Rebecca Bowe

San Francisco landlords targeted for elder abuse

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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76
San Francisco landlords targeted for elder abuse

Lisa Gray-Garcia, aka “Tiny,” led a press conference outside the San Francisco Hall of Justice Feb. 5 to announce that she and fellow activists were filing elder abuse charges against San Francisco landlords.

Clad in a gray pantsuit and flanked by activists and senior citizens who were facing eviction or had lost housing in San Francisco, the Poor News Network founder condemned landlords who’ve invoked the Ellis Act as “dangerous criminals.”

Gray-Garcia said criminal charges were being filed against the landlords in accordance with California Penal Code 368, which creates a special category for crimes – such as infliction of pain, injury or endangerment – committed against elders and dependent adults.

The theory is that carrying out an Ellis Act eviction against a senior citizen qualifies as a criminal act under that law, since an elder can suffer physical harm as a result of being turned out of his or her home.

The targeted landlords were taken from a list compiled by the San Francisco Anti Eviction Mapping Project, a volunteer-led group that published names, property ownership, and identifying information of 12 landlords who had repeatedly invoked the Ellis Act in San Francisco. Garcia read out their names as part of the press event.

Beyond that, however, the announcement was short on specifics. Gray-Garcia told the Bay Guardian she did not want to share the names of the affected seniors because she did not feel comfortable exposing the elderly tenants to potential backlash.

Joining the group of activists was an 82-year-old woman who used a walker and declined to share her name. She told the Bay Guardian she had lived in her Richmond District flat for more than 30 years, and had recently received a verbal warning from her landlord that if she did not move out, he would invoke the Ellis Act.

When Gray-Garcia and others filed into the San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon’s office inside the Hall of Justice, however, Chief Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo first told them that they should complain to the police department, then scheduled a meeting with them at a later date.

Here’s how it went:

Guardian video by Rebecca Bowe

In order of appearance, speakers include Erin McElroy, a tenants’ rights advocate; Gray-Garcia; a District Attorney staff person whose name we didn’t catch; Woo, and Anthony Prince (there because he is campaign manager to Green Party gubernatorial candidate Luis Rodriguez, who spoke at the press conference).

Fresh out

Michael Redmond
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21
Fresh out

Rebecca@sfbg.com

Food stirs strong passions in San Francisco. Protests have been mounted against foie gras and live chicken sales, and epic battles have been fought over chain grocery stores’ proposals to open up shop in certain neighborhoods.

When Whole Foods opened in the Upper Haight in 2011 amid no shortage of neighborhood controversy, Rachel Levin wrote in The Bold Italic that her glee at beholding offerings such as Kombucha on tap belied her nagging conscience about patronizing a chain retailer in an area dotted with local businesses. Internal conflict ensued; the writer confessed feeling “totally conflicted.”

But a very different food-related dilemma is currently plaguing residents in Bayview Hunters Point, a racially diverse, low-income area in the city’s southeast sector.

Six months after the Upper Haight Whole Foods flung open its doors to guilt-ridden and guilt-free patrons alike, a different grocery store was welcomed with much fanfare.

Five years had passed from the time when Fresh & Easy Market had agreed to do business in the Bayview to the day it finally opened for business. The store launch, held in late August of 2011, was treated as a celebratory affair — after much involvement by city officials, it marked the first time in 20 years that the low-income community would have a grocery store.

“The opening of Fresh & Easy on Third Street creates jobs for the community and will help make the neighborhood a place where families will want to stay and thrive,” Mayor Ed Lee said at the time.

But just over two years later, Fresh & Easy was closed. Tesco, the British parent company that owned the grocery chain, fell into financial trouble and unloaded its West Coast stores onto an affiliate of Yucaipa companies, headed by Los Angeles billionaire Ronald Burkle. Other San Francisco Fresh & Easy locations survived the transition, but the Bayview store didn’t make the cut.

Now it’s back to square one, and the neighborhood is once again without a grocery store where one can purchase fresh food. That’s especially problematic considering that Bayview residents suffer from diet-related illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes at much higher rates than other city residents.

And ever since Fresh & Easy closed, Sup. Malia Cohen, who represents District 10 where Bayview is located, has discovered that attracting a new grocery retailer to that neighborhood is like pulling teeth.

“Safeway was absolutely closed to the idea,” Cohen reports. “They cited safety concerns.”

When she first contacted Safeway representatives to pitch the idea of having the grocery retailer move into the vacant Fresh & Easy location, their response was to ask her office to track down emergency service call data in the surrounding neighborhood. “They said they couldn’t get the information,” Cohen said. “I said, that’s interesting, it’s public information.”

Safeway also cited concerns about the configuration of the vacant space and the size of the parking lot, Cohen said. She noted that the grocer has shown generosity in the past by making Safeway gift card donations to needy Bayview residents, but “that also presents a challenge. It’s a hike to get to the grocery store.”

Safeway spokesperson Wendy Gutshall did not answer questions about why the retailer was unwilling to consider moving to the area, and wrote in an email to Bay Guardian, “There are no plans at this time with respect to a new location in the Bayview.”

Cohen was frustrated, but undeterred. “I think there’s a certain level of racism and classism that blinds retailers from even exploring these communities,” she said. “I really want the community to be able to have healthy food options — not discounted toss-aways.”

Next on Cohen’s list was Trader Joe’s. “The conversation went well,” she noted, adding that she’s targeting the chain because numerous residents have told her they would shop there. “I’m optimistic — although they did express a desire to be in Noe Valley. Or the Castro.”

Asked whether the company would consider opening a store in the Bayview, Trader Joe’s spokesperson Alison Mochizuki would only say, “At this time, it’s not in our two-year plan to open a location in that area.”

Cohen said she’d also reached out to Kroger, Sterling Farms, and 99 Ranch Market to gauge interest. Meanwhile, nearby Visitation Valley will be getting its own grocery store, with an anticipated opening in June: discount retailer Grocery Outlet.

The closure of Fresh & Easy left some Bayview residents without jobs. Gloria Chan, spokesperson of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, a city agency that works closely with Mayor Ed Lee, noted that OEWD had “deployed its rapid response team to assist [displaced Fresh & Easy] employees during the transition, and provided information on workforce services including unemployment assistance.”

Investment firm Fortress Investment Group acquired the vacant Fresh & Easy site in December, Chan added. “OEWD reached out to the Fortress Investment Group and expressed interest and the need for ensuring a grocery retail outlet continues to remain in the now vacant location,” she wrote. “OEWD remains diligent in pursuing a grocery retail outlet in the Bayview and have also spoken to various food operators.”

But so far, nothing has fallen into place, and Cohen says the mayor’s office could be offering more support. “We have the density needed to support a store — households, age range, all the qualifying data points,” Cohen said. “I do have my fingers crossed.”

 

Did Feinstein see a drone?

Michael Redmond
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6
Did Feinstein see a drone?

For years now, Bay Area organizers with the antiwar group Code Pink have been staging protests outside the Pacific Heights residence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Code Pink director Medea Benjamin has led delegations to Pakistan and Yemen in the past to protest US drone strikes, and San Francisco activists have frequently appeared outside the senator’s home to sound off against the US military’s use of drones.

But more recently, Code Pink activists have paid visits to Feinstein to let her know what they think of her comments condemning the actions of whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“We at Code Pink think Edward Snowden did a great service to this country,” by leaking secret National Security Agency documents detailing the intelligence agency’s dragnet surveillance program, said organizer Nancy Mancias.

So on June 15, 2013, “We flew a couple toy helicopters outside her home” as part of an anti-surveillance protest. It was an “Austin Powers” themed protest, she added, “playing spy-type music.”

