Rebecca Bowe

World Series bedlam!

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1

In case you didn’t notice, San Francisco erupted into a street party last night, Nov. 1, after the Giants won the World Series. Wandering through a sea of orange-and-black that swelled into the streets of the Mission, I got showered with beer and champagne about half a dozen times, and my ears are still ringing from all the hooting and hollering, horn-honking, firecracker bursting and police siren wailing that filled the air.

One of the craziest scenes I witnessed the entire night was when some people set a mattress on fire in the middle of the intersection at 22nd and Mission. As the blaze got brighter and everyone yelled louder and laughed harder, a fire truck started blaring its horn and inching its way through the crowd. But after the burning mattress situation was under control, the firefighters had a new problem — a dance party was unfolding on the roof of the fire engine. The crowd swarmed around it, people climbed on up, and even swung open the doors and got into the fire truck, and suddenly the brightly flashing emergency lights seemed more like a strobe light. When the truck sounded its deafening horn, it almost sounded as if the drivers were participating in the madness.

The celebration went on. There were brass bands, fireworks, spontaneous high-fives and embraces, dancing in the streets, and people hanging out of their cars half-naked waving Giants flags and laughing wildly. That was just one San Francisco neighborhood — it seems that similar out-of-control scenes played out in the Castro, near the Civic Center, and around the ballpark.

The riot cops came eventually, of course, and I’ve put a call out to the SFPD to find out how many total arrests were made by the end of the night. On my way into work this morning, I saw people washing graffiti off of brick walls and windows, and the sidewalks were littered with shards of broken glass and debris. San Francisco awoke today for the first time ever as a World Series city, but with one giant hangover.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer comes to San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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3

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer came to San Francisco Nov. 1 to attend a federal hearing on SB 1070, the controversial immigration law that critics say will encourage racial profiling. The law was partially struck down this past July when District Court Judge Susan Bolton ruled that it was unconstitutional. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder brought the case against the state of Arizona and Brewer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco began hearing arguments Nov. 1 concerning Arizona’s appeal of the ruling. Apparently, word spread far and wide that Brewer would be in the city, and a boisterous crowd of SB 1070 opponents crowded outside the federal courthouse. They chanted, displayed signs, and some wore black-and-white face paint in honor of the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday celebrated Nov. 1 and 2.

At one point, SB 1070 opponents rushed into the middle of the street and unfurled a giant banner which read, “Stop Family Separations.” Representatives from immigrant rights coalitions, social-justice groups, and labor unions joined hands, sang chants, jumped up and down, and cried out in Spanish that they were all together in the struggle. Camera people and police officers wove through the crowd.
 
Rev. Jacqueline Duhart, a Unitarian Universalist, joined Rev. David Takahashi Morris in displaying a bright yellow banner proclaiming, “Stand on the Side of Love.”
 
Duhart said she was against SB 1070 because it “causes hate to be a primary motivator,” and “denies the worth and dignity that we all have.”

Supporters of Arizona’s law showed up to wave signs, too. They were outnumbered by opponents, but voiced their opinions at high volume. One woman, gesturing toward protesters who waved banners denouncing SB 1070 as racist and a modern-day version of Jim Crow, leaned backward and belted out, “This is nothing like the civil rights movement!” and let out a peal of laughter. She was holding one side of a giant Arizona flag that had been altered with a picture of a rattlesnake and the words, “Bite Me.”

Critics of the law say it law would open the door to racial profiling and result in tearing families apart.

The Sit Lie Posse can “liberate” a billboard in 10 minutes

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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54
The Sit Lie Posse can “liberate” a billboard in 10 minutes

A press release went out yesterday announcing that a group called the Sit Lie Posse had “liberated” six billboards and 60 bus shelters with original artwork in opposition to Proposition L, San Francisco’s proposed sit / lie ordinance. The posters bear three different images, including one featuring a “Gascon-topus,” illustrated with the face of San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon and the body of a gigantic octopus. Gascon is a strong advocate for the ordinance, which would ban sitting and lying down on San Francisco sidewalks.

While members of the posse did not provide a phone number or reveal their true identities, the Guardian did manage to get in touch via email with a spokesperson of the posse, who goes by the name Jim Rawley.

Rawley says he chose his name in honor of the character from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, who manages the utopian Weedpatch camp and treats the impoverished Joad family with dignity and respect. Rawley also reveals the technique the Sit Lie Posse uses to liberate bus-shelter ads, and tells us how long it takes for the crew to put up displays of their artwork throughout the city. A few of our questions and answers appear below.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Does the Sit Lie Posse have a budget? If so, how much?
Jim Rawley: The Sit Lie Posse is a volunteer group unaffiliated with any electoral campaign. We made our guerrilla ads by hand and paid for our materials out of pocket. It cost us $150 to liberate six billboards and 60 bus shelter ads.

 
SFBG: How long does it take to liberate a billboard? How about a bus shelter ad? Does the posse use wheat-paste?
JR: Our billboards took about 10 minutes and the bus shelters took 2-3 minutes. We accessed the bus shelters using a master key and attached our work with Velcro, the industry standard for bus shelters because of quick, easy insertion. We attached our billboards with wheat-paste. Despite the efforts of Clear Channel and a heavy rainstorm, our bus shelters and billboards are still up.

 

SFBG: The Sit / Lie Posse has created quite a stir. C.W. Nevius writes in this morning’s column: “Opponents are attempting to make a comparison with the civil rights movement in the South in the ’50s and ’60s. Apparently their view is that an unkempt panhandler camping on the sidewalk equates to the Freedom Riders opposing racial discrimination. Weird.” What would you say to Nevius in response?

 JR: We expected that the Chronicle would try to ridicule, belittle and smear our work, especially since C.W. Nevius and his advocacy columns instigated Prop L. In the 1950s and 60s civil rights workers were maligned by the mainstream press, harassed by the police and subject to physical violence. It takes time for social movements to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the state and the corporate media. In their own words, Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius and Police Chief George Gascon have said that Prop L enforcement would exclude tourists and center on the homeless. Regardless of your opinion on homelessness, it’s clearly discrimination when the law is based upon a person’s appearance and applies only to certain groups – the poor and people of color. Even more so when the stated intent of the enforcement is to drive certain people out of a neighborhood. This is San Francisco’s kindler, gentler version of Jim Crow segregation.

 

SFBG: What was the inspiration behind the Gascon-topus?

JR: We came up with the Gascon-topus as a reference to sci-fi movie posters. Prop L will give unchecked power to the police to conduct unconstitutional searches and arrests. In the face of such a monstrous attack on civil liberties, we wanted to respond with wit, humor and satire.

 

SFBG: Why do you think it’s important to fight against expanded policing in public space?

JR: It’s important to fight additional policing in pubic space to preserve our civil liberties and to save the character of San Francisco. Most San Franciscans don’t want to sacrifice the city’s diversity and rebellious creativity in order to recreate San Francisco as one massive, sanitized shopping mall with all action controlled by the police. Most San Franciscans don’t want undocumented immigrants and day laborers to be deported after a bogus bust for sitting. Most people don’t want to see the poor disqualified from government housing because they committed the crime of sitting. Most people don’t want to be subjected to unconstitutional drug searches after being detained for sitting, nor do people want to see parolees sent back to prison for the crime of sitting. Public space and civil liberties are vital to a healthy democracy. Public space is the only area beyond private property and the marketplace where San Franciscans can come together to exercise civil rights and collectively shape the future of the city. We need to defend that space and extend it against threats from wealthy business interests and their allies in government.

PG&E fast and loose on repairs, tight-lipped on info

Andrew Lam
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0
PG&E fast and loose on repairs, tight-lipped on info

It was clear at several times during the Oct. 19 Senate committee hearing that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. had done a poor job of communicating with those affected by the pipeline explosion that brought catastrophe to San Bruno, a practice that is in keeping with its longstanding pattern of secrecy.

Kathy DeRenzi, a survivor who testified at the hearing, noted that she had written several letters to PG&E since the event, addressed to Vice President of Gas Operations Kirk Johnson. “I haven’t heard back from anyone,” she said. DeRenzi also noted that she has been in close contact with many affected residents since the blaze, and very few had received notification that the hearing would be held. “There would’ve been a lot more people here” had they known, she said.

San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane also complained of the utility’s lack of communication. In the weeks following the blaze, he said, the company started a repurchasing program for residents whose homes had been damaged — but never mentioned it to city officials. “The city was never informed,” Ruane said. “It’s kind of a mixed message when we find out from the media about this program.”

Weeks earlier, the company continued to hide crucial information about its top 100 priority repairs until intense public pressure forced it to release the list. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that two key PG&E employees who were on duty the night of the explosion declined to be interviewed by federal investigators about the pressure spike in the gas pipeline, saying they were “too traumatized” to talk.

PG&E also ignores the inquiries of certain media outlets. When a Guardian reporter attempted to approach Johnson to ask a question, media relations representative Joe Molica stood in the way and insisted that Johnson didn’t have time to talk. Asked for contact information so that an interview could be set up later, Molica appeared to search for a business card but came up empty-handed.

He then refused outright to provide his phone number or e-mail address. Asked why a media relations representative could not share his e-mail address with a reporter, Molica scoffed. “Because it will end up on some blog,” he snapped. 

 

No good answers

Andrew Lam
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1
No good answers

rebeccab@sfbg.com

There was lots of anger from victims and legislators but very few substantive answers from regulators or Pacific Gas & Electric Co. officials during an Oct. 19 hearing at the state capitol on the Sept. 9 gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people, injured at least 50 others, and destroyed 37 homes in San Bruno.

State senators grilled PG&E executives and officials from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), demanding to know why an aging segment of the San Bruno pipeline had been neglected despite having been flagged several years ago as high-risk and in need of repair.

Residents from San Bruno, including some who lost loved ones in the catastrophic incident, recounted their terrifying experiences of that night. Five San Bruno residents filed suit Oct. 19 against PG&E in San Mateo County Superior Court.

The complaints allege that the utility didn’t do enough to maintain the pipeline: “Investigation has revealed that the pipeline that exploded was a ticking time bomb,” one of the complaints states. “The San Bruno pipeline explosion was completely preventable.”

WHAT IS “SAFE”?

A central focus of the California Senate committee hearing was Line 132, the gas line that ruptured. PG&E installed the 30-inch, high-pressure steel pipeline in San Bruno some 50 years ago.

In 2007, the company approached the CPUC as part of an annual rate-setting process and asked for higher rates, justifying its request with a list of repairs that needed funding. A segment of Line 132, several miles from the epicenter of the explosion, was on the list. The CPUC granted a $5 million rate increase to complete the upgrade, but the work was never done. The money presumably went toward a different project deemed a higher priority.

In 2009, PG&E was back at the CPUC again with a second request for additional funding and a new project list in hand. Line 132 was included again, coupled with a document noting, “The risk of a failure at this location [is] unacceptably high.”

But even though the upgrade was never scheduled and the project never completed, Line 132 vanished from the repair list by the time PG&E returned to the CPUC as part of the rate-setting process in 2010. By then, an engineer had determined it would not have to be replaced for several more years.

“Our engineers looked at that piece of pipe and deemed it was safe until 2013, at which time we should continue to look forward to its construction,” Kirk Johnson, vice president of gas operations at PG&E, said during the hearing.

