Category: Update

by Noah Baustin, Josh Koehn : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco officials announced a new policy Tuesday that puts more than 100 nonprofits with roughly $300 million worth of city contracts at risk of being barred from doing business with the city unless they come into compliance with state regulations.

In January, The Standard reported that San Francisco doled out more than $25 million in taxpayer dollars last year to nonprofits that were blocked by state law from receiving or spending funds because they failed to maintain good standing with the California Attorney General Registry of Charitable Trusts.

As of December, the city had contracts for the current fiscal year with 139 nonprofits that were out of compliance with the state registry. Those nonprofits, which deal with issues ranging from homelessness and drug addiction to education and the arts, still had remaining contract balances totalling nearly $304 million.

The new policy, issued jointly by the offices of the City Controller, City Attorney and City Administrator, explicitly states that San Francisco is not authorized to continue doing business with any nonprofits in delinquent, suspended or revoked status with the state registry…

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who announced legislation to address the oversight of city-funded nonprofits following The Standard’s first report, issued a statement Tuesday saying more accountability is needed in managing taxpayer money. Last year, the city had nonprofit contracts totaling $1.4 billion… (more)

By Thomas Elias : taftmidwaydriller – excerpt

If you’re looking for sure things among bills under consideration in the state Legislature, think of one word: housing.

It’s not yet certain just which new housing measures will be proposed this year, but if the recent past is prologue, almost anything that includes new housing – permanent homes, tiny homes or temporary hotel and motel rooms for the homeless and new construction for other folks – will pass easily.

Some of that housing is needed, but there’s no hard evidence backing the state’s claims that 1.8 million new units must be built by the end of 2030 both to avert a disastrous rise in homelessness and fill the needs of first-time home buyers looking for something they can afford.

In fact, the state auditor last April reported that estimates of need from the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) are unreliable because they’re based on information inputted to state computers by workers who never vetted it at all. Devastating as this report should have been, it was completely ignored by both lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom; no one in any office that deals with housing said a single public word about it…

Instead, they keep leaning on the unproven assumption that HCD estimates are correct. Never mind that HCD’s current estimate of housing need is about 1.2 million units lower than five years ago, but only a fraction that many units have actually been built or converted from commercial space emptied by the COVID-19 pandemic…

In short, this state’s housing policy operates in a kind of fantasy world first pushed by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, whose plans to densify the state languished for years in legislative committees before Newsom began supporting and signing them.…(more)

by Michael Barba : sfstandard – excerpt

Controversy over Mayor London Breed asking her appointees to sign undated resignation letters in a perceived attempt to control them hasn’t convinced a city lawmaker that San Francisco should ban the practice.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman on Monday came out against the ban proposed by his colleague Dean Preston, saying he didn’t have a problem with the practice depending on what role the commission plays in city government…

The revelations raised concerns that Breed was assaulting the independence of mayoral appointees by gathering the undated letters to one day be used against them. Under local law, she can’t remove many of her appointees on her own without the consent of the Board of Supervisors…(more)

RELATED:

Mayor Breed’s Former Nonprofit Gets Millions From City While Flouting State Law

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Hearing shows huge disconnect between lofty goals and the ability of the city to implement them.

The outcome was pretty much determined in advance. The San Francisco Housing Element is, as Fred Sherburn Zimmer, director of the Housing Rights Committee put it, “state blackmail, and you all know this.”

So the Land Use and Transportation Committee sent this plan to the full Board of Supes, where it will be approved Tuesday/24.

But in the process, we learned that the Planning Department, which had to develop the Housing Element and its ambitious affordable housing goals, and the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, which would implement those goals, are on very different tracks…(more)

Engardio report on nextdoor on what he found when he met with Taraval Police : nextdoor – excerpt

I learned a lot listening to police officers express their concerns about the difficulties and challenges of doing effective police work in San Francisco. I spent 10 hours talking to beat officers one-on-one and in groups at the Taraval police station serving the Sunset and much of the westside.

Police officers in San Francisco are stretched thin. They’re a model of police reform but treated like they can’t be trusted. They’re constantly under fire while being asked to do too much without the tools they need. They don’t feel valued or supported. Many are leaving.

We’re short 500 officers (and growing) for a city our size. This is not sustainable. Taraval station had 130 officers three years ago. Now, there are only 65. That means only 4 or 5 officers on a given shift to serve a population of 130,000 over 10 square miles.

With so few officers in such a large territory, they’re constantly crisscrossing the entire westside from hot call to hot call with no time to do the community policing they prefer to do and residents deserve.

Officers say they want to do proactive police work to solve and prevent crime but they lack tools and technology that other Bay Area cities provide. Well-meaning but overly restrictive policies in SF make it difficult to help crime victims when common sense should prevail.

It’s a dangerous job. Thieves stealing catalytic converters at 4am a couple nights ago on the westside opened fire on officers who tried to arrest them. Our officers are getting shot at by organized criminals over a car part.

The officers I spoke to were diverse and committed to serving residents despite the difficulties. Nearly 60 percent of our officers are people of color. We must change the narrative about police in San Francisco. They are essential. And they need to know they are valued and supported…

(more) this link only worked is you have a nextdoor account.

By Margaret Hetherwick : sfexaminer – excerpt (includes audio and graphics)

San Francisco’s Native American community has been waiting on a planned housing development for years — and now, thanks to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, it’s on its way.

One of Pelosi’s last acts as speaker was securing $750,000 for a cutting-edge, six-story housing development in the Mission District of San Francisco called “The Village SF.”

The project is the brainchild of Friendship House, a nonprofit for Native Americans living in urban areas. It will be constructed right across the street from the Friendship House office on Julian Ave, near the 16th Street BART station and is set to break ground this year and be completed by 2025…(more)

by Will Jarrett and Eleni Balakrishnan : missionlocal – excerpt (include auto track)

Politicians and advocates today rallied at City Hall ahead of a vote that – if approved tonight – will prevent the police from pulling people over for certain kinds of traffic violations…

San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said that banning pretext stops would not only reduce racial discrimination in stops, but could make the city safer.

“Right now,” said Raju, “you end up with police spending their time on stops and searches that the data shows are not leading to something.” By eliminating these stops, he said, they could dedicate more time to dangerous violations such as running through red lights.

What is the policy exactly?

A version of this policy has been on the table since last summer. In its first iteration, it proposed that 18 types of stop be banned, but that list has since been chopped down to nine. Should the policy pass, people could no longer be pulled over for these reasons:

1. Failure to properly display or mount license plates when the rear plate is still legible.
2. Failure to display registration tags, or driving with a registration that expired over a year ago.
3. Failure to illuminate license plates.
4. Driving without one tail light, or driving without tail lights during the day.
5. Driving with a missing or broken brake light.
6. Affixing objects to windows or hanging objects from a rearview mirror.
7. Failure to signal while turning or changing lanes.
8. Sleeping in a car.
9. All pedestrian stops, unless there is an immediate danger of a crash.

This newest iteration of the policy brings some substantive changes to the version that was tabled and discussed last month…(more)

No helpful link other than this is the new sfgovtv.org page that should have the link by date.

By Mike Ege :sfstandard – excerpt

Twenty-twenty-two was a challenging year for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

In addition to the usual tug-of-war for power between the board and Mayor London Breed, supervisors had to weather a massive election cycle while addressing exigent problems such as the drug overdose crisis and economic shocks from the Covid pandemic.

While there will be no marathon of elections in 2023, the board will continue to face hurdles in both policy and politics. Here’s a look at the key issues that will shape next year’s board politics, some familiar and some new…(more)