But a couple months ago, Feinstein mentioned during a hearing about drones that she’d actually seen a drone peeking outside her window at her San Francisco home. She said it crashed shortly after she detected it.

But that left activists and others wondering about Feinstein’s account, since Mancias says the remote controlled device they sent up to fly around Feinstein’s mansion was not a drone, but rather a pink helicopter, “like a toy you pick up at Toys-R-Us.”

The Code Pink activists captured video of the event, she added, and sent it to the television program 60 Minutes. “Hopefully, they’ll air it when they interview Dianne Feinstein.”

Another wrinkle in Feinstein’s story is that “she said she was home when this demonstration was happening,” Mancias said. “But we were knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell.”

Believe it or not, Feinstein has actually responded to this sort of activity in the past by coming to the door and engaging with the concerned, pink-clad citizens.

“She’s a very old school politician,” Mancias said by way of explanation. “She’s very approachable. On that day she didn’t come outside, and if she was home, we would have loved to have a discussion with her about Edward Snowden.”

So was Feinstein’s account of spotting a surveillance drone rooted in nothing more than noticing a pink kid’s toy zip past her window during a routine Code Pink protest?

Nobody knows for sure but nevertheless, Code Pink activists feel vindicated. “I can say that we actually achieved our goal,” Mancias said. That’s because more recently, Feinstein has softened her stance somewhat and admitted that “we need to look into” the domestic surveillance program.

But that perception of a small victory doesn’t mean they aren’t going back. On Tuesday, Feb. 11, Code Pink plans to return to Feinstein’s Pac Heights mansion for yet another protest, this time to coincide with a national day of action being planned in opposition to NSA spying.

Called “The Day We Fight Back,” the Feb. 11 action day will consist of website owners installing banners to encourage their visitors to challenge online spying, and employees of tech companies calling on their organizations to do the same.

“We’re asking people to bring surveillance equipment, drones, and magnifying glasses,” to Feinstein’s house, Mancias said, presumably talking about props and not real surveillance equipment (does Google Glass count?). “We’ll just play some music,” she added, “and have a fabulous time.”

Marcus Books approaching landmark status as fundraising continues

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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6
Marcus Books approaching landmark status as fundraising continues

It may be a long shot, but there is still time.

Marcus Books, which faces eviction from its Fillmore Street location, seeks to raise $1 million to remain in Jimbo’s Bop City building, the violet-colored Victorian it has operated out of since 1981. If Marcus Books succeeds in its fundraising endeavor, the building will be turned over to the San Francisco Land Trust and the bookstore will remain as a tenant in perpetuity.

Its fundraising campaign is titled Keep It Lit, and co-owners Karen Johnson and Tomiko Johnson have framed it this way: If 50,000 supporters donated $20 apiece, the bookstore could hit its goal by the fast-approaching Feb. 28 deadline. So far, the fundraising website reflects an amount of $5,660 raised so far.

Marcus Books has been doing business for 54 years and is the nation’s oldest continuously operating black-owned, black-themed bookstore.

Today the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected to approve historic landmark designation for the bookstore’s Fillmore Street address, on account of “its long-term association with Marcus Books … and for its association with Jimbo’s Bop City, one of the City’s most famous, innovative and progressive jazz clubs.”

The memory of Jimbo’s lives on, as it hosted the likes of John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and other jazz greats for after-hours jam sessions.

The Board of Supes’ ordinance also highlights the contributions of Julian and Raye Richardson, Karen Johnson’s parents and the founders of Marcus Books, “who for many years served the city’s rapidly expanding Black community in a myriad of ways, from small-scale publishing and book-selling to academic instruction and mentorship.”

The future of civic engagement is here (so far it’s not pretty)

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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20
The future of civic engagement is here (so far it’s not pretty)

Last week, we wrote about San Francisco City Hall’s foray into “civic innovation,” to foster greater governmental openness through web-based technology.

We spotlighted the OpenGov Foundation’s partnership with the city to upload the entire municipal code to a website, SanFranciscoCode.org, to make local laws readily accessible for anyone (regardless of city of residency, apparently) to comb through, offer comments, or suggest legislative tweaks.

Sup. Mark Farrell trumpeted the open city code website as a great way to incorporate citizen feedback to improve government. It earned a mention the San Francisco Chronicle and other news outlets after Farrell proposed doing away with a silly law that effectively bans bicycle storage in garages, prompted by a comment left on SanFranciscoCode.org.

In and of itself, the idea is not bad – transparency and openness are laudable goals.

That being said, judging by the quality of “civic engagement” happening so far, there’s a long road ahead before this particular experiment in digital democracy takes us anyplace we’d like to go.

There’s the guy who rails against the law about curbing the wheels of your car when parking on an incline, who wants it known, sir, that “I resent and object to getting a near $70 fine for not curbing the wheels on my 2011 Prius.” (He argues that the grade of the incline the rule applies to only made sense in a bygone era, when parking brakes and manual transmissions were more likely to fail.)

Other brilliant insights from cantankerous “innovators”: What do we need San Francisco General Hospital for, anyway?

Another comment calls for writing a new law: “I think news racks should be outlawed as people leave garbage around them, graffiti and vandalize them all the time. I have never seen a group of news boxes / racks that were in a good shape anywhere in the city. They just make the city ugly and cluttered.”

I know, I know – this civic innovation experiment is still in a test phase. And after all, anyone is free to comment, and more stimulating ideas could still be on the horizon. 

But still. This is what citizen empowerment through technology looks like, in San Francisco?

Controversy still brewing over CCSF administrative pay raises

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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22
Controversy still brewing over CCSF administrative pay raises

A string of recent emails have led City College of San Francisco faculty members to believe that college administrators are already being paid according to the higher salary ranges that were proposed and then hastily withdrawn from an action agenda last week. Now, they’re waiting for answers about a controversy that has only ballooned since Fri/24, when it seemed that a proposal to raise administrative pay had been brought to a halt and tabled for further discussion.

The retraction was made just as a protest by students and faculty members was getting underway. The recommendation called for increasing salary ranges for certain administrative positions by 19.25 percent, sparking an outcry from faculty members who have endured cutbacks in recent years. 

In an email that was widely circulated among CCSF faculty members, City College of San Francisco Chancellor Arthur Tyler seemed to imply that the recommendation was put forth to reflect current pay ranges – in order to comply with an audit requirement.

“We had not published an approved schedule that matched what people were being paid,” Tyler wrote in an email obtained by the Bay Guardian, which had a timestamp showing it was sent a couple hours after the Fri/24 protest and was addressed to Special Trustee Bob Agrella and several faculty members. “There wasn’t any intent to increase Administrative pay.”

In another email obtained by the Guardian, Tyler wrote, “The existing salaries did not match the schedule which was outdated. That inconsistency needed to be fixed before the audit.”

Tyler’s explanation seemed to imply that the proposed higher salary ranges, for the classifications Vice Chancellor, Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Technology Officer, had already gone into effect – even though they were higher than the formally approved pay schedule that can be found on CCSF’s website.

As of 5pm today (Tue/28), faculty members and reporters were still waiting for Tyler, Special Trustee Bob Agrella, and other top administrators to offer a clear explanation as to what, exactly, what was going on with this supposed pay increase.

“This is what I surmise from your email and other comments: This outrageous increase in pay for administrators listed is a fait accompli because you say the old pay scale is outdated for the upcoming audit. The employee who published did so innocently, thinking it was already known by the employees, since in the past there was a great deal of transparency in the policy changes here,” faculty member Patricia Arack wrote in an email to the chancellor that was widely circulated.

