Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods
Advocating for a healthy city
KPIX CBS News
This is a problem that someone should be able to fix as soon as the new administration steps in.
We understand there is a well-managed private RV park close by that cost less to operate than the city managed one. Perhaps there is someone better able to manage this safe parking site and our new Mayor will find that person in time to save it. Trailer parks are a perfectly legal and widely accepted lifestyle for many. Why San Francisco opposes them is somewhat of a mystery.
Mayor Blocked 3 Permanent Drug-Free Housing Projects
Mayor Breed allocated $3.7 million for permanent drug-free SRO housing in her 2023-24 budget. None of this money has been spent.
Did drug problems end in San Francisco? No. Did other permanent drug-free housing options available to graduates from transitional programs emerge? No.
The mayor did not spend a dime of the $3.7 million allocated for permanent supportive drug-free housing in the 2023-24 budget year. Instead, Mayor Breed intervened three times to block the program she claimed to support.
The North Beach Hotel
“I think a project like this could be a game changer, and very transformative and exciting for so many people who deserve a second chance to live a life free and clean and sober in the city and county of San Francisco,” Breed said.”–SF Chronicle, February 8, 2024…
The San Remo Hotel
The San Remo Hotel, 2237 Mason, was completely vacant (it is legally a tourist hotel). I met with Peskin to assess his support. Peskin not only supported the project but said he would take responsibility for community outreach and community support. I thought that was great. But when I conveyed that to the mayor’s office I was told they didn’t want Peskin doing that. They wanted me to do the outreach.
So I began outreaching to North Beach groups. None expressed opposition. Some asked that I meet with their Board and this was scheduled. All was going well when the mayor’s office told me that wanted one of their close political allies, Cedric Akbar of Westside Community Services, to do door-to-door outreach around the San Remo.
I thought that was odd. We did not need Akbar’s help to do outreach. Akbar was running for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee at the time and I assumed the mayor was looking to help his campaign by assigning him outreach to potential voters (he was elected). Wanting to move the project forward, I said fine to Akbar’s plans…
Steve Adami of Salvation Army also said that permanent drug-free housing didn’t work. I thought that was odd because the Salvation Army was co-sponsoring Matt Haney’s statewide bill mandating money for permanent drug-free housing. After our call I alerted the Bay Area Council about this contradiction (they were co-sponsoring Haney’s bill) and heard from Salvation Army that Adami did not speak for them. He later recanted his opposition to permanent drug free housing expressed at the meeting.
Residents in Westside/Salvation Army programs do not get tenants’ rights. These are transitional “programs” that residents must leave to get the permanent drug-free housing they need.
What I realized was going on here was Mayor Breed trying to shift $3.7 million from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic to her favored nonprofits. The mayor was also reversing her support for THC’s plan to provide a bridge to permanent drug-free housing for those graduating from transitional programs. The Salvation Army and Westside do not provide permanent drug-free housing so that was not where the mayor now wanted this money to go.
What I anticipated would happen after that meeting did happen. The mayor killed her once heavily promoted permanent drug-free housing plan…(more)
Reading this makes me feel some-what vindicated. For some time I have watched Breed flit from one shiny new object to another, never giving any of her proposals time to work. What is particularly galling is the facts that she blame everyone else for not building any affordable housing, when all along it was her holding onto the money, and or, frittering it away on someone else. We shall soon see what she did with it if it is not in the coffers waiting to be spent.
insidesf – excerpt
The San Francisco Superior Court has struck down a residential vacancy tax slated to take effect in 2025, ruling that the tax is unconstitutional.
Voters approved the Empty Homes Tax in 2022, which required owners of apartments or condos in structures with three or more units to pay a tax on units vacant for 182 or more days in a calendar year. Filing and fees were scheduled to begin in 2025.
