Housing

Question of intent

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former mayor Willie Brown, Sup. Sophie Maxwell, and Mayor Gavin Newsom in recent weeks have come out in support of a proposed ballot measure that would allow Lennar Corp. to develop thousands of new homes at Candlestick Point, create 350 acres of parks, and possibly build a new 49ers stadium at Hunters Point Shipyard.

The campaign for the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative just launched its signature drive, but the measure should qualify relatively easily for the June 2008 election, given new low signature thresholds and the campaign’s powerful backers.

The measure would give Lennar, which is also involved in Treasure Island and much of the Bayview–Hunters Point redevelopment area, even more control over San Francisco’s biggest chunks of developable land.

But should San Franciscans really reward Lennar with more land and responsibilities when the financially troubled Florida developer has a track record in San Francisco and elsewhere of failing to live up to its promises, exposing vulnerable citizens to asbestos dust, and using deceptive public relations campaigns to gloss over its misdeeds?

As the Guardian has been reporting since early this year (see "The Corporation That Ate San Francisco," 3/14/07), Lennar failed to monitor and control the dust from naturally occurring asbestos while grading a hilltop in preparation for building condominiums on Parcel A of the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

Last month the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s Board of Directors asked staff to pursue the maximum fines possible for Lennar’s violations, which could run into millions of dollars, particularly if they are found to be the result of willful or negligent behavior.

"It’s clear to everyone in the agency that this case needs to be handled well," BAAQMD spokesperson Karen Schkolnick told the Guardian. "It’s in everyone’s interest, certainly the community’s, to get resolution."

The air district gives parties to whom it issues a warning three years to settle the matter before it goes to court. Lennar officials have publicly blamed subcontractors for failing to control dust and leaving air-monitoring equipment with dead batteries for months on end, but the BAAQMD is treating Lennar as the responsible party.

"It’s air district policy to deal with the primary contractor, which in this case is Lennar, although additional parties may be held liable," Schkolnick said.

Accusations of willful negligence also lie at the heart of a Proposition 65 lawsuit that was filed against Lennar for alleged failures to warn the community of exposure to asbestos, a known carcinogen (see Green City, 8/29/07).

Filed by the Center for Self Improvement, the nonprofit that runs the Muhammad University of Islam, which is next to Parcel A, the suit alleges that the construction activities of Lennar and subcontractor Gordon N. Ball "caused thousands of Californians to be involuntarily and unwittingly exposed to asbestos on a daily basis without the defendants first providing the adjacent community and persons working at the site with the toxic health hazard warnings."

Now fresh evidence from another whistle-blower lawsuit filed by three Lennar employees (see "Dust Still Settling," 3/28/07) shows that higher-ups within Lennar reprimanded and reassigned a subordinate who told subcontractors to comply with mandated plans or face an immediate suspension of construction activities at the Parcel A site.

In an April 21, 2006, BlackBerry message that was copied to Lennar Urban senior vice president Paul Menaker and other top Lennar executives, Lennar Urban’s regional vice president Kofi Bonner wrote to Gary McIntyre, Lennar/BVHP’s Hunters Point Shipyard Project manager, "Gary why do you insist on sending threatening emails to the contractor. If you can no longer communicate directly without the threat of a shutdown … perhaps we should find another area of responsibility for you to oversee. Such emails should only be sent as documentation of [a] conversation."

McIntyre says he was just trying to do his job, which involved ensuring that subcontractors abided by the long list of special health and safety criteria that were developed for this particularly hazardous work site, located in an area long plagued by environmental injustice.

The shipyard is a Superfund site filled with toxic chemicals, and although the 63-acre Parcel A had been cleaned up enough to be certified for residential development, it sits atop a serpentine hill full of naturally occurring asbestos, a potent carcinogen. So the Department of Public Health and the BAAQMD both insisted on a strict plan for controlling dust, which Lennar used to sell the community on the project’s safety.

Yet when McIntyre began insisting in writing that Lennar and its subcontractors adhere carefully to those rules, he was removed from his job. In a work evaluation signed Oct. 17, 2006, Menaker described McIntyre as "a good company spokesperson as it relates to Hunters Point Shipyard" but claimed that he required major improvement in his leadership and communication skills.

"As a manager, he needs to focus on achieving his ultimate mission, rather than focusing on details. Poor communication skills have led to incomplete and often incorrect information being disseminated," Menaker wrote.

The ultimate mission for Lennar — which has seen its stock tank this year as it’s been roiled by a crisis in the housing market — was to get Parcel A built with a minimum of problems and delays. And as concerns about its behavior arose, its communication strategy seemed to be more concerned with positive spin and tapping testimony from financial partners than with putting out a complete and correct view of what was happening.

Whether or not McIntyre was a good Lennar employee, he was at least trying to do right by the community, as records obtained through the lawsuit’s discovery process show. As McIntyre wrote in a three-page response to Menaker’s evaluation, "Our BVHP Naval Shipyard project has unique environmental requirements and compliance therewith is mandatory."

But the record is clear that Lennar didn’t comply with its promises, raising serious questions about a company that wants to take over development of the rest of this toxic yet politically, socially, and economically important site.

BUYING ALLIES


So who is really behind the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative, which does not even have the support of the 49ers, who say they’d rather be in Santa Clara?

The measure was submitted by the African American Community Revitalization Consortium, which describes itself as "a group of area churches, organizations, residents and local merchants, working to improve Bayview Hunters Point." Yet this group is backed by Lennar and draws its members from among those with a personal financial stake in the company’s San Francisco projects.

AACRC founders Rev. Arelious Walker of the True Hope Church of God in Christ in Hunters Point and Rev. J. Edgar Boyd of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of San Francisco are both members of Tabernacle Affiliated Developers, one of four Bayview–Hunters Point community builders who entered into a joint venture with Lennar/BVHP to build 30 percent of Lennar’s for-sale units at Parcel A. TAD is building the affordable units while Lennar develops the market-rate homes.

Neither Walker nor Boyd disclosed this conflict of interest at a July 31 Board of Supervisors hearing where they and the busloads of people Lennar helped ferry to City Hall created the illusion that the community was more concerned about keeping work going on Parcel A than temporarily shutting down the site while the health concerns of people in the Bayview were addressed.

Referring to reports from the city’s Department of Public Health, which claimed that there is no evidence that asbestos dust generated by the grading poses a threat to human health, Walker and Boyd warned that even a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s Parcel A site would adversely affect an already economically disadvantaged community. There is no way to test for whether someone has inhaled asbestos that could pose long-term risks, and Lennar supporters have used that void to claim all is well.

But even if community benefits such as home-building contracts, better parks, and job training opportunities do trickle down to Bayview–Hunters Point residents, will those opportunities outweigh the risk of doing business with a company that has endangered public health, has created deep divisions within an already stressed community, and is struggling financially?

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Minister Christopher Muhammad, whose Nation of Islam–affiliated nonprofit filed the Prop. 65 suit "individually and on behalf of the general public," described Lennar as "a rogue company that can’t be trusted."

"I’m concerned about the health of the community, as well as the other schools that border the shipyard," Muhammad said. "Our contention is that Lennar purposefully turned the monitors off. If you read the air district’s asbestos-dust mitigation plan, it appears that there was a way to do this grading safely. And the community went along with it. The problem was that Lennar was looking at their bottom line and violated every agreement. They threw the precautionary principle to the wind, literally. And the city looked the other way."

And even if Rev. Walker truly believes the June 2008 Bayview ballot measure is "a chance for all of us to move forward together," does it make financial sense, against the backdrop of a nationwide mortgage meltdown, to give Lennar permission to build thousands of homes at Candlestick Point when this measure doesn’t even specify what percentage of the 8,000 to 10,000 proposed new units would be rented or sold at below-market rates?

Lennar/BVHP has already reneged on promises to build rental units at its Parcel A site, and on Aug. 31, Lennar Corp., which is headquartered in Miami Beach, Fla., reported a third-quarter net loss of $513.9 million, compared to third-quarter net earnings of $206.7 million in 2006. Its stock continues to tumble, hitting a 52-week low of $14.50 per share on Nov. 26, down from a 52-week high of $56.54.

On Nov. 2, Reuters reported that Standard and Poor’s had cut Lennar’s debt rating to a junk-bond level "BB-plus" because of Lennar’s "exposure to oversupplied housing markets in California and Florida." And on Nov. 16 the Orange County Register reported that Lennar is shelving a condominium-retail complex in Long Beach and keeping high-rise condos it built in Anaheim vacant until the housing market bounces back.

Redevelopment Agency executive director Fred Blackwell, who was hired Aug. 30, told us his agency’s deposition and development agreement with Lennar wouldn’t let the company indefinitely mothball its housing units: "The DDA gives Lennar and the vertical developers the option to lease the for-sale units for one year, prior to their sale."

While the agency has been criticized for failing to do anything about Lennar’s problems on Parcel A and letting the company out of its obligation to build rental units, Blackwell said it is able to hold Lennar accountable.

"I feel like the DDA gives us all the tools we need," Blackwell told us. "We have opportunities to ‘cure’ whatever the contractor’s default is, but we can’t just arbitrarily shut things down."

But many in the community aren’t convinced. With the grim housing picture and the 49ers saying they’d rather be in Santa Clara, the only certain outcome from passage of this ballot measure would seem to be a mandate for the city to turn over valuable public lands and devote millions of dollars in scarce affording-housing funds to subsidize the ambitions of a corporation with a dubious track record that is actively resisting public accountability.

True, Lennar has promised to rebuild the Alice B. Griffith public housing project without dislocating any residents, and the measure also allows for the creation of 350 acres of parks and open spaces, 700,000 square feet of retail stores, two million square feet of office space, and improved transit routes and shoreline trails.

But although the rest of the shipyard is contaminated with a long list of human-made toxins, would passage of the initiative mean an early transfer of the shipyard from the Navy to the city and Lennar? And with that shift, the requirement that we put even more faith in this corporation’s ability to safely manage the project?

In October, Newsom, who was running for reelection at the time, told the Guardian he was worried about Lennar’s ability to follow through on "prescriptive goals and honor their commitments."

"We have to hold them accountable," Newsom told us. "They need to do what they say they’re going to do. We need to hold them to these commitments."

But how exactly is the mayor holding Lennar accountable?

In March, when the Guardian asked Newsom’s office if he intended, in light of Lennar’s Parcel A failures, to push ahead with plans to make Lennar the master developer for the 49ers stadium and Candlestick Point, the Mayor’s Office of Communications replied by referring us to Sam Singer, who has been on Lennar’s PR payroll for years.

On Nov. 18 the Chronicle reported that Singer was on the campaign team for the Bayview ballot initiative, along with former 49ers executive Carmen Policy, Newsom’s campaign manager and chief political consultant Eric Jaye, Newsom’s former campaign manager Alex Tourk, political consultant Jim Stearns, and political advertising firm Terris, Barnes and Walters, which worked on the 1997 49ers stadium bond and the 1996 measure for the Giants’ ballpark, both approved by voters.

In recent months Lennar has asked the Guardian to send questions to its latest PR flack, Lance Ignon, rather than Singer. In reply to our latest round of queries, about lawsuits and air district violations, Ignon forwarded us the following statement: "The record is abundantly clear that at each and every stage of the redevelopment process, Lennar has been guided by a commitment to protecting the health and safety of the Bayview–Hunters Point community. Lennar has fully cooperated with all relevant regulatory agencies and public health professionals to determine whether grading operations at the Shipyard pose a health threat to local residents. After months of exhaustive analysis, numerous different health experts — including [the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry] — concluded that the naturally occurring asbestos did not present a serious long-term health risk. Lennar will continue to work with the San Francisco Department of Public Health and other regulatory agencies to ensure the health of the community remains safeguarded."

Actually, the ATSDR report wasn’t quite that conclusive. It took issue with the faulty dust monitoring equipment at Parcel A and noted that exposure-level thresholds for the project were derived from industrial standards for workers who wear protective gear and don’t have all-day exposure. "However, there are studies in the scientific literature in which long term lower level/non-occupational exposures (from take home exposures and other areas of the world where naturally occurring asbestos occur) caused a low but epidemiologically detectable excess risk of mesothelioma," the ATSDR-DPH report observes.

It’s not surprising to see Lennar gloss over issues of liability, but it’s curious that Newsom and other top officials are so eager to push a proposal that would give Lennar control of Candlestick Point and perhaps result in a 49ers stadium on a federal Superfund site — without first demanding a full and public investigation of how the developers could have so miserably failed to enforce mandatory plans at Parcel A.

This fall the Newsom administration was peeved when the San Francisco Board of Education, which includes Newsom’s education advisor Hydra Mendoza, and the Youth Commission unanimously called for a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s Parcel A site until community health issues are addressed.

These demands were largely symbolic, since major grading at the site is complete, but the Mayor’s Office shot back with a Nov. 2 memo including the request that city department heads and commissions follow the example of the Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee and the Bayview Project Area Committee, which have said they won’t hear further testimony on the dust issue "unless and until credible scientific evidence is presented to contradict the conclusions of the DPH, CDPH, UCSF and others that the construction dust at the Shipyard had not created a long-term or serious health risk."

Such complex points and counterpoints have been like dust in the air, preventing the public from getting a clear picture of what’s important or what’s happened at the site. But a careful review of the public record shows that, at the very least, Lennar has failed to live up to its promises.

PAPER TRAIL


As records obtained through a whistle-blower lawsuit’s discovery process show, Lennar employee McIntyre was reprimanded for e-mailing a group of Lennar subcontractors including Gordon N. Ball, Luster National, and Ghirardelli Associates and demanding that their traffic-control plan implementation be in place before Gordon Ball/Yerba Buena Engineering Joint Venture "begin using (oversize construction equipment) scrapers or articuutf8g trucks on Crisp Road."

In court depositions, Menaker, who became McIntyre’s supervisor in April 2006, claimed he "never told McIntyre that he should not raise issues related to what he perceived to be deficiencies in Gordon Ball’s dust control measures.

"Rather, I repeatedly advised him that management by e-mail would not accomplish the goal of improving Gordon Ball’s performance and that he needed to communicate with Gordon Ball and others on the project in a more effective fashion. As a result of my observations of his job performance and the feedback from others … on Aug. 1, 2006, we brought in other professionals to assist with duties initially assigned to McIntyre."

But public records reveal that things continued to go awry at the site, long after the bulk of McIntyre’s construction field-management duties were transferred to David Wilkins, an employee of Lennar subcontractor Luster National.

According to a report filed by the city’s Department of Health, on July 7, 2006, the DPH’s Amy Brownell drove to the Lennar trailers and informed McIntye that Lennar was in violation of Article 31, the city’s construction-dust ordinance, after she observed numerous trucks generating "a significant amount of dust that was then carried by the wind across the property line." She even observed a water truck on the haul road doing the same thing as it watered the road.

On Aug. 9 — eight days after McIntyre was relieved of his field-construction management duties and seven days after Lennar declared it could not verify any of its air district–mandated asbestos-monitoring data — Brownell drove to the Lennar trailers and spoke with McIntyre’s successor, Wilkins, about dust problems generated by hillside grading, haul trucks, and an excavator loading soil into articulated trucks.

"Every time [the excavator] dumped the soil into the trucks, it created a small cloud of visible dust that crossed the project site boundary. There was no attempt to control the generation of dust," Brownell observed in her Aug. 9, 2006, inspection notes.

On Sept. 21, seven weeks after McIntyre’s transfer, Brownell issued Lennar an amended notice of violation when it came to her attention that construction-dust monitors hadn’t been in place for the first two months of heavy grading.

On Dec. 8, 2006, five months after McIntyre’s reassignment, Lennar got slapped with another violation after DPH industrial hygienist Peter Wilsey observed on Nov. 30, 2006, that "dust from the work, particularly from the trucks on the haul road, was crossing the property boundary."

And on Aug. 17, a year after McIntyre left, the DPH issued Lennar its most recent violation for not controlling dust properly. But this time the notice included a 48-hour work suspension period to establish a dust-control plan monitor to be supervised by DPH staff, with costs billed to Lennar.

"The issuance of notices of violations shows the regulatory system is working," Brownell told the Guardian. "Dust control on a gigantic project like this is a continuous, everyday process that every single contractor has to do properly. That’s Lennar’s issue and problem. At DPH, we feel we have enough tools to do inspections, which Lennar gets billed for. And if they violate our requirements again, we’ll shut them down again. Or fine them."

So far, the DPH has not chosen to fine Lennar for any of its Parcel A dust violations.

"We considered it for this last violation but decided that shutting them down for two days was penalty enough," Brownell says, adding that while she’d "never just rely on air monitors, a monitor helps when you’re having problems with dust control, because then you can say, ‘Here’s scientific proof.’<0x2009>"

And scientific proof, in the form of monitoring data during the long, hot, and dusty summer of 2006, would likely have triggered numerous costly work slowdowns and stoppages. According to a memo marked "confidential" that the Guardian unearthed in the air district’s files, Lennar stated, "It costs approximately $40,000 a day to stop grading and construction" and "Gordon Ball would have to idle about 26 employees at the site, and employees tend to look for other work when the work is not consistent."