“I think it safe to say we are all very concerned about this divisive situation,” she went on. “The release of this pay scale has incited very strong emotions among employees, and I hope that you and Dr. Agrella, in the [swiftest] and most transparent way possible, confirm that the true administrator pay scale is the one currently online on the Pay Roll web page, and clearly explain why that pay scale released last Friday exists at all. All explanations have seemed very ambiguous to me. Please provide clarity so the speculations will cease and harmony can be restored and we can move forward to restore the reputation of CCSF.”

The Bay Guardian also sought clarity on this situation, but we have not yet received a response from CCSF administrators. Last we heard, communications director Peter Anning had forwarded our questions to Chancellor Tyler and Special Trustee Agrella and they were planning to respond.

Faculty members and students are scheduled to meet with Chancellor Tyler tomorrow, Wed/29, to discuss recent class cancellations. “This is not the time to close the door to students eager and willing to enroll at City College,” organizers with AFT 2121 wrote in an email newsletter to CCSF faculty. “Displacing students undermines their confidence in our college and interrupts their educational progress.”

In related news, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano introduced legislation Mon/27 seeking to “end undemocratic power grabs,” specifically the sort that stripped CCSF’s Board of Trustees of its voting powers.

Under the new system, Agrella, in his capacity as special trustee, can unilaterally make decisions that previously required the approval of the entire board. Approving the salary range modification on last week’s action agenda is one such example of what the special trustee may approve independently.

“Under a vague section of California code, the 17-seat Community Colleges Board of Governors has taken over faltering community colleges and effectively deposed the elected trustees of those colleges,” Ammiano’s office wrote in a statement announcing the proposed legislation. “They appoint a special trustee to make decisions in place of the elected board.”

Ammiano’s bill seeks to eliminate arbitrary actions that can lead to the disempowerment of an elected board, by clarifying and restricting conditions under which the state’s Board of Governors may take control.

“Aside from being undemocratic, I think it’s pretty criminal,” Ammiano told the Bay Guardian in a phone interview. “People can vote people out, people can recall people, and acknowledge that they’ve made mistakes. But it’s very upsetting to think that some appointed board can capriciously remove duly elected people.”

SFMTA approves tech shuttle plan

Michael Redmond
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8

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors approved a pilot program Jan. 21 that allows operators of private commuter shuttles to use public bus stops, something they’ve been doing illegally for years on a very predictable basis.

The program will establish an “approved network” of 200 designated San Francisco stops where private shuttles may pick up and drop off passengers. It will issue permits and identifying placards to the private buses and require them to adhere to certain set of rules, like yielding to Muni buses if they approach the stop at the same time. (There’s already a Curb Priority Law stating that any vehicles not operated by Muni will be fined $271 for blocking a bus zone. But the city has chosen to ignore that law when it comes to private commuter shuttles.)

Finally, the program will charge shuttle operators $1 per stop per day, which seeks to cover the costs of the program implementation and no more. The meeting drew a very high turnout that included the protesters who have been blockading the buses, Google employees, private commuter shuttle drivers, and residents of various San Francisco neighborhoods.

Sup. Scott Wiener said at the meeting he was fully supportive of the pilot program, which was developed over the course of many months in collaboration with tech companies who operate the shuttles.

“These shuttles are providing a valuable service,” Wiener said. He said he was sensitive to widespread “frustration and anxiety” around the high cost of housing and rising evictions, but thought it was unfair to blame tech workers: “We need to stop demonizing these shuttles and these tech workers.”

Then Sup. David Campos addressed the board. “I think it’s really important for us to have a dialogue to find common ground,” Campos said, adding that pushing shuttle riders into private automobiles was not a good outcome. But he also urged the SFMTA board to send the proposal back to the drawing board: “It’s a proposal that simply does not go far enough.”

Campos was also critical of the SFMTA’s process of studying the growing private shuttle problem for years and drafting a proposal in collaboration with members of the tech community, with Campos pointing out, “Public input is being sought after the fact.”

Bus plan ignores real cost

Many community members have criticized the new $1 per stop tech shuttle fee as being too low, but city officials say their hands are tied by a state law prohibiting them from charging any more than that.

Yet under Proposition 218 — the state law that limits local governments’ ability to impose new fees — the city has more discretion about how to calculate “cost recovery” than officials have let on.

“Prop. 218 is part of a legal scheme that doesn’t so much limit how we calculate cost recovery,” San Francisco City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Gabriel Zitrin told us, “but limits the city to cost recovery.”

At the Jan. 21 SFMTA meeting, Project Manager Carli Paine explained how her team had arrived at the $1 per stop, per day fee amount.

“We identified everything it would take to implement this program,” Paine said. After identifying all the program components, the agency “took the number of stop events and came up with a ‘per stop event’ cost…The kinds of costs we included are upfront costs, ongoing program costs.”

Under Prop. 218, however, the SFMTA could determine whether there are other costs associated with allowing private commuter shuttles to use public transportation infrastructure, beyond just the cost of issuing and enforcing permits and placards.

Zitrin said the city can identify any costs not already being recovered elsewhere. If shuttles’ use of public bus stops cause transit delays, for instance, what are the costs associated with those delays? More overtime pay for bus drivers?

Low-income kids getting to school late and missing breakfast? What’s the cost of that?

If rents rise in neighborhoods located along the shuttle routes (and studies show they do), what are the associated costs of that phenomenon? What’s the cost of displacement resulting from those higher rents?

City College Special Trustee withdraws proposal for administrative pay hike

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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57
City College Special Trustee withdraws proposal for administrative pay hike

Students and faculty at City College of San Francisco staged an emergency protest today (Fri/24) after discovering that a generous salary increase had been proposed for top administrators and was headed to the desk of Special Trustee Bob Agrella for approval. 

Since he was appointed and infused with the voting power of the full board of trustees in the wake of CCSF’s threatened loss of accreditation, which the Guardian has covered extensively, Agrella can unilaterally decide on such matters.

But just as word of the proposed pay increase got out and angry protesters gathered to oppose it, Agrella announced that the item would be withdrawn from the action agenda.

The recommendation was to increase salary ranges for the college’s Associate Vice Chancellor, Chief Information Technology Officer, and Vice Chancellor by a generous 19.25 percent, “based on the positions’ level of responsibilities and duties.”

“This is absolutely outrageous,” said faculty union president Alisa Messer. “We have students being pushed out of classes, instructors losing jobs, and faculty are still 4 percent below 2007 level salaries. Giving 20 percent raises to the one per centers around here? This college administration’s priorities are upside down.”

Ona Keller, an organizer with the faculty union, said some classes had already been cancelled due to low enrollment. “Agrella came out and said it was a mistake,” Keller said. “I think it was because there were so many people contacting him.” She said roughly 100 protesters had turned out on campus between 2:30 and 3:30.

Student trustee Shanell Williams sounded a similar note. “The students aren’t making a San Francisco minimum wage. … Everyone at the college is suffering. This is outrageous.”

City College’s communications director, Peter Anning, said he’d first learned of the proposal from a reporter. Seems that was right around the time protesters and news vans turned up outside.

Anning insisted that the proposal had not originated with Agrella and that the special trustee had not even seen it prior to the alerts going out that he would approve it.

The agenda went out Thu/23 around 5:30pm, Anning said, with the deadline for community input set for 24 hours later, at which point Agrella would make a final decision. “When Bob received it and saw it, he withdrew it,” according to Anning.

However, the proposal seems to have been tabled for future consideration. Anning said he did not know whether Agrella had been holding any prior conversations about the proposed salary range increases before the recommendation found its way onto the action agenda.

