MUNI Archives — Page 7 of 32 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The hype, reality, and accountability of collaborative consumption

Sasha Cuttler

-

April 24, 2013

The hype, reality, and accountability of collaborative consumption

Collaborative consumption, aka the shareable economy – the labels given to a new generation of Internet-based companies that facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges of goods and services – certainly has some positive attributes. But does it really live up to the overhyped claims of its biggest boosters, who evangelize it as a “revolution” that forever alters the economy in only positive ways? Have they really figured out a way to create something from nothing, or are there hidden costs, impacts, and complications?

I was hoping to hear that kind of balanced discussion today at a symposium hosted by the University of San Francisco’s Department of Hospitality Management, featuring What’s Mine is Yours author Rachel Botsman and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky giving the keynote luncheon address: “The Rising of the Sharing Economy: How is it expanding the Global Hospitality Industry.”

Moderated by the department’s administrative director, Dr. David Jones, I thought I’d hear a little academic skepticism, particularly given the hotel industry’s concerns about unfair competition from Airbnb. And I wanted to ask Chesky directly why his company isn’t paying the $1.8 million per year in Transient Occupancy Taxes that it owes to the city, as well as how his business model relies on hosts who are violating their leases and tenant protection laws here, in New York City, and other cities.

Instead, all I heard was uncritical boosterism, grandiose claims, creepy futurism, and the unfettered hubris of a 31-year-old CEO who claims to be altruistically saving the world while getting filthy rich in the process and refusing to even pay the local taxes that a fair public process concluded that Airbnb and its hosts owe. And after Dr. Jones failed to ask the questions I had submitted and cut off the Q&A early, Chesky turned and darted out a back door before I could ask him myself (his company’s spokespeople also still haven’t responded to my inquiries from last month).

Everyone just seems so enamored of what Botsman called “the wonderful world of collaborative consumption,” with its focus on economic “disruption,” that tech-lovers label she used over and over, without really stopping to think about the impacts of disrupting established economic and regulatory systems.

“This isn’t a threat to the hospitality industry, it’s a massive opportunity to innovate,” she enthused, claiming it would only make the economic pie bigger, with no downsides.

Chesky then told the story about how he and a buddy slapped together the Airbnb website in three days to advertise the flophouse they turned their San Francisco apartment into using air mattresses in advance of a design conference, an idea that has now blossomed into a multi-million-dollar business that places about 100,000 guests each night around the world.

“It’s like the United Nations at every kitchen table. It’s very powerful,” Chesky said of the social benefits of his company. “I think we’re in the midst of a revolution and not a lot of people are talking about it.”

Actually, it seems that everyone is talking about collaborative consumption these days, which is why Chesky was recently on the cover of Forbes and The Economist. But not a lot of people seem to be asking tough questions or challenging assertions that Chesky and his young bretheren are making, such as, “For us to win, no one has to lose.”

That would have been a good time for Dr. Jones to ask, “If that’s true, why are you refusing to pay the $2 million in TOT you owe the city, money that helps pay for Muni, street maintenance, the police, and other city services that visitors use?” Because the more Airbnb wins business from traditional hotels that do pay the TOT, the more the rest of us lose.

Similarly, in big, expensive cities that have developed complex systems regulating landlord-tenant relations – an essential system that determines who gets to live in these cities and how diverse and inclusive they remain – Airbnb offers a mechanism for circumventing those rules, a system it barely even acknowledges.

I’ve used Airbnb, and I understand that it can be a cool way to avoid expensive hotels and meet locals while traveling. That’s great. But it’s just not that simple, and it’s simplistic to focus simply on its benefits, divorced from the larger economic and environmental systems in which is operates.

“This is not a niche phenomenon. This could have enormous historic precedence,” Chesky said, later adding, “This is like a Golden Age we’re going to be entering.”

It is an age when anyone can become an entrepreneur and get rich, when the system of mass production itself will be replaced by the myriad ideas of people like Chesky in unforeseeable ways. “I think it will change dramatically the hotel and restaurant industry,” Chesky said. “Hotels themselves are going to be much more local and personal.”

He envisions the next generation of hotels creating rooms that cater to the individual tastes and preferences, from the music piped into the room to what’s in the mini-bar, all discerned from Facebook and other online mechanisms that create what Bostman called our “digital exhaust.”

“Consumers aren’t strangers, they all have profiles and you can know everything about a person,” Chesky said, sending the chill of dystopian futurism down my spine.

And we’re all going to travel freely around the world, owning little, sharing everything, and elevating Airbnb and its allies into the “trillion-dollar-industry” he’s pushing toward.

“We’re wired to be nomads,” Chesky said. “We’re going to be moving all over the world much more.”

So says the young, entitled CEO who doesn’t even have a home, flitting around the world to stay with various Airbnb hosts. But for most of us, air travel is still expensive and our vacation time is limited. And from the perspective of climate change, nothing could be worse for the environment than substantially increasing air travel to facilitate this expanded globe-trotting lifestyle that Chesky envisions.

The environmental claims of collaborative consumption companies have always struck me as the most overblown. That’s why I also cornered Adam Werbach – who went from heading Sierra Club to working for WalMart on its sustainability programs to launching Yertle, a stuff-sharing website – at an event promoting the new company on Monday, aka Earth Day.

“There’s nothing that’s green,” Werbach said when I asked whether Yertle was. “I’ve never used the term green.”

But he does make the argument that facilitating sharing allows less stuff to be produced overall, which is good for the planet.

“Is sharing a greener alternative than buying new?” he asked, citing examples such as pasta- or bread-makers as products that people may want to try without buying. “Can you find a way to sample or test those things without buying a new one?”

That’s true, but as I perused the pages and pages of stuff available on Yertle – which is sort of a high-tech version of a garage sale or thrift store, except that everything is free – I couldn’t help but be struck by its promotion of materialism and accumulation. Can we really tackle big environmental challenges and still keep all our toys?

Werbach, who graciously indulged my questions, admits that the shareable economy can’t adequately address big problems like climate change, which will require a major cultural and economic shift. It’s more like tinkering on the margins, and making some positive incremental changes, as he felt he was able to do at WalMart. “I do think we made them somewhat better. But, has it been adequate? No,” he said.

His Yertle co-founder Andy Reuben was someone Werbach met and worked with at WalMart. Reuben seemed even more hopefully that the younger generation will use collaborative consumption to create a lighter footprint on the planet.

“One thing we’re seeing is it will be an asset-light generation that can just get it and pass it on,” Reuben said, describing Yertle as “based on better utilizing the stuff what we have.”

That’s a goal that most of us probably share, and one that the shareable economy can certainly help us address. But its big boosters – from venture capitalist Ron Conway down to the random techie true believer – have to be willing to engage in an honest discussion with the rest of us, rather than just bulling their way forward, heedless of their impacts and dismissive of our concerns.

Maybe Lyft and Uber have a role to play in augmenting San Francisco’s taxi system, but we shouldn’t destroy that taxi system in the progress. Yes, City Care Share and Zipcar enable people to sell their cars, but how do they actually impact the number of cars on the roads? Airbnb is certainly a popular site with both hosts and guests, but that doesn’t mean it should be exempt from taxes and regulations.

After today’s event, I spoke with Dr. Jones – a longtime Bay Area tourism booster with a fairly libertarian outlook – about why he didn’t ask tough questions or express more skepticism. “I’m really not [skeptical]” he said, although he did note the dearth of academic research on collaborative consumption and the validity of some of my questions.

“There’s a massive value shift and there’s no way we’re going back,” Botsman said of the rapid rise of the shareable economy and its disruption of traditional economic models. That may be true, or that may be self-serving hype, but either way, it’s worth talking about in an open and collaborative way that involves more than just the insular tech world.

Last year, Mayor Ed Lee and Board President David Chiu announced the creation of a shareable economy task force, which was supposed to be reporting back some recommendations about now. I asked the Mayor’s Office of Communications for an update on its status three days ago, and I’m still waiting to hear back.

Meanwhile, Chiu’s office is still negotiating complicated legislation that would govern Airbnb’s operations in San Francisco, so there will likely be hearings on that company and the issues it raises this summer. That’s important for a city like San Francisco that is so diverse and engaged.

If San Francisco wants to help lead this collaborative consumption revolution that we keep hearing about from Lee and other boosters, hopefully we’ll also take a clear-eyed and precautionary view of what this brave new world looks like, how it’s regulated, what its byproducts may be, and whose interests it serves.

City-owned electricity generation works

Zelda Bronstein

-

April 24, 2013

7

I remember years ago a loser of a supervisor named Bill Maher tried to make a lame joke in opposition to a public-power measure. “If the city tries to run an electric system,” he said, “every time I throw a light switch my toilet would flush.”

Ha. Ha. Ha.

But it’s a common refrain: We can’t even run the Muni on time — how can we run an electricity system?

Which is why it’s worth noting that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Public Works have managed, all on their own, to build successful solar generating facilities –– without contract scandals or any other apparent problems. The School District is happy; when they throw the light switch, the lights turn on — and the price of electricity is really, really low (far less than half what Pacific Gas and Electric Co. charges), so there’s more money for classroom instruction.

This is the future of green energy in San Francisco: Small-scale renewable projects, either owned by the city or financed by the city and placed on residential and commercial rooftops. It’s why CleanPowerSF is so important. PG&E is never going to support distributed generation; that kind of project makes PG&E irrelvant and undermines its business model. Once the city has enough generating facilities, it can start buying its own distribution system.

So yeah: Public power works. On a small scale, to be sure, but if the city can build one solar project, it can build more.

Wells Fargo foreclosure fighters: They’re baaaack!

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

April 23, 2013

39

See an update at the end of this article.

A group of activists focused on organizing against Bay Area foreclosures will return to Wells Fargo’s San Francisco headquarters today for a protest timed to coincide with the banking giant’s shareholders’ meeting – even though the meeting was moved to Salt Lake City, Utah this year. (Perhaps the change of scenery had something to do with what happened last year, or the year before?)

Unfazed, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment has sent some homeowners who are facing bank foreclosure on a road trip to Utah to bring their message to CEO John Stumpf in person, according to ACCE organizer Erin Franey.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, activists focused on fighting foreclosure will congregate outside the bank’s Mongtomery Street headquarters. “Wells is foreclosing on more homeowners in California than any other bank,” says Franey, adding that there are currently 11,000 California homes in the foreclosure pipeline.

In attendance at this afternoon’s San Francisco rally will be Bernetta Adolf, a cancer survivor in her late 60s who has also struggled with blindness, a particularly challenging disability that forced her to retire from her city job as a Muni driver.

Adolf is locked in a battle with Wells Fargo over the foreclosure of her home in San Francisco’s Oceanview-Merced-Ingleside neighborhood. The trouble started when she borrowed against the home she’s lived in 20 years, to fund her son’s college education.

“It turns out the loan to provide for my son’s future was designed to ruin my own,” Adolf wrote in an online statement. “It was predatory, calculated to strip my equity and set me up for failure. When I tried to work with Wells to fix the loan, they offered a modification so small it didn’t make any difference. Then they started trying to take my house. The stress hastened my blindness and continues to aggravate my health problems.”

UPDATE: Wells Fargo spokesperson Ruben Pulido contacted us in response to this article and requested that we post a statement in response:

“Our foreclosure rate in 2012 fourth quarter was just 1.04 percent in California—less than half our national rate (2.1 percent) during that period.

Over the past four years, Wells Fargo has helped more than 850,000 customers nationwide with loan modifications, and has helped customers through $6.6 billion in principal forgiveness; the majority of that principal forgiveness has gone to borrowers in California.

When customers with financial challenges choose to work with us, we help 7 of 10 avoid foreclosure. Over the last 6 months, customers who completed a foreclosure were, on average, 19 months past due on their payments.”

“Street Fight” examines the politics of mobility in San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler

-

April 17, 2013

16

“Street Fight” examines the politics of mobility in San Francisco

Ideology plays a bigger role in shaping San Francisco than most people realize, as we’ve discussed in this space before. Nowhere is that more true than in the politics of land use and transportation, as my friend Jason Henderson, a San Francisco State University geography professor, discusses in his insightful new book, Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco.

He’ll be discussing his work this Friday, April 19, from 7-9pm during a book launch party hosted by Green Arcade Bookstore across the street at the upstairs loft space of McRoskey Mattress, 1687 Market. Or if you miss that but want to join the discussion, you can catch Henderson’s forum on May 15 at SFSU or what will surely be other local events on this pivotal topic.

Henderson chronicles the seminal events in San Francisco’s history with “automobility” and related transportation issues, from the freeway revolts of the late ’50s through 2000 to today’s continuing political struggles over parking, bicycles, livability, gentrification, and the form, function, and financing of Muni.

Yet the lens that Henderson brings to understanding all of these issues and struggles is ideology, which he breaks down into three major categories: progressive, neoliberal, and conservative. Whether we realize it or not, we can all be fairly easily placed in one of those three categories when it comes to how we think about automobility, or the primacy of cars in modern life.

“A progressive framework conceptualizes mobility as a systemic problem that requires deep social commitment and responsibility. How we get there matters. It posits that there can be too much mobility, as exemplified by high levels of [Vehicle Miles Traveled] in the United States, and that excessive mobility results in both environmental degradation and major social inequality at a local, state, and global scale. The main problem, obviously, is that automobility is part of a wider, systemic moral and social problem of over-consumption and disproportionate materialism,” Henderson writes, sounding themes that I echoed in this week’s cover story.

