Rent Control

Small biz should support Chiu tax plan

David Talbot
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A new proposal to make the flat payroll tax more progressive and exempt more small businesses

EDITORIAL It’s rare to see a fairly conservative city agency, created in part to make it harder for progressives to push measures that might affect business, come down in favor of a new business tax. But the San Francisco Office of Economic Analysis has concluded that the proposal by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu to change the local payroll tax and impose a new tax on commercial rents would actually help local businesses, particularly small businesses. The proposal presents a crucial opportunity for progressives to make the case that the Chamber of Commerce and big downtown corporations are not advancing the interests of small businesses — and local merchant groups need to pay attention.

Chiu has taken on a problem that has lingered in San Francisco for decades. The city’s business tax is terribly regressive: Only 10 percent of the companies in town even pay the payroll tax, in part because banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms are exempt under state law. That means the burden falls the heaviest on small and medium-sized companies — the ones that provide most of the net job growth in the city.

The new proposal would make the flat payroll tax more progressive and would exempt more small businesses. It would also raise $28 million more a year for the cash-strapped municipal coffers by taxing commercial rents of more than $60,000 a year.

The commercial rent levy would force the big outfits that now pay no city taxes whatsoever to take on at least some of the burden of financing San Francisco government. Smaller companies with modest leases, and small commercial landlords, wouldn’t pay the new tax at all.

Chiu originally had proposed an even broader tax, which would have raised more than $35 million. But after the Small Business Commission expressed concerns, he changed the measure, reducing the burden on small business even further. And at this point, Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist at the Office of Economic Analysis, reports that the tax would lead to greater job creation in the private sector (because of the reduction in the payroll tax) as well as greater job creation in the public sector (because of the additional revenue to the city).

It’s the kind of idea that ought to have broad-based support — progressives looking to fund crucial services see it as a way to bring in money, and small businesses ought to see it as a way to cut taxes and create jobs in the sector of the city that most needs economic stimulus.

Unfortunately, the response from small business leaders hasn’t been encouraging. The commission hasn’t taken a stand on the measure; on July 12th, the panel deadlocked 2-2, with one member absent and two slots still vacant (the mayor hasn’t filled them). That lets the big downtown players — the Chamber, the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on JOBS, etc. — in a position to claim that the Chiu proposal is anti-business.

We’ve seen this pattern far too often. Small business groups allow big corporations, which have no interest in the real issues that impact local merchants, stick the little folks out front on political issues. We’ve seen it over the years with public power, commercial rent control, downtown development, and taxes — and it needs to stop.

The Small Business Commission, the Council of District Merchants, all the local community merchant groups, and anyone else who really cares about the interests of small business in San Francisco should support the Chiu measure. It’s a tax plan that’s good for small business. And if the advocates don’t realize that, they’re hurting themselves, the customers, and the city.

Another bloody budget

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Another bloody budget

rebeccab@sfbg.com

In the days since June 1, when Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled his proposal for San Francisco’s $6.48 billion budget for the next fiscal year, public sector employees and community organizations have been poring over the hefty document to determine how their jobs, services, and programs survived cuts made to close a $483 million shortfall.

For police and firefighters, a key Newsom constituency, the news is good. There were no layoffs to San Francisco firefighters, and while members of the Police Officer’s Association gave up $9.3 million in wage concessions under the lucrative contract Newsom gave them a few years ago, police officers will still receive a 4 percent wage increase on July 1.

For others, the release of the mayor’s budget signified a tough fight looming before the Board of Supervisors, one with high stakes. Cuts to homeless services, mental health care, youth programs, and housing assistance, along with privatization proposals, have raised widespread concern among labor and liberal advocacy organizations. Public input on the budget will continue at the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee until July 15, when the amended document is considered by the full board.

At a June 1 announcement ceremony, Newsom asserted that the budget was balanced “without draconian cuts,” saying, “We were able to avoid the kind of cataclysmic devastation that some had argued was inevitable in this budget.”

Nearly a week later, Board President David Chiu told the Guardian that sort of cataclysm wouldn’t be staved off for long if the city continues on the course of repeatedly making deep budget cuts without proposing any significant new sources of revenue.

“Now that the smoke has cleared, it is clear that the mayor’s proposed budget is perfect for a mayor who is only going to be around for the short term, but it does not address the long-term fiscal crisis that our city is in,” Chiu said. “Next year, we’re looking at over a $700 million budget deficit. The year after that, we’re looking at almost an $800 million budget deficit. The budget proposal that Newsom put out balances the … deficit on many one-time tricks and assumptions of uncertain revenue.”

Meanwhile, advocates said even the cuts proposed this time would bring serious consequences, especially with unemployment on the rise, state programs being cut in Sacramento, and families feeling the pinch more than ever.

“Poor and working class families, and families of color in San Francisco, are facing kind of an assault on funding and on safety net services on multiple levels,” said Chelsea Boilard, family policy and communications associate for Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. “I think a lot of it is that families are concerned about their ability to stay in the city and raise their kids here.”

 

“NO NEW TAXES”

During the budget announcement, Newsom emphasized the positive. He found $12 million in new revenue simply by closing a loophole that had allowed Internet-based companies to avoid paying that amount in hotel taxes. He said 350 currently occupied positions would be cut, but noted that it was less than a cap of 425 that public sector unions had agreed to. Cuts were inevitable since the ailing economy inflicted the city’s General Fund with significant losses, particularly from business and property tax revenues.

Nonetheless, Newsom’s budget is already coming under fire from progressive leaders. For one, there are no new revenue-generating measures in the form of general taxes, which could have averted the worst blows to critical safety-net services and might help remedy the city’s economic woes in the long-term.

“There are no new taxes in this budget,” Newsom declared. “I know some folks just prefer tax increases. I don’t.”

Yet Chiu said many of Newsom’s assumptions for revenue were on shaky ground, prompting City Controller Ben Rosenfield — Newsom’s former budget director — to place $142 million on reserve in case the projected revenues don’t pan out.

“These budget deficits continue as far as the eye can see,” Chiu noted. “Even if those amounts come in, something like 90 percent of them are one-time fixes. So even if the mayor is right, it doesn’t solve next year’s problem, or the year after. Which is why many of us at the board believe that we have to consider additional revenue proposals to think about the long-term fiscal health of the city.”

Sup. John Avalos, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, described Newsom’s budget as “pretty much an all-cuts budget,” noting that he and Chiu planned to introduce revenue-generating measures. They were expected to introduce proposals — including an increase in the hotel tax and a change in the business tax — at the June 8 board meeting.

Because despite Newsom’s rosy assessment, many of his proposed cuts are deep and painful: the Recreation and Park Department would be cut by 42 percent (with its capital projects budget slashed by 90 percent), Economic and Workforce Development by 34 percent, Ethics Commission by 23 percent (basically eliminating public financing for candidates), Department of the Environment by 14 percent, Emergency Management by 10 percent, and the list goes on.

 

CUTS TO SOCIAL SERVICES

Progressives say Newsom’s budget reflects skewed priorities. While relatively little is asked of public safety departments, health and human services programs face major staffing and funding losses. “Poor people are being asked to shoulder the burden,” noted Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

Nearly $31 million would be slashed from the Department of Public Health, and more than $22 million would be cut from the Human Services Agency under Newsom’s proposed budget. While this reflects only 2–3 percent of the departmental budgets, there’s widespread concern that the cuts target programs designed to shield the most vulnerable residents.

Proposals that deal with housing are of special concern. “We have more and more families moving into SRO hotel rooms. We have families in garages. We have a really scary situation for many families,” Friedenbach said.

Affordable housing programs within the Mayor’s Office of Housing would get slashed from $16.8 million currently down to just $1.2 million, a 92 percent cut. Other cuts seem small, but will have big impacts of those affected. Newsom’s budget eliminates 42 housing subsidies, which boost rent payments for families on the brink of homelessness, for a savings of $264,000. Meanwhile, a locally funded program that subsidizes housing costs for people with AIDS would be cut, for a savings of $559,000.

Transitional housing would be affected, too, such as 59 beds at a homeless shelter on Otis Street, which Friedenbach says would be lost under Newsom’s budget proposal. “We’ve already lost more than 400 shelter beds since Newsom came to office, so that’d be a huge hit,” she said. Since the recession began, she added, the wait-list at shelters has tripled. The Ark House, a temporary housing facility that serves LGBT youth, would also be closed.

Overall, homeless services delivered by HSA would take a $12 million hit in Newsom’s budget, or about 13 percent, offset slightly by homeless services being increased by $2 million within the Mayor’s Office budget, a 71 percent increase.

Outpatient mental health services, such as Community Behavioral Health Services, would also be affected (See “Cutting from the bottom”), in violation of current city law. Several years ago, then-Sup. Tom Ammiano introduced legislation establishing a “single standard of care” to guarantee access to mental health services for indigent and uninsured residents.

“If timely, effective, and coordinated mental health treatment is not provided to indigent and uninsured residents who are not seriously mentally ill, those residents are at risk of becoming seriously mentally ill and hence requiring more expensive and comprehensive mental health care from San Francisco,” according to the ordinance, which was passed in June of 2005. Newsom’s budget proposes changing this legislation to enable cuts to those services, which would result in 1,600 people losing treatment, according to Friedenbach.

Unfortunately, advocates for the poor has gotten used to this ritual of trying to restore cuts made by Newsom. “There are some sacred cows that seem to survive year after year, and then we’re left fighting over what we can get,” said Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC).

The Central City SRO Collaborative, which supports tenants living in single-room occupancy hotels in the mid-Market Street area and is operated through THC, is slated to be cut by 40 percent along with three other similar programs — a replay from last year when the mayor proposed eliminating funding and the Board of Supervisors restored the cut.

“I think you’d see more fires, more people dying from overdoses. You’d see really bad conditions,” Jeff Buckley, director of the program, told us of the potential consequences of eliminating the inspections and resident training that is part of the program.

Funding was also eliminated for THC’s Ellis Eviction Defense Program, the city’s only free legal defense program with capacity to serve 55 low-income tenants facing eviction under the Ellis Act.

 

THREAT TO RENTERS

One of the most controversial proposals to emerge from Newsom’s budget is a way for property owners and real estate speculators to buy their way out of the city lottery that limits conversion of rental properties and tenants-in-common (TICs) to privately-owned condos if they pay between $4,000 and $20,000 (depending on how long they have waited for conversion), a proposal to raise about $8 million for the city.

“I went back and forth because I know the Board of Supervisors can’t stand this,” Newsom said as he broached the subject at the June 1 announcement. “I still don’t get this argument completely. Except it’s a big-time ideological discussion. It’s so darn ideological that I think it gets in the way of having a real discussion.”

Yet Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said the argument is quite clear: making it easier to convert rental units into condos will accelerate the loss of rental housing in a city where two-thirds of residents are tenants, in the process encouraging real estate speculation and evictions.

“It will encourage TIC conversions and evictions because it makes the road to converting TICs to condos that much easier,” Gullicksen said. “It’s going to be a huge gift to real estate speculators.”

Newsom press secretary Tony Winnicker disputes that impact, saying that “these units were going to convert anyway, whether next year or six years. This merely accelerates that conversion without altering the lottery to protect jobs and services.”

But Gullicksen said the proposal obviously undermines the lottery system, which is the only tool tenant advocates have to preserve the finite supply of rent-controlled apartments, noting that even if the condos are later rented out, they will no longer to subject to rent control. That’s one reason why the Board of Supervisors has repeatedly rejected this idea, and why Newsom probably knows they will do so again.

Avalos said he and other progressive supervisors will oppose the proposal, despite the difficulties that will create in balancing the budget. “It’s kind of like putting a gun to our heads,” Avalos said of Newsom’s inclusion of that revenue in his budget.

To offset that revenue loss, Avalos has proposed a tax on alcohol sold in bars and Gullicksen is proposing the city legalize illegal housing units that are in habitable condition for property owners willing to pay an amnesty fee.

Some housing advocates were also struck by the timing of proposing condo conversion fees while also eliminating the Ellis Eviction Defense Program. “We’re really the only ones doing this,” Shaw noted. He said the program is crucial because it serves low-income tenants, many of whom are monolingual Chinese or Spanish speakers who lack the ability to pay for private attorneys to resist aggressive landlords.

 

PRIVATIZATION PROPOSALS RETURN

The Department of Children, Youth. and Families budget would be reduced by 20 percent under Newsom’s budget, with the greatest cuts affecting after school and youth leadership programs. Roughly a $3 million cut will result in the loss of around 300 subsidized slots for after school programs, said Boilard of Coleman Youth Advocates. Another $3 million is expected to come out of violence-prevention programs for troubled youth; an additional $1 million would affect youth jobs programs.

Patricia Davis, a Child Protective Services employee who lives in the Mission District with her two teenage sons, said she was concerned about the implications for losses to youth programs, particularly during the summer. “You can imagine what’s going to happen this summer,” she said. “I feel that a lot of kids are going to do a lot of things that they have no business doing.”

Davis, who says she’ll have to look for a new job come Sept. 30 because the federal stimulus package funding that supports her position will run out, said she was not happy to hear that police officers would be getting raises just as that summer school programs are being threatened with closure. “Couldn’t the 4 percent [raise] go somewhere else — like to the children?” she wondered.

Meanwhile, privatization proposals are causing anxiety for SEIU Local 1021 members, who recently gave millions in wage concessions and furloughs along with other public employees to help balance the budget. A proposal to contract out for jail health services cropped up last year and was shot down by the board, but it’s back again.

“When you make it a for-profit enterprise, the bottom line is the profit. It’s not about the health care,” SEIU Local 1021 organizer Gabriel Haaland told us. “It isn’t the same quality of care.”

Haaland said he believes the mayor’s assumption that the proposal could save $13 million should be closely examined. Other privatization schemes would contract out for security at city museums and hospitals.

Institutional police in the mental health ward at SF General Hospital and other sensitive facilities are well trained and experienced with difficult situations so, Haaland said, “the workers feel a lot safer” than they would with private contractors.

Regarding Newsom’s privatization proposal, Avalos said the board was “opposed last year and the year before, and we’ll oppose [them] this year.”

In the coming weeks, Avalos and other members of the Budget and Finance Committee will carefully go over Newsom’s proposed budget — which is now being sized up by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose’s office — and solicit input from the public. Chances are, they’ll get an earful.

“People are scared. They are scared to death right now,” Boilard said. “As it is, people’s hours are being reduced. And it’s getting harder and harder to find a job because so many people are out of work that the level of competition has gotten really fierce. This is the time that we need to invest in safety net services for young people and families more than ever — and all those services and programs and relationships that people depend on are disappearing.”

Steven T. Jones and Kaitlyn Paris contributed to this report.

Triumph of tenacity

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Triumph of tenacity

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Nearly four years after City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit against Frank and Walter Lembi and their dizzying array of companies affiliated with CitiApartments for “an outrageous pattern of corporate lawlessness,” the powerful and notorious San Francisco landlords have watched their empire crumble.

The Lembi empire consisted of more 300 apartment buildings in San Francisco at its peak. Four Lembi subsidiaries that owned 16 buildings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. Twenty Lembi properties were taken over by Lennar spin-off LNR in late May; another 24 buildings are slated to be foreclosed in early June; 51 were deeded back to UBS bank in lieu of foreclosure early last year; and still others are now held by court-appointed receivers and managed by Laramar, an unaffiliated property-management company.

CitiApartments still owns and manages a large portion of the buildings it controlled in its heyday, but it’s had to either restructure loans or get payment extensions to hold onto many of them, according to general counsel Ed Singer. The Lembi Group staff has dwindled, and a team of 18 dedicated solely to relocating tenants is now long gone.

For many renters in foreclosed units who managed to ride out what San Francisco Tenants Union director Ted Guillicksen has labeled CitiApartments’ “war of terror” against its occupants, the dust has finally settled. Gullicksen says that living in limbo is better than living under Lembi.

There are no more harassing phone calls pressuring them to move. No more sudden utility shutoffs. No armed agents showing up at the doorstep unannounced. No illegal construction projects clamoring away on the other side of paper-thin walls, destroying any hope of tranquility at home.

These are tactics CitiApartments used to drive people out, according Herrera’s 2006 complaint and an award-winning Guardian series (“The Scumlords,” March 25), in order to vacate units so they could be renovated and removed from rent control protections. A San Francisco Rent Board roster of 174 current and former Lembi properties as of May 25 lists no fewer than 1,890 cases associated with those buildings, the majority of them now settled.

While the sordid history of CitiApartments’ strong-arm tactics has been well-documented, tenant-rights advocates say the untold story of the Lembis’ rise and demise is that its entire business model hinged on evicting and relocating existing tenants — but that strategy failed, in large part because of a grassroots organizing effort that emboldened renters to stand their ground.

“The economic downturn played a role in it because the money stopped flowing,” says Gullicksen, who helped form the CitiStop Campaign in 2004 in response to reports of outrageous tactics. “But if the money kept flowing, I think they would have failed anyway. The end result was inevitable, given the tenant resistance.”

Darin Dawson moved into his apartment at 2 Guerrero St. in 1994 on a lease secured through the federal Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS program. Dawson, who was diagnosed in 1987, said things turned sour in 1998 when Trophy Properties I DE LLC — one of the Lembis’ dozens of subsidiaries — snapped it up.

Their first contact was to inform him that he would have to move “because we don’t allow those kinds of leases in our buildings,” he recalled. He fought it with the help of the Housing Authority and managed to stay put. It was the first in a series of standoffs that ultimately stopped last September when the property was repossessed.

“Basically, I just dug my heels in and knew that I couldn’t get evicted,” Dawson said. Nonetheless, he spent years embroiled in conflict with the Lembi subsidiary while also battling AIDS-related illnesses.

There was the time he was ordered to vacate his apartment for two weeks during a seismic retrofit only to find it trashed when he returned. “The floors were ripped up,” he said. “The ceiling was hanging in some places. There was black grease smeared all over the walls.” He repaired it himself. Then came the constant phone calls, which started off artificially cheerful but turned threatening if he refused to accept money to relocate.

Dawson pays a base amount of $635 per month for his rent-controlled studio, so he suspected he might be a target. Once a residential manager discreetly warned him that his name was on a “hit list” of tenants whom the owners wanted gone, he said.