Anning said the proposal originated with City College Associate Vice Chancellor of Human Resources Clara Starr. We called Starr’s office to find out more, but her assistant told us she was taking the day off.

The SFMTA could legally charge commuter shuttles a higher fee

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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23
The SFMTA could legally charge commuter shuttles a higher fee

Under a newly approved pilot program that sanctions private commuter shuttles’ use of San Francisco public bus stops, shuttle operators will be made to pay a fee of $1 per stop, per day.

Many community members have criticized this fee as being too low. In response, city officials have indicated that their hands are tied due to a state law prohibiting them from charging any more than that.

But we’ve just learned that under Proposition 218 – the state law that limits local governments’ ability to impose new fees – the city has more discretion about how to calculate “cost recovery” than officials have let on.

“Prop. 218 is part of a legal scheme that doesn’t so much limit how we calculate cost recovery,” said spokesperson Gabriel Zitrin, of the San Francisco City Attorney’s office, “but limits the city to cost recovery.”

At the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board meeting yesterday afternoon (Tue/21), Project Manager Carli Paine explained very clearly how her team had arrived at the $1 per stop, per day fee amount.

“We identified everything it would take to implement this program,” Paine said. After identifying all the program components, the agency “took the number of stop events and came up with a ‘per stop event’ cost.” Further clarifying, Paine said, “The kinds of costs we included are upfront costs, ongoing program costs.”

Even while remaining within the limitations of Prop. 218, however, the SFMTA could determine whether there are other costs associated with allowing private commuter shuttles to use public transportation infrastructure, beyond just the cost of issuing permits and placards.

It would be well within the legal rights of the city to recover identified costs, as long as they were not already being recovered elsewhere, according to Zitrin’s explanation.

If shuttles’ use of public bus stops cause transit delays, for instance, what are the costs associated with those delays? More overtime pay for bus drivers?

Low-income kids getting to school late and missing breakfast? What’s the cost of that?

If rents rise in neighborhoods located along the shuttle routes (studies show they do), what are the associated costs of that phenomenon? What’s the cost of displacement resulting from those higher rents, which can create a new class of commuters originating from the East Bay?

There are no simple answers, of course. But thanks to data and technology (two things Google seems to know an awful lot about) many costs associated with the private use of public infrastructure can likely be identified.

Zitrin said it was tough to say more without having the details. 

“As far as our office is concerned,” he said, “we would need full detail on what costs are being recovered.”

SFMTA Board approves tech shuttle plan

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
132
SFMTA Board approves tech shuttle plan

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of directors approved a pilot program today that allows operators of private commuter shuttles to use public bus stops, something they’ve been doing illegally for years on a very predictable basis.

The program will establish an “approved network” of 200 designated San Francisco stops where private shuttles may pick up and drop off passengers. It will issue permits and identifying placards to the private buses and require them to adhere to certain set of rules, like yielding to Muni buses if they approach the stop at the same time. (There’s already a Curb Priority Law stating that any vehicles not operated by Muni will be fined $271 for blocking a bus zone. But the city has chosen to ignore that law when it comes to private commuter shuttles.)

Finally, the program will charge shuttle operators $1 per stop per day, which covers the costs of the program implementation and no more.

The meeting drew a very high turnout that included the protesters who have been blockading the buses, Google employees, private commuter shuttle drivers, and residents of various San Francisco neighborhoods.

Sup. Scott Wiener spoke at the beginning of the meeting, saying he was fully supportive of the pilot program, which was developed over the course of many months in collaboration with tech companies who operate the shuttles.

“These shuttles are providing a valuable service,” Wiener said. He said he was sensitive to widespread “frustration and anxiety” around the high cost of housing and rising evictions, but thought it was unfair to blame tech workers. “We need to stop demonizing these shuttles and these tech workers,” Wiener said.

Then Sup. David Campos addressed the board. “I think it’s really important for us to have a dialogue to find common ground,” Campos said, adding that pushing shuttle riders into private automobiles was not a good outcome. But he also urged the SFMTA board to send the proposal back to the drawing board. “It’s a proposal that simply does not go far enough,” he said.

Campos was also critical of the SFMTA’s process of studying the growing private shuttle problem for years, drafting a proposal in collaboration with members of the tech community, and waiting until the eleventh hour once the plan had already been formulated to seek comment from community members who are impacted.

“Public input is being sought after the fact,” he said.

That feeling of being frozen out of the process was echoed in comments voiced throughout the public comment session, which went on for hours.

“I’m opposed to the $1 charge,” one woman said. “I believe it’s way, way, way too low.” She told a story of receiving a ticket for being parked in a bus zone very briefly. “It wasn’t a $1 ticket,” she said.

Another woman, who said she was born and raised in SF, said she’d been riding Muni since she was in diapers. “It makes me really sad that we have regional shuttles and corporations that are saying, you can’t just fix that system, we’re going to go around it,” she said. She urged members of the transit agency board to find a better system that would work for everyone, “because you are in charge.”

A Google employee told board directors that she is very pleased that the shuttles have made it possible for her to live in San Francisco. “Not everyone at Google is a billionaire,” she said. “Ten years after the fact I am still paying my student loans. This is a choice, I know, to live in San Francisco and commute to Mountainview. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Her perspective, however, came in sharp contrast to that of Roberto Hernandez, who spoke on behalf of Our Mission No Eviction and said he was worried that displacement caused by rising rents have forced many members of his community to move to the East Bay.

Hernandez also brought up a little-known consequence of transit delays caused by private shuttle buses.

In the elementary schools near 24th Street in the Mission, he said, “They have the breakfast program for people who are low-income. So if you show up late, you don’t get breakfast.”

Here’s Hernandez addressing the SFMTA board members.

In the end, the transit directors approved the pilot with very little discussion. “At the end of the day, this is before us as a transit issue,” said board member Malcolm Heinicke. “And we’re better with something than nothing.”

Tenant battle brewing

Michael Redmond
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44
Tenant battle brewing

rebecca@sfbg.com

Benito Santiago, 63, was born and raised in San Francisco. But now that he’s received an eviction notice from the apartment he’s lived in since 1977, he isn’t sure what the future holds.

“This is roots for me,” Santiago told us. “I have more affinity for San Francisco than the Philippines,” his family’s place of origin.

He works part-time with disabled youth enrolled in San Francisco public schools. “The idea that I built a rapport with these students here … to be put in a position where I wouldn’t be able to work with them, I’m a little saddened and depressed by it,” he said. “If I’m homeless, I can’t be taking care of these kids. I mean — it’s a worst-case scenario.”

He’s been exploring alternative housing options, and trying to stay positive. He says he’s even trying to “change the rate of vibration” of the real estate speculators seeking to oust him as part of his pre-dawn meditation and ritualistic movement practice, a routine he developed to mitigate the chronic pain he dealt with after being hit by an automobile when he was crossing the street in 1980.

“Hopefully, they can have some compassion,” he said.

Santiago is hoping to get a temporary extension to stave off his eviction, and he’s been looking into publicly subsidized below-market rate apartments. But rent for even the most affordable of those places would eat up 75 percent of his monthly income, he said. Unless he can find an affordable arrangement somewhere, he might end up having to leave the city.

 

GROWING MOVEMENT

Santiago has been a part of a growing movement underway in San Francisco to reform the Ellis Act and introduce meaningful legislation at the local level to protect the city’s renters.

In recent weeks, the San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition, made up of a wide range of organizations including the San Francisco Tenants Union, has hosted a series of neighborhood tenant conventions to solicit ideas that will be boiled down at a citywide tenants’ gathering scheduled for Feb. 8. At that meeting, organizers plan to hash out a strategy and possibly solicit ideas for a ballot initiative.

