.

Under RAD, developers will team up with nonprofits and architectural firms to take over managing public housing from the Housing Authority. RAD is a federal program meant to address a nationwide crisis in public housing funding. Locally, the effort to implement the program has been spurred by the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

MOHCD Director Olson Lee has described RAD in a report as “a game-changer for San Francisco’s public-housing residents and for [Mayor] Lee’s re-envisioning plan for public housing.” Later, Lee told us, “We have 10,000 residents in these buildings and they deserve better housing. It’s putting nearly $200 million in repairs into these buildings, which the housing authority doesn’t have. They have $5 million a year to make repairs.”

Funding is sorely needed, and this won’t be enough to address problems like the perpetually broken elevators at the 13-story Clementina Towers senior housing high-rises or SFHA’s $270 million backlog in deferred maintenance costs.

But RAD is more than a new source of cash. It will “transform public housing properties into financially sustainable real estate assets,” as SFHA literature puts it.

RAD changes the type of funding that supports public housing. Nationally, federal dollars for public housing have been drying up since the late ’70s. But a different federal subsidy, the housing choice voucher program that includes Section 8 rent subsidies, has been better funded by Congress.

Under RAD, the majority of the city’s public housing will be sustained through these voucher funds. In the process, the Housing Authority will also hand over responsibility for managing, maintaining, and effectively owning public housing to teams of developers and nonprofits. Technically, the Housing Authority will still own the public housing. But it will transfer the property through 99-year ground leases to limited partnerships established by the developers.

The RAD plan comes on the heels of an era marked by turmoil and mismanagement at the Housing Authority. The agency’s last director, Henry Alvarez, was at the center of a scandal involving alleged racial discrimination. He was fired in April 2013.

In December 2012, HUD declared SFHA “troubled,” the lowest possible classification before being placed under federal receivership. A performance audit of the agency, first submitted in April 2013 by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst, determined that “SFHA is expecting to have no remaining cash to pay its bills sometime between May and July of 2013.”

Six of the seven members of the Housing Authority Commission were asked to resign in February 2013, and were replaced with mayoral appointees.

Joyce Armstrong is not a member of this commission, but she sits on the dais with them at meetings, and gives official statements and comments alongside the commissioners. Armstrong is the president of the citywide Public Housing Tenants Association, and she talked about RAD at a March 27 meeting, conveying tenants’ apprehension toward the expansion of private managers in public housing.

“Staff in HOPE VI developments are very condescending,” Armstrong said. “We’re not pleased. We’re being demeaned, beat up on, and talked to in a way I don’t feel is appropriate.”

NONPROFITIZATION

When RAD is implemented, it won’t just be development companies interacting with public housing residents. San Francisco’s approach to RAD is unique in that it will rely heavily on nonprofit involvement. Each “development team” that is taking over at public housing projects includes a nonprofit organization. Contracts haven’t been signed yet, but the Housing Authority has announced the teams they’re negotiating with.

“We call it the nonprofitization of public housing,” said Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee.

The developers are a list of the usual players in San Francisco’s affordable housing market, including the John Stewart Company, Bridge Housing Corporation, and Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation.

Community-based organizations that are involved include the Mission Economic Development Agency, the Japanese American Religious Federation, Ridgepoint Nonprofit Corporation, Glide Community Housing, Bernal Heights Housing Corporation, and the Chinatown Community Development Center.

On March 13, when the Housing Authority Commission announced who would be on these teams, the meeting was packed with concerned members of the public. Two overflow rooms were set up. One group with a strong turnout was SEIU Local 1021, which represents public housing staff.

Alysabeth Alexander, vice president of politics for SEIU 1021, said that 120 workers represented by the union could be laid off as management transfers to development teams, and 80 other unionized jobs are also on the line.

“They’re talking about eliminating 200 middle-class jobs,” Alexander said.

She also noted that SEIU 1021 wasn’t made aware of the possible layoffs — it only found out because of public records requests. (Another downside of privatization is that certain information may no longer be publicly accessible.)

“We’re concerned about these jobs,” Alexander said. “But we’re also concerned about the residents.”

RESIDENTS’ RIGHTS

HUD protects some residents’ rights in its 200-page RAD notice. These include the right to return for residents displaced by renovations and other key protections, but rights not covered in the document — some of which were secured under the current system only after lengthy campaigns — are less clear. In particular, rights relating to house rules or screening criteria for new tenants aren’t included.

Negotiations with development teams are just beginning. Lee said tenants’ rights not included in the RAD language would be discussed as part of that process.

“It will be a function of what is best practice,” Lee said.

But developers have already expressed some ideas about public housing policies they want to tweak when they take over. At one point, the city was considering developers’ requests to divide the citywide public housing wait-list into a series of site-specific lists. Lee says that this option is no longer on the table.

But as developers’ interests interact with local, state, and federal tenant regulations, things could get messy. James Grow, deputy director of the National Housing Law Project, says that whatever standard is the most protective of residents’ rights should apply.

Still, Grow said, “There’s going to be inconsistencies and gray areas.”

Grow said that inevitably some residents’ rights will be decided “on a case-by-case basis, in litigations between the tenant and the landlord…They’ll be duking it out in court.”

This will be true nationwide, as each RAD rollout will be different. But at least in San Francisco, “Most of the tenant protections in public housing will remain,” said Shortt. “We are trying to tie up any holes locally to make sure that there is no weakening of rights.”

Grow’s and Shortt’s organizations are also involved in San Francisco’s RAD plan. The National Housing Law Project, along with the Housing Rights Committee and Enterprise Community Partners, have contracts to perform education and outreach to public housing residents and development teams.

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Just how much money will go to RAD is still under negotiation. The RAD funding itself, derived from the voucher program, will surpass the $32 million the city collected last year in HUD operating subsidies. But its big bucks promise is the $180 million in tax credit equity that the privatization model is expected to bring in.

The city will also be contributing money to the program, but how much is unclear.

“The only budget I have right now is the $8 million,” Lee said, money that is going to the development teams for “pre-development.”

Lee added that funding requests would also be considered; those requests could total $30-50 million per year from the city’s housing trust fund, according to Shortt.