After Rev. Muhammad began to raise a storm about dust violations next to his nonprofit Muhammad University of Islam, Lennar Urban senior vice president Menaker accused him of being a "shakedown artist" when he refused an offer to temporarily relocate the school.

But Muhammad told the Guardian he refused the offer "because I didn’t want the school to be bounced around like a political football. And because I was concerned about the rest of the community."

Muhammad said he’s trying to sound the alarm about Lennar before it takes over all of Hunters and Candlestick points. As he told us, "This city is selling its birthright to a rogue company."

TRIGGER TIME


So what does the BAAQMD intend to do about Lennar’s enforcement record past, present, and future?

At an Oct. 29 hearing on asbestos dust, the BAAQMD Board of Directors unanimously instructed staff to pursue the maximum fines possible for Lennar’s Parcel A violations.

Air district staff tried to reassure the public that the "action levels" the BAAQMD set at the shipyard are health protective and provide a significant margin of safety.

Health impacts from unmonitored exposures, BAAQMD staffer Kelly Wee said, "are well within the guidelines," claiming a "one in three million" chance of developing asbestos-related diseases.

BAAQMD board member Sup. Chris Daly, who as a member of the Board of Supervisors voted July 31 to urge a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s Parcel A site, praised the air district for "moving forward with very conservative action levels.

"But these levels are political calls that are not necessarily scientific or health based," Daly added. "The initial violation, the one that, according to Lennar, CH2M Hill is responsible for, we don’t know what those levels of asbestos were, and that’s when the most significant grading occurred.

"The World Health Organization and [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] scientists are very clear that any level of exposure to asbestos comes with an increased health risk, and if you are already exposed to multiple sources, this becomes more serious," he said, referring to the freeways, power plants, sewage treatments plants, and substandard housing that blight the community, along with the area’s relatively high rate of smoking.

The BAAQMD’s Wee told the organization’s board that Lennar did not conduct proper oversight of its contractors and did not properly document the flow of air through its monitors but did discover and report its lapses in August 2006.

"Lennar exceeded the air district’s work shutdown level on at least 23 days in the post–Aug. 1, 2006, period, which is when the developer was monitoring asbestos dust," Wee observed, noting that the air district has two additional notices of violation pending against Lennar for 2007: one for overfilling dump trucks, the other for failing to maintain enough gravel on truck-wheel wash pads.

BAAQMD spokesperson Schkolnick later confirmed to the Guardian that the air district issued Lennar a notice of violation on Oct. 26 for failing to control naturally occurring asbestos at Parcel A, where grading is finished, but Lennar subcontractor Ranger is digging up the earth again to lay pipes.

"It’s time for the board to make sure the air district is as aggressive as possible to protect residents and sensitive receptors," Daly said. "Asbestos is carcinogenic. The state and federal government knows it. That was why there was an asbestos-dust mitigation plan. The air district asked for air monitoring because of the site’s proximity to a school. The air monitors were sold not just to the city but to the public as the major safeguards to the community, especially sensitive receptors, but during the most gigantic grading period and perhaps the most gigantic exposures, we don’t know what the levels of asbestos were."

Fellow BAAQMD board member Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who was a key swing vote against urging a Lennar work stoppage at the Board of Supervisors meeting in July, is now joining Daly in demanding full enforcement of the law.

"The July 31 resolution had no way to force Lennar or the SFRA to do anything," McGoldrick told the Guardian, explaining why he’s now taking a stronger stance. "It seemed that we’d reached the conclusion that the community didn’t want to shut down the project, since it included 31 percent affordable housing, and that the work was essential in terns of revitalizing the area and that the evidence presented seemed to show that everything is now under control."

But because the coalition of Lennar supporters — who didn’t mention they are on Lennar’s payroll until after the July 31 resolution failed — is now pushing a ballot measure to vastly expand Lennar’s control in our city, McGoldrick is demanding answers and accountability.

"We want to look into whether Lennar screwed up deliberately, and if so, fine them to the hilt," McGoldrick said. "But let’s get the project on Parcel A going, because the grading has been completed and it will be beneficial to the community."

McGoldrick claimed that in July he and Daly knew they had an air district hearing coming.

"And we knew where the strongest action could be taken in terms of sticking it to Lennar and showing them we won’t just be looking over your shoulder, we’ll be standing on it," McGoldrick told us.

"A fine means we have warned you — and we’ve got a gun to your head. It means if you don’t act properly, we can pull the trigger," McGoldrick said, noting that at the time of the July 31 vote the Parcel A grading was essentially done and no one could present any solid evidence that the public health had been harmed.

"So now the question is: did you or did you not do this? [A maximum fine of] $75,000 a day for 383 days, even if it’s not a lot of money to Lennar — it’s a lot of embarrassment," McGoldrick said.

But if Lennar tries to delay settling with the air district to avoid fines until after the June 2008 election, will its perceived unwillingness to face consequences backfire at the ballot box — and soil Newsom’s reputation as a great environmentalist in the process?

As McGoldrick observed, "Some of us are having serious second thoughts about going forward with Lennar. Our feeling is, you should sit down and cooperate with the air district and settle this thing with them. And you know darn well that we are standing there, ready to pull the trigger."

He framed the issue this way: "We’re saying to the Mayor’s Office, you guys have a responsibility [to ensure Lennar is accountable] before you give them another 350 acres — on top of the 63 acres they already have — just to save the mayor’s butt, since he blew it with the Olympics and the 49ers."

LENNAR BY THE NUMBERS

Number of days Lennar Corp. had been in violation of air district monitoring rules, according to the Sept. 6, 2006, citation: 383

Fine, per day, for vioutf8g the air district’s plan: $1,000–$75,000, depending on intent

Maximum fine Lennar faces: $28.7 million

Fine, per day, for vioutf8g the city’s construction-dust plan: $5,000

Number of cited violations of city’s construction-dust control plan: 5

Daily cost Lennar claims for stopping work at Parcel A: $40,000

Amount Lennar paid subcontractors for grading Parcel A: $19.5 million

Amount Lennar paid Sam Singer Associates for public relations work in 2005: $752,875

Amount Lennar paid CH2M Hill for environmental consulting work: $445,444

Parcel A acreage: 63

Acreage Lennar controls on Treasure Island: 508

Percentage of rental units promised at Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island: 27

Number of rental units Lennar is building at Parcel A: 0

Acreage in the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative: 780

Number of rental or below-market-rate homes in Bayview initiative: Unknown

Lennar’s share price Nov. 26: $14.50 (a 52-week low)

Lennar’s stock’s 52-week high: $56.54

Defying the injunction

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

While City Attorney Dennis Herrera can claim victory in winning court approval for his controversial gang injunctions, at least one targeted group is openly defying the terms of the preliminary order, trying to make a statement that they should be given a chance to heal the wounds they helped create.

Alleged members of the Eddy Rock gang in the Western Addition, from the Yerba Buena Plaza East housing complex at Eddy and Buchanan streets, have continued to hold small film festivals and other gatherings in an attempt to show the public that despite being labeled violent criminals, they are making a positive contribution to the community.

As the San Francisco Police Department and City Attorney’s Office say they are preparing to enforce the injunction, many of the named parties in the Western Addition say they will continue to congregate within the four-block "safety zone," an area where they are forbidden to loiter, be in the company of other gang members, or engage in other banned activities. In defying the injunction, they risk being jailed for up to five days.

"They’re trying to force us out of our community, but we’re [going to] fight it," Maurice Carter, a 32-year-old alleged gang member, told the Guardian.

The decision by targeted members to forge ahead with their community-building efforts is an attempt to sway city officials into easing the restrictions of the injunction, a prospect that seems unlikely at this stage.

"We’ve got the most influence of anybody," said Paris Moffet, whom the city attorney has identified as the leader of Eddy Rock, a label the 27-year-old disclaims. "But they don’t think so. Instead of putting us down, if they want to stop the violence, why aren’t they helping us?"

Superior Court Judge Peter Busch granted three injunctions sought by Herrera on Oct. 18 against two other gangs in the Western Addition and the Norteños in the Mission. The date for enforcing the injunction remains tentative, and city attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey said, "Out of an abundance of caution, we will not begin to enforce the injunction against an enjoined gang member until after the proof of service for that individual has been filed with the court."

The city attorney is also holding sessions, with the help of the Gang Task Force, to properly train local police to enforce the measure. However, Lt. Ernie Ferrando of the task force said his unit can and likely will apply the restrictions to those who have already been served.

As of Nov. 26, 33 individuals have been served with injunctions, Dorsey said. Twenty people from the Western Addition — five from Chopper City, 10 from Eddy Rock, and five from the Knock Out Posse — have been given notice, along with 13 Norteños from the Mission.

Despite the measures being taken by police and the city attorney, which involve careful efforts to make sure only people named on the injunctions are prosecuted, critics of the approach say the injunctions may no longer be necessary in the Western Addition, where many of the targeted individuals seem to have made great strides over the past few months.

"I’ve been coming down here for four years, and this is the first summer that I haven’t had to drive over caution tape," said Sheryl Davis, program director of Mo’ Magic, which is based in the nearby African American Art and Culture Complex on Fulton Street. "So something is working."

The last gang-related homicide occurred in May, Northern Police Station captain Croce Casciato said. Police say the reasons for the decrease in violence are varied, but few can argue against its scope. The alleged gang members who have been targeted maintain that they — not outside forces or the injunction — are most responsible for the turnaround.

"There’s been a lot of bloodshed here. We’re trying to clean that bloodshed," Moffet said. About the looming threat of the injunction, he added, "We’re [going to] stand tall no matter what they say. Everybody makes mistakes. The main thing is trying to better yourself. That’s my leadership — stopping the violence."

Davis, who helped the film fest at Plaza East secure a digital projector, agreed that the respite in killings is directly attributable to the alleged perpetrators. While she didn’t criticize outright the efforts of the city attorney, she did say the recent positive actions by alleged gang members should be noted and that the injunction will likely act as a deterrent to such activities.

Of community-based efforts in the Western Addition, Davis said, they "should be duplicated, not shut down."

But proponents of the injunctions say they won’t hinder positive efforts. Nor will it be impossible for targeted gang members to be removed from the list. Public Defender Jeff Adachi is currently pushing for an opt-out provision that would permit injunction targets to petition for their removal by proving they are not involved with gangs. It’s an idea that has been supported in concept by the city attorney, though the details have yet to be worked out.

Lt. Ferrando pointed out that the injunctions might help gang members to escape the lifestyle without fear of retribution.

"This gives some guys the chance to leave the area for good," he said, noting that after the first injunction was approved, against the Oakdale Mob in Bayview–Hunters Point, several members simply never came back to the area and were never served.

Still, those named as members of Eddy Rock expressed concern that their recent positive efforts may go to waste.

"Some of the guys doing the good work are on the injunction. I find that very unique," said Marquez Shaw, a 26-year-old who is described in court papers as a member of the gang, though he is not on the list of targeted individuals.

In a video made by the group during a recent gathering, 20-year-old alleged member Hannibal Thompson says, "We got a lot of good stuff going on right now. Don’t take it away from us."

Slow down the Laguna project

-
0

EDITORIAL The 440-unit housing development slated for the Laguna Street site of the old UC Berkeley Extension campus is suddenly on the fast track. The Planning Department has calendared a vote on the project for Dec. 20 in what appears to be a desperate effort to get it approved before the end of the year. That may be in the interests of developer A.F. Evans, but it’s not in the interests of San Francisco, and the commissioners should be in no rush to go along.

This isn’t a typical commercial project: the land has been in the public sector for a century and has always been used for public projects. Until the 1950s it was home to San Francisco State University, and it became a UC campus in 1958. Turning public land over for private use should raise alarms anywhere, and in the middle of a dense city, where public land is scarce and affordable housing desperately needed, those alarms ought to be ringing loud and long.

In this case Evans has done a brilliant bit of political maneuvering: the market-rate housing project is paired with an 80-unit development that will be designed as retirement housing for queer seniors. That’s clearly something the city needs, and that aspect of the plan has won widespread support — and helped divert or eliminate opposition to the overall project.

But there are real issues here. For one thing, Evans plans to tear down two historic buildings (while saving three others). That was a compromise the Board of Supervisors accepted in August, but we still find it dubious. We also find dubious the notion that the developer will create public space by reopening a section of Waller Street — a public thoroughfare — that was part of the old campus.

The biggest problem, however, is the lack of affordable housing. Evans is planning to make 20 percent of the units available below market rate — but that’s a fairly small number considering that this is public land. Remember: at that ratio only 16 of the queer retirement apartments will be available to anyone who isn’t wealthy. While we agree that queer seniors of all income levels need this style of housing, which will feature community amenities and on-site services for the aging, 16 lower-cost units hardly seems like enough of a benefit to justify shifting 5.4 acres of public property into a private project. "How can the queer community settle for this, in San Francisco of all places?" queer housing activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca asks. "I think that we can do much better."

Evans is in a rush — and thus the Mayor’s Office and the City Planning Department are in a rush — because the developer’s contract with the university expires if the project isn’t approved by Jan. 1, 2008. Almost everyone involved agrees that the UC and Evans can easily reach terms on an extension, so there’s no real threat here. But it doesn’t matter — that’s not the city’s problem. San Francisco has a responsibility to ensure that big new projects serve the public interest; the developer’s deadline doesn’t trump that.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is asking that the affordable-housing component be increased to around 40 percent. That may take a little work: the UC, which wants to make as much money as possible off this, is charging Evans a stiff fee for the land. But with the proper pressure, including pressure on the UC from Assemblymember Mark Leno and state senator Carole Migden, a much higher ratio of low-cost housing ought to be possible.

It’s too early to approve what’s still a bad deal. The planning commissioners should turn it down, and if they don’t, the supervisors should demand more from Evans before allowing the property to go from public to private use. *

Fetus frenzy

-
0

› culture@sfbg.com

If you live in San Francisco and are in possession of a conventional vagina, you are most likely pregnant. And if you’re not pregnant, you’re either anxious to become so or have just pinched out a baby and are looking toward closing the deal on numbers two and three before you hit 40. If none of the above applies, I, a new mother myself, give you permission to ignore that self-righteous pregnant bitch eyeing your Muni seat and openly admit the following: SF was edgier when it was just a bunch of wayward freaks in crotchless ass pants.

Now, thanks to a surge in results-oriented fucking among the white, heterosexual ruling class, this city has become overrun with decaf-latte-sipping, thousand-dollar-stroller-pushing, CFO–Noe Valley–ish, overly together supermoms who will tear you multiple assholes if you even think about stepping near their two-legged petri dish specimens. One might be tempted to label this phenomenon a baby boom. That assumption, however, is incorrect. What we are witnessing in San Francisco — and everywhere else inhabited by Gen Xers with money — is a parent boom.

In the past, parents were simply identified as people who raised children. That era, which lasted roughly 200,000 years, has ended. Parents now practice the rarified art of parenting. Parents who parent must adopt a specific parenting style — one that’s far more complex than a hairstyle and infinitely more expensive. Parenting requires ongoing investment in sleep and breast-feeding consultants, childproofing contractors, European-designed gear, six-week courses, endless manuals and magazines, and, depending on one’s sacred style, couture bedding and nursery decor that can run well over five grand. This is quite a change of direction for Generation X, to which I belong, whose members were blacking out in Cow Hollow bars and smoking out of two-foot Mission District bongs throughout the ’90s. But my generation’s escapist persona — equal parts political indifference, obsessive consumerism, hedonistic self-absorption, and Diff’rent Strokes references — did not abate or even truly evolve when we threw the birth control in the trash. It only found new life, literally.

We, the latchkey slackers who postponed being parents until our ovaries wept, are acutely aware that whatever decisions we make regarding our children are direct reflections of ourselves. It is therefore imperative to properly accessorize one’s child; only by doing so can one ensure the child is a better accessory. The right stroller, carrier, preschool waiting list, parenting philosophy, and even diaper — all denote much more than any sensible person would care to know.

THE BABY GAP


Oh, wait. I forgot to mention the babies: it appears there are many of them. Commercial sidewalks in Noe Valley, Cole Valley, Hayes Valley, and beyond buzz with kitten-eyed freshies sucking the rubberized life out of pacifiers, frazzled mommies in yoga pants and camel toes pushing behemoth, double-wide prams, nannies chatting on cell phones while small barbarians stick organic Cheerios up their noses. Top preschools are waitlisted for several years. Babysitters are harder to find than a pimple on a newborn’s butt. Is it good for San Francisco’s soul that kiddie boutiques outnumber bondage shops and Polk Street glory holes? It’s an epidemic, cry my nonparent friends, some of whom have been accosted by pompous moms and dads for accidentally bumping into strollers or smoking on the street. Ever think of denying an All-Important Holy Mother with Child your seat on the 1 California? Want to be knifed by a stay-at-home mom from precious Laurel Heights?

Funny thing is, the evidence of a baby boom is largely anecdotal. Statistics paint a very different picture. A disturbing March 2006 report by Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, "Families Struggle to Stay: Why Families Are Leaving San Francisco and What Can Be Done," reveals that we have the lowest child population of any American city. And of San Francisco’s 100,000 children, most reside in the city’s poorest districts — including traditionally working-class neighborhoods that are becoming increasingly chic. Coleman Advocates also estimates that 39,000 families with children are in need of affordable housing.