The tenant conventions are happening on a parallel track with efforts to reform the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to remove apartments from the rental market and evict tenants.

“Our goal is to ban the use of the Ellis Act in certain circumstances,” explained Dean Preston of Tenants Together, a nonprofit focused on strengthening the rights of renters.

“More than half of Ellis Acts are performed by people who bought the properties within the past six months,” he told us. “Their whole purpose is to buy it and kick everyone out. It was supposed to be for long-term landlords to get out of the business” of being landlords, he added. Instead, “it’s being completely abused.”

Sen. Mark Leno is working with Mayor Ed Lee on a response that would seek to lessen the impact the Ellis Act has had in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano is spearheading a separate effort.

“At this time, he’s not really ready to say which avenue he’s taking” in terms of a legislative strategy, said Carlos Alcalá, Ammiano’s communications director. “Because that can rule out that avenue.”

Preston said he’s been through waves of evictions before, but the organizing now taking place has been especially effective at drawing attention to the issue. Oftentimes, “the speculators are not from within the city or even within the state,” he pointed out. “That has fueled a lot of activism and courage.”

For Santiago, the organizing has given him heart during a difficult time. “I’m hearing a lot of sad stories,” he said, “and I am not alone.”

By the people

Michael Redmond
-
3
By the people

rebecca@sfbg.com

A growing number of people seem to be convinced that “civic innovation” is sexy.

Tech-oriented events at San Francisco City Hall, like hackathons for improving government services, have become increasingly common. App developers are gaga over the idea of revolutionizing government through software, and the concept is gaining momentum.

To borrow an analogy referenced in an essay by tech publisher Tim O’Reilly, some software purveyors are moving away from the idea of government as a vending machine: “When we don’t get what we expect, our ‘participation’ is limited to protest—essentially, shaking the vending machine.”

Instead, they’re latching onto the idea of government as an open platform that citizens can tinker with.

That’s exciting. Can it lead to a government that is more responsive to the people, as enthusiasts predict? Can we really hack away the ineffective and irresponsive parts of the public sector?

Or is some of this just hype and libertarian idealism from a cash-drenched tech sector seeking business opportunities and greater political influence?

 

HACK THE LAW

Sup. Mark Farrell recently proposed doing away with an outmoded and widely disregarded law disallowing bicycle storage in garages. The legislative tweak matters because it was spurred by feedback submitted through a new website, SanFranciscoCode.org.

Operated by a private nonprofit organization called the OpenGov Foundation, the website presents an interactive, online version of the city’s municipal code with an open platform where anyone can easily comb through the thicket of city laws and leave comments on specific sections, using the software as a magnifying glass.

Farrell touted the website — launched in partnership with Mayor Ed Lee’s Office of Civic Innovation last September — as a tool that could spur “a more transparent and accountable city government.”

“I see this leading to better engagement,” said Jess Montejano, Farrell’s legislative aide. Seamus Kraft, executive director of the OpenGov Foundation, has been compiling all the comments submitted via SanFranciscoCode.org, and recently sent a memo with all user feedback to each member of the Board of Supervisors.

“Our mission is to put as much public information into the public’s hands as possible,” Kraft said, “so that people can access their laws the way they deserve in 2013.”

The idea that a law would be changed instantly based on public comments is a new take on an old concept, with shades of being enamored by that shiny new thing. After all, many supervisors have a habit of turning their backs, or very obviously zoning out, during public comment sessions at weekly board meetings.

Yet anyone with an Internet connection can run with this new portal for citizen engagement. How about a reinvigorated response to San Francisco’s Sit/Lie Ordinance? A torrent of online commentary about the public nudity ban? Not everyone has the same idea about what it means to fix a broken law.

In some respects, City Hall appears to be lending itself out as a laboratory in which to test the wide-ranging theories of civic innovators. Mayor Lee has greeted the technology sector with arms wide open, and empowered the Office of Civic Innovation to foster tech-fueled government fine-tuning.

With the rise of amply funded organizations such as Code for America, droves of programmers stand at the ready, eager to chip in and do their part to help transport the public sector out of the analog ages.

A recent brigade of Code for America fellows partnered with the city’s Department Health and Human Services to create an app that automatically notifies food stamp recipients via text when they are about to be automatically dis-enrolled. The idea is to give recipients advance notice so they can take steps to renew their enrollment.

Other initiatives, such as the Department of Public Health’s release of an open data set to reveal housing inspection records, can arm citizens with useful knowledge — like empowering apartment hunters to spot a slumlord from a mile away.

The use of tech for transparency holds potential: What if each and every public record — down to every last email, calendar appointment, or police report — were instantly uploaded to a publicly accessible database, easy to locate, and fully searchable? Would that be a check against corruption?

Ron Bouganim, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist and mentor to the very Code for America teams industriously improving city government through technology, recently filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to create GovTech. It’s a new kind of venture capital fund, specifically devoted to fostering companies looking to find their way in the “civic innovation” sector.

Bouganim laid out the dynamics driving the civic innovation trend: First, “2008-2009 was like a nuclear bomb,” he explained. “The financial crisis was a cataclysmic event. The money is not coming back, ever.”

 

THE NEW NORMAL?

This new normal, characterized by dramatically depleted public-sector finances, has helped make government more open to working with startups instead of trusted brands like IBM, Bouganim said, since startups can help government “do more with less.”

Bouganim also said adoption of cloud computing has changed the game. Whereas governments were initially hesitant to move their data to the cloud, the recent migration has made it possible for companies seeking government contracts to price below the “procurement threshold,” a price point that triggers a long public approval process before a purchase can go through. Now that technology has helped software developers slice through red tape, startups are flooding in, eager to land public sector contracts.

The city’s Entrepreneurship in Residence webpage (entrepreneur.sfgov.org), which markets a program rolled out by the Office of Civic Innovation, says it all. Sporting a gleaming picture of San Francisco City Hall, it bears the caption: “Develop products & services for the $142 billion public sector market.”

Bouganim wasn’t willing to say much in the way of GovTech’s plans, but he mentioned that his accelerator provides mentorship for startups that are paired with government agencies, and hinted that his initial investments would lead to “a dramatic impact on government savings.”

An underlying goal of the whole civic innovation movement, Bouganim added, “is to fundamentally change this concept that government is over there, and I am over here. We the people are the government, we’ve just lost touch with it.”

Bouganim responded to the Guardian’s call within 15 minutes, mentioning he was in London. “I wanted to get back to you so you didn’t think I was ignoring you,” he said, “because that would be awful.”

But the well-compensated public servants at the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation evidently had no such compunction. The Bay Guardian placed multiple calls to that office for this story, only to be met with radio silence.

And that’s a quandary. One cannot trumpet lofty goals of citizen engagement while habitually walling off government critics, and still expect to be taken seriously. And therein lies the rub with civic innovation: Even if technology is neutral, politics will never be so.

Hey whistleblowers

Michael Redmond
-
6
Hey whistleblowers

rebecca@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Bay Guardian newsroom is tapping some high-tech tools to continue its journalistic mission.

Working in partnership with a group of technologists who dislike government corruption just as much as we do, we’re launching a new web-based system to enable sources to anonymously submit documents directly to our news staff.

The system offers better safeguards for protecting sources’ identities than conventional email can offer.

Powered by a software system called SecureDrop, the system is designed to protect the identities of whistleblowers if they wish to share information without fear of retaliation.

If the documents we receive contain newsworthy information that can be independently verified, we’ll use it as the basis for our reporting.

Since this is an experiment, we have no idea what will land in our SecureDrop folder — but it creates the potential for us to partner with sources in breaking significant news items.

