News

By Joe Eskenazi : misisonlocal – excerpt

Follow the dark money.

President of DBI’s commission admits he has private builders edit, redraft official DBI materials

Because this is San Francisco, this story starts with a party.

It was May 2015, and Mayor Ed Lee had just turned 63. The city’s Residential Builders Association, the politically significant group of largely Irish immigrant builders, threw him a fantastic soiree. A cavalcade of elected officials, politicos, movers and shakers descended upon a spacious and elegant Forest Hill home for cake, Irish dancing, drinks and an all-around good time.

Because this is San Francisco, it warrants mentioning that the permitting situation for the spacious and elegant home hosting this party is a bizarre amalgamation of confusing irregularities; the permit enabling the construction of the downstairs living space where revelers at the mayoral shindig sat on couches and mingled had never been signed off and was never inspected by Department of Building Inspection personnel – not even to this day…(more)

The backslapping crowd is at it again. No one finds themselves as deserving of praise as the “ City Family” departments and agencies. No one dose better job of cleaning cash than the appointees our elected officials choose to hire and promote.

By Susan Bender : archinect – excerpt

Global architecture, engineering, and consulting firm Stantec is an integrated design delivery partner—teamed with general contractor, Clark Construction— on the Block 34 Clinic Building facility, which has broken ground. The 182,800-square-foot, $335.8 million project is the newest addition to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center on its Mission Bay campus. Stantec is providing architecture, medical planning, interior design, LEED consulting, building energy modeling, and landscape architecture services.

The facility will house a wide array of medical programs, including adult urgent care, a retail pharmacy offering prescriptions and refills for both patients and local residents, imaging, adult ambulatory surgery, and multispecialty clinics including: adult primary care, dermatology, outpatient rehabilitation, cardiovascular, urology, an otolaryngology head and neck clinic, gastroenterology, endocrine, and pain management…(more)

The UCSF machine is growing without their new hospital expansion. Suppose they will be importing labor to fill all those new empty condos with the singing sidewalks nearby. Maybe they should shore of the sidewalks and roads before they add more weight and bulk on top of the landfill that is probably sinking around the site.

By Melanie Woodrow : abc7news – excerpt (includes video)

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A drive along the Hunters Point Expressway perimeter of Candlestick State Park reveals hundreds of RVs. A closer look reveals trash, human waste and needles. Residents say in addition to being unsightly, much of this is a fire hazard…

The proposed plan would provide spaces for unhoused people living in RVs and cars.

“We want equity. That’s all we want is equity in the community, so we feel sorry for the unhoused, but we need to spread the unhoused and disenfranchised around the city,” said Moore…(more)

That comment about spreading the unhoused and disenfranchised around the city needs to be addresses by anyone who thinks there is any part of the city untouched by the problem, and in the process of putting together a plan.

By Frances Carrigan, UT-Letters : sandiegouniontribune – excerpt

Despite flex alerts, long-term drought, and a failing infrastructure (e.g. traffic) we are being told that neighborhoods can quadruple in size.

Re “Newsom signs law to allow up to four housing units to replace single-family lots” (Sept. 16): Assembly Bills 9 and 10 could now eliminate single-family neighborhoods. Gov. Newsom just signed the bills. This will allow a single-family home to be replaced by up to four units.

Also, Proposition 19 took away our childrens’ inheritance of our properties. They will now have to live in the inherited property or pay the market value tax. Our freedom of choice is slowly being taken away from us. I cannot understand why people are allowing this and not protesting…(more)

Announcement by the Justice Department – Northern District of California

Defendant Bribed Former SF DPW Director Mohammed Nuru with Money, Meals, And Gifts – Including A Tractor

SAN FRANCISCO – Alan Varela was sentenced today in federal court to 24 months in prison and ordered to pay a $127,000 fine for a seven year conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud by bribing a San Francisco public official, announced Acting United States Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair. The sentence was handed down by the Honorable William H. Orrick, United States District Judge.

A federal complaint filed September 17, 2020, charged Varela, 60, of Orinda, and William Gilmartin, 61, of San Mateo, with bribery of a public official. In 1991, Varela founded ProVen Management, a Bay Area civil engineering and construction firm that engaged in large scale infrastructure projects. Varela and Gilmartin acted as the firm’s president and vice-president, respectively, during the conspiracy time period. According to the complaint, Varela and Gilmartin provided a stream of benefits to Mohammed Nuru, then the Director of San Francisco’s Department of Public Works (DPW), in exchange for favorable treatment of their business interests, including non-public inside information…(more)

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Second ex-DBI employee accused of taking a loan from a developer and then handling his projects — Mission Local tracks down his identity

The office of the Controller today released the seventh of nine eventual reports on city dysfunction and corruption — and, today, it was the Department of Building Inspection’s turn in the barrel.

The 56-page report tosses around terms like “nepotism,” “cronyism,” and “corruption — and that’s just on page 3. All told, the report read like a medley of the issues Mission Local has been focusing on, including the troubled projects at 555 Fulton and 2867 San Bruno, the saga of disgraced former senior inspector Bernie Curran — and the Department of Building Inspection’s disorganized electronic tracking system, which is rife with opportunities to alter or even delete files.

As the controller’s report put it today:

The department’s permitting and inspection system lacks system controls to ensure completed data is entered into the system and to prevent inappropriate after-the-fact changes to recorded inspection records…(more)

By: Sharon Rushton : marinpost – excerpt

Big Wall Street Investment Firms, Big Real Estate, and Big Tech have generated billions in revenue from residential real estate. To capitalize on their residential endeavors, they have successfully championed a self-serving false narrative about the housing crisis. Since these powerful industries shell out millions of dollars for marketing, lobbying, and campaign contributions, they wield great influence over politicians, government agencies, the news media, and the public at large. This influence has resulted in a sea change in residential land use policy and legislation.

This article does the following:

• Demonstrates Big Wallstreet Investment Firms’, Big Real Estate’s, and Big Tech’s appetite for residential real estate;
• Describes the “False Housing Crisis Narrative”;
• Reveals the millions of dollars the Big Players are spending to influence political campaigns, legislation, and the press;
• Shows that Big Wallstreet Investment Firms’, Big Real Estate’s, and Big Tech’s lobbying efforts have resulted in land use policy and legislation that augment their investments in residential properties;
• Presents a more effective way to address California’s housing affordability challenge…

BIG WALLSTREET INVESTMENT FIRMS’, BIG REAL ESTATE’S, & BIG TECH’S APPETITE FOR RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE

Big Wallstreet Investment Firms, Big Real Estate, and Big Tech have become increasingly hungry for residential properties.

Rented homes have been a hot trade since investors made lucrative bets on foreclosed houses during the 2008-9 Great Recession. During the COVID-19 crisis, rents collected from commercial real-estate assets such as malls and offices took a hit, whereas most private residential tenants continued to pay up, according to the Wall Street Journal article entitled; “Property Investors Bed Down in the Family Home” [1]…(more)