Category: Action

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S.F. homeless families to be evicted despite reassurance from Lurie

By Xueer Lu : missionlocal – excerpt

Update: Hours after publication, both families won another temporary extension, meaning they will not face eviction again until mid-April…

 

 

 

Two steps forward and four steps back. How do we get back through the looking glass?

In last-minute reversal, S.F. homeless families avoid eviction — for now.

Two San Francisco families who were set to be evicted from their homeless shelters on Monday night have won a reprieve following protests by advocates and several press stories highlighting their plight, according to Matt Alexander, an advocate working with the families.

The families of Vilma Arias and Maria Flores, two in a group of some 30 families who are facing eviction after San Francisco reintroduced a cap on the number of nights families can stay in city-contracted homeless shelters, were told to be out of their rooms at St. Joseph Family Center by 5 p.m. tonight.

If not, shelter staff told the families, the police would be called…(more)

Whiplash politics from Washington to SF! What gives? Why don’t they do us all a favor and DO NOTHING! That is the cheapest least chaotic way to end this mind-bogging confusion we are in. Did something happen to our leaders? Did power go to their head or what? Who said we wanted mass change? I thought the public voted for border security and safe streets and an end to inflation. Nothing they are doing is gong to fix those problems!

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SFPD converting SoMa parking lot into one-stop shop for arrests, drug treatment, and homeless busing

By Abigail Van Neely : missionlocal – excerpt

‘Street fair’-like tents proposed for site where drug-users could be offered choice of jail, treatment — or bus journey

A third of a parking lot at 469 Stevenson Street will become a temporary law enforcement and treatment center to curb drug use on Sixth Street.

Hours after the Board of Supervisors voted in support of giving Mayor Daniel Lurie expanded powers to mitigate the city’s drug, mental health and homelessness crises, San Francisco police held a town hall to address part of their contribution to the effort: a parking lot.

Specifically, a parking lot at 469 Stevenson St., a stone’s throw away from the notoriously chaotic Sixth Street corridor, which Lurie has focused on as an early priority for his administration.

Police plan to operate 469 Stevenson as a hub for directing drug users to services and offering to bus them out of San Francisco — or putting them in jail. The site was the subject of an infamous fight when the Board of Supervisors temporarily blocked hundreds of housing units there in 2021, which led the state to investigate the city’s housing laws.

The city is “keeping expectations low” as it tries “doing something different,” San Francisco Assistant Police Chief David Lazar said on Tuesday evening. But, Lazar said, “If the model works, we can copy and paste it.”… (more)

How will the SFPD determine if the experiment is working? If neighbors are feeling better about the streets’ conditions, users are taking advantage of the services, and 911 calls are down, Lazar said the city would consider the project a success.

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Peskin helps cops catch attacker while driving to work

By Joe Burn, Sam Mondros, and David Sjostedt : sfstandard – excrrpt

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin went above and beyond in his civic duties Thursday morning. As he drove toward City Hall along Van Ness Avenue, he spotted what appeared to be a homeless man being beaten and robbed.

Acting fast, Peskin called 911 at 11:02 a.m., he told The Standard in a phone call, and began following the suspect in his car, remaining on the line for eight minutes.

“At which point, I was told he had been apprehended, and I drove back around and found him and identified him, and he is now under arrest,” Peskin said.

Peskin said the victim looked as if he was in his 60s and “maybe homeless.”…

Peskin’s longtime political consultant, Jim Stearns, wasted no time seizing the opportunity to promote the mayoral candidate’s good deed for the day.

“He not only swims from Alcatraz, he single-handedly apprehends dangerous criminals. I mean, of course, he should be mayor,” he told The Standard by phone…(more)

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Prior to her resignation, Dream Keeper Initiative director Sheryl Davis threw a party at one of D.C.’s swankiest hotels

By Susan Dyer Reynolds – via email (excerpt)

She also took two trips to Martha’s Vineyard in 2023 and 2024, where she and other Dream Keeper recipients were event sponsors…
Mayor Breed, right, appointed Mawuli Tugbenyoh to serve as acting replacement for Human Rights Commission head Sheryl Davis…
 
