Category: Update

By Kevin V. Nguyen : sfstandard – excerpt
A group of schools are providing a test case in the city’s most troubled neighborhood.

When San Francisco was mired in “doom loop” talk last year, Mayor London Breed and some business leaders began openly calling for college students to save downtown. Young adults, the thinking goes, would populate struggling areas, reinvigorate the economy and help transform downtown from a 9-to-5 office community to a 24/7 arts and culture destination.

Just one block away from the worst drug corner in the city, the University of California College of the Law SF is putting that theory to the test…

The key to getting the Academic Village over the finish line is the concept that it will be shared by multiple universities.

“Had this been only for the law school, we would have met much more skepticism trying to finance this project,” David Seward, chief financial officer of the university, told The Standard. To pay for Academe at 198, UC Law SF secured $364 million in tax-exempt bond financing…(more)

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

More than $200 million goes for services city workers could provide much, much cheaper.

San Francisco has 3,747 vacant jobs—and has spent more than $211 million in the past two years filling some of those positions with outside contractors who charge far more than what city workers would earn, a new study shows.

And the vast majority of that money goes to big out-of-town companies—that is, it leaves San Francisco and does nothing to help the local economy…

The study, by analysts with IFPTE Local 21, which represents thousands of city employees, shows that the percentage of the city budget spend on local workers has dropped from 51 percent ten years ago to 46 percent today.

In some departments, like the scandal-plagued Public Works, the drop has been even more dramatic: DPW used to spend 35 percent of its budget on staff, and now it’s 26 percent.

In the meantime, DPW and the Public Utilities Commission have contracts worth more than $150 million on contracts with companies like AECOM, a giant engineering outfit based in Dallas, which paid its CEO $9.5 million last year.

AECOM charges the city far more than it would cost to fill that job with public employees:…(more)

It is not often you can connect two different stories under such a juicy title as this:

“Overpaid city contractors caught in corrupt schemes. Labor cries foul, threatens to strike.”

By Nuala Bishari : sfchronicle – excerpt

On Thursday, the Chronicle released the results of a poll that shed new light on the city’s mayoral race. Incumbent London Breed is lagging. Only 18% of people polled said they’d list her as a first choice, compared to former Mayor Mark Farrell at 20%, Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie at 16% and Supervisor Ahsha Safaí with 8%.

Of course, San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system doesn’t just count first-place votes. Looking at the second-place data, however, things get even worse for Breed. The mayor has fewer second-choice votes than Lurie or Farrell.

It’s still early; polls will likely shift as we get closer to the November election. But with a weak incumbent and her top challengers all representing the more moderate side of city politics, these numbers do raise a question: Could a progressive-leaning candidate jump in the race and win?

History certainly shows it’s possible, given the proclivities of ranked choice…

One potential candidate, however, was mentioned by people I talked to: Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin — a sometimes controversial figure, but one known both for his encyclopedic knowledge of San Francisco’s rules and regulations and his commitment to advocating for Asian American communities.

“There is a growing clamor to get Peskin to run,” Jeffrey Kwong, president of the left-leaning Harvey Milk Democratic Club, told me. “I think he’s one of the few people moderates can come over to. He has his ear to the ground like no one else. There’s a consensus among progressives that he has the policy acumen and administrative ability. He’s someone who’s able to get started on the first day of the job.”

Peskin has said he hasn’t ruled out a run. When I asked him about the Chronicle’s poll, however, he told me his focus is on “better policies.”

“I know we can make this city work for everyone, in every neighborhood. But to make our city safer, to bring everyone in-doors, to create an economy that works for the rest of us is going to take uniting around smarter policies — not dividing around increasingly bitter politics.”

That sounded awfully campaign-ish to me. This isn’t an easy race to jump into, especially with the enormous amount of money already pouring into the top candidates’ coffers. But there’s still time: The deadline to file isn’t until June 11…(more)

Mark Nagel and Lori Brooke : rescuesf – excerpt

San Francisco’s homeless shelters are in crisis. Homeless shelters are supposed to offer people a first step on their journey out of homelessness, but in San Francisco the majority of people leaving homeless shelters are returning to the streets. In 2023, the City might have spent as much as $81 million serving people in homeless shelters who eventually exited shelters for street sleeping. These disastrous results, produced at such enormous cost, are a colossal failure that should shock every resident of San Francisco.

Based on an analysis of previously unreported City data obtained through a Sunshine request, this Comment contains the following findings:…(more)

• San Francisco’s homeless shelters are failing in their primary mission of helping people permanently leave homelessness.
• During 2020-23, 246 shelter guests died in the City’s shelters.
• The City is spending enormous financial resources on shelter guests who return to homelessness.
• The City’s inadequate management practices have allowed this crisis to worsen year after year

This Comment makes the following recommendations:

• The City should conduct a thorough and speedy investigation into the causes of the high rates of shelter exits to homelessness or unknown destinations
• The City should prepare a comprehensive strategy for improving the effectiveness of the shelter system.
• The City should overhaul the reporting on its response to homelessness to make better use of the data it collects….