That assertion prompted Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) to ask Johnson how PG&E defines “safe.” Reading aloud from the project summary included in the second request for funding, Hill noted, “‘The likelihood of failure makes the risk of a failure at this location unacceptably high.’ Are you saying that that description is a ‘safe’ condition?”

In response, Johnson launched into a detailed description of what factors are considered when calculating risk, but Hill cut him off. “Would that be considered a safe pipe?” he repeated.

“I think for a pipeline to be deemed safe, it needs to go through an analysis to ensure that it’s safe, and that line was deemed safe,” Johnson responded.

Essentially, PG&E reached different conclusions about the integrity of the same section of pipeline over the course of several years, and no one at the hearing seemed able to explain why. The utility flagged the pipeline stretch as being in need of replacement in 2007, received millions of dollars in the form of higher utility rates to do it, spent the money on a different repair instead, went back and requested more money citing the same repair, and then decided that the pipe would remain intact until 2013.

For all the inconsistency, that particular segment of Line 132 was not actually the same section that blew apart. CPUC Executive Director Paul Clanon emphasized this point. “The discussion that alarms me the most,” he said, “is the part that blew wasn’t on that list.”

Meanwhile, the San Bruno pipeline wasn’t the only utility infrastructure PG&E never fixed, even though ratepayers forked over the cost of the repair. A list released by The Utility Reform Network (TURN) focused on the electric side of the gas-and-electric company’s vast system, noting that the utility received millions in 2007 for a slew of reliability and safety-related projects, but never quite got around to completing them. Among the neglected projects were transformer replacements, gas meter protection upgrades, reliability and safety equipment, and inspections that can help identify deficiencies.

“Consumers are shocked to realize that when PG&E is authorized to raise rates, it gets the money with no strings attached,” said Mindy Spatt, a spokesperson for TURN. “PG&E is the only entity responsible for those pipelines, and the CPUC is the only entity that regulates PG&E. So between the two of them, the buck’s got to stop somewhere.”

THE WATCHDOG

A federal investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to determine the cause of the blast has yet to reach any definitive conclusions. A preliminary NTSB report noted that just before the explosion, a system malfunction occurred when PG&E was working on a power-supply terminal in Milpitas, triggering a surge in the gas-line pressure.

Until the whole mystery is unraveled, regulators can’t accurately determine how to safeguard against such a tragedy in the future. “I have no idea how this could’ve been prevented,” Richard Clark, director of the consumer protection and safety division of the CPUC, said when asked what the agency could have done differently.

Legislators fired pointed questions about why this issue hadn’t been more closely scrutinized by the CPUC. “Did the PUC do any accounting when you gave them $5 million?” Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) queried Clark. “Do we just give them money and cross our fingers and hope they fix it? Is that what we do? Until some terrible tragedy occurs?”

Clark’s response was that the CPUC does not manage on the level of individual projects — all the upkeep, maintenance, testing, and replacement of pipeline infrastructure is up to PG&E. The utility maintains its own list of needed repairs, and the company has license to prioritize repairs and funnel money from one project to another without seeking prior approval from the regulatory body. It conducts its own audits, and the regulatory agency looks over the paperwork.

“We can’t run the company for them,” Clark said. “We don’t take a microscopic look, if you will, at what it is they’re doing.”

A team of nine inspectors for the entire state of California is tasked with auditing PG&E’s infrastructure improvements. For the first time in years, the CPUC has submitted a request to hire a few more, Executive Director Paul Clanon noted. This small staff physically inspects about 1 percent of the state’s entire gas pipeline infrastructure. PG&E has about 5,700 miles of natural gas transmission lines, with about 1,000 miles in densely populated regions classified as “high consequence areas.”

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) suggested that the CPUC should exercise more hands-on oversight. “Might it make sense to look at a different way of working with them?” Leno asked. He noted that the San Bruno explosion wasn’t the first time a PG&E pipeline failure had resulted in a loss of life or significant property damage. “We’ve got a pattern here,” Leno said. “And we’re not doing anything differently. In fact, we’re not even fining them.”

In 2008, a PG&E gas leak in Rancho Cordova led to a pipeline explosion, killing one person and injuring a few others. Leno reminded the CPUC of this tragedy, demanding to know if the agency had fined PG&E after finding the utility was at fault. It hadn’t yet, Clanon responded.

When Leno pressed for an explanation, Clanon said, “We were slow, and we should’ve been quicker.” The utility can be fined up to $20,000 for each violation, Clanon explained — and as things stand, there are no additional penalties for violations resulting in injury or death.

A HARD LOOK

Since the San Bruno pipeline explosion occurred, the CPUC has convened an independent panel of technical experts to assess the disaster, a parallel effort to the NTSB investigation. The committee will issue a set of recommendations on how PG&E should change its design, operation, construction, maintenance, or management practices to improve safety.

“We’ll be examining whether there may be systemic management problems at the utility,” Clark noted. The CPUC panel may also recommend new legislative changes to allow the state to clamp down on PG&E’s activities. “We’re taking a hard look at ourselves, and we’re taking a hard look at PG&E,” Clark said.

One point that’s abundantly clear is that the utility does not lack the money to address its system deficiencies. PG&E revenue was $13.4 billion in 2009, its rates are 30 percent higher than the national average, and its shareholders receive a cool 11.35 percent return on equity.

The utility came under fire this past spring for sinking $40 million into Proposition 16 — a ballot measure that would have effectively eliminated competition for the monopolistic utility by snuffing out municipal power programs. Now that its unaddressed repairs in San Bruno and elsewhere have come to light, the company’s profits and substantial executive bonuses may come under closer scrutiny.

Yet whatever regulatory changes come into play will hardly matter for those San Bruno residents whose lives were permanently altered by the loss of family members. James Ruigomez, a resident who testified at the hearing, told legislators that his son’s girlfriend, Jessica Morales, had just settled down to watch a football game with his son Joe Ruigomez on the night of the explosion. Morales died in the blaze and Joe is still recovering in the hospital.

The tragedy filled James Ruigomez with guilt and sorrow, he said — but also anger. “Extreme anger,” he added, “knowing that this possibly could’ve been prevented.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Danny Glover robo-calls for DeWitt Lacy

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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6

My office phone rang this afternoon and it was none other than actor Danny Glover — well, a recorded message from him anyway — asking me to support DeWitt Lacy for supervisor in District 10. (The Guardian office is located in the district.)

“I worked in southeast San Francisco before I went into acting,” Glover’s message says. “Lacy has earned my support because he will put people first.”

Lacy’s campaign has drawn some criticism in recent weeks for not being as visible as it could, but with Danny Glover’s message reaching D10 voters, it looks like Lacy is rallying for a strong final push. In any case, the D10 candidate clearly has some friends in high places. You can listen to Lacy’s Guardian endorsement interview here.

 

Don’t believe everything the government tells you

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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0

So this is weird. I was poking around on the National Pipeline Safety Mapping System website today, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration, looking for information relating to the San Bruno pipeline explosion. When I ran a search for gas pipeline operators in San Francisco, two different names cropped up: The first is a gas technician who works for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and the second, also listed as a PG&E contact, is local environmental justice advocate Francisco Da Costa. Wait, what?

Da Costa is a well-known figure at city hall who frequently speaks up during public comment at Board of Supervisors meetings. He’s the director of a Bayview organization called Environmental Justice Advocacy, and he blogs about local political issues on his website. When he speaks of PG&E, he tends to use phrases like “diabolical.” Da Costa wears several hats, but PG&E gas pipeline operator certainly isn’t one of them. Not only is he incorrectly identified as such in this federal search engine, complete with his email address and phone number, his name is tagged with the phrase “San Bruno Natural Gas Line” — virtually the only subject a member of the public would be on that website to collect information about.

Da Costa told me this headache started when he submitted an information request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that is conducting an investigation to determine the cause of the San Bruno gas-pipeline rupture. Somehow, in the course of processing his public-records request, it appears that the government wound up incorrectly listing him as a gas operator with PG&E. He’s notified them of the error, but as of this afternoon, it hadn’t been corrected.

Ironically, Da Costa’s request for information on the San Bruno pipeline prompted other info-seekers to contact him. “Ever since I initiated a FOIA request, fire chiefs have emailed me saying to provide them with the maps of the pipelines and so on and so forth,” he said. “I’ve received about 15 or 20 emails from fire chiefs all over California. I had to tell them, I’m not a gas operator.”

When we phoned the National Pipeline Mapping System to ask how Da Costa wound up being a listed as a PG&E pipeline operator, a spokesperson said she would check into it and call us back.

The cheapest seats

Andrew Lam
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0

Of course the Guardian staff didn’t have the dough for tickets to Game Five of the Giants and Phillies battale royale for the National League crown. But hey, the real party was outside the park — so Caitlin Donohue (by land) and Rebecca Bowe (by sea) staked out where the real fans were hangin’ — and caught a little animalistic behavior and political fracas in the bargain. What more could you ask of a ball game? Game Six is on Sat/23 at 4:57 p.m.

Creative forces unite against Prop. 23

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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7

Proposition 23, bankrolled by out-of-state oil interests, threatens to reverse California’s environmental progress by suspending its landmark climate change legislation,  Assembly Bill 32. Titled the Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32 would place enforceable limits on major polluters and spur the creation of green businesses. But if voters approve Prop. 23, progress on transitioning to clean energy could be stalled for decades. The Guardian published in-depth coverage of Prop. 23 in the Oct. 13 issue.

A broad coalition of big green organizations, green-business associations, and others has formed to oppose Prop. 23 — but some of the most inspiring efforts have emerged from a coalition of environmental-justice advocates who are tapping their own creative genius to get the message out.

Hip hop artists Braelan B and Gammaray of the Los Angeles-based Beatrock Music label spearheaded the creation of a No on Prop 23 song, in collaboration with Otayo Dubb and T-Know (both of CounterParts with Braelan B and Gammaray), and artists Nomi of Power Struggle, Somos One of BRWN BFLO, and Damn Pete of Think Tank. Have a listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCR4QF7w7Aw

Braelan B told the Guardian that the artists were inspired by the efforts of Communities United Against Prop 23 — a coalition of environmental-justice organizations that is highlighting the impact the ballot measure would have on communities of color — as well as a voter-mobilization effort called the Clean Energy Tour, and the California Students Sustainability Coalition (CSSC), which is seeking online pledges for “no” votes against Prop. 23. Also known as Braelan Murray, he also serves as communications director at the Greenlining Institute, which is part of Communities United.

“We’re trying to use music as a catalyst,” he explained. “The youth vote and the of-color vote are really the swing votes.” To launch the music project, he said, “I just sort of got on the phone and said, California’s under attack, and I really want to send a strong message.” The idea caught on, and the YouTube video featuring the song already has more than 1,000 hits.

Meanwhile, Green for All has released a YouTube video about Prop. 23 set to the tune of the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” featuring some rather hilarious oily cowboys smoking cigars and clutching fistfuls of money. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCdTHrtU12Y

On the edge

Andrew Lam
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0
On the edge

rebeccab@sfbg.com

It’s a strange and daunting time for anyone just starting out, but youth who age out of foster care are up against particularly harsh challenges.

