Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

SF Renters on Verge of Winning Collective Bargaining Rights

Garrett Overheul/Unsplash

San Francisco lawmakers will soon decide whether to approve a proposal that could compel landlords across the city to negotiate with their tenants over a broad array of housing issues. The proposal has widespread political backing.

 

Groundbreaking tenant protections just got closer to becoming a reality in San Francisco.

City supervisors Monday gave the initial thumbs-up to legislation to protect the formation of tenant associations that, like unions, could collectively bargain with landlords. Negotiations could cover a broad array of concerns, including aesthetics, construction schedules and even rent levels building-wide. The three-person Rules Committee voted unanimously to approve the protections, which now move to the full Board of Supervisors.

The legislation appears likely to pass. Author Aaron Peskin has four co-sponsors, not including Rafael Mandelman, who green-lighted the proposal in the Rules Committee. If Mandelman remains a yes vote, it will have a majority of the full board behind it. The ordinance would need eight votes to override a veto from Mayor London Breed, who has not publicly taken a stance on it.

Peskin, who represents North Beach, called the proposal “the strongest tenant organizing legislation at the municipal level in the history of this state and country.” It is inspired by similar organizing protections that have been effective in federally subsidized housing.

At Monday’s committee meeting, Peskin said he had amended the legislation in response to concerns by the San Francisco Apartment Association, which represents landlords and opposed a previous version of the protections. The changes allow landlords to send representatives to negotiations rather than personally showing up.

The Apartment Association did not respond to an email asking whether it supported the latest version of the proposal.

Because the legislation fosters a bargaining environment similar to that between unions and employers, it has widespread support from labor groups, including the San Francisco Labor Council, the National Union of Healthcare Workers and Service Employees International Union.

The protections are especially important as renters try to stay housed while facing financial pressures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Molly Goldberg, director for the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition, a group of organizations that offer services to thousands of tenants every year.

“This has been a challenging couple of years for all of us, and our counseling clinics are seeing two to three times the volume of cases that they’ve ever seen before, and we don’t expect this to change any time soon,” Goldberg said. “There are too many tenants that are self-evicting before we ever reach them.”

The legislation is largely inspired by long-simmering tensions between a group of San Francisco tenants and Veritas, often called the city’s largest landlord. The Veritas Tenants Association tried for more than a year to get the company to bargain with it over forgiving debt, including unpaid rent, that accumulated during the pandemic. The association won major concessions in January.

The Veritas Tenants Association helped Peskin’s office craft the proposal, which would help tenants establish the kind of dialogue they struggled to achieve with Veritas.

“We are hopeful that the ordinance serves as a foundation for new collective rights in the future,” said Debbie Nunez, a Veritas Tenants Association member.

Under the legislation, tenant associations could become official in rent-controlled or market-rate buildings with five or more units where the occupants of at least half the units signed on. The landlord or their representative would be required to periodically sit down with the tenant group and deliberate in good faith about their concerns. If they failed to do so, the tenants could appeal to the city’s Rent Board to penalize the landlord by forcing rent reductions.

 

 

Amazon in SF: City Quietly Inked Agreement (Kills Affordable Housing Opportunities)

Featured in the San Francisco Standard:

Amazon in SF: City Quietly Inked Agreement on Proposed Delivery Hub, Raising Hackles Over Back-Room Dealing 

San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s office quietly inked an agreement with Amazon.com Inc. last September to begin negotiating terms for the company’s proposed delivery hub at 900 Seventh St., according to documents obtained by The Standard through a public records request.  

 

The “memorandum of understanding” (MOU) with Amazon signals significant support at City Hall for a project that’s expected to face stiff opposition from labor unions, neighborhood groups and other stakeholders.

The agreement calling for the company and the city “to cooperate in negotiating the substance of a public benefits package” for the project was signed by Kate Sofis, the director of the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD), the city agency responsible for hashing out development agreements that benefit the city. Amazon agreed to pay the city up to $250,000 for the time the OEWD and the City Attorney spend working on the deal. The MOU is non-binding and can be abandoned or altered at any time.

