Jane Kim

Angry building owners threaten lawsuit over anti-speculation tax

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Opponents of the anti-speculator tax that will appear on the November ballot blasted the proposal in a City Hall hearing yesterday [Thu/10] — pledging to defeat the measure in court even if voters approve it — but they were overwhelmed by a strong turnout from supporters who said real estate speculation drives up the cost of housing without adding any value.

“We can sue you in court on the many of the unconstitutional aspects of this and we will do that,” Janan New, director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, said of the measure that would charge a 24 percent tax on properties flipped within a year of purchase down to a 14 percent tax if flipped within five years.

New and other allies — including San Francisco Association of Realtors, Small Property Owners of San Francisco, and Sup. Katy Tang — claimed that the measure is illegally retroactive because it affects those who recently bought property and that it doesn’t account for people who need to sell their properties because of job loss or other life changes.

“This is almost tantamount to a confiscation of property,” Peter Rich of SPOSF said at the hearing.

But Sup. David Campos — who placed the measure on the ballot along with Sups. Eric Mar, Jane Kim, and John Avalos — refuted allegations that the measure isn’t legally sound and carefully questioned City Attorney’s Office staff to clarify the laws that allow for the measure.

“I know there’s a lot of ulterior motives here because we do know this is going to be challenged in court, so I want to be very clear,” Campos said in response to a line of questioning from Tang, who continued to maintain, “So it’s retroactive in a sense” after being told by the deputy city attorney that it wasn’t retroactive because the tax only applies to future property sales.

The anti-speculation tax was first introduced by then-Sup. Harvey Milk shortly before his assassination in 1978 (Dianne Feinstein killed the measure after becoming acting mayor), and it was revived this year during a series of tenant conventions and sponsored by Mar.

“What we’re proposing is very reasonable to deal with the affordable housing crisis,” Mar said at the hearing, noting that it exempts single-family homes, projects larger than 29 units, and sales triggered by the death of the property owner. “It’s been crafted with enough exemptions to protect the small guy and really go after the profiteers.”

During the public comment period, where supporters on the measure vastly outnumbered opponents, several speakers referenced Harvey Milk and said housing in San Francisco wouldn’t be so expensive today if the measure had passed back then, a time when evictions and displacement were also on the rise.

“He was assassinated before it came to fruition. The parallels to that time and today are striking,” testified Tom Temprano, president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, who urged supervisors to “honor the legacy of Harvey Milk by passing this thoughtful and well-crafted legislation.”

Brian Basinger, head of the AIDS Housing Alliance, played old video footage of Milk talking about the measure back in 1978, shortly after he was evicted from his Castro Street camera store by a landlord seeking higher rents, noting that profiteering forces San Franciscans to spend too much on housing and have too little left over for other needs.

“So when you look at that, it’s going to affect the larger economy,” Milk said of real estate speculation.

Gen Fujioka, who works at Chinatown Community Development Center and spoke for San Franciscans Against Real Estate Speculation, cited recent evidence of properties snapped up by speculators and quickly flipped for profits of 50 percent of more.

“Basically, what we’re seeing today is an escalation in the sales prices of multi-unit buildings beyond what people can pay in rent,” Fujioka testified, noting how that essentially forces landlords to evict rent-controlled tenants to make the investments pencil out. “That kind of price escalation is causing instability in our communities.”

But opponents lashed out at the measure and the characterization that they were profiteering in ways that hurt people. “It’s a housing tax and it doesn’t make sense to have a housing tax in the most expensive city in the country,” said Jay Chang of the Association of Realtors.  

Aaron Jones said he and his wife invested their children’s college savings in a small apartment building, and that they’re good landlords who should be able to sell the property when they want to without penalty.

“We can’t sell until 2017 with this retroactive, punitive tax,” Jones said, saying there were many other small investors like him who were afraid to speak up because “in San Francisco, to be an investor — not a speculator — is to be the devil.”

But supporters of the measure say their intention isn’t to demonize property owners but to do something about the eviction and displacement crisis that is changing the face of the city, and to create a disincentive to bad behavior.

“It’s really the most vulnerable people who are being affected by evictions,” said Erin McElroy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, citing her group’s research showing 72 percent of recent evictions have been of the elderly or disabled.

“Speculation is the commodification of housing and housing is essential,” said Chris Durazo of the Veterans Equity Center.

Campos said most landlords should support the measure as check against speculators that are pushing up the price of housing, triggering evictions, and creating a divisive politcal climate: “Speculators are giving landlords in San Francisco and property owners in San Francisco a bad name.”

Taxing speculators

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steve@sfbg.com

Political tensions over evictions, displacement, real estate speculation, and rapidly rising housing costs in San Francisco are likely to heat up through the summer and autumn as a trio of November ballot measures are debated and combated by what’s expected to be a flood of campaign cash from developers and other real estate interests.

Topping the list is a tax measure to discourage the flipping of properties by real estate speculators. Known generally as the anti-speculation tax — something then-Sup. Harvey Milk was working on at the time of his assassination in 1978 — it was the leading goal to come out of a citywide series of tenant conventions at the beginning of this year (see “Staying power,” 2/11/14).

“To be in a position to pass the last thing Harvey Milk worked on is a profound opportunity,” AIDS Housing Alliance head Brian Basinger told us, arguing the measure is more important now then ever.

The measure has been placed on the ballot by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim, and Eric Mar and is scheduled for a public hearing before the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee on July 10 at 2pm.

“It’s an absolutely key issue for San Francisco right now. Passing this measure will create a seismic shift in what we’re seeing with evictions and displacement in the city,” Sara Shortt, director of the Housing Rights Committee, told the Guardian.

The measure creates a supplemental surcharge on top of the city’s existing real estate transfer tax, a progressive rate ranging from a 24 percent tax on the sale of a property within one year of its purchase to 14 percent if sold between four and five years later.

In addition to levying the tax, the measure would also give the Board of Supervisors the power to waive that tax “subject to certain affordability-based restrictions on the occupancy of the real property,” giving the city leverage to expand and preserve deed-restricted affordable housing.

Meanwhile, there’s been a flurry of backroom negotiations surrounding the City Housing Balance Requirement measure sponsored by Sup. Jane Kim, which would require market rate housing projects to get a conditional use permit and be subjected to greater scrutiny when affordable housing falls below 30 percent of total housing construction (with a number exemptions, including projects with fewer than 24 units).

That measure is scheduled for a hearing by the Rules Committee on July 24 and, as an amendment to the City Charter, it needs six votes by the Board of Supervisors to make the ballot (the anti-speculation tax is an initiative that requires only the four supervisorial signatures that it now has).

Mayor Ed Lee and his allies in the development community responded to Kim’s measure by quickly cobbling together a rival initiative, Build Housing Now, which restates existing housing goals Lee announced during his State of the City speech in January and includes a poison pill that would invalidate Kim’s housing balance measure.

Together, the measures will draw key battle lines in what has become the defining political question in San Francisco these days: Who gets to live here?

 

COMBATING SPECULATORS

In February, Mayor Lee and his allies in the tech world, most notably venture capitalist Ron Conway, finally joined housing and other progressive activists in decrying the role that real estate speculators have played in the city’s current eviction and displacement crisis.

“We have some of the best tenant protections in the country, but unchecked real estate speculation threatens too many of our residents,” Lee said in a Feb. 24 press release announcing his support for Sen. Mark Leno’s Ellis Act reform measure SB 1439. “These speculators are turning a quick profit at the expense of long time tenants and do nothing to add needed housing in our City.”

The legislation, which would have prevented property owners from evicting tenants using the Ellis Act for at least five years, failed in the Legislature last month. So will Lee honor his own rhetoric and support the anti-speculation tax? His Communications Director Christine Falvey said Lee hasn’t yet taken a position on the measure, but “the mayor remains very concerned about real estate speculators.”

Peter Cohen of the Council of Community Housing Organization said Lee and his allies should support the measure: “It seems so clearly aligned with the same intent and some of the same mechanics as Ellis Act reform, which had the whole city family behind it.”

“I think it would be very consistent with their position on Ellis Act reform to support the anti-speculation tax,” Shortt told us. “If the mayor and tech companies went to bat for the anti-speculation tax, and not against it, that would show they have real concern about displacement and aren’t just giving it lip service.”

Conway’s pro-tech group sf.citi didn’t returned Guardian calls on the issue, nor did San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, but their allies in the real estate industry strongly oppose it.

“As Realtors, our goals are to increase housing availability and improve housing affordability,” San Francisco Association of Realtors CEO Walk Baczkowski told the Guardian. “We don’t believe the proposal from Sup. Mar, which is essentially a tax on housing, will accomplish either of those goals.”

But supporters of the measure say real estate speculation only serves to drive up housing costs.

“We have been successful at bringing people around on the issue of real estate speculation,” Basinger told us. “But of course, there will be financed opposition. People will invest their money to protect their interests.”

“We know it’s going to be a fight and we’ll have to put in a lot of resources,” Shortt said, adding that it’s a fight that tenant activist want to have. “Part of what fuels all of this [displacement] is the rampant real estate speculation. We can’t put profits above people.”

 

MAYOR’S MEASURE

Falvey denies that Lee’s proposal is designed simply to negate Kim’s measure: “Build Housing Now specifically asks the voters to adopt as official city policy the Mayor’s Housing Plan to create 30,000 new homes by 2020 — the majority within reach of low, moderate, and middle income residents. This is not a reaction, but a proactive measure that lets voters weigh in on one of the mayor’s most important policy priorities.”

Yet the most concrete thing it would do is sabotage the housing balance measure, an intention it states in its opening words: “Ordinance amending the Planning Code to prohibit additional land use requirements such as conditional use authorizations, variances or other requirements on housing projects…based on a cumulative housing balance ratio or other similar criteria related to achieving a certain ration of affordability.”

Beyond that, it would have voters validate Lee’s housing goal and “urge the Mayor to develop by December 31, 2014 a Housing Action Plan to realize this goal.” The measure is filled with that sort of vague and unenforceable language, most of it designed to coax voters into thinking it does more than it would actually do. For example, it expands Lee’s stated goal of 30 percent of that new housing being affordable by setting a goal of “over 50 percent within reach of low and middle income households.”

But unlike most city housing policies that use the affordable housing threshold of those earning 120 percent of area median income (AMI) and below, Lee’s measure eschews that definition, allowing him and his developer allies to later define “middle income households” however they choose. Falvey told us “he means the households in the 50-150 percent of AMI range.”

The measure would also study the central premise of Mayor Lee’s housing policy, the idea that building more market rate housing would bring down the overall price of housing for everyone, a trickle-down economic argument refuted by many affordable housing advocates who say the San Francisco housing market just doesn’t work that way because of insatiable and inelastic demand.

“Within 60 days of the effective date of this measure, the Planning Department is directed and authorized to undertake an economic nexus analysis to analyze the impact of luxury development on the demand for middle income housing in the City, and explore fees or other revenue sources that could help mitigate this impact,” the measure states.

Shortt thinks the mayor’s measure is deceptive: “It’s clever because for those not in the know, it looks like a different way to solve the problem.” But she said the housing balance measure works well with the anti-speculation tax because “one way to keep that balance is to make sure we don’t lose existing rental stock.”

And advocates say the anti-speculation tax is the best tool out there for preserving the rental housing relied on by nearly two-thirds of city residents.

“It’s the best measure we have going now,” Basinger said of the anti-displacement tax. “Mayor Ed Lee and his tech supporters were unable to rally enough support at the state level to reform the Ellis Act, so this is it, folks.”

Justice delayed is justice denied

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EDITORIAL Members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who try to identify with both the progressive movement and business-oriented Mayor Ed Lee — most notably, Sups. David Chiu and Jane Kim — engaged in a strange bit of self-congratulations during their June 10 meeting, patting themselves on the back for a trio of “progressive” reforms.

Yet in each case, the measures are weaker than they should be and too long overdue — and they have their full implementation delayed for years, while the needs of the people they aim to serve are immediate. What Kim and Chiu presented as a demonstration of political effectiveness on behalf of needy constituents is actually just the opposite. It is political cowardice and not political courage.

The best of the trio of approvals was a measure by Sup. David Campos that finally closes the loophole that allows employers to satisfy their employee healthcare mandate by creating healthcare savings accounts, which they make difficult to use and then pocket the money that remains.

This should have been enacted three years ago when Campos first won approval for it, only to see Lee veto it and Chiu sponsor a watered-down alternative that didn’t address the problem. Even now, in order to win over Sups. Mark Farrell and London Breed to attain a veto-proof majority, Campos had to delay full implementation until 2017.

“I also want to commend Sup. Campos for finding compromise,” Chiu said before joining the inevitable majority, a snide dig at his Assembly race opponent that only served to reinforce Campos’ campaign trail points that Chiu’s compromises are often just sellouts to downtown interests. This watered-down version, albeit better than the last watered-down version, also won unanimous approval.

Another kumbaya moment came with the introduction of a consensus ballot measure for increasing the minimum wage in San Francisco, with the Mayor’s Office and business community finally agreeing with the campaign by labor and progressive groups to increase the minimum wage to $15 — but delaying that implementation to 2018. How much displacement and economic hardship will San Franciscans experience between now than then?

Chiu and Kim also sang the praises of Lee for finally agreeing to finally keep his word and support a local increase in the vehicle license fee to fund safer and smoother streets and more money for Muni. But rather than this year as promised, that measure will be on the November 2016 ballot, pushing it back from prosperous to uncertain times.

At the June 12 Guardian community forum, Sup. Scott Wiener said he may still move forward with his proposed charter amendment to give Muni more general fund money until the local VLF is approved, and we strongly urge him to so do.

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a legal maxim that this board full of lawyers is certainly familiar with. Their delays of crucial reforms are disgraceful and damaging to the city, and for them to congratulate themselves for doing so is insulting.

Supervisors consider affordable housing half-step

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While the Board of Supervisors today considers placing a measure on the fall ballot that would slow market rate housing projects when affordable housing development drops below 30 percent of total production, it is also slated to quietly approve another item showing San Franciscans actually need more than double that amount of housing.

The 30 percent ballot measure by Sup. Jane Kim is covered by the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, an article that includes Chicken Little quotes from developers and their biggest cheerleaders, who fear the sky will fall if the current flood of luxury housing development is slowed even a little bit.