According to a confidential document leaked to advocates by an anonymous source, tenants who paid the least came under the greatest pressure to relocate since San Francisco rent-control laws prohibit raising existing occupants’ rents to market rate. The document outlines how loan repayment and estimated profits were calculated wholly on the expectation that existing tenants would vacate, rather than relying on normal projections like natural turnover.

“Tenants with significantly below market rents are chosen for thorough screening to see if they might be relocated,” according to the document, a 2008 Credit Suisse prospectus concerning a pool of 24 buildings under Lembi ownership that have since been foreclosed. “Those tenants most below market and/or with the longest history are the priority for relocation.”

All 24 buildings in question — including properties on Larkin, Market, Cesar Chavez, Post, and Leavenworth streets, in addition to others — were subject to rent control. “At acquisition [Aug. 30, 2007], the portfolio was approximately 5 percent vacant,” it notes. “As of May 2008 the portfolio was 19 percent vacant, as a result of Lembi successfully executing their business plan of vacating units and rolling them to market.”

Although the paperwork spelling this out in stark terms didn’t surface until recently, advocates who worked on the CitiStop campaign essentially figured it out years ago. A collaboration between the Tenants Union, Pride at Work, and other advocacy groups, the campaign sent organizers door-to-door to inform tenants of their rights, hosted potlucks where people could swap horror stories and forge alliances, and staged demonstrations outside CitiApartments’ Market Street offices.

They tracked public records from the Assessor-Recorder Office and swooped in to warn tenants whose buildings had fallen into the Lembis’ clutches. It didn’t always work. According to the Credit Suisse document, Lembi had relocated 2,500 units as of August 2008, a fact pointed to as evidence of its “successful track record.” But the relocation team only drove out a small number of the lowest-paying tenants; the vast majority of those who took buyout offers left units that paid closer to market rate.

“They really needed to get more turnover than what they accomplished,” Gullicksen said. “The fact that they couldn’t is attributable to the CitiStop campaign.”

Singer rejected this assessment, saying the real problem was the economic downturn and the loss of capital availability. “I can see why they want to say that, why they want to take credit for bringing down the Lembis,” he said. “But I don’t think it would have made any difference if [tenants] left or not.”

A common complaint nowadays is that former tenants haven’t gotten their security deposits back, a matter that has spurred a class-action lawsuit against 57 corporate defendants associated with the Lembi Group.

“They’re claiming that they have no money,” Brian Devine, an attorney with Seeger Salvas LLP, told the Guardian. Devine estimates that he will end up representing several thousand tenants who are entitled to their deposits. In March, a judge awarded sanctions of $30,000 to Devine’s firm because the Lembi Group refused to cooperate with discovery, withholding documents necessary for the case to proceed.

Herrera has encountered a similar recalcitrance in his own suit and won court sanctions of $50,000 in February for the same reason. “We have been engaged in discovery for a long, long time,” noted city attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey. “We’re hoping that the judge is at the edge of his patience.”

Singer said the problem was that there wasn’t enough “people power” to photocopy thousands of documents. The Lembis were never up to any nefarious purpose, Singer insisted — they only wanted to make the buildings nicer. As for the tenants who endured the most brutal relocation tactics? “I can understand why they didn’t want to leave,” he said. “Some of them didn’t leave — and they’re still there.”

Affordable housing group’s shady, “shameless” endorsements

Zelda Bronstein
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Editors note: This article orginally ran in October, 2000.T


he Brown machine’s soft money operation is churning out some very
duplicitous propaganda. While we haven’t seen many mailers attacking
independent candidates yet (they’re usually deployed in the final days
of the campaign, when the targets don’t have a chance to respond), we’ve
come across flyers that aim to portray business-friendly machine
candidates as champions of progressive causes.



Perhaps the most egregious comes from an organization called the
Affordable Housing Alliance.



Once a legitimate tenant advocacy group, the AHA does little these days
except endorse candidates and send out mailers during election season.
Numerous well-known tenant activists say the AHA reflexively promotes
the candidates of the Willie Brown machine — no matter where they
stand on tenant issues.



And from what we’ve learned about the group’s endorsement process, AHA
director Mitchell Omerberg isn’t even trying to give the group the
appearance of legitimacy.



Omerberg, who works as a deputy city attorney for San Francisco, was
active in the 1979 fight for rent control. We called him several times
and left messages at the AHA, at his home, and at his city office. He
never called us back or faxed us a copy of the group’s endorsements.
The shenanigans began when Omerberg invited candidates to speak at the
AHA’s endorsement meeting. Chris Daly, the District Six hopeful who has
inspired more enthusiasm from tenant activists than any other candidate
in the city, wasn’t even invited. Daly told us his campaign called
Omerberg to ask when the meeting was scheduled, and Omerberg never
called back.


At the Sept. 28 meeting, the candidates whom Omerberg did invite made
their speeches. Then the group’s supposed members voted on the club’s
endorsements. But it’s not clear who most of those members are or where
they came from.


Progressive activist Richard Ow, who probably attends more political
meetings than anyone in San Francisco, told us he didn’t recognize a
single other tenant activist among the voting members. Ow sits on the
boards of the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Housing Rights Committee,
and the Senior Action Network and is active in dozens of other tenant
groups.


The most egregious maneuver came at the end of the meeting. According
to District One supervisorial candidate Jake McGoldrick (one of the few
people who stayed until the end) Omerberg refused to open the ballot box
and tally up the votes there and then.



Instead, he insisted on taking the ballot box home with him.
Apparently Omerberg prefers to count the ballots alone: one former AHA
member, who asked to remain anonymous, told us he did the same thing
after at least two endorsement meetings in years past.


Alex Wong, chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, helped
Omerberg run the meeting, introducing the candidates and watching the
clock as they spoke. Wong, a Brown ally, told us he didn’t know if Omerberg had taken the ballots home with him; he says he, too, had left the meeting by that point. Then he got off the phone, saying he’d call
us back. He never did.



With Omerberg and Wong keeping mum, we couldn’t track down a copy of
the group’s endorsement list. (McGoldrick campaign manager Jerry Threet
says he asked Omerberg for a copy and Omerberg flat out refused.) But an
AHA mailer sent to tenant voters in the Richmond provides a clue.
“Renters have two choices in the November election,” the flyer
proclaims. “Michael Yaki will preserve rent control. Rose Tsai wants to
repeal it.”


Of course, Richmond renters have more than two choices. There are five
candidates on the District One ballot, including McGoldrick. McGoldrick
has been active on tenant issues for decades, including a term as a San
Francisco Rent Board commissioner from 1988 to 1992 and another as
cochair of the now defunct Housing and Tenants Council, an umbrella
coalition for the movement.


“Jake has a long history of being pro-tenant, from his days on the Rent
Board to doing grassroots work on every tenant campaign and every piece
of tenant legislation,” said Ted Gullicksen of the Tenants Union. The
city’s preeminent renters’ advocacy group, the Tenants Union gave
McGoldrick its enthusiastic endorsement. If you believe the AHA’s
mailer, he’s not even in the race.


On the other hand, Gullicksen said, “Yaki initiated legislation to stop
owner move-in evictions — but then, under pressure from landlords,
killed it himself. Since then he has consistently been against tenants
and with the real estate industry.”


That’s the candidate of the Affordable Housing Alliance. Yaki has a
strong claim on AHA support: he is backed by Willie Brown, of whom he
has been a stalwart ally, and Omerberg worked on Yaki’s 1998 campaign
for the board.


“As a tenant who went through an owner-move-in eviction, I strongly
believe in protecting our rent-control laws and stringently enforcing
protections for seniors and the disabled,” Yaki told us through his
consultant Ellie Schafer. “I am proud to have supported all the measures
which passed the Board of Supervisors expanding OMI and Ellis Act
protections.” (Note Yaki’s careful phrasing: he supported the measures
that passed, and opposed the measures that failed. The same can be said
for most of Willie Brown’s other appointees; that’s why those measures
passed and the others failed.)


The AHA also endorsed Meagan Levitan in District Three, according to a
Levitan mailer. Her opponent Aaron Peskin, who spoke at the endorsement
meeting, has the support of the Tenants Union and just about every other
legitimate tenant activist. Yaki and Levitan are both endorsed by the
Small Property Owners Association and the San Francisco Apartment
Association, which lobby for landlords.


The AHA’s endorsements of Yaki and Levitan were no surprise to longtime
members of the tenant movement. “Historically, the Affordable Housing
Alliance hasn’t endorsed credible pro-tenant supervisors,” Robert
Haaland of the Housing Rights Committee told us. “It’s a group that’s
used to perpetuate machine candidates. It’s another shameless example of
how the machine stays in power.”

Realtors send deceptive mailer to SF renters

Sasha Cuttler
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Realtors send deceptive mailer to SF renters

The San Francisco Association of Realtors, which has a long history of actively opposing the protection of tenants and rental housing, now wants tenants to believe it is on their side. The Realtors even recently formed and funded the Committee to Preserve Rental Housing to alert tenants about a ballot measure that they say favors dreaded rich people.

The only problem: It’s complete bullshit.

“Wealthy tenants will benefit most if Proposition F passes,” warns a mailer that landed this week in the mailboxes of San Francisco apartment dwellers, referring a local ballot measure that would allow renters to delay rent increases if they lose their job or their salaries dip by 20 percent or more.

But the mailer warns that the measure would somehow favor rich renters, citing this example: “Take a tenant whose annual income has dropped, for any reason, from $250,000 to $200,000. Under Proposition F, that tenant would be able to apply for financial hardship status and, at the discretion of a public official, qualify for financial relief.”

Yet the measure doesn’t really allow that scenario. Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, which helped draft the measure, points out that it only applies to renters who pay 33 percent or more of their incomes in rent, which in the Realtors’ example, would be a $5,500 per month home.

“Which, even in San Francisco, is pretty high,” he said. Plus, the Rent Board (that “public official” the mailer darkly warns of) could still tell that poor rich guy, sorry, you’re denied, perhaps it’s time to find a slightly cheaper place to live. But Gullicksen said he’s not surprised at such a deceptive attack from the Realtors (which formed the group on April 30 using campaign attorney Jim Sutton, downtown’s usual dirty trickster, according to an Ethics Commission filing).

“The Realtors over the years have increasingly taken the lead in fighting rent control measures, so they are now even more active than groups like San Francisco Apartment Association,” Gullicksen said, noting the Realtors have also pushed hard on ending condo conversion limits and other efforts to protect rental housing. “The individual Realtors are also landlords and speculators to a great degree.”

I called the Association of Realtors for comment and am waiting for a return call, but I’ll add their response as a comment if and when I hear back.

Gullicksen was confident renters would see through the mailer, particularly because it was required by law to include the line “major funding by San Francisco Association of Realtors.” He’s more worried about voter turnout, which could be low for the June 8 election. And even though two-thirds of San Franciscans are renters, they aren’t the most reliable voters and could constitute as low as 40 percent of voters in this election.

So if you rent, don’t be fooled and don’t forget to vote.

Fiona Ma’s cash machine

Zelda Bronstein
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Fiona Ma’s cash machine

Why does Assembly member Fiona Ma take on odd causes like ending rent control for trailer parks?


Maybe it’s because almost 90 percent of the money she raises comes from outside her district. From the Chron today:


But San Francisco’s Fiona Ma, who was elected in 2006 and quickly rose to power within the Democratic Caucus, took the top spot when it came to sheer cash collected out of district: $1.68 million. Ma, now speaker pro tempore, raised more campaign cash from outside her district than either of the leaders of both houses. Her outside contributions made up 88 percent of the money she raised, placing her 29th in funds raised outside the district. Ma attributed the prolific fundraising to her involvement in statewide issues, such as high-speed rail, agriculture and domestic violence, that take her on the road. She said that as a member of the Assembly’s Democratic leadership – and someone from a safe Democratic district – she funnels a lot of money to other candidates. But she said the interests of her San Francisco constituents are well served because her high profile helps her promote those interests.


ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Editor’s note: the file below contains a correction, updated May 5 2010. 


National races


U.S. SENATE, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA BOXER


The Republican Party is targeting this race as one of its top national priorities, and if the GOP can dislodge a three-term senator from California, it will be a major blow for the party (and agenda) of President Obama. The pundits are happily talking about how much danger Barbara Boxer faces, how the country’s mood is swinging against big-government liberals.


But it’s always a mistake to count out Boxer. In 1982, as a Marin County supervisor with little name recognition in San Francisco, she trounced then-SF Sup. Louise Renne for an open Congressional seat. Ten years later, she beat the odds and won a hotly contested primary and tough general election to move into the Senate. She’s a fierce campaigner, and with no primary opposition, will have a united party behind her.


Boxer is one of the most progressive members of the not-terribly progressive U.S. Senate. She’s been one of the strongest, most consistent supporters of reproductive rights in Washington and a friend of labor (with 100 percent ratings from the AFL-CIO and National Education Association). We’ve had our disagreements: Boxer supported No Child Left Behind, wrote the law allowing airline pilots to carry guns in the cockpit, and was weak on same-sex marriage when San Francisco sought to legalize it (although she’s come around). But she was an early and stalwart foe of the war in Iraq, split with her own party to oppose a crackdown on illegal immigration, and is leading the way on accountability for Wall Street. She richly deserves reelection, and we’re happy to endorse her.


 


CONGRESS, 6TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


LYNN WOOLSEY


It’s odd that the representative from Marin and Sonoma counties is more progressive by far than her colleague to the south, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi. But over the years, Lynn Woolsey has been one of the strongest opponents of the war, a voice against bailouts for the big Wall Street banks, and a foe of cuts in the social safety net. We’re proud to endorse her for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 7TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


GEORGE MILLER


George Miller has been representing this East Bay district since 1974, and is now the chair of the Education and Labor Committee and a powerhouse in Congress. He’s too prone to compromise (with George W. Bush on education policy) but is taking the right line on California water (while Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the wrong side). We’ll endorse him for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 8TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


NANCY PELOSI


We’ve never been terribly pleased with San Francisco’s most prominent Congressional representative. Nancy Pelosi was the author of the bill that created the first privatized national park at the Presidio, setting a horrible standard that parks ought to be about making money. She was weak on opposing the war, ducked same-sex marriage, and has used her clout locally for all the wrong candidates and issues. But we have to give her credit for resurrecting and pushing through the health care bill (bad as it was — and it’s pretty bad — it’s better than doing nothing). And, at a time when the Republicans are trying to derail the Obama presidency, she’s become a pretty effective partner for the president.


Her fate as speaker (and her future in this seat) probably depends on how the Democrats fare in the midterm Congressional elections this fall. But if she and the party survive in decent shape, she needs to take the opportunity to undo the damage she did at the Presidio.


 


CONGRESS, 9TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA LEE


Barbara Lee, who represents Berkeley and Oakland, is co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House, one of the most consistent liberal votes in Congress, and a hero to the antiwar movement. In 2001, she was the only member of either house to oppose the Bush administration’s Use of Force resolution following the 9/11 attacks, and she’s never let up on her opposition to foolish military entanglements. We’re glad she’s doing what Nancy Pelosi won’t — represent the progressive politics of her district in Washington.


 


CONGRESS, 13TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


PETE STARK


Most politicians mellow and get more moderate as they age; Stark is the opposite. He announced a couple of years ago that he’s an atheist (the only one in Congress), opposed the Iraq war early, called one of his colleagues a whore for the insurance industry, and insulted President Bush and refused to apologize, saying: “I may have dishonored the commander-in-chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me.” He served as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee for exactly one day — March 3 — before the Democratic membership overruled Speaker Pelosi and chucked him out on the grounds that he was too inflammatory. The 78-year-old may not be in office much longer, but he’s good on all the major issues. He’s also fearless. If he wants another term, he deserves one.


 


State races


GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


EDMUND G. BROWN


Jerry Brown? Which Jerry Brown? The small-is-beautiful environmentalist from the 1970s who opposed Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon nuke and created the California Conservation Corps, the Office of Appropriate Technology, and the Farm Labor Relations Board (all while running a huge budget surplus in Sacramento)? The angry populist who lashed out at corporate power on a KPFA radio talk show and ran against Bill Clinton for president? The pro-development mayor of Oakland who sided with the cops on crime issues and opened a military academy? Or the tough-on-crime attorney general who refuses to even talk about tax increases to solve the state’s gargantuan budget problems?


We don’t know. That’s the problem with Brown — you never know what he’ll do or say next. For now, he’s been a terribly disappointing candidate, running to the right, rambling on about preserving Proposition 13, making awful statements about immigration and sanctuary laws, and even sounding soft on environmental issues. He’s started to hit his stride lately, though, attacking likely GOP contender Meg Whitman over her ties to Wall Street and we’re seeing a few flashes of the populist Brown. But he’s got to step it up if he wants to win — and he’s got to get serious about taxes and show some budget leadership, if he wants to make a difference as governor.


 


LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


JANICE HAHN


Not an easy choice, by any means.


Mayor Gavin Newsom jumped into this race only after it became clear that he wouldn’t get elected governor. He sees it as a temporary perch, someplace to park his political ambitions until a better office opens up. He’s got the money, the statewide name recognition, and the endorsement of some of the state’s major power players, including both U.S. Senators and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s also been a terrible mayor of San Francisco — and some progressives (like Sup. Chris Daly) argue, persuasively, that the best way to get a better person in Room 200 is to ship Newsom off to an office in Sacramento where he can’t do much harm and let the supervisors pick the next mayor.


But it’s hard to endorse Newsom for any higher office. He’s ducked on public power, allowing PG&E to come very close to blocking the city’s community choice aggregation program (See editorial, page 5). His policies have promoted deporting kids and breaking up families. He’s taken an approach to the city budget — no new revenue, just cuts — that’s similar to what the Republican governor has done. He didn’t even bother to come down and talk to us about this race. There’s really no good argument for supporting the advancement of his political career.


Then there’s Janice Hahn. She’s a Los Angeles City Council member, the daughter of a former county supervisor, and the sister of a former mayor. She got in this race way before Newsom, and her nightmare campaign consultant, Garry South, acts as if she has some divine right to be the only Democrat running.


