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Planning Commission to hear a bad UCSF deal

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Massive new development that violates historic agreements is drawing widespread opposition.

If you read the San Francisco Chronicle story about the UCSF expansion plans today, you might get the impression that the school has gone to great lengths to offer affordable housing, transportation money, and open space to the community – and that everyone thinks this is a fine idea:…

That’s not exactly accurate.

In fact, the deal that will come before the City Planning Commission Thursday/7 has considerable opposition, from neighborhood groups, affordable housing leaders, and the Sierra Club…

The “widespread support” that the chancellor described, and the Chron linked to, is almost entirely elected officials who favor more growth (State Sen. Scott Wiener) or don’t represent the district (Rep. Jackie Speier and Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, both from the Peninsula), or pro-development groups like SPUR and the Chamber of Commerce, or Yimbys. Check out the list... (more)

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Gavin Newsom could be ‘undermined’ by Democrats in recall efforts, report says

By Eric Ting : sfgate – excerpt

The sixth attempt to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is rapidly gaining steam amid the worsening pandemic, a controversial new stay-at-home order and an unemployment fraud scandal.

It was previously reported by Politico’s Carla Marinucci that those close to the governor were growing “increasingly worried” about the recall efforts, and Marinucci’s latest report on the recall adds another twist.

After detailing the new Republican fundraising efforts behind the recall — while noting the challenges the GOP will face in a heavily Democratic state — Marinucci quotes a “Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group” who says, “We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires” on getting on the ballot in a potential recall election in 2021….(more)

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She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired

By Scott Morris, Bay City News Foundation : propublica – excerpt

Alice Stebbins was hired to fix the finances of California’s powerful utility regulator. She was fired after finding $200 million for the state’s deaf, blind and poor residents was missing…

Earlier this year, the governing board of one of California’s most powerful regulatory agencies unleashed troubling accusations against its top employee.

Commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, accused Executive Director Alice Stebbins of violating state personnel rules by hiring former colleagues without proper qualifications. They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC.

“You took a series of actions over the course of several years that calls into question your integrity,” Batjer told Stebbins, who joined the agency in 2018. Those actions, she said, “cause us to have to consider whether you can continue to serve as the leader of this agency.”…(more)

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Clint Reilly, S.F. Examiner’s New Owner, Vows to Expand Paper’s Newsroom, Coverage

By Laura Wenus : sfpublicpress – excerpt (includes audio)

The soon-to-be owner of the San Francisco Examiner intends to grow the publication’s newsroom and expand its coverage, diversifying the perspectives in San Francisco’s news ecosystem.

Clint Reilly, a retired political consultant with a real estate and hospitality business who also owns two local magazines, is purchasing the Examiner and SF Weekly after the two papers were under absentee ownership for years. The company he and his wife Janet co-own, Clint Reilly Communications, is expected to take over in January.

“What’s happened in newspapers over the last decade, decade and a half, even 20 years, has been essentially a huge cutback in journalists and costs at the local level,” Reilly said. “As journalists have been laid off, so have the beats that they cover. And so the amount of coverage of local news has declined dramatically over the last 10 years.”… (more)

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Report on the Wiener Town Hall

Posted December 22, 2020
There were some problems at the start, and Twitter crashed.  Congress had just passed the Cares package, and much of the talk was about that, and about the vaccine regimen and unemployment problesms.  He talked about emphases for the new legislative session: housing in general, extending the eviction moratorium, helping small landlords, reforming criminal justice (policing), and mental health programs, including safe injection sites.  The legislature has a windfall for the state budget due to the stock market and other reasons; SF has a drug overdose epidemic to deal with; there are problems with the EDD payments, with the PG&E bankruptcy, and with the Homekey program.  (No specific bills were mentioned)
     He ended the hour by saying there would be more town halls in the future, with some great guest speakers…
Regards,
Charles
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Hypocrisy in the local zoning debate

By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

Professors who argue that local regulations drive up housing prices appear to admit they have no credible data to back up that argument.

On December 1, 48hills ran my story about the California State Auditor’s dubious sortie against local land use authority, an incursion purportedly undertaken in behalf of greater housing affordability. While I’m waiting for the Auditor to respond to my Public Records Act request for documentation of her numerous claims, I want to call out the hypocrisy of three of the scholars cited in my story.