In July, the national unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds reached a staggering 51 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A recent article in The New York Times Magazine described how, in the face of a bleak job market, 20-somethings today are far more likely than those in past generations to go back to school, travel, volunteer, or complete unpaid internships — extending a phase of impermanence and financial dependency for years beyond what used to be considered the norm. Studies show that nearly half of youth between ages 18 and 25 move back home with their parents at least once.

But young people aging out of the foster care system typically have to face this world of churning uncertainty without the benefit of a safety net. Many post-foster care youth don’t have the luxury of “failing to launch,” embarking on an early career path without pay, or landing back home if nothing else pans out. Foster youth lose their support base at 18, when the state ceases to be their legal guardian. For these young people, who are often the least equipped to achieve financial self-sufficiency, becoming emancipated as a legal adult is no cause for celebration; rather, it’s a source of anxiety.

Most foster youth lack the skills, connections, and resources they would need to transition to independence at age 18 — a prospect that would be difficult even for youth with greater access to resources and no major family history problems. Studies measuring the outcomes for this population paint a grim picture: many wind up homeless, incarcerated, or at risk of losing children of their own by the time they reach their early 20s.

There’s a growing awareness that many of the approximately 5,000 youth who age out of foster care in California every year are slipping through the cracks. Local and state programs have been initiated to improve their chances of achieving independence, but efforts on both fronts have run up against obstacles.

In Sacramento, Assembly Bill 12 — which extends key services for foster youth to age 21 — was signed into law several weeks ago, but the intentions behind it were undermined when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a line-item veto of $80 million in funding for child welfare programs. In San Francisco, a housing facility designed for youth at risk of homelessness seems to hold promise as an effective model, yet it has encountered resistance from local neighborhood organizations.

The plight of these young people is both a measure of our compassion and potentially a harbinger of larger societal problems to come.

HIGH STAKES

Kirsten Johnson-Bell is an emancipated youth who turned 18 in January. She has six siblings still in foster care in the East Bay, and she says she has been in more than 20 foster care placements since 2007.

Johnson-Bell told the Guardian that she has housing assistance that will last for 18 months — but she’s already beginning to wonder what will happen after that. “Where am I supposed to go?” Johnson-Bell wondered. If the experience of her peers who’ve exited the system is any indication, her concern is well founded.

Nationwide, nearly 40 percent of post-foster-care youth have been homeless at some point by the time they turn 24, according to survey results released by the University of Chicago and Partners for Our Children at the University of Washington. Just 6 percent had completed college degrees by that age, and only 48 percent were working — mostly in low-wage jobs. More than half of the young men had been convicted of crimes, and roughly three-quarters of the young women had received government benefits to meet basic needs. Teen pregnancy is statistically higher among young women exiting foster care.

Most youth in foster care aren’t housed continuously with a single caregiver, but bounce from place to place, making it tough to form long-lasting relationships. “It’s a fairly rare experience that youth stay in one home, and that means moving schools and moving friends,” notes Rachel Antrobus, executive director of Transitional Age Youth San Francisco (TAY SF), a city-funded nonprofit. Many foster kids take medication for behavioral problems, and it’s common for them to experience emotional upheaval.

“It’s practically inevitable that they’re going to have long-term emotional impacts,” Antrobus said, noting many bear the long-term scars of abuse, neglect, or forced separation from their families for some other reason. “It’s a much longer road, and they have to do it with deeper wounds. Even the kids that are the most together … will likely experience some really dark places in their 20s.”

In San Francisco, there are 1,400 young people in the foster care system, and all but about 500 are in placements outside the city. Lynette Davis, who turned 18 this year, moved from San Francisco to Oakland when she first entered foster care in the eighth grade. Davis acknowledges that she was one of the lucky ones. Rather than move in with a stranger, she went to live with her godmother and remained there until her 18th birthday.

Davis is now living with her boyfriend and his family in Oakland — and the household was in the process of moving when the Guardian spoke with her. Her godmother offered to continue housing her after she turned 18, Davis noted. “But she’s got her own kids. I felt like I should be able to go off and do my own thing.” The requirement in either housing situation is that she must work, go to school, or both, Davis said. She’s attending classes at Oakland’s Merritt College. In the meantime, she’s mired in the frustrating exercise of applying for job after job.

“It’s been pretty ridiculous,” Davis said of her fruitless job hunt. “Sometimes it makes me want to stop and give up. But as long as you’ve got people around you who care about you, it’s okay.”

Many foster kids who didn’t have the support network that Davis did are up against alarmingly high stakes as they age out. “Some people are mothers and they have to pay rent and are looking for more than two jobs,” she said. Asked what she thought were the greatest challenges facing foster youth in San Francisco, she mentioned poverty, gangs, and a lack of job opportunities.

“To be successful, you have to be financially stable,” she said. “With some youth, that’s hard. They don’t have jobs, or they can’t get jobs. They want to find an easy way out.” That’s when they become more susceptible to gangs or drugs, she said. Davis says she was a “rebellious youth” at a younger age, but now she’s focused on her goal of obtaining a degree in psychology so that one day she can go into counseling. When she became a member of California Youth Connections, which aids youth with transitional support, she met other foster youth and realized she could really have an impact.

HELP OR HARM?

The difference between ages 18 and 21 can be critical, so foster youth advocates throughout the state cheered Sept. 30 when AB12, California’s Fostering Connections to Success Act, was signed into law. It allows California to make use of federal matching funds to provide transitional support for qualifying foster youth until age 21. It also authorizes the state to take advantage of a federal subsidy for an existing guardianship program for relatives of foster youth who want to become caregivers. Many foster youth advocates have thrown support behind the kin caregiver model — it can be less traumatic for youth to move in with a grandparent than being suddenly dropped into a strange place.

A major sponsor of A 12 was the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes, and policy director Amy Lemley hailed its passage as “the biggest child-welfare improvement in 20 years.” Studies show that youth who receive support beyond 18 are 200 percent more likely to be working toward completion of a high school diploma, 65 percent less likely to have been arrested, and 54 percent less likely to have been incarcerated than those who exit with no support. The benefits could also generate savings by reducing the number of people in prison, on welfare, or in need of publicly funded health and human services. The law will be implemented in 2012.

The law also will provide new housing options. The federal government will chip in to cover more placements in the Transitional Housing Program Plus — nearly axed during the last budget cycle — which offers supervised transitional housing for emancipated youth. Youth may also receive a rent subsidy that could apply in a dorm, a shared-living situation, or another arrangement that fits the youth’s needs. This flexibility is a positive change, Lemley noted. “We’re not telling young people ‘it’s our way or the highway,'<0x2009>” she said.

“If a state like California can do this in the context of its current fiscal deficit, it sends a strong signal to other states,” Lemley said. However, an unexpected line-item veto put a damper on the landmark achievement. Schwarzenegger dealt a blow to the child-welfare system by cutting $80 million in funding for programs the California Legislature had restored, which actually amounts to more like $133 million due to the loss of federal matching funds.

“It’s really just a schizophrenic policy on the governor’s part,” Lemley said. “We were hoping he would have a legacy of the foster care governor, but now it doesn’t seem as if he will have that legacy at all.”

While the deep budget cut isn’t aimed at AB12 directly, Lemley said, it erodes funding for child-welfare workers and forces counties to make painful funding cuts. The overarching effect is that abuse and neglect may go undetected more often, and youth in the system will have fewer available resources once they’re placed.

ANOTHER CHANCE

Of all the challenges facing foster youth who age out of the system, housing is among the most critical, particularly in San Francisco. A partnership between the city, Larkin Street Youth Services, and nonprofit developer Community Housing Partnership (CHP) aims to address this by providing a space for transitional-age youth who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford housing in the city. Located at the King Edward II Inn near Cow Hollow and the Marina district, the facility would house 24 young people, ages 18 to 24, who are at risk of homelessness.

“By definition, that includes youth aging out of foster care,” explains David Schnur of CHP. The nonprofits are working in tandem with the city’s Human Services Agency and Mayor’s Office of Housing.

Youth housed at Edward II would have access to physical and mental health care, substance abuse and HIV-related services, education and job training, coaching in basic life skills such as budgeting and personal hygiene, and case management, Schnur said. They would be required to contribute a portion of their income, whatever the amount, toward rent.

However, an organized force of opposition has already surfaced from the surrounding community, which comprises one of San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhoods. “I think people are just nervous about what it means to have a building of this type in the neighborhood,” Schnur noted. To assuage neighborhood concerns, the nonprofits have set up a project advisory committee in hopes of talking it out and bringing everyone on board.

Patricia Vaughey, with the Marina-Cow Hollow Neighbors, is actively opposed to the project but insists that it isn’t out of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) concerns. “We are not NIMBYs,” she told the Guardian. “We want to find a location that’s suitable. We want to make sure those kids are safe.” She said that criminal activity in the neighborhood made the inn a poor choice. Yet advocates insist that for the youth, the program could mean the difference between a lifetime of hardship and a chance to get their lives on track at a crucial age. “The safety net for these young people is so thin,” Lemley noted. “You might have one person, you might have another. But then the winds of change blow and suddenly the bloom falls off the rose.”

Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Sarah Phelan on SF’s disadvantaged youth, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Tim Redmond’s editorial on the issues facing our rising generation

More on the “whore” gaffe

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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3

By now, you’ve probably heard about the campaign gaffe in which an unidentified female associate of Jerry Brown (possibly Brown’s wife) called his opponent Meg Whitman a “whore” during a conversation that neither realized was being recorded over voice mail.

The comment was made in reference to Whitman’s offer to cut a deal over the pensions of a police officer’s union in exchange for an endorsement. Soon after the tape went public, Whitman’s campaign seized the opportunity to issue a press release slamming the remark as “an appalling and unforgivable smear,” and a slur. Sparks flew over the comment at Tuesday’s gubernatorial debate.

Yet a number of reactions from feminist organizations and bloggers suggest that despite Whitman’s ire, women haven’t started hating on Brown as a result of the dumb mistake. And in the meantime, the controversy has generated some pretty interesting discussions out there in the blogosphere.

Shortly after the remark went live, Brown secured the endorsement of the California chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW), which in turn prompted conservative bloggers everywhere to start foaming at the mouth, madly accusing NOW of being partisan and anti-woman.

“We definitely felt that putting the announcement out today was important to refocus on the real issue in the campaign,” such as “what are the two candidates going to do for women and their families,” the chapter’s president, Patty Bellasalma, told the Sacramento Bee. “The use of the word ‘whore’ is offensive,” she added. “There’s no mincing words about that.”

Chloe, a blogger at Feministing.com, had this to say:

“When candidates and their aides use highly gendered derogatory terms to refer to the opponent, and when that opponent responds by appealing to women’s personal-is-political feminism, we are having a national discussion about gender. … But it doesn’t feel like a particularly productive one — it’s more a case of one camp screwing up by revealing underlying sexism and the other capitalizing on that mistake to score a few points. It’s not an honest discussion of structural and cultural sexism in America and how it affects people of all genders. I want to make it clear that I think what Jerry Brown’s aide said was unacceptable, as was Brown’s seemingly tacit endorsement of the word. It’s not acceptable, obviously, to call anyone a whore. But I’m trying hard to remember what Jay Smooth taught us: condemn the action, not the person, or the campaign.”