On the other end of the ideological spectrum are those with conservative views on mobility, who see driving as a basic right, which is the dominant mindset on the west side of supposedly liberal San Francisco. “Unlike progressives, conservatives do not think about responsibility as relating to broader systems such as the economic structure of society. Instead, they think in terms of direct causation and of each individual being responsible for the consequences of his or her actions. For example, poverty is a result of individual shortcomings caused by personal and moral characteristics, not of structural themes like socioeconomic forces beyond an individual’s control. Getting to work on time and providing one’s daily needs are not collective concerns but the responsibility of the individual,” he writes.

Of course, these conservatives still rely on government to build and maintain their transportation infrastructure, which they believe should be centered around cars. “Government should guarantee and accommodate automobility, not seek to discourage it or make it more expensive. Government-sponsored road building and other explicit policies that encourage motoring reflect an optimal use of government to stabilize conservative social relations centered on automobility,” Henderson write of the conservative mindset.

Between those two poles are the neoliberals, who have come to dominate City Hall, particularly in the last few years with the ascendancy of Mayor Ed Lee, Board President David Chiu, and Sup. Scott Wiener, who has taken the lead role on transportation issues. Neoliberals rely on market-based solutions to almost any problem, and they end up partnering with either conservatives or progressives in the politics of mobility depending on the issue.

“Neoliberals, consistent with the broader agenda of the privatization of space and market-based pricing of public access to space, envision a mobility system shaped by pricing and markets rather than by regulation and collective action. Unlike progressives, neoliberals feel the built environment must be allowed to develop with the efficacy of the market. Movement, paid for by the individual user, should be unrestrained. Yet such efficacy can include a commodification of nonmovement or slower movement or the package of quality-of-life goods surrounding the ‘walkability’ and ‘livability’ of the city, a package reserved for those who can afford to enter. To that end, neoliberal mobility includes the aggressive use of government to both enhance mobility and rein it in, but only inasmuch as government policy helps realize the goals of profit and facilitating economic growth and development,” Henderson writes.

It’s fascinating to explore how these three distinct mindsets have shaped San Francisco in recent decades, and how they interact today to create the city that we’ll be moving through in the future.

Smell that: Wildflower trains take you away all this month

Andrew Lam

-

April 12, 2013

0

Smell that: Wildflower trains take you away all this month

If one-too-many overcrowded Muni rides have left you aching for a more pleasurable mass transit experience, the Western Railway Museum has an option that smells less of body odor and more of spring flowers for you this weekend: the 12th year of its April spring wildflower train rides, which take passengers back to the early 1900s on an hour-long, 10-mile trip around the Montezuma Hills, a mere hour’s drive out of town.

The trains’ route runs along the original historic main line of the Sacramento Northern Railway fields. Passengers can hop on either the Scenic Limited or the Vintage Comet trains, both of which consist of a 1914 parlor car and Sacramento Northern interurban car.

THIS. Seriously, leave the city this weekend.

For a mid-day, kid-friendly adventure: Hop aboard the Scenic Limited. First class passengers ride up front in the parlor car and are served cookies and lemonade by attendants dressed in white button downs, vests, and slacks. Coach passengers ride behind in the Sacramento Northern interurban. Docents will be in both cars pointing out botanical views, which are constantly evolving as the season progresses. Expect to spot patches of poppies, goldfields, brass buttons, butter and eggs, clovers, and sheep’s sorrel.

If that options sounds too sober: A late afternoon ride on the Vintage Comet train, its quaint charms augmented by sips via the Suisun Valley Wine Co-Op might be more your speed. Proceeds from your ticket will go towards Solano Midnight Sun Foundation, which provides temporary financial assistance to women with breast cancer.

Whether you’re in it for the wine, the history, or simply as an escape from the particular eau de rush hour of Muni, be sure to bring a camera. Because if you were ever going to make out of state friends jealous of your California digs a shot of wildflower filled fields on a sunny April day aught to do it.

April Wildflower Train Rides

The Scenic Limited: Saturdays and Sundays through April 28, 11:00am, 12:30pm, and 2:00pm, $10-16

The Vintage Comet: Saturdays through April 28, 5:00pm, $30

Western Railway Museum

5848 State Highway 12, Suisun

www.wrm.org

What cabs really do

Andrew Lam

-

April 9, 2013

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITORS NOTES There are two ways to look at the taxicab industry in San Francisco: Either it’s purely a business, out to serve customers with the products that are most profitable — or it’s part of the city’s public transportation infrastructure, and thus subject to regulations that ensure all parts of the city are properly served.

If you take the first approach, then you’re like the entrepreneurs who founded Lyft, Uber, Sidecar, and Tickengo. They offer a product that the market clearly wants — rides that can be summoned with a smart phone and tracked by geolocation (no more “when the hell is that cab going to get here?”), with both drivers and passengers rated on a Yelp-like system.

The newcomers have no interest in the city’s old-fashioned regulations, which really do, in some ways, date back to the days when cabs were buggies pulled by horses. They’ve got a business model, and they’re going to follow it.

The problem here is that cabs are not just a business. (Housing isn’t just a business, either; that’s why we have, for example, rent control, eviction protections, and code enforcement.) Taxis are an essential part of the transit system in San Francisco. They backfill where buses and trains can’t or don’t go. They provide a lifeline for disabled people and seniors who need a ride, for example, to and from health-care appointments or supermarkets.

They are absolutely essential to the tourist economy, which is the city’s biggest and most lucrative industry (tech is still far behind).

There are problems with this part of the transportation system, as there are problems with Muni and BART and airport shuttles. There need to be more cabs on the streets, particularly at busier times. The existing drivers and operators need better technology and a better dispatch system.

But taxi drivers — the old, traditional type — are required to pick up anyone and drive anywhere; they can’t cherry pick the most attractive rides. They have to go through screening and training that ensures the public is safe.

They are, like many other utilities, almost a part of the public sector. There’s a good reason for that. And it’s what the city and the state regulators should be looking at.

The cost of fake cabs

Andrew Lam

-

April 9, 2013

90

tredmond@sfbg.com

Hansu Kim has been involved in the San Francisco taxi industry for more than a decade. He helped design the current system of buying and selling cab permits, or medallions. In 2011, he led a group that bought DeSoto Cab, and now he runs what many say is the best-managed livery company in the city. Taxis are his career — and he’s about ready to pull the plug.

“You can quote me on this, because I’m very serious,” Kim told us. “If the city can’t solve this problem, DeSoto will drop out of the taxi business. We’ll run limos or something else. Because the whole industry is headed for collapse.”

The problem Kim is talking about: The rise of companies that act like cabs, offering rides for hire, but operate outside of the rules and regulations that the traditional industry is mandated to follow.

They’re called Lyft, Sidecar, Uber, and Tickengo, and they offer the same basic model: You can track a ride on your phone based on geolocation, the driver can choose whether to pick you up — and you pay a fee that the companies call voluntary but everyone knows is the basis of a venture-capital-funded business model.

They refuse to accept the city’s oversight, running without the medallions that traditional cabs need to pick up passengers.

Cab regulators are furious: “Those of us who know the situation know there’s a reason that taxis have been regulated for 350 years,” Chris Hayashi, who runs the taxis division of the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency, told us. “If you follow this to its logical conclusion, it will kill the entire industry.”

That’s a problem for a number of reasons — for one thing, Hayashi said, “you’re not going to find one of these new services picking up a disabled grandmother at the hospital and taking her home to the housing projects.”

But there’s another element that policy-makers need to consider: By allowing the faux cabs to operate, the city is risking the loss of some $300 million in projected revenue, money that is supposed to underwrite Muni and public transit.

Hundreds of drivers who bought medallions with long-term loans may wind up underwater — and the local credit union that financed them could lose millions.

PERMITS FOR SALE

Two years ago, San Francisco radically changed the way it distributes taxi medallions. Since 1978, the valuable permits were given out essentially free to working drivers, on the basis of a waiting list that could be as long as 15 years.

Now, they’re sold at a fixed rate; any active driver can buy one, and every time one is bought or sold, the city gets a substantial cut.

There’s a lot of money involved. The permits have been selling for $300,000, and the city has roughly 1,000 available, and is considering issuing 800 more. Over the next 10 to 15 years, Hayashi agrees, the city’s take could approach $300 million.

Some 300 have already been sold, with most of the drivers taking out a special loan from San Francisco Federal Credit Union. It’s a good deal — a permit holder can count on not only the money from driving but another $2,500 or so a month from renting the medallion out for shifts when he or she isn’t in the car.

But competition from Lyft and the others has already eroded the value of the medallions. “Absolutely, it’s happening,” Hayashi said. “We’re asking the commission to lower the price to $250,000 to reflect that.”

And they may have to lower it more — a lot more — in the future.

Everybody agrees the city’s taxi industry is a mess — customers constantly complain that they can’t find cabs, particularly at busy times. And the new tech-driven alternatives have sprung up to provide competition.

But from the perspective of a driver, it’s already almost impossible to make a good living. “We’re still okay, but a lot of people aren’t” Kim said. Paying off a medallion loan, leasing or buying a car, and paying for gas leaves so little left over at the end of many shifts that some of the most experienced drivers are thinking of leaving.

The result, Hayashi argues, will be a race to the bottom, with less-qualified and less-experienced drivers hustling ever harder for a fare — which means more accidents as desperate cabbies speed around town, running lights and cutting corners. It’s also bad for the tourism industry — inexperienced drivers aren’t good for the city’s reputation.

In the end, Carl Macmurdo, the head of the Medallion Holders Association, told me, “We’re looking at the total deregulation of the industry.”

GOOD — FOR SOME

That may be fine for some people — particularly those who are young, able-bodied, and tech savvy. But it’s not so good for the rest of the city.

Regulated cab drivers not only have to undergo a background check and training, they’re under a legal mandate to pick up everyone — or any age or ethnic group. They can’t turn down a fare because the person wants to go to a part of town they don’t like. They can’t legally discriminate.

The newcomers have no such rules.

“I took Lyft twice,” Hayashi said. “My customer profile on the system is now so low that I can never get another ride. I’m told I must have said something the drivers didn’t like.

“Traditional cabs have to pick up everyone. Unless you’re on Facebook, have a valid credit card, and are hip and cool to your driver, you can’t get picked up. That’s just not a good system for a diverse city.”

There are plenty of other issues: The new outfits don’t have the same level of insurance that traditional cabs require. “And you have to remember, it’s like your mother said — don’t get in a car with a stranger,” Hayashi added. “When you have no idea who these drivers are and they haven’t been screened properly … it’s scary.”

So far, Hayashi’s efforts to crack down on the rogue cabs have not won her much support from City Hall. The mayor is a big fan of the new model, and few supervisors have stepped forward to demand accountability.

They aren’t considering that taxis are more than just a business — they’re part of a civic transportation infrastructure. But those city officials with stars in their eyes about the latest disruptive technology might also want to look at the cold, hard numbers. By allowing the traditional industry to collapse, they will be allowing an immensely valuable public asset — those medallions — to become worthless, and will be forcing taxpayers to find another $300 million to make up the difference.

Class divisions in SF (sorta)

Zelda Bronstein

-

April 9, 2013

38

Richard Florida, who got famous creating the “creative class,” has a new series of maps out charting class structure in American cities — not on the basis of income or wealth but on the type of work people do. Sfist has a nice copy of the San Francisco version here. It shows, on the surface, that this city has virtually no “working class,” some “service class” and lots of “creative class.”

Overall, it’s a picture of a city in the late stages of terminal gentrification — but it’s also a bit misleading.

San Francisco long ago lost much of it’s traditional blue-collar work — manufacturing, production, distribution, and repair — although there’s still some left. What we don’t have is a lot of unionized blue-collar jobs (like the Port of Oakland offers). That’s pretty clear.

But unionized jobs that don’t require advanced degrees still exist in San Francisco — they’re just in the public sector. I suppose Muni drivers get defined as “service class” by Florida, but that’s really not accurate.

Nor is the notion that “creative class” people all make a lot of money. I suppose there are artists and musicians who are getting rich in San Francisco, but I don’t know any of them.

If anything, Florida’s approach just underscores the changes in the American economy in the past few decades. It doesn’t do much to help understand how the actual demographics of the city have changed, how wealth has become more concentrated and poverty more dire. So I don’t really get the point.

Lyft to take on Muni routes

Zelda Bronstein

-

April 1, 2013

37

In an announcement that could transform transportation policy in San Francisco, the startup company Lyft is prepared to take over some of the most crowded and dysfunctional Muni routes in San Francisco.

Mayor Ed Lee and the Municipal Transportation Agency have approved a plan that would turn the 38 Geary, 30 Stockton, and 14 Mission over to the tech startup, City Hall sources told us. The plan is still tentative and the Mayor’s Office is trying to keep it tightly under wraps until the financial details are complete.

However, documents provided to the Guardian show that Lyft would buy at least 68 buses, including 12 articulated vehicles, at a price still to be negotiated. In exchange, the city would give the company – known for its pink mustaches on illegal taxi cabs – exclusive rights to operate on the heavily-used lines.