To access that $180 million in low-income housing tax credits, development teams will need to create limited partnerships and work with private investors. The city wants to set up an “investor pool,” a central source which would loan to every development team.

It’s a complicated patchwork of money involving many private interests, some of whom don’t have the best reputations.

Jackson Consultancy was named as a potential partner in the application for the development team that will take over management at Westbrook Apartments and Hunters Point East-West. That firm is headed by Keith Jackson, the consultant arrested in a FBI string in late March on charges of murder-for-hire in connection with the scandal that ensnared Sen. Leland Yee and Chinatown crime figure Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.

Presumably, Jackson is no longer in the running, although the entire transformation is rife with uncertainties.

Residents often feel blindsided when management or rules change at public housing properties. And RAD will be one of the biggest changes in San Francisco’s public housing in at least a decade.

“People are concerned about their homes. When they take over the Housing Authority property, what’s going to happen? They keep telling us that it’s going to stay the same, nothing is going to change,” said Martha Hollins, president of the Plaza East Tenants Association.

Hollins has been part of Carter’s support network in her eviction case.

“They’re always talking about self-sufficient, be self-sufficient,” Hollins said. “How can we be self-sufficient when our children are growing up and being criminalized?”

Public housing has many complex problems that need radical solutions. But some say RAD isn’t the right one. After seeing developers gain from public housing while generational poverty persists within them, Gray-Garcia says that her organization is working with public housing residents to look into ways to give people power over their homes. They are considering suing for equity for public housing residents.

“‘These people can’t manage their own stuff and we need to do it for them.’ It’s that lie, that narrative, that is the excuse to eradicate communities of color,” Gray-Garcia said. “We want to change the conversation.”

How SF politics (and journalism) really works

Zelda Bronstein

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May 8, 2013

51

How SF politics (and journalism) really works

The internal report on SF Housing Authority management berates ousted director Henry Alvarez as a jerk and a bully, somone who made racist and homophobic comments and intimidated staff. But the report also shows exactly how the corrupt politics of San Francisco contracting works. You can’t read the whole Chronicle story because of the paywall, but I’ll excerpt the part that matters:

In another instance, Larsen said Alvarez had him resolicit bids three times for a contract to provide security at public housing projects. Alvarez later called Larsen into his office and said he had just returned from lunch with Chronicle columnist and former Mayor Willie Brown where he met Stan Teets, who runs the private security firm Personal Protective Services, which was not poised to win the contract, the report said.

“Larsen said that Alvarez told him, ‘You need to figure this out; you need to figure out a way to get PPS the work,’ ” according to the report. “Larsen said that his belief is that Alvarez saw Brown as an influential person, and that he (Alvarez) therefore needed to get Teets a contract or risk losing his job.”

After PPS failed to win the contract, Larsen said Alvarez told him to start the process over a fourth time, the report said.

Alvarez denied to investigators that ever happened.

Brown, when reached on his cell phone, said: “I can’t talk to you. I’m at a luncheon.”

Check that out: Brown — who works for the Chronicle as a columnist — said he can’t talk to a Chronicle reporter because he’s at a luncheon. BTW, he’s used the exact same excuse with me a bunch of times, including once at 4pm. He has a lot of luncheons. And they seem to last most of the day.

And let’s remember: in his columns, Brown has consistently made excuses for Alvarez and gone out of the way to tell his side of the story.

PPS has had serious problems with its work at the Housing Authority in the past, when Teets was hired by Brown’s hand-picked authority director, Ronnie Davis. Now Brown meets with Alvarez — who he defends in his column — and tries to get a contract for a firm with a shaky history that wasn’t the low bidder.

Is PPS one of Brown’s private law clients? We don’t know — the Chron doesn’t require him to disclose that information.

But we know this is fucking sleazy shit, and it’s exactly how the city worked every day when Brown was mayor — and apparently, it’s how things are working again, now that Brown’s pal Ed Lee is mayor. I give Lee credit for ousting Alvarez and shaking up the Housing Authority Commission, but by the time he did that, he really had no choice — the evidence and the mounting media pressure was overwhelming. And Willie clearly still has his hands in the operations of the city.

All this is happening at the same time that the Columbia Journalism Review has taken up the issue of Brown’s column and the truly shady ethics involved.

I had a lot of gripes with Mayor Gavin Newsom, as all of you know, but when he was mayor, this kind of pay-to-play overwhelming sleaze wasn’t the order of the day at City Hall. Now it’s back.

That’s how it works in San Francisco in 2013. How lovely.

Family of teen shot in Alice Griffith still waiting for Housing Authority help

Sasha Cuttler

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March 1, 2013

14

Aireez Taylor, a 15-year-old Mission High School student and a resident of the Alice Griffith public housing project in Bayview, was shot seven times on Dec. 29.

It happened around 6:30 p.m. She was with several friends at a house just a few blocks from her home in Alice Griffith, also known as Double Rock. They were standing on the porch talking, her mother, Marissa, told the Guardian. Then two men armed with guns hopped out of a parked car. One of Aireez’s friends, a 17-year-old boy who lived at the house with his family, saw them coming. He ran for the door and was shot once in the foot. Aireez, fleeing after him, was shot seven times.

Residents of Alice Griffith interviewed by the Guardian described an intensification in the violent crime at and around their community in recent months. Several attributed the violence to a conflict between African American and Samoan gang members. Whatever the cause, the shooting of a 15-year-old girl stands as evidence of the ongoing danger in San Francisco’s public housing developments. Aireez’s father, Roger Blalark, said that his daughter wasn’t the intended target of the shooting. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, he said.

But for Aireez, who survived the attack, the wrong place at the wrong time is her home in Alice Griffith. Her parents have applied for emergency relocation with the San Francisco Housing Authority, but after two months—and amid the recent scandal surrounding Director Henry Alvarez and federal reports that have rated the agency as one of the worst in California—they are still waiting for the agency to locate and repair a unit in a new housing development. In the meantime, Roger and Marissa continue to fear for their daughter’s life. “What if they find the guy and ask her to testify?” asked Roger.