Hahn in not overly impressive as a candidate. When we met her, she seemed confused about some issues and scrambled to duck others. She told us she’s not sure she’s in favor of legalizing pot, but she isn’t sure why she’s not sure since she has no arguments against it. She won’t take a position on a new peripheral canal, although she can’t defend building one and says that protecting San Francisco Bay has to be a priority. She won’t rule out offshore oil drilling, although she said she has yet to see a proposal she can support. Her main economic development proposal was to bring more film industry work to California, even if that means cutting taxes for the studios or locating the shoots on Indian land where there are fewer regulations.


On the other hand, she told us she wants to get rid of the two-thirds threshold in the state Legislature for passing a budget or raising taxes. She supports reinstating the car tax at pre-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger levels. She supports a split-roll measure to reform Prop. 13. She wants to see an oil-severance tax to fund education. She’s one of the few statewide candidates who openly advocates higher taxes on the wealthy as part of the solution to the budget crisis.


We are under no illusions that Hahn will be able to use the weak office of lieutenant governor to move on any of these issues, and we’re not at all sure she’s ready to take over the top spot. But on the issues, she’s clearly better than Newsom, so she gets our endorsements.


 


SECRETARY OF STATE, DEMOCRAT


DEBRA BOWEN


Debra Bowen is the only Democrat running, a sign that pretty much everyone in the party thinks she’s doing a fine job as Secretary of State. She’s run a clean office and we see no reason to replace her.


 


CONTROLLER, DEMOCRAT


JOHN CHIANG


Like Bowen, John Chiang has no opposition in the primary, and he’s been a perfectly adequate controller. In fact, when Gov. Schwarzenegger tried two years ago to cut the pay of thousands of state employees to the minimum wage level, Chiang defied him and refused to change the paychecks — a move that forced the governor to back down. We just wish he’d play a more visible role in talking about the need for more tax revenue to balance the state’s books.


 


TREASURER, DEMOCRAT


BILL LOCKYER


Bill Lockyer keeps bouncing around Sacramento, waiting, perhaps, for his chance to be governor. He was attorney general. Now he’s treasurer seeking a second term, which he will almost certainly win. He’s done some good things, including trying to use state bonds to promote alternative energy, and has spoken out forcefully about the governor’s efforts to defer deficit problems through dubious borrowing. He hasn’t, however, come out in favor of higher taxes for the rich or a change in Prop. 13.


 


ATTORNEY GENERAL, DEMOCRAT


KAMALA HARRIS


There are really only two serious candidates in this race, Kamala Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, and Rocky Delgadillo, the former Los Angeles city attorney. Harris has a comfortable lead, with Delgadillo in second and the others far behind.


Delgadillo is on his second try for this office. He ran against Jerry Brown four years ago and got nowhere. And in the meantime, he’s come under fire for, among other things, using city employees to run personal errands for him (picking up his dry-cleaning, babysitting his kids) and driving his car without insurance. On a more significant level, he made his reputation with gang injunctions that smacked of ethnic profiling and infuriated Latino and civil liberties groups. It’s amazing he’s still a factor in this race; he can’t possibly win the general election with all his baggage.


Harris has a lot going for her. She was among the first California elected officials to endorse Barack Obama for president, and remains close to the administration. She’s a smart, articulate prosecutor and could be one of the few women atop the Democratic ticket this year. We were never comfortable with her ties to Willie Brown, but he’s no longer a factor in state or local politics. These days, she’s more closely allied with the likes of State Sen. Mark Leno.


That said, we have some serious problems with Harris. She’s been up in Sacramento pushing Republican-style tough-on-crime bills (like a measure that would bar registered sex offenders from ever using social networking sites on the Internet) and forcing sane Democrats like Assembly Member and Public Safety Committee Chair Tom Ammiano to try to tone down or kill them (and then take the political heat). If she didn’t know about the problems in the SFPD crime lab, she should have, and should have made a bigger fuss, earlier.


But Harris has kept her principled position against the death penalty, even when it meant taking immense flak from the cops for refusing to seek capital punishment for the killer of a San Francisco police officer. She’s clearly the best choice for the Democrats.


 


INSURANCE COMMISSIONER, DEMOCRAT


DAVE JONES


Two credible progressives are vying to run for this powerful and important position regulating the massive — and massively corrupt — California insurance industry. Dave Jones and Hector De La Torre are both in the state Assembly, with Jones representing Sacramento and De La Torre hailing from Los Angeles. Both have a record opposing insurance industry initiatives; both are outspoken foes of Prop. 17; and either would do a fine job as insurance commissioner. But Jones has more experience on consumer issues and health care reform, and we prefer his background as a Legal Aid lawyer to De La Torre’s history as a Southern California Edison executive. So we’ll give Jones the nod.


 


BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, DISTRICT 1, DEMOCRAT


BETTY T. YEE


Betty Yee has taken over a job that’s been a stronghold of progressive tax policy since the days of the late Bill Bennett. She’s done well in the position, supporting progressive financial measures and even coming down, as a top tax official, in favor of legalizing (and taxing) marijuana. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION


TOM TORLAKSON


Two prominent Democratic legislators are running for this nonpartisan post, state Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles and Assembly Member Tom Torlakson of Martinez. It’s a pretty clear choice: Romero is a big supporter of charter schools who thinks parents should be able to move their kids out of one school district and into another (allowing wealthier white parents, for example, to abandon Los Angeles or San Francisco for the suburban districts). She’s been supported in the past by Don and Doris Fisher, who put a chunk of their GAP Inc. fortune into school privatization efforts. Torlakson wants more accountability for charters, opposes the Romero district-option bill, and has the support of every major teachers union in the state. Vote for Torlakson.


 


STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 8, DEMOCRAT


LELAND YEE


Sen. Leland Yee can be infuriating. Two years ago, he was hell-bent on selling the Cow Palace as surplus state property and allowing private developers to take it over. In the recent budget crisis, he pissed off his Democratic colleagues by refusing to vote for cuts that everyone else knew were inevitable (while never making a strong stand in favor of, say, repealing Prop. 13 or raising other taxes). But he’s always been good on open-government issues and has made headlines lately for busting California State University, Stanislaus over a secret contract to bring Sarah Palin in for a fundraiser — and has raised the larger point that public universities shouldn’t hide their finances behind private foundations.


Yee will have no serious opposition for reelection, and his campaign for a second term in Sacramento is really the start of the Leland Yee for Mayor effort. With reservations over the Cow Palace deal and a few other issues, we’ll endorse him for reelection.


 Correction update: Yee’s office informs us that the senator suports an oil-severance tax and a tax on high-income earners and “believes that Prop. 13 should be reformed,” although he hasn’t taken a position on Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s reform bill. 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 12, DEMOCRAT


FIONA MA


Fiona Ma’s a mixed bag (at best). She doesn’t like Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and supports public power, but comes up with strange bills that make no sense, like a 2009 measure to limit rent control in trailer parks. Why does Ma, who has no trailer parks in her district, care? Maybe because the landlords who control the mobile home facilities gave her some campaign cash. She faces no opposition, and we’re not thrilled with her record, but we’ll reluctantly back her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 13, DEMOCRAT


TOM AMMIANO


When the history of progressive politics in modern San Francisco is written, Tom Ammiano will be a central figure. His long-shot 1999 mayoral campaign against Willie Brown brought the left to life in town, and his leadership helped bring back district elections and put a progressive Board of Supervisors in place in 2000. As a supervisor, he authored the city’s landmark health care bill (which Newsom constantly tries to take credit for) and the rainy day fund (which saved the public schools from debilitating cuts). He uses his local influence to promote the right causes, issues, and candidates.


And he’s turned out to be an excellent member of the state Assembly. He forced BART to take seriously civilian oversight of the transit police force. He put the battle to reform Prop. 13 with a split-role measure back on the state agenda. And his efforts to legalize and tax marijuana are close to making California the first state to toss the insane pot laws. As chair of the Public Safety Committee, he routinely defies the police lobbies and the right-wing Republicans and defuses truly awful legislation. We’re glad Ammiano’s still fighting in the good fight, and we’re pleased to endorse him for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 14, DEMOCRAT


NANCY SKINNER


Nancy Skinner has taken on one of the toughest, and for small businesses, most important, battles in Sacramento. She wants to make out-of-state companies that sell products to Californians collect and remit sales tax. If you buy a book at your local bookstore, you have to pay sales tax; if you buy it from Amazon, it’s tax-free. That not only hurts the state, which loses hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, it’s a competitive disadvantage to local shops. Skinner’s a good progressive vote and an ally for Ammiano on the Public Safety Committee. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 16, DEMOCRAT


SANDRE SWANSON


Sandre Swanson represents the district where BART police killed Oscar Grant, but he wasn’t the one out front pushing for more civilian accountability; that was left to SF’s Ammiano. And while Swanson was generally supportive of Ammiano’s bill, he was hardly a leader in the campaign to pass it. This is too bad, because Swanson’s almost always a progressive vote and has been good on issues like whistleblower protection (a Swanson bill that passed this year protects local government workers who want to report problems confidentially). We’ll endorse him for another term, but he needs to get tougher on the BART police.

Hard Times Handbook

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Hard Times Handbook

It’s tough out there. The recession is supposed to be over, although you’d never know it to walk the streets of San Francisco. But we’re here to help; our Hard Times Handbook offers tips on bargains, deals, and discounts to make those fewer dollars go further.

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Broke doesn’t mean bored

Eight great ways to have fun in San Francisco for $5 or less

By Johnny Funcheap

Living on a tight budget and still trying to have fun in San Francisco is a near impossible task. This is an expensive city, thanks to the reality that everyone wants to live in the tiny 49-square-mile cultural oasis — driving up rents and the cost of just about everything else.

Despite its reputation, the city is actually getting slightly more affordable, if ever so relatively. (In 2008 San Francisco actually fell in the rankings of most expensive cities in the U.S. from fourth to fifth.)

Leading the charge toward making the city a more affordable place to have fun are numerous businesses, government-run sites, and co-ops that are trying to survive in the recession themselves — and using big discounts and fun free events to try to lure you in.

Here’s a list of my favorite deals and freebies I’ve found so far for 2010.

CAFÉ ROYALE

Waving the flag high for nightlife in the Trendynob with its curved couches and velvet curtains is the cozy beer and wine bar Café Royale. This late-night venue (it’s open until 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays) stages more than 20 nights of free events each month, an eclectic mix of live entertainment that includes jazz bands, Beatles karaoke, book readings, slam poetry, stand-up comedy, and even the odd accordion night. You can dine on small plates and noshables until the wee hours, and wash them down with a robust selection of wines by the glass and creatively yummy Soju cocktails like the Pom Pom and Creamsicle. And for billiards fans, Café Royale has one of the few three-quarter size tournament tables in San Francisco at just 75 cents a game.

800 Post at Leavenworth. 415-441-4099. www.caferoyale-sf.com

COUNTERPULSE

More an arts and culture community hub than just a performance space, CounterPULSE serves as a home and venue for a diverse mix of local artists, dancers, and playwrights to practice and showcase their latest works. A majority of the events at this nonprofit theater (plays, dance performances, as well as classes and workshops) are free. For more elaborate productions that require tickets, CounterPULSE has a wonderful “no one turned away for lack of funds” policy. You can also get in free by donating a few hours of your time to the volunteer usher program.

1310 Mission at Ninth St., 415-626-2060. www.counterpulse.org

$5 MOVIE NIGHT

Saving money on going out to the movies used to mean you had to blag your way to a cheap ticket using a long-expired student ID or arrive by lunchtime to save a few bucks on a matinee ticket. The historic Roxie Theater has done away with all of those shenanigans, at least on Monday nights, with cheaper-than-matinee prices ($5) to all films (except for the odd film festival or special screening when regular ticket prices still apply). This stalwart of the Mission District, which recently celebrated its 100th birthday, is an independent art-house theater that shows limited-run art, music, foreign, and documentary films on two small screens.

Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., 415-431-3611. www.roxie.com

BART DISCOUNTS AND FREE RIDES

You didn’t think BART — notoriously expensive for commuters — could be the source of cheap events, did you? Well, mybart.org, run by the transit system, lists a calendar of free events that take place close to BART stations. The site also gives you access to an constantly updated bevy of special discounts like two-for-one theater tickets, museum discounts, and heavily-discounted tickets to Warriors and Cal basketball games. For those of you who only respond to free, mybart.org also puts together ticket contests with different prizes each week, like the chance to win one of five preloaded $50 BART tickets.

www.mybart.org

PIER CRABBING

Hell with Fisherman’s Wharf and its giant crab sign. Forget the pricey crab dinners at local restaurants. You can learn how to be your own crusty crab-fisher, right in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. The National Park Service staffers at the historic Fort Port (built in the 1850s) give free pier-crabbing demonstrations every Saturday morning from March to October. After the class, they’ll even loan you crabbing equipment so you can put your newly-learned skills to the test. Space is limited and advanced reservations are required.

Fort Point, Marine Drive, Saturdays, 10 a.m.–noon, March–Oct. (415) 556-1693 www.nps.gov/fopo

THE HISTORY OF BAY AREA ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Feeling nostalgic? You can get a taste for the era when the Bay Area and the psychedelic music scene were the center of the rock ‘n’ roll universe at the Museum of Performance and Design’s free history exhibit “Something’s Happenin’ Here: Bay Area Rock ‘n’ Roll 1963-73.” On display at this one-of-a-kind exhibit are the full-size original painting that made in onto the Grateful Dead’s “Anthem in the Sun” album cover, costume pieces worn by stars like Janis Joplin and Sly Stone, and original posters from the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom, along with a collection of previously unseen rock photos. Visitors can also listen to rare audioclips and watch vintage film footage they probably never knew existed. Exhibit runs through Aug. 28. It’s free, but the museum suggests a $5 donation.

Museum of Performance and Design, Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness, Fourth Floor. Wed.–Sat., noon–5 p.m. www.mpdsf.org

AMERICAN BOOKBINDERS MUSEUM

If you’re really looking for a blast from the past, check out the free exhibit at this little-known museum. Bookbinding is the art of physically assembling and sewing the pages and spine of a book by hand — a skill that was made essentially obsolete (at least, for the purpose of mass-production) with the dawning of the Industrial Revolution. But the nonprofit American Bookbinders Museum, part of a working bookbindery that still practices this art, documents the history of how books used to be put together with exhibits celebrating the skilled artisans who bound books, samples of vintage papers, and a maze of large and terrifying-looking 19th- and early 20th-century binding and cutting machines (many of which could cut off all your fingers in one go if you stood too close).

1962 Harrison at 16th St., Saturdays, noon–4 p.m. and by appointment, (415) 710-9369. www.bookbindersmuseum.com

SAN FRANCISCO BICYCLE COALITION

Unless you want to walk, there’s really no cheaper way to get around town than on a bicycle. And for the tens of thousands of San Franciscans who use bikes as their main mode of transportation, the Bike Coalition is a co-op knight in shining armor. The advocacy group, whose members successfully fought more than 200 miles of bike lanes in the city as well as bike access on Muni and BART, also puts on and sponsors a handful of events each month such as free urban cycling workshops to help you navigate the city streets safely, themed guided bike rides, and many other bike-friendly events. Membership starts at $35 per year, but many of their events are free for nonmembers or for a $5 donation.

www.sfbike.org

D-STRUCTURE

Owned by former pro skater and X-Games judge Azikiwee Anderson, D-Structure in the Lower Haight blurs the line between retail store, art gallery and performance space in a big way. Every month, this self-described “lifestyle clothing brand culture store” lets local artists take over the space and use the entire store as their canvas. For launch parties, which take place several times each month, the merchandise displays of urban hoodies and t-shirts and hip beanies are pushed to the walls to make room for DJs and events that range from art openings with live painting to indie rock shows, hip hop album release parties and film screenings. And did we mention the open bar? During its nighttime events, most of which are free and open to the public, D-Structure has been known to bring in a truck load of beer; that’s what happened on New Year’s Eve.

520 Haight, 415-252-8601, Mon.–Sat., noon–8 p.m.; Sundays, noon–6 p.m. www.d-structuresf.com

Johnny Funcheap runs FunCheapSF.com, a free SF-based service that uncovers and shares a hand-picked recommendation list of more than 50 cheap, fun, unique Bay Area events each week.

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Drink early and often

Five great happy hours that offer bargain booze — and amazing food deals

By Virginia Miller

BAR CRUDO’S HAPPY HOUR

About the best crudo (and some of the best seafood) anywhere, Bar Crudo’s new digs on Divisadero Street provide ample room for you and your friends. You want to go at happy hour; there’s free food and you can also get sweet deal on what is arguably one of the best seafood chowders around. A creamy bowl rich with fish, mussels, shrimp, squid, potatoes, and applewood-smoked bacon goes for $5 (normally $14). Oysters from British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and Washington are normally $2.50 each, but only $1 during happy hour. Beer and wine specials rotate, $5 for wine or $3 for beer — and we’re not talking PBR. Bar Crudo is known for a broad selection of Belgian and artisan beers, not to mention some beautiful wines.

Mon.–Thurs., 5–6:30 p.m. 655 Divisadero.415-409-0679. www.barcrudo.com

SEAFOOD HAPPY HOUR AT SWELL

For happy hour with a touch of class — and an affordable price — you can’t beat Swell, a delightful, under-the-radar crudo/seafood restaurant. The post-work crowd gets $1 oysters — and not just any oysters, but our own local Point Reyes’ bivalves. There’s ceviche with kampachi and butterfish or mackerel bruschetta with garlic-ginger oil ($8 each). For imbibing, sip $6 Bellinis and Kir Royals or $6 glasses of chardonnay, syrah, or rosé.

Mon.–Thurs., 5–7 p.m. 603 Bush. 415-956-0396. www.swellsf.com

AVENUE LOUNGE’S FREE BRATS ON SUNDAYS

I’ll give you three words: bacon bloody marys. That alone makes it worthwhile trekking to Outer Sunset’s Avenue Lounge on a Sunday. But it gets better: buy any of the $3 well drinks or draft beers ($5 to upgrade to Belvedere or Hennessy in your cocktail) and they’ll throw in free brats and chips. Yes, you heard right: dogs, beer, and football on the flatscreens for $3. At that price, you could settle in all day.