Hanna Rosin, a blogger writing for Slate.com and the DoubleX factor, had this take on it:

“Now it’s unclear exactly what the aide meant, but it’s perfectly clear he or she did not mean that Whitman was a hussy who had slept with half the legislators west of the Mississippi. Since this was an endorsement call, he or she meant that Whitman was whoring herself for the endorsement. In one way, we could see this as progress, that the word ‘whore’ is so far removed from its original sex-shaming role that it gets thrown around in the context of political power trading.”

But if the phrase weren’t so wrapped up in sexism, would we even find ourselves in the midst of this controversy? Technically, “whore” can be used to refer to a man or a woman, and it can also mean “a venal or unscrupulous person” or some one who is “considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.” But do alternate definitions remove the sting of an offensive word?

A few questions. Should the gender of the person using the word (in this case, a woman) change our analysis of how it was used? When the remark has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with sex, should it be taken as a sign that we’re making progress on gender equality? Or would real progress be when the term “whore” goes the way of an archaic insult you’d find in a Shakespearean play?

There are signs, meanwhile, that the word “whore” isn’t universally regarded as a gendered insult. Just check out the roughly 200 definitions offered on Urban Dictionary. Like this one, posted by some one named Megan:

“Minor annoyance. You’re not really mad at them, but still kinda pissed.
‘Hey, who ate the last doughnut?’
‘I did.’
‘Whore.’”

Big Oil’s false choice

Andrew Lam
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0
Big Oil’s false choice

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Tapping into voters’ economic insecurities at a time of record high unemployment rates, out-of-state oil interests say addressing global warming will cost California more jobs. But a broad coalition that includes environmentalists and top business groups argue that just the opposite is true, saying the economy will suffer if we suddenly kill the incentives now driving the clean energy industry, one business sector that actually grew during the recession.

Proposition 23 would indefinitely suspend Assembly Bill 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act. Texas oil companies are bankrolling the initiative, spending millions of dollars to convince voters that they must choose between saving jobs and saving the environment. Since jobs are more important right now, they argue, the environment will have to wait.

But the other side — which includes groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, whose top priority is always job creation — is promoting the compelling idea that the path to economic recovery lies in rising to the challenge of climate change. They argue that addressing global warming now isn’t just about avoiding more out-of-control wildfires, diminishing crop yields, prolonged intense droughts, coastal flooding, and other calamities that climate scientists say global warming will bring to California. It’s also about creating jobs now and trying to lower California’s 12.4 percent unemployment rate, the third highest nationwide.

The push to defeat Prop. 23 has brought together prominent business people, public-health advocates like the American Lung Association, big green organizations such as the Sierra Club, and environmental-justice advocates who are pushing for green jobs as a way to fend off poverty and tackle air quality problems in disadvantaged neighborhoods. If the coalition of unlikely allies is successful, Big Oil’s comfortable lock on the energy market could be thrown off balance by California’s emerging green economy.

“Ultimately, we think it’s going to be a David vs. Goliath battle, because they have very deep pockets,” said No on 23 campaign spokesperson Steve Maviglio. “The proponents are playing to the fears of those most affected by the economy.”

When voters decide on this one, it will signify a choice to proceed down one of two paths at an important crossroads. A global climate summit in Copenhagen late last year failed to produce an effective response to climate change. A push for a federal cap-and-trade system to combat global warming yielded similarly disappointing results. AB32 presents a third chance to set a new standard, and a precedent, for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. But if Prop. 23 passes, environmentalists will have struck out.

A report issued in July by the National Academy of Sciences lays bare the far-reaching implications of policy decisions around climate change. “Emissions reductions choices made today matter in determining impacts experienced not just over the next few decades,” the report notes, “but in coming centuries and millennia.”

 

CLOSE RACE

In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB32, mandating a statewide reduction of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The law is slated to go into full effect in January 2012, when a cap-and-trade system will make it more costly and burdensome for major polluters to continue burning high quantities of fossil fuels, among other strategies.

The law helps alternative energy companies and creates incentives for large and small businesses to green their operations. Prop. 23, deceptively titled the “California Jobs Initiative,” would suspend AB32 until the state’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. A decade could pass before such a market condition is in place — in the past 40 years, it’s occurred just three times.

Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara in September, Schwarzenegger blasted Texas-based oil companies Tesoro Corporation and Valero Energy Corporation, which have contributed a combined $5.6 million to the Prop. 23 campaign, for trying to deceive California voters. “They are creating a shell argument that this is about saving jobs,” Schwarzenegger said. “Does anybody really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black oil hearts, are spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs? It’s not about jobs at all, ladies and gentlemen. It is about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits.”

Prop. 23 has been unpopular even among many traditional right-wing and business interests. Oil giants Chevron and BP have remained neutral on it. Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman also renounced it, but straddled the fence by vowing to suspend AB32 for a year anyway.

According to a breakdown of campaign spending issued by opponents, oil interests contributed 97 percent of the funding for Prop. 23, while out-of-state interests were responsible for 89 percent. Kansas-based Koch Industries, run by billionaire siblings David and Charles Koch, dropped $1 million into the effort. The Koch brothers have been singled out as the financial backbone of the Tea Party.

Yet despite bipartisan opposition in Sacramento, polls suggest Prop. 23 could be a close race. A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed a dead heat among California voters, with 40 percent in favor, 38 percent opposed, and about one-fifth of likely voters undecided. The television commercials advocating Yes on 23 drive home a simple yet misleading message: “Save jobs. Stop the energy tax.” A spokesperson from the Yes on 23 campaign did not return the Guardian’s calls seeking comment.

Ironically, jobs are also the cornerstone of the No on 23 campaign’s arguments. “We have very heavy hitters who see this as a job killer,” Maviglio said. The campaign is highlighting the fact that the only economic area that has experienced growth amid the recession is green tech.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown referenced green jobs as a bright hope for economic recovery in a televised debate against Whitman, and the prospect of green job creation as a way to alleviate poverty is clearly articulated in The Green Collar Economy, a widely influential book by Green for All founder Van Jones. Green for All has joined the Greenlining Institute and a host of 80 organizations statewide in a united front against Prop. 23, called Communities United Against Prop. 23, which is part of the larger opposition campaign dubbed Communities United Against the Dirty Energy Prop.

Low-income communities and communities of color will be disproportionately affected if Prop. 23 wins, said Orson Aguilar, executive director of the Greenlining Institute. “The communities we represent are feeling a double impact,” Aguilar noted. “They’re suffering from pollution,” since power plants and polluting industries tend to be sited in low-income communities, “and they’re suffering from unemployment and the economic crisis. There definitely is a double-whammy.”

 

LOCAL MOMENTUM

At a recent green business symposium hosted by Urban Solutions, a nonprofit that aids small businesses and seeks to create job opportunities in low-income communities, a Castro District merchant explained her decision to enter green-business certification process. “I’m dedicated to going green because, No. 1, it’s the right thing to do,” said Elaine Jennings, who runs Small Potatoes Catering & Events. “No. 2, it’s the right thing to do. And No. 3, it’s the right thing to do.”

But the moderator of the panel, a business reporter, wasn’t as interested in the moral rationale — instead, she followed up by asking whether going green was a wise financial move. Anthony Tsai, green business program manager at Urban Solutions, made the case that it is. Water bills have gone up 40 percent since 2000, Tsai said. Electricity costs have gone up 60 percent and waste disposal fees have increased 250 percent. By conserving energy and water and reducing waste, small businesses can save money during tough economic times.

Aguilar sees energy-efficiency building retrofits as an opportunity to create jobs for disadvantaged populations. In order to comply with the climate regulations under AB32, energy-efficiency retrofits would have to be completed to hit conservation targets. “We have thousands, if not millions, of buildings in California that need to be retrofitted,” he said. “A lot of people who are out of work are in the construction industry. Latinos and African Americans were hit hard when construction fell.” With energy retrofits and solar-panel installations on the agenda, AB32 could be good news for electricians, too, Aguilar said.

There are signs that AB32 is already giving green business a lift. A manufacturer of electric delivery trucks, for example, relocated from Mexico to California’s Central Valley late last year. A wind-energy company recently relocated to San Diego from Spain. The solar industry is growing faster in California, particularly in the Bay Area, than anywhere else nationwide. And in the past five years, roughly $9 billion in venture capital investment has gone into clean tech industries, with more going to California than any other state.

“Prop. 23 would essentially pull the rug out from under this explosive growth, which we’re experiencing during a recession,” Maviglio noted.

Jeanine Cotter, CEO of Luminalt, an independently owned San Francisco solar and installation company, is active in the campaign to defeat Prop. 23. “There is an entire ecosystem that feeds off of good policy,” Cotter said. If Prop. 23 passes, “we will lose the spark that we have and we will go backward.”

Despite the economic downturn, Luminalt experienced its best year in 2009 in the six-year history of the company, and if AB32 goes into effect in 2012 as planned, the demand for new solar installations will only grow. But with less than a month to go before the election, Cotter said she was alarmed by the lack of awareness about Prop. 23, even among environmentalists.

“We were at West Coast Green with No on 23 literature,” she said, referencing a widely attended green-business conference, “and I was shocked at how many people didn’t know what it is.”

 

RISKING IT

Small business owners and conscience-driven activists aren’t the only ones touting this theory of a new energy economy. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a fiscally conservative business association that is often at odds with environmentalists and progressives, is actively campaigning against Prop. 23 — and it’s not out of any sense of moral duty.

If Prop. 23 succeeds, explained Chamber spokesperson Rob Black, it will scare off the venture capitalists. “For them, water’s like money,” he explained. “It will flow to the easiest place to invest.” Regulation like AB32 guarantees a return on investment for climate-friendly technology, he added. But if that regulatory structure is thrown into question, investors may flee overseas because investing would be too risky. “If we walk away from clean tech, the next Microsoft will be a Chinese company,” Black said.

Donnie Fowler, a political consultant who has worked for Al Gore and other top Democrats, is a senior adviser to the Clean Economy Network and a leader in the effort to defeat Prop. 23. Oil companies “went to Washington and spent hundreds of millions” lobbying against climate change regulations, Fowler pointed out. “Now they’ve opened up a second front. If California goes backward, all of those senators and Congressional representatives will say, ‘No way … I’m surely not taking a political risk. If they went backward, there’s no reason we should go forward.'”

Fowler said that for environmentalists, voting No on 23 could be seen as an affirmation of statewide efforts to address climate change in a meaningful way. “This is a real opportunity,” he said, “for Californians to stand up and say we’ve had enough. We are going to take a stand — right now.”

www.stopdirtyenergyprop.com

www.communitiesagainstprop23.com

The Governator: Fighting oil villains or making life easier for them?

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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The Governator: Fighting oil villains or making life easier for them?

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle contains an opinion piece by David Horsey commending Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, for taking Texas oil companies Tesoro and Valero to task for attempting to subvert California’s landmark global warming legislation, AB 32.

Titled “The Governator battles villains with ‘black oil hearts,’” the piece casts Schwarzenegger as an environmental superhero facing off against a band of greedy cowboys. Tesoro and Valero have sunk millions into Proposition 23, the deceptively titled “California Jobs Initiative,” which would suspend implementation of the greenhouse-gas reduction law until unemployment drops to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. Prospects are dim for such a market condition anytime soon.