But those fears are unlikely to materialize given that Kim seems to have steadily weakened her measure since its introduction last month, responding to allies who deceptively warn of a “housing civil war.” The measure doesn’t create the moratorium that many affordable housing advocates have called for, simply a bit more paperwork for developers, and even then it exempts projects with less than 25 units and those bigger developers who file applications by the end of this year.

That sort of tepid approach to building the housing that current San Franciscans actually need belies the official city policy of seeking to build more than 60 percent of new housing for those earning 120 percent of the area median income or below, as spelled out in the Housing Element of the city’s General Plan.

Ironically, the board is scheduled to re-adopt the 2009 version of that plan today. Its approval of that plan in June 2011 was challenged in court by neighborhood groups, and in December the court ruled that the city needed to shore up its analysis of alternatives to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. That work is now done, so the board today will repeal its 2011 action and re-approve the 2009 Housing Element.

The changes weren’t terribly significant — and besides, the city seems to essentially ignore its Housing Element anyway, even though cities and counties are required by state law to complete them and build their fair share of the affordable housing needed in their region. In rare cases, cities and counties can be fined by the state for not doing so, as was the case with Folsom many years ago when it built only market rate housing.

“Plan for the full range of housing needs in the City and County of San Francisco, especially affordable housing,” reads Policy 1.1 of the Housing Element.

Later in the plan, it spells out just how much housing that should be in San Francisco, based on the Regional Housing Needs Assessment done by the Association of Bay Area Governments: “A total of about 18,880 units, or 61 percent of the RHNA target, must be affordable to households making 120 percent of the area media income (AMI) of less.”

So the supervisors probably shouldn’t stretch too far in patting themselves on the back for a loophole-ridden half-step toward meeting its affordable housing obligations, although we’re happy to see at least some progress in the right direction. 

Shaw’s “housing civil war” is really about influence peddling

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I’m always wary of the BeyondChron stories by Tenderloin power broker Randy Shaw, who uses the website as a propaganda tool for his interests and those of the politicians who he helped get into office, including Mayor Ed Lee and Sup. Jane Kim, as I wrote in last week’s paper.

Sure, they can be a great way to understand what the Mayor Lee and his business community allies are up to, as Shaw floats his little trial balloons that try to frame the city’s political dynamics in the interests of his allies. And now, he’s got San Francisco (aka Modern Luxury) Magazine amplifying those efforts.

For example, did you know that we’re in the midst of a “housing civil war” in San Francisco? No, me neither. But that’s what Shaw declared this week, a declaration that the folks at downtown-friendly Modern Luxury amplified today by reprinting that story.

The tone of the story is a little more even-handed than usual, given that Shaw is being careful not to hurt his close relationship with Kim. But it’s also clearly a shot across her bow on behalf of Lee and the pro-development crowd that Shaw has cozied up to in recent years.

Kim already engages in a delicate balancing act between the progressive community that helped her get elected (which is increasingly restive about the gentrification and displacement that have been fed by economic policies she supported after winning the race in 2010) and the political establishment surrounding Mayor Lee, whom she regularly lavishes praises upon.

Apparently, it’s a dance that she’s performed pretty well, given her lack of serious challengers as she runs for reelection this year. But Shaw’s piece seems to be a subtle public warning to remember where her political bread is buttered, and to not go too far with her proposal to limit luxury condo development when it exceeds 70 percent of the total housing construction.

As with any legislation, the devil is in the details on this one, and Shaw seems to be trying to have a big say in influencing those details by declaring a “war” without identifying any of its combatants or battlefields. Then again, this piece doesn’t seem intended for a general audience, but for those in the back rooms where Shaw truly exercises his power.   

New minimum wage proposal less ambitious, has broader support

San Francisco bears the unfortunate distinction of having the fastest-growing income inequality nationwide. At the same time, the city may retain its more progressive status as having the highest nationwide minimum wage — if voters approve a November ballot measure unveiled today by Mayor Ed Lee and 10 members of the Board of Supervisors.

The consensus measure would increase the minimum wage for all San Francisco employees to $15 an hour by 2018. Currently, the city’s lowest-paid workers earn $10.74 per hour under the existing minimum wage ordinance.

The proposed increase, announced at a June 10 press conference held in Mayor Lee’s office, calls for minimum wage workers to earn $12.25 per hour by May Day of next year, followed by paycheck increases amounting to $13 an hour in 2016, $14 an hour in 2017, and $15 an hour in 2018.

Crafted by representatives from labor, business, and the nonprofit sector in conjunction with Mayor Lee and Sup. Jane Kim, this November ballot measure proposal is less ambitious than an earlier minimum wage increase floated by the Campaign for a Fair Economy, although both guarantee workers an eventual $15 an hour.

The earlier proposal, backed by a coalition that included city employee union SEIU Local 1021, the Progressive Worker’s Alliance, San Francisco Rising, and other progressive organizations, sought to increase the minimum wage to $13 an hour by 2015, $14 by 2016, and $15 by 2017.

So at the end of the day, the newly unveiled consensus proposal would leave minimum wage earners with $0.75 less per hour in 2015 and $1 less in 2017 than what the Campaign for a Fair Economy originally called for, but the broader support for this measure might mean brighter prospects for lowest-paid workers in the long run. The consensus proposal also eliminates the idea of an enforcement committee tasked with holding employers to the mandatory wage increases, yet continues to allocate resources for this purpose.

Shaw San Liu of the Campaign for a Fair Economy, who was part of the negotiations for the consensus measure, noted that this piece was especially important: “It is meaningless to raise the minimum wage if they’re not going to enforce it,” she said. The Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement, tasked with upholding the minimum wage, is currently experiencing a backlog due to case volume.

Shaw San Liu speaks about the importance of the proposed wage increase.

Moderates’ strong opposition to the more ambitious wage increase posed the threat of having two competing measures going to voters in November. Now that a single unified measure is headed to the ballot, there may be less of a risk that workers will end up with an inadequate increase or none at all.

The across-the-board increase to $15 an hour makes this a stronger proposal than a similar wage increase moving forward in Seattle, although that city has a lower cost of living than San Francisco, so the wage will stretch a lot farther. San Francisco has a notoriously high cost of living; former Mayor Willie Brown once famously quipped that anyone earning less than $50,000 simply shouldn’t try to live in the city, and rents were much lower then. Under this proposal, minimum wage workers can hope to earn $31,200 before taxes by 2018, with wages continuing up from there in correlation with Consumer Price Index adjustments.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was adamantly opposed to the earlier ballot measure proposal, but is now on board. “We think that with consensus built up around this measure, which residents will be voting on, we’ve reached that compromise,” Wade Rose, co-chair of the Public Policy Committee of the SFCOC, said at the press event.

However, the SFCOC played a minimum role in the negotiations, with the key players being labor leader Mike Casey, Liu of the Progressive Workers Alliance, Sup. Kim and her staff, and Mayor Lee and his staff, with input from a variety of minimum wage earners, employers, and other stakeholders.

Kim called the measure “the most progressive and strongest minimum wage proposal in the country,” and later clarified that unlike a similar proposal in Seattle, this measure guarantees a $15 wage across the board regardless of business size or additional benefits. “There will be no tip credit or health care credit – this will be pure wages that San Francisco workers will be bringing home to their families,” Kim said. “Despite setting a successful precedent in 2003, which set the highest minimum wage in the country then, in the last years in particular we’ve been seeing a widening income gap between our lowest paid workers and our highest paid workers. In times of economic prosperity, no one should be left behind.”

“We’ve heard input from all of the different affected sectors of our community – earners, and people who pay the minimum wage, we’ve heard from nonprofits as well as small businesses and large businesses,” Mayor Lee said at a June 10 press conference. “And today, with the current minimum wage at $10.74, there’s been an across the board agreement that that just doesn’t cut it; that’s not enough.”

Lee emphasized that with the unveiling of the consensus proposal, “there are no two measures. There is one measure,” destined for the November ballot. He added that in the course of negotiations between opposing sides, “there was reality that needed to be checked in on all sides.”

The anti-sunshine gang intensifies its attacks on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force in City Hall

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By Bruce B. Brugmann   (with special sunshine vendetta chronology by Richard Knee) 

The Guardian story in the current issue demonstrates in 96 point tempo bold how important the glare of sunshine and publicity is in City Hall in keeping the public’s business public. Yet, the anti-sunshine gang in City Hall is intensifying  its savage attack on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.

The Sunshine Ordinance established the Sunshine Task Force to serve as the people’s court for hearing citizen complaints on public access, thus giving  citizens a way to get secret records, open secret meetings, and hold government officials accountable. It empowers citizens to be watchdogs on issues they care about.  It is the first and best ordinance of its kind in the country, if not in the world, and its effectiveness is shown by the fact that the anti-sunshine gang regularly tries  to bounce strong members and gut the task force.

Terry Francke, then the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition and author of the ordinance, and I as a founder anticipated this problem in trhe early 1990s and put a mandate  into the original ordinance for the task force to have representatives from the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (a journalist and media attorney) and the San Francisco League of Women Voters, two organizations with experience and tradition with open government issues. Later, the mandate included a representative from New America Media, to insure a member of color for the task force.

 I served for 10 years on the task force and then Mayor Willie Brown made the point about City Hall interference by targeting me for extinction.  He tried several times  to kick me off the task force.  I refused to budge, on the principle that neither the mayor nor any other city official should be able to arbitrarily kick off a member of the task force for doing his/her job. When Willie left office, I left the task force when my term was up  and the principle was intact.

Today, as Richard Knee writes in his timeline and chronology below, the principle is once again under city hall attack. Knee replaced me as the journalist representative  of SPJ and has served under fire  for a record 12 years. He writes that the latest attack is retaliation for a unanimous finding by the task force in September 2011 when Board President David Chiu and Supervisors Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar violated  local and state open meeting laws by ramming through the monstrous Park Merced redevelopment contract with 14 pages of amendments that Chiu slipped in “literally minutes” before the committee vote.

This was a historic task force vote in the public interest, and a historic vote for open government and for all the good causes. But instead it prompted a smear- dilute-and- ouster campaign by the Board of Supervisors, with timely assists from the city attorney’s office.  The ugly play by play follows. The good news is  that the sunshine forces inside and outside city hall are fighting back, hard and fast, and with a keen eye on all upcoming elections.   Stay tuned. On guard. :

 Special  chronology and timeline detailing the anti-sunshine gang attack on  the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. By Richard Knee)

1. In April 2011, the Task Force voted to change its bylaws to declare that approval of substantive motions required “yes” votes from a simple majority of members present rather than a simple majority of all members, as long as a quorum was present. The quorum threshold remained at six. The bylaws change went against the advice of the city attorney’s office, which pointed to city Charter Sec. 4.104. Suzanne Cauthen and I cast dissenting votes on the bylaw change. David Snyder was absent from that meeting but made it clear that, reluctantly, he could find no reason to disagree with the city attorney’s opinion.

2. In September 2011, the Task Force voted, 8-0, to find that Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and Supervisors Eric Mar, Scott Wiener and Malia Cohen had violated the Sunshine Ordinance and the state’s open-meeting law (Brown Act). Mar, Wiener and Cohen served on the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee, which voted to recommend approval of a Parkmerced redevelopment contract. Literally minutes before the committee voted, Chiu introduced 14 pages of amendments to the contract. The deputy city attorney at the meeting opined that the amendments did not substantially alter the contract and therefore the description of the item on the meeting agenda was still apt and the committee could act on it. The full board approved the contract the same day.

Wiener tried to intimidate the Task Force from hearing the case. His legislative aide Gillian Gillette (now the mayor’s director of transportation policy) told us we had no business telling the board how to vote and that in taking up the matter, we would be overstepping our authority. Her tone of voice, facial expression and body language were clearly confrontational. We pushed back. Bruce Wolfe told her it was inappropriate to prejudge the Task Force’s vote before the hearing had begun. I told her that we were not interested in the LUED Committee’s or the board’s substantive vote on the contract, but we were concerned about the procedural aspect. A complaint alleging sunshine violations had been brought before us and we were duty-bound to hear it. I pointedly suggested she review the ordinance, especially Sec. 67.30, which defines the Task Force’s, duties, powers and composition. She skulked back to her seat, seething.

Chiu’s legislative aide Judson True told us that Chiu’s office had made a mad scramble to get the amendments printed and properly distributed to allow enough time for review by the supervisors and members of the public before the committee’s vote. He and Gillette, citing the city attorney’s opinion, reiterated that the committee and the board had followed proper procedure.

We were incredulous toward their claims that (a) 14 pages of amendments did not substantially alter the contract and (b) there was sufficient time to review the amendments before the committee’s vote. We consensed that there was no reason the committee could not have delayed its vote in order to allow adequate review time.

3. Wiener surreptitiously asked the Budget and Legislative Analyst in late 2011 to survey every city department on how much sunshine compliance was costing it. When we learned about it, Task Force Chair Hope Johnson sent a strongly worded letter objecting to the attempt at secrecy and to the form that the survey took; we felt many of the questions were vague or vacuous.

4. In May 2012, the Rules Committee (Jane Kim, Mark Farrell, David Campos) interviewed Task Force applicants. Committee members pointedly asked incumbents Suzanne Manneh (New America Media’s nominee), Allyson Washburn (League of Women Voters’ nominee), Hanley Chan, Jay Costa and Bruce Wolfe if it wouldn’t have been wise to follow the city attorney’s advice in order to avoid violating the Charter. They responded that while they deeply appreciated having a deputy city attorney at Task Force meetings and certainly gave due weight to the DCA’s counsel, such advice did not have the force of law, they had a right to disagree with it and they believed the bylaw change they had enacted in April 2011 did not violate the Charter.

The Rules Committee voted unanimously to recommend the appointments of newcomers Kitt Grant, David Sims, Chris Hyland and Louise Fischer, and returnee David Pilpel. Campos and Kim voted to recommend Wolfe’s reappointment; Farrell dissented.

Then, citing concerns about lack of “diversity,” Farrell and Kim said the Society of Professional Journalists, NAM and the LWV should have submitted multiple nominations for each of their designated seats. They pointed to language in ordinance Sec. 67.30(a) stipulating that the respective members “shall be appointed from … names” – and they emphasized the plural, “names” – “submitted by” the organizations. And the committee voted unanimously to continue those four appointments to the call of the chair.

It is important to note that this was the first time ever that the committee had made a multiple-nominations demand. Previously, the committee and the board had invariably accepted the single nominations from the three organizations.

The “diversity” argument was a smokescreen. They had already voted to bounce Chan, who is Chinese-American, and Manneh is a Palestinian-American fluent in Arabic and Spanish.