"The issue is not if there is a baby boom trend in San Francisco," Coleman Advocates’ Ingrid Gonzales e-mailed me. "The real issue is whether these [lower-income] families stay or are eventually pushed out of San Francisco because of a lack of affordable family housing or access to a quality public school education. Stats show that families leave when their children reach kindergarten age. Coleman Advocates and our families say that this is not OK — families should have a right to stay in the city they call home."

Somehow I doubt the parents buying the $1,890 Cabine infant dresser at Giggle on Chestnut Street are too worried about making rent. In fact, a May article in the New York Times reports that San Francisco is second only to Manhattan in toddlers born to wealthy white families, defined as those that pull in an average of $150,763 per year. And consider this Coleman Advocates finding: there was a 45 percent drop in the number of black families with children in San Francisco from 1990 to 2000, while around the same time 90 percent of the people moving into the city did not have children and — surprise, surprise — were mostly rich and white. This development pretty much paralleled the period of the dot-com boom. At the risk of making light of an alarming situation, is it safe to posit that the dot-com bust inspired semiemployed white professionals to buy a lot of lube?

CLASH OF THE CODDLERS


So what creates this illusion of a baby boom? Probably an uptick in showy, hyperactive parenting. Weekends at Children’s Playground in Golden Gate Park provide insight into the phenomenon. There parents can be found earnestly — one might even say aggressively — parenting. They really put their all into it ("it" being what our parents haphazardly did with us) as they push their bewildered offspring in swings, making sure to "Wheee!" with more enthusiasm than a redneck at a NASCAR rally — an apt metaphor, because this brand of parenting is a competitive sport. "How old is she? Is she standing on her own? Can she walk yet? Does she speak French, and can she crap in the can?" someone always wants to know, hungrily eyeing your baby as if she were a delicious wild Alaskan king salmon fillet.

But blessed be, developmental superiority is not the only way to make other parents feel like shit. Fleets of luxury Dutch strollers are parked around the playground’s grassy knolls, each exceeding my share of rent by $300. I’ve seen nannies pull toys from Coach and Louis Vuitton diaper bags, kids scale the jungle gym dressed in Little Marc coats, white babies in $40 organic cotton T-shirts emblazoned with a grossly ironic image of a black woman’s face.

This excess of money breeds paranoia. Even on the warmest days, Caitlin-Courtney-Penelope-Emily-Aurelia-Shiloh-Mackenzie can be observed crawling in the playground’s cool sand, fully dressed in the very best of Zutano’s and Petit Bateau’s wide-brim hats, thick socks and booties, long-sleeve shirts, and pants in order to prevent the wretched elements, formerly known as blue sky and sunshine, from attacking the child’s not-so-invisible bubble. And rest assured, many of the playground’s nannies — almost entirely middle-aged mothers and grandmothers of color — have been fingerprinted and subjected to invasive criminal background checks. Long gone are the days when parents hired any ol’ teenage stoner to watch their kids.

LAVISH AND LACK


I feel embarrassed to be here, I often think. Because I know I’m part of the problem. I didn’t come to San Francisco for the money — I was born here and spent most of my childhood in that new epicenter of ultraparenting, Noe Valley — and I don’t have a nursery, a full-size kitchen, or even a hallway in my shared one-bedroom Sunset apartment. (This is not a "poor me" moment; my lifestyle is a choice.) But I did spend $300 on a labor and newborn preparation course, during which I suffered video after video of goopy babies cannonballing forth from untamed bush. I paid a woman $200 to teach me how to breast-feed and another $50 to join a local e-mail list through which upper-crust women seek help in finding dinner party entertainment for hire and live-in au pairs. I can cite Halle Berry’s prenatal test results but no statistics from the war in Iraq. I have secretly chuckled at ugly babies. I have wanted to know if your baby can stand alone yet and why she’s so much smaller than mine. I’ve purchased nearly 20 books on pregnancy, breast-feeding, natural birth, cosleeping, infant health, starting solids, potty training, how to stay hot, and how to fix my gut.

Pediatric records indicate I was not reared by wild dogs, yet I can’t figure out how to assume the most primal of all roles — motherhood — without hitting the ATM.

In her 2007 manifesto against the $20 billion baby-to-toddler industry and the disastrous effects it has on our children, Buy, Buy Baby (Houghton Mifflin) author Susan Gregory Thomas credits Gen X’s overspending and unhealthy micromanaging to the way in which we, the products of broken homes and TVs as babysitters, were raised: "The commercialization and neglect of young people results not only in fears of abandonment and bank-breaking shopping habits in adulthood to fill the void but also in a deep, neurotic sense of attachment to, and protection of, one’s own children and home."

Gregory Thomas’s assessment strikes me as painfully true and spurs the question: what kind of people will our babies become? Will they, as older children and adults, invariably expect and demand the best, no matter the appropriateness of the circumstance? Will they be terrified of public schools and public transportation and — worse — people with a different color skin? How will they ever travel abroad, and will they condescend to people who have less? Surely the parents who buy their baby the $1,700 Moderne crib intend only to give their child the finest they can offer. Every child is worthy of that grand intention. Yet, as my friend and mother-mentor Billee Sharp pointed out, the more extravagant the gifts, the harder the parents must work to provide them, resulting in less time spent with their kids. Lavishness, in this sense, becomes empty compensation for a shortage of available love.

IT TAKES AN INTERNET?


Being a new parent is much harder than it seems. If we’re overcompensating, it’s largely because we don’t know what else to do. If it takes a village to raise a child, what happens when all you have is DSL? During my pregnancy and the first three months of my daughter’s life, my husband and I lived in relative isolation in Brooklyn, away from family and a network of close friends that could offer knowledge and day-to-day help. The books, the classes, and the breast-feeding consultant filled the gaps that real support would have provided. (I certainly had two boobs but no idea where to put them: In the baby’s mouth? Are you serious?) In the absence of genuine community, we follow the only guidelines available to us and do the best we can manage. While nothing is less appealing to me than having to be someone’s friend simply because we both piss our pants when we sneeze, artificially constructed social networks like mommy groups, daddy groups, play groups, and Yahoo e-mail groups fulfill a real need for disconnected urbanites whose families typically reside thousands of miles away.

Learning to be a parent without geographic and strong emotional links to our families, then, becomes a complicated process of untangling the skein of too much information. From the moment a woman discovers she is pregnant, she and her partner are encouraged to believe they are totally, utterly retarded when it comes to being parents. The reality-TV experts, the how-to books, the product-driven Web sites and magazines cater to a deep, unrelenting distrust of ourselves, and they have the tragic effect of obliterating whatever parenting intuition and knowledge that we, as living creatures, already have in our DNA.

My path to reclaiming motherhood began with an injured wrist. Everything I had read warned that I would roll over my child and kill her if we slept together in one bed. To prevent this tragedy, my husband and I bought a sleigh bed attachment for our bed that kept me at least a foot away from my child. Each night that I listened to her breathe without being able hold her brought an agony so intense that I became profoundly depressed. I was desperate to pull her close to my body, like every mammal mother does, like our ancestors did long before they stopped growing pubic hair on their backs. In my longing to be nearer to my child, I contorted my left wrist under my head as I slept, perhaps to stop my murderous hands from accidentally touching the person I love most. With my wrist in a splint and steroid shots in my hand, I sobbed to my mother over the phone, "I can sleep with my cats, but why not with my own child?"

The night I brought my daughter into bed marked the beginning of my departure from the fear-and-product-based mommy mainstream. Within weeks a friend turned me on to the instinctive-parenting ideas put forth in Jean Liedloff’s The Continuum Concept (Addison Wesley, 1986), a fascinating book that details the author’s travels to Venezuela, where she studied the parenting methods of the indigenous Yequana Indians, who, remarkably, have never considered shopping for child-rearing clues on Babycenter.com. Admittedly, my and my husband’s current touchy-feely, indigenous-inspired style is a little fringe lunatic, and, as Gregory Thomas might suggest, it’s probably no coincidence that we both come from broken homes. But life-changing insights that require no investment in stylish baby gear are available to us. We only have to be willing to look.

BEYOND THE BUBBLE


One of the most affecting messages I have received about the depth of real parental love came to me in the form of a damp newspaper abandoned on the subway in New York City. Elizabeth Fitzsimons’s essay "My First Lesson in Motherhood," published in the New York Times Modern Love section this Mother’s Day, chronicles the journalist’s trip to China, where she and her husband picked up their adopted infant daughter, who, it turned out, had debilitating health defects. Fitzsimons was warned that her daughter might have Down’s syndrome, might never walk, and will likely be tethered to a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. "I knew this was my test," Fitzsimons writes, "my life’s worth distilled into a moment. I was shaking my head ‘No’ before [the doctors] finished explaining. We didn’t want another baby, I told them. We wanted our baby, the one sleeping right over there. ‘She’s our daughter,’ I said. ‘We love her.’ "

Fitzsimons’s fierce, truly unconditional love for a child she did not create becomes even more striking when contextualized in these fertility and pregnancy-obsessed times. We all want our children to be healthy, to outlive us, to be content, and to exist in a safe, peaceful world. These desires are pretty basic. Clearly, though, there’s a worrisome glitch in the parent boom trend: it has nothing to do with the well-being of children who are biologically not ours. This newfound love for babies is entirely insular, concerned only with one’s genetic family, one’s own perfect, beautiful, well-fed, well-dressed child. Look inside a pregnancy or parenting magazine and you will find that most lack any semblance of social perspective as they offer tired takes on recycled, useless information: "How to lose the baby weight in three days!" "Ten tips for getting back the magic in the bed!"

But the truth is that while middle-class women squabble about whether to breast-feed or bottle-feed, 39,000 families with children in this city are in dire need of affordable homes. For every day we bicker over stay-at-home moms versus mothers who work full-time, four children in this country will die from abuse or neglect, and eight more will be killed at the hand of someone operating a gun, according to Children’s Defense Fund statistics.

The self-centeredness of Gen X parents manifests as blindness to these sad realities, and here I indict myself again. Why do I only act on behalf of my child when I have the means to do something that could help other, less fortunate children? Maybe the answer is too painful to consider. Maybe I’d rather shop for a new sling instead. *

Behind the Bey empire

-
0

Editor’s Note: The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration of local media outlets including the Guardian, is investigating the circumstances surrounding the Aug. 2 murder of Bailey, an Oakland journalist who was reporting on the financial dealings of the Bey family’s Your Black Muslim Bakery at the time he was killed. For more information, including audio, video, and updates on the case, click here.

Since 2003, Esperanza Johnson, a former key figure within Oakland’s Bey organization, and her husband, Antron Thurman, have acquired nearly $2 million worth of East Bay real estate through a string of controversial deals tainted with allegations of deceit.

In five cases those deals led to litigation. Johnson, of Antioch, who also goes by the name Noor Jehan Bey, has twice been accused of fraud. Court records indicate that one of those transactions involved falsified documents.

One sale involving Johnson, a licensed real estate broker, led to criminal charges: Alameda County prosecutors in 2006 convicted a Johnson associate on fraud charges stemming from a deal that cost an East Oakland couple their home.

A broad array of characters have tangled with Johnson and Thurman in court, including a disabled Berkeley bus porter forced from his family home, an Antioch couple now facing foreclosure, and East Bay Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that builds homes for the poor and struggling. Combined, they claim to have lost at least $1.77 million in property, cash and equity in the deals.

The revelations about Johnson and Thurman come as authorities scrutinize the extensive real estate dealings of the Bey family and their bankrupt business, Your Black Muslim Bakery, including Johnson’s role as the broker for an Oakland woman named Paulette Arbuckle who is attempting to buy the bakery’s San Pablo Avenue headquarters. Johnson bore four of the Bey family patriarch’s dozens of children.

Bakery CEO Yusuf Ali Bey IV, 21, jailed without bail on kidnapping and torture charges, also is charged with real estate fraud: prosecutors say he bought an Oakland property under a false identity.

And bankruptcy trustee Tevis Thompson, who is overseeing the liquidation of Your Black Muslim Bakery’s assets, has claimed in court papers that Bey IV transferred $2.28 million in bakery properties to his mother, Daulet Bey, in a bid to “defraud creditors.” The trustee has sued for those properties’ return.

Devaughndre Broussard, a 20-year-old bakery associate, is charged with the Aug. 2 shotgun slaying of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey as he walked to work in downtown Oakland. Police say Broussard made a confession – later recanted – that he killed Bailey because the journalist was working on a story about the bakery’s finances and bankruptcy case.

Johnson, whose state business registration was suspended more than a year ago for failure to pay taxes and who with Thurman has more than $1 million in state and federal tax liens recorded against them, didn’t return numerous telephone calls and emails, and didn’t answer the gate at her Antioch home on two recent occasions.

Thurman refused to speak to reporters who approached him recently in Oakland.

A Los Angeles real estate consultant who reviewed Johnson’s transactions for the Chauncey Bailey Project said the trustee and judge handling the bakery’s bankruptcy should examine Johnson’s record.

They “should be made aware that a realtor on a transaction which requires the trustee’s approval has a murky… background,” said Eric Forster.

The attorney for the court appointed bankruptcy trustee charged with liquidating the bakery said Johnson’s transaction history would be probed.

“Obviously it is of some concern to us and we’re looking into it,” Eric Nyberg, attorney for trustee Tevis Thompson, said when informed of the cases.

He also noted that Arbuckle may not, in the end, be the highest bidder for the bakery. A hearing on her offer is scheduled for Nov. 29. If the $899,999 bid of Johnson’s client, Arbuckle, is successful and Johnson is “entitled to receive the commission, then we really don’t have an issue with it,” Nyberg said.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Real Estate, Tom Pool, wouldn’t discuss the Johnson and Thurman transactions.

Machado

Markus Machado and Gail Mateo said that when they wanted to buy a newer and bigger home in 2005, they went to a real estate broker they thought they could trust: Esperanza Johnson.

A Compton native, Johnson became involved with the Bey organization, a spin-off of the Nation of Islam, at the age of 12, taking the name Noor Jehan Bey.

She’s returned to using the name Esperanza Johnson, though she’s been listed in judgments against her by banks and credit-card companies as Nellie Bey, Nuri Bey, Noojean Bey and Noor Jehan Esperanza, a review of records by the Chauncey Bailey Project shows. And, in 2005 testimony, she said she still occasionally uses the name Noor Jehan Bey.

Johnson had hired Machado, a graphic artist, to create flyers for her Signature One Mortgage and Real Estate.

In a recent interview at his lawyer’s office, Machado described her as warm and gregarious – at first, anyway. Machado said Johnson arranged what seemed like an incredible deal: the couple could sell their 50-year-old Pittsburg house and move into a spacious four-bedroom home in a verdant Antioch subdivision, an ideal place to raise their three children and grow old together.

Johnson promised they’d pay about $1,600 a month for the new home, only a little more than their mortgage at the time. Machado said Johnson even agreed to forgo her usual commissions “because we were like family.”

They said Johnson had told them their credit was poor, and talked them into selling their Pittsburg house to one of her employees, Araceli Moreno, for $350,000 while putting the new home and mortgage in Moreno’s name as well. They expected to refinance the loan in about a year, when Moreno would sign the house over to them.

It seemed perfect – until the bills arrived.

The payments were $2,700 a month and soon ballooned higher, they now say in court records. And then Johnson – who in sealing the deal had diverted almost $58,000 of equity from their old home to others, and had won large commissions for herself by getting them an unfavorable mortgage – stopped taking their calls, Machado said as his wife sat next to him weeping.

The couple had trouble making the payments almost immediately and Moreno began receiving calls from the mortgage company. She sued Machado and Mateo last year.

“The point of (Moreno’s) lawsuit was to get them to refinance to get my client’s name off the loan and for her to go ahead and salvage what of her credit picture she could,” said Moreno’s attorney, Richard G. Hyppa of Tracy.

The couple counter-sued in November 2006, naming Moreno and Johnson as defendants, claiming that Johnson defrauded them. They are now months behind on the payments and stressed to exhaustion.

“I don’t sleep. Gail doesn’t sleep,” Machado said. “I was very naive. We were led down this primrose path because I trusted (Johnson) implicitly.”

After paying off what they owed on the Pittsburg house, about $190,000 was left over that should have been used for the down payment on the Antioch house. But the suit alleges that Moreno used only $77,973 toward the down payment.

Meanwhile, court records say Johnson arranged for another $10,000 to be paid out to Moreno, and for someone named Harry Hawkins to get $45,830 as “repayment of loans.” Machado’s lawyer, Ken Koenen, said attempts to locate Hawkins have been fruitless.

The suit also claims Johnson structured the Antioch mortgage so monthly payments would increase dramatically after a year, and so Machado and Mateo would have to pay an $18,000 penalty in order to refinance – thereby earning her a much larger commission.

Machado and Mateo now are several months in arrears on the mortgage in Moreno’s name. Default notices have arrived at the house.

“It’s an extremely painful thing,” Machado said. “We have been robbed of our peace of mind. We have to make decisions about whether to put food in the refrigerator or gas in the car. We’ve not even sure we’re going to have a place to live.”

