Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods
Advocating for a healthy city
KPIX CBS News
This is a problem that someone should be able to fix as soon as the new administration steps in.
We understand there is a well-managed private RV park close by that cost less to operate than the city managed one. Perhaps there is someone better able to manage this safe parking site and our new Mayor will find that person in time to save it. Trailer parks are a perfectly legal and widely accepted lifestyle for many. Why San Francisco opposes them is somewhat of a mystery.
Mayor Blocked 3 Permanent Drug-Free Housing Projects
Mayor Breed allocated $3.7 million for permanent drug-free SRO housing in her 2023-24 budget. None of this money has been spent.
Did drug problems end in San Francisco? No. Did other permanent drug-free housing options available to graduates from transitional programs emerge? No.
The mayor did not spend a dime of the $3.7 million allocated for permanent supportive drug-free housing in the 2023-24 budget year. Instead, Mayor Breed intervened three times to block the program she claimed to support.
The North Beach Hotel
“I think a project like this could be a game changer, and very transformative and exciting for so many people who deserve a second chance to live a life free and clean and sober in the city and county of San Francisco,” Breed said.”–SF Chronicle, February 8, 2024…
The San Remo Hotel
The San Remo Hotel, 2237 Mason, was completely vacant (it is legally a tourist hotel). I met with Peskin to assess his support. Peskin not only supported the project but said he would take responsibility for community outreach and community support. I thought that was great. But when I conveyed that to the mayor’s office I was told they didn’t want Peskin doing that. They wanted me to do the outreach.
So I began outreaching to North Beach groups. None expressed opposition. Some asked that I meet with their Board and this was scheduled. All was going well when the mayor’s office told me that wanted one of their close political allies, Cedric Akbar of Westside Community Services, to do door-to-door outreach around the San Remo.
I thought that was odd. We did not need Akbar’s help to do outreach. Akbar was running for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee at the time and I assumed the mayor was looking to help his campaign by assigning him outreach to potential voters (he was elected). Wanting to move the project forward, I said fine to Akbar’s plans…
Steve Adami of Salvation Army also said that permanent drug-free housing didn’t work. I thought that was odd because the Salvation Army was co-sponsoring Matt Haney’s statewide bill mandating money for permanent drug-free housing. After our call I alerted the Bay Area Council about this contradiction (they were co-sponsoring Haney’s bill) and heard from Salvation Army that Adami did not speak for them. He later recanted his opposition to permanent drug free housing expressed at the meeting.
Residents in Westside/Salvation Army programs do not get tenants’ rights. These are transitional “programs” that residents must leave to get the permanent drug-free housing they need.
What I realized was going on here was Mayor Breed trying to shift $3.7 million from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic to her favored nonprofits. The mayor was also reversing her support for THC’s plan to provide a bridge to permanent drug-free housing for those graduating from transitional programs. The Salvation Army and Westside do not provide permanent drug-free housing so that was not where the mayor now wanted this money to go.
What I anticipated would happen after that meeting did happen. The mayor killed her once heavily promoted permanent drug-free housing plan…(more)
Reading this makes me feel some-what vindicated. For some time I have watched Breed flit from one shiny new object to another, never giving any of her proposals time to work. What is particularly galling is the facts that she blame everyone else for not building any affordable housing, when all along it was her holding onto the money, and or, frittering it away on someone else. We shall soon see what she did with it if it is not in the coffers waiting to be spent.
By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez : sfstandard – excerpt
In an interview with The Standard, Peskin said that despite speculation, he isn’t interested in serving as, for instance, chief of staff for mayor-elect Daniel Lurie or the city’s first inspector general. (Regardless, Peskin would be barred from such roles by a rule that prohibits employment at City Hall for a year after leaving.) But Peskin did call Lurie to offer any help he could, he said.
Instead of a staff role, Peskin plans to unite a loose collection of progressive Democrat groups — neighborhood groups, Democratic clubs, civic organizations, and labor — to push back against the influence of wealthy power players in local politics.
A cadre of folks whose net worth borders on the bonkers — including billionaire Bill Oberndorf, who backs Republicans nationally, and The Standard chairman Michael Moritz — have channeled millions of dollars into political groups like TogetherSF, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, and GrowSF.
In this election, such well-heeled donors dropped coins aplenty: Moritz spent $3.1 million; Oberndorf spent $1.1 million; former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, $1.4 million; Ripple CEO Chris Larsen, roughly $1 million; and tech angel investor Ron Conway, $438,000. That’s to say nothing of the city’s new mayor, Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie, who self-funded his campaign to the tune of $8 million.
The outcome of all that spending was mixed.…(more)
insidesf – excerpt
The San Francisco Superior Court has struck down a residential vacancy tax slated to take effect in 2025, ruling that the tax is unconstitutional.
Voters approved the Empty Homes Tax in 2022, which required owners of apartments or condos in structures with three or more units to pay a tax on units vacant for 182 or more days in a calendar year. Filing and fees were scheduled to begin in 2025.
However, the San Francisco Apartment Association, Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute, San Francisco Association of Realtors and four individual landlords filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court in February 2023 to challenge the constitutionality of the law. And the San Francisco Superior Court ruled yesterday morning that the tax violated the Constitution and imposed an unlawful burden on privacy interests, while also being pre-empted by the state’s Ellis Act.
As it stands now, the residential vacancy tax is no longer in effect. The city will appeal the decision and debate will continue. (Here’s a link to the court decision.)