The truth was, they didn’t like the nominees. SPJ had nominated attorney Ben Rosenfeld and Westside Observer editor Doug Comstock. Both as a Task Force member and as a political consultant, Comstock had been a thorn in lots of local politicians’ and bureaucrats’ sides. And Manneh and Washburn had participated in the Task Force’s unanimous finding of violation against Chiu, Wiener, Mar and Cohen.

Upshot: By continuing those appointments, the committee and the board ensured that Manneh, Washburn and I would remain as “holdovers” and the SPJ-nominated attorney’s seat would stay vacant (Snyder had formally resigned). Manneh, citing an increased professional and academic workload, stepped aside a few months later, meaning two of the 11 seats were vacant, and it now took only four absences instead of five to kill a quorum.

5. At the subsequent meeting of the full board, after Campos moved to reappoint Wolfe, Wiener moved to replace his name with that of Todd David. In making his motion, Wiener delivered a scorching, mendacious attack on what was then the current Task Force. Details of the tirade are available on request. The board voted, 6-5, in favor of Wiener’s motion (ayes: Wiener, Chiu, Farrell, Cohen, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd; noes: Campos, Kim, Mar, John Avalos and Christina Olague). The board then voted unanimously to appoint Grant, Sims, Hyland, Fischer, Pilpel and David.

6. Ordinance Sec. 67.30(a) stipulates that the Task Force shall at all times have at least one member with a physical disability. Wolfe was the only applicant in 2012 to meet that criterion. So when the board ousted him, the Task Force no longer had a physically disabled member. The city attorney advised the new Task Force that to take any actions before a new physically disabled member was appointed could land land the Task Force and its individual members in serious legal trouble. So the Task Force was sidelined for five months, finally resuming business in November 2012 following the appointment of Bruce Oka — who, by the way, is solidly pro-sunshine.

            7. After interviewing 12 of the 13 task force applicants on May 15, 2014, Rules Committee members Norman Yee and Katy Tang complained about a lack of racial/ethnic diversity among the candidates, but that didn’t stop them from voting to recommend the reappointments of members David, Fischer and Pilpel, all Anglos (Campos was absent). Nor were they deterred by the fact that David has missed six task force meetings since March 2013, including those of last January, February and April. They continued consideration of additional appointments to a future meeting, possibly June 5.

At the board meeting on May 20, Wiener repeated his slander of the 2012-14 task force and heaped praise on David, Fischer and Pilpel without offering a shred of corroborating evidence. The board voted to confirm their reappointments, again ignoring David’s porous attendance record.

8. To be seen: whether Rules and/or the board will continue insisting on multiple nominations, and whether it will move forward on other possible appointments. Including Grant’s resignation and the possibility of holdovers, there is a risk that as few as eight of the 11 seats will be filled, meaning three absences would kill a quorum. Sims is moving to Los Angeles but remaining as a holdover for the moment. If he resigns, that could pull the number of fill seats down to seven, meaning two absences would kill a quorum.

The foregoing commentary is strictly personal and not intended to reflect the views of any other individual or organization.

Respectfully submitted,

Richard Knee

Member (since July 2002) and past chairman of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, Freedom of Information Committee

San Francisco-based freelance journalist

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012). In San Francisco, the citizens are generally safe, except when the mayor is in his office and the board of supervisors is in session. You can quote me.  B3

Political power play unseats SF Police Commissioner

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Police Commissioner Angela Chan fought the federal government as they unjustly tried to deport undocumented San Franciscans who were guilty of no crimes, and won. She fought to arm the SFPD with de-escalation tactics instead of Tasers, and won again.

But at the April 30 Board of Supervisors meeting, Chan lost. The board denied her reappointment to the Police Commission, and seven supervisors voted to appoint her opponent, Victor Hwang, instead.

The decision came after heated backdoor politicking by Chinatown political leader Rose Pak, insiders told us. Politicians involved would only speak on background, for fear of reprisal from Pak, yet indicated that Pak felt Chan did not consult often enough with Chinatown interests and focused too broadly on issues of concern to other communities.

Chan gained national recognition for her work against Secure Communities, challenging a provision that allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to call for illegal holds of undocumented persons they’d later like to deport. Pak came out swinging against Chan in the wake of those battles, we were told.

“It’s a sad day for the immigrant rights movement when a strong leader cannot be reappointed,” Sup. Eric Mar said just before the vote.

After Sup. Katy Tang introduced the motion to strike Chan’s name from the appointment, and replace it with Hwang’s, other supervisors noted the obvious elephant in the room — there was not only one vacant seat on the police commission, but two.

Supervisor John Avalos suggested the Board of Supervisors make a motion to request the mayor appoint Hwang himself, allowing for both Chan and Hwang to be appointed.

But Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said he’d asked Mayor Lee that very question to no avail. “It is not something that will happen,” he said. “It is not the practice of the mayor to solve difficult decisions of the board. It’s up to us.”

Sups. Mark Farrell, Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, London Breed, Jane Kim, Tang and Chiu voted to strike Chan’s name from the appointment, and to vote to appoint Hwang instead. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

LAWSUIT FILED TO HALT TECH SHUTTLE PILOT

The road to regulating Google Buses has a new pothole: a lawsuit.

A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court May 1 demands the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s commuter shuttle pilot program be put on hold while a full environmental review is conducted under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“We know that these buses are having devastating impacts on our neighborhoods, driving up rents and evictions of long-time San Francisco residents,” said Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and one of the lawsuit petitioners. “We’ve protested in the streets and taken our plea to City Hall to no avail. We hope to finally receive justice in a court of law.”

The suit was filed against the City and County of San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee, the Board of Supervisors, the SFMTA, Google, Genentech, Apple, and a handful of private transportation providers. It alleges the tech shuttle pilot project is in violation of the California Vehicle Code, which prohibits any vehicle — except common carriers (public buses) — to pull into red zones that are designated as bus stops. It also alleges the city abused its discretion and violated the CEQA by exempting the Shuttle Project from environmental review. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

ILLEGAL ANTI-CAMPOS FLYERS TARGETED IN ETHICS COMPLAINT

Several San Francisco neighborhoods over the last week have been targeted with illegal campaign flyers against Assembly candidate David Campos — breaking both state election laws requiring the group and its funding source to be identified and local laws against placing political flyers on utility poles and other surfaces.

Former Ethics Commission Eileen Hansen this week filed a complaint about the guerilla campaigning with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which has jurisdiction over state races.

“I am asking for the intervention of your office into what appears to be a blatant and arrogant violation of campaign finance reporting and disclosure laws in California’s 17th Assembly District Primary Election,” Hansen wrote in the April 30 letter. “As you well know, the political climate in San Francisco is quite sensitive, and nerves are raw. If this violation is allowed to continue, it will have a chilling effect on the entire election and further alienate voters, and potential voters.”

The race between Campos and David Chiu has indeed gotten more heated in recent weeks, but Chiu campaign manager Nicole Derse denies that the campaign has any knowledge or involvement with the illegal campaigning: “We think everyone in this race should be transparent.”

In her letter, Hansen casts doubt on the Chiu campaign’s claims of innocence: “The wide distribution, professional design, and overnight appearance in distant locations strongly suggest that these flyers have been produced and distributed by a funded political organization aligned with Assembly candidate David Chiu, whose aim is to attack and discredit Chiu’s opponent David Campos.”

And she even identifies a leading suspect in this illegal campaigning: Enrique Pearce and his Left Coast Communications firm, which has a history of dirty tricks campaigning on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee and other establishment politicians. Hansen notes that the flyers appeared right after the registration of a new campaign committee, San Franciscans for Effective Government to Support David Chiu. Although the group hasn’t reported any fundraising yet, its contact phone number goes to Left Coast Communications and Pearce, who hasn’t yet returned our calls on the issue.

This campaign stunt in reminiscent of an “independent expenditure” effort in the District 6 supervisorial race in 2010, when Pearce was connected to a mailer supporting Sup. Jane Kim that was funded partially by Willie Brown, again because the supposedly independent group listed his phone number even though he was worked directly for Kim.

The anti-Campos mailers include some nasty and misleading charges, labeling Campos “City Hall’s Hypocrite” by falsely claiming Campos ignored rising evictions until he decided to run for the Assembly and that he was concerned about Google buses but wanted to charge them less than $1 per stop. A third flyer claims Campos “lets wifebeater sheriff keep his job” for his vote against removing Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct.

“This is a secretly funded shadow organization aligned with David Chiu, committing a desperate move that is as illegal and it is false in its claims,” Campos told us, saying he hopes the FPPC is able to stop and punish those involved. (Steven T. Jones)

SUPES CALL FOR INCREASED YOUTH FUNDING

José-Luis Mejia says he’s seen a little bit of everything in his work with transitional-age youth.

A few have died suddenly; others wound up incarcerated. Then there are those who beat the odds by attending top-level universities, opening up their own businesses, or dedicating themselves to public service.

As associate director of Transitional Age Youth San Francisco, Mejia was part of a grassroots coalition that has been working for about two years on crafting a measure that aims to increase funding for youth programs, seeking to give a boost to transitional-age youth services in particular.

It culminated with the April 30 introduction at the Board of Supervisors of a suite of new proposals to support youth programs, including a pair of charter amendments that will appear on the November ballot.

An amendment sponsored by Sup. John Avalos would renew the existing Children’s Fund, renaming it the Children and Youth Fund, and increasing the property-tax set-aside that supports it from three cents per $100 of assessed valuation to five cents. Funding would be designated for programs set up to aid “disconnected transitional-aged youth,” including homeless or disabled youth, unmarried parents, those who identify as LGBTQ or are aging out of foster care, and other specified categories. The amendment would also create a Commission on Children, Youth, and Their Families, to oversee the Department of Children Youth and their families. A second charter amendment would extend the Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF), another source of funding for youth programs.

Avalos has strong support on the Board, but the mayor’s office has reportedly been pressuring supervisors not to support Avalos’ measure.

“As we all know, San Francisco is experiencing incredible economic activity,” Avalos noted April 30. “We’re experiencing growth and speculation that is lifting many boats, but not lifting all boats. And some of the people who are not doing so well are children and families.”

The Children’s Fund, and PEEF currently set aside over $100 million for children and youth in San Francisco. The funding sources would sunset if action were not taken to extend them. (Rebecca Bowe)

 

Cycling to City Hall

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steve@sfbg.com

When the first Bike to Work Day was held in San Francisco 20 years ago, cyclists had little support in City Hall. But on May 8, almost every one of the city’s top political leaders will take part in Bike to Work Day, pledging their support to an increasingly popular and important transportation option.

In fact, Bike to Work Day has become such an anticipated event in San Francisco that city officials and cycling advocates in recent years have used it as the deadline to unveil the latest high-profile bike project to demonstrate the city’s commitment to cycling.

This year, it’s the new contraflow bike lanes on lower Polk Street, an important connection from Market Street to City Hall that helps cyclists avoid dangerous, car-centric Van Ness Avenue or Larkin Street — without having to illegally cut up the one-way section of Polk.

When that $2.5 million bike and pedestrian project — with its attractive landscaping, pedestrian bulb-outs, pretty green lanes, and trio of special bike-only signal lights — was officially opened on May 2, bike activists kept circling the new lanes as if they were doing victory laps.

“I cannot think of a better way to kick off Bike Month in the Bay Area and the 20th anniversary of Bike to Work Day, coming up May 8, than to celebrate what I think is the most beautiful, functional, well-designed, and what is probably going to be the best used piece of bike infrastructure in our city,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Director Leah Shahum said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

She and the others who spoke at the event praised the city officials who moved quickly to complete this project, calling it a testament to the growing political will to make streets safer and more welcoming for cyclists.

“I will be honest, we put a lot of pressure on to get this done by Bike to Work Day,” Shahum said. “We really wanted to make sure you all and the folks throughout this city could, this year, for the first time in San Francisco’s history, make a safe and comfortable and direct link from Market Street…to City Hall.”

Building high-profile, separated cycletracks to the steps of City Hall seems to symbolically mark the arrival of cyclists into the political mainstream.

 

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Twenty years ago, California Bicycle Coalition Director Dave Snyder was the head of SFBC, and he was able to persuade only one member of the Board of Supervisors to participate in that first Bike to Work Day.

“I should give a shout-out to Tom Ammiano because he was the first supervisor to care enough to ride on Bike to Work Day, back when the Board of Supervisors didn’t really care about cycling,” Snyder told us. “These days, it’s not uncommon for supervisors to ride for transportation, but back then none did.”

Shahum remembers it as well, back before the SFBC was one of the city’s largest member-based political advocacy organizations.

“Twenty years ago, Bike to Work Day was a fun but sort of lonely event,” Shahum told us, noting how the number of cyclists on the road has exploded in recent years. “Riding on a regular Thursday during rush hour feels like Bike to Work Day used to feel 20 years ago.”

But both Snyder and Shahum said the universal statements of support for cycling that emanate from City Hall these days are only half the battle.

“It’s a good idea to promote bicycling as a mainstream activity, and we won that battle,” Snyder said. “Now, we have to get them to put their money where their mouth is.”

With cycling projects receiving less than 1 percent of the city’s transportation funding, and city officials so far unwilling to pay for the projects that would allow the city to meet its official goal of 20 percent of all vehicle trips being by bike by the year 2020, Snyder said, “We haven’t accomplished that second goal yet.”

“We hear them all talk about investing money in bike infrastructure,” Shahum told us, “but now the decision makers need to do it.”

A report released in December by the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office shows that San Francisco spends less per capita on bike infrastructure, at just over $9 annually, than other bike-friendly US cities such as Portland, Minneapolis, and Seattle. And it found the city would need to spend about $580 million to reach its official goal of 20 percent bike mode-share by 2020.

Even meeting the SFMTA’s more moderate Strategic Plan Scenario — which aims to reach 8-10 percent mode-share by 2018 by creating 12 miles of new bike lanes and upgrading 50 existing miles and 50 intersections — would require $191 million. That’s $142 million more than the SFMTA now has budgeted for the work.

 

FUNDING PITCH

At the May 2 event on Polk Street, city officials used the new project to call on voters to approve a pair of transportation funding measure proposed by Mayor Ed Lee for the November ballot — an increase in the vehicle license fee and a $500 million general obligation bond — which the Board of Supervisors will consider later this month.

“Do you guys like what you see here?” SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin told the crowd, eliciting a rousing response. “Would you like to see more of this kind of work all over San Francisco?”

