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Board OKs $14.3M Loan for 2550 Irving St. Project

By Thomas K. Pendergast : sfrichmondreview – excerpt

With a unanimous vote the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently approved a $14.3 million loan agreement to help replace the Police Credit Union building on Irving Street between 26th and 27th avenues, with 100 units of “affordable” housing reserved primarily for previously homeless and low-income families in a seven-story building.

“This is a historic moment to be considering funding for site acquisition for the Sunset’s first 100% affordable housing development for low and moderate-income families,” District 4 Supervisor Gordon Mar told the Board at a meeting on July 27. “The need for affordable housing is so often overlooked and ignored in the Sunset and this development is one very important step to address the urgent needs of residents priced out of our neighborhood.”…

Mar acknowledged that the project is contentious…

“Imagine a day in the life of a hundred families and what their needs are and what they do every day,” said local architect Thomas Soper. “(Affordable housing for families) is by far the most activity-generating type of affordable housing that you can ever build…. Over-concentration is the word that professionals should be applying here but politicians don’t understand that. They have a mandate…

“The scale of the building is way out of line from where it should be,” said Robert Ho, who owns a four-unit building in the area. “The City is making a mistake getting back into the large-scale, low-income housing type of development that they’d gotten away from or stopped doing…. I think it’s a mistake to build such a large building on Irving Street.”

Ho said he grew up in Chinatown public housing.

“Where a person grows up, especially a young person, influences their self-esteem,” he said. “Living in such a large-scale building, it’s something that a young person is aware of very early, that this is not where we want to live. We’re living in this out of necessity, not because we want to. It’s a constant reminder for young people that ‘our family is poor.’”…(more)

 

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PG&E, Gavin Newsom, and the French Laundry connection

By ABC Investigation : abc10 – excerpt (includes video)

ABC Investigation : Governor Newsom brokered a bankruptcy plan that prioritized PG&E, French Laundry friend’s clients over PG&E fire victims.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A plate of dinner at Napa County’s award-winning French Laundry restaurant starts at $350, but dining there during the pandemic cost Gov. Gavin Newsom quite a bit more than that.

It was an unforced political error that immediately put Newsom on defense from the appearance of hypocrisy for going against his own COVID safety advice to Californians…(more)

This is just the tip of the nasty iceberg that could bring the house of Newsom down. The party has until the end of the month to come up with an alternative. Will they get smart?

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Mayor London Breed’s $23K ethics fine is ratified — and everyone comes out looking bad

By Joe Eskenazi : 48hills – excerpt

Ethics Commission staff refuses to answer key questions, even to commissioners: Was mayor interviewed? Did it obtain key receipts for Nuru gifts? What was the true source of illegal donations?

y a 4-0 vote, the San Francisco Ethics Commission today approved a stipulated agreement with Mayor London Breed, fining her nearly $23,000 for a series of legal and ethical missteps.

This is not an insignificant amount of money. And this is the first instance of the Ethics Commission dinging a sitting mayor — despite a healthy selection of ethically challenged (and extremely ding-able) prior San Francisco mayors. But if the purpose of today’s proceedings, and the Ethics Commission writ large, is to give San Franciscans confidence that our elected leaders are adhering to the law or face consequences —  well, that didn’t happen...(more)

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Facing ‘dire water shortages,’ California bans Delta pumping

By Rachel Becker, calmatters : sfexaminer – excerpt

In an aggressive move to address “immediate and dire water shortages,” California’s water board this week unanimously approved emergency regulations to temporarily stop thousands of farmers, landowners and others from diverting water from from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed…

The new regulations — the first to take such widespread action for the massive Delta watershed stretching from Fresno to the border with Oregon — could lead to formal curtailment orders for about 5,700 water rights holders as soon as Aug. 16. The decision comes on the heels of curtailment orders issued to nearly 900 water users along the drought-stricken Russian River, with 222 more expected next week.

The five water board members, who were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom or former Gov Jerry Brown, approved the rule despite vehement opposition from representatives of Central Valley growers.

Sen. Shannon Grove, a Republican from Bakersfield, said the regulation would “disrupt the critical production of essential food…Instead, the state should focus on expanding water storage and upgrading its existing water infrastructure, not punish local water managers.”

Assemblymember Adam Gray, a Democrat from Merced, called the curtailment orders for senior water rights holders “one of the most destructive measures possible.”

“The Board’s legal authority is by no means certain,” Gray wrote to the board. “Growers will have to risk significant fines and penalties just to find out whether the Board actually has the authority it claims. Either way, they lose.”…

Dwindling flows risk salty backwash from the Pacific tainting supplies for drinking, farmers and fish…

It’s just too fast, you’ve got to listen to stakeholders in this process,” said Valerie Kincaid, a water law attorney who represents the San Joaquin Tributaries Authority, a coalition of irrigation districts and water agencies. “We now have a draft regulation that exceeds water board authority.”…(more)

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The public must decide

Opinion by Gregory Schmid, Palo Alto : sfchronicle

Regarding “Manhattanize Palo Alto” (Open Forum, July 25): Manhattanizing a city or region is a big deal. It is a change in the nature of a community. In our democracy those are decisions made with full public participation. But Manhattanizing follows the program defined by the non-elected Association of Bay Area Governments Board which set its own priority strategy: concentrating jobs and housing growth in already jobs-rich South Bay Cities. There has been no serious public discussion of alternative strategies (as required by law) such as job dispersion, or of the serious consequences of overconcentration, including: the high cost of land and infrastructure, producing the highest housing costs in the country; the resulting income inequalities, with extremely expensive affordable and middle income housing; excluding families with two workers and children. (Manhattan and San Francisco have the smallest share of their population between the ages of 5 and 17 of any cities in the country). Remember: The tech revolution that transformed the world did not happen in Manhattan or any dense city, but in five small suburban cities where mobility of people and ideas was dominant. Manhattanization and its consequences need to be the product of a full public discussion and not an imposed decision.

