Category: Update

By David Sjostedt : sfstandard – excerpt

A commission in charge of holding San Francisco accountable for its response to the drug and mental health crises hasn’t been able to hold a proper meeting for more than seven months as the city’s elected leaders neglect to fill its seats.

There are currently only six active members on the 17-person Behavioral Health Commission, an oversight body with the power to draft policy and conduct reviews of programs run by the city’s Behavioral Health Department. The department has a $592 million annual budget and is responsible for providing mental health and drug treatment services.

Because there are fewer than nine active members, the commission lacks a quorum and hasn’t been able to wield much of its power or hold meetings since February….

Victor Young, a clerk for the Board of Supervisors, told The Standard there are eight people who have pending applications to serve on the commission. However, he said it’s difficult to find qualified members for the commission due to the types of experience needed for each seat…

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who is chair of the rules committee, which evaluates commission applicants, said he’s working on legislation that would shrink the commission from 17 members to 11. He told The Standard the commission’s stringent eligibility requirements have imposed barriers for him and other supervisors to appoint commissioners. …(more)

Sounds like a typical state bill that sets up a system doomed to fail.

By Josh John :sfstandard – excerpt

Mayor London Breed’s road to reelection is getting as crowded as a WrestleMania ring, and there will likely be no shortage of skullduggery and political body slams between now and November 2024.

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí announced his candidacy in the spring and immediately started taking digs at Breed as a weak leader. Anti-poverty nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie launched his campaign last week and a day later was attacking the mayor’s plan to force drug-addicted welfare recipients into treatment. As the moderate candidates duke it out, the door is open for a progressive to carve out a lane and take advantage of the city’s ranked-choice voting system.

But so far, no one has emerged to … wait … no, it can’t be … bah gawd, is that Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s theme music?!…(more)

All right, Josh, you have our attention. You deserve a read today. Let me get a cup of coffee to mull that one over.

By Emily Hoeven : sfchronicle – excerpt

Despite his many years in politics, Gov. Gavin Newsom still has an uncanny ability to shoot himself in the foot.

Newsom’s knack for backing himself into corners of his own making, issuing bold statements that crumble under the slightest pressure, and pursuing grand visions without much regard to details, has defined his response to his second U.S. Senate appointment…

In 2021, amid reports about Feinstein’s dwindling health and mental acuity, Newsom vowed to appoint a Black woman to her Senate seat if she were to resign before her term ended in 2024. The promise was apparently intended to placate Black women voters — often considered the backbone of the Democratic Party — angered that he didn’t choose a Black woman to replace Kamala Harris in the Senate when she was elected Vice President. (Newsom instead picked longtime ally Alex Padilla, highlighting the fact that he would be California’s first Latino U.S. Senator.)

Not only did many view Newsom’s actions as disrespectful to Feinstein — who had no intention of resigning — but they also came across as politically self-serving, as Newsom at the time was fending off a recall election.

“You don’t have to like Dianne Feinstein to see that pushing her out of her elected position for a Black woman appointment that you could have made when there is an actual vacancy to win a recall to push you out of your elected position is a very bad look,” tweeted Christine Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and former chair of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus…

Eager to generate headlines and to make history, Newsom is great at making bold proclamations — even if he contradicts them moments later.

But a leader who puts good governance first wouldn’t have said anything about Feinstein’s seat unless and until the time came to make a decision.

Forgoing the spotlight, however, has never been Newsom’s strong suit…(more)

I was going to ignore this, but, the extremely negative response Newsom gets from his strategies generates a certain desire to repeat the bad news.

By Associated Press, Contributor Annie Gaus : sfstandard – excerpt

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will name Laphonza Butler, a Democratic strategist and adviser to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a spokesman in his office said Sunday.

In choosing Butler, Newsom fulfilled his pledge to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein’s seat should become open. However, he had been facing pressure by some Black politicians and advocacy groups to select Rep. Barbara Lee, a prominent Black congresswoman who is already running for the seat…

Butler currently lives in Maryland, according to her Emily’s List biography.

She did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman in Newsom’s office who declined to be named confirmed to The Associated Press that Newsom had chosen Butler…(more)

By Matt Mahan, San Jose Mayor : mercurynews – excerpt

After the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco quickly constructed over 5,600 cottages to house those made homeless by the catastrophe. City leaders didn’t say “a cottage isn’t good enough” or “someone else is to blame” or, worse, “this is unsolvable.”

They recognized that in an emergency, you take emergency action — such as building simple, decent shelters for everyone affected.

They placed these cottages on public land and then, as the emergency ebbed, residents were allowed to relocate them. They were the first homes for thousands of families. You can still find them across the region.

We’ve seen elected officials offer excuse after excuse for our state’s failure to adequately address homelessness. We’ve blamed the courts, we’ve blamed the cost of building housing, and we’ve blamed the homeless…

We don’t have the money to build enough “affordable” housing units at the nearly $1 million per door local governments pay now. But we do have the resources to build secure individual cottages, casitas or safe sleeping units on public land. In San Jose we are building these units at a fraction of the cost and time required by traditional approaches…

The answer is in our history books — and right in front of us. Build low-cost shelter now on public land and then require that everyone live indoors…(more)

By Madison Alvarado : sfpublicpress – excerpt

As a hotly debated lawsuit preventing San Francisco from clearing some encampments makes its way through the courts, data from the city’s Homeless Outreach Team call log and interviews with providers reveal the barriers unhoused people face in seeking shelter.