However, the San Francisco Apartment Association, Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute, San Francisco Association of Realtors and four individual landlords filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court in February 2023 to challenge the constitutionality of the law. And the San Francisco Superior Court ruled yesterday morning that the tax violated the Constitution and imposed an unlawful burden on privacy interests, while also being pre-empted by the state’s Ellis Act.
As it stands now, the residential vacancy tax is no longer in effect. The city will appeal the decision and debate will continue. (Here’s a link to the court decision.)
Owners in this property category now don’t need to file or pay any fees to the city. I’ll keep you updated on any future developments…(more)
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new requirements Friday for cities and counties receiving state money to address homeless encampments.
Newsom, who has been cracking down on local governments that refuse to accommodate new housing projects or homeless shelters, said that the state will “claw back” funding for localities that fail to comply with their housing goals.
San Francisco became the first city to fall out of compliance with the housing element law, the California Department of Housing and Community Development ruled in July. San Francisco is required to plan for 82,000 new units between 2023 and 2031, but the city authorized just over 3,000 new units in 2023 and 831 units in the first half of this year, according to the city’s Planning Department. The state announced in August that San Francisco was back on track to return to compliance.
Under a law passed in 2023 by San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener, cities that fail to comply must streamline the approval of most projects.
Newsom also said Friday that cities must follow “all state housing and homelessness laws” to hold on to their millions in state aid from encampment resolution funds…(more)
How did we end up with an anti-San Francisco governor and an anti-San Francisco Senator? What is wrong with our city that no one who likes us runs for state office?
Prop. 33 on the Nov. 5 ballot would overturn Costa Hawkins. If that happens, and Peskin’s bill passes, every apartment build between June 14, 1979 and Nov. 5, 2024 would come under the city’s rent control law…
The legislation, sponsored by Sup. Aaron Peskin, would extend rent controls to the tens of thousands of units that are exempt under state law, if and when that state law is repealed or amended.
Under the Costa Hawkins Act, any apartment built after June 13, 1979 is exempt from any form of local rent control…(more)
Not sure why no one is asking the Mayoral candidates about this. They do a lot of lip service to “the high costs of housing”, but avoid talking about the corporate takeover and control of rental pricing. There is even less talk about the exorbitant costs of fuel and utilities. Most of these are state problems, but they need to be on the table for discussion every time the price of rent is raised, in my opinion.
The first thing that Pacific Heights resident Gabriel Wolf recalls when asked about his mid-pandemic move to Upper Fillmore Street is discovering signs of a friendly and engaged community that he found comforting during a time of great uncertainty.
He points out a ginkgo tree dubbed “Bartholome” that the owner of Cielo lobbied the city to have planted on the sidewalk in front of her clothing boutique, and the string lights that a customer of adjacent Ten-Ichi installed outside the 46-year-old sushi restaurant. Across the street, 45-year-old La Mediterranee restaurant refurbished its parklet with a mural depicting a serene sunset…
“These businesses obviously care about this neighborhood and the people in it,” Wolf said.
Now the future for some of these businesses is uncertain.
When a mysterious web of connected limited liability companies started buying up building after building on a three-block stretch of Fillmore, small business owners and residents in the area were hopeful that the infusion of capital could help buoy and revive the close-knit retail community that had been struggling since the pandemic.
But, months after the properties traded hands, the vision of Upper Fillmore’s newest investor is coming into focus, and one thing appears certain: It does not include several of the mom and pop businesses that have anchored the street for decades.
Earlier this year, stealthy entities spent upwards of $40 million on acquiring more than half a dozen aging buildings on Fillmore between Clay and Pine streets, including the defunct Clay Theater at 2261 Fillmore. For now, they’re adding to the street’s shuttered storefronts by displacing a handful of long-time small businesses in an apparent bid to ultimately bring more high-end retailers into the area… (more)
RELATED:
VC Neil Mehta, who’s quietly nabbing prized SF property, plans a “Y Combinator for restaurants”:
What does Neil know about the restaurants he is kicking out? Not much evidently. They are some of the most popular eating establishments in town. How jaded are his tastebuds?