To nobody’s surprise this close to an election where Mayor London Breed, her dear friend, is battling to keep her job, Sheryl Davis, head of the Human Rights Commission where she also ran the Dream Keeper Initiative, has resigned (on Friday the 13th, no less). As I pointed in last week’s GBTB, when London Breed was District 5 supervisor, she asked Mayor Ed Lee to allow Davis to run programming at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center. After a few years there, Davis was asked to be interim director of the Human Rights Commission, and soon after that she became the director. In November 2023, I called out the Dream Keeper Initiative, which took $120 million from law enforcement and created a citywide plan for “reinvesting” those millions in San Francisco’s African American community, as a pet project of Mayor Breed and Supervisor Shamann Walton ripe for grift. “A quick glance at the beneficiaries brings up numerous ‘nonprofits’ with ties to Breed and Walton, including organizations involved with the SFPUC Community Benefits pay-to-play scheme,” I wrote. A year later, my predictions came true, with many of the nonprofits I referenced caught misusing those funds on everything from cigars and bourbon to $700,000 for two Juneteenth parties.
On Sept. 12, Davis took a paid leave of absence, but she phoned it in. The day before, on Sept. 11, she presided over the Dreaming Forward “fireside chat” and reception at the luxury five-star Riggs Hotel in Washington, D.C. The event was hosted by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, as was a seminar held from 11 a.m. to noon that same day called “Dreaming Forward: Investing in Black Culture to Advance Academic Excellence,” featuring Davis and Dream Keeper Initiative director Dr. Saidah Leatutufu-Burch.
It turns out Burch has big City Family ties as well, to District 10 supervisor Shamann Walton, co-sponsor of the Dream Keeper Initiative. Walton officiated the wedding of Leattutufu to his aide and longtime associate Percy Burch. In his opening comments, Walton made light of the fact they met “while one was the boss of the other” but said (with a “wink-wink”) that both swear the relationship started outside of work. And where did they work? At the infamous Young Community Developers while Walton was director. Not surprisingly, YCD got a nice grant from the Dream Keeper Initiative…(more)
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If you live on Social Security and Medicare, read this article before you vote

by Carol Harvey : sfbayview – excerpt

Produced over 12 years ago, this video never gets old…
Hey kiddos, Mom and Dad here. Let’s talk turkey – specifically about those turkeys who want to cut Social Security benefits. What’s up with that?

Read the article before you view the videos. Watch the entire one and one-half hour event by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRITuQhUO3g&list=PLHrKWOo7hlZBqhGnknzClH3RqOO_sR4Lz.
Watch a 14-minute video summary by clicking this link: https://youtu.be/KlcWvBFn36Q.
Watch an eight-minute summary by clicking this link: https://youtu.be/zbHBfGQjK3Y.

If you live on Social Security and Medicare, you and I are not alone.

It has now become too expensive for 65 million Americans to live in the United States of Money. People need food, shelter, healthcare and a basic income. Social Security and Medicare are our safety nets…

On July 30, 2024, with flare and a sense of fun, the California Alliance of Retired Americans (CARA) threw Social Security and Medicare a birthday party. I videoed the event, which took place at the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francesco. I swear I gained weight just looking at the red, white and blue frosted birthday cake held up by Hene Kelly, CARA vice president, and Kory Powell-McCoy, Nancy Pelosi’s district director…

13scrap-the-cap-1400x875, If you live on Social Security and Medicare, read this article before you vote, Featured News & Views

“Scrap the Cap” signs were everywhere. So what’s the cap?

…(more)

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SB 610: Senator Wiener attacks Fire Hazard Maps as impediments to housing.

By Amy Kalish : marinpost -excerpt

Fire truck got stuck in a tight turn. Had to get another. Use a different approach. Hydrant was 300 feet away Here’s something fresh!

There is a new and dangerous assault on local control. Senator Wiener is not content to merely wrest zoning from cities. He is now targeting Fire Hazard Severity Zone Maps as “impediments” to housing.

SB 610 upends local considerations — and would eliminate the State Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps and familiar terms — most noticeably “ember resistant zones.” A whole new system would instead declare portions of the state “Wildfire Mitigation Areas.” There would be no comparative maps to see where changes were made.

Wiener introduced SB-610 “Fire prevention: wildfire mitigation area: defensible space: State Fire Marshal” as a “gut and amend” bill, meaning the contents were completely changed after it had already passed the Senate in an innocuous form (a proposed annual report by the chair of the State Energy Resources Commission).

The Assembly had no time to digest the language or its ramifications and it has sailed through.

Wiener bluntly states the reasons to ditch a functioning system in his SB 610 Fact Sheet:

  • “to keep localities from weaponizing the fire hazard mapping as anti-housing/development tools.”
  • “LRA (Local Responsibility Area) maps can functionally result in restrictions on growth in those areas through imposing costly building standards, increased disaster planning and mitigation requirements, or increasing home insurance premiums.”
  • “Local jurisdictions have the ability to misuse this process and make the majority of their community a high or very high FHSZ (Fire Hazard Severity Zone) map that could impact housing development.”
  • In other words, the Maps must go in order to keep cities and counties from cheating their way out of “fair share housing.”…(more)

How can anybody be so callous about human lives?