“It is electrifying to hear a Republican politician expose the big corporations that relentlessly subvert public policy and the national interest,” Horsey notes. “Arnold Schwarzenegger might be leaving office with a mixed record of accomplishment, but when it comes to challenging these modern-day bandits of industry, he could be the boldest action hero we’ve got.”

Schwarzenegger deserves credit for taking a stand against oil-industry giants on this particular issue, but he’s no environmental action hero. On Sept. 30, The Governator vetoed legislation that would have improved the state’s capability to respond to oil spills.

AB 234, authored by Assembly Member Jared Huffman, would have required large vessels to deploy oil containment booms prior to fuel transfers. The Dubai Star oil spill occurred during a fuel transfer, and the precautionary measure could have lessened the impact.

Additionally, the bill would have increased existing oil fees to bolster funding for the state’s oil spill prevention and response efforts. And it would have required the State Lands Commission to report on safeguards for offshore oil drilling and response plans in the event of the failure of an oil rig’s blowout preventer. The BP oil spill demonstrated how dire the consequences can be if such a failure occurs.

“With his veto of AB 234, Governor Schwarzenegger failed miserably when it came to protecting California’s environment, public health, seabirds, and our coastal waters from oil spills,” said Marcie Keever, Oceans & Vessels Campaign Director at Friends of the Earth, which sponsored the bill along with Pacific Environment.  “Assembly Member Huffman and the Legislature worked extremely hard this year to craft AB 234 to protect the people and resources of the state of California — and with a few strokes of his pen the Governor struck a significant blow to public health and our environment.”

Schwarzenegger may have publicly reprimanded the Texas oil cowboys for bankrolling Prop. 23, but he’s no Captain Planet.

Who’s trying to fast-track Parkmerced?

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Who’s trying to fast-track Parkmerced?

At a Sept. 30 Planning Commission meeting, several commissioners and community members raised concerns that project approval for Parkmerced, a development that will add thousands of new housing units to an existing residential complex, had been scheduled before anyone was really prepared to discuss it. It’s since been pushed back, but the attempt to rush it through drew fire nonetheless.

Land use attorney Sue Hestor said she’d discovered the day before the Planning Commission meeting that a final project EIR would be made available Oct. 7, with an approval hearing scheduled just two weeks later, on Oct. 21. That came as a surprise even to Hestor, who closely monitors development projects. “You cannot just drop a complex legal document on people two weeks before the hearing and say that is sufficient,” Hestor said. “Two weeks for a staff report for this project is insulting.” Prior to this notice, the hearing on Parkmerced was widely expected later in the year.

Christina Olague, vice-president of the Planning Commission, said during the meeting that the accelerated timeline was highly unusual. “I was hearing that we were going to be attempting to initiate this project on the 7th of October with an approval calendared for the following week,” she said. “And I was concerned that it felt, at that point, that it was a little bit out of the hands of the planning commission. When it comes to projects of this size, I just felt like that was too much of a rush to get it through, especially given that we are in the middle of CPMC with comments due the 19th of October.”

Olague said the process made her uncomfortable. “I felt a lot of our say was being removed from our realm and there were outside forces … other departments in the city that were kind of influencing it in a way that didn’t feel comfortable to me,” she said. “Also, historically … we have never done it that way. Usually we calendar an item for one week and then there’s a 20-day noticing period that allows members of the public to digest the information and review the information.” She added, “I just didn’t want the public to get the impression that we were favoring one project over other projects.”

Calvin Welch, an affordable housing activist, noted that Parkmerced developers have a laudable goal of preserving onsite rent-controlled units at the housing complex — but he had yet to see a draft of a development agreement outlining the details of that plan. The planning commissioners hadn’t seen that document, either. Welch suggested more time was needed to review the terms of the agreement.

If the Planning Commission had approved Parkmerced on this accelerated schedule, it might have gone to the Board of Supervisors for approval before the end of the year, so the votes would’ve easier to count than if the project went before a new class of Supes in 2011.

The Guardian reported earlier this month that Mayor Gavin Newsom received a $1,000 campaign contribution for his bid for lieutenant governor from Craig Hartman, a design partner for Parkmerced, plus $2,000 from two executives associated with the project. AECOM, which is completing technical studies for the project, gave him campaign donations totaling $13,000.

Speaking to a crowd of real-estate professionals and representives from the business community a couple weeks ago, Newsom urged them to get involved in district elections in order to avoid “a dramatic shift” that would occur if the wrong people get elected to local office in November.

Did the mayor’s office lean on the planning department to rush the approval of Parkmerced in order to ensure a more predictable outcome? We emailed Newsom’s press secretary, Tony Winnicker, with questions, and we’ll be sure to post a response if we receive one.

 

Dollars or sense?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Dollars or sense?

rebeccab@sfbg.com

It’s no secret that San Francisco is a particularly costly place to live. It consistently ranks in the top 10 most expensive cities nationwide, and it isn’t uncommon to see people renting out their walk-in closets as makeshift bedrooms to make ends meet.

There’s ample evidence that the city’s market-rate housing is out of reach for many families, middle-class workers, and low-income populations, particularly during the recession. Yet the shortage of affordable housing is a problem that is going largely unaddressed at City Hall.

The city’s General Plan estimates that a full 61 percent of new housing would have to be affordable to satisfy the housing needs of city residents, but even the most demanding development standards fall far short, producing only about half that amount. And while most new affordable housing is built for low-income people, a sizable portion is intended for first-time homebuyers with salaries at the highest threshold of affordability. In recent years, about one-third of new “affordable housing” was built to sell to people with “moderate” incomes.

So as big plans are mapped out for new residential developments composed of mostly market-rate units, what’s the strategy for addressing the underlying affordability gap? And will it ever be enough to keep from further turning San Francisco into a city of rich people while its workers are forced to live elsewhere?

This map, which appears in San Francisco’s Five-Year Consolidated Plan, charts concentrations of low- and moderate-income households in the city using HUD 2000 income data. Under federal guidelines, people with low and moderate income could be eligible for affordable housing.

A San Francisco Unified School District proposal to create new housing for San Francisco teachers underscores just how mismatched housing prices are to income. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) estimates that San Francisco renters paying market rate in 2010 would have to earn $56,240 to afford rent a one-bedroom apartment, $70,400 for a two-bedroom unit, and $94,000 for a three-bedroom unit, assuming they spend no more than about one-third of their income on housing.

A starting teacher’s salary in San Francisco is $50,000, so early-career educators may feel the squeeze. A survey of teachers conducted for the proposal found that 81 percent of respondents were renters, most living with unrelated roommates. More than half had plans to relocate in five years to a city where they could afford to be homeowners.

Housing was a hot-button issue at the Sept. 16 Planning Commission hearing on the environmental impact review for a hospital and housing complex that California Pacific Medical Center wants to build near Van Ness Avenue.

“The CPMC EIR fails miserably to analyze the income of the CPMC work force, and where it’s supposed to be housed,” affordable housing advocate Calvin Welch told the Guardian. “It’s a profoundly important question. If they are [providing] jobs that produce incomes that are insufficient to pay for average market-rate housing in San Francisco, who’s responsibility is it going to be to build housing for that workforce?”

 

WHO CAN AFFORD IT?

San Francisco has a reputation as a diverse, politically engaged hub that supports emerging artists, independent thinkers, and advocates for youth, workers’ rights, healthy ecosystems, protections for the most vulnerable segments of society, and hundreds of other causes. Without economic diversity — which is only possible when housing is available to people with a range of incomes — it might be a different place.

NLIHC estimates that 65 percent of San Francisco households are renters, and a significant number are what the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) calls “cost-burdened,” shelling out more than a third of their incomes on rent. To get by, tenants have been known to cram roommates in like sardines, or cling tenaciously to a rent-controlled unit.

In a thick report outlining affordable housing goals for 2010–14, MOH and two other city agencies clearly articulate the housing challenges facing low-income renters. For one thing, the report says rents are going up despite the economic recession and declining home prices. And most people’s salaries don’t stretch far enough to cover those high prices. Even though there are 16 billionaires and some fabulously wealthy CEOs residing in San Francisco, the majority of people work in more mundane occupations like waiting tables, retail, office work, nonprofit jobs, teaching, health care, or public service.

The MOH report notes that despite the city’s relatively high median income, there’s a widening gap between top earners and people on the lower end of the spectrum, so few households actually wind up in that middle zone. “In fact, over a quarter of San Francisco’s population earns under 50 percent of [area median income],” the report states. For individuals in 2010, this translates to one in four people earning $34,800 or less. Compounding that problem are recent unemployment figures indicating that nearly one in 10 is jobless.

About one half of San Francisco’s population is considered low- or moderate-income, the housing report notes, using the standards used to formulate affordable housing prices. MOH uses a tiered income matrix, calculated using federal guidelines, to determine who could qualify for housing below the market rate. If you make $20,900 or less, you’re counted as “extremely low income.” You’re “very low income” if you make between $21,000 and $34,800, “low income” if you earn between $35,496 and $55,700, and if you make between $56,376 and $83,500, you count as “moderate income.” Even these figures are skewed higher because they include data from wealthy Marin County. As a point of comparison, U.S. Census data estimates that the median income for American workers was $29,530 over the last several years.

Most of the new affordable housing constructed in San Francisco is aimed toward people in the lowest ranges, but in recent years one-third was built for those with moderate incomes, which could gentrify some parts of the city. “Supervisorial Districts 3, 6 and 10 had rates of more than 40 percent extremely low and low-income,” the MOH report notes. “These three districts make up the entire eastern part of the city.”

A Guardian analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational and wage estimates for 2009 suggests that about 71 percent of people who work in San Francisco (many commute from less expensive places) earned less than that highest “moderate” salary limit of $83,500. It suggests that the vast majority of the workforce could not afford market-rate housing unless they sought it in pairs or groups.

“A big issue is the inability of San Francisco’s employment market to produce jobs that pay people enough to afford housing,” Welch says. “There’s a mismatch between market-rate income and market-rate housing costs. We’re housing somebody else’s workforce.”

Another stab at assessing the affordable housing need gazes into the future. The Housing Element of the San Francisco General Plan includes an estimate for the city’s future housing needs for the better part of the decade. The city should build 31,200 new housing units to meet its need, the General Plan says, and “at least 39 percent of these new units must be affordable to very low and low-income households. Another 22 percent should be affordable to households with moderate incomes.”

What this adds up to is a full 61 percent of new residential development in San Francisco ought to be dedicated to some form of affordable housing. The calculation reveals a lot about the condition San Francisco is in, but it might as well be chalked up as a hollow academic exercise. Indeed, the report deems this goal “unrealistic.” The reality of the market and chronic government deficits ensures that there will not even be an attempt to meet it.

 

IF YOU BUILD IT

The trouble with affordable housing is that developers won’t build it unless there is a financial incentive. “The only way it works is not in the marketplace,” Welch said. “There’s no such thing as affordable land, affordable sheetrock, affordable architects, or affordable engineers. The profound condition … is that the market cannot produce affordable housing.” As long as developers can make higher profits building market-rate, they will.

That’s why government steps in to subsidize or mandate new affordable housing construction or preserve existing stock. Under the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, if developers decide not to build the required 15 percent of affordable units, they must pay an in-lieu fee that gets funneled into an affordable housing fund.