Lyft is developing an app that would allow customers not only to view approaching buses but to book specific seats for an additional price. Sensors in the bus seats will emit an electronic buzz to alert passengers that their seats had been purchased by someone else, warning them to vacate by the next stop. If the passengers remain, they will feel a sharp electric shock.

Lee’s office said the plan is similar to the market-based parking-meter program that raises the price of a space in times of heavy demand.

“The free market solves so many problems,” Christine Falvey, spokesperson for Lee, told us. “And it’s pretty clear that too many people who don’t really need to sit down or who are perfectly capable of waiting for a later conveyance are taking up space on the most crowded buses.”

Ron Conway, the venture capitalist who is Lee’s closest ally in the business community, will invest as much as $40 million in the new venture, Silicon Valley sources say. If the trial public-private partnership works, he’s prepared to raise money to buy out Muni and turn the city’s bus system into a private operation.

“You’ve got a captive market, and demand-based pricing is what’s happening these days,” Falvey said. “It’s just the next step.”

Artists respond to hate-speech ads with “fabulous” alterations

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

March 26, 2013

25

When it comes to countering hate speech, there’s nothing like creative expression mixed with direct action. Activists affiliated with art collectives Bay Area Art Queers Unleashing Power (BAAQUP) and Street Cred declared yesterday to be “Hate Free Monday,” and celebrated by modifying hate speech ads recently plastered on Muni buses.

Purchased by the pro-Israeli American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the ads contain bigoted, inflammatory quotations directed at LGBT people, attributed to prominent Muslims. Although city officials have condemned the advertisements, they were nevertheless allowed to be displayed because Muni determined them to be within First Amendment guidelines.

Headed by conservative blogger Pamela Geller, AFDI has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. Geller herself is the target of the activists’ handiwork.

“We believe that all public spaces, including public transit, should be welcoming and safe for all members of our community,” the artists, who did not give their names, wrote to the Guardian in a statement sent from baqupower@gmail.com. “The hate-filled messages purchased by Pamela Geller’s AFDI defame and vilify Muslims and are harmful and offensive to residents and visitors in San Francisco, both Muslim and non-Muslim.  Since the city will not take action against these ads on city buses, we have.”

To read BAAQUP’s full description of the motivations behind their action, go here.

Their statement concludes: “As long as these advertising outrages continue to appear on our streets, we will continue to reconstitute them to reflect something more truthful, just, and ideally fabulous.”

Emotions in motion

Andrew Lam

-

March 19, 2013

0

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Imagine being trapped, No Exit–style, on a city bus — let’s say Muni’s dreaded “Double Deuce” Fillmore for the sake of creative visualization — in the midst of a dozen or so out-of-control teenagers hell-bent on humiliating and terrorizing their peers and, if you have an obvious human frailty, you as well. Sound like fun? Well, Michel Gondry’s The We and the I puts you there (dramatically speaking, at least) and is often surprisingly just that. To paraphrase Sartre, “Hell is other people … on the bus,” but thankfully we get to take the trip from the safety of cushy theater seats and comfy couches.

Arguably minor Gondry (unlike 2011’s abominable The Green Hornet, whose failure can only be described as major), it’s a nice little palate cleanser in anticipation of his upcoming, much-publicized “return to form,” the Audrey Tautou–starring Mood Indigo, a film that looks to be as visually lush and romantic as The We and the I is stripped down.

Almost all of the film takes place on the aforementioned city bus as it crawls around the mean streets of New York City’s Bronx borough, ostensibly to take home kids (all played by nonprofessional actors, all minorities) after their last day of school. One or two of them do disembark early, but most seem stuck on a fossil-fueled existential journey of the damned. At about the 70-minute mark it’s hard not to wonder if the disgruntled bus driver isn’t just tooling around in circles past the same storefronts à la Joel Barish’s mind trips in Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) — just exactly how big is the Bronx anyway? “Drop out, get your GED, join the army. I don’t give a fuck,” the driver tells a confused girl. It’s clear that the kids suffer from this kind of general adult apathy, but most bear it with a hard-edged bravado that belies their vulnerability.

That particularly applies to the trio of bullies at the back of the bus, who treat both the kids and the adults with equal-opportunity disdain. They smash an arty boy’s acoustic guitar, hurl insults while sneaking smokes, and even shame a middle-aged guy with a cleft palette. But most of their ire is saved for Teresa (Teresa Lynn), a slightly chubby, obviously troubled girl who shows up wearing a laughably bad blonde wig after being MIA from school for weeks. Teresa becomes the emotional heart of the story after it’s revealed her relationships with several kids on the bus are more complicated than initially thought.

Those kids include a drama-queen sexpot with apparent self-harming issues, a refreshingly upfront couple of gay teens, and a gaggle of giggling girls who toss around a water bra like a football. (The girls, tellingly, are just as aggressive as the boys.) Geek and bully alike connect regularly through the preferred teen method of communication: social media, specifically in the form of a YouTube video of a local doofus named Elijah repeatedly falling on his ass. Some joys are universal.

Visually, The We and the I marks a departure for Gondry. While his films always have a low-fi, arts-and-crafts vibe full of DIY quirk, this one generally eschews his love of handmade ephemera. (A major exception is the boom box rejiggered to resemble a tiny bus, which tools around to Young MC’s “Bust A Move” during the opening credits.) There is a touch of fast-motion and papier-mâché goofiness, but mostly the whole thing is done in a straightforward, verité style.

The tone, however, is pure Gondry: dopey-funny and sophisticatedly unsophisticated. You get the sense that, unlike his tony New York–loving counterparts Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, Gondry is a true populist. The We and the I is certainly nothing if not populist. But it’s also about the individual — specifically who we are inside and outside of an often-grueling social system. Despite some hiccups, like an unnecessarily dark third-act revelation, it’s more or less successful in illuminating the joys, cruelties, and uncertainties of life, which remain viscerally real after the sun sets and we finally get off the bus, vulnerable as ever in our solitude.

THE WE AND THE I opens Fri/22 in Bay Area theaters.

Who gets hit by Muni switchbacks?

Andrew Lam

-

March 19, 2013

20

rebecca@sfbg.com

Muni switchbacks — that annoying practice where trains force all the passengers off well before the end of the line — have been in the news lately, with new Supervisor Katy Tang making switchbacks her first political priority.

But when you zero in on who bears the brunt of these service disruptions, it becomes clear that not all transit passengers are created equal. In fact, Muni data shows that the vast majority of switchbacks were concentrated in just three locations this past January.

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency reports shows that the top three stations hit by switchbacks in January were the T Third stop at Third Street and Carroll Avenue; the N Judah stop at Judah Street and Sunset Boulevard; and the J Church stop at Glen Park Station, in that order. While the January data provides only a snapshot, annual figures show that the T and J lines each averaged around 36 switchbacks per month since February of 2012, while the N averaged 49.

View MUNI Switchbacks in a larger map

This map displays the top five locations where switchbacks occurred in January 2013.

Muni defends the switchbacks, saying that trains sometimes have to be rerouted to fill service gaps elsewhere. But for passengers, it’s a huge inconvenience — they’re left with little choice but to sit tight until the next train arrives, which in some cases can be as long as 30 minutes.

Switchbacks can happen in foul weather, and at night. They can impact elderly transit riders with few other transportation options. For weary Muni customers headed to the outskirts of the city after a long workday — or trying to get to a job or child-care responsibilities on time — a switchback can be the proverbial last straw.

The SFMTA data was included in a February memo to Sup. Carmen Chu, predecessor to newly minted District 4 Sup. Tang, who did not return Guardian calls seeking comment.

Some view switchbacks as a social justice issue. In the case of riders traveling to the end of the T line in the Bayview, the disruptions disproportionately affect riders who have longer trips to begin with — it takes 40 minutes to get from Van Ness Station to the end of the T line during normal weekday hours, compared with 28 minutes to the end of the N line and 26 minutes to the end of the J line. And those traveling to the city’s lower income, southeastern sector are less likely to have alternative means of transportation.

The 39 switchbacks that left southbound passengers waiting at the T Third Carroll stop, near Armstrong Ave, accounted for almost a third of all switchbacks recorded in January. Since they happen more frequently during off-peak hours, passengers are more likely to be left standing out on the platforms at night, when there are longer gaps between train arrivals.

That’s a public-safety issue: Police Department data accessed on San Francisco’s Open Data Portal shows multiple car break-ins, a robbery with force, and a meth possession charge all occurring nearby that train stop over the past three months.

According to the SFMTA memo, “Vehicle maintenance issues and automatic train control system issues accounted for most delays in which switchbacks were used to rebalance and restore scheduled service.” There were more disruptions on the K/T and N lines, Transit Director John Haley wrote, because they are “longer than the other lines and, as a result, have more opportunity to fall behind schedule.” The memo added that upgrades are underway to improve reliability and reduce breakdowns.

“SFMTA needs to prioritize providing reliable transit service to all San Franciscans,” Sup. Malia Cohen, who represents the Bayview, told us. “While I understand that systems need to be flexible to adjust to accidents or other issues, the data tells us that there is a pattern of these switchbacks in our outer neighborhoods in District 10 and District 4, disproportionately impacting low income transit riders, seniors and families.”

San Francisco’s Transit First policy, which appears in the City Charter, states: “The primary objective of the transportation system must be the safe and efficient movement of people and goods.” But Muni regularly boots three specific groups of train passengers off the trains, even though they have the farthest to travel. They’re left out on the platforms during off-peak hours, sometimes after dark, when there are longer wait times between trains. Does anyone actually believe that’s safe and efficient?

MUNI switchbacks disproportionately affect low-income and outlying areas

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

March 15, 2013

96

MUNI switchbacks may be on the decline overall, but when you zero in on who bears the brunt of these annoying service disruptions, it becomes clear that not all transit passengers are created equal. In fact, the vast majority of these annoying service disruptions were concentrated in just three locations this past January, according to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) data.

A “switchback” is SFMTA jargon for ejecting passengers from a train before their destination, leaving them with little choice but to sit tight until the next one arrives. The trains are then rerouted to provide service elsewhere. Switchbacks can happen in foul weather, and at night. They can impact elderly transit riders with few other transportation options. For weary MUNI customers headed to the outskirts of the city after a long workday, a switchback can be the proverbial last straw.

The top three affected stations in January were the T Third stop at Third Street and Carroll Avenue; the N Judah stop at Judah Street and Sunset Boulevard; and the J Church stop at Glen Park Station, in that order. While the January data provides only a snapshot, annual figures show an average of 36 switchbacks on the T and J lines per month since February of 2012, and an average of 49 per month on the N.

For more information, click on the stations plotted below, created by the Guardian using Google Maps.

View MUNI Switchbacks in a larger map

The SFMTA data was included in a February memo to Sup. Carmen Chu, predecessor to newly minted District 4 Sup. Katy Tang, who has taken up switchbacks as a cause. Tang did not return Guardian calls seeking comment.

Whether passengers are bound for the Outer Sunset, Glen Park, or the Bayview, the passengers disproportionately impacted by these disruptions are those traveling furthest from the city’s urban hubs.

Some regard switchbacks as a social justice issue. In the case of riders traveling to the end of the T line in the Bayview, the disruptions disproportionately affect riders who face longer trips to begin with – it takes 40 minutes to get from Van Ness Station to the end of the T line during normal weekday hours, compared with 28 minutes to the end of the N line and 26 minutes to the end of the J line. And those traveling to the city’s lower income, southeastern neighborhoods are less likely to have alternative means of transportation.

The 39 switchbacks that left southbound passengers waiting at the T Third Carroll stop, near Armstrong Ave, accounted for almost a third of all switchbacks recorded in January. Since they’re concentrated during “off-peak” hours, passengers are more likely to be left standing out on the platforms at night, when there are longer gaps between train arrivals. Police Department data accessed on San Francisco’s Open Data Portal shows multiple car break-ins, a robbery with force, and a meth possession charge all occurring nearby that train station in the past three months, suggesting that there could be safety concerns as well.

According to the SFMTA memo, “Vehicle maintenance issues and automatic train control system issues accounted for most delays in which switchbacks were used to rebalance and restore scheduled service.” There were more service disruptions on the K/T and N lines, Transit Director John Haley wrote, because they are “longer than the other lines and, as a result, have more opportunity to fall behind schedule.” The memo added that upgrades are underway to improve reliability and reduce breakdowns.

“SFMTA needs to prioritize providing reliable transit service to all San Franciscans,” Sup. Malia Cohen, who represents the Bayview, told the Guardian. “While I understand that systems need to be flexible to adjust to accidents or other issues, the data tells us that there is a pattern of these switchbacks in our outer neighborhoods in District 10 and District 4, disproportionately impacting low income transit riders, seniors and families. I will be working with Supervisor Tang and SFMTA to develop strategies to limit these switchbacks so we can provide reliable transit service to all corners of our city.”

San Francisco’s Transit First policy, which appears in the City Charter, states: “The primary objective of the transportation system must be the safe and efficient movement of people and goods.” SFMTA data shows switchbacks disrupt travel for three specific groups of passengers, even though they have the farthest to go. They’re left out on the platforms, sometimes after dark, when there are longer wait times. Does anyone actually believe this practice is safe and efficient?

Those infuriating private buses

Zelda Bronstein

-

March 14, 2013

154

People in the Mission continue to get more and more angry with the private tech-company buses clogging streets and filling up Muni stops; here’s a great photo of two of the behemoths forcing Muni passengers to walk out into the street to catch the bus that is supposed to be at the stop.