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The San Francisco Influence List: People who are directing the city’s future

By Chronicle staff : sfchronicle – excerpt

San Francisco is changing. These are people whose decisions will shape that change — for better or worse. You might not know them all. But you should.

Since the pandemic, San Francisco has been thrust into the global spotlight for its myriad problems: homelessness, the fentanyl epidemic, the affordability crisis and the potential for an economic “doom loop.” These challenges have forced a place known for historic cataclysms and rebirths into one of its most difficult transformations.

The election in November comes at a critical time: Residents are eager for solutions, and the decisions being made have the potential to dramatically alter what it’s like to live in San Francisco. It’s important that you, our readers, understand how things grow from idea to reality, so we are identifying the people directing that process. You might or might not like what they’re doing, but you should know who they are.

Enter the San Francisco Chronicle’s first Influence List…

Kanishka Cheng : Founder and CEO of Together SF Action
Jennifer Friedenbach : Executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness
Rudy Corpuz : Executive director of United Playaz
Sean Elsbernd : Mayor London Breed’s chief of staff
Chris Larson : Chairman and Co-founder of Ripple
Sheryl Davis : Executive Director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission
Phil Ginsberg : General manager of the SF Rec and Park Department
John Elberling : President of TODCO
Laura Crescimano : Principal of SITELAB Studio
Enrique Landa : Managing Partner of Associate Capital
Rudy Gonzalez : Secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council
Larry Baer : President and Chief Exceutive of hte SF Giants
Malcolm Yeung : Executive director of Chinatown Community Development Center
Lena Millier : Founder dn CEO of Urban Alchemy
Joe Derisi : President of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco
Mira Murati : Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI
Greg Perloff : Co-founder of Another Planet Enertertainment
Pim Techamuanvivit : Chef-owner of Kin Khao and Nari
Brandon Jew : Chef-owner of Mr. Jiu’s
D’arcy Drollinger : San Francisco drag laureate

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Valencia business owners protest center bike lane

By Will Jarrett : missionlocal – excerpt

Merchants from Geary, Market, and Taraval, and other streets along with SaveMuni and other transit supporters,  joined the Valencia merchants in their demands for a removal of the center bike lane on Valencia.

On Tuesday, some 40 protesters briefly occupied the controversial Valencia center bike lane outside Blondie’s Bar, just south of 16th and Valencia streets.

The crowd, composed of business owners, local residents, and a handful of cyclists, took turns decrying the lane as people on bikes shuffled around them. Several brandished signs calling on Jeff Tumlin, director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), to resign. The occasional car honked its support.

“We’ve been in business for 33 years, and this was the worst six months we’ve ever seen,” said Nikki DeWald, owner of Blondie’s Bar and a director of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association. “We love bikes, but not this bike lane.”

Anger at the trial lane, which spans from 15th to 23rd streets, has been brewing since before construction began in April. Business owners have expressed frustration at the loss of roughly 70 parking spaces, and new limits on turning for cars. Some cyclists are also upset, saying that the design turns the road into a “bicycle freeway” that is difficult and unsafe to navigate.

And store owners have begun to organize: Walk along Valencia Street, and you will likely spot several pink-and-white posters emblazoned with the message, “This Bike Lane is Killing Small Businesses and Our Vibrant Community.”

Objections continued at SFMTA meeting

The Valencia Street protest was followed by an SFMTA Board meeting, where public comment was filled with frustration directed at the center bike lane. But although many voiced their objections, there was little consensus on what should be done to remedy the situation.…(more)

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50 Story Skyscraper Hearing July 26

Money Money Money as High as your eye can see!

City and Supervisor Engardio claim the project is a no go on San Francisco  Beach. Petition against skyscraper in SF’s Sunset District draws over 2,500 signatures. Planning Department will hear the matter on July 26. One other issue that has been raised is over who is  behind the caper.

By Joe Kukurta  wrote in sfist, ” There are other things that smell funny about this proposal. CH Planning “project consultant” John Hickey, the wife of listed developer Raelynn Hickey, was convicted on securities fraud and mail fraud charges in 2006. Plus, YIMBY Law executive director Sonja Trauss has been doing a full-court press giving interviews on behalf of this project. That indicates this whole scheme may be a ruse to create Housing Element-related lawsuits, albeit lawsuits that could push the Overton window of San Francisco height limits up a little more. And that would benefit real estate developers pretty much across the board.… (more)”

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Prison term for developer who defrauded investors / S.F. man ordered to pay $17.4 million in restitution as well