Then Reiskin connected that goal to the fall ballot measures, the lion’s share of which will go to Muni improvements.

“With the funds we have, there’s only so much of this we can do and we know the need is so great to make biking and walking a safer and more attractive means of getting around the city. If we want to do more of this, we’re going to need more support in November,” Reiskin said.

The city has make significant progress on new bike infrastructure in recent years, after a legal challenge of the city’s Bicycle Plan stalled projects for four years. Ben Jose, a spokesperson for the SFMTA, told us the Polk project is the 52nd of 60 bike improvement projects from the Bike Plan.

“And those that are left are signature projects like this one,” Jose said at the event, referring to high-profile bike lanes along Bayshore and Masonic boulevards, on upper Polk Street, and along Second Street that are among the bike projects now in the pipeline. But the city hasn’t yet devoted the resources to completing the city’s bike network.

“We want to do more projects like this with money from the fall ballot measure,” Rachel Gordon, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works, told us. “We don’t have enough money in our general fund to do these projects and we hear loud and clear the streets need to be safer for bicyclists and pedestrians.”

 

LITTLE PROJECT, BIG GAIN

The new bikes lanes on Polk are only a few blocks, but it is those kinds of small but critical connections that determine whether cycling in the city is safe or scary.

“I want to know that I can bike safety going north and south on Polk Street, which is why I strongly, strongly support our protected bike lanes on Polk Street, so this is super exciting. As a beginning cyclist, these are the kinds of routes I need to see to get out of my car and onto a bike, so I’m really excited this is the direction our city is moving in,” Sup. Jane Kim said at the event.

Reiskin noted how awkward and unsafe it has been to get from Market Street to City Hall or up Polk Street: “Physically, it’s a pretty small project, but it’s so critically important for those of us who do get around by bike.”

Cyclist Shannon Dodge also spoke at the event, describing her previously awkward commute to work from the Mission District to Russian Hill: “It might look like a tiny stretch of bike lanes to most people, but to me and lots of other people it will make a huge difference. It means we can turn now directly onto Polk Street and we can do it safely.”

She also compared cycling in San Francisco today to the days just before Bike to Work Day began.

“Twenty-one years ago this month, I moved to San Francisco from the East Coast. I came in a van with three friends, so I didn’t bring a lot of possessions. But I did bring my bike and I’ve been biking in San Francisco ever since,” Dodge said.

Back then, in her younger days, she didn’t mind battling for space on the streets of San Francisco.

“When I first moved here, just out of college, safety was not that important to me. I kind of enjoyed the adrenaline rush of being out on a bike in traffic,” she said. “But now I’m a mom. I have a 3-year-old son, and my husband and I bike our son to and from his preschool everyday. And on the weekends we explore the city, which usually means he’s on one of our two bikes. Pretty soon, he’ll be riding his own bike out on San Francisco streets. So safety is incredibly important to me, as it is to all families.”

Illegal anti-Campos flyers the subject of an ethics complaint

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Several San Francisco neighborhoods over the last week have been targeted with illegal campaign flyers against Assembly candidate David Campos — breaking both state election laws requiring the group and its funding source to be identified and local laws against placing political flyers on utility poles and other surfaces.

Former Ethics Commission Eileen Hansen this week filed a complaint about the guerilla campaigning with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which has jurisdiction over state races.

“I am asking for the intervention of your office into what appears to be a blatant and arrogant violation of campaign finance reporting and disclosure laws in California’s 17th Assembly District Primary Election,” Hansen wrote in the April 30 letter. “As you well know, the political climate in San Francisco is quite sensitive, and nerves are raw. If this violation is allowed to continue, it will have a chilling effect on the entire election and further alienate voters, and potential voters.”

The race between Campos and David Chiu has indeed gotten more heated in recent weeks, but Chiu campaign spokesperson Nicole Derse denies that the campaign has any knowledge or involvement with the illegal campaigning: “We think everyone in this race should be transparent.”

In her letter, Hansen casts doubt on the Chiu campaign’s claims of innocence: “The wide distribution, professional design, and overnight appearance in distant locations strongly suggest that these flyers have been produced and distributed by a funded political organization aligned with Assembly candidate David Chiu, whose aim is to attack and discredit Chiu’s opponent David Campos.”

And she even identifies a leading suspect in this illegal campaigning: Enrique Pearce and his Left Coast Communications firm, which has a history of dirty tricks campaigning on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee and other establishment politicians. Hansen notes that the flyers appeared right after the registration of a new campaign committee, San Franciscans for Effective Government to Support David Chiu. Although the group hasn’t reported any fundraising yet, its contact phone number goes to Left Coast Communications and Pearce, who hasn’t yet returned our calls on the issue. [UPDATE: Pearce called back and categorically denied any involvement with the illegal flyers, and he blasted Hansen for speading what you called “scurrilous lies” with no foundation, saying he has called her directly and expects an apology.]

This campaign stunt in reminiscent of an “independent expenditure” effort in the District 6 supervisorial race in 2010, when Pearce was connected to a mailer supporting Sup. Jane Kim that was funded partially by Willie Brown, again because the supposedly independent group listed his phone number even though he was worked directly for Kim.

The anti-Campos mailers include some nasty and misleading charges, labeling Campos “City Hall’s Hypocrite” by falsely claiming Campos ignored rising evictions until he decided to run for the Assembly and that he was concerned about Google buses but wanted to charge them less than $1 per stop. A third flyer claims Campos “lets wifebeater sheriff keep his job” for his vote against removing Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct.

“This is a secretly funded shadow organization aligned with David Chiu, committing a desperate move that is as illegal and it is false in its claims,” Campos told us, saying he hopes the FPPC is able to stop and punish those involved. 

Political power play unseats SF Police Commissioner who fought Secure Communities

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Police Commissioner Angela Chan fought the federal government as they unjustly tried to deport undocumented San Franciscans who were guilty of no crimes, and won.

She fought to arm the SFPD with de-escalation tactics instead of Tasers, and won again. 

But at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Chan lost.The board denied her reappointment to the Police Commission, and seven supervisors voted to appoint her opponent, Victor Hwang, instead.

I can see the writing on the wall and the way the votes are coming down,” Supervisor Eric Mar said to the board just before the vote. “It’s a sad day for the immigrant rights movement when a strong leader cannot be reappointed. Its a a sad day when a woman standing up for immigrant justice is not reappointed.”

The decision came after heated backdoor politicking by Chinatown political leader Rose Pak, insiders told us. Politicians involved would only speak on background, for fear of reprisal from Pak, but openly told the Guardian that Pak felt Chan spent too much time advocating for other communities of color, instead of just focusing on issues affecting Chinatown.

Chan gained national recognition for her work against Secure Communities, or S-Comm, a program that allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold undocumented persons they’d later like to deport, often indefinitely.

Pak came out swinging against Chan in the wake of those battles, we were told, because they diverted from efforts relating to Chinatown. Public records requests also show that Pak’s allies operated against Chan, demonstrating Pak’s influence.

A series of public records requests from the Guardian confirmed that Malcolm Yeung, a well-known “hatchet man” for Pak, emailed the Board of Supervisors with scores of support letters for Chan’s opponent, Hwang. One of those support letters came from noted Reverend Norman Fong, a powerful voice in the Chinatown community and the executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center. 

For a full recap of the nasty politics that came out to slam Chan, check out our post from earlier today.

Sup. Katy Tang introduced the motion to strike Chan’s name from the appointment, and replace it with Hwang’s. 

We are lucky when we have such strong candidates,” Tang said. “However it is because of Victor’s sense of criminal justice and civil rights experience that we bring to a full vote to put Victor to the Police Commission.”

But other supervisors noted the obvious elephant in the room — there was not only one vacant seat on the police commission, but two. One appointed by the supervisors, the other appointed by Mayor Ed Lee.

Supervisor John Avalos suggested the Board of Supervisors make a motion to request the mayor appoint Hwang himself, allowing for both Chan and Hwang to be appointed, a compromise move that would benefit everyone.

[Mayor Ed Lee] could appoint Victor to the committee,” Avalos said to the board. “There’s room for both of them to be on the commission.”

But Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said he asked Mayor Lee that very question, and that he was denied.

“It’s something I asked,” he said. “It is not something that will happen.” He went on to note that both candidates were very well-qualified, but did not explain why he would support one over the other, saying: “It is not the practice of the mayor to solve difficult decisions of the board. It’s up to us.” 

Then Chiu said he would vote for Hwang, a surprising move. Chiu is running for state assembly on the notion that he is the compromise candidate, yet was unable to broker a compromise that was clearly in front of him: there were two vacant police commission seats, and two candidates. 

Chiu’s support for Hwang was especially surprising considering Rose Pak is oft-described as Chiu’s political enemy. One must wonder what political favors he gained for his support of Hwang. 

Kim repeatedly referenced her friendship with Hwang in the discussion leading up to the vote.

In the end, Supervisors Mark Farrell, Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, London Breed, Jane Kim, Tang and Chiu voted to strike Angela Chan’s name from the appointment, and to vote to appoint Hwang instead.

I had a good four years on the commission,” Chan told the Guardian in a phone interview afterwards. “I was able to accomplish a lot, along with the many people who came out today to support me. People from the mental health, African American, Asian American and Latino communities. Hopefully with this experience they will become more organized and powerful as a community.”

After Victor Hwang’s victory, the Guardian stopped him outside of the board chambers to ask him: If Rose Pak helped you get your seat, are you beholden to Rose Pak?

The simple answer is no,” he told the Guardian. “She’ll have no more sway than anyone else. She’s a leader in the community, and there are many leaders in the community. I’ll make independent decisions for myself.”

His first priorities as a Police Commissioner, he said, would be what he called “the little things” — pedestrian safety by the Broadway tunnel, graffiti enforcement, and making sure calls for matters like break-ins are enforced in a timely manner. 

Hwang doesn’t want to start new projects right away, he said, because there are already big issues with the SFPD on the table. He said the Alejandro Nieto shooting would be a focus moving forward.

In our last story covering the shady politics behind Hwang’s appointment, we likened the political machines supporting him to the Game of Thrones House Lannister (the purported villains of the show). Hwang wanted to set the record straight. 

I think Ivy [his partner and Sup. Kim’s legislative aide] took one of those personality tests for me,” he said, “it came back as Jon Snow.”

Jon Snow is the closest thing Game of Thrones has to a hero.

Image below: A Guardian file photo of Victor Hwang, newly appointed by the Board of Supervisors to the Police Commission.

hwang

Supervisors propose increased funding for youth services

José-Luis Mejia says he’s seen a little bit of everything in his work with transitional-age youth.

A few have died suddenly; others wound up incarcerated. Then there are those who beat the odds by attending top-level universities, opening up their own businesses, or dedicating themselves to public service.

When a mentor interacts with youth aging out of foster care, Mejia said, “you don’t know what that young person is going through.” He himself had the experience of turning his life around as a young person after growing up in a violent household; he credits publically funded programs for at-risk youth with supporting his transformation.

As associate director of Transitional Age Youth San Francisco, Mejia was part of a grassroots coalition that has been working for about two years on crafting a measure that aims to increase funding for youth programs, seeking to give a boost to transitional-age youth services in particular.

The culmination of that effort was today’s introduction at the Board of Supervisors of a suite of new proposals to support youth programs, including a pair of charter amendments that will appear on the November ballot.

The first, sponsored by Sup. John Avalos with Sups. David Campos, Malia Cohen, Jane Kim, Norman Yee, and London Breed as cosponsors, would renew the existing Children’s Fund, renaming it the Children and Youth Fund, and increasing the property-tax set-aside that supports it from three cents per $100 of assessed valuation to five cents.

Throughout the room at a press conference held in City Hall today with members of the Board and a coalition of youth advocates, attendees sported hats with neon stickers that read: “Our kids are worth two cents.”

As part of this measure, funding would be designated for programs set up to aid “disconnected transitional-aged youth,” including homeless or disabled youth, unmarried parents, those who identify as LGBTQ or are aging out of foster care, and other specified categories. The amendment would also create a Commission on Children, Youth, and Their Families, to oversee the Department of Children Youth and their families.

“At the end of this process, I hope to have the support of eleven members of the board,” Avalos noted. However, members of the Board of Supervisors who are sponsoring the legislation have already received from pushback from Mayor Ed Lee, who has reportedly been pressuring supervisors not to support Avalos’ measure. (Lee’s press office did not return a call seeking comment.)

“As we all know, San Francisco is experiencing incredible economic activity,” Avalos said at this afternoon’s press conference. “We’re experiencing growth and speculation that is lifting many boats, but not lifting all boats. And some of the people who are not doing so well are children and families – we’ve seen a decline in our population of families with children, over the past few decades, and it’s time that we … put the resources forward that are going to make it possible for San Francsicans and families to find affordability here.”

A second, closely related charter amendment, carried by Sup. Jane Kim with Yee as a cosponsor, would renew the Public Education Enrichment Fund, eliminate its expiration date, and provide for universal access to early childhood education for kids between three and five years instead of starting at age four.

The Public Education Enrichment Fund and the Children’s Fund, created after being placed on the ballot in 1991, currently set aside over $100 million for children and youth in San Francisco. The funding sources would sunset if action were not taken to extend them.

Will San Francisco Game of Thrones oust police commissioner?

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Police Commissioner Angela Chan did not pay fealty to the proper lords and houses, sources say, and in a true to life Game of Thrones, she may now lose her office. The throne in question is a seat on the Police Commission, which Chan may be reappointed to by the Board of Supervisors today [Tues/29], but her chances don’t look good. 

In a political tussle reminiscent of House Lannister’s schemes against House Stark, political machines far larger than the idealistic Chan are churning to keep her from regaining her political office. The forces of Chinatown community leader Rose Pak and her fellow power brokers are backing potential replacement police commissioner Victor Hwang, whose sudden candidacy took many off guard. 

As first reported by Tim Redmond of 48hills.org, Pak’s political pushers dialed every supervisor and marshalled their armies, hellbent on unseating Chan. 

They may win, but not because Chan was a bad commissioner. Actually, the problem might be that she was too effective, and now people in power want her out.

Expanding the mayor’s power

In a Rules Committee meeting Apr. 17, backers of both candidates wore their house sigils, green or white buttons meant to support their chosen candidate, both of whom are seemingly very qualified.