To illustrate the tenuousness of the Auditor’s attack, I observed that a growing number of academics are questioning the argument that “local constraints significantly hamper the provision of affordable housing.” I illustrated that interrogation with a few examples:…(more)

Government confusion, fraud and corruption are to blame for the high cost of building in San Francisco.

If we look at San Francisco’s building triumvirate, Planning, DBI and Permitting departments, that the public and small contractors must wade through we can see that the primary costs for building and remodeling in the city is not in government regulations. It is in government confusion, fraud and corruption. The sad thing is that is took the FBI t expose what many knew was going on for decades. This system is rigged. You must pay to play or get out of the game.

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Neighborhood Notes: New funding for Latino Task Force and online events happening soon

by Juan Carlos Lara : missionlocal – excerpt

DPH pandemic grants

The Department of Public Health announced $5.25 million in grants to neighborhood organizations for pandemic-related community assistance.

The funds are meant to support contact tracing, outreach efforts, mobile testing and community care for residents with Covid-19, according to a press release by the Department of Emergency Management.

In the Mission, the Latino Task Force and the Mission Language Vocational School will receive the grants, totalling about $500,000, according to Jon Jacobo, health committee chair for the Latino Task Force…

The community care component consists of workers bringing food or supplies to residents quarantining with Covid-19. If a quarantining community member lives in a crowded home, they will be connected with quarantine hotels in the city to prevent spread within the household.

The Latino Task Force also provides financial support to encourage residents to stay home rather than going to work sick…

Residents hoping to seek out the services mentioned above can do so here, or show up to 701 Alabama Street any Monday and Wednesday through Friday during regular business hours. …(more)

RELATED:

Department of Public Health opens Covid-19 popup community testing  site on Barlett Street

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Transit advocates grill nominee Manny Yekutiel on his vision for the SFMTA

by Clara-Sophia Daly : missionlocal – excerpt

‘Class should not be a barrier to getting around the city.’

Manny Yekutiel, Mayor London Breed’s nominee to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board, spent close to two hours Thursday evening telling community members and advocacy groups that his priority would be equity — in both access to transportation and within the agency.

“You have to get your own house in order, before you can tell others to get their house in order,” he said, seemingly alluding to the lawsuit Black employees filed Wednesday against the city, and acknowledging that “there is a problem with racial discrimination within SFMTA.”…

“I want to make it easier for small business owners who are disproportionately represented by people of color and immigrants, and see a better relationship with SFMTA and small business owners,” he said…

He hopes to continue to support small businesses on the SFMTA board, especially on Mission Street, where he said that the red transit-only lanes have made it challenging for some businesses. “It is possible we could take another look at forced right turns and think about how we can encourage more business on Mission Street, or think about eliminating or reducing certain registration fees for business owners.” … (more)

Manny offers a refreshing change of view on transportation as seen through the eyes of a small businessman and he is not afraid to speak out. If the board does not eat him alive, he may be able to bring some new ideas to the SFMTA. They certainly need some.

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Two of architecture’s biggest names just pulled out of an ambitious climate pledge

By Nate Berg : fastcompany – excerpt

In as many days, two of the world’s most well-known architecture firms have shocked the field and removed their names from a pledge aiming to reduce architecture’s contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss. First Foster + Partners and then a day later Zaha Hadid Architects withdrew from Architects Declare, a pledge launched by architects in the U.K. in 2019 that commits to reducing the architecture and construction industry’s nearly 40% contribution to global carbon emissions…(more)

At last we have an admission that the ordinary citizens going about their lives are not the primary producers of GHG. Read the article for a list of the primary contributors.

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Mill Valley’s RHNA Methology Letter Calls for a Stronger Response

By Susan Kirsch of Mill Valley : marinpost – excerpt

This letter is written to the Mill Valley Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Councilmembers, but it may apply to any of our local civic leaders who are considering how to deal with the RHNA number conundrum, made more obviously out of touch with reality by the large exodus of citizens from California this year.

The end of the land rush has come to the state, due to a number of factors, but, our government officials can’t get past their old methods of creating financing through growth. Read the letter here and consider how you may apply the information to your community…(more)

Review the investigative report by The Embarcadero Institute, entitled “Double Counting in the Latest Housing Needs Assessment” (September 2020)…

“Use of an incorrect vacancy rate and double counting, inspired by SB-828, caused the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to exaggerate by more than 900,000 the units needed in SoCal, the Bay Area and the Sacramento area.”