Steven T. Jones

Forum begins to bridge the housing-transportation divide

Sasha Cuttler
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Forum begins to bridge the housing-transportation divide

Advocates for sustainable transportation and affordable housing in San Francisco — who have been pitted against each other in this election — discussed their differences and found some common ground for a post-election agenda during a community forum last night [Thu/9] hosted by the Bay Guardian and San Francisco Transit Riders Union.

We intended for the forum, “Bridging the Gaps in Funding Transit and Housing,” to begin to heal the rift that has developed over the last couple years and played out strongly this year in the creation of and campaigns for Propositions A, B, G, K, and L, with each camp not supporting the other’s priorities.

But there was broad agreement that both sides should work together on an affordabilty agenda that combats rising housing and transportation costs, the need to incorporate equity and social justice studies into the solutions this coalition should pursue, and even some specific funding mechanisms to meet both needs, including charging transportation impact fees to residential developers and uniting in a campaign to increase the local vehicle license fee in 2016.

“If you looking at what kind of city this is going to be, it really is about housing and transportation. They are two sides of the same coin,” Sup. Scott Wiener said after he arrived late in the forum, explaining how he has filled a critical void in transportation advocacy at City Hall. “The problem has been that over time, everytime there’s a budget fight, Muni loses.”

But Wiener has been a political lightning rod, particularly with renters and affordable housing activists who blame him for the division and for moving forward with Prop. B, which increases funding for Muni, without building a broader coalition first.

“I think the VLF could have had a chance [this year], but what it was lacking was a solid coalition to pull it off,” Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, said at the forum.

Cohen and his allies were left out of the Mayor’s 2013 Transportation Task Force, and they were critical of it for setting priorities and identifying funding options before undertaking a broad study of equity and social justice considerations, a study that the SFMTA is now working on with support from transportation activists.

Cohen didn’t accept the framing that helping Muni necessarily helps low-income households — 53 percent of Muni riders don’t have access to a car and 51 percent live in low-income households, according to an SFMTA ridership survey presented at the forum by the agency’s Jonathan Rewers — saying many system improvements are aimed at wealthier parts of town.

“The question is what parts of the system are actually being improved,” Cohen said, adding, “When you get down to the fine grain scale, it’s a lot more complicated.”

But Wiener and transit activists didn’t agree, noting that most Muni lines connect rich and poor neighborhoods, and that when you consider that low-income people disproportionately ride public transit, giving money to Muni necessarily helps the poor.

“There are very few [Muni] lines that only serve low-income people or high-income people,” Wiener said, arguing the public transit funding helps the entire city, and disproportionately the low-income people who rely on Muni.

“Helping Muni intrinsically helps low-income folks,” Amandeep Jawa, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said. “Fixing Muni is intrinsically a equity issue.”

That was also how SFTRU’s Thea Selby framed the issue: “We have a customer base that is low income and we have to take that into account.”

But because affordable housing and the transportation system each have funding needs running into the billions of dollars, there is tension.

“It’s a limited pile of funds, so we all feel like we’re fighting in a zero sum game,” Jawa said, blaming elected officials for unnecessarily creating that divisive paradigm and failing to identify new funding sources. “There is a lack of political leadership in this town, and not on the activist side.”

But when Jawa made an exception of Wiener (who hadn’t yet arrived at the forum), praising Wiener’s leadership on transportation issues, Cohen reacted angrily and blamed Wiener for sowing the divisions between transportation and housing activists.

“We see very intentional wedging,” Cohen said, criticizing Wiener for placing Prop. B on the ballot (which Cohen and his group opposes) and for opposing Prop. G, the anti-speculation tax that is a top priority for affordable housing advocates this election. “We have had a very difficult time working together because we have been pitted against each other.”

Yet Jawa criticized how Cohen and affordable housing activists have tried to frame the discussion around Prop. B, which increases General Fund contributions to Muni as the city’s population increases: “I don’t believe the notion that we’re stealing from affordable housing. We’re not.”

Eventually, those tense moments in which the divisions were sharply on display yielded to more civility and pledges to work together after this election.

“From my perspective, we need to not be at each other’s throats, but we have to work at all those priorities,” said Peter Strauss of the SFTRU.

“Talking, we can begin to understand each other’s priorities,” said Chema Hernández Gil of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, pledging to work with Cohen and other affordable housing and social justice activists to strength that coalition.

Hernández Gil cited studies showing that housing is the biggest expenditure for San Franciscans, followed by transportation costs. A worker making minimum wage pay about half of his or her income on housing and a quarter on transportation, leaving very little left for other expenses.

“If you need a car, how much it costs to live here gets so much more expensive,” Jawa said, citing the importance of transit-first policies to an affordability agenda. So he said the pro-car Prop. L would make San Francisco more expensive. “Prop. L is all about transportation affordability in the end,” Jawa said, urging voters to reject the measure.

Cohen noted that he’s supporting the Prop. A general obligation transportation bond and will continue to supporting the creation of a sustainable transportation system as well.

“Right now, residential development doesn’t pay a nickel for transportation infrastructure,” Cohen said, with his call for a residential transportation impact fee winning support from most of the activists in the room.

Cohen asked the transportation activists for their support on housing issues.

“What we have in San Francisco is a dramatic shortage of affordable housing,” Cohen said, calling for a broad coalition to support more public funding to build affordable housing. “It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot you coming back to support funding measures on the ballot.”

Remembering Gary Webb, the fallen messenger resurrected on film

Sasha Cuttler
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Remembering Gary Webb, the fallen messenger resurrected on film

I always enjoy seeing fellow journalists and their work celebrated in a Hollywood blockbuster such as Kill the Messenger, which opens tomorrow. It’s even more exciting when that journalist is someone that one knows and admires, as I did the film’s protagonist, the late Gary Webb, author of the explosive “Dark Alliance” series connecting the CIA to cocaine trafficking in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

I was happy to run a story on Webb and the film in this week’s paper, a piece written by former Sacramento News & Review editor Melinda Welsh, who hired me back in 2000 to be the paper’s news editor. I had already moved on to the Bay Guardian, in 2003, before Webb came to work for SN&R, so never got the chance to work directly with him, as Welsh did before Webb took his own life (her story, including this longer version from SN&R, is well worth reading).

But I did introduce Webb to the SN&R editor that I worked under, Tom Walsh, who was the worst boss I’ve ever had, a petty tyrant who made most of his employees (at SN&R and later SF Weekly) miserable. I met Webb through some journalistic colleagues one night at a party thrown by Robert Salladay, then a reporter with San Francisco Chronicle and now with Center for Investigative Reporting.

I was star-struck upon meeting Webb, remembering what a big impact his 1996 “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News had on me and other young newspaper journalists at the time. It exposed how the CIA turned a blind eye to the cocaine trafficking into the US that was being done by the Contra rebels that the Reagan Administration was supporting in Nicaragua. Perhaps even more significantly, it was the first big newspaper investigation of the Internet age, showing how online journalism could go viral and reach millions of people.

It was inspiring, but it was followed by dispiriting attacks by fellow journalists who tried to debunk its findings and the conclusions made by many of its readers, who went further than Webb in accusing the CIA of intentionally fueling the crack epidemic as a way of undermining African American communites in big cities.  

Those attacks helped deny Webb the Pulitizer Prize that he probably deserved (the CIA’s inspector general later confirmed Webb’s main findings) and led his own newspaper editors to sell him out, fueling his battle with depression and leading him to the job he had when I met him. He worked as an investigator for the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, an investigatory arm of the California Legislature staffed almost entirely by former journalists (he later got laid off during the state’s lean budget years).

We didn’t know each other very well — we had lunch or drinks a few times and he was a helpful source of mine in the Capitol on a few occasions — but we did talk about how he felt betrayed by his profession and yet still longed to get back into the work that he loved doing.

Journalism plays a critically important yet undervalued role in the US, where the profession has been losing journalists in droves to the public relations industry and corporate communications jobs, positions often designed to fool the public instead of inform it.

Welsh calls Webb’s story “a cautionary tale,” and it was indeed, both for journalism and the broader public interest. I’m looking forward to seeing the film, and hoping that it helps humanize Webb and his fellow messengers before we’re forced even further into the margins of civil society.  

Why and how we endorsed what we did

Sasha Cuttler
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Why and how we endorsed what we did

As I sort through the barrage of positive and negative feedback to the election endorsements that we published today — which included some tough calls that have surprised some of our progressive allies — I’d like to take a moment to explain how we at the Guardian approach our political endorsements and what they represent.

First of all, let me state clearly and categorically that our corporate owners had nothing to do with our decisions, which were made entirely by the Guardian’s editorial board, which includes me, News Editor Rebecca Bowe, and Staff Writer Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez. And the three of us found consensus on all of our choices, sometimes after long discussions, even when we had differing initial views on a particular race or measure.