You better keep your car because you are going to need it when they drive you out of town!
By Amy Kalish : marinpost -excerpt
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:
How can anybody be so callous about human lives?
By Calvin Welch : 48hills – excerpt
Some of her Big Tech allies have abandoned her—and now the neighborhoods are unhappy too…
Hammett’s 1920s cynicism of fictional San Francisco has been superseded by the 2020s reality facing voters this November: the simultaneous buying and taking of the city by a handful of billionaires. These billionaires’ intent is not only controlling the city’s politics, but also in replacing most of its current residents with folks more like them—wealthy and conservative.
This assault on the current residents of San Francisco is based, in part, on Yimby lies about housing policy, lies endorsed by the Breed administration. And the irony of ironies is that it is her “loyalty” to this agenda that has so weakened her among San Francisco voters that some of her wealthy backers have dropped her like a stone.
Breed has now been officially discarded by the very “moderates” she has courted with her pro-Yimby density/displacement plans and her hard right turn on crime and police. Parts of the big tech/real estate coalition have now formally endorsed Mark Farrell, saying that Breed has not “demonstrated an ability to govern with the degree of persistence and consistency necessary to solve San Francisco’s problems.”…(more)
This is an URGENT call to action. SB 7 is a terrible bill, and it needs to be opposed before it’s next heard on 6/26. Letters and calls should be in ASAP. Today if possible.
What is the Problem with SB 7?
This is a housing bill that makes HCD stronger and RHNA worse. SB7 takes recommendations from a 176 page report — “California’s Housing Future 2040: The Next Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA)” — sent to legislators just two months ago, and hastily tries to get them passed into law in the next few weeks.
Through a sneaky process called “gut and amend,” new language has been put into SB 7 — which already passed the Senate in another form — and is now working its way through the Assembly.
No underlying problems of 6th cycle RHNA are addressed. This bill relies on unsubstantiated claims about the state’s housing crisis to justify usurping local control.
The 6th cycle RHNA is not even mid-way through, and all cities are failing its metrics. The solid reasons why are heavily documented — to the point that a housing element audit was recently authorized to examine the process.
The HCD is doing an end run around the audit and any flaws it might uncover; the new language of SB 7 bolsters their powers for 7th cycle RHNA, and they want it done now.
WHAT HCD GETS WITH SB 7:
THIS IS HAPPENING FAST:
SB7 is being rushed through without due diligence.
This “gut and amend” bill bypassed normal deadlines, and showed up at the last minute. In the Senate it was an innocuous bill about group housing.
June 10th: Amended in Assembly
June 18th: Passed Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee
June 26th: Up for a vote in the Local Government committee
your message can be this simple: I OPPOSE SB 7.
Contact for direct representatives are below, they also need to hear from us.
| First | Last | Phone | ||
| Chair, D | Juan | Carrillo | juan.carrillo | (916) 319-2039 |
| V-Chair, R | Marie | Waldron | marie.waldron | (916) 319-2075 |
| R | Bill | Essayli | bill.essayli | (916) 319-2063 |
| D | Matt | Haney | matt.haney | (916) 319-2017 |
| D | Ash | Kalra | ash.kalra | (916) 319-2025 |
| D | Blanca | Pacheco | blanca.pacheco | (916) 319-2064 |
| D | James | Ramos | james.ramos | (916) 319-2045 |
| D | Chris | Ward | assemblymember.Ward | (916) 319-2078 |
| D | Lori | Wilson | lori.wilson | (916) 319-2011 |
| Chief Cons. | Angela | Mapp | angela.mapp | (916) 319-3958 |
By KELLY WALDRON : missionlocal – excerpt
Melgar was invited to speak but just sat in the audience and said nothing. One of her opponents, Stephen Martin-Pinto was in attendance and gathered a lot of support last night. There were a lot of people from D-4., D-7, and D-11 that I recognized.
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