On the one side, Hwang is an ex-assistant district attorney, ex-public defender, ex-nonprofit attorney, and advocate with over 20 years of experience holding police to task for their wrongdoing. He’s fought human trafficking and litigated against out-of-control cops. 

But the incumbent, Chan, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, has many similar qualifications. She also has a proven track record on the Police Commission: she crafted the Crisis Intervention Team, tasked with de-escalating standoffs with mentally ill offenders; advocated language access in the police force; helped to revise rules protecting children at school facing arrest; and opposed arming police with tasers.

Both candidates have an extensive list of backers. District Attorney staffers, the Anti-Defamation League, advocates from the Chinatown Development Center, and Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic all wrote to supervisors backing Hwang. The Guardian even named him a “local hero” in our Best of the Bay issue in 2004.

But the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco Women’s Political Committee, members of the Central Americans Resource Center, Board of Education President Sandra Fewer, the local NAACP, and even a retired police officer all backed Chan. The Guardian also named her a local hero, in 2010. 

A change.org petition calling for her reappointment to the commission has 255 signatures, as of this writing. 

Chan hasn’t yet given up the ghost.

“I’m hoping the full board will recognize I work extremely hard,” she told the Guardian. “I look after the community, especially those who are most marginalized.”

Though many issues have political bents and political sides, one aspect of this tussle reveals the power play behind the curtain: the two candidates are competing for one empty seat on the commission, when there are actually two seats vacant.

Why fight over just one seat? 

The answer lies in political motivations insiders would only outline for reporters on background. You see, in a city where many commissions (see: SFMTA) are fully appointed by the Mayor’s Office, and therefore beholden to his whims, the Police Commission has a mechanism to dilute that power — a minority of seats are appointed by the Board of Supervisors. The seat Chan and Hwang are fighting for is the supervisor appointed seat, and for now the mayor’s seat sits empty and uncontested.

Hwang was co-chair of Progress for All, which ran the Run, Ed, Run campaign for Lee’s mayoral candidacy. If the question was really just about making Hwang a commissioner, the mayor could appoint him today with a snap of his fingers. But that’s not the point.

Many insiders, including ones that seemingly support Hwang, told the Guardian that Mayor Ed Lee has plenty of reason to usher Chan out and appoint Hwang in her place. The SFPD long pushed for tasers but found a formidable opponent in Chan, and the mayor would benefit from police support next election, they said. Others said her combative style ruffled people’s feathers, a seemingly legitimate complaint until you consider more cooperative boards like the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency define “cooperative” by mostly voting in unison and with little discussion, coincidentally also often in agreement with the mayor’s positions.

Angela Chan asks an SFPD station captain if officers use verbal means to de-escalate situations. 

That’s why Chan is dangerous; she’s a freethinker, and a loud one at that. By pushing the supervisors to appoint Hwang, we were told, the mayor would unseat a potential political liability, and net a freebie commission seat appointment in the deal. 

Win-win.

This isn’t to say Hwang is a bad guy. He longs for public service (nicknaming his practice the Ronin Law Firm), and expressed disappointment in political power struggles beyond his control.

“For me it’s not about Angela, it’s about the police commission,” he told the Guardian. “To give Angela credit, I think the work she’s done on Crisis Intervention Team and language access are important issues.”

And for his part, he said that though many political entities aligned with political powerbroker Rose Pak are pushing for his appointment, he wouldn’t be beholden to her, or them.

“Are Chinatown issues important to me? Yes, they’re very important to me,” he said. “Am I going to answer to one or two folks just because of whoever they are? No. That would be putting my own 20 years of work aside to kowtow to one particular person over anyone else.”

Hwang told us Supervisor Eric Mar is asking the mayor to appoint him to the second vacant police commission seat, but if that effort isn’t successful Chan and Hwang will go head to head.

So the supervisors have a tough choice ahead of them, but for some, the decision is tougher than others.

Conflict of interest

Some of the supervisors have votes that are fair to guess at. Long time progressives like Sups. Mar, John Avalos, and David Campos are ideologically aligned with Chan, and have reason to vote in her favor. 

Chan needs six votes to be re-appointed to the commission, and some of those votes are up in the air.

Sups. Norman Yee, and Katy Tang voted to approve Chan in the Rules Committee, the first round before today’s Board of Supervisors vote. But that’s no guarantee they’ll vote for her again. 

Sup. Jane Kim has an odd conflict of interest. Ivy Lee, an attorney and one of Kim’s staffers, is Hwang’s romantic partner. The couple has three children together. He dedicated a brief he wrote for the Asian American Law Journal, “to my incredible partner Ivy Lee, who gave birth to our second son Kaiden, as I was writing the brief at the hospital.”

Is that conflict of interest grounds for Kim to recuse herself from the vote? Is it proper for her to vote to appoint her staffer’s partner to a political position? We reached out to Kim’s office but did not hear back from her before going to press. 

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu’s vote is also an open question. 

Chiu worked with Chan in 2011 to fight against the federal Secure Communities program, which as we then reported, was a database allowing the feds to circumvent local policies protecting local immigrants who have been arrested but not convicted of any crimes and deport them.

They were partners in the struggle for human rights. So will Chiu back his former ally, Chan, in her re-appointment?

We called, texted, and harangued Chiu to call us back, but did not hear from him before press time. To be fair, he’s running for the Assembly and was likely between one of his dozens of necessary appearances. He did have an aide call us back, but he was unable to give us a hint at which direction Chiu may vote in. 

Complicating his choice is a mix of allegiances. With so many former and current allies on both sides, Chiu will make someone angry no matter which potential police commissioner he votes for, insiders told us. 

And Chiu’s vote may be the deciding one. With real reform of the SFPD on the line, the stakes are higher than the fictional Game of Thrones.

Ultimately, Chiu will have to vote his conscience. 

Correction 3:28pm: The article earlier identified Ivy Lee as married to Victor Hwang. In actuality, Hwang and Lee are romantic partners who decided not to marry in direct protest of the LGBT community being denied the right to marry.

Update 6:50pm: The vote was cast, and Victor Hwang was appointed to the Police Commission in place of Angela Chan. Read our full story.

Covered San Francisco unveiled

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At the tail end of a long Board of Supervisors meeting last week, Sup. David Campos introduced legislation to create Covered San Francisco, a city healthcare option designed to remedy a coverage gap that will be created under the Affordable Care Act.

Lately, we’ve gotten reports of San Franciscans hoping to enroll in Covered California — the state-run health insurance marketplace created under the ACA — leaving meetings with enrollment counselors in tears of frustration. Even though these would-be enrollees are technically eligible for Covered California — which makes them ineligible to stay in Healthy San Francisco — the insurance cost is nevertheless too high to be a realistic option.

“In high cost-of-living cities like San Francisco, many will simply not be able to afford it,” Campos said when he introduced the legislation. “The most authoritative study says 40 percent of San Franciscans who are eligible for Covered California still will not be able to afford it.”

Co-sponsored by Sups. John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Jane Kim, the legislation seeks to address the problem by creating a new option for employees to receive subsidies to purchase health insurance under Covered California through the Department of Public Health. The funding would be derived from an employer spending requirement already in place under the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance, the law that created Healthy San Francisco.

The proposal also seeks to close a loophole that Campos said incentivizes employers to set up health reimbursement accounts for employees that cannot be used to purchase Covered California insurance plans. To discourage the use of these accounts, the proposal would make spending irrevocable, meaning employers would be unable to claw back funding they’ve contributed. (Rebecca Bowe)

 

PG&E INDICTMENT DOESN’T GO FAR ENOUGH

A federal grand jury in San Francisco issued a criminal indictment against Pacific Gas & Electric for negligence in the 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people and destroyed an entire neighborhood. But that falls far short of what this rapacious company and its conniving executives — none of whom face personal criminal charges — should be facing.

The indictment omits key details of what happened leading up this tragic and entirely preventable explosion, buying into the fiction that there is a meaningful difference between PG&E Co., the regulated utility, and PG&E Corp., the wealthy and powerful Wall Street corporation. This is a stark example of how corporations are given all the rights of individuals, but accept few of the responsibilities, with the complicity of the political and economic systems.

The 12-count indictment focused on violation of the Pipeline Safety Act, which requires companies to maintain their potentially dangerous pipelines, including keeping detailed records and doing safety inspections that would detect flaws like the faulty weld that caused the San Bruno explosion on Sept. 9, 2010 — work the company negligently failed to perform.

But PG&E’s wanton disregard for public safety, combined with the greed and shameless self-interest of then-CEO Peter Darbee and other executives, goes far deeper than that. A report by the California Public Utilities Commission released in January 2012 found that $100 million in ratepayer funds that had been earmarked for pipeline maintenance and replacement, including this section in San Bruno, was instead diverted to executive bonuses and shareholder profits.

“PG&E chose to use the surplus revenues for general corporate purposes,” the audit said, noting that the company was flush with cash at the time and there was no good reason to neglect this required maintenance. (Steven T. Jones)

 

911 DISPATCHERS STRESSED

The controversial tax breaks given to tech companies in San Francisco in 2011 came under fire again last week, as emergency dispatchers protested crippling budget shortages on April 2 in front of the Department of Emergency Management.

“When you call 911, there should be enough people working to pick up the phone,” said Ron Davis, an emergency dispatcher in San Francisco for 13 years. “It’s upsetting when you or someone you love is in a life-threatening emergency and you’re put on hold for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, or even a minute and longer.”

The department receives, on average, nearly 3,000 phone calls per day, and the workers who spoke at the rally described long hours and inadequate coverage for the volume of calls that they receive. California law mandates that 90 percent of 911 calls be answered in 10 seconds or less, but in San Francisco that number often drops to 60 percent or lower. Davis said that on particularly busy nights, such as New Year’s Eve, there can be up to 20 calls in the queue waiting for an available dispatcher.

The rally was organized by SEIU Local 1021 and was part of the union’s contract negotiations with the city. Larry Bradshaw, vice president for the San Francisco region of the union, said workers were willing to make sacrifices during the recession but now, “we just want to recoup our losses and make up for lost ground.” (Brian McMahon)

 

WILL AIRBNB PAY UP?

Airbnb has agreed to start collecting and paying the transient occupancy tax in San Francisco sometime this summer — finally acknowledging that’s the only workable way to meet the tax obligation it shares with its hosts. But that leaves open the question of whether this $10 billion corporation intends to pay the tax debt it has accumulated for years while trying to duck its responsibility to the city.

That’s at least several million dollars that the city could really use right now. As we’ve previously reported, Airbnb commissioned and publicized a study in late 2012 claiming its San Francisco hosts collected $12.7 million from Airbnb guest in fiscal year 2011-12, meaning they should have collected and remitted to the city $1.9 million.

In early 2012, the San Francisco Tax Collector’s Office held public hearings to clarify whether the TOT applies to the short-term rentals facilitated by Airbnb and similar companies, ruling in April 2012 that the TOT does apply to those stays and that it is a “joint and several liability” shared by the hosts and Airbnb, which conducts the transaction and takes a cut.

As we also reported, despite heavily lobbying during the hearing and being acutely aware of the outcome and its resulting tax obligation, Airbnb simply refused to comply and tack the 15 percent surcharge onto its transactions, as similar companies such as Roomorama were doing.

So if Airbnb was really being the good corporate citizen that it’s now claiming to be, it would not only start charging the 15 percent fee and sharing that money with the city, it would also cut San Francisco a check for around $4 million, or whatever the tax would be on what this growing business has collected from its guests since April 2012. (Steven T. Jones)

 

BURSTING THE MONTEREY SHALE BUBBLE

“We’ve been told that there’s a great oil boom on the immediate horizon,” billionaire investor Tom Steyer noted at the start of a March 27 talk in Sacramento.

But Steyer (who has pledged to spend $100 million on ad campaigns for the 2014 election to promote action on climate change) wasn’t there to trumpet the oil industry’s high expectations. Instead, he introduced panelists who dismissed the buzz on drilling the 1,750-square-mile Monterey Shale as pie-in-the-sky hype.

Dr. David Hughes, a geoscientist with the Post Carbon Institute, and researcher Robert Collier had been invited to speak by Next Generation, a policy group focused on climate change that was co-founded by Steyer.

Both experts questioned the findings of a University of Southern California study that wound up being cited time and again as the basis for the oil industry’s arguments, in the context of a statewide debate on fracking.

Partially funded by the Western States Petroleum Association, the USC report outlined a rosy economic outlook stemming from oil extraction in the Monterey Shale, estimating that it would create 2.8 million jobs and $24 billion in tax revenues, findings that were “echoed by politicians of both parties,” Collier noted.

Yet prominent economists could find no basis for certain claims. “They said: ‘We cannot see any justification for these incredible numbers,” Collier reported. “They seem too big to be believable.” The Post Carbon Institute and Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy published their own report challenging the findings, titled Drilling California: A Reality Check on the Monterey Shale. (Rebecca Bowe)

Covered San Francisco plan would bridge gaps between Healthy San Francisco and Obamacare

The whole point of Healthy San Francisco, the city’s universal healthcare program, is to help people who can’t afford health insurance get medical care when they need it. Despite the intentions of expanding access to healthcare under the Affordable Care Act, that goal won’t necessarily be realized now that federal reform is underway.

Lately, we’ve gotten reports of San Franciscans hoping to enroll in Covered California, the state-run health insurance marketplace created under the ACA, leaving meetings with enrollment counselors in tears of frustration. Even though these would-be enrollees are technically eligible for Covered California – which makes them ineligible to stay in Healthy San Francisco – the insurance cost is nevertheless too high to be a realistic option.

“The most authoritative study says 40 percent of San Franciscans who are eligible for Covered California still will not be able to afford it,” Sup. David Campos noted in a recent phone interview. At the tail end of a long Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, Campos introduced legislation that would create “Covered San Francisco,” a health care option designed to remedy this coverage gap. “In high cost-of-living cities like SF, many will simply not be able to afford it,” Campos said when he introduced the legislation.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Sups. John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Jane Kim. Drafted along with a team that included experts in healthcare and representatives from the city’s Department of Public Health and City Attorney’s Office, the proposal essentially does three things.

First, it seeks to close a loophole that incentivizes employers to comply with the city’s health care law in a way that makes it harder for employees to access medical care.

Under the Health Care Security Ordinance, the law that created Healthy San Francisco, employers must contribute toward their workers’ healthcare costs based on hours worked. In the past, they could comply by setting up standalone accounts, called healthcare reimbursement accounts (HRAs). If employees never tapped those accounts for healthcare needs, the businesses could take back the money they put in.