There’s a way to put an end to this, of course. Any other outfit that blocked Muni stops that regularly, with that much of an impact, would not only get repeated $250 tickets (as if Google cares about $250) but would eventually get a cease-and-desist order from the city. I know it’s not an earth-shattering problem, but it drives a lot of us nuts — and at some point, the city attorney needs to make it clear that violating city bus zones on a daily basis is not acceptable.

On a mission

Andrew Lam

-

March 12, 2013

15

tredmond@sfbg.com

Every gang member on the streets knows Cathey and Sands. They’re the cops. They’ve busted dozens of the young men who hang out in the Mission. They know every excuse, every trick, every way you can duck into an alley, hide in a doorway, ditch a weapon or cover up a crime.

But today, as they cruise around 24th Street in an unmarked car, Officers John Cathey and David Sands are not talking about putting bad guys in prison. They’ve been there, done that — and a year or two ago, they got so sick of seeing teenagers ruining their lives that the two tough cops decided to take another approach.

The officers pull their unmarked car into a side street, where two young men are walking together. They’re Norteños, Cathey explains, part of the gang that controls the southern part of the neighborhood, and they’ve got the telltale red colors all over them. Red shirts, red caps, red strips on their shoes.

Cathey approaches the young men and asks them what they’re doing. “Nothing,” they say.

They look at him as if they know what’s coming next, and chances are they do. It happens all the time these days in the world of the Mission District gangs. Cathey is about to give “The Speech.” The one that hundreds of gangbangers have heard, over and over. The one that’s already saved a few of their lives.

“You know what happened last night?” he asks. The kids feign ignorance. “Sure you do,” he continues. “A bunch of your guys got arrested. Your buddy just turned 18 and he got caught. He’s going to big-boy jail.”

The kids in red look at the ground.

“You want to wind up like that, you keep doing what you’re doing,” Cathey says. “You want to do something different, we can get you a job. A decent job, pays real money, in six months you get benefits. You know you don’t have to do this. You know we can help.”

For a second, one young man looks interested. “You come by the station, you leave your number for me, we’ll be in touch,” Cathey says. Then the moment’s over, the Nortenos walk away, and the two cops get back in the car.

“We might have a chance with him,” Cathey tells me. “I’m like water, I wear them down.”

********

Latino gangs — primarily two violent rival operations that run drugs and kill each other — have been a serious problem in the Mission for years. Kids as young as 11 or 12 are getting recruited into a life that typically leads to Juvenile Hall, state prison, or death. The city, and nonprofits that work with youth, have run all sorts of gang-prevention programs, with some success and a lot of failure.

While the Mission rapidly becomes a cool place for rich high-tech workers to live, the violence continues. In the past seven months, 10 people, most of them under 25, have been shot in gang-related incidents; three are dead.

But there’s a new, somewhat radical approach going on now — and it comes largely from two police officers who get paid to arrest gang members and instead are devoting their lives to keeping them out of jail.

Cathey and Sands, 11-year veterans, friends from their days in the Police Academy, have, pretty much on their own initiative, created a grassroots program that allows young men and women who want to get out of the gang life to go to work for the city, typically as landscapers, to earn a paycheck, find a new supportive community and leave The Life.

It doesn’t always work. Some try and don’t make it. The drop-out rate is high; it’s a constant struggle. But for the people who take, and keep, jobs in the program, the success rate is phenomenal.

“It’s pretty simple,” Cathey told me. “One hundred percent of the guys who get the jobs and go to work every day leave the gang life. One hundred percent of the ones who don’t show up for work, who don’t stick with it, go back to the gangs.”

It’s a tiny project right now, involving maybe 20 people. Cathey and Sands, with the support of the brass at Mission Station and Chief Greg Suhr, are trying to expand it to reach kids as early as middle school, before the gangs get to them. They’ve rounded up a construction contractor who spent half his adult life behind bars, an ex-gang member, a City College administrator, and Supervisor David Campos, and, mostly under the radar, are trying to do what all the academics and professionals say is the only effective approach to this kind of crime. They’re trying to stop it before it happens.

********

One day about 18 months ago, Campos was walking down 24th Street, on his way to get a burrito for lunch, when a police car pulled over and two plainclothes cops got out. Campos represents the Mission, and previously served on the Police Commission, but he had never met Cathey or Sands. “I was surprised to see these two tough guys come up to me,” the supervisor recalled recently.

“They just stopped me and said, ‘supervisor, we need your help,'” Campos said. “They said they were tired of the cycle of putting kids in jail and seeing them come back out and do the same thing again, and they wanted to find an alternative. They asked me if I could get some gang members jobs.”

What the officers explained was simple, if counterintuitive: “The young men on the street are smart,” Campos told me. “They have a lot of skills to live the way they do. If they could put that into something constructive, they could be very successful.”

Campos gave the cops his card, told them to call his office — and an unusual relationship between one of the most progressive supervisors and two gang cops was born.

“It was crazy when I told my staff that we were going to be working in the Mission with law enforcement,” Campos said. “I’ve had people stop me and say, ‘Campos, what are you doing with the cops?’ But these guys are great, and they’re doing something really important.”

What the gang cops had in mind was this: If the city could offer jobs — outdoor, hands-on, get-your-fingers-dirty jobs — and Cathey and Sands could convince gang members to step away from the life and try working, there might be a way to end the violence.

The program would be tightly controlled: The two officers would invite gang members to apply for jobs, would screen them, and keep on top of every applicant. People who missed work, or screwed up on the job, would get a visit; Cathey and Sands would watch the streets, follow everyone in the program, check in with families — and let everyone know that their lives and futures were on the line.

“We started with one kid they knew,” Campos said. “We decided to see if we could find him a job.”

Campos contacted the Public Utilities Commission, which hires workers to do landscaping, and convinced the general manager, Ed Harrington, to give it a try.

Cathey and Sands went looking for the young man who would kick off the program (let’s call him J.), and wound up at his house, talking to his mom and dad. That would become a central part of their MO, involving the parents of gang members and trying to bring together what are sometimes not the closest of families.

It wasn’t an easy sell — the family didn’t trust law enforcement. “Then they told the dad that they were working with Campos, and their guard went down,” the supervisor said.

J. started working with the PUC, doing gardening and landscaping work. “He was so successful, nobody could believe it,” Campos said. “We went to see him later, and his dad said his life had completely changed. It changed the whole family.

“When we saw that, we decided we needed to expand this.”

From the start, Mission Station Captain Greg Corrales — a no-nonsense cop who is not known as a starry-eyed liberal — saw the logic and got behind his two officers. Chief Suhr also came on board.

In the early days, Cathey and Sands had no resources at all — not even money to get the young workers Muni or BART tickets. Campos helped track down the funding, and worked with the officers on the next group of kids.

“I bring them into my office at City Hall,” he said. “I explain that there’s a real responsibility here. You are going to change your life.”

********

I am sitting in the community room at the Mission Police Station, talking to two young men who Cathey and Sands have brought into the program. They’ve had some problems — missing work, hanging out with their old gangs — and they’re at risk of losing their jobs. Cathey is blunt: Keep this up, and you’re done. Keep this up, and you’re going back to the streets, back to the life you wanted to leave.

I tell the men I’m not going to print their names, and they agree to talk to me. It’s a dangerous situation — the gangs don’t like members dropping out, and really don’t like to see them at the police station working with the cops.

“Just walking in this door is a hard thing to do,” Cathey says.

But the two officers make it clear to everyone they meet — on the streets, in the program, and everywhere else: These kids are not snitches. “We don’t ask them to tell on their friends,” Cathey said. “I don’t do that, and I don’t want any part of it. This isn’t about us finding out information about the gangs, and that’s not why people come and see us.”

I ask the two young men about what their lives were like before they started working. They’re not interested in talking. When I ask straight out if they were gang members, they shrug, and change the subject.

But they’re happy to talk about their jobs and what it means to be employed. They’re bringing home a paycheck. They can help out their families. They’re also up early in the morning and really tired at night; the idea of going out with their old friends isn’t that appealing.

The handful of people who are working, and not showing gang colors, hasn’t stopped the violence in the e Mission. One of the kids in the program was shot and killed a few months ago. “It was heartbreaking,” Campos said. “I went to see the parents, and they told me how proud their son had been, how he was bragging about being the first one in the house up in the morning, how he loved his job.”

On the other hand, Campos noted, “There normally would have been retaliation for that shooting, and more killing. But the ones who might have retaliated were in our program, so it didn’t happen.”

********

The tech workers from Google and Apple and Facebook who are flooding into the Mission don’t see the signs on the street. Upscale white people who think the neighborhood is cool don’t tend to notice what’s happening in front of their eyes. There are at least 200 active gang members in the small piece of land bounded by Cesar Chavez, Potrero, Castro and 16th. As Cathey and Sands drive around, they see the colors everywhere.

North of 19th Street, the young men and women wear blue. They’re Surenos, southerners; many of them are recent immigrants. Cross 19th and the colors turn red; the Nortenos, who sport the number 14, control the south Mission. They tend to be born in this country.

Back in the 1960s, the two gangs emerged out of the state prison system; Surenos lived south of Bakersfield, Nortenos north. But these days, the geographic lines aren’t always as clear. “They’re really the same guys on both sides of the line,” Cathey explains. “Other than this blind loyalty, they’d probably get along.”

The gangs make their money selling drugs, and much of it eventually goes back to a handful of leaders, many serving long prison terms. Since a lot of the members either die or wind up incarcerated before they get out of their 20s, recruiting is constant.

“They have recruiters outside the middle schools,” Cathey tells me. “Last night we arrested a 15-year-old for possession of a handgun. They older guys made him hold it. Now his life is about to be ruined.”

The two cops are opposites: Cathey is ebullient, outgoing, a former tech worker who is constantly talking, texting and emailing. Sands is quiet, more taciturn, a martial artist who walks the streets with the look of serious business.

But they’re fast friends and partners who can communicate with a quick nod or shake of the head, and nothing in the Mission gets by them.

We pull up at 16th and Mission. “Just watch, the block will clear,” Cathey says. And yes, the minute the gang car is spotted, a guy in a blue hoodie ducks down into the BART station.

There’s a girl who can’t be 16 yet sitting on the bench. Sands hangs back while Cathey approaches her. He asks what she’s doing, what’s going on; she shrugs and ignores him. Not interested.

Cathey speaks with a bit of resignation as we walk back to the car. “She’s already jumped in” — initiated into the gang — he says. It’s going to be hard to reach the girl; the gang members she hangs out with are violent, armed, “and will come down on you in a second.”

It’s hard not to feel the frustration that comes with the territory: Violent and dangerous, maybe — but still, she’s still just a little girl.

We head up to 24th Street, Norteno turf. Here, when you look for it, red is everywhere. “A lot of these kids are living in crowded situations, in relatives houses,” Cathey says. “The gangs tell the young ones that they shouldn’t trust their families, that the gang is their new family. That’s what we’re up against.”

Two young men duck into a jewelry store. Cathey throws the car into park and the officers get out, walking slowly toward the entrance. The men with the red jackets and red highlights on their shoes know the drill. A quick warrant check and they know they’re free to go — but not without listening to Cathey for a few minutes.

This time, “The Speech” is falling on deaf ears.

Later, Cathey shows me a video he’s captured off YouTube. It’s hard to find, hidden under gang names that only insiders would know. It shows some of the guys we’ve seen on the street, beating the living shit out of people. In one scene, a handful of gang members approach a man, punch him in until he falls to the ground, then kick his head until he’s unconscious.

“This is what they do,” Cathey says. “They terrorize the neighborhood.”

********

I am back in the community room at Mission Station. Cathey and Sands have invited me to an “intervention.” A boy and a girl, both of them in eighth grade, are coming in, with their parents, to talk about their flirtations with gang life.

A counselor at James Lick Middle School contacted the officers after seeing signs that the kids were showing gang colors and drifting away from their schoolwork and their families. Cathey and Sands were at Lick a few months earlier, running an assembly and talking about the dangers of gangs; the counselor got their phone numbers.

I have agreed to use no names or in any way identify the participants in the intervention. So I sit and watch as Cathey runs the show.

The boy appears painfully young, small and shy; it’s hard to believe he’s even in eighth grade. He wears a hoodie and makes little eye contact with anyone else in the room. The girl is taller, more self-assured.

I can’t fathom that kids this young – the age of my own son, who is still shedding the soft edge of youth, sliding slowly into adolescence — are already prey to the gang recruiters. But the evidence is clear.

When the parents and other family members are seated, Cathey starts asking the boy about gang life. “What color do the Sureños wear?” Blue, the boy says. “What about the Norteños?” Red. “Where does Norteño territory start?” 19th Street. “What number do the Norteños associate with?” Fourteen. “Can you give me the street names of some gang members?” The boy rattles off a few.

Cathey looks over at the boy’s dad. “He knows a lot, doesn’t he?” The dad is visibly startled. So are the girl’s family members as the officers run through a similar routine.

“We’re seeing younger and younger kids get dragged in,” Cathey tells me later. Often, parents and grandparents — working multiple jobs to pay the rent in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood — have little or no idea how far their kids have gone into the gang life.

Next up is Mike Bowen. He’s a soft-spoken guy whose face bears the scars of a hard life of substance abuse and jail time. In fact, he’s spent much of his adult life running from the law, winding up at one point jumping from a third-story window in a Tenderloin building to avoid arrest.