Aireez made a steady recovery from the gunshot wounds inflicted upon her in the December attack. But the trauma of the event has not been as easily healed. She spent three weeks at San Francisco General Hospital. During that time, an unknown intruder tried to snap a photo of her as she lay in her hospital bed, Roger said. Later, a man claiming to be her father came to inquire about her, while Roger himself was at her bedside.

A police officer met with Roger and Marissa on the Monday following the attack. Aireez reportedly had not seen the shooters. An investigation is underway, though no arrests have been made and the police have no suspects, according to SFPD spokesperson Gordon Shyy.

The journey home from the hospital was a return to the place where she had nearly been killed, a community where the shooters presumably were still at large. “She gets shakes, every time she comes home,” said Roger. “She has to come by the corner where she got shot.”

SFPD Bayview District Captain Robert O’Sullivan said that relocation is an important part of protecting the victims of violent crimes. Ultimately, the choice to relocate a tenant rests with the Housing Authority. “There needs to be an assessment done when something like a shooting occurs in public housing,” said O’Sullivan. Alice Griffith, he pointed out, has a significant number of people in a relatively small space.

“It’s always something that is in the front of people’s mind, anyone that has a stake in this, in investigating or assisting—is this going to be a risk for this person or their family in continuing to stay here?” O’Sullivan said.

Marissa and Roger applied for an emergency transfer on Jan. 2. There was paperwork to fill out, then the Housing Authority had to search for a vacant unit that could accommodate a family of their size. Housing Authority spokesperson Rose Marie Dennis said that she could not give out confidential information regarding specific tenants, but confirmed that the majority of the Housing Authority’s holdings are studios, one-, or two-bedroom apartments.

Roger and Marissa needed something bigger. A unit that could accommodate their family was finally located in another housing development by the third week of January. Marissa was initially told that the unit would be ready in two weeks. But two weeks turned into five, and now six, and Marissa still doesn’t know the status of the unit or when it will be ready for move in.

Dennis told us the Housing Authority tries to accommodate all requests for relocation, and prioritizes tenants with emergencies. Victims of a violent crime that request a transfer are moved as soon as possible, she said. But the process of relocating a victim is often hindered by a variety of factors, including Housing Authority’s ability to allocate resources toward fixing up vacant units. The length of the wait is a matter of resources and cooperation between all the parties involved in preparing the new unit. Once a suitable place has been found, teams of custodians and craftsmen and women must work to clear, clean, and repair the unit. Preparing a unit for move in costs on average $12,000, she said.

The problem is not that there aren’t empty units. According to Dennis, vacant housing stock is in a constant state of flux, with the current occupancy rate estimated to be 96.3 percent. Since the Housing Authority manages a total of 6,476 units over 45 development projects, that would indicate that as many as 240 units now lie empty. Dennis said that some units are kept vacant by the Housing Authority for a variety of reasons, while many others are only made available as the agency finishes the repairs and renovations necessary to make the units livable by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) strict standards.

Roger and Marissa’s experiences would appear to dovetail with recent media scrutiny that suggests the Housing Authority has reached a critical state of dysfunction. The agency made the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s list of troubled agencies after it received a 54 out of 100 on their latest evaluation. Scandal has dogged the agency’s leadership—three lawsuits alleging discrimination and retaliation were recently filed against Alvarez, who was also accused in a lawsuit of steering contracts to political allies. And it’s long-term capital outlook is looking increasingly bleak, as buildings accumulate decades of wear and tear and infrastructure becomes obsolescent. Stuck with a federal budget that remains constant, the Housing Authority is put in the position of maintaining outdated infrastructure that would, in the long run, be more cost effective to replace, said Dennis.

But Dennis nevertheless assured the Guardian that the agency addresses emergencies as quickly as possible—irrespective of larger, structural financial deficits. “We get bogged down in anecdotes that aren’t reflective of what’s ahead of us,” said Dennis. “We don’t have time for politics, that really doesn’t add up to positive change.”

So what is positive change for the residents of San Francisco’s public housing? With Alvarez on leave, Mayor Ed Lee has stated his intention to revamp the agency’s leadership and has appointed five new commissioners to oversee the city’s public housing. “Being on a constant treadmill of troubled lists and repair backlogs that are structurally underfunded is not working for our residents or our City,” Lee said in a press release.

Lee spoke of a “better model” through HOPE SF, a massive redevelopment plan that began under former Mayor Gavin Newsom and which hinges on public-private partnerships. Alice Griffith is one among several sites that is being rebuilt as part of HOPE SF, with construction scheduled to begin in 2014. The plan is to create mixed-income neighborhoods where 256 new affordable rental units are interspersed in a larger community of market-rate homes.

But in the meantime, the day-to-day reality of the violence and dysfunction faced by tenants continues. “It’s not about tearing down the projects, you got to revitalize what’s already here,” said Roger.

Roger knows that a relocation won’t necessarily solve their problems. He worries about the persisting presence of gang members at the new housing development, about the fact that he will be trying to protect his family in a community that he is much less familiar with. At Alice Griffith, Roger has connections within the community. He helps direct the Run, Ball & Learn Program, which provides basketball and tutoring programs for community youth. So they wait.

“They’re gonna have their own process,” says Marissa. “In the meantime we’re still sitting here.”

Should city employees be commissioners?

Zelda Bronstein

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February 14, 2013

6

Mayor Ed Lee had to do something radical with the Housing Authority, and I’m glad he did. The commissioners who oversee this mess, particularly the chair, Rev. Amos Brown, were nothing but syncophants for Director Henry Alvarez, who clearly has to go. Firing all but one of the commissioners was the right way to go.

(Although technically, the mayor must have gotten them all to resign. The City Charter says a Housing Authority Commission member can only be removed “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct in office, after serving written charges and providing an opportunity for a hearing.”)

That said, his replacement commissioners raise an interesting question. Every one of them is a city employee. Four of the five are either department heads or senior staffers, all of whom work for the mayor or one of his appointees. The other is a deputy district attorney.