Under Obamacare, those standalone HRAs are now illegal. But some employers have discovered that they can still set up a different kind of HRA, called an “excepted benefits HRA,” which can only be used toward ancillary care like vision or dental needs.

For employees who are sick and need some kind of medical coverage, these “excepted benefit HRAs” can result in a bind, because under the new federal law, workers are expressly prohibited from using them to obtain insurance through Covered California. And, if employees don’t spend what’s in these accounts, employers can still take the money back – making this option very attractive to employers looking to reduce spending.

Therefore, Campos’ legislation seeks to make all spending to satisfy the local health care law irrevocable, meaning the employers cannot take it back.

“While individuals will face a federal mandate for the first time to purchase health insurance, they will not be able to use these accounts in these excepted benefit HRAs to actually meet that mandate,” Campos pointed out, saying the legislation seeks to do away with “this perverse incentive” for employers to set up HRAs instead of going with an option that would aid employees in seeing a doctor when needed.

This change would leave employers with the choice of keeping ever-expanding HRAs on their books – which is a liability – or looking for a different way to comply with the city’s healthcare law. Other options include providing insurance for their employees, or paying into a locally administered health-care program known as the “city option.”

Many employers already use this city option, and Campos’ proposal would change how it works. First, workers would sit down with city health officials for a consultation. From there, if workers were eligible for Covered California, they’d be enrolled, and they would get additional subsidies to make it more affordable. This system would be known as Covered San Francisco.

Workers not eligible for Covered California, such as undocumented residents, would be enrolled into Healthy San Francisco. And healthcare accounts would be set up for those who didn’t fall into one of the other two categories.

The third thing the law would do is require the city’s health department to extend Healthy San Francisco coverage to include anyone not already covered by the ACA, either due to economic hardship or because they lack an affordable health insurance option.

Already, the newly introduced legislation has some detractors in the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a business entity that sued the city several years ago to challenge employer requirements under Health Care Security Ordinance.

Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association — which brought and unsuccessful legal challenge to HCSO when the city adopted it — said her group takes issue with the idea of making HRA spending irrevocable. “The irrevocability does limit the choices – the city is trying to force the hand of the employer, to choose the city option,” she said. “The city’s making it more restrictive.”

She also said the GGRA was concerned about transparency. “What they’re saying is that … that entire cost wouldn’t have to sit in an account for an employee; it would fund the system,” in the event that an employer selected the city option, Borden said. “If they’re arguing that the employer has to spend every cent of the dollar on health care for the employee, then the city should have to do that as well.”

But Borden said GGRA had litigated on this issue before, and therefore would not be able to bring their opposition to the courts again. Borden also added that GGRA wanted to make one thing clear: “We applaud Sup. Campos’ efforts to broaden the city option,” she said, “and get more people health care.”

Inside the Homeless Outreach Team

This week’s Bay Guardian features a cover story on homelessness in San Francisco.

For that story, we reached out to the San Francisco Department of Public Health to interview members of the city’s Homeless Outreach Team, public workers who interact directly with people who live on the city’s streets.

Access was denied. It’s not clear why DPH was unwilling to allow a press interview with members of the HOT team, but our requests did coincide with a March 19 Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee hearing regarding a $1.3 million budget supplemental to expand its capacity.

The item was approved 4-1. Sup. John Avalos, who opposed it, said the city ought to come up with a more comprehensive plan to address homelessness.

As Sup. Jane Kim noted in an interview for the story, “If you’re just going to increase the HOT team, but not services, then you’re just sending people out to harass homeless people.”

Meanwhile, thanks to emails we recently obtained in response to a public records request, we now have a clearer picture of the HOT team’s day-to-day activities.

Apparently, efforts to expand the HOT team are being made in the context of city officials being contacted frequently by neighbors who complain that they are very bothered by the sight of homeless people.

A records request yielded more than 100 pages of such complaints. Some are quite dramatic.

“I don’t know where to begin,” one resident wrote. “I feel between mad, disgusted, and frustrated. This homeless encampment keeps growing. … The city has put up wire fencing only to be cut through by the homeless. … It is within 100 yards of my 1.2M condo.”

Another said: “Something is deeply wrong with San Francisco policy. Cultivating the Bohemian San Francisco style is nice but … it is as if we were in a deteriorated undeveloped country. We live in downtown San Francisco, not in the favelas, which is what it feels like …”

Still another complainant wrote: “Bags distributors are installed in the parks in order to help dog lovers clean up after their dogs, which is completely normal, but nothing is done for all the human beings who stroll, do drugs, eat, sleep, urinate, defecate and so on, on the sidewalks.”

Sometimes these complaints result in HOT team visits to homeless encampments that have been described. But the emails suggest that while the city’s HOT team does approach homeless folks to try and persuade them to access services or go to a shelter, the service workers don’t always have full services to direct them to if the homeless individuals agree to do so.

Psychiatric social worker Jason Albertson, who is part of the HOT team, explained this dilemma in an email sent in mid-January. His email noted that the HOT team had encountered some homeless people in the vicinity of Harriet Alley and Manolo Draves Park, in response to a neighbor’s urging.

They’re “primarily in transit, meaning that they camp in different places each night and are not regulars,” he explained. “So far, nobody has wanted to enter into shelter or discuss other access to treatment or services.” But even if they had, he said, there wouldn’t be too many options for moving forward with recovery.

“At this time, our case management support is limited with identified clients waiting,” he wrote. “So capacity for full service is limited.”

San Francisco’s untouchables

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Rebecca@sfbg.com

In one sense, San Francisco’s homeless residents have never been more visible than they are in this moment in the city’s history, marked by rapid construction, accelerated gentrification, and rising income inequality. But being seen doesn’t mean they’re getting the help they need.

Not long ago, Lydia Bransten, who heads security at the St. Anthony’s Foundation on 150 Golden Gate, happened upon a group of teenagers clustered on the street near the entrance of her soup kitchen. They had video cameras, and were filming a homeless man lying on the sidewalk.

“They were putting themselves in the shot,” she said.

Giggling, the kids had decided to cast this unconscious man as a prop in a film, starring them. She told them it was time to leave. Bransten read it as yet another example of widespread dehumanization of the homeless.

“I feel like we’re creating a society of untouchables,” she said. “People are lying on the street, and nobody cares whether they’re dead or breathing.”

Condominium dwellers and other District 6 residents of SoMa and the Tenderloin are constantly bombarding Sup. Jane Kim about homelessness via email — not to express concern about the health or condition of street dwellers, but to vent their deep disgust.

“This encampment has been here almost every night for several weeks running. Each night the structure is more elaborate. Why is it allowed to remain up?” one resident wrote in an email addressed to Kim. “Another man can be found mid block, sprawled across the sidewalk … He should be removed ASAP.”

In a different email, a resident wrote: “The police non-emergency number is on my quick dial because we have to call so often to have homeless camps removed.”

It’s within this fractious context that the city is embarking on the most comprehensive policy discussions to take place on homelessness in a decade.

In 2004, city officials and community advocates released a 10-Year Plan to Abolish Chronic Homelessness. One only needs to walk down the street to understand that this lofty objective ultimately failed; people suffering from mental illness, addiction, and poverty continue to live on the streets.

Most everyone agrees that something should be done. But while some want to see homelessness tackled because they wish undesirable people would vanish from view, others perceive a tragic byproduct of economic inequality and a dismantled social safety net, and believe the main goal should be helping homeless people recover.

“The people living in poverty are a byproduct of the system,” said Karl Robillard, a spokesperson for St. Anthony’s. “We will always have to help the less fortunate. That’s not going to go away. But we’re now blaming those very same people for being in that situation.”

sabrina

Sabrina: “The streets can be mean.”

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

 

HOMELESS MAGNET?

A common framing of San Francisco’s “homeless problem” might be called the magnet theory.

The city has allocated $165 million to homeless services. Over time, it has succeeded in offering 6,355 permanent supportive housing units to the formerly homeless. Nevertheless, the number of homeless people accounted for on the streets has remained stubbornly flat. The city estimates there are about 7,350 homeless people now living in San Francisco.

Since the city has invested so much with such disappointing results, the story goes, there can only be one explanation: Offering robust services has drawn homeless people from elsewhere, like a magnet. By demonstrating kindness, the city has unwittingly converted itself into a Mecca for the homeless, spoiling an otherwise lovely place for all the hardworking, law-abiding citizens who contribute and pay taxes.

That theory was thoroughly debunked in a Board of Supervisors committee hearing on Feb. 5.

“The idea of services as a magnet, … we haven’t seen any empirical data to support that,” noted Peter Connery of Applied Survey Research, a consultant that conducted the city’s most recent homeless count. “The numbers in San Francisco are very consistent with the other communities.”

He went on to address the question on everyone’s mind: Why haven’t the numbers decreased? “Even in this environment where there have obviously been a tremendous number of successes in various departments and programs,” Connery said, “this has been a very tough economic period. Just to stay flat represents a huge success in this environment.”

As former President Bill Clinton’s campaign team used to say: It’s the economy, stupid.

 

LIFE OUTSIDE

For Sabrina, it started with mental health problems and drug addiction. She grew up in Oakland, the daughter of a single mom who worked as a housecleaner.

“Drugs led me the wrong way, and eventually caught up with me,” she explained at the soup kitchen while cradling Lily, her Chihuahua-terrier mix.

“I had nothing, at first. You have to learn to pick things up. Eventually, I got some blankets,” she said. But she was vulnerable. “It can get kind of mean. The streets can be mean — especially to the ladies.”

She found her way to A Woman’s Place, a shelter. Then she completed a five-month drug rehab program and now she has housing at a single room occupancy hotel on Sixth Street.

“You don’t realize how important those places are,” she said, crediting entry into the shelter and the drug-rehab program with her recovery.

Since the 10-year plan went into effect, Coalition on Homelessness Director Jennifer Friedenbach told us, emergency services for homeless people have been dramatically scaled back. Since 2004, “We lost about a third of our shelter beds,” she explained. About half of the city’s drop-in center capacity was also slashed.

“Between 2007 to 2011, we had about $40 million in direct cuts to behavioral health,” she said at the Feb. 5 hearing, seizing on the lack of mental health care, one of the key challenges to reducing homelessness.

“The result of all three of these things, I can’t really put into words. It’s been very dramatically negative. The increase in acuity, impact on health,” she said, “those cannot be overstated.”

The need for shelters is pressing. The city has provided funding for a new shelter for LGBT homeless people and a second one in the Bayview, but it hasn’t kept up with demand. And for those who lack shelter, life is about navigating one dilemma after another, trying to prevent little problems from snowballing into something heinous.

Consider recent skirmishes that have arisen around the criminalization of homelessness. Department of Public Works street cleaning crews have sprayed homeless people trying to rest on Market Street. Sitting or lying on the sidewalk can result in a ticket. There are few public restrooms, but urinating on the street can result in a ticket. There are no showers, but anyone caught washing up in the library bathroom could be banned from the premises. Sleeping in a park overnight is illegal.

“The bad things that happen are when people don’t see homeless people as people,” said Bevan Dufty, the mayor’s point person on homelessness. “That’s the core of it — to be moved away, to be pushed away, citing people, arresting people.”

Friedenbach said the tickets and criminalization can ultimately amount to a barrier to ending homelessness: “You’re homeless, so you get a ticket, so they won’t give you housing, because you wouldn’t pay the ticket. And so, you’re stuck on the streets.”

 

ORDINARY EMERGENCIES

A man slumped over his lunch tray and fell to the floor. Within minutes, a medical crew had arrived on the scene, set up a powder-blue privacy screen, and cleared away a table and chairs to administer emergency care.

Throughout the dining hall, most continued lifting forkfuls of mashed potatoes, broccoli, and shredded meat to their mouths, unfazed. Volunteers clad in aprons continued to set down heaping lunch trays in front of diners who held up laminated food tickets. At St. Anthony’s, where between 2,500 and 3,000 hot meals are served daily to needy San Franciscans, this sort of thing happens all the time.

“A lot of our guests are subject to seizures, for one reason or another,” Robillard told me by way of explanation. Behind him, a pair of medics hovered over the man’s outstretched body, his face invisible behind the screen. “In almost all cases, they’re fine.”

Seizures are just one common ailment plaguing the St. Anthony’s clientele, a mix of homeless people, folks living on the economic margins, and tenants housed in nearby single room occupancy hotels.

Jack, an elderly gentleman with a gray beard and stubs on one hand where fingers used to be, told me he’d spent years in prison, battled a heroin addiction, and sustained his hand injury while serving in the military. He previously held jobs as a rigger and a train operator, and said he became homeless after his mother passed away.

St. Anthony’s staff members mentioned that Jack had recently awoken to being beaten in the head by a random attacker after he’d fallen asleep on the sidewalk near a transit station.

A petite woman with a warm demeanor, who introduced herself as Kookie, said she’d been homeless last August when she faced her own medical emergency. “I was in the street,” she said. “I didn’t know I was having a stroke.”

She’d been spending nights on the sidewalk on Turk Street, curled up in a sleeping bag. When she had the stroke, someone called an ambulance. Her emergency had brought her unwittingly into the system. At first, “They couldn’t find out who I was.”

She said she’d stayed in the hospital for six months. Once she’d regained some strength, care providers connected her with homeless services. Now Kookie stays at a shelter on a night-by-night basis, crossing her fingers she’ll get a 90-day bed. She’s on a wait-list to be placed in supportive housing.

Kookie unzipped a tiny pouch and withdrew her late husband’s driver’s license as she talked about him. Originally from Buffalo, NY, she lived in Richmond while in her early 20s and took the train to San Francisco, where she worked as a bartender. She’s now 60.

“When I was not homeless, I used to see people on the ground, and I never knew I would live like that,” she said. “Now I know how it is.”

kookie

Kookie: “I used to see people on the ground, and I never know I would live like that.”

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

HOUSING, HOUSING, HOUSING

Way back in 2003, DPH issued an in-depth report, firing off a list of policy recommendations to end homelessness in San Francisco once and for all. The product of extensive research, the agency identified the most important policy fix: “Expand housing options.”

“Ultimately, people will continue to be threatened with instability until the supply of affordable housing is adequate, incomes of the poor are sufficient to pay for basic necessities, and disadvantaged people can receive the services they need,” DPH wrote. “Attempts to change the homeless assistance system must take place within the context of larger efforts to help the very poor.”