Sundays, 10a.m.–2 a.m.. 1334 Noriega. 415-731-3757

NAMU’S FREE-FOOD MONDAYS

Monday night is free food night at Namu, the Richmond District’s gem of an Asian fusion restaurant that combines Korean and Japanese cooking techniques with Cali-fresh cuisine. With an order of sake, beer, or glass of wine, you can nibble on what Namu is dubbing “drinking food”: bite-size tapas, skewers, and spreads with Asian flair. If you can’t stay out late on a Monday night, there’s a weekday happy hour from 5-7 p.m.

Mondays, 9:30–10:30pm. 439 Balboa. 415-386-8332.www.namusf.com

DOSA ON FILLMORE’S SOUTH INDIAN HAPPY HOUR

This Pac Heights wing of Dosa has the feel of a chic London Indian restaurant, with striking chandeliers and gorgeous Indian-influenced cocktails. The happy hour rocks with a rotating selection of beer (like India’s Kingfisher), wine (maybe a Dona Paula Argentinean malbec) and, yes, those cocktails (how about “Mood Indigo,” i.e., Buffalo Trace bourbon, jackfruit marmalade, Angostura bitters, and a splash of sparkling wine) for a mere $5 each. For the same price, there’s a range of South Indian snacks like cochin calamari sautéed in coconut milk and served with a julienned salad, or a mung sprout salad with fresh lentils, tomatoes, ginger, cucumber, grated coconut, chile, and mustard-seed oil.

Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–7 p.m. 1700 Fillmore. 415-441-3672. www.dosasf.com.

Virginia Miller writes about food for sfbg.com and offers advice for great meals at theperfectspotsf.com

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Drinks on the cheap

By Caitlin Donohue

“No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.” So said our illustrious forefather and part-time debaucher, Thomas Jefferson, on the importance of happy hour. We are proud of the brave bar-owning San Franciscan souls who have held true to his vision of a nation built on cheap booze and high spirits. Here assembled are their numbers, true patriots that they are.

BAR ON CHURCH

Some days you want to get drunk and throw peanut shells on the floor. This is a practice aided and abetted by the B.O.C., which serves up 50 cent PBR’s (that elixir from the heavens for the broke-as-hell contingent) and free peanuts from 4-8 p.m. on Saturdays. Sit down, throw one back and get nutty with it.

198 Church, SF. (415) 355-9211. www.thebarsf.com

TSUNAMI SUSHI

With more than 100 sake bottles on the menu, Tsunami is usually off-limits to those with holes in their pockets. Not so during happy Hour (Mon.-Fri. 5-8 p.m., Sat. 6-9 p.m.) when all bottles and selected maki rolls are half off. Try the Sho Chiku Bai nigori sake, a sweet, creamy, unfiltered 720 ml that’ll only run you $16 — ureshii yo!

Mon.–Fri. 5–8 p.m., Sat. 6–9 p.m. 301B King, SF. (415) 284-0111. www.dajanigroup.net

EL RIO

Ah, Mondays at El Rio. If shuffleboard and easy access to cheap burritos isn’t enough to pull you Outer Mission-ward, than peep their very special Monday happy hour: $1 Pabsts, $2 wells all the live-long day. Get you in with that and then tell us you can’t hang with the hipster hangouts.

3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3352. www.elriosf.com

KYOTO SUSHI

Japanese businessmen have a reputation for sealing big deals utterly, blackout snookered. Something about how you can only really know a man when he’s being slapped by the waitress for being fresh or passed out drooling on your suit jacket. At any rate, sushi restaurants like to get you drunk. Check out Kyoto, where the anytime special of draft Sapporos for 99 cents will compel you to raise one to the salaryman.

1233 Van Ness, SF.(415) 351-1234. www.kyotosushi-sf.com

BRAIN WASH LAUNDROMAT

Now here’s a multitask for you: get drunk, listen to good music, and wash your clothes. Only one spot in the city where that’s a go — and to celebrate the lineup of fresh tunes and clean threads, Brain Wash Laundromat is offering $1 Pabst during happy hour and $3 wine glasses all the time. Drop by for its acoustic open mic nights Tuesdays at 7 p.m.

1122 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-3363. www.brainwash.com

BEAN BAG CAFE

Not only does this sunny, warm café serve the most bangingest breakfast burrito and plethora of bean blends in the city, the folks there have a soft spot for the low-income set. Bean Bag proves it with $1.75 Stella Artois and 21st Amendment beers on tap; just the ticket for easing your way through that mid-afternoon caffeine-booze transition. Just don’t spill on the laptop and you’re golden, you pillar of the community, you.

Bean Bag Café. 601 Divisadero, SF. (415) 563-3634 *

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How to fight foreclosure

By Caitlin Donohue

You’ve finally found your dream home, an apartment so well-loved even you can afford it. You settled in, cleaned the carpet, set the mouse traps … and then the eviction notice arrives: your landlord’s been foreclosed on. And the bank that owns the place now wants you out.

It’s happening a lot in this city, where tenants get caught in the financial meltdown through no fault of their own. But don’t panic: in most San Francisco buildings, foreclosure isn’t a legal grounds for eviction. But you’ll have to stand up for your rights.

Here’s what the San Francisco Tenants Union advises:

•If you sense your landlord’s at the brink of foreclosure, watch for telltale signs: realtors checking out the property or repairs that go unresolved. Keep in mind that lack of money is no defense for maintaining property, so call the Department of Building Inspections at 415-558-6200 for help with holding property-owners to their repair responsibilities.

•Once the eviction notice due to foreclosure arrives, find out if you are covered by rent control. If you aren’t (if your rental was built after 1979 then you definitely aren’t) the bank has the power to evict you within 90 days. If you do have rent control, you have eviction protection. This means the bank can’t evict you or raise your rent.

Unfortunately, the bank might not know that if it’s based outside the city or state. Ignore the letters to vacate and contact the bank of its property agent directly to let them know you have protection. Then file a wrongful eviction petition with the SF Rent Board, which also handles cases from Oakland, Berkeley and West Palo Alto (forms available at the office at 25 Van Ness, SF or online at www.sfgov.org/rentboard).

•Rent control or no, landlords can only collect rent on foreclosed properties until the deed of trust has gone to the bank. Determine who has control of your property to avoid paying rent twice. This information is available at the City Assessor’s Office at 415-554-7915. Send letters to the bank and to your landlord saying you have the money but don’t know who to pay. Until you can determine who has control, don’t pay rent.

For more resources, check out SF Tenants’ Union Web site at www.sftu.org.

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Avoid check-cashing fees

By Caitlin Donohue

ATM charges, big old monthly fees, frustrating commercials — oh Lord, save us from these banks! But you can’t live without ’em either — the average unbanked American spends 5 percent of his or her income at the check-casher. In San Francisco, we drop a total of $40 million a year accessing our own money — not to mention how much goes toward money order fees.

Enter the Bank of San Francisco, the mayor’s brainchild that allows city residents to open a checking or savings account for $5 a month or less. The bank is open to those without Social Security numbers as well as residents who have a poor record with accounts in the past. Go to www.bankonsf.org for more information on the program, or keep an eye peeled for one of the 140 participating city banks that have a “Bank on SF” sign in their window. There’s no reason to pay check-cashing fees any more.

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Food so cheap, it’s free

Let’s level here: how broke are you? Two-for-one beers and discounted oysters are all well and good for the casually unmonied, but there are times when one needs a real deal on nutrition — like, food that really is free. If we’ve got your number, here’s the Web site for you: www.freeprintshop.org, whose printable calendar lists 20 organizations that dish up meals open to all comers, including Food Not Bombs’ vegetarian dinners, which are served four times a week in U.N. Plaza. Free Print Shop gets the posthumous thumbs-up from Abraham Maslow: the up-to-date info on shelters, mental health, and neighborhood resources in the city has the bottom tier of your hierarchy of needs covered. Except for maybe the sex part; that might be another Web site. (Caitlin Donohue)

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Inner peace, by donation

It is said that whenever Buddha would speak to an audience that had not yet recognized him as their spiritual teacher, he would first expound on the concept of dana, or giving. If the listeners were unable to grasp this basic principle, he knew they weren’t ready for the Four Noble Truths.

Would that all yoga studios were this enlightened. I mean, $20 for 90 minutes of inner peace?

We are lucky that with a little bit of looking one can find financially accessible ayurveda even here, in the city of yoga-yuppies. Case in point: Yoga to the People, whose beautiful new Mission District studio (and fixture Berkeley location) offers three classes a day by donation, some of them by candlelight and all of them dana approved. And they’re not the only ones. Here’s a list of places that will relieve that tension you’ve been holding, including the strain in your wallet. (Caitlin Donohue)

YOGA TO THE PEOPLE

Class schedule online, donations

2673 16th St., SF

64 Shattuck, Berkeley

www.yogatothepeople.com

GREY AREA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS

Mondays, 6-7:30 p.m., donations

55 Taylor, SF

www.gaffta.org

SPORTS BASEMENT

Sundays, 1-2:30 p.m., free

1590 Bryant, SF

(415) 575-3000

LAUGHING LOTUS

Mon.-Fri. 2:30–3:45 p.m., donations

3261 16th St., SF

(415) 335-1600

www.laughinglotus.com

SATORI YOGA STUDIO

Mondays, 4:15– 5:15 p.m., free

40 First St., SF

(415) 618-0418

www.satoriyogastudio.com

PURUSHA YOGA

Saturdays, 11 a.m., free

Main entrance of Botanical Gardens

Golden Gate Park

Ninth Ave. and Lincoln Way, SF

(415) 694-8412

www.purushayoga.org

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Learning to love the rec centers

With free gyms, darkrooms, and play areas, city rec centers may be the athlete (or artist’s) answer to the bum economy

By Molly Freedenberg

I’ve always though of recreation centers as places where kids took cheap summer camp classes or attended awkward junior high school dances. But these city-funded centers are actually some of the coolest, most affordable, and least appreciated resources any community has to offer — and especially so in San Francisco.

From weight rooms and basketball courts to dance studios, dog parks, and performance-ready auditoriums, SF’s neighborhood centers offer a variety of resources for budget-conscious adults as well as their kids. Use of most facilities is free (or, on rare occasions, costs a nominal fee) and classes and workshops are priced low with a sliding scale and scholarship option.

Why does the city allocate $34.5 million in general fund support to maintain these centers every year? According to Elton Pon, spokesperson for the Recreation and Park Department (which also oversees public spaces like Golden Gate Park and Coit Tower), “they keep the city sane.”

We’ve outlined the resources at some of our favorite centers, but check parks.sfgov.org for a full list, sfreconline.org for programs, or call (415) 831-5520 for information on renting rec center buildings.

CHINESE RECREATION CENTER

This Nob Hill neighborhood center caters primarily to youth in Chinatown, which is most apparent weekdays after 3 p.m. when its gym areas fill up with teenage boys. But everyone can enjoy volleyball, basketball, and even dance in its indoor gym, outdoor hoops, and mini weight room. The secret to getting some grown-up time? Visit early on weekdays or after 7 p.m.

1199 Mason. (415) 292-2017

EUREKA VALLEY REC CENTER

Well-maintained and recently renovated, this Castro District facility is a favorite for its resources and fantastic location (there’s a grocery store right next door, not to mention the full Castro shopping corridor a block away). Parents love that the indoor and outdoor play areas are especially good for toddlers. Dog-owners love the enclosed dog run. Sporty adults appreciate that the basketball court is regularly relacquered, while event planners focus on the auditorium with raised stage and 70-seat capacity. Special bonuses? An LGBT Teen Center and an especially girl-friendly gym scene.

100 Collingwood. (415) 831-6810

HARVEY MILK ARTS CENTER

Geared more toward artists than athletes, this recently reopened center in Duboce Park is a dream-come-true for creative-leaning folks on a budget. With dark room, dance studio, costume room, meeting spaces, and variety of other opportunities, HMAC is a fantastic and affordable alternative to adult education courses, expensive dance studios, and booked-up theater spaces.

50 Scott. (415) 554-9523

MISSION REC CENTER

This hidden gem, often overlooked by athletes headed to Mission Cliffs, offers everything your K-12 schools did — without the homework or early call-time. Mission Rec provides a weight area, ping pong tables, squash courts, a dance studio (complete with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and enclosed storage space), basketball court, outdoor playground area, and a full auditorium with stage and curtains (and food prep area).

2450 Harrison. (415) 695-5014

POTRERO HILL REC CENTER

Most people notice the baseball fields first — a full-block expanse of green, grassy oasis in the center of what’s still mostly an industrial area. But this city property also offers a well-maintained indoor basketball court, recently revamped playground, decent tennis courts (though lights rarely work), and a dog-friendly area that notoriously extends to the rest of the park when games aren’t in session. Not feeling sporty? Check out the infamous mural of O.J. Simpson (who apparently used to frequent the park as a kid) or the fantastic view of the city and the bridge from the south/southeast end of the park.

801 Arkansas. (415) 695-5009

RICHMOND REC CENTER

Catering primarily to the very young and the very old, people in the middle can certainly appreciate this classic neighborhood meeting spot. Play badminton, volleyball, or take advantage of the dance studio (where many city dance programs are held). Or just people-watch: weekdays are great for spying toddlers in the big indoor play area or quieter play-and-craft spot; weekends are when older Asian ping pong masters take over.

251 18th Ave. (415) 666-7020

UPPER NOE REC CENTER

Newish, bright, and clean, this well-loved and well-funded facility also is one of the few with its own Web site (hosted by friends of the Noe Valley Recreation Center). The bright, shiny spot offers indoor and outdoor basketball courts, a playground, baseball field, tennis court, dog park, and (according to parents-in-the-know), an inordinately nice sandbox. Indeed, this spot is known for being especially good for babies and toddlers. Another bonus? A multipurpose room that can be rented for small events features an A/V system, stage area with upgraded theater curtains, and a large movie screen with a projector.

30th Sreet, west of Church. (415) 695-5011. www.noevalleyreccenter.com

Tenant Torment

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Tenant Torment

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s mid-December decision to announce — on YouTube — that he planned to introduce legislation to protect San Francisco renters from foreclosure-related evictions has outraged tenants rights organizations.

They say Newsom is trying to undermine a much stronger bill by Sup. John Avalos that would give thousands of tenants in newer buildings the same protections as tenants in buildings constructed before 1979.

The mayor’s bill is a classic piece of politics — stealing some of the limelight and giving political cover to mayoral candidate Sup. Bevan Dufty, who voted against Avalos’ package but doesn’t want to be seen as anti-tenant.

This way Newsom and Dufty can enthusiastically support a bill that won’t offend as many landlords — while the mayor vetoes a more robust tenant-protection measure.

Dufty’s decision to side with Sups. Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, and Sean Elsbernd in voting Dec. 8 against Avalos’ just-cause legislation gave Newsom veto power over a package that would have empowered thousands of renters.

The Avalos legislation seeks to extend just-cause eviction requirements and protections to tenants in units that are not now subject to eviction controls, which includes most residential rental units built after June 13, 1979. That’s when the city’s current rent control law took effect — and as part of a compromise needed to get the votes for that law, its framers agreed to exempt all “newly constructed” housing.

Newsom’s proposal would only protect those tenants from one category of evictions.

While Newsom promised to introduce his counter-proposal Dec. 15, nothing has come from the Mayor’s Office of Housing so far, fuelling suspicions that the legislation is in fact being drafted by Michael Yarne, a former developer who now works for the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

Asked Dec. 16 if the Mayor’s Office has submitted any tenant protection legislation, mayoral spokesperson Joe Arellano e-mailed the Guardian, “Not yet. Still ironing out a few details.”

‘OUTRAGEOUS’

In his YouTube address, Newsom said he was committed to vetoing the Avalos legislation, which he claimed was “well-intended” but “went too far.”

His alternative, Newsom said, would protect tenants from the “predatory nature of banks” and “other circumstances” related to “macroeconomic challenges.”

Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, described Newsom’s play as “outrageous.”

“The mayor is essentially stealing a bill that came out of the community, watering it down and taking credit for other people’s work,” she said.

“Probably the most frustrating part of this is that there was no attempt to work with any of us,” Shortt added.

As Shortt notes, if Avalos’ legislation doesn’t pass, tenants in at least 10,000 rental units that have come onto the market since 1979 will be left without just-cause eviction protection. That means they can be tossed out for almost any reason.

Shortt’s estimate includes 1,900 units at Trinity Place, 113 units at 430 Main St., 308 units at 333 Harrison St., 113 units built by the Emerald Fund in the Castro District, 192 recently completed units at Strata in Mission Bay, 179 units at 1 Polk St., 720 units at 1401 Market St., 52 units at 818 Van Ness Ave., 5,679 units at Park Merced, and 720 units at Archstone, 350 Eighth St.

But her estimate doesn’t factor in the thousands of potential rentals in the pipeline for Treasure Island, the Candlestick Point shipyard development and the old Schlage Lock site.

Facing a mayoral veto and unwilling to leave tenants without any hope, Avalos introduced an amended version of his just-cause evictions package that addressed Dufty’s concerns about unintended consequences during the board’s Dec. 15 meeting.

“Dufty said he was worried that if someone was in the military and was sent to Afghanistan or decided to go to Harvard to finish their master’s and then wanted to return to their apartment, they’d have to pay a relocation benefit,” Avalos legislative aide Raquel Redondiez explained.

So Avalos amended his legislative package to provide an owner the option of giving additional notice in lieu of making relocation payments for owner move-in eviction of a newly converted single-family home or individually-owned condominium, provided the tenant was initially given specified notice of this status.

The amended bill would also allow eviction from a condominium unit with separable title that had been rented by the developer for a limited time prior to sale of the unit, when the developer has given specified advance notice to the renters.

But Dufty still voted against the amended legislation.

Dufty’s legislative aide Boe Hayward claimed the office didn’t cut a deal with Newsom. “We heard Newsom was interested in introducing legislation but we haven’t seen a draft,” Hayward said. “Michael Yarne mentioned it.”

NO DATA

Hayward told the Guardian that part of Dufty’s problem was an absence of data to support advocates’ claims that people in non-rent-controlled units are being evicted without cause.

“I’ve heard anecdotally that this has happened, but I’ve never seen anyone testify that this has happened,” Hayward said.