The other important point to make is that it’s long been the Guardian’s philosophy to avoid choosing “no endorsement” whenever possible. If voters have to make a tough decisions among bad or equally attractive options, then we shouldn’t shrink from making that decision as well, even if that risks the scorn of a segment of our readership. This was the approach that I learned from former Guardian editors Bruce Brugmann and Tim Redmond, and it’s an approach that I’ve encouraged us to continue as editor.

Finally, there’s the philosophical question of what it means to endorse a candidate, a question that we’ve spent a lot of time pondering and discussing during this election cycle. There’s not a clear and simple answer to the question, so I’ll just discuss what I think it means.

At its most basic, our endorsement means that we think our readers should vote for this person or position in this election. That’s all. It isn’t a validation of everything a politician does or stands for, and our endorsements are often driven by a weak field of challengers more than the strength of an incumbent. Frankly, there’s only one challenger in the five supervisorial races this fall who is well-qualified for the board and running a strong campaign, Tony Kelly in District 10, and we endorsed him.

The endorsement that we’re catching the most shit for right now is Scott Wiener in District 8, which was a tough call that we spent a lot of time discussing. To many progressives, Wiener is the devil, someone who has taken strong and inflexible positions on housing and regulatory issues that have angered many on the left.

But I don’t think Wiener is the devil, even though I’ve helped blast him for his bad positions as strongly as anyone in town. I think he’s a complicated person and politician who, in addition to his bad stands, has shown important political leadership and integrity on issues we do support, including transportation, nightlife, and public health. I’ve also found him to be more honest and accessible than his more progressive colleague, Sup. Jane Kim, who we also endorsed with some reservations. If you want to understand why we endorsed them, read our endorsements, it’s all in there.

Personally, for me, the hardest endorsement in our package was going no on Prop. H, and I’m still not sure whether we made the right call — or how I’m going to vote on this measure. I’ve sympathetically covered the political battles over artificial turf and this Beach Chalet project for years, and I viscerally don’t like this project, feeling like it just doesn’t belong right there on the coast.

But I understand the need for more playing time on the city’s fields, we’ve visited the site and seen how tucked away from the surrounding area it really is, and I was persuaded that it’s time to let this project proceed after six-year-long fight. Our strong rejection of the companion measure Prop. I also gives me confidence that we’re not opening the door to a rapid conversion of city playing fields to artificial turf.

Did we get it right? That’s for readers and voters to decide based on their political perspectives, but I can tell you that we made a good faith effort and spent many hours trying. And if you have doubts about the calls we made, please listen to the audio recordings of our endorsement interviews and form your own opinions. Democracy is messy business, imperfect by design, and sometimes “least bad” is the best choice. 

In the end, I’m proud of our endorsements, which provide a valuable public service in helping voters sort through a long and complicated ballot, offering a more neutral and public-spirited perspective than that of the paid advocacy that is filling up voters’ mailboxes and billboards around town right now.

Good luck this election season, and don’t forget to vote by Nov. 4.  

SF supervisors vote to legalize and regulate Airbnb’s short-term rentals

Sasha Cuttler
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SF supervisors vote to legalize and regulate Airbnb’s short-term rentals

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today approved controversial legislation to legalize and regulate short-term housing rentals to tourists, voting 7-4 on the package after supervisors narrowly rejected a series of amendments to rein in an activity that has taken thousands of units off the market for local residents.

Amendments to limit hosted rentals to 90 nights per year, to require that Airbnb pay about $25 million in back transient occupancy taxes it owes the city before the legislation would go into effect, to exclude in-law units from eligibility for short-term rentals, and to limit rentals in single-family home neighborhoods failed on a series of 5-6 votes.

Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, Norman Yee, and Jane Kim voted as a block on the amendments to limit the scope of short-term rentals facilitated by Airbnb and other companies, as a broad coalition that includes tenant, landlord, labor, neighborhood, and affordable housing groups had sought. Kim parted from that block to vote yes on the final legislation, which the others opposed.

Amendments proposed by Kim to give housing nonprofits the right to file injunctive lawsuits to help enforce the legislation and by Campos to ban short-term rentals in units that have been cleared of tenants by Ellis Act evictions were approved 8-3. But because those changes were substantial, they were turned into trailing legislation that must go back to the Planning Commission.

Despite a series of amendments since Board President David Chiu proposed the legislation over the summer, its basic tenets have changed little. It requires short-term rental hosts to register with the city and rent out only their primary residence, which they must live in for at least 275 days out of the year, with the Planning Department enforcing the regulation on a complaint basis.

That effectively limits the rental of entire homes to 90 days per year, but Chiu, Airbnb, and its hosts strenuously rejected calls to extend that cap to hosted rentals, such as spare bedrooms that might otherwise be available to permanent city residents. Chiu said his legislation was “framed through the lens of our housing affordability crisis,” arguing that many San Franciscans rely on Airbnb income to make their rent.

Avalos said he understands that position, but he said tourists shouldn’t be displacing San Franciscans, proposing the 90-day limit on all short-term rentals. “I think it’s important to maximize our residential housing stock to the utmost,” he said. Mar also voiced strong support for extended the cap, criticizing the “cult-like” beliefs by some home-sharing advocates.

As I’ve been reporting in the Guardian over the last two and a half years, Airbnb and its hosts have been openly defying city laws against short-term rentals, as well as ruling by the Tax Collector’s Office that the city’s transient occupancy tax (aka hotel tax) of about 15 percent applies to short-term rentals.

Airbnb just began to collect that tax for its guests last week, but Campos argued that it should pay those back taxes going back to the city ruling in the spring of 2012 before the city legalizes and validates its activities. Company representatives have said its TOT collection would total about $11 million per year.

“I believe it’s only right that Airbnb make good on its back taxes before this legislation becomes law,” Campos said, arguing this $10 billion company is being rewarded for defying city regulators. “Do we give special treatment to a multi-billion-dollar company?”

But supporters of the legislation were anxious to move it forward, despite the dizzying series of complicated amendments, something Avalos said was unusual. “I’m surprised it was given the green light to leave today,” Avalos told reporters after the vote. “There was a lot of pressure to move it forward.”

Now the question will be whether the Planning Department can effectively enforce the regulations, particularly given that Airbnb has been unwilling to share data that might help in that effort. City officials have seemed powerless to enforce laws against short-term rentals that have been on the books for decades, even with rising public concern about the issue over the last year.

“I’m concerned that the legislation simply isn’t enforceable,” Kim said, arguing for the private right of action component that will be returning for board consideration in the coming months.

The other question is whether we’ve heard the end of an issue that has polarized city residents, or whether the coalition of opponents will succeed in a threatened initiative campaign to put more stringent new short-term rental regulations before voters next year.

Sup. Mark Farrell thanked Chiu for taking on the issue despite the intractable positions on both sides, saying, “I think everyone recognizes this to be a no-win situation.” Wiener are referenced the wide emotional divide on the issue: “The views around it are so intensely divergent.”

“The status quo is not working. This system of home sharing is happening in the shadows with little or no oversight,” Wiener said. “It’s time to bring it out of the shadows.”  

Even supporters of the legislation, such as Breed, said they would continue closely monitoring the situation to ensure the legislation helps curbs widespread abuses of lucrative short-term rentals, including landlords evicting rent-controlled tenants to use Airbnb and entrepreneurial tenants renting out multiple apartments through Airbnb, practices Chiu sought to curb.

“The one thing that I think everyone can agree upon is the status quo is not working,” Chiu said early in the hearing.

After the legislation — which comes back to the board for a perfunctory final vote next week and goes into effect in February barring legal challenges — Airbnb’s Public Policy Director David Owen told the Guardian, “It’s a tremendous step forward and we have a lot of work to do.”

Opponents seek changes in Airbnb legislation before big hearing

Sasha Cuttler
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Opponents seek changes in Airbnb legislation before big hearing

The broad and diverse coalition opposing Sup. David Chiu’s legislation to legalize and regulate Airbnb and other short-term housing rental companies — which the Board of Supervisors will consider tomorrow [Tues/7] — have boiled its many concerns down to three particular demands.

The coalition of tenant and landlord groups, affordable housing and neighborhood advocates, hotel workers and homeowners, and asundry other community leaders held another in a series of rallies on the steps of City Hall on Friday, again raising a variety of concerns.

But now, they’re penned a letter that has “three core recommedations.” The first is a call to limit rentals to 90 nights per year. That has been a feature of Chiu’s legislation from the beginning for unhosted rentals, given that it requires hosts to be permanent residents who live in their units at least 275 days per year, but the legislation still allows hosts to rent out a spare bedroom through Airbnb with few limits.