Such agreements are not unusual. But several top city officials said that they were surprised and upset to learn about the deal only now, and that it was inappropriate for official negotiations on such a controversial project to be kept quiet and exclude other stakeholders.

“I am not surprised that Amazon would try to come into the community without working with residents, businesses, and everyone that will be affected by their presence,” said Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton, who represents the district where the property is located. “I think it signals that Amazon is an irresponsible neighbor.”

The Mayor’s Office did not respond to repeated requests for comment made Friday and over the weekend.

Amazon acquired a 6-acre site near the mouth of Mission Creek from trash-hauler Recology for $200 million in December 2020. Once the site of a proposed mixed-use development that would have delivered up to 1,000 units of badly needed housing, Amazon now wants to use the property for a “last-mile delivery station” that would employ up to 500 people and help speed delivery of packages in the city, according to a company presentation.

Sofis, before joining OEWD, had led SF Made, an advocacy group for locally manufactured brands, and had expressed support for Amazon’s purchase of the property. She did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Stephen Maduli-Williams, Amazon’s San Francisco-based manager of economic development policy who documents show is representing the company in negotiations with the city, did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

Amazon has increasingly run into local obstacles around the country as it expands its massive footprint of warehouses, distributions hubs, offices and data centers. The company canceled plans for a second headquarters in New York in 2019 in the face of local opposition, though the San Francisco project is much more limited.

The company has also been fighting union efforts to organize its workers, and that’s expected to be a major issue in labor-friendly San Francisco. One local union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, has already been organizing neighborhood groups and other labor unions in response to Amazon under a coalition called the San Francisco Southeast Alliance. Jim Araby, the organizer who has led that campaign, said the union had no comment.

Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, did not respond to a message seeking comment on Friday.

Amazon first submitted plans for the 650,000-square foot, three-story delivery station in February. Under state law, the project requires an environmental-impact review as well as a public approval process before the Planning Commission. It’s unclear when that process might begin.

The memorandum of understanding designates OEWD as the “lead representative of the City in negotiating” with the company. It specifies: “As currently envisioned by Developer, the Project would not require the approval of a special use district, planning code and zoning map amendments, or the establishment of project-specific design guidelines. The Project will likely involve agreements related to workforce development and other public benefits, which may require review of other City agencies.”

The fact that the agreement was signed without the knowledge of city staffers and elected officials is stoking suspicion that Breed is willing to support Amazon at the expense of organized labor, neighborhood groups and other interests.

“It would have been nice to know the administration entered into it,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who helped negotiate the complex land-use plan in the 2000s that kept the Seventh Street site zoned for warehouse use—a choice made then to preserve blue-collar jobs in San Francisco. 

Now, almost 20 years later, with the city’s income inequality much worse, Amazon’s low-paying delivery jobs, which would not allow workers to afford housing in the city, are much less appealing.

“It just feels a little janky,” Peskin added, “because, basically, it’s a sign that labor, and traffic, and environmental impacts to brick-and-mortar businesses are all being ignored and Amazon is being embraced.”

Pay starts at $17.25 an hour for Amazon employees at delivery stations, and delivery drivers, who work for third-party companies, start at $21 an hour, according to a summary of a “town hall meeting” led by Amazon and conducted over Zoom in November. 

Amazon already has three other sites in the city: 749 Toland Ave., near the produce market in Bayview; 435 23rd St.; and 888 Tennessee St., where the company employs 502 people, half of whom are “coming from San Francisco zip codes,” company officials said at the meeting.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development was part of the Mayor’s Office.

 

 

San Francisco Night Ministry

Please check the San Francisco Night Ministry's Open Cathedral events (food for the homeless): Sundays 2pm at Civic Center Plaza and Thursdays 5:30 pm at the 16th and Mission Street BART station. 

 

Saint Paulus Lutheran church's congregation makes the sandwiches after weekly worship so come to 1541 Polk St this Sunday: 10am for prayers and/or 11.30am to volunteer making sandwiches. 

 

The Night Ministry also has virtual prayer gatherings on Tuesdays at 6pm and their Care Line is available to all from 8pm - 4am every night by calling 844-HOPE-4-SF. 