Two broken legs and months in the hospital put him on a path to sobriety — and a new life. “I used to think the money was in crime,” he tells the group. “Then I got myself together, went back to school, got my contractor’s license, and pretty soon I bought my first Lamborghini.”

That gets the young boy’s attention.

“You have so much going for you,” Bowen says. “You can make it.”

He turns to the boy’s mom, who speaks only Spanish, and asks her how it’s going. Not so great, she says; she just got laid off, and is having trouble finding a new job. Bowen reaches into his pocket and pulls out a stack of $100 bills. “Here, take this,” he says. “It will help until you find work.”

That really gets the boy’s attention.

Bowen’s been a key part of the two cops’ efforts, and they met entirely by chance. “I was driving down Folsom,” he told me. “I parked at a store and I saw these two cops, and I said hi and they wanted to check out my car, and we started to talk about my background. They told me what they were doing, and I said I’d love to help.”

Bowen offered money, which they needed, but that was just the start. “They brought me with them to James Lick,” he recalled. “I brought the Lamborghini. That got every one of the kids interested. I let them sit in it, then we talked.

“I told them that the gang members say the only way to get money is to join the gang. But I got out, went to school, and now I have a house and really nice car.”

When Bowen’s done with his talk, Cathey puts his cell phone on speaker and dials a number. The man on the other end is a former gang member. “He’s the real deal,” Cathey whispers to me. And indeed, for about ten minutes, he tells the two young people and their families exactly what their lives will be like if they follow the path he took at their age. By the end, the boy is shaken and the girl is crying.

Cathey’s not done yet. Guillermo Villanueva, a City College counselor, takes over and reads the families a pledge that Cathey and Sands have written. It’s all about family, about staying out of the gang life, but also respecting and taking care of each other. “Family and Education Forever” is the slogan, chosen because the gangs, who tell members that they are their new families, use “family forever.”

Yeah, the language in the pledge is a little bit hokey — but nobody’s laughing.

Cathey asks the boy what he wants from his parents. “I just wish my daddy had more time to play soccer with me,” he says. The officer looks at the father. “Every day, I’ll be there after work,” he says.

The pledge is on a plaque signed by Chief Suhr. Everyone signs it. By the end, there are tears and hugs all around.

“This is what we really need to be doing,” Cathey tells me. “Getting gang members to change is hard. If we can get them early enough, we have a much better chance.”

********

I’ve been a political reporter for 30 years. I write, mostly, about intractable social problems. I know that poverty and desperation lead to crime, that broken families and inadequate schools put young people at risk of falling into violence. I am under no illusions.

When I first heard about Cathey and Sands, I thought: They’re cops. Most of the time, cops aren’t the best answer to deep-seated social problems and the crime that results. And I’m not going to pretend that these guys are softies — you have a warrant out, you get caught in the act, they’ll pull you in, and it won’t necessarily be nice.

What they’re doing won’t end gang violence in San Francisco, not by itself. Everyone knows that. This is a huge issue, one that will become more and more pronounced as the crazy, ancient and pointless war between the Norteños and Sureños plays out in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

Cathey and Sands are by no means the only people fighting to end the carnage. Nonprofits, educators, social service agencies and others have spent years trying to break the gang cycle.

But there they are, every day, two guys with badges who see the blood and the pain on the streets, and are trying, with little bureaucracy or resources, to stop it. To save lives. One kid at a time.

“If we could get into all the middle schools, if we could expand this out, that’s what would really work,” Cathey told me. “That’s where we can have the biggest impact.

Crime would come down; it would have to.

“I’ve been trying to get a meeting with the mayor.” Paging Room 200, City Hall: Is anyone listening?

Big waterfront projects prompt study of new transportation ideas

Sasha Cuttler

-

March 1, 2013

18

The massive development projects being proposed along San Francisco’s central waterfront – from the proposed Warriors Arena at Pier 30 through the Giants’ housing/retail project at Pier 48 down to Forest City’s sprawling proposal around Pier 70 – will create huge challenges for the city’s already overtaxed transportation system.

Nobody is more aware of that issue than Warriors President Rick Welts as he seeks approval to build a 17,500-seat arena with just a smattering of parking spaces. “We’re investing a billion dollars in this property, and if people aren’t comfortable getting to it and leaving it, we have a problem,” Welts told a gathering of the California Music and Culture Association on Tuesday night, responding to a local resident who raised the concern. “We have to get that right, it’s at the top of our list.”

With Muni and BART already at capacity during peak hours, and thousands of new housing units being built in the coming years both along the waterfront and from nearby SoMa down through the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan area, city transportation planners are trying to get ahead of potential problems created by the development boom.

“We’re now taking a step back and looking at the long-term needs from the Exploratorium down to Pier 70,” says San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency planner Peter Albert, who is leading a comprehensive waterfront transportation study that will inform the environmental studies done for each of these projects. “What we get is an environmental review that is much smarter because we have all this advanced planning….EIRs are important, but they aren’t really planning.”

Albert is looking at everything from working with various transportation agencies to beef up bus, train, and ferry services to the area; using these projects to complete the ambitious but underfunded and long-stalled Blue-Greenway bicycle path along the waterfront; accelerating capital projects that are already in the SFMTA’s queue; and exploring a dozen or so new ideas.

“What’s also coming out of this are new ideas we’re coming up with, things we weren’t even thinking of that may make sense,” Albert told us, noting that he’ll be doing his first presentation of some of these ideas to the SFMTA Board of Directors on March 5.

They include extending new streetcar service along the Embarcadero to the Caltrain station at 4^th and King or possibly all the way out to the Anchor Steam Brewing-anchored project at Pier 48 (which would probably involve construction of new streetcar turn-arounds); better integrating the Central Subway project into Mission Bay and the Embarcadero with new bus and rail connections around 20^th and 3^rd streets; and expansion of the Embarcadero BART station to increase its peak capacity.

Welts said BART will be an important connector to the new Warriors Arena, noting that the walking distance from Pier 30 to the Embarcadero station is actually about the same distance as the Coliseum BART station is from the entrance to the Warriors’ current arena. He said that he’s excited about Albert’s work and wants to cooperate with helping the city meet its transportation needs: “We have a lot of process to go through and we’re embracing that process.”

Funding the needed improvements will be a challenge, particularly because new development projects generally don’t pay for their full impacts to the transportation system, as SFMTA head Ed Reiskin and Sup. Scott Wiener have told the Guardian. On Monday, Wiener amended the Western SoMa Community Plan to increase how much developers would pay in transportation impact fees.

Albert said funding for the needed improvements to the area’s transportation system would come from a combination of mitigation fees from the developers, reprioritizing the SFMTA’s existing capital budget, and securing state and federal transportation grants by developing impactful projects that are shovel-ready, thanks to this advanced planning effort.

These three waterfront development projects alone could have huge impacts. The Warriors Arena would host more than 200 concerts and sporting events per year, drawing anywhere from a few thousand to more than 17,500 people. The Giants’ Pier 48 proposal involves 27 acres of new development, including retail, office, Anchor Brewing, and about 1,500 homes. And Forest City’s proposal for Pier 70 involves about 1,000 homes, 2.2 million square feet of office space, and 275,000 square feet of retail and light manufacturing.

Addressing the waterfront’s transportation challenges, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu told the Guardian, “It is possibly the most difficult and important question surrounding the Warriors project, and I’ve encouraged all parties to make sure they get it right.”

Public broadband works; why not here?

Zelda Bronstein

-

February 28, 2013

42

There’s a fascinating new map that the Institute for Local Self Reliance has put together that shows how 342 communities around the United States are now offering publicly owned, cheap, reliable broadband and cable service to local residents and businesses. Check it out here. Then check out why the fastest networks in the nation are built by local governments:

“It may surprise people that these cities in Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana have faster and lower cost access to the Internet than anyone in San Francisco, Seattle, or any other major city,” says Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Telecommunications as Commons Initiative. “These publicly owned networks have each created hundreds of jobs and saved millions of dollars.”

Then sit back and ask yourself why you’re paying so much money every month for the rotten service you get from Comcast and AT&T. Ask your friends, ask around work; is anyone really happy with their broadband service? Do you think you’re getting a good deal for the price?

When I saw the map I called Mitchell, and he told me that every one of the cities and towns on his map has been successful with public ownership. “Within five years, everyone is either making money for the general fund or breaking even and offering really low rates,” he said. “The real benefit is lower prices, which leaves residents with more money in their pockets, which tends to get spent in their communities where it helps local business.”

Most of the cities that have muni broadband (and cable TV!) also have municipal electric power systems, which makes the whole thing easier. But Santa Monica did it bit by bit, installing fiber every time one of the streets was torn up for plumbing, sewers, etc. and gradually building out a network that so far only connects businesses but can be expanded as the money comes in. San Francisco streets are torn up all the time, and will be torn up regularly as water and sewer lines are replaced. The biggest expense of laying cable is cutting open and repaving streets; the cable itself is fairly cheap.

In some states, the big private telecoms have pushed through state legislation banning muni broadband — but not in California. San Francisco has every legal right to get into this business.

So why aren’t we doing it already? “What’s missing,” Mitchell said, “is the political will to really piss off Comcast and AT&T.”

I was just looking at the map when I got an email alerting me to this lovely discussion between Mayor Ed Lee and the head of PG&E, talking about the private utility’s plans to invest $1.2 billion in local infrastructure (more on that in a future blog post). That’s going to involve a lot of digging up streets. So what does Mayor Lee say? Maybe we could allow PRIVATE companies to lay fiber at the same time.

I want to throw up.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam

-

February 26, 2013

0

WEDNESDAY 27

On the Cheap listings compiled by Cortney Clift. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for listings, see Picks.

After Hours at the Conservatory of Flowers Golden Gate Park, 100 John F. Kennedy, SF. www.conservatoryofflowers.org. 6-10pm, $13. The Conservatory is romantic during the day, but add drinks, an award-winning violinist, and special access to its old Victorian greenhouse, and it’s downright swoon-worthy. Jill Tracy will be playing violins from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and talking about the natural materials used to make them. A musical séance is also set to take place, channeling compositions from beloved treasures that you, the audience, will supply.

THURSDAY 28

Tears of Gaza screening Berkeley City College, 2050 Center, Berk. www.mecaforpeace.org. 7-9:30pm, $10. A documentary recording the effects of the 2008-’09 three-week bombing of Gaza by Israeli military (backed by US-made weapons). In this emotional film, Norwegian director Vibeke Lokkeberg and Palestinian cameramen show us the devastating effects of war on civilians. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion including a Palestinian refugee, a former resident of Gaza, and Barbara Lubin, an aid worker who was in Gaza during the assault.

FRIDAY 1

Gay Men’s Sketch art show Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF. www.markichester.com. Opening reception: 8-10pm, free. To celebrate 25 years of weekly meetings and sketch sessions that celebrated the male form, Gay Men’s Sketch wanted to put together a best-of showing of its work. 21 artists were responsible for these pieces, rendered in pencil, pastel, ink, watercolor, and even with an iPad. If you’re in the mood for something a little saucier there will also be work from Hot Draw! a subgroup of Gay Men’s Sketch that focuses on erotic, explicit poses.

Tall ship sailings at Jack London Square Jack London Square, Oakl. www.jacklondonsquare.com. 4-5pm, $3 donation requested. Grab your sea legs and hop on board two historic seafarers. The Lady Washington is a replica of one of the first US ships to explore North America’s west coast. The Hawaiian Chieftain is a steel-hulled replica of a typical 19th century coastal trader. The vessels are set to sail into town on Thu/28 and stay through Feb. 6. For just $3, you can take a tour of the tall ships and speak with the crew.

“Titti Trifecta” MOCO, 371 17th St., Oakl. mocoart.tumblr.com. Opening reception 6-10pm. In celebration of Women’s History Month, head to this all-female show and enjoy art, free wine, hors d’oeuvres, and live music. Later this month the exhibit will host a DIY sex toy workshop, an artist talk entitled “Slut, Cunt, Bitch, Whore,” and a feminist film night.

“UNPLUG SF: Device-Free Drinks” Inner Mission, 2050 Bryant, SF. www.unplugsf.com. 7pm-midnight, free. Feel like a screen-free night out? UNPLUG SF wants to help. Check your phone at the Digital Detox cell phone check-in station and receive a reboot cell phone sleeping bag. While your phone takes a break grab a non-Instagrammed cocktail and step into the analog zone of typewriters and board games. Enjoy community art, live music and vinyl DJs spinning soul, Motown, and oldies.

SATURDAY 2

“Free Your Mind” black literary festival San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. www.sfpl.org. 11am-5pm, free. An eclectic day-long program for families at the library. Check out a performance by author Kirk Waller and a presentation on African American genealogy, meet revolutionary authors, and take in a keynote talk by Oba T’Shaka, a civil rights leader who spent 38 years as a SF State professor.

“Muni Diaries Live” Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. munidiarieslive9.eventbrite.com. Doors open at 6pm. Show starts at 7pm, $12. Advance ticket purchase suggested. Even if you’ve ridden the Muni just once chances are you probably saw something weird. With usual sightings of crazy cat ladies and men with no pants, a trip on the Muni is anything but boring. Join fellow bus goers (and even a BART operator) as they share their wackiest stories. The evening will also include the second Muni Haiku Battle where writer James Nestor will fight to keep his crown as champion.