“If this is not done, the current proposal will allow year-round tourist rentals in every residential unit in the City which will drive up housing prices, create further economic incentive to increase evictions, further deplete housing stock for residents, and deteriorate the quality of life in our residential neighborhoods,” the coalition wrote in a letter to Chiu.

The supervisor had been a little cagey about the 90-day limit in the past, but when we pressed him on the issue during his endorsement interview with the Guardian last week, he confirmed that his legislation would allow spare bedrooms to be rented for more than 90 nights per year.

Chiu said his primary concern with the legislation was ensuring entire homes can’t be rented more than 90 nights per year, which he said was the main threat to the city’s rental housing stock, but he was open to amendments that would limit the rental of spare rooms, although that’s a practice he still wants to allow.

“We are grappling with the idea of what that balance is,” he told us.

The coalition is also asking for the legislation to explicitly ban short-term rentals of below-market-rate units and other affordable housing built with public subsidies. The third recommendation seeks to include “expedited private right of action” in the legislation, allowing neighbors and other third parties to file enforcement actions with the courts without waiting for city enforcement processes to slowly play out first.

That’s been a big problem recently as the San Francisco Tenants Union and other groups try to file lawsuits against landlords that have evicted rent-controlled tenants in favor of tourist rentals through Airbnb and other sites, but they’ve been prevented from doing so by foot-dragging in the Planning Department and Department of Building Inspection.

Members of this coalition will also present individual demands tomorrow, but the coalition also conveyed its opposition to supervisors approving this legislation tomorrow:

“We are unanimous in our position that the process being pursued by Supervisor Chiu is rushed. The City will live with the intended (and unintended) consequences of this legislation for many, many years. We implore you to amend the legislation with the recommendations articulated above, and as necessary postpone the Board hearing on this measure. This is one of the most important housing policy issues the City has faced in a decade, and the ‘solution’ by the Board of Supervisors must be done right and not hurried.”

The legislation will dominate the otherwise sparse agenda for tomorrow’s meeting, which starts at 2pm in City Hall. We’ll be live-tweeting the action, so follow along @sfbg or check back here for the full report. 

Investigation shows outsider ownership of SF’s luxury condos

Sasha Cuttler
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Investigation shows outsider ownership of SF’s luxury condos

Former Bay Guardian editor and publisher Tim Redmond has a great new investigation on his 48Hills site showing how many new luxury condos in San Francisco are owned as investments by out-of-towners, puncturing the myth that unfettered market-rate housing development will help with the city’s affordability crisis. Check it out. 

Ammiano “angry” as Brown vetoes prosecutor misconduct bill

Sasha Cuttler
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Ammiano “angry” as Brown vetoes prosecutor misconduct bill

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano strongly criticized Gov. Jerry Brown today [Mon/29] for yesterday vetoing his Assembly 885, which would have provided modest sanctions for prosecutors who willfully withhold evidence during criminal trials, a huge problem we’ve repeatedly covered in the Bay Guardian.

From the case of JJ Tennison and Antoine Goff — who served long prison terms before being freed after a Guardian investigation showed misconduct by the police and prosecutors in San Francisco — to the similar and most recent case of Obie Anthony, as told by Ammiano to his legislative colleagues during the hearings, prosecutorial misconduct is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

AB 885 became a good compromise measure and it worked its way through the legislative process, in the end allowing judges to inform juries when a prosecutor has intentionally withheld evidence, an important factor when weighing credibility that is usually shielded from jurors.

But in his veto message, Brown wrote, “Prosecutorial misconduct should never be tolerated. This bill, however, would be a sharp departure from current practice that looks to the judiciary to decide how juries should be instructed. Under current law, judges have an array of remedies at their disposal if a discovery violation comes to light during trial.”

Yet the reality of the criminal justice system is that such remedies rarely get applied, particularly in cases where the defendant is a poor person of color, sometimes because judges (many of them appointed by Republican governors during shameful tough-on-crime eras) are biased in favor of police and prosecutors.

This is a problem that was ripe for a legislative remedy in country where racism and the world’s highest incarceration rates are still huge problems, and we share the frustration of Ammiano over this veto.

“I’m not just disappointed at the Governor’s veto of this bill, I’m angry,” Ammiano said in a press release. “We need so much more than this to balance the system and keep the innocent out of prison, as the writers of the Constitution intended. Most prosecutors are honorable, but we’ve seen too many cases where DA’s don’t play fair – hiding evidence or releasing it at the last minute.”

“I recently met 40-year-old Obie Anthony, who has spent nearly half his life in prison because prosecutors hid evidence that would have pointed to his innocence,” Ammiano continued. “A court has now completely exonerated him, but that exoneration has come 20 years too late. We need this bill to stop the few prosecutors whose zeal for convictions lead them to cut corners on justice. We can’t wait decades to free the innocent while the true perpetrators run free.”

Ammiano noted that while the courts have prohibited non-disclosure evidence, he said the remedies that Brown refers to are weak and rarely used. For example, in Anthony’s case, the prosecutorial misconduct resulted in just a 24-hour continuance and no disclosure to the jury.  

“AB 885 could have saved me from spending 17 years in state prison,” Anthony said shortly after it passed the Legislature.

Brown is right that, “Prosecutorial misconduct should never be tolerated,” but in today’s criminal justice system — where cops and prosecutors are regularly exposed for railroading low-income defendants — it is not just tolerated, it is commonplace. 

Moderate politicians push “affordable housing” definition up to higher income brackets

Sasha Cuttler
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Moderate politicians push “affordable housing” definition up to higher income brackets

San Francisco, its General Plan Housing Element, and various city codes have always had a very specific definition of what they mean by “affordable housing”: homes that are affordable to those making 120 percent of area median income (AMI) and below, the kind that generally require public subsidies to build from scratch in San Francisco. That group is defined annually by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development using the latest data, and this year in San Francisco, it is defined as individuals making $81,550 or less year, or households of four people making $116,500 or less, according the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

But Mayor Ed Lee and other neoliberal and pro-developer politicians and political groups in town have in recent years been trying to redefine what the city means by “affordable housing” to reach up to 150 percent of AMI, definitions that made their way into the Proposition K housing policy statement on the November ballot and into a City Hall hearing yesterday [Thu/25].

The Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee held a public hearing to respond to the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury report, “The Mayor’s Office of Housing: Under Pressure and Challenged to Preserve Diversity,” which called on that office to be more transparent and aggressive in addressing the city’s affordable housing crisis, writing “the need for public transparency and fair access to housing opportunities has never been greater.”

MOHCD Director Olson Lee agreed with almost all of the report’s recommendations, pledging to provide more information to the public and complete an overhaul of the department’s website by the end of the year, making it easier for the public to apply for subsidized housing and more easily track where public resources are being spent.

“We agree with the grand jury report globally,” Lee said at the hearing.

But two of the three supervisors on that committee used the occasion to push this redefinition of “affordable housing” in San Francisco, with Chair London Breed pressing Lee and MOHCD on what it’s doing to serve those higher income brackets who want the city’s help with housing.

“Even people at 150 percent AMI can’t afford to buy a median-priced home today,” Lee acknowledged, pledged his office’s resources to help address the problem.

Sup. Katy Tang also pressed the point, telling Lee that “to stretch it to 150 AMI is really important,” clearly defining what she meant when she said, “San Francisco needs to continue building and really accommodate family housing.”

While it may be true that with median home prices in San Francisco now reaching $1 million, an individual making $101,950 per year or family of four making $145,650 — that is, 150 percent of AMI — would be hard pressed to buy real estate in this booming housing market.

But it’s not like this relatively small group of people (refresher: “median” is the middle point, meaning half the citizens make 100 percent of AMI or below) is being forced out of the city, like those truly low-to-middle income people traditionally served by affordable housing.

Peter Cohen and Fernando Marti, co-directors of the Council of Community Housing Organization, tell us they’re concerned about this upward creeping definition of affordable housing, even though they strongly support Prop. K, which calls for 33 percent of housing to be affordable to 120 percent of AMI, but also for half of all housing to be affordable to those at 150 percent AMI and below.

They’re fine with the city doing what it can to encourage more housing affordable to those in the 120-150 AMI range, but they’re adamant that money from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and other public resources don’t subsidize housing for that group.

“It’s going to be a continuing discussion,” Marti told us. “But legally, we can’t talk about city subsidies going into that sector.”

Hopefully, the transparency reforms that MOHCD is pledging will allow the public to make sure that upper-middle-class San Franciscans — the very people whose influx (encouraged by the city’s economic development policies) is driving up the cost of housing for everyone — aren’t also cannibalizing the city’s already inadequate affordable housing resources. 