Johnson hasn’t responded to the couple’s lawsuit and will likely be subject to a default judgment, Koenen said.

Chicago D&P
Johnson and Thurman in 2004 acquired a Hercules home after a federal judge had ordered it frozen as an asset of an investment company, Chicago D&P, that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had accused of fraud.
The property was supposed to be sold to help pay back investors – reportedly including at least 30 active-duty Marines and several churches – which had been cheated out of millions through Chicago D&P’s pyramid schemes.
The daughter of the company’s president had bought the property years earlier using a straw purchaser – a friend with better credit – as a front, according to court records.
That friend had been trying to get her name off the title for some time, and the daughter’s attorney – Githaiga Ramsey, who also worked for Thurman and Johnson on another case – persuaded her to sign the house over to them. Records shows Ramsey offered the friend $20,500 to complete the transaction but that the payment was never made.
The transfer of the house occurred after U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer ordered the property frozen. Thurman then turned around and sold it a month later to one of the employees of his bail bond business, Jamie Bonilla, for $460,000. Johnson filed Bonilla’s loan application.
Most of that money appears to have eventually gone to pay mortgages against the property when Thurman and Johnson acquired it for free. But first, Thurman received $60,213 from the deal’s escrow; and Ramsey got $31,000.
It remains unclear who lived in the house after Bonilla bought it.
Stephen Anderson, the receiver representing Chicago D&P’s bilked investors, wrote in April 2005 that he believed Johnson’s daughter, Nisa Bey, had lived there.
Other documents show Madeeah Bey – another mother to several of patriarch Yusuf Bey’s children – used it as her mailing address in two December 2004 real estate deals.
It’s also unclear whether Thurman and Johnson knew of the court order freezing the house when they took possession of it. But in February 2005 Breyer held Ramsey in contempt of court for defying his order.
Ramsey and Thurman both repaid the money they received from the escrow when Thurman sold the house to Bonilla.
Bonilla, within a few months, then sold the house for $625,000 – a profit of $211,690 from a property that the receiver had originally wanted to sell to help repay the defrauded investors.
Anderson said a long legal battle to regain title to the house would’ve been too costly.
“We made an economic decision,” he said. “The objective of the receiver is to return as much money as possible back to the investors, and it was not difficult to determine we were going to get more money” by taking the $91,000 from Thurman and Ramsey than by “trying to unscramble that whole mess.”
Ramsey, who surrendered his law license while facing disciplinary charges from an unrelated case, wouldn’t discuss this case or others in which he was involved with Johnson and Thurman.
“My God, am I never going to get away from this?” he said. “I’m not involved and I don’t want to be. I’m not in contact with these people anymore.”
Bonilla could not be located.
Habitat for Humanity house
Antron Thurman married a woman named Sharon Clements in December 1987. Records show they separated seven months later and eventually filed for a divorce that was never made final.

In early 2000, Clements, as a single mother, moved into a home on 105th Avenue in Oakland built by the low-income housing nonprofit East Bay Habitat for Humanity. It gave Clements a no-interest $112,000 loan with no down payment.

Clements died in April 2003, leaving no will. Usually either there’s a clear legal inheritance, or else the nonprofit passes the deed to someone qualified for low-income aid, executive director Janice Jensen said. But Clements’ son was still a minor.

Clements’ home stood vacant for three years while her estate was sorted out in Alameda County Probate Court.

Then, in mid-2006, Thurman argued he was entitled to the low-income property as Clements’ surviving spouse, records show – even as he listed his address as Johnson’s Antioch home, and other records showed that in the previous few years he had bought and sold in excess of $1 million in East Bay real estate.

“Frankly, I didn’t even know about Mr. Thurman,” Habitat’s Jensen said. “I had no idea who he was or that he even existed until the attorneys got involved. When we looked at the deed, she was the only signature, so she bought that home herself.”

Still, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Marshall L. Whitley awarded Thurman the house, which had restrictions in place to preserve its affordability for low income people.

Thurman then sold it back to Habitat for Humanity for the $13,500 in equity that had accrued during the three years Clements owned it.

Alana Conner, an attorney for Thurman at the time, said she couldn’t independently recall details of the case and declined to discuss it.

Stewart

Mitzie Peters befriended Brandy Stewart in 2001, studying the Bible with her eventual victim, court records say.

Peters persuaded the cash-strapped AC Transit bus driver to deed the home at 1565 77th Ave. – which Stewart had inherited from her mother, and in which she, her husband and her three children lived – into Peters name and use Peters’ credit to get an equity loan. Peters promised to return the deed after a few days, keeping $12,000 from the loan as a fee.

“She said that because she loved me so much, she would never, ever think about doing this for anyone else, but she would help me to get the house refinanced,” Stewart would later testify.

Stewart deeded the house to Peters on March 11, 2003. But rather than sticking to the deal, Peters drained the property of all equity and gave nothing to Stewart, court records show.

Peters couldn’t have conducted the transaction without Johnson and her family.

As Peters’ broker, Johnson submitted a series of loan applications reporting Peters’ income as increasingly higher until the bank accepted the deal; she also allegedly coached Stewart in writing to the title company and falsely claiming Peters was her cousin.

Johnson’s sister, Ruquayya Jasmine Pennix, prepared Peters’ tax returns to send to the loan company, showing self-employment income that Peters later admitted was bogus; it’s unclear if Pennix knew that at the time.

Another of Johnson’s sisters – Fatima Ismail, who worked in Johnson’s office – drew up a phony lease showing Peters had derived rental income from Stewart’s house, according to court records.

Three months after she took title to Stewart’s house, Peters sold it to one of Johnson’s sons, Amir Bey. Under oath, Amir Bey later admitted he was just a straw buyer for his mother.

When arrested and charged with unrelated public benefits fraud, perjury and grand theft in July 2004, Peters made bail with Thurman’s Sinbad’s Bail Bonds.

As investigators also began probing her real estate activities, Peters gifted her Hayward condo to Johnson’s daughter, Nisa Bey, who sold it a month later for about $400,000.

Peters then lived with Nisa Bey in Pittsburg until going to prison. Because her bail had been secured with the condo, Thurman later asked a judge to exonerate the bail and return more than $50,000 – to Nisa Bey.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s office interviewed Johnson, Thurman, and their attorney, Githaiga Ramsey – who had represented Peters until just two months earlier, and who had just arranged the Chicago D&P deal for them – in September 2004.

“Johnson seemed evasive when questioned about irregularities in the loan and application process,” inspector Paul Wallace wrote in court papers.

But Johnson wasn’t charged.

“We didn’t think we could prove the case against her beyond a reasonable doubt,” Deputy District Attorney Alyce Sandbach said. “We didn’t have enough to make her on a case of fraud… of having made knowing misrepresentations.”

Among additional charges filed against Peters in November 2004 was a felony grand-theft count for equity and title to the Stewarts’ home; she pleaded no contest to that and 15 other, unrelated counts a year later, and was sentenced in February 2006.

The Stewarts got the $50,374.10 bail money Thurman had tried to direct to Nisa Bey. A judge in January ordered Peters to pay $486,083.90 in the Stewarts’ civil lawsuit, but they haven’t seen a dime, their lawyers say.

Amir Bey and Johnson tried to evict the Stewarts, court documents show, but backed off when the couple obtained free legal help.

The Stewarts then sued Johnson, Peters and Amir Bey; Johnson eventually offered to deed the house back to Stewart, but with the equity drained, the Stewarts couldn’t afford the higher mortgage payments.

A judge in September 2006 ordered Johnson and Amir Bey to pay the Stewarts $100,000 – $20,000 up front and $1,667 per month for 48 months.

Rebecca Saelao, the Stewarts’ attorney, said this civil judgment became a lien on the house, and was subordinated to massive mortgages Johnson and Amir Bey had taken on the property and eventually defaulted on. The house was sold at auction last year for $80,900, public records show.

The Stewarts got only about $5,000 from the sale of the home they’d lost. They no longer live in the Bay Area, and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Taylor

Wrapped in a thin, sea-green blanket, Donald Taylor lay in a narrow bed at a Stockton nursing home recently, his frail 61-year-old body ravaged by diabetes and hypertension. His wheelchair was parked at his bedside, a walker he wants to learn to use, a few feet away.

Taylor is broke and relies on Medi-Cal, the state insurance program for the indigent, to bankroll his care and board at the Elm Haven Care Center.

His room is dingy and, fluorescent-lit with peeling blue wallpaper and a television, foil wrapped around its rabbit-ear antennae, issuing forth static-filled sound. He spends his days “just doing nothing.”

He said he wonders what his life might be like now if he never encountered Antron Thurman. “I think about it quite often, but there’s nothing I can do… I think about how they took the house from me,” Taylor said haltingly in a soft, gravelly voice that contained little emotion.

In the 1950s Taylor’s parents bought a cozy two-bedroom home on a tree-shaded street in north Berkeley. He grew up there and lived there still as an adult, while working as a bus-station porter. When his parents died, he and his sister, Loretta Alexander, inherited the house; the mortgage was paid off.

In early 2001, according to interviews and court documents, stepbrother Frederick Myers Jr., approached the siblings with a plan: He would help them form a company to manage the house and another property they had inherited, an undeveloped Lake County parcel.

Myers asked them to transfer the two deeds to the new corporation, which he would helm for them. Taylor said he agreed at his sister’s urging, believing the three of them could profit from development of the Lake County parcel.

But Myers suddenly sold the Berkeley house to Thurman, pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars and disappeared, court documents say, catching Taylor and Alexander completely off guard.

“I felt I had been cheated,” Taylor said, adding that he believes Thurman and Myers worked in concert. “Fred Jr. took the house and sold it to (Thurman) and it’s been downhill ever since. He sold it out from underneath us.”

Myers could not be located. Thurman, asked if he remembered Taylor, refused to answer as he climbed into a Cadillac Escalade outside a home in the Oakland hills.

Alexander’s son, Tony Cole, expressed disgust at the way his mother and uncle were played. “That property slipped right out from underneath them,” he said in a phone interview. “They didn’t have the business sense to know what was going on.”

Taylor and Alexander in 2004 sued to reclaim the house. Myers never appeared in court, but Thurman – represented by Githaiga Ramsey – responded by filing his own suit, claiming he had legitimately bought the property for $374,388 and demanding that Taylor pay $1,500 in monthly rent or get out.

Taylor and Alexander eventually settled the case for $55,000; it took Thurman 10 months to pay them, court records indicate. Taylor’s attorney, Frederic Harvey, refused to discuss the case.

The two-story, beige stucco house with a large garage has steadily appreciated in value. Public records show Thurman sold it in 2004 to Madeeah Bey – the same relative who used the Chicago D&P house in Hercules as her address – for $520,000; she sold it for $850,000 less than a year later. The house is now assessed at $867,000.

Alexander died last year. Taylor lost most of his possessions including photos of his mother when he left the property.

“I’d like to tell him to go (screw) himself,” Taylor said of Thurman, his legs twitching quietly under the blanket.

University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism students Lisa Pickoff-White, Robert Lewis, Nick Kusnetz, Vianna Risa Davila, Marnette Federis and Lucie Schwartz contributed to this story.

Thomas Peele and Josh Richman are staff writers for the Bay Area News Group; A.C. Thompson is a free-lance reporter working for New America Media and Bay Area News Group-East Bay; Bob Butler is a freelance reporter and president of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association.

Good-bye to my city

-
0

EDITORIAL My marriage to the city is ending. Yes, the one on a peninsula tipped with astounding beauty, filled with rich cultural communities and the fullness and complexities of the growing inequities in American life.

It is the city that has witnessed the nurturing scenes of my adulthood on the West Coast of North America since 1966. I was here as the beat generation turned over my new city bride to newcomers during the Summer of Love. They called us hippies. Later I witnessed the tear gas flows at Haight and Ashbury the year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis. I watched television with Students for Eugene McCarthy on Haight Street on the warm June night when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.

Although my city bride is scarred and worn down, like any bride would be with too many lovers fighting over each blink of her aging eyes under a wrinkled brow, how can anybody leave after a 41-year love affair?

Sadly, the deepening citywide housing crisis, well documented by the Guardian, has now reached our rental home near our beloved Unitarian Church and Center.

I have been in the "good fight" for most of those 41 years in San Francisco, where I have been arrested in solidarity with homeless people, witnessed for peace and justice, and engaged the body politic at City Hall on behalf of sound environmental and planning policies. I have worked continually for better public TV and radio services, including 10 years of elected service on KQED’s Board of Directors.

Now what is a responsible lover of a city bride to do? Jump ship? Leave on the next voyage of the SS Bilge Rat?

As an aging groom, however, my choices are few.

Along with my human bride, Jean, I could live in the cramped, crowded, and often dangerous gray ghetto for folks of limited income. Perhaps we’d win the California Lottery so we could "afford" the city’s lottery for a so-called affordable-housing condo.

We could continue to mount the barricades, trying keep our bride from being dressed up for dates with the limousine-and-caviar set and the arrivistes of wealth and power who want to steal her remaining treasures.

Instead, we are now heading toward building a new community in Boulder, Colo., where my life in the West began nearly 50 years ago as a college student. We will be members one of America’s first cohousing villages designed by elders who are now building an intentional community of self-managed affordable and market-rate units in a city where there are successful policies geared to meet the housing needs of all income groups.

In many marriages facing uncertain challenges, at times ties are dissolved unwillingly. I will miss my haughty, imperial, and strangely vulnerable city bride called the city of St. Francis — in Spanish, San Francisco.

To you, the remaining citizens of San Francisco: I have had a wonderful relationship with my city bride, with many gifts from insightful people. It was a time of great love, affection, expectations met and unmet, with disappointments and frustrations and — of course — laughs and tears. I have had them all with you.

Henry Kroll

Henry Kroll moved to San Francisco in 1966.

Bodhi

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

It would be possible to enjoy a visit to Bodhi without eating anything at all, and this is not because the restaurant’s Vietnamese food is unworthy, but because the setting itself is so rich in allure that just sitting there (perhaps in the company of a good conversationalist, just to be on the safe side) is pleasure enough. Bodhi’s atmospheric magic is the magic of Europe’s public squares and has to do with architecture, artfulness, and the weaving of the private threads of human lives into a community fabric.

Food is central too, of course, in the casting of this enchantment. But let’s begin with the building, a gracious old brick structure that’s been subtly brought up to date with a good sandblasting and new windows, which are to a facade what new glasses are to a human face. Inside, the restaurant consists of two boxy, high-ceilinged dining rooms, connected by a grand passageway, like a squared-off proscenium arch, and the walls are hung with colorful abstract art. I have my doubts about abstract art, but I have even graver doubts about restaurants with no art at all on the walls. Art in public spaces, even public spaces devoted to activities other than art appreciation, isn’t a luxury and shouldn’t be considered discretionary. It’s an indispensable ingredient in the flavoring of mood, the temper in which people gather to eat.

Years ago, when a freeway viaduct still blighted the area, the space was occupied by a pan-Asian restaurant called the Window. That enterprise moved to Cathedral Hill and then became a Chinese restaurant. The viaduct, meanwhile, came a-tumblin’ down, and, in the vicinity of Valencia and Duboce, it was as if the sun were finally peeping out after years of sullen cloudiness. It didn’t hurt, either, that the public housing project across the street was demolished and rebuilt according to a more humane ethic. Inner Valencia still has something of the flavor of undiscovered country, but if Bodhi is a predictor, then the Valencia restaurant corridor could soon reach all the way to Market Street.

Bodhi’s food, unlike the Window’s, is pretty much straight Vietnamese, as that cuisine has come to be understood in this country, although there are a few little cross-cultural twists and turns here and there: spring rolls filled with Peking duck, for instance, or grilled beef and pineapple, in a brief curtsey toward Hawaii. A representative introduction to the kitchen’s style is Bodhi’s sampler ($15), a likable hodgepodge of nibbleables and noshables whose members include crispy rolls (stuffed with pork, taro root, carrots, and onions), summer rolls (filled with shrimp, cucumbers, and lettuce and presented as stubby cylinders, like nigiri), sugarcane shrimp (which look like tiny corn dogs), noodle patties, and a long berm of lemongrass grilled beef, suitable for scooping up with lettuce leaves.

After all that, you wouldn’t necessarily be panting after soup, though we liked the sweet corn soup with Dungeness crab meat ($5), a kind of egg-drop number with cameos by a couple of big stars. (Seasonality buffs will notice that corn and crab are an awkward combination; the first is a summertime treat, the second a holiday season delicacy. If there is overlap, it would have to fall about now, in midautumn.)

Satay fish ($13) attracted my attention not least because I wondered if we were walking into a disaster. Delicate fish don’t always like being skewered and don’t always take kindly to the harsh, dry heat of the grill. One foresaw crumblings, disintegrations. But the whitefish filets (of tilapia?) turned out to have been marinated in coconut curry and threaded carefully onto the skewers, and the result was a surprising intactness, with sly but distinct flavors.

More in the extrovert line was citrus chicken ($10), a low mountain range of boneless cutlets that had been breaded and fried until tender gold, then drizzled with an orange reduction, like a spicy-sweet syrup. White rice or cold rice noodles made adequate accompaniments, but you’re not likely to miss them if they’re not there.