Babylon Salon spring reading Cantina SF, 580 Sutter, SF. www.cantinasf.com. Doors open at 7pm, show starts at 7:30pm, free. Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Terry Bisson and Tamin Ansary, scribe of West of Kabul, East of New York will perform readings from their acclaimed works. Transmedia artist and Lady Gaga blogger Kate Durbin, author of The Plume Hunter Renee Thompson, and short story author Rashaan Alexis Meneses will also be reading.

SUNDAY 3

Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon Marina Green, 500 Marina, SF. www.escapefromalcatraztriathlon.com. Race starts at 7:30am, fitness expo 6:30am-2:30pm. If your New Year’s resolution has long since given way to take-out and TV-filled evenings, pre-register for (or just set up a folding chair and cooler to watch) the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon for some serious motivation. 2,000 triathletes will complete a 1.5-mile swim from Alcatraz to the San Francisco shoreline, an 18-mile bike ride around the Presidio and an eight-mile run in Golden Park, finishing back at the Marina Green. There will also be a fitness expo throughout the weekend featuring dozens of vendors, products, demos, and more.

TUESDAY 5

Bay Bridge Grand Lighting Ceremony Embarcadero, 4 Embarcadero Center, SF. facebook.com/thebaylights. 8pm, free. Designed by artist Leo Villareal, the Bay Lights is a light sculpture set to sparkle everyday from dusk to midnight for two years on the San Francisco Bay Bridge’s west span. 25,000 white individually programmed LED lights will create intricate algorithms and patterns. Head over to the waterfront this evening to be one of the first to take in this monumental moment.

Western SoMa Plan changed to lessen development impacts to nightlife and Muni

Sasha Cuttler

-

February 25, 2013

14

Western SoMa Plan changed to lessen development impacts to nightlife and Muni

The Western SoMa Community Plan had its first hearing before the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee today, with dozens of speakers praising the eight-year citizen-based planning effort that developed it but with much of the testimony criticizing the plan’s emphasis on facilitating housing development to the exclusion of other goals.

As we’ve reported, the nightlife community has in recent months been pushing for changes to the plan that would better protect nightclubs from complaints and pressure from nearby residents, particularly along 11^th Street. Area Sup. Jane Kim has supported that effort and those concerns were echoed by Sup. Scott Wiener, the committee chair and a strong nightlife advocate.

“I have had significant concerns about this plan…and I’m hoping we can address them over the course of this hearing,” Wiener said.

Wiener also opened another front of attack on the plan by noting that it doesn’t adequately pay for the impact that thousands of new housing units would have on Muni and other aspects of the transportation system. In particular, he criticized a policy in the plan that would let 13 large properties get increased density in exchange for higher affordable housing fees that would be offset by lower transit and other impact fees paid to the city.

“What are we doing to make sure our transportation system keeps pace?” Wiener asked of Planning Department staff, later asking again, “Where would we get the money to improve transit for these increased residents?” Wiener didn’t get back any answers that seemed to satisfy him, so he asked for a more detailed report when the plan returns next week for a second hearing. That concern was echoed by the third committee member, Board President David Chiu, who said, “Building housing without money for transit will lead to long-term problems.”

The concern seemed to revive a losing fight that Wiener led in December over expanding who pays the city’s Transit Impact Development Fee, which pitted transportation advocates against affordable housing activists. Fernando Marti of the Council of Community Housing Organizing rued the revival of that conflict. “We’ve been here before, pitting [transportation against affordable housing needs] as if it were a zero sum game,” Marti told the committee, noting the importance of policies to balance out market rate housing and calling it a “plan for stability in a neighborhood facing large-scale gentrification.”

Marti’s COCHO colleague Peter Cohen, who was closely involved with the plan’s creation, also urged the committee not to tweak the housing policies or the revenues it creates for affordable housing. “This is a major upzoning,” Cohen said. “In 20 years, perhaps all the market rate stock [of housing in the plan area] will be gentrified.”

But the issue raised most often during more than two hours of public testimony involved nightlife and the need to strike a better balance between housing development and entertainment, much of the input stirred up by the California Music and Culture Association, a industry-backed trade group that formed largely in response to crackdowns on clubs in SoMa.

“It’s often said San Francisco can plan more for fun, and this is a great opportunity to do that,” said Guy Carson, a CMAC founder who owns Cafe du Nord. Longtime nightlife advocate Terrence Alan took part in the Western SoMa Task Force for four years before resigning in frustration, and he told the committee, “We are bringing up issues we felt marginalized in bringing up earlier.”

But several people involved with the task force, as well as speakers representing development interests, urged supervisors to pass the place without significant modifications. “There are dozens or hundreds of compromises in this plan,” Cohen said, urging supervisors not to upset that careful balance.

Task Force Chair Jim Meko – whose leadership was widely praised in the testimony – detailed the extensive outreach and detailed work that went into the plan, and offered a simple plea to the committee: “Please pass this plan so we can get on with our lives.”

The committee unanimously voted to support the change made to the plan by the Planning Commission to ban new residential development on the raucous 300-block of 11^th Street, but to reverse the commission’s decision to grandfather in one final 24-home residential project on that block, in the so-called “purple building” at 340 11^th Street. A number of other small changes to the plan were also unanimously approved.

But Kim objected to Wiener’s motion to eliminate the plan provision that would reduce the transit and open space fees and raise the affordable housing fees that developers of those 13 large parcels would pay. “I don’t think it’s good policy to reduce transit impact fees when we’re increasing population,” Wiener said.

“This has gone through an extensive community process,” Kim countered, adding that, “I hate that we’re always having this discussion about transit versus affordable housing.”

But Chiu sided with Wiener and the amendment was approved on a 2-1 vote with Kim in dissent. Yet Chiu held open the possibility of changing his mind next week when the plan returns to committee for a final vote – the delay prompted by the other revisions in the plan – when Planning staff will provide more information on the fee structure and its impacts.

If the committee gives final approval to the plan next Monday, it could be before the full board for approval the next day.

The machine

Andrew Lam

-

January 29, 2013

127

steve@sfbg.com

Scott Wiener is a political machine.

I don’t mean that he’s part of a political machine, although he is arguably a member of a few nascent operations in town, from the old-school Democratic Party establishment to the morphing amalgam of groups pushing what he calls a “livability” agenda. I mean that Supervisor Wiener, who represents District 8, is a machine — almost robotic in his tireless, 24/7 engagement with all things political.

In just two years on the board, he’s become one of the most productive legislators in the city, courting controversy and taking on issues others had ducked. He is relentless in his quest to make government run more efficiently. He’s affable, mild-mannered and accessible, often willing to work with opponents — but he has an agenda for the city that he pursues aggressively.

Perhaps more than anyone at City Hall, Wiener embodies the current political zeitgeist in San Francisco, with its emphasis on civility and private-sector job creation. He isn’t the most powerful person in city government, but he’s playing an outsized role in shaping the city’s future — and that will only grow this week as he assumes the chair of the board’s Land Use Committee.

Wiener defies easy labels. Critics who call him an uncaring conservative aren’t quite right, and it’s equally tough to simply accept the “urbanist” and “good liberal Democrat” labels that Wiener applies to himself. And it’s hard to pin Wiener down on what sort of city he envisions, except for one with minimal bureaucracy where the trains and buses run on time.

In his City Hall office, where the walls contain little artwork, just the occasional reminder of past political episodes (like the framed Guardian butt cover from when he banned the nudists in the Castro from putting their bare asses on benches), he was happy to talk to me at length about policy. But he had less to offer on who he thinks this city is for — about who should be able to stay here, and who has to leave. He talks about preserving a safety net — but not about pushing back against gentrification and displacement with any tools up to the task.

In the end, his focus is on making government and the city’s infrastructure work well for those who are able to live in a city that’s become openly hostile to low-income and working-class people. He’s an agent of change — but his change is disturbing to progressives. He’s steadily moving legislation that makes it more difficult to counter trends that are gentrifying and sterilizing the city.

A BIT OF A NERD

Born in Philadelphia and raised mostly in the small, conservative New Jersey town of Turnersville, the young Scott Wiener always felt one step removed from his surroundings. So he poured himself into his studies. “I was always a bit of a nerd. I’ll admit I was voted most studious in high school,” Wiener said.

What social life he had centered around his synagogue in a Christian-dominated community. His parents — dad an optometrist, mom running his practice — were “very partisan Democrats” in a Republican county. Although they weren’t very politically active, Wiener’s earliest political memory is the 1980 presidential election that brought Ronald Reagan to power: “Our house was like a place of mourning.”

Involvement in Democratic Party politics seemed to just flow from his academic life, interning with a member of Congress as a teenager and then helping form a Democratic Club when he attended Duke University, which devoted itself to campaigning against then-Sen. Jesse Helms when Wiener was a sophomore.

Coming out as a gay man at the age of 20 wasn’t terribly traumatic in a family where his cousin and aunt were lesbians. His main concern was whether it might hinder his plan to run for president of his fraternity, the Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi, but he won that election anyway.

Still, Wiener calls being gay and Jewish the “galvanizing experiences” of his formative years, particularly at a time when AIDS had devastated this new community he was joining, so his political activism focused on LGBT issues as he worked his way through Harvard Law School, choosing to settle in San Francisco in 1997.

Tall and gangly, almost obsessed with Democratic Party politics, his only real hobby or pastime is yoga, which he said “helps me stay sane.” Wiener has always been less fun-loving than many of the gay men around him in the Castro, the neighborhood he represents.

“Dating has not always been my strong suit,” Wiener said. He’s close to family and friends but really hasn’t had any serious romantic relationships to speak of. “Men are challenging.”

So he works, and works, and works. He’s been working the Castro with door-knocking intensity since well before his successful run for supervisor in 2010, during his long tenure on the Democratic County Central Committee and his day job as a deputy city attorney, focused mostly on defending the San Francisco Police Department.

Department heads have learned that he’s always on duty. “I was at Nancy Pelosi’s New Year’s party on Sunday, and I saw [SF Muni head] Ed Reiskin and I started walking up to him because I had like three things to talk to him about, and the look I saw in his eye was the same look that I think I sometimes get in my eye when a particularly aggressive constituent approaches me,” Wiener recalled.

It’s a look that Wiener has had to adopt regularly over the last two years as he’s sponsored a string of the city’s most controversial pieces of legislation.

AGENT OF CHANGE

Right now, Wiener is pushing legislation that would limit people’s opportunities to appeal development projects (dubbed “CEQA reform”) and co-sponsoring legislation that would let owners of tenancy-in-common (TIC) housing units pay a fee to bypass the city’s condo conversion lottery, which limits the removal of apartments from the rental market.

Both changes, two of the most controversial measures of this new legislative session, have been opposed by progressives for decades. And they follow Wiener’s sponsorship of the two most controversial pieces of legislation from the last session: his unsuccessful attempt to remove the exemption of nonprofits from paying the city’s Transit Impact Development Fee and his ban on public nudity, which passed on a 6-5 vote in November, making national headlines.

The two new bills reflect an agenda that’s popular with landlords, property owners, and developers — and opposed by tenants, neighborhood activists, and just about every progressive group in town.

Yet, at the same time, Wiener is supportive of nightlife and an advocate for Muni and bike lanes — softening his image as a downtown conservative and sometimes giving him a chance to divide the progressive community. And last year he cast the crucial eighth vote needed to create the CleanPowerSF public-power program and override a threatened mayoral veto.

“I strongly believe in the capacity of government to make people’s lives better,” Wiener said.

Wiener told me he believes in the social safety net and rent control. He says he has supported every tax measure on the ballot in recent years, he understands that Muni and other vital city infrastructure go deeper in the hole with every new development project the city approves, and he knows that San Francisco is becoming steadily less affordable to those on the bottom half of the economic spectrum.

Yet, even when pressed on the topic at length, he doesn’t have a good answer for how to maintain San Francisco’s long-term socioeconomic diversity. It’s almost as if that’ s not part of his consciousness. Instead, he’s making it easier for capitalism to have its way with San Francisco.

Tom Radulovich, director of Livable City, puts it this way: “One thing he’s really doing is reforms in the process of government. He wants to smooth the way for the transformation of the city.”

While smoothing the way for change is good for those who desire certain changes — whether it be a developer building luxury condos or the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition trying to add more bike lanes — there are often good reasons why change occurs in a slow, methodical way in San Francisco, a city of great wealth and power but also lots of checks and balances on how power gets wielded.

“Process is important in San Francisco,” Radulovich said. “For a lot of people that want to slow things down, they are very process focused, and he’s really messing with that.”

Wiener’s efforts particularly rankle people like Aaron Peskin, who started as a historic preservation activist before leading a prolific agenda (he said he authored 205 ordinances in eight years, far faster than Wiener’s pace) as a supervisor during the board’s modern progressive era.

Peskin — who successfully ran against Wiener for DCCC chair in 2008 and has fought him on historic preservation and other progressive issues since then — doesn’t mince words when describing Wiener’s agenda and key votes as supervisor: “Supervisor Wiener is intent on turning the clock back on San Francisco’s decades-long legacy of cutting edge legislation to protect consumers and the environment.”

Radulovich says the trend is upsetting the city’s balance in unpredictable ways. “The net result is he’s speeding everything up, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He’s taking the brakes off of change,” Radulovich said. “In all of these changes, it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen because these are big, complex systems.”