Commissions are set up to provide a degree of indepedent oversight over city agencies; there’s a reason the mayor doesn’t directly hire and fire the police chief, the fire chief, the planning director, etc.; there are commissions to give members of the public some role in monitoring those departments. Obviously, the mayor appoints most of the commissioners, and most mayors expect a degree of loyalty, but there’s a least a chance that appointees will speak up when the mayor is doing the wrong thing. (Planning Commissioner Dennis Antennore used to defy Mayor Willie Brown routinely; he ultimately got fired for it, but at least the public got a chance to hear another point of view.)

Now we have people whose day job — and income — depends directly on the mayor’s will (these are not civil servants; they’re all high-level workers who can be fired any time) running a commission. The idea that any of them will ever cross the mayor is now out of the question.

Oh — and do you think there might ever be a time when the District Attorney’s Office has to investigate the Housing Authority for criminal conduct? Maybe? Could that ever happen? And how would Deputy D.A. and Commissioner Eric Fleming handle that?

It’s perfectly legal for city employees to be commissioners, according to a detailed 2010 memo from the City Attorney’s Office. Former Sup. Aaron Peskin tried before he left the board to change that, but he fell short (in part because labor didn’t like the idea; why should city workers be deprived of the ability to participate in the public process?) But we’re not talking about rank-and-file workers who have union protections and can speak their minds and engage in political action freely; we’re talking about direct appointees of the mayor and the city administrator who have no choice but to do the bidding of their bosses.

This just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam

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January 15, 2013

12

EDITOR’S NOTES The guy who runs the San Francisco Housing Authority is in pretty serious doo-doo: His agency has just been placed on the federal government’s “troubled” list, and he’s getting sued by his own lawyer, and he’s hiding from the press while tenants complain that they can’t get basic repairs.

Although Mayor Ed Lee has so far officially stuck by Henry Alvarez, he’s already backing off a bit, and it’s pretty likely Alvarez will be gone when his contract expires this summer. He may be gone even sooner than that; there’s a growing chorus of voices calling on the mayor to fire him.

So at some point we’ll get a new director, who will make a handsome salary (Alvarez gets $210,000 a year plus a car and seven weeks paid vacation) and live in a nice house and go into work every day to deal with problems that are pretty damn far from his or her life.

That’s always the case to some extent with the heads of agencies who deal with the poor, but it’s particularly dramatic when you talk about the Housing Authority. Public housing is never luxurious, but in San Francisco, it’s been riddled with problems for many years. And frankly, I’m much more concerned about the tenants than about Alvarez or his management style.

I get that the Housing Authority has financial problems. The federal government long ago abandoned any serious commitment to funding housing in American cities, and the authority only recently managed to pay off a multimillion-dollar judgment from a lawsuit filed by the families of a grandmother and five children killed in a fire on Housing Authority property.

Yet, tenant advocate continue to complain that it can be hard, even impossible to get a response from the agency. When critics complain, the agency goes after them: The Housing Rights Committee went after the Housing Authority over evictions, and wound up getting investigated by SFHA employees who wanted to gut their city funding. And while some say Alvarez is a hard-charging person who demands results (and thus pisses some people off), nobody has used the words open, accessible or compassionate to describe him.

I’ve got an idea for the next director (or for Alvarez, if he wants to stick around). Why not live in public housing?

Seriously: Why shouldn’t the person who controls the safety and welfare of tenants in more than 6,000 units spend a little time understanding what their lives are like? Why not spend, say, one night a week in one of those apartments?

In the old days, judges used to sentence slumlords to live in their own decrepit buildings, which seemed to work pretty well: Once the guy in charge has to deal with the rats and roaches and broken windows, he’s much more likely to expedite repairs.

But it wouldn’t have to be punitive — just a chance to get a first-hand look at how the agency policies are working on the ground. The city employee unions have had a lot of success asking members of the Board of Supervisors to do a union worker’s job for a day; the director of the San Francisco Housing Authority could certainly live like one of his tenants every now and then.

Think of it as a management tool: What better way to figure out whether his staff is doing the job than to look at the end product? Or figure it as a way to stop being an asshole and see what people who live on less than ten percent of his salary really think of his administration.

Feds downgrade troubled Housing Authority

Zelda Bronstein

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January 8, 2013

9

Feds downgrade troubled Housing Authority

The federal government has declared the San Francisco Housing Authority a “troubled” agency and dispatched agents to review the agency’s finances and management failures.

The team of experts from the Department of Housing and Urban Development arrived Jan. 7 and has begun poring over the SFHA’s books.

The federal decision came in an October 31 letter to the city’s Housing Authority Board, with a copy to Mayor Ed Lee.

“The Board of Commissioners of the San Francisco Housing Authority should take immediate action to identify the sources of the performance deficiencies and develop and implement a plan to recover” at an “acceptable level of performance,” wrote HUD in its letter.

The troubled ranking is further bad news for Executive Director Henry Alvarez, who was hired in 2008 to help steady the agency’s management. He has since faced allegations of mistreatment and discrimination by some of his top staff, including the agency’s lawyer. He is the target of three lawsuits by his staff.

In addition to the “troubled” status for public housing, SFHA already faced stepped up monitoring if its Section 8 program that provides rental assistance for program participants in privately owned units. The agency scored zero points in its section 8 program because it failed to submit its report.

San Francisco’s “troubled” status was due to low scores for management of the agency and its finances. On financials, SFHA scored five points out of a possible 30, and on management it scored 12 points out of a possible 25. On physical conditions, SFHA squeaked above the cut-off with 27 out of 40 points. The agency’s total score was 54 out of a possible 100.

The score was a drop from score of 75 the prior year. The SFHA explains the change as new scoring criteria by HUD. The looming issue is the lack of effective management at the agency’s top level.

The arrival of a HUD team this week for a week-long examination of the Housing Authority will produce a plan for the agency to correct its management and financial practices with a set of deadlines and specific actions. Failure to implement the plan can bring new consequences with even tighter oversight.

“HUD is at SFHA offices starting today,” said Bill Ford, SFHA attorney speaking for the agency on Monday. “They are reviewing the situation related to the Troubled status. That’s why they are here. They will help develop a plan to pull the agency out of Troubled status.”