At lunch the servings are, if anything, even more generous than those in the evening. I struggled through a rather vast plate of garlic noodles ($7.50) tossed with shreds of sautéed beef, while a green papaya salad ($6.50) — a formidable mound in its own right — was augmented by steamed shrimp, halved lengthwise. The papaya in this salad was crisper than what I have found to be usual and also dressed with a bolder, more acidic lime vinaigrette than is typically the case. Only the seafood combo ($8), a jumble of shrimp and calamari in a lively amber sauce, with green beans and zigzaggy tabs of carrot thrown in for color, was reasonable enough in size to finish without being incapacitated for the rest of the afternoon.

Bodhi, as a culinary experience, isn’t the match of a place like Dragonfly, which lifts Vietnamese cooking to a sublime level without doing violence to its basic character. But even the grandest restaurant is never entirely about food; a meal in a restaurant is a holistic interval whose meaning and value turn not merely on what is eaten but on whom it’s eaten with and in what setting. In this enveloping sense, Bodhi is unlike any other place I can think of on Valencia Street’s ever-longer restaurant row; it’s the sort of place you go to when you want to keep talking to whomever you’re with long after the last platter has been cleared and the conversation has turned to the subject of art, abstract art, perhaps, pros and cons — cons first, please! *

BODHI

Mon.–Thurs., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–11:30 p.m.; Sun., noon–10 p.m.

211 Valencia, SF

(415) 626-7750

www.bodhisf.com

Beer and wine

AE/DS/MC/V

Pleasant noise level

Wheelchair accessible

Rent control under attack

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s rent-control and affordable-housing laws could be struck down by a statewide initiative that appears to be headed for the June 2008 ballot.

The measure is sponsored by a coalition of conservative property rights advocates under the guise of limiting the government’s ability to seize property by eminent domain.

Cities and progressive organizations are fighting back by trying to qualify a competing ballot measure that would restrict the ability of governments to seize owner-occupied homes but would invalidate the more radical initiative. Groups from the San Francisco Tenants Union to the League of California Cities are actively mobilizing to gather the needed signatures by the Dec. 3 deadline.

SFTU director Ted Gullicksen told the Guardian, “180,000 rental units stand to be affected in San Francisco,” and argued that the invalidation of rent-control laws would rapidly gentrify the city. He noted that environmental groups have lined up against the measure because of ambiguous wording that “could also impact the revamping of the Hetch Hetchy Dam as well as the work on the levees and the delta.”

His group is mobilizing volunteer signature gatherers to qualify the competing measure — which would need more votes than the right-wing measure to quash the latter — and trying to educate the public through the Web site www.eminentdomainreform.com and a Nov. 14 rally planned for noon at the State Building at Van Ness and McAllister.

Eminent domain laws have been a hot-button political issue since 2005, when the US Supreme Court ruled in Kelo vs. City of New London that the Connecticut city could use eminent domain to seize land for a private development project. The furor over that decision triggered last year’s Proposition 90, which would have restricted eminent domain and defined “regulatory takings” so as to cripple local governments’ ability to enforce environmental laws and other restrictions on property use.

Prop. 90 was narrowly defeated (by 47.6 to 52.4 percent of voters statewide, but 29 percent in San Francisco), and advocates for the constitutional amendment titled Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property hoped to learn from the experience in crafting this new measure, for which they say they’ve gathered 850,000 signatures and plan to have one million by the Nov. 26 deadline for turning in 694,354 valid signatures of registered voters.

That measure “had a substantial amount of baggage in that it delved into regulatory takings,” Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, told the Guardian. The latest proposal, he said, “is a fairly tightly drafted measure that deals with eminent domain.”

Actually, as the Attorney General’s Office has concluded in its summary of the measure, it would also strike down rent-control laws, a key source of affordable housing in San Francisco, Berkeley, and a couple of other California cities. The measure’s broad prohibition on laws that “transfer an economic benefit to one or more private persons at the expense of the private owner” could also be interpreted as invalidating inclusionary housing laws, which require developers to create a set percentage of below-market-rate units, and other laws that regulate property.

Coupal admitted the measure attacks rent control and told us, “We think that’s part and parcel of complete property rights protection.” But he noted that units are only removed from rent-control protection when existing tenants move out. And he denied that the proposed act would affect inclusionary housing laws, citing a section that reads, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit or impair voluntary agreements between a property owner and a public agency to develop or rehabilitate affordable housing.”

Yet he also admits that it’s an open question whether affordable-housing requirements for developers will always be deemed voluntary. He said, “The issue of what is voluntary is currently being litigated in a number of courts.”

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I’ve been talking to the folks at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association about housing. It’s been an interesting conversation — SPUR has been known largely as an advocate for downtown development and rarely as a beacon of progressive wisdom.

But these days there are people on staff who really care about urban issues, and they aren’t always wrong. So when Dave Snyder, SPUR’s transportation person, who was formerly the director of the SF Bicycle Coalition, phoned and asked me to come by and discuss the Guardian‘s call for a new housing policy, I was happy to pay a visit.

And after talking to SPUR’s executive director, Gabriel Metcalf, and policy director, Sarah Karlinsky, I realized that we agree on a basic frame of reference.

San Francisco is in a state of crisis that threatens the future of the city. Housing isn’t just another policy issue to debate; it’s the central factor shaping the future of the city. If we do nothing — in fact, if we go along as we have been doing, building a few thousand units of market-rate housing and some affordable units on the side — we’re heading for disaster. This will become a city where only rich people can live, where a few working-class and poor folks are tolerated but the majority sentiment favors the very wealthy. It will be a city unlike the one so many of us love. The politics will be much more financially conservative. Social liberals like Gavin Newsom will be fine, but anyone who dares talk about business paying for health care or taxes supporting social programs will be irrelevant to electoral politics. As Calvin Welch likes to say, who lives here votes here.

The SPUR board has a lot of downtown types and developers, and some of them probably think it would be a fine thing if San Francisco became a city of wealthier homeowners. I don’t think the staff are of the same view. Snyder, Metcalf, Karlinsky, and I all agree: what’s happening now is simply unacceptable.

We part, sharply, when we talk about solutions. Metcalf argues that building lots and lots of housing, of all kinds — tens of thousands of units a year, bringing San Francisco to the density of Paris — will eventually bring down costs and make the city affordable again. And failing to build enough market-rate housing will just put more pressure on the existing housing stock, driving up prices even more.

That position requires a certain faith in market–based solutions, and I’ve always argued that the economics of San Francisco housing are too unusual for traditional thinking. Luxury condos in this city are like jails and freeways: you build them, they fill up, and the problem you set out to solve is still there. The new housing downtown isn’t keeping down prices (or demand) in the neighborhoods; it’s creating its own new demand.

When I suggested that we stop building new housing for the rich until we have, say, 40,000 new units for low-income and middle-class San Franciscans, Snyder jotted down some figures and told me the price tag for that much affordable housing would be $8 billion. Actually, if some of the housing is put into land trusts and is available for purchase by middle-income people, that number drops a bit, and if you leverage state and federal money, the amount San Francisco has to raise drops again, maybe to $2 billion or so. Still, it’s a very big number.

And it’s a very big problem. And in one sense, if we don’t solve it, nothing else really matters.

Newsom kills the party

-
0

EDITORIAL It was a typical Halloween night this year in New York City: two million people in Greenwich Village, 50,000 participants in a wild costume parade, national media attention … and no real problems. Since 1973, New York has managed to handle a homegrown event that exploded into a tourist attraction in an urban neighborhood. It’s a signature part of the city’s landscape, something world famous that shows the best of the city to the eyes of the world and generates a small fortune in tourist revenue.

Why can’t San Francisco, which by all rights ought to have a claim on Halloween as a national holiday, seem to get it together enough to manage its version of this event? Why was the city’s response simply to give up, to kill the party, to send out so many cops that the Castro was effectively in lockdown? Why spend millions to keep an event from happening while giving up on the small businesses that depend on that night’s revenue?

The scene on Castro Street on Oct. 31 was surreal; at least 500 law enforcement officers kept the barricaded streets blocked off. Anyone who so much as stuck a toe off the sidewalk was harshly reprimanded and pushed back. Local restaurants were shuttered — and the few that tried to stay open faced reprisals. The would-be revelers tried to be festive, but they weren’t given much support. Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Bevan Dufty had effectively cancelled Halloween.

They did so with little public input, operating mostly in secrecy, without revealing any specific plans to anyone in the community. It was a startlingly un–San Franciscan way of doing business, autocratic and mean-spirited. In fact, Newsom’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard, was almost mocking of any community concern; when we asked if the mayor or any of his staff would be holding any press events to discuss Halloween plans or let the community know what was in store, he tersely responded, "Halloween has been cancelled."

Newsom referred to the evening as "an incredible success," and if the goals were to make sure that nobody had any fun, nobody spent any money, and the Castro District was largely dead, it’s hard to argue with his logic.

On the other hand, if you think it ought to be possible for San Francisco to host a big party without creating panic and fear — that Halloween ought to be something to improve on and fix, not utterly shut down and abandon — then Oct. 31 was a civic embarrassment.

In a city where thousands of homeless people still wander the streets, where the price of housing is driving families out of town, where the homicide rate is soaring, the fate of a party is hardly the top issue on anyone’s agenda. And it’s tempting to give up, focus on more important things, and let the city’s tradition of wild Halloween fun just die.

But this is part of a larger trend that’s been happening in this town, and it’s directly related to the gentrification that’s changing the face of San Francisco. We’ve called it "the death of fun" — anything that might make a little noise and bother some well-off neighbor, anything that might create a little mess, anything that’s just a little out of control … the folks in the Newsom administration would just as soon see it go away. These days permits for live music events are tougher to get. Street fairs are facing prohibitive fees and regulations. Dance clubs are being told to quiet down. And we’re getting sick of it.

Next year Halloween will fall on a Friday, and the Castro simply can’t shut down then. Even Dufty admits something different will have to be done, and there’s no shortage of ideas. A Halloween street fair — perhaps with a modest donation asked of anyone not wearing a costume — shouldn’t be impossible to manage. A parade, similar to that of the New York gala’s, could start in the Castro and wind down at Civic Center, thus eliminating the problems that have some neighbors up in arms. But any solution will require extensive community input, and the mayor and Dufty need to set up a legitimate community task force — now, not next summer — to start talking about plans.

Some people suggest that the mayor needs to create an office of special events, which isn’t a bad idea. But he needs to do something else first: say that he’s not dead set against fun.

Bechtel and Newsom: a fine pair

-
0

What do Newsom and Bechtel have in common?

They both oppose Prop. E, which requires the next Mayor of San Francisco to appear before the Board of Supervisors for public policy discussions.

Up until now, Newsom has been framing Prop. E as work of Sup. Chris Daly that will only lead to “political theater.”

Then, boom, four days before the election, Bechtel goes and plonks down $5,000 to defeat Prop. E, on top of the last-0minute plonking down of $10,000 from Republican Warren Hellman, $20,000 from the San Franciscan Association of Realtors, $25,000 from the Committee on Jobs Government Reform Fund, and $1,000 from socialite Dede Wilsey.

Looking at all these “No on E” money bags, it’s hard not to conclude that what Newsom’s No on E “Let’s Really Work Together Coalition” is really working together on is avoiding having to publicly debate tough issues, like the lack of affordable housing, or the rising tide of violence, or mental health issues among the homeless–issues that folks who aren’t millionaires and realtors would like to see their elected representatives hash out with the Mayor, but that rich folks can chat privately with the Mayor over fund raising dinners.

What’s bizarre about all this is that when you actually get Newsom talking, he seems perfectly capable of carrying out a well-argued and coherent debate.

So why don’t his handlers want their boy to be drawn into public debates? Could it be that they understand that once you get drawn into an argument, and express your opinion, people will take sides? That’s it safer to maintain a remote, inaccessible position, while you prepare for the next big thing, like governor, senator, or President?

But this is San Francisco, where people thrive on debate. So here’s hoping that the next Mayor of San Francisco spares us the fake question time and does as voters requested last fall: show up before the Board and answer their gosh darn questions.

Endorsements: Local offices

-
0

Mayor

1. QUINTIN MECKE


2. AHIMSA PORTER SUMCHAI


3. CHICKEN JOHN RINALDI


Let us be perfectly clear: none of the people we are endorsing has any real chance of getting elected mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom is going to win a second term; we know that, he knows that, and whatever they may say on the campaign trail, all of the candidates running against him know that.

It’s a sad state of affairs: San Francisco has been, at best, wallowing helplessly in problems under Newsom, and in many cases things have gotten worse. The murder rate is soaring; young people, particularly African Americans, are getting shot down on the streets in alarming numbers. The mayor has opposed almost every credible effort to do something about it — he fought against putting cops on foot patrol in the most violent areas, he opposed the creation of a violence-prevention fund and blocked implementation of a community policing plan, and he’s allowed the thugs in the Police Officers Association to set policy for a police department that desperately lacks leadership. The public transportation system is in meltdown. The housing crisis is out of control; 90 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can’t afford to buy a house here, and many of them can’t afford to rent either. Meanwhile, the city is allowing developers and speculators to build thousands of new luxury condos, which are turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. Newsom only recently seems to have noticed that public housing is in shambles and that the commission he appoints to oversee it has been ignoring the problem.

The mayor is moving aggressively to privatize public services (including turning over the city’s broadband infrastructure to private companies), and he’s done little to promote public power. He’s cracking down on the homeless without offering adequate alternatives to long-term housing. Much of the time, he seems disconnected, out of touch with the city; he won’t show up and take questions from the Board of Supervisors and won’t even comply with the Sunshine Ordinance and release his daily calendar so the voters can see what he’s doing all day. He rarely appears in public, unless his handlers have complete control of the situation.

In fact, almost all of the significant policy discussions and initiatives that are happening in San Francisco today (including the universal health plan that Newsom likes to take credit for) have come from the Board of Supervisors.

There are good things to say about Newsom. We were among the huge number of San Franciscans who applauded when Newsom directed the city to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He did more than make a political statement, more than allow hundreds of couples to get married; he put one of the leading civil rights issues of our time on the center stage of the political agenda. And he made all of us proud to be San Franciscans. We were happy to see him stand up against the big international hotel chains and support striking hotel workers. In some ways, he’s brought modern management to the city — the 311 system, which connects callers directly to the proper city services, actually works, and sometimes works well.

But San Francisco is one of the world’s great cities, and it’s in serious trouble, and the person in charge isn’t offering much in the way of leadership — and he certainly isn’t offering the sort of progressive agenda that this city ought to be showing the nation. Newsom doesn’t deserve another term.

And yet the progressives in the city, who have come so very far since the return of district elections in 2000, were unable to field an electable candidate. We could spend pages dissecting why that happened. Matt Gonzalez should have made a decision much earlier in the process. Ross Mirkarimi should have run. The entire movement needs to be better about developing and promoting candidates for citywide office. But right now the issue on the table is this: who should the progressives, the independents, the neighborhood activists, the tenants, the people who have been dispossessed during the Newsom years, who don’t like the prospect of this mayor waltzing into another term atop a landslide majority, vote for Nov. 6?

We aren’t in the habit of endorsing for a big-league elective office people who haven’t put in their time in the minors. And Newsom’s challengers are not exactly a varsity squad. But many of them are raising important issues that Newsom has ignored, and we commend them all for taking on the difficult task of mounting a campaign against a mayor who most observers say is unbeatable. Our endorsements are, to be honest, protest votes — but we hope they’ll send a message to Newsom that there are issues, communities, and ideas he can’t just ignore after his coronation. The smaller the mayor’s margin of victory and the more votes the candidates who are pushing the progressive agenda collect, the less of a mandate Newsom will take into a second term that could be a truly frightening time.

Quintin Mecke has the strongest progressive credentials and by far the best overall approach to issues facing the city. He’s never held elective office (and had never run before), but he’s been involved in local politics for a decade. A volunteer with Tom Ammiano’s campaigns for supervisor and mayor and with Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign, Mecke went on to serve on the civil grand jury and the task force on redistricting, where he helped stave off attempts to chop up progressive supervisorial districts. He helped organize the South of Market Anti-Displacement Committee and now runs the Safety Network Partnership, a nonprofit that works to fight crime and violence in the city’s neighborhoods. He’s on the committee that monitors the city’s homeless shelters.

Mecke told the Guardian that "it’s hard to find an innovative, non-PR-type initiative out of the Mayor’s Office." He supports community policing, a progressive gross-receipts tax that would exempt small businesses, and a moratorium on market-rate housing until the city can determine how it will build enough affordable units. He complains that there’s no standard of care in Newsom’s homeless shelters. He opposes the privatization of public programs and resources.

Mecke tends a bit to bureaucratspeak; he talked about "horizontal conversations" instead of taking some issues head-on. And we’re concerned that he didn’t seem serious or organized enough to raise the modest amount of money it would have taken to qualify for public financing and mount a more visible campaign. But he’s a solid candidate, and we’re happy to give him the nod.