Fast forward more than a decade, and many who work within the city’s homeless services system echo this refrain. The pervasive lack of access to permanent, affordable housing is the city’s toughest nut to crack, but it doesn’t need to be this way.

At the committee hearing, Friedenbach, who has been working as a homeless advocate for 19 years, spelled out the myriad funding losses that have eviscerated affordable housing programs over time.

“We’ve had really huge losses over the last 10 years in housing,” she said. “We’ve lost construction for senior and disability housing. Section 8 [federal housing vouchers] has been seriously cut away at. We’ve lost federal funding for public housing. There were funding losses in redevelopment.”

A comprehensive analysis by Budget and Legislative Analyst Harvey Rose found the city — with some outside funding help — has spent $81.5 million on permanent supportive housing for the formerly homeless.

That money has placed thousands of people in housing. Nevertheless, a massive unmet need persists.

 

WAITING GAME

Following the hard-hitting economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, San Francisco saw a spike in families becoming homeless for the first time. Although a new Bayview development is expected to bring 70 homeless families indoors, Dufty said 175 homeless families remain on a wait-list for housing.

Yet the wait-list for Housing Authority units has long since been closed. And many public housing units continue to sit vacant, boarded up. Sup. London Breed said at a March 19 committee hearing that fixing those units and opening them to homeless residents should be a priority.

DPH’s Direct Access to Housing program, which provides subsidized housing in SROs and apartments, was also too overwhelmed to accept new enrollees until just recently. Since the applicant pool opened up again in January, 342 homeless people have already signed up in search of units, according to DPH. But only about a third of them will be placed, the results of our public records request showed.

Meanwhile, the city lacks a pathway for moving those initially placed in SROs into more permanent digs, which would free up space for new waves of homeless people brought in off the street.

City officials have conceptualized the need for a “housing ladder” — but if one applies that analogy to San Francisco’s current housing market, it’s a ladder with rungs missing from the very bottom all the way to the very top.

In the last fiscal year, HSA allocated $25 million toward subsidized housing for people enrolled in the SRO master-lease program. “It’s often talked about as supportive housing,” Friedenbach notes. “But supportive housing under a federal definition is affordable, permanent, and supportive.”

In SROs, which are notoriously rundown — sometimes with busted elevators in buildings where residents use canes and wheelchairs to get around — people can fork over 80 percent of their fixed incomes on rent.

“An individual entering our housing system should have an opportunity to move into other different types of housing,” Dufty told the supervisors. “It’s really important that people not feel that they’re stuck.”

Amanda Fried, who works in Dufty’s office, echoed this idea. “Our focus has to be on this ladder,” she told us. “If people move in, then they have options to move on. What happens now is, we build the housing, people move in, and they stay.”

 

START OF THE CYCLE

Homelessness does begin somewhere. For Joseph, a third-generation San Franciscan who grew up in the Mission and once lived in an apartment a block from the Pacific Ocean, the downward spiral began with an Ellis Act eviction.

After losing his place, he stayed with friends and family members, sometimes on the streets, and occasionally using the shelter system (he hated that, telling us, “I felt safer in Vietnam”). He now receives Social Security benefits and lives in an SRO.

Homelessness is often a direct consequence of eviction. Last year, the city allocated an additional $1 million for eviction defense services. Advocates hope to increase this support in the current round of budget talks. The boost in funding yielded measurable results, Friedenbach pointed out, doubling the number of tenants who managed to stave off eviction once they sought legal defense.

There’s also a trend of formerly homeless residents getting evicted from publicly subsidized housing. Since 2009, the Eviction Defense Collaborative has counted 1,128 evictions from housing provided through HSA programs. Since most came from being homeless, they are likely returning to homelessness.

Dufty said more could be done to help people stay housed. “Yes, we’re housing incredibly challenged individuals. And we have to recognize that allowing those individuals to be evicted, without the city using all of our resources to intervene to help that person, that’s not productive,” he said. “It’s debilitating to the person. It’s just not good.”

Fried said the city could do more to provide financial services to people who were newly housed. “You were homeless on the street — you know you didn’t pay some bill for a long time. Really that’s the time, once you’re housed and stable, to say, ‘let’s go back and pull your credit.’ Once we have people in housing, how are we increasing their income?”

Gary

Gary: “If I knew how to fix it, I would.”

Guardian photo by Mike Koozmin

SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS

The reopening of [freespace], a community space at Sixth and Market temporarily funded by a city-administered grant, attracted a young, hip crowd, including many tech workers. A girl in a short white dress played DJ on her laptop, against a backdrop where people had scrawled their visions for positive improvements in the city. Some of the same organizers are helping to organize HACKtivation for the Homeless, an event that will be held at the tech headquarters of Yammer on March 28. The event will bring together software developers and homeless service providers to talk about how to more effectively address homelessness.

“The approach we’re talking about is working with organizations and helping them build capacity,” organizer Ilana Lipsett told us. The idea is to help providers boost their tech capacity to become more effective. And according to Kyle Stewart of ReAllocate, an organization that is partnering on the initiative, “The hope is that it’s an opportunity to bridge these communities.”

Other out-of-the box ideas have come from City Hall. Sup. Kim, who stayed at a homeless shelter in 2012 during a brief stint as acting mayor, said she was partially struck by how boring that experience was — once a person is locked into a shelter, there is nothing to do, for 12 hours.

She wondered: Why aren’t there services in the shelters? Why isn’t there access to job training, counseling, or medical care in those facilities? Why are the staffers all paid minimum wage, ill-equipped to deal with the stressful scenarios they are routinely placed in? Her office has allocated some discretionary funding to facilitate a yoga program at Next Door shelter, in hopes of providing a restorative activity for clients and staff.

More recently, Sup. Mark Farrell has focused on expanding the Homeless Outreach Team as an attempt to address homelessness. Farrell recently initiated a citywide dialogue on addressing homelessness with a series of intensive hearings on the issue. He proposed a budgetary supplemental of $1.3 million to double the staff of the HOT team, and to add more staff members with medical and psychiatric certification to the mix.

But the debate at the March 19 Budget and Finance Committee hearing grew heated, because Sup. John Avalos wanted to see a more comprehensive plan for addressing homelessness. “I’m interested in people exiting homelessness,” he said. “I’d like there to be a plan that’s more baked that has a sense of where we’re going.”

Farrell was adamant that the vote was not about addressing homelessness in the broader sense, but expanding outreach. “We have to vote on: do we believe, as supervisors, that we need more outreach on our streets to the homeless population or do we not?” he said.

Sup. Scott Wiener defined it as an issue affecting neighborhoods. “When we’re actually looking at what is happening on our streets, it is an emergency right now,” he said. “It’s not enough just to rely on police officers.”

When other members of the board said homeless advocates should be integrated into the solution, Wiener said, “The stakeholders here are not just the organizations that are doing work around homelessness, they are the 830,000 residents of San Francisco … It impacts their neighborhoods every day.”

Asked what she thought about it, Kim told us she believed sending more nurses and mental-health service providers into the city’s streets was a good plan — but she emphasized that it had to be part of a larger effort.

“If you’re just going to increase the HOT team, but not services,” she said, “then you’re just sending people out to harass homeless people.”

 

STILL OUT THERE

Mike is 53, and he’s lived on the streets of San Francisco for five years. He was born in Massachusetts, and his brothers and sisters live in Napa. We encountered him sitting on the sidewalk in the Tenderloin. “I don’t like shelters,” he explained. “I got beat up a couple times, there were arguments.” So he sleeps under a blanket outside. “It’s rough,” he said. “I do it how I can.”

A few blocks away we encountered Gary, who said he’s been homeless in San Francisco for 17 years. He was homeless when he arrived from Los Angeles. He said he’d overdosed “a bunch of times,” he’s gone through detox five times, and he’s been hospitalized time and again. “Call 911, and they’ll take care of you pretty good.”

Gary is an addict. “If I knew how to fix it, I would,” he said. “Do yourself a favor, and lose everything. It’s like acting like you’re blind.”

Gary and Mike, chronically homeless people who have been on the streets for years, are HOT’s target clientele. “My slice of the pie is the sickest, the high-mortality, they’re often the ones that are laid out in the street,” said Maria Martinez, a senior staff member at DPH who started the HOT program.

“I went through years of the 10-Year plan,” she added. “Do I feel like I could take this money [the HOT team supplemental] and do something effective with it? Yes. Do I think there’s a lot of other things that we could address? Yes.”

Pressed on what broader solutions would look like, she said, “There has to be an exit into permanent housing. I’ve seen that we’ve been creative around that. We can make lives better. I say that vehemently. And permanent housing is critical to exiting out of homelessness.”

Mike

Guardian photo by Mike Koozmin

The price of growth

20

joe@sfbg.com

San Francisco is booming, but will its infrastructure be able to keep up with its population growth?

The problem is acutely illustrated in the southeast part of San Francisco, where long-stalled development plans were finally greenlit by the adoption of the Eastern Neighborhoods Community Plan a few years ago.

The Mission, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, and Mission Bay districts have attracted more attention from developers than any other sector of San Francisco, according to the Planning Department. Bayview and Hunters Point are also now attracting lots of investment and building by developers.

But when development projects don’t pay the full cost of the infrastructure needed to serve those new residents — which is often the case in San Francisco and throughout California, with its Prop. 13 cap on property tax increases — then that burden gets passed on the rest of us.

Mayor Ed Lee’s recent call to build 30,000 new housing units by 2020 and the dollar sign lures of waterfront development have pressed the gas pedal on construction, while giving short shrift to corresponding questions about how the serve that growth.

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Infrastructure needs — such as roads, public transit, parks, and the water and sewer systems — aren’t as sexy as other issues. But infrastructure is vital to creating a functional city.

That kind of planning (or lack thereof) impacts traffic congestion, public safety, and the overall livability of the city. And right now, the eastern neighborhoods alone face a funding gap as high as $274 million, according to city estimates highlighted by area Sup. Malia Cohen.

That’s why Cohen went looking for help, though that’s not exactly what she found.

 

MEETING DEMAND

Cohen has asked Mayor Lee about the lack of adequate investment in critical infrastructure again and again. She asked his staffers, she asked his aides. At the Feb. 11 Board of Supervisors meeting, during the mayor’s question time, she was determined to ask one more time.

Cohen asked the mayor about how to fund infrastructure needs in the eastern neighborhoods and whether the city should use a new, rarely used fundraising option called an Infrastructure Financing District, or IFD.

“When the city adopted the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, we were aware of a significant funding gap that existed for infrastructure improvement,” she said to the mayor. She asked if he would slow down development while the city caught up with infrastructure improvements, or commit more funding.

Cohen asked pointedly, “Would you support an IFD for the eastern neighborhoods?”

The mayor’s answer was in the foreign language known as bureaucratese, offering a firm “only if we have to.”

“Strategically planning for growth means making long-term investments in infrastructure,” he said. “And the most important thing that we can do right now is to work together to place and pass two new revenue generating bonds measures on the November 2014 ballot.”

But his proposed $500 million general obligation bond and $1 billion local vehicle license fee increase would just go to citywide transportation projects, where the city faces $6 billion in capital needs over the next 15 years, according to a task force formed by the mayor.

That’s small comfort for the people of the eastern neighborhoods, who are already ill-served by Muni and will have other needs as well. It’s a situation likely to get worse as the population there increases, unless the city finds a way to make serious new investments.

 

CITY VS. NEIGHBORHOOD

Development impact fees go to the city’s General Fund, paying for the planning work, building inspections, and a share of citywide infrastructure improvements. The problem with that strategy, opponents say, is that there are then no promises that the money will make its way back to the neighborhood that generated the funding in the first place.

Neighborhood advocates see a need to address the problems created by new development by capturing fees before they get to the General Fund. IFDs do just that. Though the nuts and bolts of how an IFD works are complex, the gist is this: Once implemented, an IFD sets up a special area in a neighborhood where a portion of developer impact fees are captured to exclusively fund infrastructure where the development is.

“So the idea that growth should pay for growth was the notion,” Tom Radulovich, executive director of the nonprofit group Livable City, told us. But with money flowing into the General Fund rather than being earmarked for specific neighborhoods, Radulovich said,the infrastructure is going to come much later than the development. (The city) delivers projects slowly, if at all.”

IFDs are largely untested in California, and have only one recent use in San Francisco, on Rincon Hill, where a deal with developers cut by then-Sup. Chris Daly has morphed into an IFD created by his successor, Sup. Jane Kim. The neighborhood will now see new funding, and a new park, as a result of development there.

“This is a HUGE step towards getting the public infrastructure improvements needed to correct livability deficiencies in Rincon Hill,” read a newsletter from the Rincon Hill Neighborhood Association in 2011. “What does this mean for those of us living (here)? It means the Caltrans property at 333 Harrison Street has a short future as a commuter parking lot, because the front portion will become our first neighborhood park.”

The benefits are tangible, but putting an IFD into action is onerous. California Senate documents describe the hurdles involved: The county (or city) needs an infrastructure plan, it must hold public hearings, every local agency that will contribute property tax revenue must approve the plan, and the IFD needs to go to ballot and obtain two-thirds voter approval, a high mountain to climb.

Gov. Jerry Brown has called for lowering the voter threshold for IFDs to 55 percent in his newest budget. The mayor used the governor’s rationale as reason to avoid an IFD for the eastern neighborhoods when speaking on the topic last week. But that may not be his only reason.

“Even if we get the changes that we seek, it’s important to point out that IFDs don’t create more money for our city, they fund specific capital improvements by earmarking money in the General Fund for a particular purpose,” Lee said.

In other words, IFDs take money from a city that is already wrestling with underfunded citywide infrastructure needs. “Earmarking general funds isn’t something that we do lightly,” Lee told Cohen.

But Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, put it this way to us: “Should the eastern neighborhoods be the cash cow for the General Fund?”

 

BOOMTOWN

With more than 10,000 housing entitlements, the eastern neighborhoods are where San Francisco will experience its biggest growing pangs.

“The eastern neighborhoods are ground zero for development in San Francisco,” Keith Goldstein, a long time member of the Eastern Neighborhoods Citizens Advisory Committee, told a Nov. 14 Board of Supervisors Government Oversight Committee hearing on the issue.

Sups. Cohen and David Campos spent the majority of the meeting trying to find solutions, but none were forthcoming. Instead they were met with presentations on the neighborhood’s myriad needs, but few on how they would be funded.

Muni is also starved for resources in the area, where the T-line is notorious for its “switchbacks” that leave riders stranded before completing its run.