The SecureDrop program originated with the late Aaron Swartz, who developed it in collaboration with Wired Editor Kevin Poulson. Swartz was an Internet activist and programmer known for hashing out inventive ways to fight corruption and promote transparency. He’s remembered, among other things, for cofounding Reddit, the online news site; and for founding Demand Progress, an online activism group known for its 2012 campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Now, SecureDrop is managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2012 that is “dedicated to helping support and defend public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government.”

Files submitted to the Guardian through the SecureDrop system will remain encrypted until they are securely downloaded. This means there’s no way for a third party to view their contents and trace them back to the sender.

Sources’ actual identities will never be revealed, and they’ll be identified to our news staff only through randomly generated code names.

Of course, whistleblowers desiring to keep their identities unknown always have the option of putting some documents into an unmarked envelope and dropping it in the mail.

But by submitting documents through SecureDrop, sources will have the ability to send high volumes of information that would be logistically difficult to print out or send. The program also enables sources to communicate with journalists in real time without revealing their actual identities.

Stay tuned. In coming weeks, the Guardian will publish a clip-out guide with instructions on how to submit documents to our news staff using SecureDrop. Sending encrypted files to journalists begins with downloading the Tor Browser Bundle, a system that makes online activity invisible to third parties.

Talking points for Google busers

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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68
Talking points for Google busers

TechCrunch is reporting that a Google employee leaked an internal memo the Silicon Valley tech firm circulated to its employees, urging them to provide public comment on the controversial proposal to sanction its private shuttles’ use of city bus stops.

Here are the talking points Googlers were supposedly told to highlight in comments to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency at tomorrow’s (Tue/21) meeting, when the transit board will vote on the proposal.

  • I am so proud to live in San Francisco and be a part of this community
  • I support local and small businesses in my neighborhood on a regular basis
  • My shuttle empowers my colleagues and I to reduce our carbon emissions by removing cars from the road
  • If the shuttle program didn’t exist, I would continue to live in San Francisco and drive to work on the peninsula*
  • I am a shuttle rider, SF resident, and I volunteer at…..
  • Because of the above, I urge the Board to adopt this pilot as a reasonable step in the right direction

The leaked memo, according to TechCrunch, also noted that “While you are not required to state where you work, you may confirm that Google is your employer if you are so inclined. If you do choose to speak in favor of the proposal we thought you might appreciate some guidance on what to say. Feel free to add your own style and opinion.”

According to the article, the memo was leaked to the activists who have been organizing tech bus blockades by an employee who found it “a bit high handed.” In turn, the activists sent it to TechCrunch.

*Not according to the study that was mentioned by the SFMTA at the SF Environment Commission last week.

Left turn?

Michael Redmond
-
27
Left turn?

rebecca@sfbg.com

Dan Siegel, an Oakland civil rights attorney and activist with a long history of working with radical leftist political movements, joined a group of more than 150 supporters in front of Oakland City Hall on Jan. 9 to announce his candidacy for mayor.

With this development, the mayor’s race in Oakland is sure to be closely watched by Bay Area progressives. Siegel’s bid represents a fresh challenge from the left against Mayor Jean Quan at a time when concerns about policing, intensifying gentrification, and economic inequality are on the rise.

Siegel is the latest in a growing list of challengers that includes Joe Tuman, a political science professor who finished fourth in the 2010 mayor’s race; Oakland City Councilmember Libby Schaaf; and Port Commissioner Bryan Parker.

In a campaign kickoff speech emphasizing the ideals of social and economic justice, Siegel laid out a platform designed “to make Oakland a safe city.” But he brought an unusual spin to this oft-touted goal, saying, “We need people to be safe from the despair and hopelessness that comes from poverty and long-term unemployment. We need safety for our tenants from unjust evictions and … gentrification.”

Siegel voiced support for raising the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. He also called for shuttering Oakland’s recently approved Domain Awareness Center, a controversial surveillance hub that integrates closed circuit cameras, license plate recognition software, and other technological law enforcement tools funded by a $10.9 million grant from the federal Department of Homeland Security.

He spoke about pushing for improvements in public education “to level the playing field between children from affluent backgrounds and children from poor backgrounds,” and described his vision for reorganizing the Oakland Police Department to foster deeper community engagement.

Among Siegel’s supporters are East Bay organizers with a deep history of involvement in social justice campaigns. His campaign co-chair is Walter Reilly, a prominent Oakland National Lawyers Guild attorney who said he’s been involved with civil rights movements for years. “This is a continuation of that struggle,” Reilly told the Bay Guardian, adding that leadership affiliated with “a progressive and class-conscious movement” is sorely needed in Oakland.

Left Coast Communications was tapped as Siegel’s campaign consultant. Siegel’s communications director is Cat Brooks, an instrumental figure in Occupy Oakland and the grassroots movement that arose in response to the fatal BART police shooting of Oscar Grant, whose Onyx Organizing Committee is focused on racial justice issues.

Olga Miranda, an organizer with San Francisco janitors union, SEIU Local 87, also spoke on Siegel’s behalf during the kickoff event. “San Francisco has become for the rich, and we understand that,” she said. “But at the same time, Oakland isn’t even taking care of its own.”

Referencing a recent surge in Oakland housing prices due in part to an influx of renters priced out of San Francisco, she added, “Dan understands that if you live in Oakland, you should be able to stay in Oakland.”

Siegel’s decision to challenge Quan for the Mayor’s Office has attracted particular interest since he previously served as her legal advisor, but their relationship soured after a public disagreement.

In the fall of 2011, when the Occupy Oakland encampment materialized overnight in front of Oakland City Hall, Siegel resigned from his post as Quan’s adviser over a difference in opinion about her handling of the protest movement. Police crackdowns on Occupy, which resulted in violence and the serious injury of veteran Scott Olsen and others, made national headlines that year.

“I thought that the Occupy movement was a great opportunity for this country to really start to understand the issues of inequality in terms of wealth and power,” Siegel told the Bay Guardian when queried about that. “And I thought the mayor should embrace that movement, and become part of it and even become a leader of it. And obviously, that’s not what happened.”

Since then, his relationship with Quan has been “Cool. As in temperature, not like in hip,” he said during an interview. “I don’t want to make this personal. But we have a difference about policy and leadership.”

With Oakland’s second mayoral election under ranked-choice voting, the race could prove fascinating for Bay Area politicos. Also called instant runoff voting, the system allows voters to select their first, second, and third choice candidates. If nobody wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the last-place candidates are eliminated in subsequent rounds and their vote redistributed until one candidate crosses the majority threshold.

Quan, who ran on a progressive platform in 2010, was elected despite winning fewer first-place votes than her centrist opponent, former State Senate President Don Perata. She managed to eke out an electoral victory with a slim margin (51 percent versus Perata’s 49), after voting tallies buoyed her to the top with the momentum of second- and third-place votes, many gleaned from ballots naming Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan as first choice.

Early polling conducted by David Binder Research showed Quan to be in the lead with the ability to garner 32 percent of the vote, as compared with 22 percent for Tuman, who placed second. That’s despite Quan’s incredibly low approval ratings — 54 percent of respondents said they disapproved of her performance in office.

When Schaaf announced her candidacy in November, Robert Gammon of the East Bay Express opined, “Schaaf’s candidacy … likely will make it much more difficult for Quan to win, particularly if no true progressive candidate emerges in the months ahead.” But Siegel’s entry into the race means there is now a clear progressive challenger.

The Guardian endorsed Kaplan as first choice in 2010, and gave Quan a second-place endorsement. While there has been some speculation as to whether Kaplan would run this time around — the David Binder Research poll suggested she would be a formidable opponent to Quan — Kaplan, who is Oakland’s councilmember-at-large, hasn’t filed.

