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Former SF official agrees to plea deal, will cooperate with FBI in corruption investigation

By Andre Torrez : ktvu – excerpt

SAN FRANCISCO – A former San Francisco aide to Mayor London Breed has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and will cooperate with the FBI in their ongoing corruption investigation of San Francisco City Hall…

Federal officials made the announcement on Tuesday regarding the former Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services Director, Sandra Zuniga…

“This investigation continues, but the window of time for cooperation is closing.  If you are involved in public corruption at any level, reach out to the FBI before the FBI reaches out to you. Early cooperation is always viewed favorably.”…(more)

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Will SF Spend New Federal Homeless Dollars on Tents, Shelters or Homes?

By Randy Shaw : beyondchron – excerpt

City Faces Moment of Truth in Combating Homelessness

The Democrats’ American Rescue Plan provides $32 billion for addressing homelessness and low-income rental assistance. The National Low Income Housing Coalition website—which offers a great city and state breakdowns— has San Francisco slated to get nearly $19 million in new homeless action grant funds (the Plan also erased the city’s $650 million budget deficit).

The question then emerges: will San Francisco use these new funds to house the unhoused or only seek band aid solutions?…(more)

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Just Up-zoning the Suburbs Won’t Solve our Housing Problems

By Casey Maddren : citywatchla – excerpt

NEED MORE THAN SUBURBS–Anybody who pays attention to the news knows that there’s a heated, ongoing debate in LA, and across California, about how to solve our housing problems.

There are lots of different proposals floating around, but the message we hear most often from elected officials and the development community is that we have to up-zone to allow a whole lot more density. The argument goes that it’s just a matter of supply and demand. If we up-zone our cities and up-zone our suburbs, that will unleash the power of the free market and we’ll have plenty of cheap housing for everybody.

One idea that’s especially hot right now is the proposal to up-zone areas dominated by single-family homes (SFH). Some State legislators have embraced this approach, resulting in bills like SB 1120.

The City of LA hasn’t yet made a move to up-zone SFH areas, but the concept is popular among local progressives who believe we just need to build more housing. Heated debates have erupted over the topic on social media. At a recent hearing on the Hollywood Community Plan Update (HCPU) some members of the public expressed enthusiastic support for ending SFH zoning…

If the key issue is the lack of affordable housing, up-zoning by itself does nothing to solve the problem. As Patrick Condon points out in his book Sick City, when a city just increases allowable density, it’s really increasing the cost of the land, and that additional cost is ultimately paid by the household that’s renting or buying. The benefit goes to the landowner, not the renter or buyer. For a solution, Condon holds up Cambridge, Massachusetts, where city officials adopted an ordinance that allows increased density but only for the construction of permanently affordable units…

Casey Maddren is President of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA [www.un4la.com]), a community group focused on better planning and better governance, and a CityWatch contributor.) Image: Curbed. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abram…(more)

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Cities Are Sinking Under the Weight of Urban Development

By Linda Poon : bloomberg – excerpt

A new study quantifies what big buildings are doing to the ground beneath San Francisco and other cities, as sea levels rise.

In late 2020, engineers began working on a $100 million project to stop San Francisco’s Millennium Tower from tilting and sinking further into the ground. Tenants of the beleaguered luxury condo had learned four years earlier that the 58-story high-rise had sunk some 16 inches in over a decade. But the tower’s predicament is only part of a larger problem, and not just for the Bay Area: Cities around the world are sinking under the weight of their own urban development — at the same time that sea levels are rising.

A new study seeks to quantify how much the sheer weight of the built environment contributes to the sinking of cities, a geological phenomenon known as land subsidence. While urbanization is just one small cause of this phenomenon among several, the paper in the journal AGU Advances estimates that its impact is only likely to grow as people move to cities in greater numbers. As a result, densely packed cities are likely to sink faster than less developed areas.

Study author Tom Parsons, an earthquake seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, looked at the San Francisco Bay Area as a case study of this impact. He estimates that the collective weight of all of the San Francisco region’s buildings is roughly 1.6 trillion kilograms, or 3.5 trillion pounds. That alone may have caused the land to sink by as much as 80 millimeters, or more than three inches, over time as the city grew. …(more)

 

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City suspends contractors involved in ongoing corruption scandal

By Michael Barba : sfexaminer – excerpt

San Francisco is suspending five individuals charged in the City Hall corruption scandal and their companies from receiving contracts under a new local law aimed at keeping government clean.