Anti-war groups take to the streets of SF to protest US bombing campaign UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler
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Anti-war groups take to the streets of SF to protest US bombing campaign UPDATED

With the US military now bombing targets in both Syria and Iraq, and the Islamic State that we’re targeting threatening to retaliate against US citizens, the Bay Area’s anti-war movement is taking the streets today [Wed/24] and in the coming days (although the SF Chronicle apparently didn’t get the memo).

Two of the Bay Area biggest anti-war groups, the San Francisco chapters of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition and The World Can’t Wait, have called for a march and protest today at 5:30pm starting at Market and Powell streets.

“[President Barack] Obama owns this immoral and illegal action, the ultimate war crime — invasion of a sovereign nation that poses no imminent threat to the aggressor. “We” did not ask for or approve this war. NOTHING good can come from U.S. bombing, and we need to say so immediately and widely,” The World Can’t Wait said in a statement calling for people to show up with sign and something to say.

Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, put out a statement that included this: “Let’s tell the fundamental truth that the Obama Administration conceals from the people. The so-called Islamic State or ISIS wouldn’t exist today as a major force either in Syria or Iraq except for the U.S. military aggression that smashed the secular, nationalist governments in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 followed by its catastrophic support for the armed opposition against the similarly organized government in Syria.”

But hey, nothing solves problems created by US militarism like the US military, right? No? Yeah, probably not, so get out there and be counted as a voice for peace.

[UPDATE Thu/25]: The turnout and energy level at yesterday’s anti-war rallies seemed a little lackluster, which was probably more of an indicator of the disempowerment people feel and their grim resignation toward our state of neverending war than actual support for the current military operations. I reflected on this phenomenon in 2008, five years after our military invaded Iraq, in an award-winning piece called “Resistance is Futile — or is it?” and I think it’s work another read in light of current events.  

Pedaling and feasting

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Pedaling and feasting

FEAST: COAST BY BIKE I spent my vacations on my bicycle this summer, pedaling from southern Oregon to San Luis Obispo and looping through the Santa Cruz Mountains on three separate bike tours, covering almost 1,000 miles over three weeks, fully loaded with camping and other gear.

It was as healthy, athletic, and adventurous as it sounds — but it also involved some serious feasting along the way. We were often ravenously hungry when we would stop for meals, eager to splurge on whatever struck our fancy on the menus, or just feel an almost irrational appreciation for simple snacks.

After all, we had earned it. And with hiker-biker campsites costing just $5 per night, we could spend our vacation money on good food and drink to fill our internal fuel tanks and feed our taste for decadent delights.

There’s a certain ethos to eating on a bike tour, as I learned from my friend Jason Henderson (the SF State geography professor who writes the Guardian’s Street Fight column) and other veteran bike tourers along the way. Some young cyclists on long trips go for austerity, eating simple meals out of cans or jars to keep their costs down, but we were going for maximum enjoyment.

We cooked about half our meals, mapping out the last place to shop for fresh food before our camping destination for the night. That sometimes meant schlepping heavy groceries — fruits and vegetables, pasta and sauce, rice and beans, beer and wine — up to 10 miles.

We didn’t always use perfect judgment, such as on the long day’s ride from Humboldt Redwoods State Park to the Standish-Hickey State Recreation Area, an otherwise remote site along the Redwood Highway that nonetheless had an awesome restaurant and store, The Peg House, right outside the campground entrance.

In the mornings before breaking camp and hitting the road, usually by 8am, we made coffee and top-quality oatmeal mixed with fresh berries (occasionally picked ourselves from the roadside), brown sugar, and walnuts. This was known as the “first breakfast.”

Two or three hours into the ride, depending on the route, we would stop at some random restaurant for the second breakfast, and it was always such a treat, anything from surprisingly awesome fried chicken from a little market to the best Hangtown Fry (mmm, oysters and eggs!) I’ve ever had.

Later, we’d stop for lunch, usually famished by then, a meal that sometimes included a beer or two if we were close to our destination for the night. Occasionally, there would be a second lunch, and on a few rare occasions when there was a restaurant at the campground, a big, fat dinner feast.

That element of randomness on a slow road trip, when hunger or whims pulled us into some funky little roadside restaurant or store along California’s epic coastline, was one of the great and unexpected joys of my summer bike tours. And while there were many awesome spots we hit along the way, here’s a representative sampling, north-to-south, of a dozen meals that lingered with me:

Fried chicken at Fort Dick Market, Fort Dick
Riding from Harris Beach, Ore. toward Crescent City, that mid-morning hunger pulled us into a little roadside market, and the smell of fried chicken propelled us from there. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and coleslaw for a second breakfast? Por que no? Well worth it.

Hangtown Fry at Seascape Restaurant, Trinidad
We rolled through beautiful Trinidad on one of our shortest ride days, under 30 miles, so we didn’t mind lingering down by the harbor during a long wait for a table at Seascape Restaurant. And when I put that first bite of my Hangtown Fry in my mouth, the oysters’ vital juice mixing with the cheesy eggs, I believed I reach culinary nirvana.

Sushi room service at Hotel Arcata
My riding partners had traveled all the way from Portland, so they needed a Laundromat and a night in a bed by the time we reached Arcata. The quaint and historic Hotel Arcata was great spot right on the town square, and better yet, it offered room service from Tomo Japanese Restaurant. Fat specialty sushi rolls were a decadent treat after a long ride while my friends washed their skivvies.

BBQ Oysters at The Peg House
Oh, how I wished we had known about this place before we arrived at Standish-Hickey State Park near Leggett. The store was filled with gourmet goodies and a great beer and wine selection, and the adjacent restaurant had a huge outdoor patio, a stage for live music on weekends, and a wonderfully full menu, including some of the most amazing BBQ oysters I’ve ever had, bathed in some secret sauce that I wanted to drink from a pint glass. So that night, I had two dinners.

Ribs at Bones Roadhouse in Gualala
Entering the lovely coastal town of Gualala, past the large dinosaur-shaped topiary on the edge of town, I was immediately charmed. And starving after arriving in our destination town well ahead of my traveling companions. So I hit Bones Roadhouse, a groovy spot with an ocean view and autographed dollar bills covering the walls and ceiling, and ordered a huge plate of smoked pork ribs and two local IPAs on tap. Ah, life is good.

Burger and beers at Pescadero Country Store
After a long day’s ride from San Francisco on Labor Day weekend, with only a few more miles until our Butano State Park campsite under the redwoods, this place not only had awesome gourmet burgers and two fine IPAs on tap, it also had a great little jam band playing on the sunny patio.

Pulled pork sandwich at Big Basin Store
Big Basin Redwoods State Park is a beautiful, popular spot that doesn’t seem to have a restaurant, only a little camp store. Ah, but it has recently added a little restaurant in the back, something visitors would hardly notice. And even though the menu is small, it did have some super yummy pulled pork panini sandwiches that hit the spot after a dusty ride on a dirt trail from Butano.

Coffee and Mocha at Surf City Coffee, Moss Landing
Sometime, between our first and second breakfasts, we’d stop for coffee drinks, which I’d drink as I rode from a Contigo cup that fit perfectly in one of my water bottle holders. At this cute and colorful little spot, I got one of the best mochas of the trip and picked up a bag of fresh ground coffee to go with our first breakfasts.

Whole cracked crab at Liberty Fish, Monterey
It was a big ride from Sunset State Beach all the way to Big Sur, more than 70 miles, with Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey the lunch spot at the halfway point. To mark the spot and fuel up for a big afternoon ride, I devoured a whole cracked Dungeness crab and cup of clam chowder. Then I was good to go.

Steak at Big Sur Lodge
Halfway through our first tour from SF to SLO, we decided to spend two nights under the redwoods at beautiful Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, which also had a fancy restaurant, Big Sur Lodge, right at the campground. We did some serious feasting both nights, short ribs the first night and a thick, perfectly cooked steak the second. Totally decadent, totally worth it.

Smoked albacore tacos at Ruddell’s Smokehouse, Cayucos
This tiny spot by the beach doesn’t look like much, offering mostly just smoked meat and fish tacos and sandwiches, but that’s all you need. It was so good that we even bought a pound of smoked albacore to go.

Lamb burritos at The Wild Donkey Cafe, San Luis Obispo
Offering the uniquely compelling combination of “Greek and Mexican Cuisine” (as well as a table that allowed us to keep an eye on our loaded bikes, which sometimes influenced our restaurant choices), this was a great little spot with an interesting menu, friendly service, and yummy grilled lamb burritos.

SEIU Local 1021 backs motorist measure and a Republican. WTF?!?!

Sasha Cuttler
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SEIU Local 1021 backs motorist measure and a Republican. WTF?!?!

Service Employees International Union Local 1021 — which has long played an important role in San Francisco’s progressive movement, providing the money and member turnout to achieve some important victories for the left — finds itself at odds with many progressive activists in this election, particularly on the issue of transportation.