I was there for a good portion of the PC revolution, working at InfoWorld. I ran around from one garage to another for short little meetings when I was doing package designs for developers. My little Fiat Spider was buzzing all over the valley.

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Go big or go home: S.F. supervisor juices housing legislation to allow fourplexes on every single-family lot

By Heather Knight : sfchronicle – excerpt (via email)

Early this year, the real f-word in San Francisco was fourplex. The notion of allowing single-family homes to be converted to four units — already being explored by Sacramento, Berkeley, South San Francisco and other cities — made some politicians and their NIMBY supporters blow their tops.

A tame proposal from Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, announced here in January, to allow fourplexes on corner lots and within a half mile of major transit stops garnered little support. Opponents of development falsely claimed it would ruin their charming neighborhoods, while supporters said it didn’t go far enough.

Mandelman could either scrap the idea or go bigger. Thankfully, he’s opted for the latter.

On Tuesday, he’ll introduce legislation allowing fourplexes on any single-family home lot in San Francisco regardless of whether it’s on a corner or near transit. And the most encouraging sign? Two fellow supervisors are working on their own pieces of fourplex legislation they plan to introduce this fall.

There’s no more time for whining about building more homes on your block. Climate change is slapping us in the face, and we need more people living near their jobs and near transit to reduce vehicle emissions. Plus, as inland California bakes — it reached 113 degrees in Sacramento this month! — we need to make room for more people near the temperate coast.

Add to that the city’s homelessness catastrophe and the obvious need to end exclusionary zoning so more low-income people and people of color can live in all neighborhoods, and it’s clear fourplexes need to be part of the solution to our housing crisis. Now comes the tricky part of figuring out how to make them affordable to build in a city where it can cost $800,000 or more to construct one unit of housing.

And it’s just not the Board of Supervisors thinking about fourplexes. A pro-housing group in San Francisco is preparing a fourplex-related ballot measure and an effort to allow them throughout the state is winding its way through the legislature.

Suddenly, fourplexes are cool. And the likelihood they’ll someday be allowed in San Francisco’s residential neighborhoods seems higher than it did just months ago.

“We’re going to have to make much bigger moves than this to address our housing shortage, but this is a meaningful step,” Mandelman said.

Meaningful, yes. But despite the outsize negative reaction they inspire in people who want San Francisco preserved like some kind of museum exhibit, fourplexes are just a tiny piece of the city’s giant housing puzzle.

What is motivating some to claim that density is the only solution to global warming while many reach the opposite conclusion? How does cutting trees and paving over backyards save the planet?

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How did the Housing Authority ignore awful conditions at Plaza East?

by Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

I just watched a hearing of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee on the status of the disastrous conditions at Plaza East housing complex in the Western Addition, and some of the information that came out was stunning.

For one thing, the city’s Housing Authority, which is emerging from years of mismanagement, appears to have allowed the private, for-profit developer that built and manages the public housing to operate with almost zero oversight…Nearly every question that Sup. Dean Preston asked the public agency in advance of the hearing was referred to McCormack Baron Salazar, which rebuilt the property just 20 years ago under a Housing Authority contract. (Wow, there are a lot of white people running a company that manages public housing, which is occupied largely by people of color.)… (more)

Looks like another case of the “c” word with yet another city agency or department that is not performing.

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PG&E says its equipment may have led to 30,000-acre Dixie Fire

By Adeel Hassan, NYTimes News Service : sfexaminer – excerpt

Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest utility, said on Sunday that blown fuses on one of its utility poles may have sparked a fire that has burned through 30,000 acres in Northern California.

The blaze, known as the Dixie Fire, has spread through remote wilderness about 100 miles north of Sacramento, in an area close to the burn scars of 2018’s devastating Camp Fire, which itself was caused by PG&E equipment failures…(more)

What will it take for the CPUC and state officials to see that the way forward is to rely less on long-distance power lines and promote more local rooftop solar production?

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California Treasurer Fiona Ma sued for sexual harassment by former employee

By Alexei Koseff : sfchronicle – excerpt

SACRAMENTO — A former senior employee in the California State Treasurer’s Office has sued Treasurer Fiona Ma for sexual harassment and wrongful termination, alleging that she was fired earlier this year after resisting unwanted sexual advances from Ma.

Judith Blackwell, who worked under Ma for about 16 months as executive director of the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, filed the lawsuit last week in Sacramento County Superior Court.

“Plaintiff felt the work environment to be hostile as she felt her employment was contingent on her accepting Defendant Ma’s sexual advances,” Blackwell’s attorney, Waukeen McCoy, wrote in the complaint. “As a result of Plaintiff denying Defendant Ma’s advances, she was terminated from her employment.”…(more)

A little light reading after all the heavy stuff we are hearing about graft and corruption in City Hall, this is tame by comparison.

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Breed appointment triggers progressive jockeying at City Hall

By Michael Barba : sfexaminer – excerpt

‘The question is do they run against each other? Does that split up the field?’

Ever since Mayor London Breed nominated Dennis Herrera to lead the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, City Hall insiders have speculated on how the political dominoes will fall.

If all goes as planned for Herrera, Assemblyman David Chiu is widely rumored to be next in line for Herrera’s spot as city attorney. But what does that mean for Chiu’s job in the state legislature?

While nothing is certain this early on, the biggest names possibly considering a run for assembly are District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney and David Campos, vice chair of the California Democratic Party and chief of staff to District Attorney Chesa Boudin…(more)