Ahimsa Porter Sumchai is a remarkable success story, an African American woman who grew up in the housing projects and wound up graduating from UC San Francisco’s medical school. She’s running primarily on the issue of environmental justice for southeast San Francisco — and for years has been one of the loudest voices against the flawed Lennar Corp. redevelopment project at and the reuse plan for the contaminated Hunters Point Shipyard. Sumchai says the shipyard can never be cleaned up to a level that would be safe for housing, and she suggests that much of it should be used for parks and open space and possibly maritime and green-industry uses. She’s highly critical of the low levels of affordable housing in market-rate projects all over the city, arguing that the developers should be forced to provide as many as 25 percent of their units at below-market rates. Sumchai is a physician, and she talks like one; her scientific language and approach sometimes confuse people. She suggested that one of the main causes of the homicide rate in the city is mental illness. "You can medically address people who are violent," she told us, saying the first step is to properly diagnose and treat depression in men. "Just as we looked at AIDS as an epidemic," she said, "we should look at violence as an epidemic." Which is, at the very least, an interesting approach.

Sumchai has some innovative ideas, including a universal child-care program for the city, paid for with a "fat tax" on unhealthy food. She’s a strong supporter of public power and a longtime critic of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

She can be abrasive and temperamental, but she’s talking about critical issues that almost everyone else is ignoring. She deserves support.

Chicken John Rinaldi is the political surprise of the season, an artist and showman who has managed a traveling circus, run a bar in the Mission, put on unusual performances of every kind — and somehow managed to be the only person running for mayor who could qualify for tens of thousands of dollars in public funding. On one level Rinaldi’s campaign is a joke — he told us repeatedly he has no idea what he’s doing, and that if by some wild chance he were elected, he would hire people like Mecke and Sumchai to run the city. He’s the Dada candidate, with his entire run something of a performance art piece.

But Rinaldi has a real constituency. He represents a dying breed in the city: the street artists, the writers, the poets, the unconventional thinkers with economically marginal lifestyles, who were once the heart and soul of San Francisco. It’s hard to pin him down on issues since he seems to disdain any policy talk, but in the end, the very fact that he’s running speaks to the pressure on artists and the lack of support the unconventional side of the art world gets in this increasingly expensive city.

Rinaldi is the protest candidate of all protest candidates, but he’s going to get a lot of votes from people who think San Francisco needs to stop driving some of its most valuable residents out of town — and if that leads to a more serious discussion about artist housing, affordable housing in general, arts funding, and the overall crackdown on fun under Newsom, then it’s worth giving Chicken John a place on the ticket.

There are several other candidates worthy of consideration. Josh Wolf, a video blogger, served 226 days in a federal prison rather than turn over to the authorities tape of a demonstration he was filming. It was a bold and courageous show of principle (anyone who’s ever done time knows that spending even a week, much less month after month, behind bars is no joke), and it speaks to his leadership and character. Wolf is talking about some key issues too: he’s a big supporter of municipal broadband and sees the Web as a place to promote more direct democracy in San Francisco.

Lonnie Holmes, a probation officer, has roots in the African American community and some credible ideas about violent crime. He favors extensive, direct intervention in at-risk communities and would fully fund recreation centers, after-school programs, and antiviolence education in elementary schools. He thinks a network of community resource centers in key neighborhoods could cut the crime rate in half. He’s a little conservative for our taste, but we like his energy, commitment, and ideas.

Harold Hoogasian, a third-generation florist, registered Republican, and small-business activist, is a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative and law-and-order guy who complains that the city budget has skyrocketed while services don’t seem to have improved. Yet somewhat to our surprise, he told us he supports the idea of a moratorium on market-rate housing and a ballot measure that would force developers to build housing more in tune with San Francisco’s real needs (even if he wants to start with ownership housing for cops). He supports public power, wants more sunshine in government, and opposes privatization. He also brings a much-needed critique of the remaining vestiges of machine politics in this one-party town and speaks passionately about the need for outsiders and political independents to have a seat at the table. We’re glad to have him in the race.

In the end, though, our picks in this first ranked-choice vote for San Francisco mayor are Mecke, Sumchai, and Rinaldi — on the issues, as a political statement, and to remind Newsom that his poll numbers don’t reflect the deep sense of distrust and discontent that remains in this city.

District attorney

KAMALA HARRIS


We’re always nervous about unopposed incumbents. And since Kamala Harris unseated Terence Hallinan four years ago, running as an ally of then-mayor Willie Brown with the backing of a corrupt old machine, we’ve been nervous about her.

In some ways she’s been a pleasant surprise. Harris quickly showed that she has courage and integrity when she refused to seek the death penalty for a cop killer despite the fact that the police rank and file and much of the brass excoriated her for it. She remains one of the few district attorneys in the nation who oppose the death penalty in all situations. She’s created a public integrity unit and aggressively filed charges against Sup. Ed Jew. She’s made clear to the Police Department that she won’t accept sloppy police work. She talks constantly about making crime and criminal justice a progressive issue.

But there are plenty of areas in which we remain nervous. Harris hasn’t been anywhere near as aggressive as she could be in prosecuting political corruption. She doesn’t pursue ethics violations or Sunshine Ordinance violations. The San Francisco DA’s Office could be a national leader in rooting out and prosecuting environmental and political crime, but it isn’t.

Meanwhile, the murder rate continues to rise in San Francisco, and Harris and the police are pointing fingers back and forth without actually finding a workable solution.

And lately, Harris, to her tremendous discredit, has been stepping up the prosecution of so-called quality-of-life crimes — which translates into harassing the homeless. She’s made sure there’s a full-time prosecutor in traffic court, pressing charges for things like public urination, sleeping in the park, and holding an open container of beer. That’s a colossal waste of law enforcement resources.

We expect a lot more from Harris in the next four years. But we’ll back her for another term.

Sheriff

MIKE HENNESSEY


Mike Hennessey has been sheriff for so long that it’s hard to imagine anyone else holding the job. And that’s not a bad thing: Hennessey is one of the most progressive law enforcement officers in the country. He’s turned the county jail into a center for drug rehabilitation, counseling, and education (the first charter high school in America for county prisoners is in the SF jail). He’s hired a remarkably diverse group of deputies and has worked to find alternatives to incarceration. He’s openly critical of the rate at which the San Francisco police are arresting people for small-time drug offenses ("We’re arresting too many people for drugs in the city," he told us). He took a courageous stand last year in opposing a draconian and ineffective state ballot initiative that would have kicked convicted sex offenders out of San Francisco and forced them to live in rural counties without access to support, services, or monitoring.

We’ve had some issues with Hennessey. We wanted a smaller new jail than he ultimately decided to build. And we really wish he’d be more outspoken on local law enforcement issues. Hennessey told us he wants to stick to his own turf, but if he were more visible on police reform, criminal justice, and law enforcement, the city would benefit immensely.

Hennessey’s only opponent is David Wong, a deputy sheriff who was unable to make a case for replacing the incumbent. We’re happy to endorse Hennessey for another term — but since this might be his last before retirement, we urge him to take his progressive views and push them onto a larger stage.

Endorsements: Local offices

-
0

We’re having some trouble with our Web site — until it’s fixed, here’s our complete local offices endorsements for the Nov. 6 elections. For more endorsements, please visit our 2007 Guardian Election Center, or for quick refence see our Clean Slate printout guide.

Mayor

1. QUINTIN MECKE


2. AHIMSA PORTER SUMCHAI


3. CHICKEN JOHN RINALDI


Let us be perfectly clear: none of the people we are endorsing has any real chance of getting elected mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom is going to win a second term; we know that, he knows that, and whatever they may say on the campaign trail, all of the candidates running against him know that.

It’s a sad state of affairs: San Francisco has been, at best, wallowing helplessly in problems under Newsom, and in many cases things have gotten worse. The murder rate is soaring; young people, particularly African Americans, are getting shot down on the streets in alarming numbers. The mayor has opposed almost every credible effort to do something about it — he fought against putting cops on foot patrol in the most violent areas, he opposed the creation of a violence-prevention fund and blocked implementation of a community policing plan, and he’s allowed the thugs in the Police Officers Association to set policy for a police department that desperately lacks leadership. The public transportation system is in meltdown. The housing crisis is out of control; 90 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can’t afford to buy a house here, and many of them can’t afford to rent either. Meanwhile, the city is allowing developers and speculators to build thousands of new luxury condos, which are turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. Newsom only recently seems to have noticed that public housing is in shambles and that the commission he appoints to oversee it has been ignoring the problem.

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (10/30/07)

-
0

For a breakdown of the positions that relevant politicians are taking on the war in Iraq, visit the slate.com link below. 36 U.S. soldiers were killed this month, which means at least one U.S. soldier was killed for every day that passed. Click here to view.

Casualties in Iraq

U.S. military:

3 U.S. soldiers were killed today by a roadside bomb, bringing the total of U.S> soldiers killed this month to 36, according to Reuters.

4,113: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

128 : Died of self-inflicted wounds, according to http://www.icasualties.org/.

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to: www.cnn.com

To view a breakdown of U.S. military casualties by state of residence, click here.

Iraqi civilians:

654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a Johns Hopkins University study.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

75,971– 82,776: Killed since 1/03

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

For a list of recent events that have resulted in Iraqi casualties, visit :
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/recent/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Iraq Military:

29 Iraqi policemen were killed by a suicide bomber yesterday, according to the New York Times.

30,000?: Killed since 2003

Source: http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

200 journalists have been killed since the start of the war in March 2003 through August 2007, according to Reporters Without Borders.


Refugees:

Read a first hand account of how Iraqis are being treated when attempting to enter Jordan for a vacation.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

2.2 million: Iraqis displaced internally

2 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Incessant violence across much of Iraq’s central and southern regions has forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes every month, presenting the international community with a humanitarian crisis even larger than the upheaval aid agencies had planned for during the 2003 war, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

28,171: Wounded from 3/19/03 to 8/31/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (10/30/07): So far, $464 billion for the U.S., $58 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

For more information on what the war is costing the United States, visit the American Service Friends Committee website here.

Transit or traffic

-
0

Click here for the Clean Slate: Our printout guide to the Nov. 6 election

› steve@sfbg.com

San Francisco is at a crossroads. The streets are congested, Muni has slowed to a crawl, greenhouse gas emissions are at all-time highs, and the towers of new housing now being built threaten to make all of these transportation-related problems worse.

The problems are complicated and defy simply sloganeering — but they aren’t unsolvable. In fact, there’s remarkable consensus in San Francisco about what needs to be done. The people with advanced degrees in transportation and city planning, the mayor and almost all of the supervisors, the labor and environmental movements, the urban planning organizations, the radical left and the mainstream Democrats — everyone without an ideological aversion to government is on the same page here.

The city planners and transportation experts, who have the full support of the grass roots on this issue, are pushing a wide range of solutions: administrative and technical changes to make Muni more efficient, innovative congestion management programs, high-tech meters that use market principles to free up needed parking spaces, creative incentives to discourage solo car trips, capital projects from new bike and rapid-transit lanes to the Central Subway and high-speed rail, and many more ideas.

In fact, the coming year promises a plethora of fresh transportation initiatives. The long-awaited Transit Effectiveness Project recommendations come out in early 2008, followed by those from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority’s Mobility, Access, and Pricing Study (an unprecedented, federally funded effort to reduce congestion here and in four other big cities), an end to the court injunction against new bicycle projects, and a November bond measure that would fund high-speed rail service between downtown San Francisco and Los Angeles.

But first, San Franciscans have to get past a few downtown developers and power brokers who have a simplistic, populist-sounding campaign that could totally undermine smart transportation planning.

On Nov. 6, San Franciscans will vote on propositions A and H, two competing transportation measures that could greatly help or hinder the quest for smart solutions to the current problems. Prop. A would give more money and authority to the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency while demanding it improve Muni and meet climate change goals.

Prop. H, which was placed on the ballot by a few powerful Republicans, most notably Gap founder Don Fisher (who has contributed $180,000 to the Yes on H campaign), would invalidate current city policies to allow essentially unrestricted construction of new parking lots.

New parking turns into more cars, more cars create congestion, congestion slows down bus service, slow buses frustrate riders, who get back into their cars — and the cycle continues. It’s transit against traffic, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

"If we are serious about doing something about global warming, it’s time to address the elephant in the room: people are going to have to drive less and take transit more" was how the issue was framed in a recent editorial cowritten by Sup. Sean Elsbernd, arguably the board’s most conservative member, and Sup. Aaron Peskin, who wrote Prop. A.

Peskin says Prop. H, which Prop. A would invalidate, is the most damaging and regressive initiative he’s seen in his political life. But the battle for hearts and minds won’t be easy, because the downtown forces are taking a viscerally popular approach and running against city hall.

The San Francisco Examiner endorsed Prop. H on Oct. 22, framing the conflict as between the common sense of "your friends and neighbors" and "a social-engineering philosophy driven by an anti-car and anti-business Board of Supervisors." If the Examiner editorialists were being honest, they probably also should have mentioned Mayor Gavin Newsom, who joins the board majority (and every local environmental and urban-planning group) in supporting Prop. A and opposing Prop. H.

The editorial excoriates "most city politicians and planners" for believing the numerous studies that conclude that people who have their own parking spots are more likely to drive and that more parking generally creates more traffic. The Planning Department, for example, estimates Prop. H "could lead to an increase over the next 20 years of up to approximately 8,200–19,000 additional commute cars (mostly at peak hours) over the baseline existing controls."

"Many, many actual residents disagree, believing that — no matter what the social engineers at City Hall tell you — adding more parking spaces would make The City a far more livable place," the Examiner wrote.

That’s why environmentalists and smart-growth advocates say Prop. H is so insidious. It was written to appeal, in a very simplistic way, to people’s real and understandable frustration over finding a parking spot. But the solution it proffers would make all forms of transportation — driving, walking, transit, and bicycling — remarkably less efficient, as even the Examiner has recognized.

You see, the Examiner was opposed to Prop. H just a couple of months ago, a position the paper recently reversed without really explaining why, except to justify it with reactionary rhetoric such as "Let the politicians know you’re tired of being told you’re a second-class citizen if you drive a car in San Francisco."

Examiner executive editor Jim Pimentel denies the flip-flop was a favor that the Republican billionaire who owns the Examiner, Phil Anschutz, paid to the Republican billionaire who is funding Prop. H, Fisher. "We reserve the right to change on positions," Pimentel told me.

Yet it’s worth considering what the Examiner originally wrote in an Aug. 2 editorial, where it acknowledged people’s desire for more parking but took into account what the measure would do to downtown San Francisco.

The paper wrote, "Closer examination reveals this well-intentioned parking measure as a veritable minefield of unintended consequences. It could actually take away parking, harm business, reduce new housing and drive out neighborhood retail. By now, Californians should be wary of unexpected mischief unleashed from propositions that legislate by direct referendum. Like all propositions, Parking For Neighborhoods was entirely written by its backers. As such, it was never vetted by public feedback or legislative debate. If the initiative organizers had faced harder questioning, they might have recognized that merely adding parking to a fast-growing downtown is likely to make already-bad traffic congestion dramatically worse."

The San Francisco Transportation Authority’s Oct. 17 public workshop, which launched the San Francisco Mobility, Access, and Pricing Study, had nothing to do with Props. A and H — at least not directly. But the sobering situation the workshop laid out certainly supports the assessment that drawing more cars downtown "is likely to make already-bad traffic congestion dramatically worse."

City planners and consultants from PBS&J offered some statistics from their initial studies:

•San Francisco has the second-most congested downtown in the country, according to traffic analysts and surveys of locals and tourists, about 90 percent of whom say the congestion is unacceptably bad compared to that of other cities.

•Traffic congestion cost the San Francisco economy $2.3 billion in 2005 through slowed commerce, commuter delays, wasted fuel, and environmental impacts.

•The length of car trips is roughly doubled by traffic congestion — and getting longer every year — exacerbating the fact that 47 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions come from private cars. Census data also show that more San Franciscans get to work by driving alone in their cars than by any other mode.

•Traffic has also steadily slowed Muni, which often shares space with cars, to an average of 8 mph, making it the slowest transit service in the country. Buses now take about twice as long as cars to make the same trip, which discourages their use.

"We want to figure out ways to get people in a more efficient mode of transportation," Zabe Bent, a senior planner with the TA, told the crowd. She added, "We want to make sure congestion is not hindering our growth."

The group is now studying the problem and plans to reveal its preliminary results next spring and recommendations by summer 2008. Among the many tools being contemplated are fees for driving downtown or into other congested parts of the city (similar to programs in London, Rome, and Stockholm, Sweden) and high-tech tools for managing parking (such as the determination of variable rates based on real-time demand, more efficient direction to available spots, and easy ways to feed the meter remotely).

"As a way to manage the scarce resource of parking, we would use pricing as a tool," said Tilly Chang, also a senior planner with the TA, noting that high prices can encourage more turnover at times when demand is high.

Yet there was a visceral backlash at the workshop to such scientifically based plans, which conservatives deride as social engineering. "I don’t understand why we need to spend so much money creating a bureaucracy," one scowling attendee around retirement age said. There were some murmurs of support in the crowd.

Rob Black, the government affairs director for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which is the most significant entity to oppose Prop. A and support Prop. H, was quietly watching the proceedings. I asked what he and the chamber thought of the study and its goals.

"We have mixed feelings, and we don’t know what’s going to happen," Black, who ran unsuccessfully against Sup. Chris Daly last year, told me. "The devil is in the details."