He also said Dufty wants Avalos to sit down with small property owners and the San Francisco Apartment Association to hear their concerns.

Shortt acknowledged that such data is hard to come by, but noted that this data gap occurs precisely because there is currently no reporting requirement for evictions that occur in buildings built after June 1979.

“For folks in non-rent-controlled units, it’s like the Wild West,” she said. “Landlords can say ‘I want you out’ and they don’t have to give a reason.

“Right now, such evictions are perfectly legal,” Shortt added, noting that part of the benefit of Avalos’ proposed legislation is that these evictions would be tracked and monitored in future.

She said the mayor’s alternative doesn’t address the larger problem. “While foreclosures are a huge piece of the problem, they are not all of it. There is all this new construction going on. And now that the housing market has turned, units that are either being built or temporarily marketed as rentals, not condos. We’re gaining more units without protections. We can’t just turn a blind eye and say there is no problem and wait for a crisis.”

Dufty told the Guardian that he voted Dec. 15 against Avalos’ amended proposal because “small property owners weren’t invited to the table to dialogue. There needs to be more dialogue between tenant advocates and property owners to come to common ground.”

He said owners are already keeping thousands of rent-controlled units off the market and fears they’ll do the same with post-1979 units. “I don’t want to legislate to the extremes and create a ripple effect where post-1979 units are kept off the market. I’m trying to find ways for folks to rent out their units.” Dufty also said he hadn’t seen the mayor’s proposed legislation.

Shortt said she doesn’t understand what Dufty hopes to achieve by convening landlords and tenant groups. “I feel like we’ve made it clear where we’re willing to go on this, and I can’t imagine anything the San Francisco Apartment Association or others might say that would convince us otherwise. Maybe it’s just a torture technique.”

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PROTECTING FAMILIES FROM EVICTIONS

Another major tenant protection bill — Sup. Eric Mar’s legislation to protect families from owner move-in evictions — is headed to the full Board of Supervisors in January. The legislation follows what Mar calls “a couple of minor tweaks” during a Dec. 14 Land Use Committee hearing that took place after months of vetting his bill with the public and family, tenant, and landlord advocacy groups.

The bill seeks to protect families with children from eviction through the OMI process, but would preserve the right of a landlord’s family to evict a tenant’s family, Mar explained.

“During these challenging economic times, our city needs to do whatever it can to ensure that our families are able to live and work here,” Mar said. “This legislation will help our city protect one of our most vulnerable populations: families with children.”

During the hearing, Mar observed that San Francisco is the third most expensive county in the nation for renters and that rent-controlled housing, which encompasses about 70 percent of the city’s rental housing stock, contributes to maintaining a balanced city.

“When a rent-controlled unit is vacated voluntarily or through eviction, the landlord can bring the rental property up to current market rate, making these units unaffordable for our working class and low-income families,” Mar said.

Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said children need to be protected from no-fault evictions.

“San Francisco protects seniors and other vulnerable tenants from no-fault evictions like the so-called owner move-in eviction,” Gullicksen observed. “We see many families with children being evicted in San Francisco, too often resulting in the family being forced to leave the city where their children were born.”

Advocates say the problem is serious. “We see families flee San Francisco every year due to evictions such as owner move-ins,” said Chelsea Boilard, family policy and communications associate at Coleman Advocates for Children.

Representatives for the San Francisco Apartment Association and other landlord groups spoke out against Mar’s proposal, arguing that anyone with children would have a permanent protection and raising similar objections to ones raised in hearings on Sup. John Avalos’ just-cause legislation.

By the meeting’s end, Mar had amended his legislation to address concerns around the definition of “custodial parent,” including the worry that a 19-year-old could sublease a room to a 16-year-old pretending to be the “custodial parent.”

But Sup. Sophie Maxwell came out against Mar’s amended proposal, which is headed to the full board in January at the recommendation of Mar and Board President David Chiu. All three supervisors sit on the Land Use committee.

“I’m not comfortable with a yes on this legislation,” Maxwell said. “I think we need a comprehensive look at our rental laws and what we need to do. Otherwise, we’ll end up with a hodgepodge.” (Sarah Phelan)

Dufty loses the tenant vote

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By Tim Redmond

Sup. Bevan Dufty, the first candidate to formally enter the San Francisco mayor’s race, just took a big political hit. By voting against a bill that would have protected tenants from unjust evictions, he’s angered one of the city’s largest and most powerful voting blocs.

The bill, by Sup. John Avalos, was important to the tenant movement. It extends to renters in buildings constructed after 1979 the same protections that the occupants of older buildings enjoy. It’s particularly important now, when so many buildings are facing foreclosure; under city law, foreclosure isn’t a “just cause” for eviction, but some tenants are losing their homes after foreclosure actions anyway.

Dufty has never been a great tenant vote, but this one should have been easy. The Avalos bill doesn’t put any more housing under rent control, or limit rent hikes, or impose any taxes or fees. There’s no direct economic impact on any landlords.

I couldn’t reach Dufty for comment today, but if the Chronicle quoted him accurately, his explanation was pretty weak:

Dufty told The Chronicle he would have supported the legislation had it simply addressed foreclosure-driven evictions. He feared that as drafted, the proposed law “would have too many unintended consequences,” particularly when it comes to condominium owners who want to move back into units that have been rented out. The burden on owners who try to evict on that basis could prove too harsh when it comes to time and money, he said.

The problem with that arugment is that owner move-in has always been a just cause for eviction. The Avalos bill wouldn’t change that. You own a condo, you rent it out and you want to move back in, you can evict the tenant.

The real problem here is what landlords think of as “rent-control creep.” Once you start allowing eviction protections on newer buildings, they fear, the next step might be actual rent controls on those buildings. So they fought against the bill.

The landlords have money, and if they see Dufty as their ally, they may reward him with campaign contributions. But the progressive vote is going to be important in the next mayor’s race, and so far — unless Sup. Ross Mirkarimi or Public Defender Jeff Adachi jumps in the race — the progressives don’t have a clear candidate. And while there will be a lot of issues in the race, this will be a big one, and I think the vote will hurt Dufty.

Of course, that assumes there’s a more pro-tenant candidate — and that’s not clear at this point. The others who are widely mentioned as potential contenders are state Sen. Leland Yee, Assessor Phil Ting and City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Herrera has traditionally declined to comment on issues like this, in part because he’s the city’s chief legal officer and has to defend the legislation and also because city law bars him from endorsing candidates or taking stands on ballot measures. But he told me several weeks ago that if he announces for mayor, he will openly discuss any issues facing the city.

When I called him today, he made the same promise again — then told me that he hasn’t announced for mayor yet, and so is declining to comment on whether he supports the Avalos bill. Ting told me he wasn’t familiar enough with the bills details, although, like Dufty, he said he supports eviction protections for tenants in foreclosed buildings.

I’m still waiting to hear from Yee.

Newsom: support just-cause eviction law

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Newsom: support just-cause eviction law

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, reeling from criticism of his disappearing act last week and his failure to quickly reengage with San Francisco, has an opportunity to repair some of his tattered image, particularly among progressives, and mend fences with the majority of the Board of Supervisors. It wouldn’t even require a dramatic or groundbreaking step — all he has to do is agree to sign legislation by Sup. John Avalos extending eviction protections to roughly 20,000 vulnerable San Francisco renters.

The Avalos legislation clears up a lingering loophole in the city’s rent-control ordinance, a leftover piece of a bad deal that tenants were forced to accept when the city first moved to limit rent hikes 20 years ago. Back in 1978, with greedy landlords taking advantage of a housing shortage to jack up rents by astronomical rates, the supervisors and then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein were under immense pressure to pass some kind of control. But the landlord-friendly mayor and at-large elected board were unwilling to do what Berkeley had done across the bay by setting permanent limits on how much landlords could raise prices. Instead, they approved a watered-down measure aimed largely at fending off a tenant initiative that would have gone further.

The deal capped rent hikes — but only for existing tenants, allowing landlords to raise rents whenever a unit became vacant. And, after the real estate industry whined that rent control would cause developers to stop building new housing in San Francisco (a dubious claim if ever there was one), the supervisors agreed to exempt all newly constructed housing (that is, anything built after 1979) from any rent regulations at all.

That housing is still exempt from rent control — and because the rent control law also includes eviction protections for tenants, the post-1979 housing stock is also exempt from those rules.

Most San Francisco tenants enjoy what’s known as "just-cause" eviction rules — that is, you can’t toss a tenant out on the streets without a reason. Failure to pay rent, of course, is legal grounds to send someone packing; it’s also okay to force a tenant out if the owner wants to move in.

But for the roughly 20,000 renters living in newer units, evictions can happen on a landlord’s whim — and one of the most dangerous problems is the lack of protection for people who live in a foreclosed building. Tenants in older, pre-1979 buildings have the right to continue to live in the property, under the same lease or rental agreement, after a sale or foreclosure. The Avalos bill would extend that protection (and the other just-cause protections) to all tenants in the city.

It’s hardly a radical idea — and given the boom in high-end housing construction in this city over the past decade (slowed only by the economic crash), the claim that tenant protections will doom new housing is demonstrably false. It would save vulnerable residents from losing their homes, protect people who live (through no fault of their own) in foreclosed properties, and restore a level of fairness to the local housing market.

The measure will almost certainly get six votes on the board, so the only real obstacle is the threat of a Newsom veto. The mayor should state publicly that he supports the measure and will sign it — which could be the start of a new, more promising chapter in Newsom’s political career.

The lesson of California

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The lesson of California

news@sfbg.com

Much of the right-wing agenda that has thrown this nation into economic chaos can be traced back to what was once called the Golden State.

The tax revolts that started here under Gov. Ronald Reagan and continued to sweep the country and the world under President Reagan never abated. Indeed, they have only been strengthened by the big business power that created and benefited from them.

But now that California is showing signs of being the country’s first failed state — caught in fiscal freefall and mired in political gridlock as a generation’s worth of neglected problems surge to the surface — this state has become a cautionary tale for that anti-government ideology.

Trends in America tend to start out west, and the economic and political disaster that California has become contains critical lessons for the rest of the country.

Lewis Uhler — president and founder of the National Tax Limitation Committee — speaks candidly and proudly of his key early role in helping build a conservative movement to limit the size of government and do battle with those who want the public sector to actively promote social and economic justice.

Uhler, a UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law graduate who did legal work for conservative causes in the 1960s, was tapped by then-Gov. Reagan in 1970 to be the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, a federally-funded legal assistance program created as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty.

While that may seem like a strange role for an avowed conservative and former member of the John Birch Society, Uhler says Reagan basically brought him in to wreck the program and fight the feds. “I was asked to put my money where my mouth was for my conservative philosophy,” Uhler told the Guardian. “OEO was set up to ensure conflict and confrontation … The mission of legal services was to change public policy through lawsuits they decided to file. I thought it was a corruption of the legal system.”

At the time, public-interest law and liberal economic and social policies were on the rise in California and spreading to the rest of the nation. So the Reaganites fought back.

Rather than helping poor plaintiffs file environmental, consumer protection, equal rights, or other types of lawsuits designed to level the playing field with powerful interests, Uhler blocked lawsuits brought by attorneys he calls “ambulance-chasers” and gutted the program. “Ultimately,” he said, “we vetoed funding for California Rural Legal Assistance.”

And for his efforts, Uhler was rewarded with a cabinet-level position: assistance secretary of the Health and Welfare Agency. Again, his role wasn’t to make the agency more effective, but to make it less effective in a realm where he believes government was too big and too active.

“The problem was uncontrolled state and local spending,” Uhler said. “Intuitively, everyone who gathered around Reagan shared the same philosophy that government doesn’t really contribute anything to economic growth.”

In 1972, Reagan gave Uhler the opportunity to work more directly on the mission of cutting taxes and shrinking the size of government, naming him chair of the Governor’s Tax Reduction Task Force. It was, in many ways, the beginning of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

“I asked to be given the chance to go across the country and find the best free market minds in the country to develop these policies,” Uhler said, explaining that he wanted to borrow the liberal strategy of giving an academic veneer to their ideas, as presidents Kennedy and Johnson had done in the realm of foreign policy. “Our side had never really done that.”

Uhler’s first stop was the University of Chicago School of Economics, where he met with noted free market economists Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and George Stigler, who were brought into the cause.

Today’s vast network of conservative think tanks didn’t exist at that time, so Uhler tapped conservative thinkers from the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, as well as other conservative economists such as Peter Drucker from Claremont McKenna College.

“There were 35 people who helped us design the first effort at a constitutional initiative in California to limit year-over-year growth of the state’s general fund,” Uhler said. “All of us as free market enthusiasts and economists all shared the belief that government beyond a certain level eats the seed corn of the nation and doesn’t produce anything.”

While voters narrowly rejected their group’s first effort to cap government growth — Proposition 1 on the November 1973 ballot — the ground had been prepared and the seeds had been sown for the tax revolts that would sweep the country in the late 1970s, with many of the campaigns coordinated by Uhler and the organization he formed for that purpose in 1975, the National Tax Limitation Committee, and a rapidly growing network of similar, interconnected organizations.

As Uhler worked with Reagan to weaken California’s government from within, his fellow travelers were developing national and international strategies to create aggressive, coordinated, well-funded campaigns to attack government and spread the free market dogma.

In August 1971, Lewis Powell — a conservative corporate attorney who President Richard Nixon had just nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court (where he served from 1972-87) — wrote a confidential memorandum to the leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.”

He sounded the alarm that the ascendant environmental and consumer movements were going to destroy capitalism in the country unless corporate America aggressively fought back in a coordinated fashion, which he spelled out in great detail.

He called for all major corporations to develop aggressive legal and public relations strategies for fighting the left, creation of a network of think tanks and media outlets to push the conservative message, manipulation of the legal system, and sponsorship of university programs to study conservative ideas and incubate future leaders — which all came to pass in the coming decades.

“American business [is] ‘plainly in trouble’; the response to the wide range of critics has been ineffective and has included appeasement: the time has come — indeed, it is long overdue — for the wisdom, ingenuity, and resources of American business to be marshaled against those who would destroy it,” Powell wrote.

Part of that strategy involved having the federal government promote and popularize free market economic theories being developed by Friedman and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, a movement that is well-documented by journalist Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

In 1971, Friedman and his colleagues began working with rich conservatives in Chile who were allied with Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who in turn were conspiring with the CIA to overthrow and assassinate the democratically elected, leftist President Salvador Allende, which they successfully did on Sept. 11, 1973.

Friedman’s economic theories called for a radical restructuring of society — slashing taxes and social spending; removing most regulation and trade restrictions; crushing labor unions; promoting economic growth at any cost — and Pinochet executed the strategy in brutal fashion, ordering the death of at least 3,200 of his political opponents, including the car-bomb assassination of economist Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., in 1976.

Friedman and Pinochet consulted openly and shared a basic disdain for social programs and progressive taxation. “The major error, in my opinion,” Friedman wrote in a letter to Pinochet in 1975, referring to the government antipoverty programs Pinochet dismantled, was “to believe that it is possible to do good with other people’s money.”

The model Pinochet and Friedman developed in Chile would eventually go global — promoted by its top cheerleaders, Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — and be implemented (with disastrous results for most citizens but creating huge profits for wealthy individuals and corporations) in Indonesia, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Russia, Poland, South Africa, Japan, and elsewhere.

But with the corporate media and conservative opinion-shapers focused mostly on economic growth — ignoring persistent poverty and the brutal tactics used to suppress the popular movements that tried to resist Friedman’s “economic shock therapy” — Friedman had become a sort of free-market prophet by the time he died in 2006.

“In the torrent of words written in eulogy to Milton Friedman, the role of shocks and crises to advance his worldview received barely a mention,” Klein wrote. “Instead, the economist’s passing provided an occasion for a retelling of the official story of how his brand of radical capitalism became government orthodoxy in almost every corner of the globe.”

California’s fiscal shackles have been in place since 1978, when Proposition 13 and subsequent measures capped property taxes and required an undemocratic two-thirds vote to either raise taxes or pass the annual budget.

A Republican landlord lobbyist named Howard Jarvis charged onto the field that Reagan, Uhler, and their team had prepared and took advantage of a gaping hole in political leadership to set off a movement that would cripple the United States of America.

There was some logic to it then. Times were good in California in the 1970s, good enough that people were flocking to the state by the millions. That was driving up property values — and thus property taxes.

Jarvis bought his home for $8,000 in 1946; 30 years later, it was assessed at $80,000. In fact, inflation was running at close to 10 percent a year in California. Homeowners were getting huge tax hikes each year, and tenants were getting huge rent hikes at a time when state government had a budget surplus.

Homeowners saw millions of dollars sitting in the coffers in Sacramento while they couldn’t pay their tax bills. Yet nobody in the Legislature or governor’s office came up with a solution.

So when Jarvis showed up with petitions to roll back property taxes and prevent future increases, he found a broad base of support. Even tenants went along — Jarvis and his gang promised that property-tax cuts would be passed on to tenants and would mean the end of the escautf8g rent hikes.

Jarvis collected signatures for a radical measure that essentially blocked all property tax increases and allowed new assessment only when a parcel sold. It was, in the end, a huge tax giveaway to major corporations. Since commercial property turned over far less often than residential property (and since commercial sales could be hidden as stock transfers), big businesses wound up paying far less of the state’s tax burden. Corporations used to pay about two-thirds of the state’s property taxes, and individuals one-third; now that is reversed.

It didn’t help tenants, either. Few of the landlords who saw the benefits of Prop. 13 passed the money along to their renters. Most just kept it. San Francisco activist Calvin Welch likes to say that Howard Jarvis was “the father of rent control.”

The campaign against Prop. 13 warned of the dangers of cutting local government; police and fire chiefs appeared in ads opposing it. But the No on 13 folks never talked about the huge windfall big corporations would get from the measure, or the huge disparities in wealth that would be created by defunding government and dereguutf8g corporations.

If the goal was to skew the concentration of wealth in the state, it worked brilliantly. According to the California Budget Project (CBP) of the Franchise Tax Board, recent data taken before the current economic recession illustrates an ever-widening chasm between the wealthiest taxpayer and the working-class person.