As we previously reported, the union has been aggressively campaigning for BART Board member James Fang’s reelection this year, even though Fang is the city’s only elected Republican and not particularly progressive on transit and other issues. But he was the only BART board member to walk the picket line with the workers during last year’s disastrous strikes, so it’s understandable why the union would stand with him now.

What’s less understandable is why Local 1021 has endorsed the Yes of Prop. L campaign, which seeks to undermine San Francisco’s transit-first policies and transfer money from Muni operations to subsidize more free public parking for automobiles, joining such unlikely allies as the San Francisco Republican Party, the SF Association of Realtors, and the SF Chamber of Commerce.

So we asked Local 1021 Political Chair Alysabeth Alexander about the endorsement, and she told us: “One of our member leaders is a proponent and the argument that driving is hell in San Francisco resonated with a portion of our membership that drives and for whom public transportation is not an option either because of service cuts and route changes, because their job requires car use, or because they work shifts that don’t work for public transportation or biking. Because of rising housing prices many working people have been pushed out of SF over the years, and many of our workers shifts end or start when BART or Muni isn’t working or isn’t practical. Our union is 100 percent supportive of public transportation and addressing the climate crisis head-on.  We are fighting for the expansion of public transportation and for adequate funding, and sufficient staffing so that it can be maintained.”

The “member leader” she referred to was apparently Claire Zvanski, a longtime past president of the District 11 Democratic Club. But even that club couldn’t bring itself to endorse this myopic primal scream of a ballot measure, taking no position and writing, “This is a policy statement to inform the MTA that cars and those who love them are not getting enough attention in the transit planning process. This measure received a No Recommendation as an alternative to an Oppose from the eboard, mostly out of respect for our venerable past-president Claire Zvanski. The members also voted No Recommendation.”

Most progressive and transportation-related groups are opposing Prop. L, which its opponents say will actually make things worse for motorists in the city by undermining current efforts to make Muni more attractive and encourage people to use alternatives to the automobile.

“If we don’t reduce the congestion on the streets, that makes it harder for the people who really do have to drive,” No on L campaign manager Peter Lauterborn told us, responding to Alexander’s argument that the measure somehow helps working people and noting that Local 1021 never allowed the No on L campaign to make its case before endorsing the measure [UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: Alexander said the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition “did present a No on L position]. He also said the measure may have visceral appeal to frustrated drivers, but it doesn’t really make sense.

“Taking away money from the transportation system to build parking garages doesn’t help anyone,” Lauterborn said. “The Labor Council endorsed No on L and the reality is working class people use Muni at a far higher percentage than those citywide….Being pro-transit is inconsistent with supporting a ballot measure that would defund Muni.”

Meanwhile, in an allegedly unrelated matter, Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly — who was a local leader of the progressive movement while serving the Board of Supervisors 2000-2010 — on Friday resigned from the union, where the Guardian has long been aware that he was having internal power struggles over the last year.

Daly tells us that his departure wasn’t based on political or philosophical differences with SEIU, that he’s proud of the work that he and his colleagues have done on wage equity and beating back anti-worker threats, and that it just seemed like the right time to leave, although he’s not sure what he’ll do next.

“I’m sorry to go,” he told us, “but it was time to go.”

Airbnb says it will collect and pay local taxes in SF. Really.

Sasha Cuttler
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Airbnb says it will collect and pay local taxes in SF. Really.

In the wake of this week’s contentious hearing on legislation to legalize and regulate short-term housing rentals in San Francisco, where Airbnb was chastised for snubbing the city on collecting and paying local taxes, the company today sent an email to its hosts announcing that it would begin doing so Oct. 1.

The message tells hosts that it will be collecting and remitting the city’s Transient Occupancy Tax on their behalf and that “hosts will not have to do anything extra.” But as Tax Collector Jose Cisneros told us for our article this week, that isn’t totally true. He said that hosts are still businesses and therefore need a business license, although companies like Airbnb can assume responsibility for the other two tasks involve: obtaining a “certificate of authority” that allows a business to collect taxes and filing monthly tax statements.

“All hosts would have to do is file annual business registrations,” Cisneros told us.

But hey, following local laws and correctly informing their customers about the legality of these transactions has never been Airbnb’s strong suit, so I suppose this is progress. The company’s email follows in its entirety:

 

Earlier this year, we announced that we would begin collecting occupancy taxes on behalf of hosts and guests in San Francisco. We’ve been working with the City to make the process streamlined and easy to follow, and today we are pleased to share that we are planning to launch this program on October 1. We know our community contributes substantial, positive economic impacts in neighborhoods across San Francisco, and this initiative will continue to make the city even stronger.

We’ve posted more information about this announcement on our Public Policy blog and we hope you’ll check it out. We also wanted to share more details about what this update specifically means for hosts and guests in San Francisco:

For reservations in San Francisco booked on or after October 1, guests will see a new line item on their Airbnb receipt for the city-imposed Transient Occupancy Tax. The tax will be added to the total amount paid by guests on stays of fewer than 30 days – hosts will not have to do anything extra. If you’ve already been collecting the San Francisco Transient Occupancy Tax for Airbnb guests, you should not do so after October 1.

Collection of these taxes won’t affect the payout amounts you receive as a host. Just like before, you’ll continue to receive your accommodation fee minus the Airbnb host service fee. Before paying and on the itemized receipt, your guests will see a separate amount for taxes in the total amount they pay for a reservation. If you’d like to learn more about occupancy taxes and Airbnb, please visit our Help Center.

Additionally, tomorrow our Regional Head of Public Policy David Owen will be hosting a webinar to discuss this important topic, and to give you the opportunity to ask questions. You can sign up to participate here.

San Francisco is our home and we look forward to continuing to work with everyone here to make it an even better place to live, work and visit.

Thanks,
The Airbnb Team

 

 

 

Polly’s sexual (r)evolution

Erica Hanna
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Polly’s sexual (r)evolution

steve@sfbg.com

There’s been more than one Polly, the author and namesake of the new memoir Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary. That may be true for each of us as we engage with different interests and identities during our sexual development, but Polly has distilled her psychosexual journey down to three distinct personas that she assumed along the way.

The Polly I’ve known for years is Polly Superstar, the fabulous hostess of Kinky Salon parties in her luscious and sprawling former Mission Control pad, community-minded sparkle pony in the Burning Man world, and a mindful feminist promoter of various sex-positive entrepreneurial ventures in San Francisco (including this independently published book, which took a massive Kickstarter campaign to get into print).

But the Polly I know passed through two previous Pollys — the Polly Whittaker she was born as in London in 1974 and the Polly Pandemonium that she became when she arrived in San Francisco 15 years ago on Folsom Street Fair weekend — on the way to becoming the woman she is today. And that woman was feeling very vulnerable as we met for lunch recently.

“I’m terrified,” she told me as she prepared to speak at Bawdy Storytelling that night and anticipated the general release of her book on Sept. 22. “I feel really exposed, I wonder what my motivation was to be so raw and open with this.”

A book that began four years ago as essentially a sassy guidebook for the Kinky Salon events that have now spread to another half-dozen cities around the world at some point turned far more serious and personal. Sure, we get to follow Polly through her crazy sexual antics, soaking in the sexy world of Mission Control.

“The crisp silhouettes of their bodies showed every detail: how the woman on all fours took his cock in her mouth, how the second guy traced his finger around his lover’s nipple, how the woman tucked underneath gently explored the body above her,” Polly wrote about a scene from Kinky Salon. “There were no wanted wandering hands, no staring eyes making me self-conscious. I became overwhelmed with a sense of pride. Fuck yes. This feels right. It feels good. These are my tribe — these crazy pleasure seekers. These brave pioneers of love.”

But those aren’t the “raw” bits that Polly referred to. No, as she wrote this book, Polly came to place her father’s slow and painful death from a brain tumor while she was a teenager at the center of the narrative, an event that propelled her subsequent sexual journey, for good or ill. She sought comfort and pleasure in the pain of the London BDSM scene, continuing that path here in San Francisco before morphing her fetish parties into sex parties that were more artsy and playful. Yet this sexual superstar still couldn’t achieve orgasms with her partners, a secret source of shame before she dealt with it more openly and honestly, helping other women along the way.

This memoir is less a wild tell-all by a high-profile libertine than intensely human story about a woman raised in a sexually liberated household (her mom was a sex therapist, her dad a hot-air balloonist, many of their friends swingers) who nonetheless struggles with her own sexual identity and ambitions against the backdrop of personal tragedy and smaller set-backs.

Polly relays and celebrates San Francisco’s storied history as the center of the American sexual revolution, from the old Barbary Coast days through the North Beach strips club, free love in the Haight-Ashbury, and gay liberation in the Castro, to the AIDS crisis, rise of BDSM, and creative ways of expressing sexuality.