The defendants, Nick Bovis, Alan Varela, William Gilmartin, Florence Kong and Walter Wong, are the first to be temporarily barred from doing city business under the newly implemented legislation that allows local officials to block contractors from engaging in city business while their criminal cases are pending or while the debarment process against them is underway…(more)

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UCSF’s Neighbors File CEQA Lawsuit

by Doug Comstock : westsideobserver – excerpt

Local residents oppose UCSF Parnassus expansion that would tower over the neighborhood and Golden Gate Park 

Neighborhood groups filed a Petition February 19th in Alameda County Superior Court challenging UC’s Environmental Impact Report for the massive UCSF Parnassus expansion proposal.

UC proposes a project that would add over 2 million square feet to the currently over-built campus — the equivalent of a Sales Force Tower and the TransAmerica Pyramid combined. The oversized project would be thrust between two mature neighborhoods – contrary to a 40-year commitment by the university to strictly adhere to the current envelope of the Parnassus complex. Neighborhood organizations and the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club as well as the Affordable Housing Alliance have concerns about the project’s effects on housing, transit, Golden Gate Park, and wildlife, as well as the failure to keep promises to the community it “serves.”…(more)

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Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning, but will it create more housing?

By J.K. Dineen : sfchronicle – excerpt (via email)

The national movement to eliminate exclusionary single-family zoning is picking up steam in the Bay Area as cities explore the benefits of getting rid of a land use policy designed to keep people of color and working class families out of certain neighborhoods.

Last week, the city councils in Berkeley and South San Francisco took steps to end single-family zoning, with Berkeley promising to get rid of it within a year and South City initiating a study as part of its general plan update. After the Berkeley vote, Council Member Terry Taplin, one of the authors of the resolution, called it a “historical moment for us in Berkeley.”

But while the movement to allow multifamily buildings in zones previously limited to single-family homes is being embraced as a correction of past discriminatory policies — Sacramento, Oregon and Minneapolis have passed such laws — the question of whether it will actually increase housing production is a lot more complicated, according to builders and architects…(download.pdf)

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and titan of the Beat era, dies at 101

By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times : sfexaminer – excerpt

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the San Francisco poet, publisher and bookseller who played a leading role in West Coast literary history as a champion of Beat writer Allen Ginsberg and co-founder of the legendary City Lights bookstore, died in San Francisco.

Ferlinghetti died Monday evening, according to Starr Sutherland, a friend who is working on a documentary on the fabled bookstore. The cause was interstitial lung disease, his son Lorenzo told The Washington Post. Ferlinghetti was 101…(more)

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Building Department director tasked with reforming antiquated permitting process quits abruptly

By Joe Eskenazi : 48hills – excerpt

In a blow for those hoping to streamline, modernize and cleanse the Department of Building Inspection’s byzantine and hidebound permitting process, the director hired to oversee this move has abruptly resigned after just 2.5 months on the job.

Issam Shahrouri was hired in late 2020 from Oakland, where he was deputy director of its building department. His status as an outsider in a department renowned for its insularity was a source of pride and hope for reformers, who looked to move the Department of Building Inspection past its reputation for scleroticism and corruption. Shahrouri also came to San Francisco in good estimation, and was accredited as a “Certified Building Official” — purportedly making him the only “CBO” in the department after the hasty March 2020 departure of former director Tom Hui in the wake of a corruption investigation.

But department employees were on Tuesday stunned to receive a brief email from interim director Patrick O’Riordan announcing Shahrouri’s sudden departure…(more)

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Supes call for investigation of Ferris Wheel money

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Revenue goes not to the city, but to a private entity that’s part of an FBI corruption probe…

The reason the Recreation and Parks Department wants to extend the run of the Ferris Wheel – according to Rec-Park documents – is that the St. Louis-based vendor that built it, SkyStar Partners, needs about 500,000 rides to make the roughly $9 million it was counting on.

And the private San Francisco Parks Alliance, which is a part of the FBI corruption investigation in SF, was counting on taking its share of about $500,000.

You can read the contract here. Not a penny of the revenue from this carnival ride will go to the city. It’s split between SkyStar and the Parks Alliance, which is supposed to use it to finance celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Golden Gate Park…(more)

Nobody likes to pay for parties more than Rec and Park and the Parks Alliance according to FBI investigations, and the City Attorney.

We were objecting to the fumes and noise from the generator that does not follow the logic for a city that is making ordinary citizens give up their gas generated heating systems and cooks give up their gas stoves. But, if there is also a question of funds and who gets them, it should be up to the Board of Supervisors to determine whether or not to sign the contract. That is, unless the Rec and Park Department have full authority to override City Hall on the matter.