Wiener sees it differently. His bill to modify the city’s CEQA interpretation would make it harder to file multiple project appeals — and he thinks that’s a good thing: “There are people who want to the option to be oppositional and to just have something in their hip pocket, even if it has no merit.”

Yet activists fighting the measure say it also makes it easier for projects to slide through without proper public or environment scrutiny. For example, the city originally exempted the controversial Beach Chalet artificial turf project in Golden Gate Park from doing an Environmental Impact Report, which eventually found significant impacts to wildlife, drainage, and from bright artificial lights.

There are some who worry that the Land Use Committee will be more friendly to market-rate developers under Wiener’s leadership.

“I’m really concerned with the direction the city is going on land-use issues, particularly with him now chairing the Land Use Committee,” Tom Temprano, president of the Harvey Milk Club, told me. “It’s about the future of the city and who it’s being built for.”

Peter Cohen of the Council of Community Housing Organizations notes that Wiener’s focus during “affordable housing” discussions has been on middle class homeowners: “I’m interested to see if he pushes that narrative, that we’re not doing enough for the middle class, because it is a bit of a zero sum game with housing and land use.”

Radulovich said Wiener may not be critical enough of projects that seek more than their zoning entitles them to, a growing problem in San Francisco that has set precedents for more intensive development and made it difficult to analyze cumulative impacts of the decisions: “Having a Land Use chair that going to move those things along will allow planning by exception.”

Between watching out for Wiener’s legislation and tracking the development projects that seem to keep springing out of nowhere, progressive activists are busy.

“He’s very busy. He’s amazingly prolific legislatively. I can’t keep up with him and I don’t know what his agenda is,” said Sue Vaughan, who works with the Sierra Club and sits on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Citizens Advisory Council. “It just seems like everything he focuses on disempowers the voters and empowers the [wealthiest] 1 percent.”

POLITICS AND PERSONALITY

Even his critics have positive things to say about Wiener. “He’s a nice guy, and I have to give him credit for going out of his way to work with us,” Temprano said, praising Wiener’s advocacy on queer, nightlife, and small business issues and saying, “He’s a really good legislator.”

“That said, we have a fundamentally different approach to politics,” Temprano said. “A huge bone of contention is his handling of public space, including the nudity ban and removing the public benches” in the Castro.

Temprano criticizes Wiener for allowing social services to be slashed while local corporations get tax breaks and focusing more on the convenience of those middle class and above than the needs of those on the bottom, often by presenting “false choices,” as Wiener did in opposing free Muni for youth by saying that increasing efficiency in the system was more important.

“The folks who have more basic needs are being pushed out of this city,” Temprano said. “There are just so many needs right now, and so many of them come down to funding for social services and other things…We should be starting to re-fund programs that have been slashed in recent years.”

Wiener has served on the Budget Committee throughout his tenure on the board, presiding over the rollback of city services and maintaining of historically low levels of business taxation.

In fact, Temprano said Wiener’s engaging personal style and points of agreement with progressives make Wiener more effective in sometimes pushing issues that are hostile to progressive values. “It’s occasionally difficult to play hardball on some of these other issues,” Temprano said, noting that Wiener doesn’t seem to have a problem switching gears and playing hardball in undermining progressive reforms, something that requires those of the left to be ever-vigilant and take advantage of Wiener’s open-door policies. “We need to be incredibly vocal and incredibly organized.”

Adds Radulovich: “There’s something about him that’s refreshing. He’s different than the moderates of the past…He’s a moderate, but he’s the new generation of moderate.”

In fact, Radulovich said that progressives could learn lessons from Wiener in terms of broadening their base and reaching across the aisle on certain issues that needn’t be as polarizing as they often are in San Francisco, even around such emotional issues as growth and development.

“If you do anything differently, you get kicked out of the progressive camp,” Radulovich said, half-jokingly adding, “If you had an original idea since 1978, you’re suspect.”

In fact, Radulovich compared Wiener to a former supervisor who is his political opposite: “Scott is effectively driving the conversation in proposing things. Chris Daly used to do that.”

Peskin said that Wiener’s legislative success so far has less to do with his skills and strength than it does with the weakness of the progressive movement over the last two years.

“He’s only one supervisor, and it’s just that his colleagues need to stand up and start questioning his legislation. He backs down when people rise to the occasion,” Peskin said, noting that progressive activists may have become complacent after a decade when progressives had a majority at the board. “It’s a big wake-up call for activists and everyday folks in San Francisco who have not had to go down to City Hall to stop bad things from happening in 10 years.”

Peskin doesn’t buy the arguments that Wiener’s politics are nuanced and hard to pin down, saying he predictably supports those with money and power and undermines the average citizen in just about every vote. “He’s fundamentally a very ideologically conservative person,” Peskin said. “He’s radical in his conservatism.”

RENTERS PLIGHT

Wiener is now in the middle of a fight that pits the progressives and the two-thirds of city residents who rent their housing against the homeowners and real estate interests that have long sought to make it easier to turn housing units into condos.

The bill that created this controversy, which Wiener co-sponsored with conservative Sup. Mark Farrell, is a one-time amnesty that would allow some 2,500 TIC units to bypass the city’s condo lottery (limited to 200 conversions a year) and to become condos. Wiener says it’s aimed at helping TIC owners stuck in limbo with mortgages they can’t refinance.

“In my view, we need housing stability for everyone, and that includes tenants and it includes homeowners,” Wiener said. “We’ve seen in the foreclosure crisis that tenants aren’t the only ones who can have unstable housing. And right now, we have many TIC owners who bought…thinking that it was going to take five-seven years to win the lottery because that’s how it used to be, but now it’s 15 or 20 years.”

That, of course, is because so many former rental units were turned into TICs that the conversion list keeps growing. When TICs become condos, the property becomes worth more and easier to refinance.

“The financing for TICs is worse than it’s ever been,” Wiener said, noting that many TIC owners are underwater. “So the people in the TICs are really hurting. And if they lose their TICs, it’s not like they’re going away, they’re going to compete for rental units.”

But San Francisco Tenants Union head Ted Gullicksen said the courts have steadily eroded San Francisco’s ability to safeguard rent control and prevent apartments from being turned into TICs and condos. “If we make it easy for them to become TICs, we will have lost the only weak defense we have against conversion,” he said.

Gullicksen said the one-time offer will just lead to more TICs — and more evictions. “They’re saying if the line gets too long, don’t worry, we’ll deal with it,” he explained.

Gullicksen also disputes the argument that financing for TIC is difficult. The market slowed down after the fiscal crisis of 2008, “but in the past 8-12 months, they have begun to skyrocket again,” he said.

Gullicksen acknowledged that Wiener has a history of supporting pro-tenant legislation, particularly during his time on the DCCC when tenant groups were at war with Wiener’s predecessor, Bevan Dufty, and then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. But he said that Wiener changed after progressives took over the DCCC and he prepared to run for supervisor in a district that has gentrified, largely because of apartments being converted to TICs and condos.

“He made the decision that he was not going to be with progressives and to ally himself with the conservatives, moderates, and real estate people,” Gullicksen said.

Wiener disputes the characterization, saying that he strongly supports rent control and tenants, even though he also supports TICs and other home ownership opportunities.

COURTING CONTROVERSY

A Guardian analysis of legislation from the past two years shows Sup. David Chiu edging out Wiener in total legislative initiatives, 153-119, with the rest of their colleagues in double digits. But while Chiu has authored more ordinances and charter amendments (49) than Wiener (33), it is Wiener that has taken on the toughest fights and found himself at the center of big controversies far more often.

“I enjoy policy and I like legislating. We have a limited time here at City Hall as members of the Board of Supervisors, and I think you have to take the bull by the horns and pursue the policies that you think are important to the city, so I started doing that pretty quickly after taking office,” Wiener said. “I also think you have to be willing to take risks, so I’ve been willing to take on legislation that maybe others wouldn’t touch, or that others thought was too hard.”

Radulovich noted: “He’s not a cautious legislator, but he is a careful legislator. He’s not afraid of starting a fight, particularly with progressives. A lot of progressives are like, ‘If Scott Wiener is for it then it must be bad.'”

Vaughan is one of those activists who said she’s eventually learned not to trust Wiener or his legislation: “We’ve been galvanized and we feel like we have to watch what he’s doing very carefully.”

Like many progressive activists, Radulovich said he likes Wiener and respects his political skills, but he doesn’t see Wiener as sharing his political values: “His agenda is much more pro-business than mine, more about promoting laissez faire capitalism.”

Rafael Mandelman, who was elected to the City College of San Francisco board last year after losing to Wiener in the D8 race two years earlier, said he has been impressed by his former adversary.

“It’s unquestionable that he’s super hard-working, super dedicated, probably the most effective member on the Board of Supervisors,” Mandelman said. “He takes on controversial issues, and in some ways he courts controversy, but he generally leave people with good feelings.”

Mandelman differs from Wiener politically on issues like CEQA reform and historic preservation standards. “On the other hand, he has taken some principled stands against some big players,” Mandelman said, citing Wiener’s battles against the Academy of Art on student housing and the Hospital Council on TIDF.

Wiener rejects the accusation that he’s not engaged enough with the community or his critics. “I think that’s made up. And really, it’s a different way of saying, ‘I don’t agree with your legislation,’ therefore I’m going to say you didn’t take enough input ahead of time,” Wiener said. “I’ve had legislation where I had more than a year’s worth of meetings with different stakeholders before I introduced it.”

“Even on the nudity legislation, I had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of communications with constituents before introducing it, between Facebook, email, on the street, in the cafes, talking with people on both sides. I know some folks say I should have had a town hall meeting on it, but that’s just one way of communicating with people,” Wiener said. “I’m communicating with constituents seven days a week, in many different ways. So I think that criticism is unfounded.”

TRANSIT AND NIGHTLIFE

Part of Wiener’s power comes from having carved out unique niches for himself, including in two realms not traditionally occupied by fiscal conservatives: public transit and nightlife issues.

“Scott Wiener has been a tireless champion of nightlife issues since the beginning. One of his very first actions in office was to call for an economic impact study to better understand the entertainment industry’s contribution to the City’s economy,” said Guy Carson, the owner of Cafe du Nord and a founding board member of the California Music and Culture Association.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum gives Wiener lots of unqualified credit for his leadership on transportation issues. “We’ve been really impressed with what a strong grasp he has of the city’s transportation needs, and he’s been willing to push in certain areas behind the scenes,” she said, contrasting the grandstanding that most politicians do on transit issues with Wiener’s more substantive position. “He comes in with a lot more policy understanding, and it’s clear he really rides Muni regularly.”

But even on transportation issues, some progressives fault Wiener. “We need to be really concerned about transit equity in this city, and that’s something I’d like to see more from him on,” Temprano said, calling on Wiener to show as much concerns for the needs of low-income communities that truly rely on Muni as he does with the needs of better-off Castro residents. “I’m always fighting with the MTA because they’re not doing a good enough job on Muni,” Wiener said. In fact, Wiener said he’s in contact with that supposedly independent agency almost every day, pushing them to make changes he wants: “To its credit, MTA does care about what the mayor and the supervisors think, and I give them a lot of credit for that because they could take a more blow-off kind of attitude with me, and I haven’t seen that, at least in my interactions with them.”

Wiener said his relationship with MTA head Reiskin is “very positive. I mean, I push him, but we have the kind of relationship where I can be very frank and tell him when I think he’s wrong, and he can be very frank and tell me when he thinks I’m wrong.” Reiskin agrees that his relationship with Wiener is a good one, because of Wiener’s hectoring as much as in spite of it. “My relationship with him is very good. He’s someone who really cares about the transportation system, particularly Muni, and he understands the importance of Muni to the city,” Reiskin said, praising Wiener for his willingness to get personally involved in the struggle. “He’s extended some political capital for it.”

Yet on the TIDF fight, the capital Wiener extended split the progressive movement and burnished his arguments that he’s independent from downtown, so the net result of that losing fight only served to strengthen Wiener politically. “There were no conversations on the front end, I can tell you that. It was sprung on us,” said Cohen, whose CCHO ended up partnering with the business community against transportation activists to defeat the measure. “It did not have to become as adversarial as it was and that was really disheartening. It’s hard to think that it wasn’t intentional.” Reiskin also said that issue was mishandled by his agency. “We failed in that process,” he said. “The fact that we’re pitting improving transportation against social services is not good.”

Yet both Wiener and Shahum cast it as a fight worth having. Wiener said they discussed dropping it when it was clear the votes weren’t there: “My gut was already telling me let’s do the vote, and she said, ‘You know, people need to say where they are on this.’ So we agreed to move it forward.”

And that was a vote he cited when I questioned him about his pro-business agenda. “You always have to be willing to disagree with your allies,” Wiener said. “So people say, ‘You always do what the Chamber of Commerce says,’ but that’s not true. I think I was number five on their scorecard this year because I supported CCA, I supported classifying banks as formula retail, and they scored on the TIDF.”

But Wiener denies there was any political calculation on the TIDF vote, and he cast that vote as a lesson in political organizing. “We have not been organized enough in term of building political power for pro-transit policies, whether it’s pedestrian safety or public transportation. We know that we’ve systematically underfunded Muni, we know that Muni does not do well in funding battles, it doesn’t have effective lobbying for it,” Wiener said.