But even for Polly and others who make their sexuality such a central part of their lives and personal identities, sexuality is still a nuanced, evolving continuum that regularly raises challenging questions and issues.

“It’s a complicated, really complicated, issue, and it’s at the core of the cultural shift that is happening around sexuality,” Polly said of the delicate balance between female sexual empowerment — which she’s all about — and sexual objectification, which this feminist strongly resists.

Growing up in the fetish scene and becoming a latex fashion designer, Polly can happily play the alluring sex kitten, as long as it feels playful and fun. But she’s quick to tear into scenes or situations that display women as sexual objects just to turn the boys on or sell products.

“I think one of the biggest problems on the planet is the sexual objectification of women,” she told us, noting the fine line she’s walking as she promotes a sex book with deeper themes. For example, at her book launch party, “We’re going to have a burlesque show, but you’re also going to get the lecture about sexual objectification.”

And even today, with her Kinky Salon community taking center-stage in her book, that community has been uprooted by the same forces of gentrification and displacement that are roiling the rest of the city (the monthly rent for their Mission Control space tripled after they got ousted).

“The sexual revolution didn’t happen in Oakland, it happened in San Francisco, and we are part of that lineage,” Polly tells us, noting that Kinky Salon, now rotating among temporary underground spaces, is still having a hard time finding a new home.

“If Kinky Salon has to move to Oakland, that will be telling of the state of San Francisco sex culture.”

UP THE REVOLUTION: LAUNCH PARTY FOR POLLY. With Porn Clown Posse, Trash Kan Marchink Band, DJ Fact50, and more Oct. 4, 9pm, Venue 550, 550 15th St., SF, www.pollysuperstar.com

Still not sharing

Erica Hanna
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0
Still not sharing

news@sfbg.com

As controversial legislation to legalize and regulate Airbnb and other short-term housing rental services operating in San Francisco headed for another contentious City Hall hearing on Sept. 15, the San Francisco Treasurer & Tax Collector’s Office quietly unveiled new policies and mechanisms for hosts to finally start paying long-overdue local taxes on their rentals.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu’s legislation attempts to strike a balance between protecting housing for permanent city residents — including tenants in rent-controlled units who are being displaced in favor of visiting tourists — and allowing San Franciscans to sometimes rent out rooms through companies such as Airbnb. That practice has mushroomed during the Great Recession even though such short-term rentals of residential units have long been illegal in San Francisco (see “Into thin air,” 8/20/13).

Among other provisions, Chiu’s legislation would require hosts to register with the city and live in their units for at least 275 days per year (thus limiting rental nights to 90), create enforcement procedures for city agencies, and protect below-market-rate and single-room occupancy units from being used as short-term rentals.

But Airbnb has also been snubbing the city for more than two years since the Tax Collector’s Office held public hearings and concluded that short-term rental companies and their hosts are required to collect and pay the city’s Transient Occupancy Tax (aka, the hotel tax), a surcharge of about 15 percent on room rentals usually paid by visiting guests (see “Airbnb isn’t sharing,” 3/19/13).

After other media outlets finally joined the Bay Guardian in raising questions about the impact that Airbnb and other companies was having on San Francisco — and with cities New York City, Berlin, and other cities taking steps to ban short-term rentals — Airbnb announced in March that it would begin collecting and paying the TOT in San Francisco sometime this summer.

But that still hasn’t happened, even though Tax Collector Jose Cisneros recently unveiled a new website clarifying that Airbnb hosts must register as businesses and pay taxes and created a streamlined system for doing so. The office is even allowing Airbnb and other companies to register as “qualified website companies” that collect and pay these taxes on behalf of hosts.

“The law does apply to these transactions,” Cisneros told us. “And the set of requirements are the same for the hosts and the website companies.”

Airbnb didn’t respond to Guardian inquiries for this story.

Meanwhile, an unusually diverse coalition of critics continues to raise concerns about Airbnb and the regulatory legislation, including renter and landlord groups, neighborhood and affordable housing activists, labor leaders, and former members of the Board of Supervisors (including Chiu predecessor, Aaron Peskin) and Planning Commission. They penned a Sept. 15 to Chiu calling for him to delay the legislation.

“Individually and collectively, we have advanced nearly two dozen additional amendments that address the issues raised by short-term residential rentals. While we are not of one mind on every issue or every suggested amendment, we are unanimous in our belief that the process you are pursuing is rushed,” they wrote. “The City will live with the intended (and unintended) consequences of your legislation for many, many years.”

Sources in Chiu’s office had already told the Guardian that he planned to keep the legislation in committee for at least one more hearing so the myriad details can be worked out, as Chiu said at the hearing as well.

“We want to have the time to continue to vet and hear all of the perspectives, and at the end of the day what I hope to do is to be able to move forward and build incentives around something that is far better than our current status quo,” Chiu said at the hearing. “This is a very complicated issue, and we all know that we need to get this policy as right as we can.”

Planning Director John Rahaim conveyed concerns from the Planning Commission that the legislation beef up the city’s ability to regulate short-term rentals.

“The commission does believe that the law should be updated to create a legal avenue for those who do want to host,” Rahaim said. “However, currently there are about 5,000 units in the city engaging in short-term rentals. It’s very difficult to know if there are units not being lived in by a full-time resident.”

A long line of speakers wound completely around the packed chamber in City Hall, awaiting their turn to speak publicly to supervisors and city residents, from 20-somethings making a lives renting out their homes to longtime tenants fearing that home-sharing will hurt city’s character.

Airbnb was represented at the hearing by David Owen, a former City Hall staffer who is now director of public policy for the company, and he was publicly confronted by Chiu on the tax issue. Chiu criticized Airbnb for failing to start collecting those taxes as promised.

“As of now, we are extremely close and you will be hearing from us about that in the near future,” Owen said, provoking audible disbelief from many in the crowd. “We have been working diligently alongside the city. This is a complicated set of issues and those involved have all worked in earnest to facilitate this request.”

When Owen was asked about enforcement of the maximum number of nights a tenant has rented out his unit, he said Airbnb’s cooperation is “akin to the city asking Home Depot.com for a list of home care purchases to see if anyone had illegally renovated their bathroom.” But city officials say they need the company’s cooperation to address its impacts. “We don’t want data, just the number of nights per permanent resident so that we can ensure that the bad outcomes of this setup aren’t occurring,” Sup. Jane Kim said. “Airbnb profits from this industry, and therefore [is] accountable to the city.”

Grassroots campaigns work to counter the influence of big donors

Sasha Cuttler
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Grassroots campaigns work to counter the influence of big donors

Big money is pouring into a few campaign committees for the fall election, with Big Soda targeting the soda tax, Realtors gunning for the anti-speculation tax, and the Fisher family last week giving $500,000 to promote artificial turf playing fields in SF (Yes on I, No on H), according to campaign filings. But low-budget grassroots campaigns are still having a strong presence at public events like the Sept. 14 Sunday Streets in Western Addition.

San Franciscans Against Real Estate Speculation, Yes on G, had activists out in force even though it has only raised a few thousand dollars. Its biggest contribution so far is $5,000 from attorney Dean Preston of Tenants Together, who was out there spreading the word near Alamo Square Park, along with campaign consultant Quintin Mecke, the runner-up in the 2007 mayor’s race.

One of the more surprising grassroots campaign of the season is No on L, San Franciscans Against Gridlock, which is campaigning against the pro-motorist Restore Transportation Balance initiative, a measure aimed at undermining the city’s transit-first policy and promoting more free parking.

The Yes on L campaign hasn’t shown much sign of life since the summer when it spent nearly $50,000 on its signature-gathering effort out of about $83,000 raised (including $49,000 from tech titan Sean Parker), but it was sitting on nearly $35,000 in the bank as of July 16.

But the No on L crowd is taking this attack on sustainable transportation policies seriously, and it’s hoping to fill its fairly meager coffers ($5,000 from Daniel Murphy on Sept. 6 is its biggest donation) this evening [Tues/16] from 6-8pm with a fundraiser at Public Bikes, 549 Hayes Street.

That event is hosted by a bevy of transportation activists and Sup. Scott Wiener, David Chiu, and Jane Kim. As the campaign says, “If you care about helping to build a better transit system, a more walkable and bicycle-friendly city, and reducing car congestion in San Francisco, the No on Gridlock, No on L campaign needs your support to raise money to educate voters.”  

It’s sexy time on this week’s Alternative Ink

Sasha Cuttler
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It’s sexy time on this week’s Alternative Ink

We talked sex and summertime during last night’s installment of Alternative Ink, the Bay Guardian’s biweekly radio show on BFF.fm, along with money in politics, the tech perspective, what’s being done to help child refugees, and the explosive new report on BART’s bungled approach to last year’s labor contract negotiations.