On a warm evening in late August, Harley received bad news at the Dolores Shelter Program, a site in the Mission for adults experiencing homelessness: There were no walk-up beds available that night.

When another man said a case worker told him the site offered walk-up beds, a shelter employee responded: “I don’t know why they do that. They send you in circles.”

More people toting backpacks and suitcases milled about on the sidewalk beyond the teal metal bars that separated them from a hot meal and bed for the night.

When Harley, who didn’t share his last name, got into a motorcycle accident and lost his job, he also lost stable housing. He said he called San Francisco’s Homeless Outreach Team’s voicemail three times that week asking for help getting into a shelter, but that his calls went unreturned…

From late January 2023 to early August 2023, people left messages in the Homeless Outreach Team’s voicemail system more than 2,000 times requesting shelter, and 68% of those requests were “unable to be fulfilled,” a Public Press investigation found. In most cases, this means that the city was unable to connect with the caller in person or on the phone — because there was not enough information to locate the person, the person did not respond to callbacks, the person’s voicemail box was full or the number was disconnected, or the dispatch team could not find them at a specified location. In few instances, the city was in contact with the person but did not have any shelter beds available to offer the caller… (more)

By Annika Hom : sfstandard – excerpt

“I’ve known many people who are on welfare and I’ve known many people at City Hall,” said a political consultant, “and there are many more people at City Hall who are high on drugs.”

Mayor London Breed and three moderate supervisors said on Tuesday that a proposal to drug test San Francisco welfare recipients would keep individuals “accountable” and help shepherd those struggling with addiction into treatment.

But more than half a dozen addiction experts and political figures told Mission Local that, if the goal of the measure is to address people’s addictions, the plan is likely to backfire.

Tell welfare recipients to undergo drug testing or risk their cash, and “they’re going to say — pardon my French — ‘Eff you, I’ll find something else,’” said Dr. William Andereck, a doctor of internal medicine who runs the ethics committee at Sutter Health/California Pacific Medical Center…

The city’s Human Services Agency, which administers the program, said that some 20 percent of those receiving cash assistance during 2018 to 2020 had reported substance use disorder. Twenty percent of today’s program enrollees is 1,040.
Yet presently there are almost no slots available for drug treatment, according to Vitka Eisen, the CEO of nonprofit HealthRight 360, which provides addiction services across the city… (more)

Even though it is coming out of a SF publication, the article should be informative to people everywhere. I am somewhat shocked that people think diagnosing mental illness is easy. Who are these people that missed basic psychology classes? Mentally ill people do not act out all the time. Human behavior is not consistent or predictable. What motivates one person will have no effect on another. And one of my favorites. It is easier to stop a behavior than to force a behavior. It very hard to force change on someone who resists change.

by Mike Ege : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safaí introduced legislation Tuesday calling on the San Francisco Police Department to implement regular foot and bike patrols to prevent retail and other crime in the city’s neighborhoods.

The legislation would also mandate annual Police Commission hearings to review foot and bike patrols as part of community policing plans. Safaí told The Standard that he has asked for a waiver of the board’s 30-day rule and hopes to have the bill first heard in October.

“Putting officers back on the street will support values of protection and community engagement, especially in areas of our city where crime is most visible and rampant,” Safaí said in a statement. “Deployment should be data-driven to truly address this citywide issue.

Under Safaí’s legislation, the police department’s regular patrols would have specific neighborhood beats based on a formula and maps developed by SFPD. The chief of police must also include information about the effort as part of the department’s annual budget…(more)

byMatthew Kupfer :sfstandard – excerpt

It happened like clockwork.
On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order calling for swift action to expand insurance coverage options for consumers. Hours later, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara outlined what he termed “the largest insurance reform” in decades.

The regulation, to be drafted by the end of 2024, would allow insurance companies to use controversial forward-looking modeling in setting rates in return for covering more Californians living in areas with the most wildfire risk.

The strategy took direct aim at a rapidly growing problem in the state and a serious liability for political leaders: dwindling access to homeowners insurance.

Newsom took executive action after an 11th-hour bill to alleviate the state’s insurance woes died in the legislature earlier this month.

But the new strategy unveiled by Lara cannot legally alter California’s regulatory framework: Proposition 103, a powerful law passed by voters in 1988 that has governed insurance for over three decades. But it may undermine it…(more)

By Solar Rights Alliance – excerpt

What happened: Last year, the state lawmakers mandated a new, uncapped Utility Tax without any public discussion

• Last year, at the last minute and without any public discussion, the California Legislature passed AB 205, a large “budget trailer bill” that included a little-noticed provision for a Utility Tax. Here is how each legislator voted.
• AB 205 removed the existing $10 per month cap on Utility Taxes and mandated that a Utility Tax be imposed on all ratepayers. This new Utility Tax will have unlimited potential to grow.
• This Utility Tax would apply to all residential ratepayers of PG&E, SoCal Edison, and SDG&E, including customers of CCAs.
• AB 205 requires the Utility Tax to be based on income…(more)

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