But others don’t even want to wait for the details. Alex Belenson, an advertising consultant and Richmond District resident who primarily uses his car to get around town, chastised the planners for overcomplicating what he sees as a "simple" problem.

Vocally and in a four-page memo he handed out, Belenson blamed congestion on the lack of parking spaces, the city’s transit-first policy, and the failure to build more freeways in the city. Strangely, he supports his point with facts that include "Total commuters into, out of, and within San Francisco have only increased by 206,000 since 1960 — more than 145,000 on public transit."

Some might see those figures, derived from census data, as supporting the need for creative congestion management solutions and the expansion of transit and other alternative transportation options. But Belenson simply sees the need for 60,000 new parking spaces.

As he told the gathering, "If someone wants to build a parking lot and the market will support it, they should be able to."

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) is generally allied with the downtown business community on most issues, but not Props. A and H, which SPUR says could be unmitigated disasters for San Francisco.

"SPUR is a pro-growth organization, and we want a healthy economy. And we think the only way to be pro-business and pro-growth in San Francisco is to be transit reliant instead of car reliant," SPUR executive director Gabriel Metcalf told me in an interview in his downtown office.

He agreed with Belenson that the free market will provide lots of new parking if it’s allowed to do so, particularly because the regulatory restrictions on parking have artificially inflated its value. "But the negative externalities are very large," Metcalf said, employing the language of market economics.

In other words, the costs of all of that new parking won’t be borne just by the developers and the drivers but by all of the people affected by climate change, air pollution, congested commerce, oil wars, slow public transit, and the myriad other hidden by-products of the car culture that we are just now starting to understand fully.

Yet Metcalf doesn’t focus on that broad critique as much as on the simple reality that SPUR knows all too well: downtown San Francisco was designed for transit, not cars, to be the primary mode of transportation.

"Downtown San Francisco is one of the great planning success stories in America," Metcalf said. "But trips to downtown San Francisco can’t use mostly single-occupant vehicles. We could never have had this level of employment or real estate values if we had relied on car-oriented modes for downtown."

Metcalf and other local urban planners tell stories of how San Francisco long ago broke with the country’s dominant post–World War II development patterns, starting with citizen revolts against freeway plans in the 1950s and picking up stream with the environmental and social justice movements of the 1960s, the arrival of BART downtown in 1973, the official declaration of a transit-first policy in the ’80s, and the votes to dismantle the Central and Embarcadero freeways.

"We really led the way for how a modern dynamic city can grow in a way that is sustainable. And that decision has served us well for 30 years," Metcalf said.

Tom Radulovich, a longtime BART board member who serves as director of the nonprofit group Livable City, said San Franciscans now must choose whether they want to plan for growth like Copenhagen, Denmark, Paris, and Portland, Ore., or go with auto-dependent models, like Houston, Atlanta, and San Jose.

"Do we want transit or traffic? That’s really the choice. We have made progress as a city over the last 30 years, particularly with regard to how downtown develops," Radulovich said. "Can downtown and the neighborhoods coexist? Yes, but we need to grow jobs in ways that don’t increase traffic."

City officials acknowledge that some new parking may be needed.

"There may be places where it’s OK to add parking in San Francisco, but we have to be smart about it. We have to make sure it’s in places where it doesn’t create a breakdown in the system. We have to make sure it’s priced correctly, and we have to make sure it doesn’t destroy Muni’s ability to operate," Metcalf said. "The problem with Prop. H is it essentially decontrols parking everywhere. It prevents a smart approach to parking."

Yet the difficulty right now is in conveying such complexities against the "bureaucracy bad" argument against Prop. A and the "parking good" argument for Prop. H.

"We are trying to make complex arguments, and our opponents are making simple arguments, which makes it hard for us to win in a sound-bite culture," Radulovich said.

"Prop. H preys on people’s experience of trying to find a parking space," Metcalf said. "The problem is cities are complex, and this measure completely misunderstands what it takes to be a successful city."

When MTA director Nathaniel Ford arrived in San Francisco from Atlanta two years ago, he said, "it was clear as soon as I walked in the door that there was an underinvestment in the public transit system."

Prop. A would help that by directing more city funds to the MTA, starting with about $26 million per year. "I don’t want to say the situation is dire, but it’s certainly not going to get better without some infusion of cash to get us over the hump," Ford told the Guardian recently from his office above the intersection of Market and Van Ness.

The proposed extra money would barely get this long-underfunded agency up to modern standards, such as the use of a computer routing system. "We actually have circuit boards with a guy in a room with a soldering iron keeping it all together," Ford said with an incredulous smile.

The other thing that struck Ford when he arrived was the cumbersomeness of the MTA’s bureaucracy, from stifling union work rules to Byzantine processes for seemingly simple actions like accepting a grant, which requires action by the Board of Supervisors.

"Coming from an independent authority, I realized there were a lot more steps and procedures to getting anything done [at the MTA]," he said. "Some of the things in Prop. A relax those steps and procedures."

If it passes, Ford would be able to set work rules to maximize the efficiency of his employees, update the outdated transit infrastructure, set fees and fines to encourage the right mix of transportation modes, and issue bonds for new capital projects when the system reaches its limits. These are all things the urban planners say have to happen. "It should be easy to provide great urban transit," Metcalf said. "We’re not Tracy. We’re not Fremont. We’re San Francisco, and we should be able to do this."

Unfortunately, there are political barriers to such a reasonable approach to improving public transit. And the biggest hurdles for those who want better transit are getting Prop. A approved and defeating Prop. H.

"It’s clear to people who have worked on environmental issues that this is a monumental election," said Leah Shahum, director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and an MTA board member. "San Francisco will choose one road or the other in terms of how our transportation system affects the environment. It will really be transit or traffic."

Shahum said the combination of denying the MTA the ability to improve transit and giving out huge new parking entitlements "will start a downward spiral for our transit system that nobody benefits from."

"We are already the slowest-operating system in the country," Ford said, later adding, "More cars on the streets of San Francisco will definitely have a negative impact on Muni."

But even those who believe in putting transit first know cars will still be a big part of the transportation mix.

"All of it needs to be properly managed. There are people who need to drive cars for legitimate reasons," Ford said. "If you do need to drive, you need to know there are costs to that driving. There is congestion. There are quality impacts, climate change, and it hurts transit."

"There are parking needs out there, and the city is starting to think of it in a more responsive way. We don’t need this to create more parking," Shahum said. "If folks can hold out and beat down this initiative, I do think we’re headed in the right direction."

Yet the Yes on A–No on H campaign is worried. Early polling showed a close race on Prop. A and a solid lead for Prop. H.

Fisher and the groups that are pushing Prop. H — the Council of District Merchants, the SF Chamber of Commerce, and the San Francisco Republican Party — chose what they knew would be a low-turnout election and are hoping that drivers’ desires for more parking will beat out more complicated arguments.

"The vast majority of San Franciscans call themselves environmentalists, and they want a better transit system," Shahum said, noting that such positions should cause them to support Prop. A and reject Prop. H. "But they’re at risk of being tricked by a Republican billionaire’s initiative with an attractive name…. Even folks that are well educated and paying attention could be tricked by this."

For Metcalf and the folks at SPUR, who helped write Prop. A, this election wasn’t supposed to be an epic battle between smart growth and car culture.

"For us, in a way, Prop. A is the more important measure," Metcalf said. "We want to focus on making Muni better instead of fighting about parking. We didn’t plan it this way, but the way it worked out, San Francisco is at a fork in the road. We can reinforce our transit-oriented urbanity or we can create a mainly car-dependent city that will look more like the rest of America."

Eugene Prince Coleman, 1937–2007

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

Eugene Prince Coleman died Oct. 26, surrounded by his family, after losing a battle against pancreatic cancer. It was one of the few fights that he lost in his long and memorable life in San Francisco.

Born in Mississippi 70 years ago and raised in Cleveland, Coleman came to San Francisco in 1972 and, like many in that decade, found a home in the city. He never left — and never, ever quit working to make it better.

Coleman was one of the creators of modern, tolerant, progressive San Francisco. His decadelong service to South of Market as director of the Canon Kip Community House (until it was closed as the Episcopal Church turned away from the central city) was a model of dedicated, informed, and effective advocacy and service. He founded the first paratransit service for seniors in San Francisco. He presided over one of the most dynamic and well-attended youth-serving community centers in the city, which provided safe, secure, and supportive space for an entire generation of Filipino youths. He almost single-handedly got the South of Market Health Center up and running, serving seniors and families.

And when urban renewal devastated South of Market, Coleman provided space and support, counsel, know-how, and a patience that bested the saints themselves in helping to create one of the most effective community campaigns against redevelopment in the nation. Some 2,000 low-income senior homes were rebuilt, and a new capacity to develop community-controlled affordable housing was created, in large measure due to Coleman’s wisdom and vision.

Thousands of San Franciscans who never knew his name owe Coleman for the dignity and grace that well-organized substance-abuse, residential-treatment, and food and health programs have provided them at his insistence as he helped build the infrastructure of a substance-abuse policy that is known nationwide as the San Francisco model.

Coleman spent the past decade or so working for the city, bringing to his job the keen judgment and the caring heart that so characterized his service to the community. He demanded that all people — youths and seniors, black, brown, and white, working-class and poor — be treated with respect and courtesy, warmth and love, and that they, in turn, treat one another the same way. Coleman was also an African American who never once gave up on the African American community or the needs of his people, and fought and talked and thought and cried for their continued survival in San Francisco.

He was simply a quintessential late-20th-century San Franciscan who gave back more than he took, cared more than he probably should have, and was one of the finest people to ever walk these sometimes mean and uncaring streets — with a demeanor that was always sweet and caring. *

Calvin Welch worked with Gene Coleman for 30 years and was blessed by his friendship.

A memorial for Coleman is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Nov. 1 at Providence Baptist Church, 1601 McKinnon, SF.

Are high-rises green?

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY High-rises are popping up fast in San Francisco, altering the skyline from one month to the next. But are these giants environmentally friendly? Do they make San Francisco more green or less?

One of the major advantages of using tall buildings in city design is the potential to reduce suburban sprawl: building up instead of out lessens the demand for single-family homes, creates dense neighborhoods where cars aren’t needed, and allows for more open spaces to be preserved.

Additionally, the concentration of people in high-rise clusters encourages the creation of acceptable transit systems. "The high density of high-rise neighborhoods — whether residential, office, or mixed-use — creates the necessary population density to support efficient transit service, allowing people to take transit rather than drive," said Lisa M. Feldstein, a local affordable-housing consultant who grew up in a residential high-rise in New York City’s East Harlem. "The reason that bus service is poor in suburbs and rural areas is not that people in those areas don’t like transit. It’s that the population isn’t sufficiently dense to support a fast, frequent, and efficient transit system, so people can’t rely on it."

Density puts demands on transportation, but that doesn’t guarantee public transit use. When people working in city centers like San Francisco can’t afford to live there, that can create cross-commute situations that clog big-city roadways, which may be even more environmentally damaging than suburban-style development. In fact, San Franciscans drive to work alone more than they use public transportation to get there, according to a 2006 US Census Bureau study.

High-density residents tend to use fewer resources than their low-density counterparts. Because walls, pipes, and other materials are shared, it can take less energy, for example, to heat a high-rise unit than a single family home.

But high-rises use energy in ways that single-family homes don’t — for example, in thousands of elevator trips from top to bottom every day. According to a study found on the US Department of Energy’s Web site, elevators consume up to 10 percent of the total energy used to maintain tall buildings. Furthermore, these buildings are usually climate controlled (in part to counteract the heat created by their elevators), whereas opening and closing windows can more effectively regulate temperatures in single-family houses and low-rise units. High-rise buildings also include common areas that often leave lights burning 24 hours a day.

Not having private yards in high-rises reduces the water and the toxic chemicals used to maintain them and forces people into public spaces. But there is another environmental cost to this void, said Lisa Katz, a planner with Design, Community and Environment in Berkeley. "People living in high-rises have less connection to the land; for example, they can’t grow their own food," she said. Raising food sources in agricultural communities and exporting them to cities uses exorbitant amounts of energy in the form of fuel and packaging.

High-rises, however, have the potential to achieve the highest level of green building ratings, according to Maria Ayerdi, executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which on Sept. 20 approved the proposal for the new Transbay Transit tower, which will be the tallest building on the West Coast. "In tall buildings there are creative efficiency, recycling, and energy-generating opportunities that may not be possible in smaller buildings," she said. In fact, several high-rises around the country have been built according to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification standards, which demand energy and resource efficiency.

But Calvin Welch, a local housing activist, said it is "virtually impossible to conceive a green-materials building of any sort" that would meet the seismic requirements of high-rises in San Francisco. These include the use of "heroic construction techniques" involving extraenforced foundations to build on "Bay Area mud," high-tinsel steel, which is packed with carbon and takes loads of energy to produce (often using coal or gas ovens), and thousands of gallons of diesel for the transportation of materials to the city center.

"This is one of the most disastrous building techniques of mankind," Welch said of high-rise housing, noting that "the environmental debt, even if compensated by solar panels, etc., is too great." *

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Tracking the Joneses’ rent

-
0

We all know there’s a housing crisis in our city. But that’s one of those big, overarching, culture/society issues that’s hard to wrap your mind around.

How about considering your own, personal housing crisis? Ever wondered if you’re getting gouged on rent as much as your neighbor? Or if there’s actually anyone in this town who pays no more than a third of their income for a closetless room? Well, with www.rentometer.com, you can find out. All you have to do is enter your address, your monthly rent, the number of bedrooms in the unit, and the number of units in the building, and the site will calculate how you measure up to other similar buildings in your area.

rentometeruntitled4.jpg

The truth about shelters

-
0

OPINION The San Francisco Chronicle‘s C.W. Nevius wrote an opinion column Oct. 18, titled “City’s Homeless Shelters Clean, Safe but Shunned When It’s Dry,” implying that the conditions throughout the San Francisco shelter system are uniformly in perfect order and that individuals experiencing homelessness are living on the street by choice. The facts, however, tell of a much different reality and of a shelter system that lacks a basic standard of care.

The Shelter Monitoring Committee (www.sfgov.org/sheltermonitoring), the body in charge of inspecting the city’s shelters and resource centers, recently found that two-thirds of sites did not have immediate access to basic hygiene necessities such as toilet paper in stalls, soap near sinks, and towels — items that many of us take for granted. From a public health perspective, providing these basic items not only helps prevent infectious and communicable diseases; they also represent the foundation for ensuring that our city’s most vulnerable populations are treated with dignity and care.

In January, in response to the lack of basic standards, the Shelter Monitoring Committee formed a work group to create a universal standard of care to address the health and hygiene concerns above as well as concerns regarding facilities and operations. The work group included shelter residents, service providers, advocates, and city departments.

Now being drafted into legislation, the standard of care will provide more than 35 basic, minimum standards in the 18 city-funded shelters and resource centers to ensure equal access for clients, regardless of their disability status or native language. In addition, clients will have expectations that can be met by providing the sites with the resources identified by the committee. These standards will make the sites more accountable to the city and to the people being served by supplying service providers with clear expectations and requirements. After implementation, the standard of care will address environmental health issues before they develop into worse conditions, thus protecting both homeless individuals and shelter site staff. One outcome of increased prevention is the reduction in the number of cases going to SF General and community clinics for treatment, creating fiscal savings that can be reinvested into much-needed services.

San Francisco needs to become the leader in inventive, forward-thinking homeless policy and as such needs to adopt a universal standard of care to meet minimum needs. According to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, there are standards of care in multiple municipalities across the country, including Seattle, Norfolk, Va., and others, as well in states, such as Ohio.

The evidence is clear — it is time for San Francisco to support the basic needs of our most vulnerable populations. In a society of increasing economic inequity any one of us is one tragic experience away from being homeless. After nearly eight years of the George W. Bush administration and in the midst of a costly unjust war, San Francisco must take a stand to protect the seniors, veterans, and families who stay in our shelter system by ensuring that their basic needs are met and that they are treated with the respect, compassion, and dignity that they deserve as we help them back on their feet and into housing.

Tom Ammiano and Quintin Mecke

Sup. Tom Ammiano represents District 9. Quintin Mecke is secretary of the Shelter Monitoring Committee.

 

The story of Q

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

With just a couple of weeks to go until San Franciscans elect their next mayor, Quintin Mecke, the 34-year-old program director of the Safety Network, has emerged as Gavin Newsom’s top challenger.

Since declaring his candidacy, the fresh-faced Mecke has been endorsed by almost every significant progressive entity in the city, including supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi, BART board member and Livable City director Tom Radulovich, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the San Francisco Tenants Union, and the Guardian.

"Of all the mayoral candidates, Quintin has the longest record of working in the community and on important issues facing the city," said Daly, who was the first to publicly endorse the Pennsylvania native, shortly after Mecke declared his candidacy in August.

But despite his solid list of endorsers, Mecke hasn’t managed to raise much money. He didn’t come close to taking advantage of the mayoral public financing program created by Mirkarimi and approved by the most liberal members of the Board of Supervisors. Mecke said his late entry made it impossible to raise the required $25,000 (from at least 250 donors who could prove San Francisco residency) by the Aug. 28 deadline.