“This is a topic I’ve advocated a lot,” Sup. Scott Wiener told us. “When you have a growing population, these folks absolutely have to have service.”

At the meeting, Planning Director John Rahaim put the problem simply: “There’s a lack of development fee funding.” The officials that day from the SFMTA, Planning Department, and the Department of Public Works presented plans that relied heavily on state and federal funding to meet the new construction and infrastructure needs, a funding gap of $274 million.

“We’re really struggling to maintain the infrastructure the city has,” Brian Strong, director of capital planning, said at the meeting. “For the General Fund itself, we’re deferring $3.9 billion in capital projects the city deemed high priority. We just don’t have the funds.”

The Mayor’s Office didn’t respond to our questions about how to solve the problem, but Sup. Cohen said she’s hopeful he’ll support an IFD in her district.

“When we introduced the plan five years ago, we knew there was a gap in terms of what we expected to collect. In terms of development impact fees, we’re still in that place,” she told us. “I just want to get shit done.”

One report seems to agree with Cohen on the importance of IFDs. In 2009, a major report on development in the eastern neighborhoods was filed to then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. It recommended the city “commission a consultant study to inform the formation of an IFD,” saying it was the best tool available to fund infrastructure in the eastern districts.

The top signature on the report belonged to then-City Administrator Ed Lee. Now that he’s mayor, a mayor calling for rapid growth, can he find a way to pay for the infrastructure to serve those new residents?

Staying power

68

rebecca@sfbg.com

Despite the rain on Feb. 8, organizers of a citywide tenants’ convention at San Francisco’s Tenderloin Elementary School wound up having to turn people away at the door. The meeting was filled to capacity, even though it had been moved at the last minute to accommodate a larger crowd than initially anticipated.

“Oh. My. God. Look at how many of you there are!” organizer Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee, called out as she greeted the hundreds in attendance. “Tenants in San Francisco, presente!”

The multiracial crowd was representative of neighborhoods from across the city, from elderly folks with canes to parents with small children in tow. Translators had been brought in to accommodate Chinese and Spanish-speaking participants.

Six members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors also made an appearance: Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, Malia Cohen, Jane Kim, and Board President David Chiu.

In recent weeks, the convention organizers had convened a series of smaller neighborhood gatherings to solicit ideas for new policy measures to stem the tide of evictions and displacement, a problem that has steadily risen to the level of the defining issue of our times in San Francisco.

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Ana Godina, an organizer with the SEIU, went to the convention with her daughter Ella, 5. Godina drove from Sacramento to support her colleagues. Three of her fellow union members have been evicted recently, all of them Tenderloin and Mission residents. Guardian photo by Amanda Rhoades

While several legislative proposals are on track to move forward at the Board of Supervisors, the meetings were called to directly involve impacted communities and give them an opportunity to shape the legislative agenda on their own terms, according to various organizers.

Addressing the crowd, Shortt recalled what she termed “some amazing jiu jitsu” during last year’s tenant campaigns, which resulted in a 10-year moratorium on condo conversions rather than simply allowing a mass bypass of the condo lottery, as originally proposed.

That measure, which won approval at the Board of Supervisors last June, was designed to discourage real estate speculators from evicting tenants to convert buildings to tenancies-in-common, a shared housing arrangement that’s often a precursor to converting rent-controlled apartments into condos.

That effort brought together the founding members of the Anti Displacement Coalition, and momentum has been building ever since. “This is the beginning of a movement today,” Gen Fujioka of the Chinatown Community Development Center, one of the key organizations involved, told the gathering. “We are shaking things up in our city.”

 

MAINTAINING DIVERSITY

Around 160 participants attended the first in a series of neighborhood tenant conventions in the Castro on Jan. 10. The one in the Richmond a week later drew so many participants that organizers had to turn people away to appease the fire marshal.

“The idea of the neighborhood conventions was to solicit ideas,” explained Ted Gullicksen, head of the San Francisco Tenants Union. “The idea of this event is to review existing ideas and ultimately rank them.” From there, the campaign will pursue a ballot initiative or legislative approval at the Board of Supervisors.

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Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, and his dog Falcor. Guardian photo by Amanda Rhoades

But first, a few speakers shared their stories. Gum Gee Lee spoke about being evicted from her Chinatown apartment last year along with her husband and disabled adult daughter, an event that touched off a media frenzy about the affordable housing crisis taking root in San Francisco.

“There were times that were very stressful for me. I would call places only for the owner to say, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ but they never did,” she said of that ordeal.

“To see everyone here, all kinds of people, it makes me really happy,” she later told the Bay Guardian through a translator. “I just hope they don’t get evicted.”

Mike Casey, president of UNITE-HERE Local 2 and an executive committee member of the San Francisco Labor Council, also made a few comments at the forum.

“Having the ability to live and vote in this city makes a difference,” he pointed out, saying workers who have to commute long distances for political actions because they’ve been displaced from San Francisco are less likely to get involved.

“The struggle of our time is the widening gap between the rich and the poor,” Casey added. “That is exactly what this struggle is about: to maintain that diversity. What we need to move forward on is bold, effective, measurable change that makes sure we are able to protect the fabric of this community.”

Maria Zamudio, an organizer with Causa Justa/Just Cause, emphasized the idea that the problem of evictions in San Francisco is less of a market-based problem and more of a threat to the city’s existing, interwoven communities.

“Those are our neighborhoods and our communities,” Zamudio said. “We’re fighting for the heart of San Francisco. Fighting for strong tenant protections is a necessary struggle if we are going to keep working class San Franciscans in their homes.”

 

ELLIS ACT UNDER FIRE

As Gullicksen noted at the start of the convention, San Francisco rents have ballooned in recent years, rising 72 percent since 2011.

“We are seeing the most evictions we have seen in a long, long, long, long time,” Gullicksen said. “Most Ellis evictions are being done by one of 12 real estate speculators — evicting us and selling our apartments, mostly to the tech workers.”

Even though median market-rate rents now hover at around $3,400 per month in San Francisco, low-income tenants can avoid being frozen out by sudden rental spikes because rent-control laws limit the amount rents may be increased annually.

But that protection only applies to a finite number of rental units, those built before 1979. That’s why tenant advocates speak of the city’s “rent-controlled housing stock” as a precious resource in decline. Long-term tenants with rent control — in the worst cases, elderly or disabled residents who might be homeless if not for the low rent — are often the ones on the receiving end of eviction notices.

From 2012 to 2013, according to data compiled by the Anti Eviction Mapping Project, the use of the Ellis Act increased 175 percent in comparison with the previous year. That law allows landlords to evict tenants even if they’ve never violated lease terms. Advocates say real estate speculators frequently abuse Ellis by buying up properties and immediately clearing all tenants.

Concurrently with local efforts agitating for new renter protections, organizers from throughout California are pushing to reform the Ellis Act in Sacramento.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has promised to introduce a proposal by the Feb. 21 deadline for submitting new legislation, and Sen. Mark Leno is working in tandem with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee on a parallel track to pursue some legislative tweaks aimed at softening the blow from the Ellis Act.

“Our goal is to change the conversation in Sacramento, where tenants’ concerns are routinely ignored,” said Dean Preston, director of Tenants Together, a statewide organization based in San Francisco.

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Those who didn’t speak English were given head sets so they could listen to each of the speakers comments, which were translated into either Spanish or Chinese. Guardian photo by Amanda Rhoades

On Feb. 18, busloads of protesters will caravan to Sacramento from San Francisco, Oakland, and Fresno for a rally. Preston said they’ve got three demands: reform the Ellis Act, restore a $191 million fund that provides financial assistance for low-income and senior renters, and pass Senate Bill 391, which would provide new funding for the construction of affordable housing.

Even though the law is technically intended to allow property owners to “go out of the business” of being a landlord, Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco are most often carried out by speculators who purchase real estate already occupied by tenants, Gullicksen said.

“Our focus is on the most immediate problem, which is the misuse of the Ellis Act by real estate speculators,” Preston said. “It’s urgent to address that specific use. That’s what Ammiano and Leno are looking at, is ‘what’s the best way to stop speculative use?'”

 

LOCAL POLICY CHANGES SOUGHT

Tyler McMillan of the Eviction Defense Collaborative said his group is often the last resort for tenants threatened with the loss of their rental units. “Too often, we face a losing fight at court,” he said. “We need to write better laws that work better to keep people in their homes.”

The legislative proposals moving forward at the local level seek to attack the problem of evictions and displacement from several angles. On Feb. 3, Sup. David Campos introduced legislation to require landlords who invoke the Ellis Act to pay a higher relocation fee to displaced tenants, equaling two years’ worth of the difference between the tenants’ rent and what would have been considered market rate for that same unit.

“It is time that we recognize that tenants must receive assistance that is commensurate with market increases in rent if we are to truly address our affordability crisis and check the rampant growth of Ellis Act evictions,” Campos said.

As things stand, relocation assistance payments are around $5,261 per tenant, and are capped at $15,783 per unit, with higher payments required for elderly or disabled tenants. But at current market rates, a tenant would not last more than a few months in the city relying solely on the relocation fee to cover rental payments.

Surveying the strong turnout at the tenant convention, Campos said, “There is a movement that’s happening in San Francisco to take our city back, and to make it affordable for all of us.” Yet he noted that he is concerned there will be major pushback from the San Francisco Apartment Association and the real estate industry, formidable interests that oppose the relocation fee increase.

Meanwhile, Sup. Mar has proposed an ordinance that would require the city to track the conversion of rental units to tenancies-in-common, a housing arrangement where multiple parties own shares of a building through a common mortgage. Speculators who buy up properties and immediately evict under the Ellis Act often angle for windfall profits by immediately converting those units to TICs.

Campos is also working on legislation that would regulate landlords’ practice of offering tenants a buyout in lieu of an eviction, a trend advocates say has resulted in far greater displacement than Ellis Act evictions without the same kind of public transparency.

Peter Cohen of the Council on Community Housing Organizations said there’s “no silver bullet” to remedy San Francisco’s affordable housing crisis. “This process is going to come up with another bundle of things,” he said. “All of that is also complimentary to the state campaign. You could have five, six, or seven policy measures going forward — and all of them winnable.”

An idea Cohen said has received traction is the idea of imposing an anti-speculation tax to discourage real estate brokers who abuse the Ellis Act by buying up properties and evicting all tenants soon thereafter (see “Seeking solutions,” for details).

During a breakout session at the tenant convention, longtime LGBT activist Cleve Jones piped up to say, “Harvey Milk proposed the anti-speculation tax back in 1979.”

It wasn’t successful at that time, but Cohen said that given the current level of concern about housing in San Francisco, it’s being talked about in some circles as the most winnable ballot initiative idea.

 

TENANTS FIGHTING BACK

At the Feb. 8 convention, tenants shared stories of challenging orders to vacate their rental properties. “The most important thing that has brought us to the victories we’ve had so far is that tenants have stayed in their homes,” Shortt said. “Tenants have fought, tenants have sought help, tenants have organized.”

Tenants from a North Beach building owned by real estate broker Urban Green shared their story of banding together and successfully challenging an Ellis Act eviction. Chandra Redack, a nine-year resident of 1049 Market St., where tenants continue battling with owners who submitted eviction notices last fall, described to the Bay Guardian how her small group of tenants has continued to organize in the face of ongoing pressure, including the owners’ recent refusal to accept rent checks.

“Our organizations only can support tenants when they stand up and fight,” said Fujioka. “The tenants’ resistance themselves is part of the strategy. If we don’t have rights, we are going to create them.”

Paula Tejeda, a longtime resident of the Mission District originally from Chile, told the Bay Guardian that she’d been threatened with an eviction from her home of 17 years, a Victorian flat on San Carlos Street.

“I thought I was dealing with an Ellis Act, now he’s trying his best for a buyout,” she explained.

Living in that rent-controlled unit made it financially feasible for her to contribute to the Mission community as a small business owner, as well as a poet, author, and active member of the arts community, she said. Tejeda is the proprietor of Chile Lindo, an empanada shop at 16th and Van Ness streets.

“Having the rent control made it possible for me to build Chile Lindo, go back to college and get my MBA,” she said. That in turn gave her the resources to employ one full-time and three part-time staff members, she said.

When she was initially faced with the prospect of moving out, “I wanted to shut down and leave, and go back to Chile,” she said. “We are suffocated, as a society that cares only about the bottom line.”

But surveying the hordes of tenants milling about at the convention, she seemed a bit more optimistic. “The fact that this is happening to everyone at the same time,” she reflected, “is kind of like a mixed blessing.”

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Free lunch, had some vegan options. Guardian photo by Amanda Rhoades

Seeking solutions

A number of policy ideas emerged from the neighborhood tenant conventions, which were held by the San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition in the Mission, Chinatown, Haight/Richmond, Castro, SoMa, and the Tenderloin.

Here’s a list of what tenants came up with at those forums, which attendees ranked in ballots collected at the event. The ideas will most likely result in a November ballot initiative and one or more legislative proposals, which organizers plan to announce in the near future.

Anti-speculation tax: One idea is to impose a tax on windfall profits garnered by speculators who buy up housing and then sell it off without maintaining ownership for at least six years. The tax would be structured in such a way that the quicker the “flip,” the higher the tax. This would require voter approval.

Eviction moratorium: This proposal is to put a yearlong freeze on certain kinds of “no-fault evictions,” instances where a tenant is ousted regardless of compliance with lease terms. State law would prohibit it from applying to Ellis Act evictions. It might potentially require voter approval.

Department of Rent Control Enforcement and Compliance: This new department, which could be done by local legislation, would create a new city department with the mission and mandate to enforce existing tenant-protection laws and conduct research on eviction trends.

Relocation assistance: While Sup. David Campos is working on legislation to upgrade relocation assistance payments to displaced tenants who face eviction under the Ellis Act, this proposal would do the same for all other forms of “no-fault” evictions. This would require voter approval.

“Excessive rents” tax: While the Costa-Hawkins state law does not allow for cities to control rents in vacant units, this proposal would create a tax on new rental agreements where rents exceed an affordability threshold.

Housing balance requirement: This proposal would make it so that approval of new market-rate housing would be restricted based on whether affordable housing goals were being met. It would create new incentives to build affordable.

Legalize illegal units: This would provide a way to legalize the city’s “illegal” housing units that nevertheless provide a safe and decent source of affordable housing. (Board President David Chiu has already introduced a version of this proposal.)