The agency had managed to stay off the troubled list — a designation for those scoring under 60 out of 100 points–for the previous two years. A troubled status can make San Francisco ineligible to compete for special funding beyond what it receives by formula.

HUD scoring lags by several months after the agency’s year-end as local officials and federal officials go through appeals and responses before settling on a final outcome. The current troubled status is for the SFHA year that ended September 30, 2011.

SFHA scores for the year ending September 30, 2012 are tentatively estimated also to be in the troubled category or possibly a point or two higher to earn it a “substandard” ranking. Those results are expected shortly to be followed by additional appeals and reviews.

Some one out of 10 San Francisco households receive some form of federal housing aid, not including those who benefit from lower mortgage interest rates under FHA and other federal homeownership mortgage programs.

SFHA earned high marks in the credit market for its HOPESF program that aims to replace decrepit public housing and expand the number if units. That process involves to outside managers to develop and operate and does not rely on SFHA management.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam

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December 11, 2012

0

EDITOR’S NOTES The two prominent lawyers who helped bring same-sex marriage to the US Supreme Court, Theodore Olson and David Boies, started out their case with the notion that it would get to the highest court, and that the Court would find a fundamental Constitutional right to marriage equality.

They’re both brilliant litigators who have argued more than 50 cases before the Supreme Court — and they think they know something. I can’t get into either man’s brain, but what legal scholars around the country are saying is that the fate (for now) of same-sex marriage may come down to one person, Justice Anthony Kennedy. And they figure he’s going to be on the right side.

I wouldn’t be surprised — those two have been here before, parsed this court, and been right enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. In fact, although 30-some states still ban same-sex marriage, I think the members of the Court see the direction that history is going. It’s moving fast, too — in five years, the tide will have fully turned, and the Court doesn’t want to be horribly embarrassed.

Kennedy, of course, is often the swing vote on the divided court — and in two prior cases, he wrote the decision affirming gay rights.

Kennedy was appointed by Ronald Reagan, but what hasn’t been mentioned much in the press was that he was a second choice. Reagan wanted Robert Bork in that position — and if Bork had gotten the job, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Bork is another Antonin Scalia and would have held down the right wing of the Court and ensured a 5-4 right-wing majority.

This goes back to 1987, ancient history for a lot of political people today. When Reagan, who mostly got his way, nominated Bork, an unheard-of coalition came together to oppose him. It seemed a long shot — it was rare for a Supreme Court nominee to get rejected. Some argued that it wouldn’t matter, anyway — if Bork lost, Reagan would nominate someone else just as bad.

But the opposition came together. The ACLU, which in its history had only opposed one other Supreme Court nominee, helped lead the way. Women’s groups around the country joined in, mostly because of Bork’s open hostility to abortion rights. The Guardian ran a front-page piece called “The case against Judge Bork.” It was a huge national issue.

Sen. Ted Kennedy led the Judiciary Committee opposition to Bork, and all of us were riveted to the proceedings, which aired on KPFA and NPR. Bork gave detailed answers to all the questions, explaining, for example, why he thought Roe v. Wade was “improperly decided.” In the end, his nomination was rejected, 58-42.

Reagan got the message. He nominated Anthony Kennedy — also a conservative, but not a Bork-style nut. And the course of legal history was changed.

So if the Court comes down 5-4 for same-sex marriage, and Kennedy is the fifth vote, we can all thank that massive mobilizing effort a quarter century ago that kept a young, healthy, wingnut who would still be there today from holding that critical seat.

IN OTHER NEWS: The mayor may think the scandal over Housing Authority Director Henry Alvarez is going to blow over, but he’s wrong. There are lots of problems in that agency. Among other things, as Citireport publisher Larry Bush has detailed over the past year, Alvarez used his official position (and city time) to go after a nonprofit, the Housing Rights Committee, that was advocating for public-housing tenants. Lee needs to distance himself from this guy, or he’s going to get dragged down with him.

Lee ducks tough questions about Alvarez and diversifying SF’s economy

Sasha Cuttler

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December 11, 2012

24

Lee ducks tough questions about Alvarez and diversifying SF’s economy

For a career bureaucrat who was appointed mayor supposedly as a sort of straight-shooting un-politician, Mayor Ed Lee today once again demonstrated a real talent for addressing tough questions with a whole lot of words that don’t seem to say much at all. First came his non-responsive answers during Question Time at the Board of Supervisors meeting, followed by the hollow filibuster with reporters asking about the Housing Authority scandal as he briskly walked back to his office.

Asked why he continued to stand by Housing Authority Director Henry Alvarez despite the scandals and accusations of mismanagement and unethical conduct on the job that have placed a cloud over the agency, Lee said he’s just waiting for the investigations and lawsuits to play out, dismissing “the so-called cloud that you referred to.”

Given the obvious problems that Alvarez is now having running an agency whose employees and clients have such a problem with his leadership, I asked whether Lee has considered suspending him, to which he responded that Alvarez hasn’t been convicted of any crimes. So, apparently professional misconduct is a personal matter, but personal misconduct unrelated to one’s job warrants suspension. This is all very confusing.

Even more bewildering was Lee’s answer to the question from Sup. John Avalos. He prefaced his question with one from constituent/comedian Nato Green asking what the city is doing to diversify its economy beyond “the highly paid finance or tech jobs and their low wage servants,” noting that City Economist Ted Egan also recently asked that question in a report calling for “a more balanced distribution of job opportunities.”

So Avalos asked, “What is your plan to create living wage jobs in local-serving industries to prevent the City’s working and middle classes from being displaced by people moving to the city for new upper income jobs in the creative (including high tech), financial, and professional services industries?”

It’s a great and important question that has been increasingly raised by those who understand the risks of placing all our eggs in one economic basket, particularly given this city’s experience with the last dot.com bubble bursting.

But even though Lee had plenty of time to think about the issue and develop an answer, he clearly didn’t have a good one, instead singing the praises of the booming tech industry and his Tech.SF program for training new tech workers, just like his main financier, tech mogul Ron Conway, wants.

