Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods
Advocating for a healthy city
By Randy Shaw : beyondchron – excerpt
Peskin Galvanizes SF’s Mayor’s Race (Updated April 4)
On Saturday, Aprill 6 Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin is announcing he is running for San Francisco mayor. I had long assumed this would happen.
San Francisco now has the most open mayor’s race since 1975.
There is no clear front runner.
Let me share by sharing my history with Aaron Peskin…(more)
By Yujie Zhou :missionlocal – excerpt
Neighbors for a Better San Francisco and TogetherSF are gonna go for Farrell. GrowSF and Abundant SF will go for Breed,” Joe Rivano Barros, told the audience at Manny’s.
That was the prediction for November’s looming election offered by Mission Local’s senior editor at a Tuesday night debrief on big money in San Francisco politics.
Mission Local has been covering the groups that have collectively launched a more conservative-leaning movement to oust progressives from elected office in San Francisco — and their spending. “We’re gonna see a big divide, a big rift in November,” said Rivano Barros. Also on the stage were Will Jarrett, Mission Local’s former data reporter, and managing editor Joe Eskenazi. All three have been contributors to Mission Local’s BigMoneySF series…
The tech- and real-estate-backed groups who have put millions into city elections do not only diverge on mayoral candidates but also differ more generally: Neighbors for a Better San Francisco has geared towards public safety, while GrowSF and Abundant SF are more urbanist and YIMBY, focused on market-rate housing, bike lanes, keeping the great highway and JFK Driver car-f-ree, according to Rivano Barros…
As for the progressive-leaning candidates, one reflection Rivano Barros has heard: “They’ve got to stop just talking about billionaires controlling this.” At some point, you have to offer voters a reason to vote for you, not just reasons to vote against your competitors: “There was a question mark there [in the March election] about what progressives were proffering.”
“If you allow your opponent to define who you are and they have ten times the money you do,” added Eskenazi, “you will lose.”.… (more)
RELATED:
BigMoneySF: Explore the major players paying out to remake San Francisco
By Annika Hom :missionlocal – excerpt
Supervisor’s anger follows series of Mission Local articles revealing squatters, deferred work, and failing habitability scores in public housing
Supervisor Shamann Walton Thursday ripped into the property manager overseeing troubled Potrero Hill and Sunnydale public housing, criticizing its explanations for mismanaged properties.
At a meeting Thursday, the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee grilled management corporation Eugene Burger for recent incidents, such as squatters living in vacant units, mounting trash, deferred work orders and poor habitability scores, and a lethal fire…
But Walton was unsatisfied with the majority of management’s answers.
“Now I understand where the problem lies,” Walton said, feigning sudden enlightenment. “We think quality of service for residents is different than what Eugene Burger thinks” it is, he said.
“Everybody who is in the development working on properties, developer, contractor, Housing Authority, HOPE SF — you are all responsible for meeting residents’ needs, point blank,” Walton said sternly…
Supervisor Catherine Stefani also questioned the city agreements that pay Eugene Burger to run the sites: “I don’t understand why we continue to engage and ask people to do the work if they are not able to perform it,” she said…(more)
By Noah Baustin : sfstandard – excerpt
Richmond neighborhood resident David Jacoby was shocked Monday to discover that he and his neighbors had received $108 parking citations while their vehicles were sitting in their own driveways.
Their offense, according to the city, was blocking part of the sidewalk.
But Jacoby said that his Prius and the rest of the cars on his Second Avenue block were all parked exactly as they had been for the past decade, never before drawing the ire of parking enforcement.
“It seems a bit random and unwarranted and, frankly, unfair,” Jacoby said.
A few doors down, his neighbor Shari Johnston, also ticketed, was in disbelief that she was hit with a fine on her vehicle.
“It’s in our actual driveway that we pay for,” Johnston said…(more)
RELATED:
San Francisco invents new rules for ‘anti-homeless’ planters
SFMTA parking boss targeted minority neighborhoods, former deputy director alleges
Looks like the bosses need a new plan. When the permits to allow street furniture and planters come about, the issue of sitting down access is going to be a little hard to prove. More of this subject will be coming up soon now doubt. The next Mayor may have something to say about it. There is a long list of SFMTA employees who have filed complaints and those may expose even more problems in the department when new leadership takes over. These articles only show a tip of the iceberg.
By Gabe Greschler : sfstandard – excerpt
Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s housing legislation passed on Tuesday despite a veto by Mayor London Breed earlier this month.
In a defeat for San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors overturned the mayor’s veto of Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s recent housing bill that pushes forward density limits along the city’s Northern Waterfront.
The vote was 8-3, with Supervisors Myrna Melgar, Joel Engardio and Matt Dorsey siding with the mayor. Breed and her supporters could not convince an additional supervisor to dissent, which would have kept her veto in place.
The passage of the bill will enact housing density controls for most developments in the Jackson Square Historic District, the Jackson Square Historic District Extension and the Northeast Waterfront Historic District. Projects under the city’s office-to-residential conversion program are exempt from the new rule.
“This is not only well considered but recommended by our Planning Department,” said Peskin. “This is not a policy discussion. This is a political discussion.”…(more)
RELATED:
Letting Aaron Peskin pass another anti-housing law would be a slap in the face for SF
CalMatters records on Senator Wiener, including his financial supporters
By Noah Baustin and Michael Barba : sfstandard – excerpt
Frank Chiu walked away from his job as San Francisco’s first director of the Department of Building Inspection nearly 20 years ago.
Since then, he has worked as a permit consultant on construction projects that his brother—and two nephews—later inspected in their roles as city building inspectors, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest in a department that has been dogged by ethical issues.