Siegel, meanwhile, cast his decision to run as part of a broader trend. “I feel that not only in Oakland, but across the country, things are really ripe for change,” he told the Guardian.

Indeed, one of the biggest recent national political stories has been the election of Kshama Sawana, a socialist who rose to prominence during the Occupy Wall Street movement, to the Seattle City Council.

“When you have a city like Oakland where so many people are in poverty or on the edge of poverty, or don’t have jobs or face evictions,” Siegel told us, “it’s no wonder that the social contract falls apart. It seems to me that what government should do is elevate the circumstances of all people, and particularly people who are poor and disadvantaged.”

FCC chair gets an earful in Oakland

Michael Redmond
-
0

On Jan. 9, the newly appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, visited Oakland’s Preservation Park for a town hall meeting.

It was the first time in more than five years that the head of the FCC engaged in this kind of face-to-face community dialogue in Oakland, Chancellar Williams of Free Press said at the start of the meeting. The event was hosted by the Free Press, the Center for Media Justice, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and the Voices for Internet Freedom Coalition.

Social justice advocates from Oakland and San Francisco greeted Wheeler with a wide variety of concerns, asking him to help close the digital divide and improve access to basic phone and Internet service for low-income people.

Some spoke out about media consolidation, which Williams said has given rise to cost barriers resulting in abysmally low representation of broadcast station ownership by people of color. Others asked Wheeler to address the high cost of telephone calls in immigration detention.

Before people started lining up to share their thoughts with Wheeler, Malkia Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, captured everyone’s attention by delivering an impassioned speech on issues of media ownership, democracy, and racial inequality.

“Just as our physical bodies serve to preserve our nervous systems,” she began, “the people right here stand beautifully strong in defense of an affordable, accountable, and accessible media.”

Confronting the speculators

Michael Redmond
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34

rebecca@sfbg.com

A group of tenant advocates has upped the ante in the ongoing protest movement against San Francisco evictions, publicizing the names, photographs, property ownership, and corporate affiliations of a dozen landlords and speculators they’ve deemed “serial evictors.”

The Anti Eviction Mapping Project, a volunteer-led effort that snagged headlines last fall when it released data visualizations charting long-term displacement in San Francisco, released its Dirty Dozen list Jan. 10.

The project spotlights property owners who’ve moved to evict tenants under the Ellis Act, a controversial state law that allows landlords to oust tenants even if they aren’t in violation of lease terms. In practice, the Ellis Act tends to be waged against longtime residents with low monthly rental payments, frequently impacting elderly or low-income tenants who benefit from rent control.

The Anti Eviction Mapping Project’s list gets up close and personal, publishing details such as landlord’s cell phone numbers, home addresses, and histories of legal entanglement.

It’s an edgy use of public records that seems to raise a slew of questions about free speech, privacy, and the use of information sharing and public shaming as a protest tactic in the digital age.

Erin McElroy, a volunteer and lead organizer of the project, said the goal was to spotlight landlords “who are disproportionately impacting senior and disabled tenants,” and to raise public awareness about “people who are making millions at the expense of tenants.”

She added that there is a budding effort to push for Ellis Act reform in Sacramento, and noted that a goal of this project was to fuel that statewide effort by providing easily accessible information.

Among those individuals named on the Dirty Dozen list was David McCloskey of Urban Green Investments, a company that owns more than 15 San Francisco properties. Urban Green has been a frequent target of San Francisco housing activists, in part due to the company’s ongoing attempt to evict Mary Elizabeth Phillips, a Dolores Street tenant who will turn 98 in April.

Another landlord who made the list, Elba Borgen, has also attracted past attention from tenant activists due to her history of pursuing Ellis Act evictions at six different San Francisco properties. A tenant currently residing in a 10th Avenue property, where Borgen’s LLC has filed for eviction, is 90 years old and suffering from Alzheimer’s, according to an interview with her daughter Vivian Montesdeoca posted to the mapping project website.

The Bay Guardian‘s efforts to reach landlords who were spotlighted on the Dirty Dozen list were largely unsuccessful. We did manage to contact Tom Iveli, president of Norcal Ventures, who spoke briefly before excusing himself, saying he had to take another call. Iveli clearly wasn’t aware that he and his business partner Bob Sigmund had been singled out.

McElroy said the Dirty Dozen list was the product of an in-depth research project which entailed filtering through property records, San Francisco Rent Board data, and information gleaned from the website Corporation Wiki.

The Anti Eviction Mapping Project initiative has attracted around 15 volunteers and will be partnering with Stanford University students to produce an oral history project showcasing the narratives of San Francisco tenants facing eviction, McElroy said.

Some of the same activists involved in recent high-profile blockades of tech buses were also part of the Anti Eviction Mapping Project effort.

“We’re not, you know, anti-tech by any means,” said McElroy. “We’re anti- speculative real estate,” and wary of policies like the Ellis Act and city government’s tendency to give deep-pocketed corporations a free pass, regardless of the consequences.

“It’s that linkage that is kind of the crux of the issue,” she added.

Here’s what the new FCC chairman heard when he came to Oakland

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
2
Here’s what the new FCC chairman heard when he came to Oakland

Last night (Thu/9), the newly appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, visited Oakland’s Preservation Park for a town hall meeting.

It was the first time in more than five years that the head of the FCC engaged in this kind of face-to-face community dialogue in Oakland, Chancellar Williams of Free Press said at the start of the meeting. The event was hosted by the Free Press, the Center for Media Justice, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the Voices for Internet Freedom Coalition.

Social justice advocates from Oakland and San Francisco greeted Wheeler with a wide variety of concerns, asking him to help close the digital divide and improve access to basic phone and Internet service for low income people.

Some spoke out about media consolidation, which Williams said has given rise to cost barriers resulting in abysmally low representation of broadcast station ownership by people of color. Others asked Wheeler to address the high cost of telephone calls in immigration detention.

Before people started lining up to share their thoughts with Wheeler, Malkia Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, captured everyone’s attention by delivering an impassioned speech on issues of media ownership, democracy, and racial inequality. Here’s a sample of what she said:

Dan Siegel announces candidacy for Oakland mayor

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
13
Dan Siegel announces candidacy for Oakland mayor

Oakland attorney Dan Siegel, known for a long history of involvement in Bay Area social justice movements, joined a group of more than 150 supporters in front of Oakland City Hall this morning to announce his candidacy for mayor.

In a speech emphasizing his campaign ideals of social and economic justice, Siegel called for shutting down Oakland’s recently approved Domain Awareness Center, raising the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, making improvements in public education “to level the playing field between children from affluent backgrounds and children from poor backgrounds,” and shifting the city’s approach to policing by reorganizing the police department to foster deeper community engagement. We caught a few moments from his speech here:

Guardian video by Rebecca Bowe

Siegel’s campaign co-chair is Walter Reilly, a prominent attorney affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild who said he has a long history of involvement with civil rights and social justice movements. “This is a continuation of that struggle,” he said, adding that Siegel’s affiliation with “a progressive and class-conscious movement” is sorely needed in Oakland.

Left Coast Communications was tapped as Siegel’s campaign consultant. Siegel’s communications director is Cat Brooks, who was previously an organizer and sometimes spokesperson for Occupy Oakland.

In 2011, when the Occupy Oakland encampment sprung up in front of Oakland City Hall, Siegel resigned as a legal advisor to Mayor Jean Quan over a difference in opinion about her handling of the protest movement. Police crackdowns on Occupy, which resulted in violence and the serious injury of veteran Scott Olsen, made national headlines that year. 

