Category: Update

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)

RELATED:

Court agrees to hear lawsuit against NEM3 rooftop solar decision solarrights.org

By Opinion Columnist : pressdemocrat – excerpt (includes audio track)

Last week, and despite the popularity of Proposition 13, the California Legislature passed two proposed amendments to the California Constitution that rip huge holes in that iconic taxpayer protection overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1978.

But here’s the good news. These anti-homeowner bills must be approved at a statewide election and, given the anger from thousands of constituents who flooded the Capitol with calls, letters, and petitions, the two measures are likely headed for the defeat they so richly deserve.

These two bills, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 and Assembly Constitutional Amendment 13, are both serious threats to Proposition 13, although for two different reasons.

Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 is a direct attack on Proposition 13 that would remove the taxpayer protection of the two-thirds vote of the electorate required to pass local special taxes. If this measure is enacted, local taxes for “infrastructure” – defined so broadly as to be meaningless – could pass with just 55% of the vote instead of the 66.67% margin as required by Proposition 13. This makes it easier for local governments to raise taxes so California’s already stressed taxpayers will end up paying billions more.

Because ACA 1 repeals language in Proposition 13, even the most dishonest politician can’t argue that it leaves Prop. 13 unharmed. But ACA 13 is a different type of assault that doesn’t directly alter Prop. 13’s language. But the harm it inflicts is just as bad. Here’s how.

ACA 13 is a devious attempt to prevent taxpayers from protecting Prop. 13. It aims to derail the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (TPA), an initiative constitutional amendment that has already qualified for the November 2024 ballot. TPA restores Proposition 13 protections that have been eroded by the courts and it is supported by a large coalition of taxpayer, business, and property rights organizations…(more)

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Four-hour parking rules would mean eviction. Why isn’t Breed pushing the obvious solution?

An item described as “various routine parking and traffic modifications” doesn’t usually generate hours of powerful testimony from homeless people and their advocates at the Municipal Transportation Agency.

But this week’s meeting involved a plan to create four-hour parking rules on streets near Lake Merced—which would amount to eviction notices for a community of recreational vehicle dwellers who have been living there for several years…

But there’s actually a pretty simple, easy solution: The city could provide a safe parking space in the area, a lot where the RV dwellers could remain until there’s decent, acceptable affordable housing for them.

Melgar told me she’s been working on this for more than two years. There’s money in the budget for it.

But the Mayor’s Office has been delaying and delaying and bringing up obstacle after obstacle. “There’s no reason we can’t do this quickly,” Melgar said. “We did it during Covid.”

For more than an hour, people who lived in the RVs (mostly Spanish speakers) and a long list of advocates asked the panel not to evict the residents. As Erick Arguello, who works at Glide’s Center for Social Justice, said, “this is the only thing they have.”…(more)

We heard from people in District 11, how well the safe parking project worked when the neighborhood groups became involved at the CSFN September Town Hall.

Vehicle Triage Center youtu.be

by Josh Koehn : sfstandard – excerpt

Days ahead of his expected announcement to run for mayor of San Francisco, Daniel Lurie filed campaign paperwork Thursday afternoon with the city’s Ethics Commission.

The founder of the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point, who is also an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, is scheduled to deliver a speech Tuesday in which he will officially announce his campaign to challenge Mayor London Breed in the November 2024 election. Over the last several months, Lurie has been holding private gatherings since the spring to rally support for his candidacy.

An email sent earlier this month to close friends, family and supporters advised them to save the date for a special announcement on Sept. 26. The location of that event has still not been announced…

Polling suggests Breed could be vulnerable to a challenge in next year’s election, as more than three-quarters of residents feel San Francisco is going down the wrong track. Supervisor Ahsha Safaí has already filed papers to run and reported raising $149,000 in the first two months of his campaign …(more)