But mostly, we talked about sex, listened to sexy music, and danced and had a good time in BFF’s Secret Alley studio. No, it wasn’t just that we had sex on the brain after a beautiful weekend in the warm San Francisco sunshine (yes, it’s true). We were also plugging our upcoming annual Sex Issue and the shenanigans therein, including Joe’s foray into virtual reality sex and the debut of the Bay Guardian’s hot new sex columnist, Krissy Eliot, who will be exposing herself to y’all quite a bit this week. And we even offered some gratuitious digs at our corporate overlords, and that’s always fun and cathartic.

So give it a listen on this (ugh!) busy Monday morning, or whenever you can get around to it, and it’ll be like the weekend never ended.  

Silicon-centric proposal to split California fails to make ballot

Sasha Cuttler
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Silicon-centric proposal to split California fails to make ballot

While we at the Bay Guardian have long been intrigued by the possibilities of splitting California up into several states — the Bay Area could be an economic powerhouse with compassionate social services and modern infrastructure, while conservative counties would have low taxes but crumbling roads and bridges — we’re happy to hear the news that venture capitalist Tim Draper’s proposed six-state solution has failed to qualify for the ballot.

The most ridiculous part of Drapers’ initiative, which he spent more than $5 million on but fell short of the requisite number of signatures from registered voters, was his plan to call the Bay Area’s state “Silicon Vally” — showing just how arrogant and out-of-touch these tech titans can be. Hey buddy, I hate to break it to you, but the world doesn’t really revolve the tech industry, and it’s just stupid to name a state after a chemical element.  

Personally, I have a long history of covering the idea for splitting up California, starting in 1991 when I covered Lassen County’s threat to secede from California because of its difference with urban areas for the Lassen County Times, a story that then made international news.

Then-Assemblymember Stan Statham used that media spotlight to introduce advisory measures on the question of splitting California up into three states, an idea that voters in 31 counties in the state voted on in election of 1992, most of them approving of the idea.

But unlike the dozens of other times in California history when the idea of splitting up the state was raised — the most serious effort coming in 1941 when the rural northern California counities declared themselves Jefferson State and set up a highway checkpoint, only to have the movement lose stream when Pearl Harbor was bombed three days later — Draper’s measure just seemed like a vanity project from a clueless rich dude. 

Mayor Lee: Welcome Fleet Week, prepare for disaster UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler
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Mayor Lee: Welcome Fleet Week, prepare for disaster UPDATED

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s daily announcement of public events today included a strange pairing for tomorrow [Wed/10]: the Blue Angels will return to perform dangerous maneuvers over this densely populated city…and we need to prepare for a disaster.  

More specifically, his Press Office wrote: 

11:00 AM

Mayor Lee to kick off return of Fleet Week to San Francisco Bay Area & announce events, activities & disaster preparedness exercises.

Marines Memorial Club Library, 11th Floor

609 Sutter Street

Well, as the editor of a newspaper that has long raised concerns about Fleet Week, we’re happy to see Mayor Lee raising the issue and we’ll be there tomorrow to see what he says. Check back. 

UPDATE: So now that I attended the press conference, I’ve learned that Fleet Week isn’t just about displaying this country’s military might, celebrating soldiers as defenders of our “freedom,” or having the Blue Angels do dangerous stunts over a densely populated city — it’s really about disaster preparedness.

Or as Mayor Lee said, “Fleet Week is not only a time when we pay tribute to our women and men in uniform, but it is also an opportunity to improve the way we provide humanitarian assistance and educate ourselves about disaster preparedness.”

Lee told the Guardian that “the show” is less important than all the multi-agency training exercises that happen in the run-up to Fleet Week (which is Oct. 6-13), and he dismissed any danger that the Blue Angels pose by telling us “everyone practices very carefully” and that our safety concerns are “like saying that Muni presents a disaster.”

Police Chief Greg Suhr told us the emphasis on disaster preparedness has “always been so,” and that celebrating the military is important because “they are owed our appreciation.”

Marine Brigadier General Joaquin F. Malavet also reassured us that the maneuvers were safe, that “we’re very sensitive to the type of training events that we practice,” and that Fleet Week is important to San Franciscans: “We want them to be exposed to who we are, what we do, and the capabilities that we have.”

So if one of these babies crashes, as they sometimes do, we can all rest assured that the resources are here to deal with that or other disasters. Don’t you feel better?

Realtors give $600,000 to defeat anti-speculation tax

Sasha Cuttler
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0
Realtors give $600,000 to defeat anti-speculation tax

Two Realtor groups have dumped nearly $600,000 into the campaign against Prop. G, the tax on flipping properties to discourage real estate speculation and evictions in San Francisco, a massive early donation that could signal the beginning of a campaign onslaught by the Realtors.

A campaign group calling itself Stop the Housing Tax, No on G, and Coalition of Homeowner, Renter, and Real Estate Organizations received a $425,000 donation from the California Association of Realtors Issues Mobilization PAC on Sept. 4 and $170,000 from the San Francisco Association of Realtors on Aug. 26, according to filings with the Ethics Commission.

Apparently, the Realtors recognize they have a strong financial stake in encouraging the flipping of houses within one to five years of being sold, on which the measure would levy a graduated tax of 24-14 percent in order to discourage. Such quick turnarounds often involve evicting tenants in order to increase a home’s market value.

Representatives for the Realtors didn’t immediately return our calls, but Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and a supporter of Prop. G, told us the huge donations indicate what’s really driving opposition to the measure.

“Make no mistake: the polished No on G mailer you receive spouting lies such as ‘G will hurt homeowners’ is coming directly from the mouths of the Realtors, the very people who have the most to gain by continuing to allow for evictions and flipping of apartments,” Shortt told the Guardian. “These are the same players who dumped piles of money to kill Ellis Act reform in Sacramento. And these are the same people who are making windfall profits by evicting low income tenants in San Francisco and wreaking havoc on our neighborhoods.”

UPDATE: Jay Cheng with the SF Association of Realtors just sent us an email that said, “We are working to raise funds to defeat the tax on housing, which will make San Francisco even less affordable to middle class families. We’re proud the people who know the most about housing are stepping up to defeat this tax, which will only backfire and make housing more expensive.”

Know the most, or profit the most? We asked a follow-up question about whether financial self-interest prompted the donations, and we’ll update this post if and when we hear back.  

Developers lobby hard to slash payments promised to Transbay Terminal and high-speed rail

Sasha Cuttler
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Developers lobby hard to slash payments promised to Transbay Terminal and high-speed rail

Will the San Francisco Board of Supervisors let developers of the biggest office towers proposed for San Francisco renege on promises to help pay for the Transbay Terminal reconstruction, extension of rail service to that site, and other public amenities? Or will Willie Brown successfully use politicians that he helped get into office — most notably Mayor Ed Lee and Sup. Jane Kim — to let the developers keep hundreds of millions of dollars in excess profits?

The answers to those questions will become clearer tomorrow [Tues/9] as the board considers a complex yet crucially important agenda item. It involves creation of a special tax district around the Transbay Terminal, where office tower developers have been awarded huge upzonings — including the Transbay Tower, which would be the tallest building on West Coast at more than 1,000 feet — in exchange for paying for public works projects to serve the area.

But those developers, including Hines, Boston Properties, TMG, and others (it’s not clear whether all six upzoned parcels are participating in the current lobbying effort and threatened lawsuit), are now objecting to paying about $1 billion in special taxes and seeking to get that amount lowered to about $400 million. And to do so, they’ve already paid Brown at least $100,000 just this quarter, kicking off a lobbying effort so intense that Brown has finally registered as a lobbyist after questionably resisting it for many years.

Leading the charge against that effort is Sup. Scott Wiener, who said the promised payments are crucial to paying for about $200 million in work on the Transbay Terminal and paying for the first $450 million of the $2.5 billion project of bringing high-speed rail and electrified Caltrain trains into the facility, as well as a promised public park on top of the terminal.

“The downtown extension is one of the most important transportation projects we will deliver in the foreseeable future. It’s a legacy project with huge benefits for San Francisco and the entire state,” Wiener told us. “We have to go to the mat to get it built, and a reduction in this assessment will significantly undermine our ability to deliver the project and get the train downtown. The last thing we need is a very expensive bus station with no train service.”

The developers and their spokespeople (including the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier & Ross, who announced Brown’s involvement in the project this summer) argue that their fees have gone up substantially since the plan was first hatched in 2007 and fleshed out in the 2012 Implementation Document (which relied on 2007 land values).

That’s true, but that’s mostly because the value of the properties have shot up in recent years (incidentally, so have the costs of bringing the trains downtown), which also makes the projects far more lucrative for the developers. And Adam Alberti, who represents the Transbay Joint Powers Agency, notes that the tax rate hasn’t changed: it’s still the same 0.55 percent of assessed value that it’s always been.