Olga Miranda, an organizer with San Francisco janitors union, SEIU Local 87, also spoke on Siegel’s behalf. “San Francisco has become for the rich, and we understand that,” she said. “But at the same time, Oakland isn’t even taking care of its own.” Referencing gentrification, a term that seemed to be everyone’s lips, she added, “Dan understands that if you live in Oakland, you should be able to stay in Oakland.”

Asked why he’d decided to run, Siegel told the Bay Guardian, “I feel that not only in Oakland but across the country, things are really ripe for change. When you have a city like Oakland where so many people are in poverty or on the edge of poverty, or don’t have jobs or face evictions … it’s no wonder that the social contract falls apart. It seems to me that what government should do is elevate the circumstances of all people, and particularly people who are poor and disadvantaged.”

Got pests? Open data project reveals housing code violation data

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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5
Got pests? Open data project reveals housing code violation data

Thanks to a handy new online platform created by the city’s Department of Public Health, in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation and Code for America, you can now determine whether the rental you’re eyeing is moldy, pest-ridden, or otherwise hazardous to your health – before signing a lease.

Investigating a potential landlord’s track record is just one application for the House Facts data set, an open data tool rolled out six months ago that instantly provides building owners’ names, code violation data, property assessment information and other relevant information associated with San Francisco addresses, all in one place.

Let’s say, for example, you were contemplating paying $1,650 a month to inhabit a 300-square-foot studio, right in the center of the Tenderloin. Now there’s a bargain in a red hot housing market! 

But before you get all excited and drain your bank account to plunk down a security deposit, surf on over to HouseFacts and punch in the building address. With this simple search, you might discover that this building has undergone inspection by city agencies a grand total of 73 times, most recently 11 months ago, with a total of 23 violations recorded.

Skim the list of violations and you’ll notice the words “rodents,” “insects,” “unsanitary conditions,” and even (big red flag here!) “biohazards (human feces).”

As they say, knowledge is power.

To be fair, some of those violations were recorded practically an eternity ago, and things could well have been cleaned up since – but having instant access to these track records could prove to be a check against negligent landlords.

 

A map of housing inspection data prepared by DPH.

The initiative to develop a uniform format and open platform for San Francisco housing inspection data was spearheaded under the environmental health division of the Department of Public Health in collaboration with city government’s growing tech innovation wing, and it’s now being emulated by several other cities nationwide.

DPH’s former Environmental Health Director, Dr. Rajiv Bhatia – who recently resigned after being targeted with a mysterious investigation that resulted in no findings of misconduct – was instrumental in advancing the open-data project under the Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability.

“We decided releasing this data would have the potential to improve government regulation,” notes Cyndy Comerford, manager of planning and fiscal policy in the environmental health division, who’s continued to move it forward since Bhatia’s departure. “Within San Francisco, there are many people who live in dilapidated and poor housing.” 

Residences plagued with rodents, cockroach infestations, lead, or mold present higher risks for health afflictions, such as allergies, respiratory conditions or cancer.

The enhanced transparency can strengthen code compliance and lead to an overall reduction in medical costs for preventable conditions, Comerford said.

Slumlords, beware: The tool has also been implemented at a time when the city is signaling that more aggressive code enforcement is on the horizon.

At the Jan. 7 Board of Supervisors meeting, Sups. Scott Wiener and Malia Cohen called for a hearing to get a better handle on building code enforcement.

“There’s not really any clear procedure for when these cases are closed, or how they’re closed,” said Jeff Cretan, a legislative aide for Sup. Scott Wiener.

“Our complicated code inspection system lacks sufficient coordination and communication among the different departments,” Wiener noted in a statement. “In addition, departments sometimes appear to be reluctant to pursue enforcement due to budget concerns.”

While the health department’s actions seem geared toward preventing ailments arising from poor housing conditions, the supervisors’ effort seems to stem from a quality-of-life concern. Cretan said his office regularly receives complaints from “really wired-in, aggressive Noe Valley neighbors.” He added, “People will call because they’re worried about hoarders.”

Google’s androids

Michael Redmond
-
0
Google’s androids

rebecca@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED Robotics, a field that largely exists in the realm of research and development, is poised to grow leaps and bounds right here in the Bay Area now that Google has decided to dump mountains of cash into it.

So far, the search giant with the “don’t be evil” slogan has acquired eight robotics firms, and is pursuing a robotics initiative that nobody seems willing to describe in detail when speaking on record to the press.

Its December acquisition of Boston Dynamics, a leading robotics firm famous for developing robots like Cheetah — which can move at 29 miles per hour on a treadmill — has generated rampant speculation about the Silicon Valley giant’s ultimate intentions.

Since Boston Robotics receives funding from military sources, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the high-profile purchase has raised a few eyebrows to be sure — like, they keep all of our email data forever and they just went out and bought some military-funded robots?

“None of these companies have products — they have prototypes,” points out Berkeley robotics professor Dr. Homayoon Kazerooni, who founded Ekso Bionics, a company that aids paraplegics in overcoming mobility limitations with robotic aids.

“Not all scientists or engineers are fully considering commercial applications yet. I don’t know why Google’s buying that stuff, except to push those applications.” From there, the question becomes “what can you do with that, to create jobs that are helpful to people?”

Kazerooni says the research being generated by robot scientists and engineers could yield many possibilities, whether in the form of new robots or something else. While he specializes in robotic machines for paraplegics, he says robots can sometimes be helpful replacements for humans in dangerous situations, like when a repair is needed at a nuclear power plant.

Several of the other firms purchased by Google are based in San Francisco. A recent, um, Google search revealed that while the companies’ website URLs remained intact, their pages had mostly been scrubbed of any information, save a single line of text announcing the acquisitions and that they were joining “the robotics revolution.”

So much for transparency from a company that knows all your secrets.

But thanks to a handy tool created by the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, called the Wayback Machine, we at the Bay Guardian were able to unearth a few nuggets to shed some light on what the hell Google just bought.

Meka Robotics, founded in 2007 by roboticists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is one of the Google robotics acquisitions that lists a San Francisco address. A Wayback search revealed that it has developed something called “the Meka S2 Humanoid Head,” which is a “robotic active vision head” featuring high resolution cameras in each eye. “Designed for a wide range of expressive postures, it is the ideal platform for researchers interested in human-robot interaction and social robotics,” according to a description that no longer exists on Meka’s current website.

Another local firm Google gobbled up is Industrial Perception, a Palo Alto company that the Wayback search revealed is “a leader in 3D vision-guided robot technology” that “enables industrial robots to assume challenging logistical tasks,” mainly related to shipping.

Julia Gottlieb is the executive producer at Bot & Dolly, a San Francisco outfit that operates dinosaur-sized robotic arms equipped with high-end cameras that capture footage while the machines glide through space. “You may have heard the news that we were recently acquired by Google,” she wrote in response to a Bay Guardian inquiry. “Unfortunately, this means I am not able to speak to or make any decisions about press or PR related matters.”

Fire displaces Olague

Michael Redmond
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A fire broke out on Christmas night at the home of Christina Olague, a former San Francisco supervisor, and fatally injured her housemate and longtime friend, Randy David Sapp.

Now, Olague’s friends and supporters are holding an online fundraiser (www.wepay.com/donations/christina-olague) to help her get back on her feet in the wake of the tragic event. A benefit has also been planned for Jan. 12 at El Rio, 3158 Mission Street.

Olague told us she has been staying with friends since the fire, and doesn’t know where she will wind up living in the long run. She said she’d wanted to be respectful of her housemates’ privacy before making any public statements about what happened, and didn’t reach out to many people initially because she was in a state of shock.

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