In a good year, MOH Executive Director Douglas Shoemaker told the Guardian, the city receives $10 to $15 million from these fees, which is used in partnership with developers to build affordable projects. That system hasn’t worked so well lately. Last year funds for affordable housing were depleted instead of bolstered. Developers who paid their fees in anticipation of building new projects requested refunds after their projects were stalled, Shoemaker told the Guardian, so MOH gave back up to $12 million to developers instead of using that money to build new affordable housing.

This year, Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced what he called an “economic stimulus” program that allowed developers to defer payment of in-lieu fees. This guarantees that it will be a long, long time before new affordable housing can be built using those funds. So as it stands, the inclusionary housing law isn’t so effective at producing new affordable housing.

Projects done in conjunction with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, meanwhile, do include higher portions of affordable housing. With all of the planned Redevelopment projects combined — Treasure Island, the Hunter’s Point shipyard, and others — the city can expect to see perhaps 7,000 new affordable housing units in coming years, a portion of which will be condos meant for people in the “moderate” income range. It may well be better than other cities have offered, but it doesn’t begin to address the true need for more than 19,000 units outlined in the General Plan.

Shoemaker noted that San Francisco is a cut above the rest when it comes to affordable-housing requirements. “I just don’t think you could find a city that has more aggressive goals,” he said, noting that in major redevelopment areas, “We’re getting like 30 percent of homes to be affordable on some level.” Yet Shoemaker acknowledged, “the need is intense,” and “there’s more people we would like to serve.”

Olson Lee, deputy executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, also described San Francisco as taking a very aggressive stance on affordable housing. Redevelopment devotes 50 percent of its tax-increment financing to affordable housing, where the state requires just 20 percent, Lee said. And some Redevelopment project areas include twice as much affordable housing as is required by state law, he added. “The city has done a tremendous amount of affordable housing,” he said. However, “the fact of the matter is, there’s a greater demand for affordable housing than the number of units.”

From 2005 to 2009, there were 3,607 new affordable housing units constructed, mostly for people at the lowest end of the pay scale, MOH reports. But in that same time frame, 3,465 rental units were converted to condominiums. One could argue that the city essentially broke even with its affordable housing stock in a decade where housing prices almost doubled. As San Francisco housing prices skyrocketed, the city’s 170,000 rent-controlled units served as the saving grace for the majority who couldn’t afford market-rate, and condo conversions continue to threaten the erosion of that very significant housing stock.

Debra Walker, a candidate for District 6 and a tenant representative on the Building Inspection Commission, told the Guardian that she believes a new financing system is needed for affordable housing. “The argument for development is that we get affordable housing money out of it,” she said, but “the inclusionary doesn’t get us enough housing. We cannot include affordable in those high-rises, because they’re so expensive to build.”

She has talked up the idea of a real estate transfer tax that would create a dedicated fund that could then be used in partnerships with affordable-housing developers. Shoemaker, for his part, noted that having a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing would be very helpful. A committee comprised of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, Welch, developer Oz Erickson, and Shoemaker was formed earlier this year and actually arrived at a deal, but Newsom ultimately rejected it. Other creative solutions, Walker says, might include reusing shuttered commercial properties or building cheaper by design using different building materials. “It’s about looking at what it is we need,” she said, “and realizing people are in a pinch.”

The greatest complicating factor of the current system, in which the city relies on market-rate development to get new affordable housing, is that even though there a some 40,000 new residential units in the pipeline, developers can’t secure financing to start building them. For now, in the down economy, they only exist on paper.

“They’ll never get built,” Welch predicts, and as long as Newsom continues to extend entitlements for those planned projects in hopes that the market will get a jump, “it’s freezing September 2008 conditions, evidently forever,” limiting opportunities to build something more reasonable.

“They’re zombies,” Welch added. “Who the fuck is going to pay $2 million for a new condo when they can buy a $4 million building for $1 million in foreclosure?” But if the need for affordable housing began to be addressed, he said, something might start to happen. “If you converted half the pipeline units to rental,” he theorized, “they might get built.”

New website features worst landlords ever

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Tenants Together, a statewide nonprofit advocating for tenants’ rights, has launched a new website that allows tenants to nominate their landlords as the worst ever in California.

The Landlord Hall of Shame features a listing of landlords who’ve been suggested, officially nominated, or installed by vote into the Hall of Shame. The aim is to spotlight landlords who disrespect tenants’ rights, try to force tenants out for their own economic gain, or act in some other egregious way that makes life miserable for a renter. While none of them will be dubbed Hall of Shamers until December, a couple of official nominees already sound like tough contenders.

One of them is David Taran of Page Mill Properties, who has been embroiled in an ongoing battle with Tenants Together after imposing exorbitant rent hikes in an effort to force tenants out of a rent-controlled housing complex in East Palo Alto.

The purpose of the website is two-fold, according to Dean Preston, executive director of Tenants Together. It can be a deterrent to landlord misconduct, but it can also help the tenant advocacy group gather information about problem landlords.

“There are a lot of bad landlords out there that get away with doing the same thing over and over again,” Preston said, “Because no one knows that they did it before. A lot of landlords operate in multiple communities, so people in one city may not necessarily know what they’ve done in another city.”

Preston said that Tenants Together expects to nominate a couple landlords every month. Official nominees are those that the group has researched and found that “their conduct has risen to the level where we should call them out publicly,” he added.

On the list of suggested nominees is Laramar SF, a property management company that has taken over management in many San Francisco properties formerly controlled by Skyline Realty or CitiApartments. The Hall of Shame website is sure to note that if some one has been suggested as a nominee, it’s “not an indication that they have done anything wrong or are bad landlords.” But if tenants visiting the site wish to share comments about their experience with a nominated landlord or add a new one to the roster, they can simply fill out an online form.

“We think this really has the potential to make some landlords think twice about abusing their tenants,” Preston said. “It will make bad landlords realize that there is a spotlight on them.”

Spoof “Civil Sidewalks” site takes a swipe at Prop L

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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5

Voters seeking information about The Civil Sidewalks Coalition, the group backing Proposition L to establish a new San Francisco law against sitting and lying down on city sidewalks, might’ve gotten a shock if they visited CivilSidewalks.org instead of CivilSidewalks.com. The imposter web page was designed to look just like the official Civil Sidewalks campaign website, but includes a scathing description of the coalition as “NIMBYs, commuters, wealthy moguls, business associations and politicians” who “think it is our duty to rid San Francisco of poor people, the homeless and fun.”

Here’s the description from the real Civil Sidewalks page:
Welcome to Civil Sidewalks.  We are a grassroots group of families, residents and small merchants who believe that sidewalks should be a safe place for our children, elderly and disabled.
Unfortunately the people who encamp on city sidewalks are becoming increasing intolerant of people who are merely trying to walk by. This had led to threats, violence, and physical retaliation.

Here’s how the spoof site interpreted it:
Welcome to Civil Sidewalks. We are an astroturf group led by suburbanites, political consultants and wealthy business interests who believe that sidewalks should be a safe place for enjoyment of the few.
Fortunately some well-off people who walk on city sidewalks have had enough and are becoming increasing intolerant of poor people who are merely trying to take a break. We have taken to threats, fear-mongering, and distorting facts to promote our cause.

The guerrilla campaign tactic brings to mind pranks pulled by The Yes Men, who’ve ruined many a corporate executive’s day by issuing fake press releases and occasionally impersonating company representatives at highly publicized events. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s this: Buy up domain names that are similar to your organization’s web address, especially if it’s election season and you’re up against a cadre of crafty progressives with web-design skills.

Ships and whales don’t mix

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Ships and whales don’t mix

Earlier this year, the Guardian reported on ongoing efforts to address threats to whales posed by huge shipping vessels in and around the San Francisco Bay. In addition to fatally striking the marine mammals – many of which are already on the decline under strain from myriad environmental pressures – cargo ships may inhibit whales’ ability to locate food, mates, or their young by masking the sounds they rely upon for those behaviors.

So it was especially sad to read the news on Sept. 16 that a whale carcass was found on the bow of a container ship coming into the Port of Oakland, especially if biologists determine that it was indeed an endangered blue whale. According to a researcher from Scripps Institution of Oceanography who we interviewed for the story, there are so few blue whales left that if even two die from ship strikes every few years, the entire species could be imperiled.

We received this statement from Jackie Dragon, marine sanctuaries program director for Pacific Environment:

“Another dead whale on the bow of a ship is a reminder that ships and whales don’t mix. Yet with the ever increasing number of ships calling on the busy Port of Oakland, and the fact that all ships must drive through the vital whale-rich marine sanctuary waters just beyond the Golden Gate – we need to step up our efforts to find ways to keep whales and ships apart.”

The news that didn’t make the news in SF

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Every year, the Guardian features the Top 10 Project Censored stories presented by the Sonoma State University project that spends all year analyzing which stories the mainstream media missed. But which stories did not find their way into the mainstream press here in the San Francisco Bay Area?

News outlets other than the Guardian typically ignore Project Censored (unless you count SF Weekly’s snark), so you might say that even Censored tends to be censored. Other than that, we note that issues not hand-delivered via press release or PR campaign might receive less attention than those obvious stories. Using a rather unscientific process of surfing alternative news sites online to find out which stories didn’t get a lot of play in the mainstream, we’ve come up with an assortment of Local Censored stories – though this is by no means a comprehensive list. What other news didn’t make the news?

Local Censored stories:

* What we didn’t hear about when PG&E was pushing Prop 16

Speaking at an informational hearing in Sacramento in February 2010 about Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s ballot initiative, Proposition 16, former California Energy Commissioner John Geesman noted that the state’s most powerful utility company was using customer money to finance a bid to change the state constitution for its own purposes. Prop 16, which earned a thumbs-down from voters in the June election, would have created a two-thirds majority vote requirement before municipalities could set up electricity services separate from PG&E. While there was no shortage of reporting about the astounding sums of cash that PG&E sank into Prop. 16, hardly anyone aside from Geesman picked up on the more salient point of what PG&E was not spending its money on.

“California’s investor-owned utilities face a Himalayan task in modernizing our electricity system and building the infrastructure necessary to serve a growing economy,” Geesman wrote on his blog, titled PG&E Ballot Initiative Fact Sheet. “They ought to focus on that, rather than manipulating the electorate to kneecap their few competitors.” It is now abundantly clear that PG&E’s aging gas pipelines in San Bruno were badly in need of replacement – and the utility’s neglect opened the door the catastrophic explosion that occurred Sept. 9, resulting in tragic loss of life and destroying homes. “The current leadership at PG&E has lost its way. Nobody is minding the ship,” senator Mark Leno told the Guardian shortly after the blast. “Enough with the self-initiated, self-serving political campaigns. … How about focusing on the current mission — to provide gas and electricity safely, without death and destruction?”