“We had an all-star cast of public transit advocates up against the Chamber and it was a mismatch, so we need to build up much more institutional capacity for transit advocacy. That’s what we’re learning.”

The battle of Brotherhood Way

Zelda Bronstein

-

January 22, 2013

24

Brotherhood Way is a creature of another era. Tucked between the San Francisco Golf Club and ParkMerced, it was long known as Stanley Way. But in 1958, under Mayor George Christopher, the city, which owned all of the land on the south side of the street, turned that property over to a long list of religious institutions and renamed the street to reflect its role as a place for houses of worship. It’s now home to six churches or synagogues and nine religious schools. It has its own (religious) neighborhood association.

And this quiet little corner of the city has been the scene of a pitched battle over a plan to build 182 housing units on an empty patch of land on the north side of the street.

Opponents of the project say the area was set aside for educational and religious uses, not housing — and they argue that the expansion of ParkMerced will add too much congestion to the area. Supporters say the west side of town needs to acept more housing and more density.

It’s gotten ugly: At one point, the Archbishop himself ordered the pastor of St. Thomas More Catholic Church to quit agitating against the development. Sean Elsbernd, who represented the district for eight years, infuriated neighbors when he supported the project, and later apologized for his insensitivity to their concerns.

And seven years after the Planning Commission and the supervisors gave the project a green light, it still hasn’t broken ground.
Now the developers are ready to go — and the churches, aided by retired Judge Quentin Kopp, are trying once again to shut it down.

Kopp’s been arguing for some time now that the project needs to go back for a new permit because too much time has passed and nothing has happened. But he’s got another argument, too, and he brought it to the Board of Appeals Jan. 9. See, the original deal had a problem with transit access, since there isn’t enough Muni capacity along Brotherhood to handle 300 or so new residents. So the developer agreed to build two pedestrian walkways from the project up to Font Blvd. in Park Merced. But according to Kopp’s appeal, ParkMerced management never agreed to the easements that would be necessary to build a path through its property.

Instead, in 2008, Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner unilaterally changed the requirement, allowing for one footpath to the edge of Park Merced — with some vague agreement that later there might be an extension to the Muni stop. That, Kopp argues, should have triggered a new Conditional Use application and a new hearing. Oh, and in the meantime, ParkMerced has just moved to greatly expand the size of its complex, so maybe that should be considered, too.

The Board of Appeals rejected Kopp’s arguments, but he’s petitioning for a rehearing, in part because the board chair wasn’t present for meeting. Kopp argues that this is a quasi-judicial board — “and you don’t go before the Supreme Court with only eight of the nine members present.” Under city rules, though, four out of five is a quorum and able to hear the matter.

Kopp has another argument, too — one that’s unusual, perhaps unique: He claims none of the board members actually read his original appeal brief.

Kopp, see, asked during the hearing if all of the members had read the papers he submitted, and none of them responded affirmatively. “It is appearent and inferable that no members of the short-handed Board of Appeals had read Appelants’ brief before the hearing, or at all,” the motion for rehearing states. “The manifest failure of the four members present to real Appellants’ carefully-prepared brief constitute extraordinary circumstances and injustice.”

I’ve been able to reach two of the board members, Frank Fung and Darryl Honda, and both insist they read the brief. “I read every case in its entirely,” Fung said, “and so does everyone on this panel.” Honda, who is new to the board, also said he read the documents. “I bust out the highlighter pen and go through all of the briefs in every case,” he said.

So why didn’t they answer Kopp’s question? Well, Fung says, it took them all by surprise: “I don’t think any one has every asked that before.”

I’ll let you know if the petition for rehearing is accepted.

The inauguration and the economic divide

Zelda Bronstein

-

January 21, 2013

112

The inauguration and the economic divide

Second inaugration speeches are hard; you have to be political without sounding partisan, inspiring without being divisive — and promise change and progress even if you haven’t accomplished what you wanted in the first term. The Obama address surprised me: He went left, making clear that he wants economic and social equality to be his final legacy. It’s getting rave reviews in the lib-blogosphere, where it’s been described as the speech liberals have been begging him to give for years. You can’t argue with the content — he mentions gay rights, global climate change, equal pay, protecting social security, economic inequality, the need for collective effort … he even talks about reforming the tax code.

So now comes the hard part: The struggle for economic justice has to go beyond a compromise plan that limits higher tax rates to people earning more than $400,000 a year.

In fact, the best thing I read this weekend was a NY Times piece by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who argues forcefully that continued economic inequality is prolonging the recession. It’s also destroying the nation’s future:

Our skyrocketing inequality — so contrary to our meritocratic ideal of America as a place where anyone with hard work and talent can “make it” — means that those who are born to parents of limited means are likely never to live up to their potential. Children in other rich countries like Canada, France, Germany and Sweden have a better chance of doing better than their parents did than American kids have. More than a fifth of our children live in poverty — the second worst of all the advanced economies, putting us behind countries like Bulgaria, Latvia and Greece. Our society is squandering its most valuable resource: our young.

Stiglitz says what few in Washington want to admit: We can’t get the economy going again without rebuilding the middle class, and we can’t do that without higher taxes on the rich and a lot more public investment in education. Oh, and all this talk of how it’s out of our control is bullshit:

There are all kinds of excuses for inequality. Some say it’s beyond our control, pointing to market forces like globalization, trade liberalization, the technological revolution, the “rise of the rest.” Others assert that doing anything about it would make us all worse off, by stifling our already sputtering economic engine. These are self-serving, ignorant falsehoods. Market forces don’t exist in a vacuum — we shape them. Other countries, like fast-growing Brazil, have shaped them in ways that have lowered inequality while creating more opportunity and higher growth. Countries far poorer than ours have decided that all young people should have access to food, education and health care so they can fulfill their aspirations.

Makes me think about some of what I hear out of San Francisco City Hall. Oh, we can’t do anything about economic inequality; that’s a national issue. Or maybe it’s a state issue. I bet there’s not an elected official in town today who woudn’t proclaim complete agreement with everything Obama just said — and there are very few of them who are trying to bring that message back home.

In San Francisco, we give tax breaks for businesses that create high-end jobs that drive poor people out of town. We happily seek development without considering the impact it will have on existing vulnerable populations. We even struggle over free Muni for low-income youth. We do nothing — nothing — to reclaim wealth from the 1 percent and put it into local housing, public education, and job-training that could make a dent in our local economic inequality.

Mr. Mayor: Are you even paying attention?

The (bad) Warriors deal, by the numbers

Zelda Bronstein

-

January 17, 2013

36

Rudy Nothenberg, who ran Muni and the city’s water system, was chief administrative officer, negotiated the deal for the Giants ballpark, and served under six San Francisco mayors, stopped by the office last week to talk to us about the Warriors Arena. We’ve had our fights with Nothenberg (as we would with anyone who was that close to Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein) but the guy knows more about City Hall, public works, private development, and infrastructure finance than almost anyone alive. So we were happy to hear what he had to say.

Let’s be clear, here: Nothenberg lives near where the arena is slated to be built, and, as he was quick to tell us, he doesn’t want it in his backyard. But he also presented a compelling case that San Francisco is getting ripped off. And he had a few pointed things to say about the lack of negotiating skills among the members of Mayor Ed Lee’s administration.

Back when Nothenberg was talking to the Giants about a stadium at Third and King — at that point a district of dilapidated and underused warehouses — always kept a card in his back pocket. “I always knew that if things didn’t work out and we didn’t build the stadium, that would be okay too,” he said. In other words: You can’t get a good deal if you’re not prepared to walk away. And when it comes to the Warriors proposal, the mayor has made it so clear that this is his legacy that the team knows the city will never walk away. So one side of the talks can demand pretty much anything, and the other side has no leverage.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that just about every development lawyer, political consultant, and lobbyist in town is already working on the project. “They have co-opted everyone,” Nothenberg — no stranger to the dark side of politics — told us.

The exact terms of the deal are still not public, which is a bit odd since the city has already started its environmental review. (Can you really do an environmental impact report on a project when you don’t know what the project actually is? Two difference state courts have come to opposite conclusions, so for now the answer is: maybe.)

But there’s enough information out there for Nothenberg to give us a basic rundown on the financing — and it doesn’t look good. “The Port is really not getting anything out of the deal,” he said. The city will get some increased sales and business taxes, and the Warriors will have to pay housing and transit fees. But there won’t be a lot of new property tax revenue, since that will all go to pay for the arena.

Here’s how Nothenberg laid out his analysis:

The Warriors have to spend $120 million to replace Piers 30-32. (Costs a lot to build such a huge structure over the water.) To make the team whole, the city will sell the Warriors a seawall lot on the other side of the Embarcadero for $30 million, then give the $30 million right back to the team. Then the city will set up an Infrastructure Finance District — the 2013 equivalent of a redevelopment agency — use the future tax increments to fund a $50 million bond. The Warriors get the bond money; the city pays it back. Oh, and then the city gives the team $30 million worth of rent credits, meaning the Warriors will probably never pay any rent at all for the use of that public property. And to make it sweeter, San Francisco will pay the Warriors 13 percent interest on the rent-credit money.

Meanwhile, the local taxpayers will have to come up with a huge amount of money to increase Muni capacity, since the existing transit can’t possibly handle the load of the new arena. Yes, the Warriors, like any developer, will have to pay a modest transit impact fee — “but it’s laughable to thing that this will ever cover the capital and operating costs,” Nothenberg said.

To summarize: The wealthy owners of a professional sports team will get free waterfront land to build an immensely valuable new arena. The city will pay to bring the fans there and get them home, deal with the traffic impacts — and get almost nothing in return.

Good one, Mr. Mayor.

SFBOS grab bag: Diva Breed, Yee’s jig, delayed Chiu, and more

Sasha Cuttler

-

January 11, 2013

10

SFBOS grab bag: Diva Breed, Yee’s jig, delayed Chiu, and more

Now that the dust has settled from this week’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors inauguration and presidential vote, I thought I’d return to a few random gems that were still stuck in my notebook, waiting to see the light of day.

Under the heading of There’s a New Diva under the Dome, new D5 Sup. London Breed didn’t wait for the official noon inauguration prescribed by the City Charter to take her oath of office, instead holding a packed event at 10am in the North Light Court, where her oath was administered by a key supporter, Attorney General Kamala Harris.

“I held a swearing in earlier to be able to have a large crowd of supporters,” was how Breed explained it to her colleagues later, and it’s certainly true that attendance at the official event was limited by the size of the room. But it’s equally true that gathering a who’s who list of local power brokers to applaud Breed’s ascendance as a key swing vote sends the signal that she expects to be at the table when the big deals get cut.

President David Chiu, who is also no stranger to political power plays, sounded a tone of humble leadership after maneuvering himself with closed-door negotiations into an unprecedented third consecutive term as president, noting that there is still much more work to do.

In fact, Chiu said he was almost late for Breed’s event because, “my bike light got stolen, the Muni bus was late, and then I had a hard time catching a cab.”

Sup. Eric Mar revisited his reelection race last year with a huge understatement – “In my campaign, I had to do a little more work than my colleagues did.” – noting that he and his supporters overcame an unprecedented $1 million in spending against them: “We sent a strong message that the Richmond District is not for sale and never will be.”

Sup. John Avalos gave credit for his surprisingly easy reelection campaign to a unlikely but deserving source: journalist Chris Roberts, who uncovered evidence that Avalos challenger Leon Chow didn’t really live in the district, which he reported in SF Appeal, forcing Chow to withdraw from the race. Avalos called Roberts “an honorary member of our campaign.”

Meetings like this are often just dripping in sanctimony, and this one was no exception, so it was nice to see a moment of genuine child-like exuberance from new D7 Sup. Norman Yee, who at 63 is about twice as old as most of his colleagues. As he thanked supporters and laid out his goals, Yee suddenly seemed overcome by this opportunity, smiling broadly, doing a little jig, and declaring, “Darn, I’m excited!”

I was less impressed by the rambling mini-lecture that Cohen gave on the topic of leadership before she withdrew her nomination as president. “That’s what leadership is about, stepping forward, outside your comfort zone, and doing things,” said the supervisor with a scant legislative record as she quit the race for president before her colleagues were even given the chance to vote on what she said was the importance of having a women of color in charge. “Every person here has that leadership quality within them.”

From both supervisors and the general public, there were also a number of statements made about the history of the board presidency that were not quite right, particularly as it pertained to Cohen and Jane Kim nominating one another for president and the issue women of color being nominated for that slot.

So, for the record, the last time a woman of color (former D10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell) was nominated for board president was 10 years ago. The last time a woman served as president was Barbara Kaufman (1997-99). And the last time there was a woman of color serving as president was Doris Ward, who served from 1991 to mid-1992 when she left to become Assessor. Also, the last three-term president was John Molinari, who served from 1979-83 and ’85-’87.

The most colorful moment in public comment was when nudism activist Gypsy Taub came clad in homemade hat that urged people to oppose and recall Sup. Scott Wiener. But because Wiener had already said he wouldn’t accept a nomination as president, she turned her criticism on Chiu, who was also slammed by another leftist speaker who told supervisors, “If you can’t prevent David Chiu from being president, we deserve to be slaves.”

Finally, the meeting included an unremarkable speech by Mayor Ed Lee, who pledged to work with each supervisor and offered this unsupported claim, “We continue to make sure this city is successful for everyone.”