“The rate is exactly the same, 0.55 percent, but the difference is the land valuations,” Alberti told us.

When the rates were formally set this year by the Rate and Method of Appointment (RMA) document, based on detailed studies of the properties and the district, it did charge the tallest buildings a little more than the shorter ones, under the logic that penthouses are more profitable (for example, the Saleforce lease of most of the Transbay Tower is rumored to be the largest commercial office deal in city history).

But the paper trail of documents and conditions for the four projects that have so far been awarded their entitlements always indicated such details would be hashed out by RMA. Indeed, when the city responded to the developers’ legal threats with a 14-page letter on July 14, it meticulously dismantled the convoluted claims by the developers that there’s been some kind of bait-and-switch here.

Still, the developers have been aggressively working the corridors of power in City Hall trying to get their fees reduced.

“Having not received any of the relief that the the Land Owner sought, the Land Owner is now forced to formally protest the formation of the CFD [Community Financing District], the levying of special taxes pursuant to the RMA, and the incurrence of bonded indebtedness in the CFD,” Boston Properties (which has not returned our calls for comment) wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to the city, which prompted Kim, the district supervisor, to continue the item for one week.

The decision to employ Brown upped the ante on this power struggle, given that Brown (who also didn’t return our calls) helped engineer Mayor Lee’s appointment to office in 2011 and worked behind-the-scenes to help Jane Kim beat progressive challenger Debra Walker the year before. Since then, Kim (who didn’t return our calls for comment) has helped do Brown’s bidding a couple of times and made misleading statements about their relationship.

Kim will be a central figure in this unfolding drama, given that it’s taking place in her supervisorial district. Her predecessor, Chris Daly — who says that he’s already been burned once by Hines (which also wouldn’t comment), which he said broke a promise for another $100 million in fees to the TJPA — said the current lobbying effort is essentially a raid on the public coffers that endangers an important project.

“The last redeeming thing about Willie Brown was his unwavering support for Transbay Terminal,” Daly told us, “and now that’s gone too.”

Unfortunately, the complexities of this deal might make it difficult for the general public to digest just how it changes, particularly as they are engineered by Brown, a legendary political dealmaker who spent decades as speaker of the California Assembly before becoming mayor of San Francisco.

But Daly said this project is crucially important for Kim’s district, and it’ll be intriguing to see what happens: “I don’t think she can make a bad vote, but behind the scenes, I’m not sure how much she can stand up to Willie Brown.”  

If the board approves the special tax district and the RMA tomorrow, then the affected property owners will vote on whether to create this Mello-Roos District in December, with a two-thirds vote required for passage. The projects can’t proceed with their current entitlements unless such a district is created, so the effort now is to slash the payments that such a district would require.

“Smart development means, among other things, making sure that development pays for supporting infrastructure,” Wiener told us. “The creation and upzoning of this district were explicitly linked to to funding the transit center and the downtown train extension. By upzoning these properties, we provided the developers with massive additional value and, in fact, the properties have exploded in value. The transit assessment needs to reflect those current property values, not values from the bottom of the recession.” 

[UPDATE: Sup. Kim returned our calls this evening and said this was a difficult issue, but that she wants to defend the city’s stance. “At this point we’re in a legal dispute, an impasse,” Kim told us, noting that she supports the fee structure from the RMA rather than earlier estimates. “The city was very clear those rates were illustrative.”

She said this isn’t simply about getting more money for the Transbay Terminal projects, but holding developers accountable for the upzoning they received. “The question isn’t what is the most money we can extract from the developer,” she said. “The question is: What did we agree to?”

Kim said she has met with Willie Brown about the issue, but she isn’t feeled pressured by him or the developers he’s representing. “Are they making threats? No,” she said. “I didn’t feel pressure at the meeting.”

But she did say she’d always be willing to hear out Brown’s side of the story. “He can just pick up the phone and call me,” she said.

Tomorrow’s meeting will include a closed session discussion of the issue, given its potential for legal actions. As for whether she and other supervisors may be swayed by the legal threat to settle on a lower fee amount, she told us, “That’s what the closed session is for.”

Kim indicated she intends to support the fees the parties originally agreed to. “I think the rates were set clearly,” she said. 

But we may have to take that promise with a grain of salt. Kim has sometimes talked tough, only to compromise later on, as she did with her Housing Balance legislation. After tomorrow’s closed session, we’ll see if her vote is as fiery as her rhetoric. ]

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez contributed to this report. 

How Big Oil is using front groups to attack global warming regulations

Sasha Cuttler
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How Big Oil is using front groups to attack global warming regulations

With California’s landmark measure addressing climate change, Assembly Bill 32, scheduled to begin covering automobile fleets and other transportation sources at the end of this year, Big Oil has been trying to sabotage that process using a variety of front groups and other tactics.

The oil industry failed in its last-minute attempt to get the California Legislature to delay the measure by rejecting AB 69, Fresno Democrat Henry Perea’s effort to exempt automobiles from the regulations, even though vehicles account for more than one-third of the state’s greenhouse gas emmissions.

But front groups funded by the Western States Petroleum Association (aka Big Oil), such as the new California Drivers Alliance, have been running online and newspaper ads attacking the regulations, pushing the meme that it’s a “hidden gas tax,” according to an article published today in Businessweek.

To help counter the trend and highlight the problem, the Stop Fooling California coalition of environmental groups are pushing back in the number of ways, including commissioning award-winning cartoonist Steve Greenberg to do the above cartoon and make it available for free to publications around the state.

Enjoy, and stay tuned as to continue to follow this important issue. 

He hates these cans! How helping Muni becomes hating nonprofits

Sasha Cuttler
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He hates these cans! How helping Muni becomes hating nonprofits

While I’m reluctant to give this self-serving poverty pimp any more attention or web traffic, it’s hard to ignore the latest misleading hit piece that Randy Shaw has written on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee, going after Sup. Scott Wiener and his Muni funding measure Prop. B.

As many local media outlets have reported, the Mayor’s Office has been fuming that Wiener dared to put the measure on the ballot in response to Lee reneging on his promise to put a local vehicle license fee increase on the fall ballot to help Muni serve a growing population of residents and workers — and threatening political retaliation.

So Shaw has been using his BeyondChron website to defend the financial interests of his city-supported Tenderloin Housing Clinic and other pet projects that this nascent Tenderloin power broker has been working on, in the process providing propaganda pieces for the Mayor’s Office, which supports Shaw with money from city taxpayers.

This cozy and symbiotic relationship is never disclosed by Shaw when he writes stories that he promotes as actual journalism, a practice that we’ve repeatedly taken issue with. We also contacted Shaw for comment, something he doesn’t do when attacking the Guardian, but we got no response.  

Wiener isn’t always the most progressive supervisor, but he’s been a solid and consistent supporter of Muni and modernizing the city’s transportation infrastructure, arguing correctly that San Francisco needs good public transit to function well, a point that civic groups ranging from SPUR to Livable City also regularly make.  

But the only reason Shaw can see for Prop. B is that Wiener hates nonprofits: “I understand why Wiener backs Prop B. Wiener is the Board member most opposed to nonprofits. He fought to eliminate the nonprofit exemption on Transit Impact Development Fees.  Wiener pushed for the proposed Vehicle License Fee to go 100 percent to transit, though it had originally been intended to be partially available for human services.”

The argument, of course, is ludicrous. In fact, it reminds me of the scene in The Jerk where a sniper aiming for Steve Martin misses and hits oil cans, causing Martin’s dim-witted character to conclude, “He hates these cans!.

No, Randy, Wiener doesn’t hate nonprofits. He supports Muni, which is also the common denominator in that list you cited. And no, Randy, the salaries of nonprofit workers aren’t the only place to find $20 million in the General Fund, as the Guardian showed during our city budget overview earlier this year.   

Shaw also claims Muni funding has kept pace with population growth — which, if true, would mean it wouldn’t get any more money under Prop. B — but Shaw uses misleading data that ignores the SFMTA reorganization measure Prop. A from 2007, the raid of SFMTA funding that followed using “work orders” from city departments, Muni’s deferred maintenance backlog of more than $2 billion, and the fact that SFMTA’s budget increases lag behind other major departments (such as the Department of Public Health and the Police Department) even with this week’s 25-cent Muni fare increase.

As former Guardian Editor/Publisher Tim Redmond used to say regularly: not everything gets better when you throw more money at it, but schools and public transit do. Money translates directly into more capacity to serve students or riders, including the growing number of local workers Muni is serving on top of the increasing local population.

This makes sense to most people, whether or not they support Prop. B and giving more General Fund money to Muni, a legitimate question about which well-meaning people can have good-faith differences of opinion over. But Shaw isn’t one of those people, and to him, Wiener just hates those cans. 

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