 

Details on volunteering at the Open Cathedrals, joining their virtual prayer groups or to speak one-on-one with a Care Line specialist are on the Night Ministry's website: https://sfnightministry.org/

 

Also please follow their social accounts in support of everything the Night Ministry does:

 

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram

 

 

Car Dwellers Now Have Bathrooms, Showers and Other Services.

Featured in the San Francisco Examiner:

San Francisco opens service center for people living in cars, RVs

San Franciscans who live in their vehicles now have a space with access to bathrooms, showers and other services.

The long-awaited Bayview Vehicle Triage Center opened Friday at the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area’s boat launch parking lot. It is a joint project between The City, California State Parks and residents in Bayview-Hunters Point.

The center includes as many as 135 parking spaces for 203 people, and will have 24-hour security and staff onsite, as well as bathrooms, showers, and water access.

Residents will also have access to services such as health care, assistance with housing and job placement.

“We must take advantage of every opportunity we get, and all do our part, to ensure that our unhoused residents have a safe place to sleep and regular access to stabilizing services,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “As we continue to move forward with our Homelessness Recovery Plan, we must find solutions for people living in their RVs or their cars and provide them with a path out of homelessness.”

A report released by the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing in June found the Bayview District is the neighborhood impacted most by vehicular homelessness, with some 677 vehicles being used for shelter in the area.

“The Candlestick area has been under-resourced, neglected and overrun with challenges for way too long. For years, our housed neighbors living in the Candlestick area have been calling on The City to tackle these very issues,” said Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton, whose district includes the Bayview. “All of our community members deserve to live in a neighborhood that’s clean and safe and our vehicularly housed folks deserve access to basic services like restrooms, electricity and pathways to housing. This VTC is the first step towards answering the calls of all our neighbors in the area who deserve better.”

The center is being funded by November 2018’s Proposition C, a gross tax receipts initiative to pay for homelessness services.

The center will be operated by the nonprofit organizations Urban Alchemy and Bayview Hunters Point Foundation.

According to city officials, the site is temporary as the city has negotiated a two-year lease with California State Parks.

 

The Bayview neighborhood is the city’s greatest area impacted by vehicular homelessness, with 677 vehicles occupied in June, according to San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. (Bayview Hill Neighborhood Association)

 

 

See Something - Say Something: It Should Be A Crime To Be A Criminal

Please read this blog post from the New York Post. Now we've all seen some type of illegal activity in our city, whether it's public defecation, store theft, car break ins, porch pirates etc. And we all know that the extreme left DA won't prosecute, which therefore gives the law breakers even more ammunition to destroy our city because it's now not a crime to be a criminal. So you'd think that if you reported the illegal activity to the police, it'd run on deaf ears so 'what's the point...' attitude. Well we all need to rally around this issue now that the Mayor and District Supervisors have said 'enough is enough.' Every time we report incidents, even when we know they'll never be actioned because the police aren't legally allowed to pursue, each reported incident is logged. And the more logs, the more the stats grow of theft, violence, defacing our city etc and this data is important because we need a track record of illegal acceleration. If we say nothing, the stats stay low and it looks like SF has blown criminality out of proportion. So by reporting incidents, knowing nothing will be done about it, we're stating that 'yes, there is a major problem in our city, we're documenting it and we're not making this up. It's real, it's scary and our city is being taken over by criminals that the DA won't stop.' So when you see something, say something because again...it should be a crime to be a criminal and we must ensure that law & order returns. Please share this. 

DA Chesa Boudin won’t give San Francisco one thing it needs: tough love 

Last month, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said she made an emergency request to the city’s Board of Supervisors for more money to help support a police crackdown on crime, including open air drug dealing, car break-ins and retail theft.

“I’m proud this city believes in giving people second chances,” said Breed. “Nevertheless, we also need there to be accountability when someone does break the law . . . I was raised by my grandmother to believe in ‘tough love,’ in keeping your house in order, and we need that, now more than ever.”