Chiu, 66, and his son, Chris, work with contractors and architects who renovate offices in downtown high-rises. He helps them save time and money by ensuring that their building plans comply with the city’s notoriously complex codes. Chiu says his job getting the permits is done by the time his family members inspect the construction work on the projects. But outside observers say the situation creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest…(more)
It is the City Family Plan. Been working for decades. Squirreling away bucks to combat the negative feedback when the s**t hits the fan. Which it did recently.
By Joe Eskkenazi : missionlocal – excerpt
Ex-HR manager Stanley Ellicott, earlier charged with selling city-bought electronics, now accused of setting up bonus company to bilk SF
Ex-HR director Stanley Ellicott was arrested for a second time on March 21. He is facing 62 felony counts stemming from an alleged scheme to defraud the city of hundreds of thousands of dollars via a bogus company he established.
In January, San Francisco Human Resources manager Stanley John Ellicott was arrested and charged with a bevy of crimes, including purportedly selling electronics on the internet that had been bought with city money earmarked for earthquake supplies.
This morning he was arrested again and hit with more than five dozen charges — most notably allegedly ripping off some $627,000 from the Workers’ Compensation bureau he oversaw. San Francisco jail records reveal that Ellicott, 38, was booked at 9:07 this morning and is being held on $50,000 bail for his 62 felony charges.
He is accused of establishing a bogus company and using it to loot the very branch of the HR department that he was charged with keeping both technically and monetarily sound…
The January and March cases against Ellicott are unrelated. But it was the investigation into the former that led to today’s arrest and charging. In addition to allegedly selling high-end consumer electronics bought with emergency supply money, Ellicott was in January charged with participating in a larger municipal theft and kickback scheme operated by former Community Challenge Grant director Lanita Henriquez and former Gavin Newsom mayoral staffer, businessman and city fixer Dwayne Jones…(more)
RELATED:
By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez : kqed – excerpt
As Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin mulls a run for mayor, how people view his opposition to market-rate housing would be both a strength and a vulnerability should he jump in the race.
That’s particularly true in San Francisco’s west side, a neighborhood replete with single-family homes where people have rallied against state laws that would allow more multi-story housing to be built. Peskin is sometimes viewed as a champion of saving neighborhood character from what residents consider to be outsize new construction.)
George Wooding, a neighborhood activist who lives just west of Twin Peaks, said neighbors are angry about Mayor London Breed’s “Housing for All Plan,” which would incentivize building taller, denser housing. He said they worry there isn’t enough parking or infrastructure to support the plan.
“That’s going to be one of the turning points of the mayor’s race on the west side,” Wooding said. “Anybody with a brain running for mayor is going to start attacking the density programs.”
San Francisco’s next mayor will steer the city’s future approach to housing.
Peskin is on one side of a divide in development philosophy between moderate and progressive Democrats in San Francisco. The moderates want the city to build, build, build to bring housing costs down. Progressives want the city to focus on building affordable housing while fiercely defending tenant protections…
“Government has a role to play. And a progressive mayor, I think, can do so much more to protect and enhance our existing residents and our existing small businesses,” Peskin said…
Eileen Boken, a west side advocate who frequently attends City Hall meetings, said her neighbors were “blindsided” by state Sen. Scott Wiener’s proposal to wrest housing approval control of Ocean Beach away from the California Coastal Commission…(more)
RELATED:
Petition to Oppose SB 951 and Keep our Pacific Coastline Free and Open.
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/no-on-sb-951-keep-california-coastline-open-and-accessible-2
Peskin’s statement says it all..”We don’t have to destroy San Francisco to save it.”
This statement is profound and comes at a pivotal time. One may walk by many up-zoned empty projects lining streets of empty sidewalks fronting sad boarded up storefronts along streets that were “improved” by SFMTA. We have seen enough destruction already. Now it is time to fix the mess we find ourselves in. We need to restore San Francisco’s once safe friendly neighborhoods that we had before the bulldozers arrived. We need to fill all the holes in the streets and quit digging more. We need a respite from the dust and noise.
In may opinion, the candidates do not fall into left/right categories.
By Gabe Greschler :sfstandard – excerpt
In keeping with a campaign promise to nix legislation that blocks housing, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Thursday that she will veto a bill that tweaked density limits along the city’s Northern Waterfront.
In a letter, Breed wrote that the bill, authored by Board President Aaron Peskin, “passes off anti-housing policy under the guise of historic protection.” The Board of Supervisors approved the legislation in an 8-3 vote on Feb. 27…
The mayor’s veto pushes Peskin’s housing legislation back to the Board of Supervisors, who can override it with eight votes…(more)
What is the point in this? The bill was already passed with eight votes. Now they have to revote on it again to get the 8 votes to override her veto? What is the point? Does she plan to coerce supervisors into changing their votes? What has changed?
By Xueer Lu : missionlocal – excerpt
Supervisor Ahsha Safaí introduced a resolution at the Board of Supervisors today urging the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to address child homelessness by prioritizing families for shelter.
“In a city with almost 48 billionaires, it is unconscionable that we have children living on our streets when we have shelter beds that are vacant,” said Safaí, who wants the homelessness department to give families shelter or hotel vouchers the same day they make contact with city officials. Families who arrive at an access point, where families get referral to shelters and housing, should be allowed to extend their vouchers if there is no alternative housing or shelter, he said.
In addition, the resolution asks the city to create a multilingual public dashboard where families can monitor the shelter waitlist and their own progress in entering permanent housing…(more)