The total adjusted personal income for Californians rose by nearly $64 billion in 2006-07 — with approximately three-quarters of that increase going to the top fifth of wealthiest taxpayers, and 30 percent going to the top 1 percent. That left only $19 billion for everyone else.

“The average taxpayer in the top 1 percent experienced a $128,261 increase in AGI [adjusted gross income] between 2006 and 2007, which was more than three times the total AGI of the average middle-income taxpayer in 2007 ($36,115),” stated the June 2009 report.

This continues a long-term trend in which the wealthy continue to leave the average income-earner behind in a trail of dollar-sign dust. From 1995 to 2007, income gains for that top 1 percent come to a whopping 117.3 percent increase — nearly 13 times more than the gains of the middle-income taxpayer.

The nation’s income gap has reached a “level higher than any other since 1917,” according to a paper by University of California, Berkeley economic professor Emmanuel Saez. According to Saez’s analysis of census data, there’s been a steady increase in the income gap since the 1970s, rising 20 percent over the years.

Yet even today, the defenders of Prop. 13 continue to sound the same consistent themes. “Those who are directly involved in government are a militant special interest,” Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association executive director Kris Vosburgh told us. “They don’t like anything that limits their revenue stream.”

While that last statement could be applied equally to corporations or other private sector enterprises, as Vosburgh reluctantly admitted when asked, he continues to imply malevolence to those who defend government. He said the state’s current fiscal collapse can only be solved by slashing government expenditures.

“It is not valid to be talking about revenue-side solutions,” he said. “Our position is the state has enough money to accomplish its goals.”

People have never liked paying taxes, but the antitax movement is about far more than just that basic individual desire to hold onto our money.

The attacks were well planned, carefully targeted, and part of a much larger effort aimed at maintaining corporate and conservative power, undermining the New Deal, reducing taxes on the rich, and radically reducing the size and scope of the public sector.

As Powell called for, corporations have aggressively challenged, in legal courts and those of public opinion, every significant progressive advance — from San Francisco’s attempt at universal health care to California’s tentative first steps to address global warming.

With a level of discipline unheard of on the left, conservative opinion-shapers pound their talking points and enforce party unity through mechanisms like the “no new taxes” pledge that every Republican in the California Legislature has signed and heeded, under the very real threat of recall.

Opposition to taxes is now so deeply embedded into the psyche of the California electorate, and such a core tenet of today’s Republican Party, that elected officials who tout fiscal responsibility allowed the state’s debts to go unpaid (destroying its credit rating in the process) and its education and transportation systems to be decimated rather considering new revenues.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spokesperson Aaron McLear told us, “He believes we ought to live within our means and pay for only the programs we can afford.”

That simple talking point gets repeated no matter how the question is asked, or when we point out that it means we’re being forced to live within historic lows this year. But they claim the people support them.

“We had tax increases on the May ballot and they were rejected by a 2-1 margin. We should listen to the will of the voters,” McLear said.

Never mind that this regressive, dishonest package of temporary tax hikes was opposed by the Guardian and a variety of pro-tax progressive groups. McLear wouldn’t even admit that point or respond to it honestly.

And he’s certainly right that most polls show a majority of Californians don’t want new taxes. But these polls also show that people want continued government services, more investment in our neglected state infrastructure, and a whole bunch of other contradictory things.

That’s why newspapers and analysts around the world are looking at California, the world’s eighth largest economy, and wondering (as the Guardian of London headline asked Oct. 4): “Will California become America’s first failed state?”

In many ways, it already is. The question now is whether we’ll try to learn from and correct our mistakes. Ryan Riddle contributed to this report. ———–

THE CONSERVATIVE RELIGION

When I asked Lewis Uhler, one of the architects of the Reagan revolution, what Americans believed in these days — where the people he likes to talk about who hate the government (but are also admittedly disillusioned with Wall Street) turn — he answered simply: religion.

It should come as no surprise that many religious fundamentalists tend to side with the free market conservatives — both ideologies require a leap of faith and ignoring certain troubling facts, such as increasing disparities of wealth, natural resource depletion, and global warming.

Their arguments mostly make sense — until these inconvenient truths come up.

Certainly, turning over more public resources to free market capitalists, cutting taxes, and slashing government regulation will spur private sector economic growth, just as advocates claim.

But that growth has a cost. The wealth won’t be shared by everyone. Indeed, poverty has persisted even through even the economic boom of the 1990s — but almost everyone will be affected by underfunded road, education, public safety, and other essential systems.

As the conservative movement has successfully limited taxes and cut regulation over the last 40 years, working class wages have stagnated as the rich have gotten richer. Many of the world’s oil reserves have peaked and gone into decline, and rapidly increasing carbon emissions have collected in the atmosphere and caused global warming.

So how do conservatives respond to these realities as they argue for the continued dismantling of government, which is the only entity with the scope and incentive to deal with these problems? They simply deny them.

Uhler decried the “pseudoscience of climate change” as hindering economic progress and claimed that there’s actually been a global cooling trend in the last 10 years. (Actually the last 10 years have been some of the hottest on record, causing glaciers around the world to melt, according to data and observations from a consensus of the world’s climate scientists, including NASA, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the United Nations Climate Change Conference.)

It’s the same story with the consolidation of wealth, which hurts the free market fantasy that letting the super-wealthy keep more money will eventually trickle down to benefit us all. Uhler simply denied the growing disparity of wealth, saying the “movement between quintiles is significant.”

He was talking about people’s ability to go from poor to rich with a little hard work and initiative, the core idea of free market conservatives. But data from the U.S. Census Bureau and many other entities indicate that median wages have been stagnant for decades (which wouldn’t be true if there was lots of upward mobility) and that most of the wealth created in the U.S. over the last 40 years has pooled with the top 1 percent.

In fact, when it comes to measuring social impacts, Uhler has simply one metric: “Governments at all levels are twice the size they should be to maximize economic growth.” (Steven T. Jones)

 

Where would we be without rent control?

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news@sfbg.com

OPINION This year marks the 30th anniversary of rent control in San Francisco. On June 13, 1979, the Board of Supervisors passed a law that was seen by tenant activists as a fairly weak version of rent control. The supervisors were acting under pressure from landlords, who were lobbying them to hurry up and pass a law before the November election, when landlords feared San Francisco voters would enact a stricter version.

So the supervisors went with a middle-of-the-road measure, but its passage was still a milestone. Today, San Franciscans in rent-controlled apartments shudder to think where they would be without this basic protection. Many would be priced out of the rental market — and out of the city altogether.

The original legislation has been amended many times to limit annual rent increases, to expand who is covered by rent control, and to give increased protections from eviction to seniors, disabled people, the catastrophically ill, and long-term tenants. To curb the use of Ellis Act evictions by real estate speculators, buildings where seniors or disabled tenants have been evicted are now barred from condo conversion. In the past few years, we have worked to raise mandatory relocation payments for tenants, and added increased protections against landlord harassment.

Tenants are still being pressured to leave their apartments with supposed voluntary buyouts, a type of roulette in which speculators wave cash and tenants need nerves of steel to resist the threat of little money and no apartment — or more money and no apartment. But tenants keep organizing and holding on.

The San Francisco Tenants Union, Housing Rights Committee, St. Peter’s Housing Committee, Tenderloin Housing Clinic, and the Eviction Defense Collaborative all work with limited staff and many dedicated, inspiring volunteers to inform tenants of their rights and represent them when they need legal assistance. Tenants Together, founded last year, is now organizing tenants statewide and making progress all over California.

Sup. Eric Mar is sponsoring legislation that would give eviction protection to families with children — currently an endangered species in San Francisco. Study after study has shown the negative effect of evictions on families with children. More than half of all families with children in San Francisco live in rent-controlled apartments. A recent nationwide report named San Francisco as the major metropolitan area with the lowest number of children. In addition to tenants groups, a broad coalition of education and health groups have given their support to the Mar legislation. If you haven’t already done so, write or fax your supervisor in support of the legislation.

Meanwhile, come celebrate the 30th anniversary of rent control by stopping by one of our tenants rights counseling booths Saturday, Sept. 19 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. (see www.sftu.org for locations). Get info on our reduced price anniversary memberships and commemorative t-shirts. Then join us back at 558 Capp St., the Tenants Union office, for a barbecue, raffle, and Tenants Hall of Fame festivities where we can all celebrate 30 years of fighting for safe, fairly priced housing.

Susan Prentice is a San Francisco Tenants Union counselor/activist.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

Every poor and working class community in San Francisco has learned the hard way that its interests are at the bottom of the list as far as City Hall is concerned. At the top of the list are the banks, real estate interests, and large corporations, who view San Francisco not as a place for people to live and work and raise families, but as a corporate headquarters city and playground for corporate executives. By using their vast financial resources, they have been able to persuade local government officials that office buildings, hotels, and luxury apartments are more important than blue-collar industry, low-cost housing and decent public services and facilities.

Sound familiar?

It’s more than 30 years old.

Back in 1974, more than 50 San Francisco community groups — from Bay Area Gay Liberation to the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center, from the Federation of Ingleside Neigbhors to the San Quentin Six Defense Committee, from the Golden Gate Business and Civic Women’s Association to the Socialist Coalition — started meeting to develop a plan to take back the city.

It culminated with a Community Congress, on June 8, 1975, at Lone Mountain College (now part of the University of San Francisco). More than 1,000 people attended, and they drafted a remarkable 40-page document that outlined an alternative political, economic, social, and environmental agenda for San Francisco. The movement led, among other things, to the advent of district elections of supervisors (a key element in the platform) and the rise of active community-based organizations in this city.

Calvin Welch and Rene Cazenave, the veteran activists who run the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse, were among the organizers. They found the old manifesto recently and sent it out to a few of us by e-mail. I’ve posted it on the Politics blog. It calls for rent control, a sunshine ordinance, a health commission, full-time supervisors (who were to be paid $20,000 a year, the equivalent of $86,000 today), cable-TV coverage of the supervisors meetings, a mandate that developers build affordable housing and a feasibility study on public power. In fact, much of what the left has achieved in San Francisco in the past three decades is outlined in the Community Congress document.

(The congress also called for decriminalization of victimless crimes, including public inebriation, a guaranteed annual income, the abolition of the criminal grand jury, and some other things that didn’t quite come to pass.)

I mention this not only because it’s a fascinating historical document but because Welch and Cazenave think it’s time for a new Community Congress. Their draft agenda refers to a New Deal for San Francisco, and they’re talking about holding a series of meetings culminating in a major session sometime next year.

It’s tough to get the San Francisco left to come together on issues, even harder to build a broad-based organization that can push an agenda. Sup. Chris Daly tried several years ago, but the San Francisco People’s Organization never got the traction many of us had hoped for.

But although the progressives have accomplished a tremendous amount in this city, and have come a long way since 1975, the need is still there.

"San Francisco’s downtown corporate and banking interests and their representatives in city government are attempting at a local level to shift the burden of the current economic and political crisis ever more fully onto the backs of the poor and working people of San Francisco."

That was then. Today, Welch and Cazenave write, "San Francisco stands at a crucial junction brought about by the collapse of the real estate based speculative bubble and the related steep reduction of city revenue resulting in cuts in funding important programs and services … There needs to be a general coming together of community groups to articulate a set of policies able to be implemented at the local level which seek to maximize community control over the provision of critically needed health and human services and beneficial community development and to maintain a vital public sector."

Sounds like a plan. *

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

Gray Davis was a pretty poor governor. He ran as a moderate who could manage the state, but utterly failed to deal with the energy crisis of 2000-01, leaving rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity bills as his legacy. He cost the state billions. He presided over a legislative budget stalemate. He was a captive of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. He gave the Democratic Party a bad name.

And for all that, nothing he did was close to what his replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Republicans in Sacramento are doing today.

Under Gov. Davis, California reduced the size of public school classes, mandating that K-4 teachers have no more than 20 students. That has made a huge difference in the classrooms, and the results show it. But it’s going to be almost impossible for most school districts to stick to that target now, because the schools are getting huge budget cuts.

So are all the other state services, and aid to counties, which means more layoffs and cuts at the local level. And still, the state is $8 billion more in the hole.

Democrats in the Legislature have tried everything they could think of. They negotiated with the Republicans, who have a veto over the budget because of the crazy two-thirds rule. They came up with a plan that fit what Schwarzenegger had been asking for, and he still refused to accept it. And now the Democratic leadership is forced to try to sell a series of state propositions that nobody likes, that will put California in worst financial straights, and that will have as bad a long-term impact on the state as Proposition 13.

Propositions 1A-1F are a terrible deal, the result of GOP blackmail and extortion — and they won’t even solve the problem. This governor is going to leave the state in the worse shape it’s been since the Great Depression. Almost makes you long for the days of Gray Davis.

In 1967, at the height of the antiwar movement, when American cities were in political chaos, a young tenant organizer named John Ross ran for San Francisco supervisor as a radical out of the Mission advocating rent control and an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, among other things. But one of his opponents discovered that Ross was a convicted felon who served two years and six months in federal prison for refusing the draft, so they took his name off the ballot.

Now, 42 years later, Ross — the writer, poet, unrepentant radical, and longtime Guardian correspondent, may be getting some recognition from the city. Sup. John Avalos is going to introduce a resolution honoring Ross for his extensive literary and political contributions to San Francisco. The May 12 ceremony, at 3:30 in the Board of Supervisors chambers, will be followed by "poems under the dome" — a poetry reading at City Hall at 5:30. If you want to help out (or donate money — please) contact Diamond Dave Whitaker at 240-0286 or Avalos’ office at 554-6975. *

Pay to play?

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tredmond@sfbg.com

Fiona Ma, the California Assembly Member from the west side of San Francisco, has introduced a bill that would limit rent controls on trailer parks — something of a stretch for a district that has no mobile homes and for a politician who has never shown any past interest in the issue.

But several months before she introduced the bill, Ma received $6,200 in campaign contributions from one of the leading mobile home landlord groups.

Assembly Bill 481, introduced Feb. 24, would make it easier for the owners of mobile home parks to raise rents on units that are either sublet or not occupied year-round. It’s one of two major bills the park owners are pushing this year. The other, AB 761, by Assembly Member Charles Calderon (D-Montebello), would eliminate vacancy control in parks and allow rents to rise every time a space becomes empty.

Rent control in California mobile home parks is unusual. Trailer residents typically own their units but must pay rent to the park owner for the land beneath them. So mobile home owners — many of them seniors and low-income people — are actually tenants.

Under current law, local rent control ordinances apply to those trailer parks, keeping the cost of living there relatively low. However, the law allows park owners to raise the rent on trailers that function as vacation homes — that are not a principal residence for the owner and aren’t rented to somebody else.

Ma’s bill would make it easier to define a mobile home as a second residence and would eliminate the provision that protects sublets.

Advocates for mobile home residents have vowed to fight the bill. "In mobile home parks, the park owners have hugely disparate power over residents, most of whom are low income and over 60," David Grabill, an affordable housing advocate and attorney for the Coalition of Mobile Homeowners-California, told us. "Park owners also look for any hook or crook way to get a space out from under rent control or squeeze more rent out of the residents. Residents can’t move their homes, can’t afford to move themselves, and can’t afford lawyers to protect their rights.

"This bill would give park owners a whole new way to threaten and intimidate residents."

Ma insists that her only goal is to promote affordable housing. She told us that mobile homes in Malibu sell for millions of dollars, and that some are used entirely as second residences for wealthy people. "Rent control is supposed to be for low-income people," she said, arguing that if rich mobile homeowners lost their rent control protection, those units would be available for less wealthy people.

As for sublet homes, she said: "If the owners don’t need to live there, then they can afford to live somewhere else — and they don’t need rent control protection."

Ma at first said she took up the bill because she was on the Assembly Housing Committee and was looking for measures that would promote low-income housing. Calvin Welch, a San Francisco activist who has been working on affordable housing issues for decades, finds that a bit odd.

When Ma was a San Francisco supervisor, Welch told us, "she was missing in action on every significant affordable housing measure. Much of the time, she was on the other side."

When we pressed her, Ma acknowledged that the Western Manufactured Housing Committee, which represents park owners, spoke to her about the bill. The group’s Web site goes further, claiming that WMHC sponsored the Ma bill. And campaign finance records show that the WMHC political action committee gave Ma $4,200 on Oct. 27, 2008 and another $2,000 the next day.

Tim Sheahan, president of the Golden Gate Manufactured Home Owners League, which represents mobile home park tenants, told us Ma’s comments about million dollar homes are off the mark. "Sure, there are a few sensational anomalies. But that is no reflection on how most mobile homeowners live," he said.

And even if wealthier residents are forced to sell their homes, he noted, "the new residents will have to pay much higher rent. So there’s no way this adds to affordable housing."

The future of a giant landlord

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OPINION The business model of CitiApartments is in crisis. The local landlord giant faces an avalanche of foreclosures, with almost 20 percent of its units being returned to lenders and dozens more properties in danger. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal blamed the credit market for the losses — but tenants standing up for their rights were a factor, too.

San Francisco renters have complained for years about the company’s practice of buying rent-controlled buildings then driving out tenants in order to re-rent their units at higher rates. In the past few years, tenant organizing has brought attention to CitiApartments’ aggressive tactics and put a kink in the company’s plans.

For years, CitiApartments has been accused of harassing tenants, with tactics ranging from illegal buyout offers to physical intimidation to intrusive surveillance. Tenants report living for months without walls and elevators, struggling with leaks and health hazards, with CitiApartments refusing to make repairs. Such problems are no accident: CitiApartments success depends on getting long-term tenants to move out.

Yet tenants are not sitting idly by. A campaign of tenants and advocates, CitiStop, has been educating new CitiApartments tenants about their rights. Over time, tenants have become less afraid and increasingly in touch with tenant advocates and lawyers. Tenants have pursued hefty private lawsuits and are also working with City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who is suing the company for numerous violations.

This campaign has had real results. Tenants are refusing to let CitiApartments force them out. And the organizing effort has helped defend rent control for all San Francisco tenants — CitiApartments owns such a large share of the apartment rental market that it is able to artificially raise rents citywide.

Normally foreclosures are bad news for tenants who have to deal with large banks unfamiliar with San Francisco tenant law. But in the case of CitiApartments, even bank ownership is an improvement. However, UBS, CitiApartments’ lender, has already made its first serious blunder by allowing CitiApartments to continue managing the buildings the bank now owns. UBS should seriously reconsider this decision, given CitiApartments’ track record.