PG&E Ballot Initiative Fact Sheet: http://pgandeballotinitiativefactsheet.blogspot.com/
Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-pelosi/deadly-priorities-why-did_b_713800.html

* What you might not have read about Johannes Mehserle’s murder trial
 
If you looked to Colorlines.com, Blockreportradio.com, the San Francisco Bay View, or Indybay.org for coverage of Johannes Meherle’s murder trial for the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant, then you got a different picture from the one offered by mainstream Bay Area news outlets. There may well be plenty of details about the trial that didn’t make the cut for mainstream news, but one particular point caught our eye as something that should’ve warranted more prominent coverage, or at very least sparked deeper questions from mainstream press. According to the witness testimony of Jackie Bryson, who was with Grant on the train platform the night of the shooting, Grant’s friends immediately urged BART police to call an ambulance after Grant had been shot, but police didn’t do it right away.

Here’s the report from Block Report Radio: “Jack Bryson said he yelled at Oscar after he was shot to stay awake and to the police to call the ambulance. The unidentified officer who was on Bryson declared, ‘We’ll call the ambulance when you shut the fuck up!’ Bryson went on to say that he was never searched on the Fruitvale platform or at the Lake Merritt BART police station, which seems ridiculous if you consider the earlier testimony of former BART police officers Dominici and Pirone, who were involved in the murder and who testified last week that they had felt threatened by Oscar Grant and his friends.” So, if it’s true that Grant’s friends were told to “shut the fuck up” when they were urging BART cops to call an ambulance, and that the supposedly threatening parties weren’t ever searched, why didn’t these points receive as much attention in the media as, say, the claim that years earlier, Grant may have resisted arrest? After witnessing the death of his friend, Bryson said in his testimony, he was detained for hours while wearing handcuffs pulled so tight that his wrists hurt, only to be told afterward that since he had not been read his Miranda rights, he was not under arrest. To be fair, the detail about calling the ambulance did make it into the Chronicle, near the bottom of a blog post, under the subhead, “Friend’s claim.”

Block Report Radio: http://www.blockreportradio.com/news-mainmenu-26/894-jack-bryson-hits-the-stand.html
Colorlines: http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/06/defense_opens_with_gripping_testimony.html

* Homelessness on the rise in San Francisco

The controversy surrounding Prop L, a proposed ordinance to ban sitting and lying down on the sidewalk, has been widely reported on — but there’s a more pressing issue related to homelessness that hasn’t gotten nearly as much ink. An article in New America Media, “Shelters predict homeless count to skyrocket,” highlighted a perceived surge in San Francisco’s homeless population, evidenced by overwhelmed service providers who can hardly keep up with demand. “We’re serving 200,000 more meals per year than two years ago, but we haven’t had the capacity to add staff,” the chief executive officer of the Glide Foundation noted in the article. The drop-in center, she added, no longer had enough seats to accommodate those in need. According to a fact sheet issued by the Coalition on Homelessness in July of 2009, 45 percent of respondents to a COH survey were experiencing homelessness for the first time. The overwhelming majority of respondents, 78 percent, became homeless while living in San Francisco.

New America Media: http://newamericamedia.org/2010/04/shelters-predict-homeless-count-to-skyrocket.php
Coalition on Homelessness: http://www.cohsf.org/en/

* The long wait for Section 8

It isn’t easy for a tenant with a Section 8 voucher to find housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. In San Francisco, there’s a barrier to getting the voucher in the first place, since the waitlist is currently closed. Those who have vouchers are often passed over by landlords, and the string of denials can drive people to unstable housing situations such as extended hotel stays. An article in POOR Magazine features the story of Linda William, a woman who left a San Francisco public housing project with a Section 8 voucher in hand only to embark on a wild goose chase, ultimately winding up in a low-end motel outside Vallejo. “Well whaddya know,” William told the POOR magazine reporter, “I found closed wait lists on almost all the low-income housing units in all of those places and all the rest of the landlords wouldn’t even return my calls when I told them I had section 8.” An article by Dean Preston of Tenants Together that appeared in BeyondChron, meanwhile, spotlights the issue of landlord discrimination against Section 8 tenants.  “In the Section 8 voucher program, participating tenants pay 30 percent of their rent and the Housing Authority pays the balance to the landlord,” Preston writes. “It takes years for eligible tenants to be able to participate in the program. Once tenants get off the wait list, the landlord must sign a payment contract with the housing authority in order to receive the portion of the rent paid by the government. By refusing to sign onto the program, some landlords seek to force rent controlled tenants into situations where they cannot pay their rent.”
POOR Magazine: http://www.poormagazine.org/node/3277
BeyondChron: http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=8012

* San Francisco’s trashy secret

Despite being thought of as a beacon of sustainability, San Francisco’s not-so-green waste stream is something that didn’t make the front page of many papers – except, of course, this one. Sarah Phelan’s “Tale of Two Landfills,” a Guardian cover story this past June, examined San Francisco’s decidedly unenlightened policy of transporting waste far outside of the city despite a goal of reducing waste to zero in the next 10 years. Here’s an excerpt: “It’s a reminder of a fact most San Franciscans don’t think much about: The city exports mountains of garbage into somebody else’s backyard. While residents have gone a long way to reduce the waste stream as city officials pursue an ambitious strategy of zero waste by 2020, we’re still trucking 1,800 tons of garbage out of San Francisco every day. And now we’re preparing to triple the distance that trash travels. ‘The mayor of San Francisco is encouraging us to be a green city by growing veggies, raising wonderful urban gardens, composting green waste and food and restaurant scraps,’ Irene Creps, a San Franciscan who owns a ranch in Wheatland, told us. ‘So why is he trying to dump San Francisco’s trash in a beautiful rural area?’”

SFBG: http://www.sfbg.com/2010/06/15/tale-two-landfills

* The real unemployment rate

The Bureau of Labor Statistics makes a distinction between so-called “discouraged workers” who have stopped looking for jobs, and the jobless who are actively seeking employment, so the official unemployment rate (9.7 percent in San Francisco, according to the most recent data) may be much lower than the actual unemployment rate.

We haven’t seen any brilliant local reporting on this issue, but the problem is summed up nicely in this YouTube video produced by a personal finance software firm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA&feature=player_embedded

CityPlace, USA — and why Newsom wants developers involved in district elections

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Speaking at the San Francisco Mariott Hotel today, Sept. 14, to a room packed full of developers, land-use attorneys, building owners and managers, members of the San Francisco Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, and others who had gathered for a San Francisco Business Times event, Mayor Gavin Newsom championed a retail development project proposed for San Francisco’s mid-Market area that is being opposed by Livable Cities and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. The project will come under consideration at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

“CityPlace will be an anchor of revitalization” in mid-Market between Fifth and Sixth streets, Newsom said. Members of the Board of Supervisors may try to block it, he added, but “we can’t afford to let that happen. It’s a quarter of a million square feet, and it connects right up from Nordstrom’s.”
“CityPlace is critical,” he added. Marcia Smolens of public relations firm HMS Associates is representing Urban Realty, the developer of CityPlace, according to a file included in the Board of Supervisors meeting packet. Smolens contributed $2,500 to Newsom’s run for Lieutenant Governor. An architect with a partnering firm on the project, Gensler, plunked down $1,000 for Newsom’s campaign.

The mid-Market area has long faced issues of blight and crime. Newsom put forth a vision for its revitalized future that would include “more cops” (the development would connect with a police officers’ substation planned near Sixth and Market streets, Newsom noted), a creative bent thanks to partnerships with artists, and an area “a little less crowded with folks panhandling.”

The proposed development is essentially a large glass box with a shopping mall inside. According to the project website, Urban Realty has not yet engaged potential tenants, but appears geared toward attracting low-end retail chains. “We intend to bring affordable, value-based retail tenants to the area and expand the shopping choices available to make this section of Market Street a shopping destination that truly caters to San Francisco’s diverse demographic,” the website notes. Our guess is that they aren’t talking about unique, independently owned thrift stores that offer affordable used items and encourage shoppers to support small business, but something more along the lines of TJ Maxx.

The project would also include 188 parking spaces in an underground garage. In contrast, the Westfield mall near Fourth and Market streets was built with no new parking.

Livable Cities has filed an appeal of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for CityPlace on the grounds that transportation issues weren’t adequately dealt with, and the board will vote on the appeal today after opening the item up for public comment. Livable Cities executive director Tom Radulovich noted that the project would demolish the St. Francis Theater, a 1910 building that some had envisioned as a structure that could be rehabbed as part of a revived theater district in that area. He also felt the development was out of character for the neighborhood. “They’ve been given a lot of bonuses, like surplus parking and an excess floor,” Radulovich noted. “We feel like the Planning Department gave them a lot more value — millions of dollars worth. The public should get something out of it.” Partly out of a desire to improve the area, he said, mid-Market amounted to a sort of “Wild West in terms of planning. That’s been the story is that the only way to move forward is to throw away our rules.”

The developer estimates that the project would create up to 250 union jobs during construction, and 760 new permanent retail positions (that is, non-union, low-wage jobs with high rates of turnover — but at least it’s something). This could present a quandary for supervisors who might otherwise hold their nose at the idea of approving a big-box mall in the heart of San Francisco. Construction workers are in dire straits right now, and unemployment in the city is nearing 10 percent — and even higher in communities of color such as the Bayview.

Meanwhile, Newsom urged the crowd of downtown real-estate big shots to get involved in disctrict elections for the Board of Supervisors, lest “you wake up and things get worse quickly.”

The mayor issued a strong warning that “ideology is too strong in this town,” and then referenced the Guardian, speaking to some dangerous influence wielded by “these people who write these blogs.”

“You are the only thing standing between a dramatic shift off course in this town,” he told the crowd. “But our opportunities are limitless as long as we have stable leadership. Please take the time to learn about these candidates. Get involved – even in the districts you don’t reside in.”

At the end of Newsom’s speech, everyone applauded and then turned their attention to a short, flashy video about America’s Cup.

Play at work, or more at play?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Play at work, or more at play?

rebeccab@sfbg.com

There’s a long-standing perception in San Francisco that certain development firms are treated more favorably than others thanks to insider politics. And while supporters of Mayor Gavin Newsom say he’s cleaned up the pay-to-play culture, a look at the list of contributors to Newsom’s run for lieutenant governor at the very least raises questions.

For example, according to campaign filings, Newsom received $6,500 from a business called 706 Mission Street Co. LLC, which was formed to construct a condo high-rise at Yerba Buena Center. The building would also be a new permanent home for the city’s Mexican Museum. The 706 Mission project, which has been in the works for several years, is a joint venture between developer Millennium Partners and JMA Ventures, a San Francisco-based real estate investment firm. JMA Ventures contributed $5,000 to Newsom, campaign finance records show, and the firm’s president and CEO, Todd Chapman, also made a generous donation of $1,000. Effectively, Newsom’s campaign received a total of $12,500 from individuals or firms associated with 706 Mission.

The project has been under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency since 2008, when the Redevelopment Commission authorized an exclusive negotiations agreement with the developer for the mixed-use high-rise and museum, to be partially constructed on a parcel owned by Redevelopment and later included plans to integrate the landmark Mercantile Building. The project went dormant in the face of the economic downturn, but it’s now moving forward again, and the environmental review of the proposed 600-foot tower falls under the purview of the city’s Planning Department. On Sept. 1, Newsom mentioned 706 Mission, a “new, world-class facility,” in a press release announcing a new director for the Mexican Museum.

“The Redevelopment Agency and the city are fully committed to the public/private/nonprofit partnership that will eventually bring the Mexican Museum to a new home in the heart of Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco’s premier cultural district,” Redevelopment Agency executive director Fred Blackwell proclaimed.