Now, Lee did cite industry studies that every tech job sustains four other jobs in the city, mostly in restaurants and tourism-related sectors (ie the “low wage servants” Green mentioned). And Lee touted the construction jobs created by his developer buddies, praising Avalos for his local hire ordinance.

But even the much-praised local hire standard of 25 percent means that 75 percent of those workers are living outside the city. It’s a similar story for the restaurant, retail, and bar jobs that the influx of well-heeled new residents are creating demand for, none of which answers Avalos’ questions about how to diversify our economy and create good jobs for most San Franciscans.

“Trickle down economics can only get us so far and without a specific and far-reaching plan to create local living wage jobs for San Francisco’s working and middle classes, we’ll see us falling behind,” Avalos told the Guardian after hearing the mayor’s “answer.”

But instead of a plan or a direct answer, we got political platitudes from Lee such as, “We’ll be investing in the greatest asset of our city and that’s the residents, our people, and ensuring San Francisco stays a city for the 100 percent.”

To which Avalos responded, “His comment about the 100 percent really means that by favoring the 1 percent, the 99 percent benefit. Well, as a country, we’ve been doing that for years and wealth disparities have only widened.”

The Housing Authority mess

Zelda Bronstein

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December 10, 2012

22

Mayor Ed Lee seems to think that the controversy over Housing Authority Director Henry Alvarez is just going to blow over, but he’s wrong. There’s too much here. And it’s not just about the lawsuits employees have filed or the sizable list of unhappy workers.

But before we get into any of that, I have to say: You can’t beat Willie Brown for putting it all in perspective. The former mayor announced in his Chron column Dec. 9 that the Housing Authority (including during his mayoral administration) has always been fundamentally screwed up:

What no one says publicly is that the tenants in public housing are never happy and that the Housing Authority workers usually aren’t all that interested in working. But as long as everyone gets something out of the deal, be it a public-housing unit for a relative or an absence of on-the-job oversight, everyone stays quiet.

So it’s basically structural corruption, all the time. Oh, and what a lovely thing to say about a large group of city employees who have the unenviable job of trying to keep substandard housing units in an underfunded agency somewhat habitable. Guess the problems aren’t at the top; it’s all lazy workers and uppity tenants.

The back story here has been well reported by Larry Bush as Citireport, who over the past year has outlined in detail how Alvarez tried to use his political clout to defund the Housing Rights Commitee, a nonprofit that helps public housing tenants. Turns out the HRC has been a bit of a pain for Alvarez because its staff is agressive about demanding that repairs are made on time and basic maintenance is done.

Alvarez went so far as to contact (presumably on city time) the Tides Foundation, which acts as HRC’s fiscal sponsor, demanding documents that aren’t public record (but that Tides provided anyway). In emails to the mayor’s housing advisor, Doug Shoemaker, Alvarez made clear that he wanted the city to cut of the $90,000 that HRC gets for code-enforcement work.

On April 7, Alvarez sent a rapid-fire series of questions and requests to Shoemaker at the Mayor’s Office of Housing, all apparently intended to uncover problems with the nonprofit and provide grounds for ending city funding. Shoemaker complied with the document requests while trying to cajole Alvarez away from a confrontation with HRC. “I realize that you don’t think I’m doing enough to keep HRC out of your hair,” Shoemaker wrote to Alvarez on April 7, “so I spent part of my evening last night getting the records request (from HRC) rescinded.”

So: The Housing Authority director thinks a widely-respected tenant rights group is “in his hair” and wants to cut off the group’s money because it’s doing its job of helping tenants deal with the HA bureacracy.

Oh, and it’s not as if HRC is making up the problems. Willie Brown can complain all he wants that the tenants are just annoying malcontents, but the record shows there are serious problems with the Housing Authority:

Hundreds of San Francisco families continue to live in tax-payer subsidized housing that fails minimum standards for health, safety, and sanitary conditions, according to recent inspections by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). San Francisco’s response is to defer compliance with housing codes “until replacement housing can be found.”

You want an idea of how serious? Check this out.

I’m glad Sup David Campos as asked for a compliance audit on the agency, because in the end, this is really about the tenants.

Oh, and just in case anyone has forgotten, this was the guy Willie Brown had running the Housing Authority.

What did the mayor know?

Zelda Bronstein

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December 5, 2012

35

So let’s get this straight:

Three lawsuits have been filed against the head of the Housing Authority. Some 30 staffers have complained about Alvarez to senior mayoral staffers. The HA even hired former City Attorney Louise Renne to investigate problems with Alvarez.

And Mayor Lee says he wasn’t aware of the problems?

This is the kind of thing that used to happen under Willie Brown — the mayor would hire cronies for top dollar, and defend them and brush aside charges of misbehavior. And I hate to see the same style happening under Lee.

Clearly, the two are pals, and I understand the urge to stand by your friends in public life, and at this point, we just have allegations — maybe none of it is true, and maybe Renne will find that everything is just grand over at the Housing Authority. But the mayor ought to at least express concern.

And if this was all really happening without his knowledge, then his staff isn’t doing a very good job of keeping him informed.

Either way, not a good scene in Room 200.

Crossing over

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

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news@sfbg.com

Tensions over the issue of how cities and states should treat undocumented immigrants have been simmering in San Francisco since the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Gavin Newsom began clashing over the issue almost two years ago. But they have recently boiled over in response to a draconian new law in Arizona, quickly altering the political dynamics of the issue, here and across the country.

Thousands flooded into the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District on May 1 to march for immigrant rights, part of a May Day celebration that seemed infused with collective outrage at Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, an anti-immigration measure signed into law April 23 that has touched off a firestorm of protests nationwide.

The predominantly Latino crowd waved American flags and flew banners denouncing the law, which makes it a state-level crime to be in the country illegally and criminalizes the failure to carry immigration documents at all times. The march occasionally erupted into chants of “Si Se Puede!” (Yes we can), and “Obama, escucha: estamos en la lucha,” (Obama, listen: We’re in the struggle).

While immigrant rights marches are held every year on May 1, the 2010 rallies had a tremendous turnout. San Francisco’s immigrant rights movement seemed galvanized by the new legislation, which is widely perceived as racist and ill-advised. Yet it has also been seen by advocacy groups as an opportunity for federal immigration reform.