The long-term fate of the buildings is an open question. An ideal solution would be for the city or a nonprofit to take over ownership of the buildings with the goal of providing permanent, affordable housing.

Though CitiApartments’ distressed mortgages are ideal candidates for federal aid, this option must be pursued carefully. It would not be helpful for the government to invest in these buildings based on CitiApartments’ claims that the company can recoup the money using the same flawed model that caused the problems in the first place. But as long as we avoid that trap, we have a great opportunity to meet the city’s pressing need for affordable rental housing.

CitiApartments’ business model has not been working for tenants for a long time, and now it is not working for CitiApartments. It is time to abandon speculative rental schemes and start prioritizing fair, equitable housing. *

Jane Martin is vice chair of SF Pride At Work and an organizer with the CitiStop Campaign.

Bad budget ideas

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EDITORIAL There’s nothing easy about solving a half-billion-dollar budget shortfall, and most of the people involved in the grisly process of making the numbers add up at San Francisco City Hall know there will be blood on the floor. Labor unions representing city workers know there will be layoffs, salary concessions, or both. Community-based organizations handling critical front-line services know they’ll have to reduce staff and curtail their mission-driven operations. The supervisors know that a lot of good projects and great ideas won’t get funded this year.

The mayor, unfortunately, isn’t acting as if this were a crisis at all — he’s been out of town more than he’s been around the past few weeks. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and, sadly, some small business leaders, are refusing to accept the idea that taxes — some taxes, not enough to stave off deep cuts, but enough to prevent disaster — ought to be part of any budget package.

And along with the cuts — which, as Rebecca Bowe reports on page 11, will have far-reaching implications for San Franciscans — a number of really bad ideas have been floated, most of them quick fixes that would generate cash for now, but lead to serious problems later.

Among the worst ideas the mayor has put forward — in fact, it’s one of the worst budget ideas we’ve ever heard — is the notion of increasing the number of condominium conversion permits from 200 per year to 1,500 per year, and possibly allowing every property owner waiting for a conversion permit to get one, now, for a price.

It’s true that selling off condo conversion permits would bring in revenue. Raffling off building permits and planning code variances would bring in money, and so would selling development rights in city parks, and so would auctioning off appointments to boards and commissions. There are lots of stupid ways to generate cash, and the fact that a proposal would be lucrative is not by itself an argument in favor of it — even in times like these.

There’s a good reason the city limits condo conversions. Nearly every piece of property that becomes a condominium was once a rental unit, and the speculative pressure to take rent-controlled apartments and turn them into market-rate condos is immense. It’s bad enough that tenants — particularly those with relatively low rent — face eviction every day because of the state’s Ellis Act and the push by real-estate interests to create tenancies in common. Without conversion limits, the number of those evictions would soar; rent control would be eviscerated, the cost of housing would rise, and the economic cleansing of San Francisco would roll forward another few giant steps.

Newsom and his real-estate industry allies like to say that this sort of proposal is painless, since nobody has to pay higher taxes. Only people who want to convert their units, and are willing to pay a high fee for the right, would wind up paying. But that’s silly — the tenants of San Francisco would pay the cost — an immense cost — while the wealthier property owners made profits.

Selling off the taxi medallions (see "Don’t privatize the cab medallions, 1/21/09), another Newsom idea, fits in the same category. In the short term, it could bring millions into the city coffers. Long term, it would turn control of the taxi industry back to speculators and big companies, hurting the drivers and the public.

The mayor (and Sup. Sean Elsbernd) also like to talk about eliminating set-asides — those parts of the budget that voters have earmarked for particular purposes. But most of that money (the Children’s Fund, for example) goes to worthy programs: eliminating the "set-aside" protecting doesn’t save any money unless you cut those programs.

There are plenty of good budget ideas out there (see "Beyond the bloody cuts, 12/17/08). But the supervisors ought to make it clear that the bad ones are off the table.

PS: Where were all these anti-tax folks in the Chamber and the small business community, and supervisors like Elsbernd, when the city had a chance to bring in millions without any new taxes — by creating a public power system or raising utility franchise fees? They were siding with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. That’s part of the reason we’re in this fix.

So what are Newsom’s budget plans?

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EDITORIAL In Washington, Rep. Nancy Pelosi — who has never been known as a radical leftist — is proposing that Congress repeal the Bush tax cuts, now, two years before they expire. That would bring $226 billion into the federal till, enough to fund a good part of the stimulus package.

In Sacramento, Democrats are moving toward a special election this spring to allow the voters to approve a tax increase — a move that would prevent disastrous service cuts in this horrible economic climate. Even the Republicans in the state Legislature — about as intransigent a group of people as you’re going to find in public service in America — are actually discussing the possibility that they might accept a tax increase as part of a budget deal.

Political writer David Sirota, blogging on Open Left, argues that a tectonic shift is taking place, that budget fights are "tilting the terms of debate away from Reaganism and toward progressive policy goals."

But not in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom refuses to support any sort of new revenue measures this spring. In fact, while the supervisors, labor, and others are working to try to figure out a solution to the budget crisis, Newsom has been out of town, campaigning for governor or galavanting off to Paris and Davos.

We can’t quite figure out what the mayor plans to do about a budget deficit that could reach $500 million. So far we know he thinks the city can get some money by privatizing cab medallions (a dumb idea). We also hear he’s talking about vastly increasing the number of condo conversion permits (an even worse idea that will lead to massive evictions and the end of rent control). Beyond that, he hasn’t offered anything.

We recognize the problems with a spring special election. Passing a tax measure would require a two-thirds majority, a tough threshold under the best of circumstances. The state may call its own special election in May, preempting the city’s chances. The deadlines are tight, and city officials would need to move very quickly to come up with a workable plan in time.

But there are also serious problems with abandoning the idea, or even waiting until November. We’re talking cataclysmic budget cuts here — maybe as many as 1,500 layoffs, massive cutbacks in public health, parks and recreation centers closed, fire stations shut down, police cut back, Muni backsliding into dysfunction, programs for the homeless and needy vanishing as more and more desperate people fill the streets … it won’t be pretty.

We’ve consistently argued that a June special election to raise new tax money is a reasonable option, and the supervisors need to keep it on the table. That means voting on several technical issues Jan. 27 and then moving at full speed to draft the ballot proposals. If circumstances change, the city can always back off and cancel the election.

But the mayor needs to come back to town and start getting engaged with this problem. Before he simply dismisses the June election, he needs to tell us his plan. What alternatives is he offering? What is he proposing to cut? What jobs, what services, will be eliminated?

The same goes for downtown, small business leaders, and the supervisors who oppose tax increases. Tell us — now, in public — what you propose to do about this once-in-a-lifetime crisis. The progressives are at least putting forward plans, imperfect as they may be. Anyone who refuses to support those plans should be required to offer something else.

Politics behind the picture

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› news@sfbg.com

The new Harvey Milk movie, which opens later this month, begins as a love story, a sweet love story about two guys who meet in a subway station and wind up fleeing New York for San Francisco. But after that, the movie gets political — in fact, by Hollywood standards, it’s remarkably political.

The movie raises a lot of issues that are alive and part of San Francisco politics today. The history isn’t perfect (see sidebar), but it is compelling. And while we mourn Milk and watch Milk, we shouldn’t forget what the queer hero stood for.

Milk started out as something of a pot-smoking hippie. “The ’70s were a hotbed of everything,” Sup. Tom Ammiano remembered. “Feminism, civil rights, antiwar.” Milk’s early campaigns grew out of that foment. “Sure, he wanted to be elected,” Ammiano told us. “But the main ingredient was courage. He was fighting with the cops when they raided the bars … what he did was dangerous.”

Milk never would have been elected supervisor without district elections — and the story of district elections, and community power, ran parallel to Milk’s own story, for better and for worse.

Milk tried twice to win a seat on the at-large Board of Supervisors and never made the final cut. But in the mid-1970s, a coalition of community leaders, frustrated that big money controlled city policy, began organizing to change the way supervisors were elected. The shift from an at-large system to a district one in 1976 was a transformational moment for the city.

“I think that San Francisco doesn’t always appreciate the sea change that district elections brought,” Cleve Jones, a queer activist and friend of Milk who helped Dustin Black write the script for Milk, told us. “It wasn’t just important to the various communities that had been locked out of power at City Hall — it was the glue that began to grow the coalitions.”

Milk was elected as part of what became the most diverse board in the city’s history, with Asian, black, and gay representatives who came out of community organizations. The board, of course, also included Dan White, a conservative Irish Catholic and former cop. And it was the assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone by Sup. White — and the civic heartbreak, chaos, and confusion that followed — that allowed downtown forces to repeal district elections in 1980. That gave big money and big business control of the board for another 20 years, a reign that ended only when district elections returned in 2000.

Milk was a gay leader, but he was also a tenant activist, public power supporter, advocate for police reform, supporter of commuter taxes on downtown workers, and coalition-builder who helped bring together the labor movement and the queer community. It started, ironically, with the Teamsters.

“Those of us who came out of the antiwar movement remembered that the Teamsters supported Richard Nixon until the very last moment,” Jones said. “And they were seen as one of the most homophobic of all the unions.”

But in the 1970s, the Teamsters were at war with the Coors Brewing Company, and trying to get San Francisco bars to stop serving Coors beer. Allan Baird, a Teamsters leader who lived in the Castro District, saw an opportunity and contacted Milk, who agreed to help — if the Teamsters would start hiring gay truck drivers.

“It wasn’t just San Francisco and California,” Jones recalled. “We got Coors beer out of every gay bar in North America.” And gays started driving beer trucks.

Today, the queer-labor alliance is one of the most powerful, effective, and lasting political forces in San Francisco.

Milk was never popular among the wealthier and more established sectors of the gay community; he believed in a populist brand of politics that wasn’t afraid to take the fight to the streets — and beyond San Francisco. A central theme of the film is the fight against Proposition 6, a 1978 measure by conservative state Sen. John Briggs that would have barred homosexuals from teaching the public schools.

Milk, defying the mainstream political strategists, insisted on debating Briggs in some of the most right-wing parts of the state. He refused to downplay the gay-rights issues. And when Prop. 6 went down, it was the end of that particular homophobic crusade.

Milk was always an outsider, and he ran for office as a foe of the Democratic Party machine. “His campaign for state Assembly was all about Harvey vs. the machine,” former Sup. Harry Britt told us. “His main supporter was [Sup.] Quentin Kopp. He didn’t run as the liberal in the race; he ran against the machine.” And for much of the next 20 years, progressives in San Francisco found themselves fighting what became the Brown-Burton machine, controlled by Willie Brown and John Burton.

It’s too bad the movie wasn’t released early enough to have had an impact on Prop. 8, the anti same-sex marriage measure that just passed in California. Some critics of the No on 8 campaign say the message was far too soft, and that a little Harvey-Milk-style campaigning might have helped.

But for us, one of the most striking things about the movie is the fact that Milk and his lover, Scott Smith, were able to leave New York with very little money, arrive in San Francisco, rent an apartment on their unemployment checks, and open a camera store. That wouldn’t be possible today; the Harvey Milks of 2008 can’t live in the Castro — and many can’t live anywhere in San Francisco. The city is too expensive.

In fact, for all the victories Milk won, for all the successes of the movement he helped to build, much of his agenda is still unfulfilled, even in his hometown.

The first time Harvey Milk gives a public speech in the film, he’s standing on a soapbox … literally. He brings out a box with “soap” written on the side; a funny gag, but a serious and telling moment for him and San Francisco.

The issues that Milk spoke so passionately about in that speech included police reform, ending the war on drugs, protecting tenants and controlling rents, and improving parks and protecting people’s rights to use them liberally — all issues with as much resonance today as they had back then.

The movie leaves us with a painful question. For all the celebration of Milk’s legacy by San Franciscans of various political stripes, why have we made so little progress on some of his signature issues? We celebrate the martyr — but often forget what the man really advocated.

Support for gay rights is de rigueur for anyone who aspires to public office in San Francisco. But a quarter of city residents still voted to take away same-sex marriage rights in this election. Many older gay men today are barely able afford their AIDS medication and rent. And transgender people and other nontraditional types are still ostracized, unable to get good jobs, and sometimes treated contemptuously when they seek help from their government.

Sure, marijuana is supposedly legal for medical uses in California and pot clubs proliferate around San Francisco. But even these sick patients are still targeted by the federal government and its long arms in San Francisco, including former US Attorney Kevin Ryan, whom Mayor Gavin Newsom named his top crime advisor and who is now seeking to crackdown on the pot clubs. Why, 30 years after Milk was shot, does one have to claim an ailment or illness to smoke a joint in this town?

Two-thirds of city residents are renters, a group Milk championed with gusto, but we barely beat a state initiative in June that would have abolished rent control. Housing is getting steadily more expensive. And in this election, Newsom and his downtown allies opposed Proposition B, an affordable housing measure, and Proposition M, a common sense measure to prohibit landlords from harassing their tenants. Such harassment is a common tactic to force tenants from rent-controlled units, even though the City Attorney’s Office is currently suing the city’s biggest landlord, Skyline Realty, for its well-documented history of harassment. Newsom may be the champion of same-sex marriage, but when it comes to issues like tenants’ rights, we suspect that Milk would be appalled at Newsom’s gall.

Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union noted that in the wake of Milk’s death and before the repeal of district elections, San Francisco established rent control and limits on condo conversions. The tenant movement has grown steadily stronger and more sophisticated, he said, as it had to in order to counter increasing economic and political pressures and creative gambits by landlords.

“The city has gentrified phenomenally since that time, and that’s put tremendous pressure on tenants and on condo conversions,” Gullicksen told us. “It continues to be a real struggle.”

Police reform was also a huge issue for Milk and his gay contemporaries, who suffered more than most groups from the behavior of thuggish cops protected by weak oversight rules and a powerful union. And today, the Police Officers Association is stronger and meaner than ever, but the oversight has improved little, as both the Guardian and San Francisco Chronicle have explored with investigations in recent years.

And in our public parks, San Francisco officials in recent years have banned smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, playing amplified music, and even gathering in large numbers without expensive, restrictive permits. Even in the Castro, where Milk and his allies took it as a basic right to gather in the streets, Newsom and the NIMBYs unilaterally cancelled Halloween celebrations and used police to chase away citizens with water trucks.

Is this really the city Harvey Milk was trying to create? In the film, he talks about transforming San Francisco into a vibrant, tolerant beacon that would set an example for the rest of the country, telling his compatriots, “We have got to give them hope.”

Well, with hope now making a comeback, perhaps San Francisco can finally follow Milk’s lead on the issues he cared about most.

>>Back to the Milk Issue

The future is on track

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> steve@sfbg.com

On the day after the election, retired judge Quentin Kopp was finally able to exhale and enjoy his martini, even though there’s still much work to be done in the coming years creating a high-speed rail system for California.

"I feel relaxed for the first time since June," Kopp, the proud father of high-speed rail in the state, told the Guardian at the Thirsty Bear brewpub in San Francisco shortly after arriving to an enthusiastic ovation from the large crowd of project engineers and contractors who had gathered to celebrate on the night after the election.

Proposition 1A — the $10 billion bond measure that finally launches high-speed rail in California, the most expensive and ambitious public works project in state history — got the nod from about 5.4 million voters, or a too-close-for-comfort 52.3 percent of the total. Combined with federal, state, local, and private funding, the measure will finance the San Francisco-to-Anaheim segment of a system that is eventually planned to stretch from Sacramento to San Diego.

The previous few months had been an emotional roller coaster for Kopp and other high-speed rail supporters. "It was like The Perils of Pauline," said Kopp, who sponsored the project as a state legislator representing San Francisco in the mid-90s and now chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the agency charged with building the project.

Last year, Kopp had to overcome the resistance from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who sought to delay the bond measure for a third straight year (see "The silver bullet train," 4/17/07). This year, Kopp had to fight through many setbacks, starting with Schwarzenegger-allied CHSRA board member David Crane’s insistence on the creation of a detailed business plan before the project could go before voters.

To incorporate that plan into the bond measure required new legislation, Assembly Bill 3034, which replaced the former Prop. 1 with the new Prop. 1A and included new fiscal standards. Meanwhile, the CHSRA in July voted to choose Pacheco Pass over Altamont Pass as the preferred Bay Area alignment, triggering controversy and a lawsuit (see "High-speed rail on track," 7/16/08).

Although high-speed rail still appeared to enjoy strong support in the California Legislature, AB 3034 was stalled by partisan bickering and appeared doomed to miss a key legislative deadline. Kopp and supportive legislators, mostly notably Assembly member Fiona Ma, managed to get the legislation through, only to again be stymied when Schwarzenegger announced he would sign no legislation until a budget was approved.

Kopp persuaded the governor to make an exception for AB 3034 and things started to look good, with the measure ready for voters and polling data showing a healthy margin of support. "Then the financial markets collapsed and we lost 10 points," Kopp recalled. That apparent voter anxiety over big-ticket expenditures was compounded by campaign fundraising drying up and newspapers in regions outside the initial project area urging readers to vote against the measure.

"From there, it was tight all the way," said Kopp, noting that by election night, "I didn’t think it would pass."

But on the positive side, the campaign against the measure was weak, particularly after the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association blew its wad in June on an ill-fated ballot measure which attacked eminent domain laws and rent control. The closeness of the poll numbers caused the thousands of contract employees who will work on the high-speed rail project to take active roles campaigning for Prop. 1A.

Peter Gertler, national transit director for HNTB Corp., the engineering firm working on the peninsula section of the project, helped organize his colleagues to hit the streets and phones. "We were very nervous. I didn’t go to bed until 4 a.m.," he told the Guardian. After doing street-level campaigning, Gertler said he learned, "Overwhelmingly, everyone thinks this is a good idea."

Gertler said voters in California approved almost all the public transit measures on the ballot, signaling a new recognition of its importance: "Something fundamentally has changed."

He said the combination of high land values and the narrow corridor on the peninsula will present challenges in getting the section up and running — challenges that abound through the project area — but they’re confident in the project’s ultimate success.