Another contributor that demonstrated strong financial support for Newsom’s bid is a global technical firm that has a hand in several major infrastructure and development projects throughout San Francisco. AECOM contributed $13,000 to Newsom’s campaign, and a handful of people who work for AECOM chipped in smaller amounts totaling $3,600, according to campaign-finance records. In an April 15 news release for investors, AECOM noted that it had been awarded a $26 million contract for construction management of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Water Improvement Infrastructure Project. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in May, the firm was also awarded a five-year, $147 million contract with the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency for construction management on the Central Subway project. AECOM is also playing a role in a number of major developments currently under review in city planning. It is the prime environmental impact report consultant for the California Pacific Medical Center proposal for a giant new hospital on Van Ness Avenue. It’s also completing a traffic corridor analysis for 19th Avenue on behalf of the developers of Parkmerced, a renovation and in-fill project on track to be one of the largest new residential developments in the city.

 

A $2 MILLION BONUS

The Parkmerced developers have helped Newsom’s campaign along too. Craig Hartman, an internationally renowned architect with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who is a design partner for the project, dropped $1,000 into Newsom’s hat. Two executives associated with Parkmerced each pitched in another $1,000.

A smaller project that has been in the works for years also seems close to home for Newsom. Michael Yarne, of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, is a former director of development of the Martin Building Co., the lead developer on mixed-use residential project located in Central Waterfront at 2235 Third St. The project has commendable features such as a reuse of an existing industrial building, proximity to transit, and 39 below-market-rate units — and the project developer managed to secure an incredible deal with the city.

This past April, the Planning Commission approved an unprecedented in-kind agreement with Martin Building Co. that waived nearly $2 million in development fees, including about $1.2 million for 2235 Third St. and the rest for a second Martin Building Co. project on Townsend Street, in exchange for the developer’s commitment to construct a space for a day-care facility on the Third Street site and lease that portion of the property to a childcare provider for free for 55 years. The provider would have to operate the facility without profit and would be required to have low-income child-care slots, so this bargain would serve to create affordable day care.

Yarne’s close ties to the mayor and the developer — plus a $2,000 campaign contribution to Newsom from the head of the project’s general contractor, a building company called Nibbi Bros. — could raise a few eyebrows in light of this unprecedented deal, especially given the city’s gaping deficit and the question of how else that $2 million might have been put to use. The project was also awarded more than $1.6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to excavate lead-contaminated soil from the property and transport it away for off-site disposal. The project, which has already been approved and moved to the Department of Building Inspection phase, also incorporates a City CarShare space. Yarne’s on the board of City CarShare, too.

It’s always possible that there is no connection between Newsom’s campaign contributions, his personal staff, and contributors’ connections to the myriad development projects in the hopper — but that doesn’t stop observers from asking questions. Developers who are anxious about the economic downturn may be motivated do everything in their power to speed a project along, and it’s possible that throwing money at a political campaign is just one tool among many.

Or maybe they just think Newsom would make a great lieutenant governor.

 

PLANNERS COMPLAIN

Nonetheless, the perception that certain developers get special treatment is shared by at least two former planners in the city’s Planning Department — one of whom is facing termination in the wake of a recent investigation surrounding porn email.

Following an internal shake-up at the planning department triggered by the discovery that some staffers shared pornographic e-mails, messages started flying about what was behind the crackdown. “Porn is not the real story,” Lois Scott, a retired planner and former president of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 wrote in an e-mail to the Guardian.

After the porn scandal broke, the hammer came down. Five people were terminated effective this past May, and another 20 or more reportedly faced some form of disciplinary action.

Some have interpreted the move as a signal that Planning Director John Rahaim, a Newsom appointee, won’t stand for inappropriate conduct on his watch. At the same time, others have contacted the Guardian to voice concerns that the firings and internal shakeup were connected to something deeper than dirty emails.

Although speculative theories abound and there is a paucity of official comments on the firings due to privacy laws, one point is abundantly clear. In a city where powerful developers will go to great lengths to secure approval for lucrative projects, there’s a great deal of wariness surrounding city planning. San Francisco is host to leagues of developers, real estate investment groups, prestigious law firms specializing in land use, technical consultants, and politically powerful associations of residential builders, building owners, and building-trade unions — all with a huge financial stake in seeing projects make it past the approval finish line and onto groundbreaking.

When it comes to a major project that will transform a city block in San Francisco, the planning department (which relies on development fees to pay the bills) inevitably encounters pressure from two sides: well-connected development teams with economic interests on the one hand, and neighborhood groups or historic preservationists who aren’t shy about hurling criticism on the other.

So it’s no surprise than anything affecting the planning staff in a major way would not pass quietly.

One of the planners affected by the firings told the Guardian that the porn investigation went on for months. There were one-on-one interviews, and some 70 staff members were called in and questioned, some two or three times. Contents of computer hard drives and city e-mail accounts were analyzed. Later, huge posters went up, displaying questions like, “How Are You Going to Make a Better Planning Department?”

“It was bizarre,” the former planner said.

According to Leigh Kienker — a former planner who recently retired and was not implicated in the computer misuse investigation — the result of all this was to create a sort of chilling effect on the planning staff, especially since she said two of the five individuals who lost their jobs had been more likely to question management and speak up when they didn’t think a project was being handled properly. When it comes to ensuring that projects conform to the planning code, “We need to be able to speak up,” she said. “This is our expertise.”

Jim Miller, who had been with the department for more than 32 years and is regarded by his peers as very outspoken, discussed his own termination in an e-mail to a number of supporters. “I was given a loose-leaf binder indicating the reasons for the firing,” he wrote. “The information contained therein was decidedly very thin. This, plus the fact that others who had a greater role in the ‘wrongdoing’ received job suspension rather than termination, leads me to believe that there is some other reason for the action taken. This reason is heretofore unbeknownst to me.”

Cynthia Servetnick, shop steward for IFPTE Local 21 planner’s chapter and a historic preservation advocate, voiced concerns about how the department dealt with the porn problem in an e-mail to Rahaim. “Frankly, the firing of so many senior Planning Department staff members not only seems like a ‘witch hunt,’ but smacks of age discrimination against a class of union-represented employees for the purpose of shoring-up budget deficits and intimidating less senior employees,” she charged. In response, Rahaim dismissed her comments as baseless accusations.

 

BADINER GETS $82,500

At a Feb. 18 Planning Commission meeting, when the department’s proposed budget came under review, commissioners noted that Rahaim was in the unenviable position of having to lay off four to six staffers in order to balance the budget. Noting that a great deal of effort had gone into attracting fresh talent and hiring younger planners, several commissioners expressed hope that they wouldn’t be the first to go. Rahaim responded that, given the union’s seniority rules, his hands were tied to an extent. In light of that conversation, Servetnick suggested that the porn e-mails presented a convenient solution for a director faced with a thinly stretched budget. All of the five who were fired were 50 or older.

At the same time, others who closely follow city planning rejected the idea of any ulterior motive. Sue Hestor, a land-use attorney who seems to have her finger firmly on the pulse of San Francisco development, told the Guardian that she’d heard plenty of rumors, but wasn’t necessarily buying the hype. Charles Marsteller, a former director of Common Cause and a keen observer of the planning process, said he had little reason to suspect that what had happened was anything more than responding to inappropriate conduct.

Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner, a 28-year veteran of the department who critics say was friendly to high-end developers, was fired in the wake of the porn investigation along with three lower-level staffers — but he appeared to walk away with a better deal than his subordinates.

A Guardian sunshine request revealed that Badiner received a six-month severance package amounting to $82,500, plus benefits he was eligible for that could have amounted to more than $57,000 (but may be significantly less). In exchange, he agreed not to sue the city. None of the other planning staffers who were terminated appear to have received such a payout.

Meanwhile, Badiner may not have been the highest-ranking city employee to be snagged in the porn investigation. An e-mail address of dlmacris[at]aol.com was included on an e-mail provided to the Guardian that contained a rather tame pornographic image.

The planner who sent the e-mail was fired after the porn investigation, and so were three of the recipients. Former Planning Director Dean Macris, who more recently served as a special advisor to Newsom, stopped working for the city around the same time Badiner and the others were terminated. Mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian he could not discuss anything related to how or why Macris left city service.

Rahaim said he had no choice in the Badiner severance. “The issue with Larry Badiner was required as part of a MEA labor contract. It requires a payout in any situation where a person is terminated or laid off.” He added that the firings were “strictly because of inappropriate use of city resources and also because of the type of material” that was being viewed. There was “absolutely no other reason.”

And he insisted that no developers get favoritism: “I have no idea who’s contributing to whose campaign.”

At least one response to the rash of firings commended the planning director for taking action. “I applaud your efforts to address hostile working conditions related to gender and sexual preference, which have long existed in the Planning Department,” a retired senior planner wrote to Rahaim shortly after the firings. “There is, perhaps as you have realized, a deep undercurrent of unresolved and unpleasant practices which perhaps finally led to the present complaints.”

Does the planning department shake-up indicate a move away from the bad old days of quid pro quo dealings and hostile working conditions, thanks to a director who’s standing strong against inappropriate conduct — or is it a move to consolidate power in a department led by a mayoral appointee at a time when the development community is particularly hungry to move new projects forward? Given the knock-down, drag-out fights that have unfolded over planning in the city’s history, and the high sums of money that are gushing into project proposals and campaign coffers, it’s no wonder the question is being posed.

“The bottom line is, the public is not being served,” Servetnick said. “Developers shouldn’t be able to come in and say, ‘Just for me!’ If everybody who pays to play gets away with that, we’re going to end up with a really ugly city.”

Endorsement Interviews: Rebecca Prozan

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Endorsement Interviews: Rebecca Prozan

Rebecca Prozan, a candidate for Disctrict 8, has the endorsement of incumbent Sup. Bevan Dufty, and she and Dufty seem to have a lot in common. “I’m able to bring both sides together,” she told us, noting that D-8 constituents “like people who are independent thinkers, who are right up the middle.”

An assistant District Attorney, LGBT and District 8 liaison under former Mayor Willie Brown, and a Recreation & Parks Commissioner, Prozan is familiar with San Francisco government from a number of angles — but she’s also perceptive of the level of mistrust that exists. “There isn’t a San Franciscan in District 8 that actually thinks government is spending every dollar as it should,” she said.

Prozan said she is supportive of a hotel tax to boost revenues, a vehicle license fee to help improve MUNI, and a parcel tax to raise money for schools. She likes the idea of conducting audits as a way to tighten up spending, but rejected the idea of requiring nonprofit organizations to disclose how they spend city funds that are allocated to them. She doesn’t see any reason for split appointments on the SFMTA Board or the Redevelopment Agency, and she believes that while it’s “not a witch hunt,” part of the solution for MUNI should be targeting salaries. She’s against the proposed sit / lie ordinance, she’s a big fan of the Community Justice Center, and she thinks gang injunctions are a useful tool for law enforcement.

Prozan also told us she thinks the city should focus on building more rental housing, and she has been shopping around the idea of figuring out how to convert 1,100 foreclosed San Francisco properties into affordable housing for “teachers, cops, and firefighters.” Listen to the full interview below.

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