Despite the cultural and geographic chasms separating San Francisco and Phoenix, SB 1070 also has emerged as a pivotal issue in a big election year as Latino and progressive communities gauge politicians’ reactions to a bill that has made national headlines.

San Francisco was the first city in the country to call for a boycott of Arizona. But Newsom proved out of step with City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Sup. David Campos, who first independently called for the boycott. While Campos and Herrera sent a clear message urging city departments to boycott Arizona-based companies, Newsom warned of the “complicated” aspects surrounding this idea then put forth a proposal to form a working group to analyze the idea.

“What we need is action, swift action,” Campos told the Guardian when we asked what he thought of Newsom’s plan. “We did not need a working group deciding whether or not to do same-sex marriage. We don’t need a working group to tell us what we should do here.”

SPEAKING OUT

Campos delivered a rousing speech, in Spanish, at the May 1 rally at Civic Center Plaza, saying San Francisco had to send a clear message to Congress and emphasizing his support for a boycott. As he spoke, the high-energy, tightly packed crowd waved flags, banged on pots and pans, cheered and applauded.

Ramon Cardona, a Salvadoran who directs a San Pablo immigrant outreach organization called Centro Latino Cuzcatlan and helped organize the event, said the underlying message was to urge Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. “Deportations are creating so much suffering and pain,” he said. “The captures and deportations are dividing up families, and leaving children as orphans.”

Cardona noted that the number of people getting deported has increased — in 2006, more than 180,000 deportations were carried out; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has declared a target of 400,000 for this year. But Cardona said he doubts if crackdowns or intensified border militarization would deter those with an eye toward illegally crossing the U.S. border because the economic conditions in Central America have decimated most alternative means of earning a living.

“If globalization policies were not so unbalanced, millions of campesinos [country people] and workers would not be in a position right now where they had to leave their families in order to work,” Cardona said. “When you have armies of unemployed people without a prospect … people will take desperate measures.”

Giselle Perez, a young woman who participated in the rally, said she was there in support of workers who risk their lives to come to the U.S. “As a child of immigrant parents, I feel our attention should be toward the forces that have created this destruction, and we shouldn’t be persecuting those … who are just coming here to work and to provide the services that we all benefit from,” Perez said.

But even in San Francisco, there were signs of how divisive the immigration issue is. As speakers and hip-hop groups took turns onstage at Civic Center Plaza, a crowd of at least 20 counter-protesters set up camp across the street in front of City Hall, standing behind police barricades and displaying banners which read “We need more ICE at this fiesta” and “Golden Gate Minute Men.”

A self-proclaimed white separatist organization calling itself the Bay Area National Anarchists (BANA) — pinpointed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and bitterly hated by local anarchists — made its presence known. A scuffle occurred when BANA members wound up in a physical clash with a group of individuals as they left the rally, resulting in two arrests.

In the wake of the boycott announcement, Herrera was deluged with angry e-mails from throughout the country, expressing angry sentiments toward “illegal aliens” and threatening to boycott the city of San Francisco.

CHANGING DYNAMICS

SB 1070 empowers police officers to detain and arrest anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in the country without immigration papers. The bill makes transporting and employing undocumented immigrants a crime. And it allows individuals to sue municipalities where they believe law enforcement is not pursuing undocumented immigrants.

Reactions to the Arizona law continue to reverberate nationwide. And the uproar has forced the debate about federal immigration reform into the headlines and created a string of potential pitfalls for politicians just ahead of the 2010 elections.

President Barack Obama immediately called the law “misguided” and ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to determine whether the new law violates people’s civil rights. Former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano — whose January 2009 decision to resign to become Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary caused then-Lt. Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, to ascend to the state’s top post — framed SB 1070 as a “cry of frustration” from state and local officials who need federal immigration reform.

“They’ve already amended the law over the course of the week, so even the Arizona Legislature is starting to recognize there are problems,” Napolitano said last week.

But the amended bill, which is scheduled to go into effect later this summer, has already opened up a Grand Canyon-sized rift within the Republican Party: GOP officials in at least seven other red states, including Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, have vowed to introduce similar legislation. Their pronouncements have forced even some conservative Republicans like strategist Karl Rove to make statements critical of the law.

In Phoenix, opponents of SB 1070 smeared the state building with swastikas made of refried beans. Around the nation, online social media networks rocked with a gale-force response. More than 1 million SB 1070 opponents banded together on a dozen Facebook pages clamoring for boycotts, a demand championed by a galaxy of civil liberties groups.

San Francisco political consultant Bob Brigham circulated an online petition urging California’s state pension fund to divest from Arizona. “I started thinking about the State of California’s role in helping end apartheid by pulling money out of South Africa,” Brigham said in an online statement. “Then I knew the move.”

The reaction to SB 1070 turned out to be a litmus test on leadership in San Francisco. Herrera, whose father is from Colombia, and Campos, who was born in Guatemala and came to the U.S. as an undocumented youth, separately called for a boycott of Arizona within days of the law’s approval.

But Newsom, in what turned out to be a major political miscalculation, waffled, first questioning the wisdom of a boycott, then scrambling to take baby steps when his opponent in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, Los Angeles City Council member Janice Hahn, authored a boycott resolution.

“The notion of boycotting a state and every business that does business in the state is an extraordinarily complicated matter,” Newsom said in an April 27 San Francisco Chronicle article.

That was the day Hahn held a press conference calling for L.A. to cut off all business ties with Arizona.

Seven L.A. City Council members and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa endorsed the measure — and Hahn was invited to be a keynote speaker at a May 1 immigration rally in downtown L.A.

Newsom swiftly sought to save face, issuing a press release shortly after Hahn’s announcement stating that he had hatched a “smart, effective” response to the Arizona legislation: the mayor was immediately banning official city travel to the state, with exceptions for essential travel related to law enforcement and public health or safety.

Mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian that he did not have information on how much the city travels to Arizona. “Travel has been cut significantly, of course, because of the city budget situation. But Henry Alvarez from the Housing Authority did cancel a trip to Scottsdale set for this weekend for a housing authority conference,” Winnicker said.

Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda estimated that when it came to the annual number of official trips to Arizona, “I would doubt that it would be more than just a handful.” San Francisco has made payments to 81 companies headquartered in Arizona since 2007, totally roughly $16 million, according to a list compiled by the city purchaser.

But it was the message that seemed to matter more than the actual impact on Arizona, at least for the politicians involved.

Newsom also announced plans to assemble a working group to analyze the impact of potential boycott measures against Arizona. The working group includes city Purchaser Naomi Kelly, Controller Ben Rosenfield, Treasurer Jose Cisneros, Theresa Sparks of the Human Rights Commission, representatives from the City Attorney’s Office, the mayor’s Director of State and Federal Legislative Affairs Nancy Kirshner-Rodriguez, and Newsom’s Latino Community liaison Joaquin Torres.

“The purpose of the workgroup is to develop boycott recommendations that are smart and effective and that won’t hurt SF businesses and residents or hurt those who are the victims in Arizona of this terrible law,” Winnicker said.

City Attorney Matt Dorsey took offense at the implication that Herrera’s boycott call was premature or motivated by his own mayoral ambitions. “Dennis was thinking about doing this as early as April 23 because of the outrageousness of the legislation,” Dorsey said.

Michael Trujillo, Hahn’s campaign manager, faulted Newsom’s waffling. “If Arizona legalizes slavery, is he going to form a working group?” Trujillo asked. “It wasn’t a question of whether [Hahn] would do it or not do it. In L.A., it’s a no-brainer. In San Francisco, it requires a working group.”

The incident also served as a vivid reminder to those who support immigration reform and the city’s sanctuary city law that Newsom hasn’t been on their side for a long time.

OPENING OLD WOUNDS

Immigrant rights advocates are expressing renewed concern about Newsom’s failure to implement a Campos-authored and board-approved amendment to his policy on turning juvenile immigrants over to federal authorities before they’ve had their day in court.

Since Newsom ordered his new policy, more than 160 youth have been referred to federal immigration authorities for possible deportation. As a result, kids who subsequently see all felony charges against them dismissed or reduced, find themselves ripped from their families and in danger of being deported.

Advocates also noted that they have not seen any evidence that language they believe is an open invitation to racial profiling has been removed from the mayor’s policy, which Newsom ordered without public review in July 2008, the day after he announced his failed bid to become the next governor of California.

Juvenile Probation Department Chief William Siffermann assured the Guardian in March that such language was being removed following a contentious March 4 hearing. Campos questioned the JPD chief about the origin of language in Newsom’s policy. The language states that in determining whether there is reasonable suspicion that youth is undocumented, one of the criteria listed is the “presence of undocumented persons.”

Siffermann replied that the policy was based on review and approval of the City Attorney’s Office.

Campos asked if Siffermann could see “how something as open-ended as this could lead to racial profiling?”

“It could,” Siffermann replied. “It requires vigilant oversight. If that criterion was taken alone, we’d have a problem with that.”

That concern echoes those of critics of the Arizona law, which purports to ban racial profiling while requiring police officers who suspect people of being an undocumented immigrants to ask for their citizenship papers. Those parallels are uniting San Francisco officials on the otherwise divisive issue.

Tensions arose between Campos and Herrera’s office following Newsom’s refusal to implement Campos’ due process amendment for immigrant youth, with Campos and immigrant advocates saying Herrera should do more to force its implementation. Now Campos said a renewed push for action could be the silver lining in Arizona’s otherwise bad legal situation.

“I think there has been a respectful disagreement between my office and Herrera’s about just how far they could go,” Campos said. “We believe the city attorney can and should advise Newsom that the Mayor’s Office doesn’t have the authority to do what he is doing [requiring probation officers to notify ICE when juveniles suspected of being undocumented are arrested, in violation of Campos’s legislation]. But I appreciate what the city attorney is doing around Arizona.”

Campos and Herrera note that a boycott proved to be an effective model in forcing Arizona to rethink its refusal to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 20 years ago.

Asked if Arizona’s SB 1070 will change the national immigration debate and the city’s local policy toward immigrant juveniles, Herrera said, “I don’t think anything with respect to the state of our immigration laws could get any worse. Otherwise, we’ll probably end up with draconian policies being put forward by other states.”

Herrera also believes the national debate could allow quicker implementation of San Francisco’s sanctuary city reform, telling us, “Obviously the debate will provide the vehicle to have the discussion to clarify the distinctions between state and federal law.”

Angela Chan, staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, an immigrant advocacy group, hopes the outcry in San Francisco and throughout the country will be the match that lights the fire for humane and comprehensive immigration reform. “We can no longer wait and allow states and local governments to try — often foolishly, like in the case of Arizona — to take matters in their own hands,” she told us.

Chan sees parallels between Arizona and what happened during the civil rights movement when police attacked African American demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala. “When there is gross injustice, the hearts and minds of Americans are moved by these images now, as they were then,” Chan said. “I do believe comprehensive immigration reform will come about, if not now then very soon, as a result.”

But she notes that what is happening in Arizona is not isolated.

“In San Francisco, for almost two years now, we have had a policy instituted by Mayor Newsom that requires probation officers to report youth to ICE based only on ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they are undocumented,” Chan explained, echoing language from the Arizona law. “The good news is, with the mayor’s strong stance against the Arizona bill, it is an opportunity for him to reevaluate his own policies in San Francisco and do the right thing here. San Francisco can and should be a leader on immigrant rights.”

Insuring against asbestos exposure, SF style

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June 30, 2009

2

Text By Sarah Phelan

Serpentinite rock with veins of naturally occurring asbestos

Henry Alvarez, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Authority, acknowledges that a judge tossed out the unlawful detainer suit that the SFHA brought against the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self Improvement in the Bayview and its leader Minister Christopher Muhammad.

“But the court left room for us to refile with some guidance,” Alvarez added, claiming that his agency tried to amend its complaints outside the court with Muhammad’s lawyer, Richard Drury, “but we could not reach an amicable solution.”

So, is the SFHA planning to file again, and if so, on what grounds?