"Had I had more time, I don’t think raising the $25,000 is that much of a challenge," Mecke, a former Peace Corps volunteer, told the Guardian at the time. But two months later Mecke has only raised $11,203, with Sup. Tom Ammiano and former mayoral contender Matt Gonzalez respectively contributing $250 and $100, although neither has endorsed him yet.

With Newsom sitting on a $1.8 million war chest, Daly admits that it would take a perfect storm for Mecke to win.

"The incumbent would have to stumble between here and the finish line," said Daly, who toyed with running until Aug. 8, at which point Mecke dove into the race, challenging Newsom’s record on public safety, homelessness, and affordable housing — issues that Mecke has been intimately involved with since moving here a decade ago.

Mecke’s move to California came shortly after he survived a near-fatal climbing accident in Alaska, which shattered all of his teeth when he fell 40 feet off a glacier. The fall also saddled Mecke, who didn’t have health insurance, with $90,000 in medical bills.

"It was a humbling experience, but people have to take responsibility for the situations they find themselves in," said Mecke, who worked for Ammiano on arriving in San Francisco and has since worked on the Ammiano, Mirkarimi, and Gonzalez campaigns.

Mecke also helped found the South of Market Community Anti-Displacement Coalition, served as president of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, and helped author a report on homelessness that led him to publicly debate then-supervisor Newsom over his Care Not Cash initiative.

"Accountability without support is a form of cruelty," Mecke stated in 2002, a belief he still holds as he tries, as a member of the Homeless Shelter Monitoring committee, to get the city to implement universal shelter standards.

"If you raise the quality of life and safety standards in the city’s shelters, then more homeless people will want to enter them," Mecke said.

Mecke, a Western Addition resident, believes in community-driven responses to crime and violence. While Newsom claims that black-on-black violence has decreased under his administration, Mecke counters that African Americans make up only 7 percent of the city population but constitute 60 percent of the homicide victims. He thinks we need a real community policing program.

"We have 10 fiefdoms, 10 police districts," Mecke said. "That means that the oft-touted and talked about idea of community policing doesn’t really exist."

Newsom campaign manager Eric Jaye claims the only thing he knows about Mecke is that "he opposed Care Not Cash and he is supported by Sup. Chris Daly.

"But his own record? That’s a little bit harder," Jaye continued. "Mecke works for a city-funded nonprofit, but ironically, he’s unhappy with the violence prevention work the city is doing. Presumably he’s running because he thinks he can do a better job, but we’re proud of our progress on universal health care, our work on climate protection, our civic efforts, the fact that the eviction rate has plummeted, and that there’s more housing and affordable housing in the pipeline than [under] any other mayor in recent history."

But Mecke points out that the city’s health care initiative was Ammiano’s brainchild and that Newsom failed to deliver on his "wi-fi for all" promise by stubbornly pushing a flawed proposal and refusing to engage with its critics.

"Newsom’s only successes are initiatives proposed and led by members of the Board of Supervisors," said Mecke, who accuses Newsom of "making every decision within the framework of a national model while promoting some future candidacy."

He faults Newsom for asking for mass resignations this fall and sees the fact that Newsom is raising piles of cash to defeat Proposition E, which would require the mayor to make monthly appearances before the Board of Supervisors, as further evidence of his cowardice.

"San Francisco need to demand of this race that there’s public accountability," Mecke said. "Newsom seems to fear any form of nonscripted public interaction. When you go to his fake Question Time–town hall meetings you don’t actually get to ask the mayor your own question. He selects what he wants to hear."

Needed: a campaign against privatization

-
0

EDITORIAL It’s time for San Francisco to declare war on privatization.

The local threat is very real: as we reported in last week’s special anniversary issue, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration has moved to turn over a long list of city services — from housing for the mentally ill to the operation of the public golf courses — to the private sector. Should this happen, if history is any guide, the city would wind up losing millions, the quality of services would decline, and the economy would suffer as hundreds of well-paid, unionized employees lost their jobs.

Equally important, the public would lose control over the institutions that were and are created and run for its benefit.

Privatization is a recipe for corruption. There always has been and always will be some level of graft, corruption, and incompetence in government operations; there will always be the occasional city employee who sleeps on the job, fudges time cards, doesn’t do the job right, and somehow manages to avoid being fired. But that sort of small-time problem amounts to peanuts in comparison to what happens when large amounts of public money are turned over to the private sector.

Private companies are out to make profits — and for the most part they keep their finances secret. Many of the worst scandals in American history have involved kickbacks, backroom deals, and bribery aimed at sending taxpayer dollars into the coffers of big contractors, and these continue today. And the argument that the private sector is more efficient often turns out to be utterly false; the absolute worst waste of money in the nation’s health care system, for example, is the phenomenal overhead involved in private insurance plans. As much as 30¢ of every dollar spent on private-sector health care goes to administrative overhead and profit. The public Medicare system operates on about 5 percent overhead.

Of course, the public has no way of keeping track of where most of the private health care money goes; the insurance companies keep that information to themselves. So do most other private contractors that take public money. And even if you don’t like the way the system is managed, you don’t have much choice — insurance executives aren’t elected by anyone and aren’t accountable to the community.

San Francisco has a history of allowing private operators to take over public resources, and the results have been almost universally bad. One of the reasons the 1906 earthquake caused such devastation was that the private Spring Valley Water Co. — looking only for quick profits and not at long-term maintenance or service — failed to keep its pipes in good repair. When the city really needed water, to put out the postquake fires, it wasn’t available. That fiasco led city officials to develop a municipal water system, which now delivers some of the best, cleanest, and cheapest water in the country.

Of course, Congress gave San Francisco the right to build that water system, which uses a dam in Yosemite National Park, only on the condition that it also develop public electric power. Instead, in the greatest privatization scandal in the history of urban America, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. wound up initially controlling much of the output of the dam, and it still controls the city’s electric grid. The result: some of the highest electric rates in the nation and terrible, unreliable service.

San Francisco officials led the way to the privatization of the Presidio, turning over a national park to an unaccountable quasi-private board that operates as a real estate developer. The results: A giant commercial office complex, built with a $60 million tax break. Plans for high-end condos. Traffic problems, neighborhood problems — and a stiff bill to the city’s taxpayers, who have to subsidize private businesses that operate in a federal enclave without paying local taxes.

And if Newsom has his way, the pattern will continue: the mayor’s signature project this past year, for example, has been an attempt to let a private company control the city’s broadband communications infrastructure. Tens of millions in city contracts go every year to private nonprofits that fight like hell to avoid sunshine and accountability.

Enough is enough — San Franciscans of every political stripe need to organize to fight back. This city needs a new political coalition, a campaign against privatization.

There are all sorts of specific policies and legislation that ought to be on the agenda. For starters, privatization expert Elliott Sclar, a Columbia University economist, argues that any private business that takes city money to provide public services ought to be required to abide by open-government laws. That means every scrap of information related to that contract — including financial projections, executive salaries, profit and loss statements, and operating overhead figures — would be public record. All meetings of boards, panels, or other policy-making entities involved in managing the contract would be open to the public. If a private business doesn’t want to abide by those rules, fine; it can stick to private-sector work and stop bidding on government contracts.

Beyond that, the city needs to set up a task force to look at every private contract San Francisco hands out and determine why the city isn’t doing the work itself. If selling electricity is so profitable (and it clearly is, or PG&E wouldn’t be fighting so hard to keep its illegal monopoly), why can’t the city take over the job and bring in some revenue? If there’s money to be made building bus shelters and selling ads on them — and clearly there is, since Clear Channel Communications, a giant private company, went out of its way to get a contract with the city to do so — why can’t San Francisco make that money for the General Fund? If a private company can make money running the golf courses, why can’t the city?

Sure, there are times when it makes sense to bring in an outside contractor. We’d argue, for example, that the Board of Supervisors needs an independent budget analyst, not tied to City Hall, to monitor budgets and spending. But there are millions of dollars going out City Hall’s door every year to private outfits that aren’t accountable to the public. And there are millions of dollars that ought to be available for badly needed public services that the city is losing because some private operator is making a profit on public resources.

Organized labor has every reason to oppose privatization and ought to play a lead role in creating a new coalition. So should the public-power coalition and the folks who have been demanding sunshine for the nonprofits. But everyone who uses public services and pays taxes in San Francisco is affected when city money gets stolen, wasted, or diverted. It ought to be a broad-based coalition.

There’s an opportunity to turn things around here and make San Francisco the model city that it ought to be. There’s no time to waste.

Airlines demand corporate welfare

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

The major airlines that serve the Bay Area, with the help of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, are trying to get out of paying millions of dollars in taxes to the city by claiming the right to use a law that was designed to help San Francisco’s poorest residents. And they’re threatening to prevent their employees from staying in the city if the Board of Supervisors doesn’t acquiesce to the corporate welfare demand.

At issue is the city’s 14 percent Transient Occupancy Tax, which is paid by hotel guests. It is the third-largest source of local tax revenue, after property taxes and payroll taxes, bringing in $177 million in the last fiscal year. The only major exemption from the tax is for permanent hotel residents, generally those on the brink of homelessness who live in the run-down single-room-occupancy hotels for months or even years on end.

Major airlines house hundreds of their employees in San Francisco’s hotels each night. They are arguing that because of past court rulings on corporate personhood — in which judges have deemed that corporations have the same rights as individuals — the airlines should be exempt from paying the tax when they rent blocks of rooms for their employees.

The airlines, in collusion with some hotels in the city, have long used the exemption to avoid paying taxes on many of the rooms they rent (about two-thirds, according to the Hotel Council, which translates into millions in lost city revenue every year). A few years ago city officials told the corporations that the exemption didn’t apply to them and that they should be paying the tax.

Enacted in 1960, the Permanent Resident Exclusion exempts from the tax individuals who occupy or have the right to occupy the same hotel room for at least 30 consecutive days. “We looked at the legislative history, and it was clearly put there to help formerly homeless people,” Treasurer José Cisneros told the Guardian. “The city has always said that 30 consecutive one-night stays are not the same as a 30-night stay by an individual.”

The hotels and airlines challenged that interpretation and had their case thrown out of court. So now they’ve turned to the Board of Supervisors in the hope that they can win this chunk of corporate welfare by using threats of an economic exodus.

 

CORPORATE SHAKEDOWN

In October 2004, American Airlines and the San Francisco Hilton filed a lawsuit against the city arguing that airline crew members staying in San Francisco hotels qualified for an exemption from the hotel tax. The lawsuit was dismissed in May 2006 without going to trial, with Superior Court Judge James Warren ruling that the plaintiffs “did not assert and did not present any evidence that any particular room at the Hilton was continuously registered to American Airlines for more than 30 days.”

To clarify any ambiguity in the law, Cisneros in May issued an interpretation stating, “Although an agreement between a person and a hotel may require that the person pay the hotel for a minimum number of ‘guaranteed’ daily reservations for the person’s employees over a period of time longer than 30 days, such an agreement does not create any permanent resident exemption for any guest rooms unless the above criteria are satisfied,” referring to criteria that include “a person is a registered hotel guest” and “that person or any of that person’s employees continuously occupy or have the right to occupy the same room for 30 days or more.”

Yet now, at the request of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, the Board of Supervisors’ Government Oversight and Auditing Committee has scheduled a Nov. 19 hearing for the purpose of “explor[ing] the unintended consequences of this decision, including the loss of revenue to the City when the airlines inevitably move their crews to another location in the Bay Area where room rates are more competitive.”

That implied threat comes from Hotel Council executive director Patricia Breslin, who paints a doomsday scenario if the airlines have to pay the hotel tax on every room they rent. Breslin warns that if the Board of Supervisors does not offer concessions to the airline industry, it could bring about an “economic tsunami” that would hit hotels, restaurants, and city government.

Airline employees occupy an average of 1,050 hotel rooms per night in San Francisco, according to Smith Travel Research, an information and data provider for the lodging industry. Given that the tax is collected by the hotels, Cisneros doesn’t have data on how much the airlines should be paying the city. But assuming the airlines negotiate rates of about $100 per night, that would translate into more than $5 million per year.

“We pushed so hard to get them to pay it that they sued us,” Cisneros told us.

Breslin said the airlines have been paying about $1.7 million per year in hotel taxes and that sales taxes generated by airline employees bring another $1.4 million into the city, all money that would be lost if the airlines go elsewhere. She said the airlines have threatened to begin putting their employees in hotels in Peninsula cities near the airport, like Burlingame, San Mateo, and even San Jose, to cut costs. Already Mexicana Airlines has stopped using San Francisco’s hotels for its employees. Other airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic, United, Cathay Pacific, and Lufthansa, have threatened to follow suit.

Breslin said hotels would be forced to lay off cleaners, servers, and other low-income workers due to the loss of business that would accompany the exodus of airline employees. San Francisco, she argues, would “lose a significant revenue stream” if the airlines lose their appeal.

“It will change the economics of San Francisco,” she told us. “This is not a frivolous issue.”

 

CALLING THEIR BLUFF

Granting the exemption would cost the city millions of dollars, but that isn’t the only reason being offered for opposing the gambit. Some city officials simply don’t believe the airlines — or their employees, most of whom are union members, many of whom have contracts specifying their accommodations be in urban centers — will abandon San Francisco.

Sup. Chris Daly, who is on the Oversight and Auditing Committee, is against granting the exemption to the airlines. “They blow smoke all the time,” he told us, referring to major industries such as the hotel and airline industries. “That’s how they get away with not paying taxes.”

Cisneros argues the airlines’ threat to move their employees into suburban hotels isn’t logical, noting that San Francisco hotel rooms are already far more expensive than their suburban counterparts — with or without the hotel tax — and the airlines have always chosen to keep their employees here anyway.

“I just don’t think the threat is realistic at all,” Cisneros said. “If they were basing their decision on which hotels are cheapest, they would have never been staying in San Francisco.”

Recently compiled data and trends in tourism and hotel occupancy rates also suggest that Breslin’s warning of a crippling economic backlash are unfounded. According to an August article in the San Francisco Business Times by Ryan Tate, “Next year promises to be by far the most robust for leisure and business travel in San Francisco since the dot-com boom.”

He continues, “Convention business will reach more than 900,000 hotel rooms in 2008, well above the 740,000 room nights booked by conventions in 2007.” The San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau forecasts that overall tourism will top 16 million visitors next year and that visitor spending will exceed last year’s record $7.8 billion.

The taxes the city collects from hotels go toward funding a wide range of public services. Some of the money is earmarked for the Convention and Visitors Bureau and for maintaining convention facilities. Some funds are allocated for low-income housing and rent supplements. The War Memorial Department, the Asian Art Museum, and the Arts Commission all receive funding through the hotel tax as well, with excess dollars poured into the city’s General Fund.

San Francisco’s tourism industry is the city’s largest industry and its second-largest employer, after the city and county government. “You want to make sure your number one industry is protected,” Breslin told us.

Yet the policy that she’s asking the city to enact runs counter to the policies in other major cities, including those thought to be less politically progressive than San Francisco. In Los Angeles, for example, only individuals can be granted exemptions from paying the hotel tax. In Chicago the exemption is even stricter and only applies to people who use hotel rooms as their domicile.

Why Vancouver sucks

-
5

vancouver-skyline-w.jpg
Look at all the pretty condos

I’m sick of hearing San Francisco planners, the folks at SPUR and SF Weekly columnists talk about how wonderful Vancouver is, what with all of the slender downtown condo towers that provide walkable neighborhoods, bike paths and a “new urbanist” approach to housing.

Here’s a bit of reality: The New York Times reports that housing costs in Vancouver are soaring. Guess what? All those condos haven’t brought down housing costs, or even stabilized them. The more condos, the higher the prices.

And guess what? Many of those rich condo buyers aren’t from Vancouver:

Fueling the high-end market are foreign and second-home buyers, [Helmut Pastrick, the chief economist for the Credit Union Central of British Columbia] said, though not necessarily from the United States. The weak American dollar, which for the first time in decades is worth less than the Canadian dollar, has been making real estate in Canada more expensive for Americans.

Other foreign buyers make up a significant percentage of the market, according to Ian Gillespie, the president of Westbank Projects. The company is building several residential towers downtown, including the 60-story Living Shangri-La, which will be Vancouver’s tallest building after it is completed in 2009.

“This is a very multicultural city,” said Mr. Gillespie, who cited as an example a pharmaceutical executive from the Middle East, who recently bought a 1,700-square-foot $3.65 million condo at the Fairmont Pacific Rim.

And:

To make room for some projects, hundreds of single-room-occupancy hotel rooms for low-income residents have been lost, said David Eby, a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, a legal advocacy group. High prices are pushing out middle-income renters and buyers, he added.

Gee, might there be a different kind of lesson here for San Francisco?

Wow! SF is expensive!

-
0

The Chronicle has discovered how expensive it is to live here. I have exactly one thing to say:

Years and years of refusing to promote affordable housing — refusing to enact effective rent control, allowing evictions to go on without effective limits, building housing for the rich and not the rest of us — has come back to haunt San Francisco.

And on all of those battles, the Chronicle was on the wrong side.

1...636465...76Page 64 of 76

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org