Owners in this property category now don’t need to file or pay any fees to the city. I’ll keep you updated on any future developments…(more)
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new requirements Friday for cities and counties receiving state money to address homeless encampments.
Newsom, who has been cracking down on local governments that refuse to accommodate new housing projects or homeless shelters, said that the state will “claw back” funding for localities that fail to comply with their housing goals.
San Francisco became the first city to fall out of compliance with the housing element law, the California Department of Housing and Community Development ruled in July. San Francisco is required to plan for 82,000 new units between 2023 and 2031, but the city authorized just over 3,000 new units in 2023 and 831 units in the first half of this year, according to the city’s Planning Department. The state announced in August that San Francisco was back on track to return to compliance.
Under a law passed in 2023 by San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener, cities that fail to comply must streamline the approval of most projects.
Newsom also said Friday that cities must follow “all state housing and homelessness laws” to hold on to their millions in state aid from encampment resolution funds…(more)
How did we end up with an anti-San Francisco governor and an anti-San Francisco Senator? What is wrong with our city that no one who likes us runs for state office?
Prop. 33 on the Nov. 5 ballot would overturn Costa Hawkins. If that happens, and Peskin’s bill passes, every apartment build between June 14, 1979 and Nov. 5, 2024 would come under the city’s rent control law…
The legislation, sponsored by Sup. Aaron Peskin, would extend rent controls to the tens of thousands of units that are exempt under state law, if and when that state law is repealed or amended.
Under the Costa Hawkins Act, any apartment built after June 13, 1979 is exempt from any form of local rent control…(more)
Not sure why no one is asking the Mayoral candidates about this. They do a lot of lip service to “the high costs of housing”, but avoid talking about the corporate takeover and control of rental pricing. There is even less talk about the exorbitant costs of fuel and utilities. Most of these are state problems, but they need to be on the table for discussion every time the price of rent is raised, in my opinion.
By Joe Burn, Sam Mondros, and David Sjostedt : sfstandard – excrrpt
Acting fast, Peskin called 911 at 11:02 a.m., he told The Standard in a phone call, and began following the suspect in his car, remaining on the line for eight minutes.
“At which point, I was told he had been apprehended, and I drove back around and found him and identified him, and he is now under arrest,” Peskin said.
Peskin said the victim looked as if he was in his 60s and “maybe homeless.”…
Peskin’s longtime political consultant, Jim Stearns, wasted no time seizing the opportunity to promote the mayoral candidate’s good deed for the day.
“He not only swims from Alcatraz, he single-handedly apprehends dangerous criminals. I mean, of course, he should be mayor,” he told The Standard by phone…(more)
By Susan Dyer Reynolds – via email (excerpt)
by Carol Harvey : sfbayview – excerpt
Read the article before you view the videos. Watch the entire one and one-half hour event by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRITuQhUO3g&list=PLHrKWOo7hlZBqhGnknzClH3RqOO_sR4Lz.
Watch a 14-minute video summary by clicking this link: https://youtu.be/KlcWvBFn36Q.
Watch an eight-minute summary by clicking this link: https://youtu.be/zbHBfGQjK3Y.
If you live on Social Security and Medicare, you and I are not alone.
It has now become too expensive for 65 million Americans to live in the United States of Money. People need food, shelter, healthcare and a basic income. Social Security and Medicare are our safety nets…
On July 30, 2024, with flare and a sense of fun, the California Alliance of Retired Americans (CARA) threw Social Security and Medicare a birthday party. I videoed the event, which took place at the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francesco. I swear I gained weight just looking at the red, white and blue frosted birthday cake held up by Hene Kelly, CARA vice president, and Kory Powell-McCoy, Nancy Pelosi’s district director…
“Scrap the Cap” signs were everywhere. So what’s the cap?
The first thing that Pacific Heights resident Gabriel Wolf recalls when asked about his mid-pandemic move to Upper Fillmore Street is discovering signs of a friendly and engaged community that he found comforting during a time of great uncertainty.
He points out a ginkgo tree dubbed “Bartholome” that the owner of Cielo lobbied the city to have planted on the sidewalk in front of her clothing boutique, and the string lights that a customer of adjacent Ten-Ichi installed outside the 46-year-old sushi restaurant. Across the street, 45-year-old La Mediterranee restaurant refurbished its parklet with a mural depicting a serene sunset…
“These businesses obviously care about this neighborhood and the people in it,” Wolf said.
Now the future for some of these businesses is uncertain.
When a mysterious web of connected limited liability companies started buying up building after building on a three-block stretch of Fillmore, small business owners and residents in the area were hopeful that the infusion of capital could help buoy and revive the close-knit retail community that had been struggling since the pandemic.
But, months after the properties traded hands, the vision of Upper Fillmore’s newest investor is coming into focus, and one thing appears certain: It does not include several of the mom and pop businesses that have anchored the street for decades.
Earlier this year, stealthy entities spent upwards of $40 million on acquiring more than half a dozen aging buildings on Fillmore between Clay and Pine streets, including the defunct Clay Theater at 2261 Fillmore. For now, they’re adding to the street’s shuttered storefronts by displacing a handful of long-time small businesses in an apparent bid to ultimately bring more high-end retailers into the area… (more)
RELATED:
VC Neil Mehta, who’s quietly nabbing prized SF property, plans a “Y Combinator for restaurants”:
What does Neil know about the restaurants he is kicking out? Not much evidently. They are some of the most popular eating establishments in town. How jaded are his tastebuds?
You better keep your car because you are going to need it when they drive you out of town!