"There are always going to be problems. This is the largest project in the history of the state," Kopp said. "The hard work is just beginning. But this was a foundational step."

The bond sales will likely be delayed by the current turmoil in the financial markets, but Kopp expects to get $50 million in the next state budget to complete the engineering work on the project. Construction could begin as soon as late 2010 and be completed in 2018, with some segments ready even earlier. The segment between San Francisco and San Jose could be operational by 2015, allowing trains to travel at speeds of up to 150 mph and complete the trip in just 30 minutes.

"It’ll come in pieces, but at some point it’ll really come together," said Brent Ogden, vice president of AECOM Transportation, one of the project’s contractors, who is working on the regional rail connection over Altamont Pass. While not part of the main project, for which Prop. 1A set aside $9 billion, the Altamont connection is eligible for part of the $1 billion in the measure earmarked for regional connections.

"The first job for the Altamont is figuring out what it’s going to be," Ogden said, adding that it could upgrade existing Altamont Commuter Express Rail lines and come on line even before the larger project.

Even if California and the rest of the country are in for a prolonged economic recession or even a depression, Kopp said the project would still likely move forward, noting that all the great public works projects — from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Hoover Dam — were built during the Great Depression and helped to revive the economy by creating jobs and stimuutf8g economic activity.

"We need projects," Kopp said. "We need to rebuild and expand the infrastructure of America."


HIGH-SPEED RAIL FACTS AND FIGURES


•<\!s>About 230 trains per week will travel between Transbay Terminal in San Francisco (where there will be about 9 million annual boardings) and Los Angeles’ Union Station (about 10.8 million boardings). Trains will reach 220 mph and the trip will take two hours and 38 minutes.

•<\!s>Fares will be about half that of air travel and generate about $2.4 billion in revenue to cover $1.3 billion in costs by 2030, thus generating about $1.1 billion in annual profits for the state once the project is paid for.

•<\!s>The project will generate about 160,000 construction jobs and is projected to create 450,000 permanent jobs by 2035, including those indirectly created by the project.

•<\!s>Even if there are unforeseen problems obtaining the full $33 billion in funding for the project, Prop. 1A could be a major boon for the Bay Area, funding improvements in Caltrain’s peninsula corridor and possibly a new rail line over the Altamont Pass.

•<\!s>"The high-speed train system will reduce California’s dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil — a reduction of 12 billion pounds of CO2 and 12.7 million barrels of oil per year by 2030."

•<\!s>"High-speed trains will alleviate the need to build — at a cost of nearly $100 billion — about 3,000 miles of new freeway plus five airport runways and 90 departure gates over the next two decades."

Source: California High-Speed Train Business Plan

The landlords attack David Chiu

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By Tim Redmond

Jack Davis, the notorious landlord lobbyist and consultant, has put up some $8,000 of his own cash to attack David Chiu, the progressive front-runner in District 3. His piece seeks to portray Chiu as a friend of the Republicans; what’s it’s really about is that Chiu is a friend of rent control.

The developers and landlords have spend a fortune on this race; they’re trying to elect Joe Alioto.

For the record, David Chiu has the endorsement of the San Francisco Democratic Party. He’s not supported by the Republicans. This is a last-minute campaign trick.

Backroom brokers

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s not the invisible hand of Adam Smith tossing hate mail on your doorstep this fall like ugly confetti. It isn’t a distinct and independent group of candidates and civic organizations that just happen to be saying the same things, either. There is a carefully orchestrated campaign going on to undermine the progressive agenda, block affordable housing and clean energy, and give Mayor Gavin Newsom a majority on the Board of Supervisors.

It’s well funded; it’s serious; it’s based on lies — and it’s a threat to rent control, sustainable environmental policies, universal health care, the city’s living wage law, and the rest of the accomplishments and goals of the progressive majority on the board.

If that sounds overblown, listen to what the organizers of this campaign are saying themselves.

On Aug. 15, after progressives took control of the Democratic County Central Committee and installed Sup. Aaron Peskin as chair, John Keogan, the head of a year-old organization called the San Francisco Coalition for Responsible Growth, a pro-downtown group founded to counter the progressive movement, announced his intentions in a letter to allies.

"CRG are [sic] preparing for an all-out attack with other like-minded groups and now is our time to stand-up [sic] and be counted," Keogan wrote. He asked members to support "taking SF on a sharp turn to the right."

Those "other like-minded groups," according to campaign finance reports, are a Who’s Who list of downtown-based organizations that have consistently fought to roll back tenant protections and slash government spending on social services: the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on Jobs, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the Association of Realtors, the Chamber of Commerce, Plan C, and the Police Officers Association.

By law, political candidates can only raise and spend limited amounts of money. But organizations like BOMA, the Realtors, and Plan C can put as much cash as they want into supporting and opposing candidates — as long as the efforts are "independent."

But the orchestration of the attacks on supervisorial candidates Eric Mar, John Avalos, and David Chiu, and the support for their conservative rivals, Sue Lee, Ahsha Safai, and Joe Alioto, is so sophisticated it’s impossible to believe that these groups and candidates aren’t working together.

Between Sept. 9 and Oct. 20, public records show, the groups spent a combined $363,754 ($178,177 in District 1, $104,308 in D3, and $81,269 in D11) on independent expenditures attacking Avalos, Mar, and Chiu and supporting their opponents. They also spent $20,000 supporting Eva Royale in her long shot race for the solidly progressive District 9 seat.

The landlords and downtown aren’t the only ones organizing. All that spending, and the threat of even more to come considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars these downtown groups still have in the bank, has served to unite tenant and labor groups in ways unseen in previous San Francisco elections.

"There’s an unprecedented coalition between tenants and labor," labor activist Robert Haaland told us. "We’re working together to defeat the landlord candidates, who are also anti-labor."

"We have a tremendous fear that the spending and progress on health care and social services will be rolled back," Tim Paulson, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, told us. "Anything less than our candidates [being elected in each of the three swing districts] will pose a real danger to the movement."

NEWSOM’S SLATE


One of the central players in this attempt to take the city away from the progressives and hand it over to downtown is Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is actively supporting Alioto, Lee, and Safai.

Eric Jaye, the mayor’s chief political advisor, has no formal role in the three district campaigns, but Newsom rarely makes a move in local politics without consulting Jaye. In fact, when reporters call the mayor’s press office to ask for comments on local candidates and initiatives, they are typically referred to the private consultant.

Jaye told us he’s talked to all of Newsom’s candidates. "I told them to run on district issues," he said.

The mayor and the latest member of the Alioto clan to seek office (Joe’s sister, Michela, is already on the board) have walked precincts together. And Newsom is so involved with the downtown effort he’s skipping a major Democratic Party gala (where he was slated to get an award) to spend time instead with the Republican-led Coalition for Responsible Growth (CRG).

Jaye’s main job this fall is running the PG&E campaign against the Clean Energy Act, Proposition H. So far PG&E has spent more than $10 million on the effort, and that number will grow in the final week before the election. Part of that same campaign has been propping up Newsom ally Carmen Chu, who has benefited from thousands of dollars of PG&E spending on her race. Chu’s face is all over PG&E’s No on H fliers.

Another central operator is Alex Tourk, the former Newsom aide who resigned after learning that the mayor had been sexually involved with Tourk’s wife. Tourk is now running the CRG operation.

"They brought me on board to do a volunteer campaign that, yes, they funded, but which seeks to inform voters in a non-partisan fashion where the candidates in D1, 3, and 11 stand on key issues," he said.

That campaign’s goal was to get 10,000 people to mobilize — he called them, using a term popularized by Richard Nixon, the "silent majority."

Tourk maintains that door-hangers the group has been distributing don’t endorse any candidates or push any initiatives. But the messages fit exactly with the overall downtown strategy — they seek to discredit the progressives by linking them with controversial ballot measures such as Proposition V, which would urge the School Board to save the military recruitment program, JROTC.

The supervisors have nothing to do with JROTC, but downtown and the Republican Party are using it as a wedge issue.

CRG is facing some political heat of its own: SF Weekly reported in its Oct. 22 issue that CRG’s recently elected president, engineer Rodrigo Santos, accepted money for professional work from someone who had business before the Building Inspection Commission while he served as commission president. Santos is a Republican, like several key Newsom appointees.

Making matters worse are revelations that Mel Murphy, vice president of the inspection commission and a CRG member, distributed invites in City Hall to an Oct. 17 CRG fundraiser for Safai and Alioto. City officials aren’t supposed to do political work at City Hall.

Alioto’s filings show that on Oct. 17, he received $500 from the firm of Santos and Urrutia’s structural engineer Kelton Finney and $250 from S&U engineer Calvin Hom.

PG&E’S FAKE DEMOCRATIC CLUBS


Political consultants Tom Hsieh Jr. and Jim Ross are involved in the District 1 race (Hsieh also responded to the Guardian on Safai’s behalf) — and are using PG&E and downtown money to support Sue Lee.

Beyond Chron reported Oct. 27 that Hsieh has been sending robocalls in Cantonese to voters saying that Lee is endorsed by the "San Francisco Democratic Party Club." Actually, the Democratic Party endorsed Mar.

What is this new "party club" anyway? Well, the Web site reported, the club started raising money just two weeks ago, and already has collected $30,000 from PG&E, $2,000 from the Chamber of Commerce, $5,000 from GGRA (Golden Gate Restaurant Association), and $70,000 from the Committee on Jobs. Another new club, called the Richmond Reform Democratic Club, is opposing Mar — and has $18,000 from the Committee on Jobs, $5,000 from PG&E, and $2,000 from BOMA.

In television ads paid for by the Realtors, a voiceover tries to link Mar, Avalos, and Chiu to Sup. Chris Daly, whose popularity outside his district is low — although neither Mar nor Chiu has much of a discernable connection to Daly. Avalos was a Daly City Hall aide.

One of the Realtors ads was so utterly inaccurate and deceptive — it claimed Chiu and Avalos support decriminalizing prostitution, when both have publicly opposed the decriminalization ballot measure — that Comcast pulled the ad off the air when Chiu filed a complaint.

Fog City Journal uncovered what appears to be illegal collusion between the police union and Safai. Although candidates are barred from coordinating with groups making independent expenditures on their behalf, POA president Gary Delagnes told FCJ editor Luke Thomas that Safai had given the group a photo of him to use on a mailer, a copyrighted image that Thomas took. Safai denied wrongdoing, but refused to answer further inquiries about the matter.

It’s a pitched battle — labor, the tenants, and the Democratic Party against the landlords, PG&E, downtown interests, and the Republicans. It’s pretty clear which side you want to be on.

Steven T. Jones, Sarah Phelan, and Amanda Witherell contributed to this report.

Family act

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> sarah@sfbg.com

District 3 supervisorial candidate Joe Alioto Jr., 36, has stated repeatedly on the campaign trail that he is not running on his family’s name.

But his lack of policy or political experience, combined with his campaign’s close ties to his sister, District 2 Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier — the most conservative and reactionary member of the Board of Supervisors — has progressives fearing he’ll be even more hostile to their values than his sister if he is elected this fall.

Records show that Alioto-Pier, 40, who was appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004, consistently votes against the interests of tenants, workers and low-income folks. She recently sponsored legislation that passes increased water and sewer rates along to tenants. In the past, she has voted against relocation money for no-fault evictions and against limits on condominium conversions. And that’s just her record on tenants’ rights.

"Michela makes Sup. Sean Elsbernd look like a progressive," said Board President Aaron Peskin, who is termed out as D3 supervisor and has endorsed David Chiu as his preferred candidate to represent this diverse district, which encompasses Chinatown, North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf and Telegraph Hill.

Alioto, who bought a $1.3 million Telegraph Hill condominium in 2004, has said in debates that he was proud to serve on the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Board for three years, citing his alleged involvement in stopping the Mills Corporation’s development at Piers 27 and 31, improving the Broadway corridor, and working on neighborhood parks.

But a former THD Board member says Alioto’s claims are wildly overstated.

"He did not achieve anything in North Beach as a board member," our source said. "His attendance was poor, he lacked leadership, and when he was asked to head a Broadway corridor subcommittee to tackle the Saturday night issue, he said no, he was too busy. He was on the opposite side of all our policies and goals. There were even questions whether he was residing in the district, when he house-sat for his parents in the East Bay."

In a March 2006 e-mail to THD members, Alioto acknowledges that he and his wife had indeed been house-sitting in the East Bay for months while his parents were in Italy. "Of course, I have never intended to stay in the East Bay, my being there for simply a temporary period," Alioto wrote, referring to the Supreme Court’s definition of residency, which he said he "relied on to continue to contribute to THD activities."

THD board members aren’t the only ones accusing Alioto of stretching the truth.

The Sierra Club’s John Rizzo is irate over the use of the club’s name in a recent Alioto campaign mailer in which Alioto claims that he helped create the San Francisco Climate Challenge "in collaboration with the Sierra Club and DF Environment."

"What he says is highly misleading," Rizzo told the Guardian. "It makes it sound like an ongoing effort he cofounded with the Sierra Club, but it was a one-time effort that, while worthwhile, only lasted a month and is over and done with."

Rizzo further noted that Alioto did not complete or return the Sierra Club’s candidate questionnaire, as is requested of candidates seeking the club’s political endorsement. Alioto also has ruffled feathers by claiming that he prosecuted criminal cases while working in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office in 1999.

Alameda County Senior Deputy District Attorney Kevin Dunleavy told the Guardian that Alioto was, in fact, "a summer intern, a student law clerk working under supervision" in 1999. "He got to prosecute a few cases under our supervision, including a misdemeanor jury trial, but he never worked as an actual deputy DA," Dunleavy said.

But Alioto’s alleged distortions have tenants’ rights advocates like Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union wondering if Alioto will preserve rent control and try to abolish the Ellis Act, as he has promised on the campaign trail. Alioto never completed a Tenants Union candidate endorsement questionnaire, and has a massive amount of financial backing from the same downtown real estate and business interests that support his anti-tenant sister, Alioto-Pier.

Campaign disclosures show that Alioto’s campaign consultant, Stephanie Roumeliotes, led the Committee to Reelect Michela Alioto-Pier in 2006. Roumeliotes is also working on two other political campaigns this fall: No on B, which opposes the affordable housing set-aside, and Yes on P, which supports giving Mayor Newsom even greater control of how transportation funds are allocated and spent, and which even Alioto-Pier joined the Board of Supervisors in unanimously opposing.

Public records show that the Alioto siblings have 160 of the same campaign contributors. These include Gap founder Donald Fisher, wealthy socialite Dede Wilsey, and Nathan Nayman, former executive director of the Committee on Jobs, a downtown political action committee funneling big money into preferred candidates like Alioto.

All of which has progressives worrying that Alioto and his sister could become the Donny and Marie Osmond tag team for the same Republican downtown interests that are seeking to overturn the city’s universal health care and municipal identity card programs.

Talking by phone last week after months of stonewalling the Guardian’s requests for an interview, Alioto told us that he admires his sister very much, but that does not mean he shares her beliefs. "She has been through more in her relatively short life than most of us, and she does a great job representing her district," Alioto said. "But we are not the same people. Just because we are siblings does not mean we think the same."

Noting that, unlike his sister, he supports Proposition M, (which would protect tenants from landlord harassment), Alioto said, "If Michela ever proposed legislation that I thought was bad for the district and city, I’d vote against it."

Asked why he opposes the affordable housing measure Prop. B, Alioto told us that he doesn’t think that "locking away any more of our money helps … but I support affordable housing for low-income folks, including rental units, and we need more middle-income housing for police officers, firefighters, nurses and teachers."

As for his endorsement by the rabidly anti-rent control SF Small Property Owners, Alioto said, "I think people are supporting me because I’d be fair and reasonable."

Alioto, who attended Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley and works as an antitrust lawyer at the Alioto Law Firm with brother-in-law Tom Pier, insists that he never claimed he’d been a deputy DA, "but I have a proven record of being interested in putting criminals behind bars."

Noting that he supports the property tax measures on the ballot, "notwithstanding the fact that some real estate interests supporting my campaign are opposed," Alioto further claimed that estimates that a third of his campaign money is from real estate interests are "severely overblown."

"I think they must have been including architects," he told us.

Asked about the Golden Gate Restaurant Association’s lawsuit against the city’s universal health care ordinance, Alioto said he supports Healthy San Francisco, "but I am concerned a little about putting the burden on small business."

Claiming that he supports the mayor’s community justice center as well as "funding for whatever programs it diverts people to," Alioto talked about kick-starting the economy in blighted areas by creating jobs and incentives for small businesses in those districts. Alioto, who just saw the San Francisco Small Business Advocates kick down $9,500 in support of his campaign, also said he wants to increase the number of entertainment permits, add a movie theater, and decrease parking fees in Chinatown.

"And I support the [Chinatown] night markets," Alioto said, referring to a pet project of Pius Lee, whose Chinatown neighborhood association was found, during a 2006 audit instigated by Peskin, to have received excess city funds and allowed unlicensed merchants to participate in the markets.

But Lee is evidently now in good standing with Alioto and Mayor Gavin Newsom, since he accompanied both on a recent walkabout to boost Alioto’s standing with Chinatown merchants. And Alioto’s election is apparently very important to Newsom, given that the first public appearance the mayor made after returning from his African honeymoon was on behalf of Alioto’s campaign.

All of which seems to confirm progressives’ worst fears that Alioto, just like his sister before him, will become yet another Newsom call-up vote on the board. Three ethics complaints were filed against the Alioto campaign this week, and his detractors say he has a long history of questionable behavior, going back to 1996 when he had a severe ethical lapse while working on his sister’s campaign for Congress.

According to a July 27, 1996 Chronicle article, Alioto, who was then his sister’s campaign adviser, and their cousin, college student Steve Cannata, admitted they conspired to intercept the campaign material of Michela’s congressional opponent, Frank Riggs.

"If Miss Alioto tolerates this sort of deceit in her campaign, it is frightening to imagine how she would behave if ever elected," Riggs wrote at the time. Alioto-Pier lost that race. But if her brother wins this November, can progressives help but be a little frightened to imagine just how the Alioto siblings might behave?

As one observer who preferred to remain anonymous told us, "Alioto may be all Joe Personality on the campaign trail, and have the same photogenic smile as his sister, but in reality, he is a fraud."

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