CONCLUSION

After living with a homelessness crisis for more than forty years, San Francisco needs a plan that will deliver results and end homelessness. The starting point is to have a shelter system that offers people an effective first step to permanently leaving the streets. The shelter system should connect people with the supportive services that they need, such as primary health care, psychiatric care, and drug treatment, as well as pathways to find transitional housing or permanent housing.

While the City is generally aware of these issues, City officials are not acting with sufficient urgency to address the shelter crisis. So long as San Francisco’s homeless shelters fail to bring people inside, thousands of unsheltered people will continue to suffer on the City’s streets, neighborhoods will continue to suffer from poor street conditions, and the City will continue to waste vast financial resources on ineffective programs. The scale of the shelter crisis calls for immediate action to fix the shelter system, now.

Read the entire document here : https://www.rescuesf.org/_files/ugd/fe2840_d265f726a9ef45d5b440a2be3821aca0.pdf

By Joe Eskenazi : Missionlocal – excerpt

Mayor’s candidate-controlled Yes-on-E committee donated to organization urging no vote on mayor’s housing bond

On paper, virtually every last vestige of San Francisco political power supports Proposition A, Mayor London Breed’s $300 million affordable housing bond. Some of the most gregarious BigMoneySF groups are for it, and so is The League of Pissed-Off Voters (which presently has $10,000 in its bank account and has fund-raised a shade over $109,000 since 2015).

Accordingly, both pro-housing devotee Sen. Scott Wiener and slow-growther Calvin Welch showed up at the Proposition A kickoff. You can only imagine that conversation:..

Big-money donors hoping to impress the mayor are clearly intuiting where to put their money — and the bond ain’t it. If they were having trouble figuring this out, mayoral fund-raising emails sent to frequent donors and obtained by Mission Local overtly call for giving to Props. C, E and F, but not Prop. A. Members of the donor class tell us they’re getting calls on C, E and F, but not A. When the mayor speaks at community events, she talks about C, E and F, but not A…

The billionaire-funded Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy, the biggest of the BigMoneySF groups, has given $110,000 to TakeActionSF, whose “No B.S.” slate mailer urges San Franciscans to vote down the bond. And, jarringly, the mayor’s Yes-on-E campaign — her own candidate-controlled committee — gave $1,000 to TakeActionSF…

The mayor’s committee donated to an outfit urging voters to reject the mayor’s affordable housing bond…(more)

Given the poor condition of the state and local economies and the high cost of living, including soaring fuel and energy costs, voters are less likely to support more government bonds. Funders understand the economy and bond market. They know the high interest rates and difficulty with supply chains will keep production volumes low and costs high. Now may be the time to pick up foreclosures at a steep discount, not finance new developments. This should be easy when owners abandon their properties in lieu of paying taxes. Banks don’t want loses on their books.

By Mike Ege : frisko – excerpt

On the other side of the world, a state official holds up San Francisco as a stark example of what not to do as the city girds herself for yet another protracted political fight over development

‘San Francisco and Sydney share many attributes, including beautiful architecture and natural harbours spanned by impressive bridges. Regrettably, both cities also share a housing crisis. While San Francisco teeters on what some claim is failed-city status, Sydney still has a chance to avoid a similar fate. But the window of opportunity to act is closing’’ — Sydney Morning Herald Op-Ed, February 5

On February 5, Daniel Mookhey, the state treasurer of New South Wales, addressed an urban policy summit in Sydney, warning that Australia’s premier city had only a five- to 10-year window to avert what he called a “landed gentry” situation, where people with little or no generational wealth would no longer have any foothold for living there. He deliberately cited San Francisco as an example where the city did not want to head…

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a campaign to claw back development policy reforms steered by Sacramento and aimed at increasing housing supply premiered last Sunday in North Beach at a town hall hosted by the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, one of San Francisco’s most potent neighborhood groups.

The emerging campaign is essentially a backlash to newly passed housing laws, like Senate Bills 35, and 8 (which streamlined housing project approvals), Senate Bill 9 (which made construction of multiple units and subdivisions on single-family lots easier), and Senate Bill 10 (which streamlined the zoning process for multi-unit housing projects near transit). Most of this legislation has been shepherded by San Francisco’s own State Senator Scott Wiener, and supported by most of the city’s delegation to Sacramento.…(more)

By Chronicle Editorial Board – excerpt

We need residents in downtown San Francisco, not empty offices. Proposition C would help get us there.

It’s no secret; downtown San Francisco is struggling.

Nearly 36% of the city’s office space is empty, totaling over 30 million square feet. Workers would rather stay home than commute, and many of the businesses that relied on the patronage of those commuters have closed, leaving “for lease” signs on vacant spaces. Downtown is the engine that drives San Francisco’s tax revenues. Consequentially, these vacancies are the most significant contributor to the city’s projected budget deficit of nearly $800 million over the next two budget cycles.

Nearly everyone in San Francisco, it seems, sees a solution to this quandary in converting empty, unwanted offices into housing.

Rightly so…(more)