But a few days later, San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin denounced her plan as “knee-jerk” and “short-sighted,” thereby throwing a monkey wrench in her plans. Boudin called for San Francisco to “shift our focus to . . . addressing root causes of crime.” Without Boudin’s participation, Breed will struggle to achieve her goal of shutting down open-air drug use and dealing, and rising property crimes. 

o be sure, there is still a lot that Breed can do without Boudin. On Christmas Eve, after a 12-hour meeting, the city’s Board of Supervisors voted to support her declaration of a state of emergency in the Tenderloin neighborhood, where open-air drug use is widespread. This puts the city’s emergency management department in charge of responding to the drug overdose crisis, which kills about two people a day, and will allow the city to open a “linkage center” capable of referring addicts to housing and rehab.

But Boudin’s opposition, along with that of progressives on the Board of Supervisors, was enough for Breed to pull back from her promise to increase funding for the police and arrest people for using drugs in public. And without the active participation of Boudin, the arrests that are made are unlikely to result in prosecution — so dealers and other criminals are likely to just return to the street.

Why is Boudin so opposed to Breed’s actions? According to the DA, “Affordable housing, quality education, access to health care and addiction services can provide the stability that empirical evidence has shown actually deters criminal activity.” But the “empirical evidence” Boudin pointed to simply found that, in 12 cities where more than 10% of the population received welfare benefits, “more crime occurs when more time has passed since welfare payments occurred.” It did not explore the role of any factors he cited.

Like other progressive prosecutors around the US, Boudin is a former public defender, and in office has acted as one, undermining the natural checks and balances that our fundamentally antagonistic criminal-justice system creates between public defenders and DAs. Unlike other DAs, Boudin grew up with his parents in prison, something he made a central selling point of his campaign. 

Boudin routinely expresses animosity toward the police. At his election-night party, a supporter led the crowd in a chant against the Police Officers’ Association: “F–k the POA! F–k the POA!” Today, the San Francisco Police Department is short 400 officers and demoralized. 

When he ran for office in 2018, Boudin announced, “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes. Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted.

Boudin has explicitly claimed that some laws shouldn’t be enforced because doing so supposedly increases victimization. “Jails do nothing to treat the root cause of crime,” he claimed. Boudin called “open-air drug use and drug sales . . . technically victimless crimes.” When Boudin announced that he was not going to prosecute street-level drug dealers, he said it was because they are “themselves victims of human trafficking.”

In fact, there is little evidence to support Boudin’s claim that the fentanyl dealers in San Francisco are dealing drugs against their will. Tom Wolf, a member of San Francisco’s Drug Dealing Task Force, who was once a homeless fentanyl addict himself for several months, knows several dealers. “These guys would show me pictures of the houses they were building back home in Honduras,” Wolf told me.

Boudin and other progressive criminal-justice reformers, such as Manhattan’s new DA, Alvin Bragg, oppose enforcing laws when addicts and mentally-ill people break them because they believe our system is fundamentally unfair and racist. This explains why Boudin and his ilk are narrowly focused on emptying jails and prisons.

“The challenge going forward,” said Boudin in 2019, “is how do we close a jail?” 

The results speak for themselves. In 2019, Boudin reduced San Francisco’s jail population by 73%, to 766 from 2,850 in 2019, despite the fact that more than half of all offenders, and three-quarters of the most violent ones who are released from jail before trial, commit new crimes. The charging rate for theft by Boudin’s office declined from 62 percent in 2019 to 46 percent in 2021 and for petty theft declined from 58 percent to 35 percent. 

Car break-ins were 75 percent higher in May 2021 than in 2019, before the pandemic, and reached an astonishing 3,000 last month. Meanwhile, many business owners and residents tell me they long ago stopped bothering to report crime.

As Breed seeks support for her crackdown, Boudin is fighting for his political life. A recall election has been scheduled for June, and many people believe San Francisco’s progressive voters will elect to remove him from office, eliminating one obstacle to the mayor’s efforts.

The recall of Boudin — and the success of Breed — may signal a rebalancing in America’s attitudes toward drugs and crime. The US went too far in the 1980s and 1990s in terms of incarceration but then too far in the other direction over the last 20 years. Breed knows that many so-called “victimless” crimes have real victims, including her sister, who died of an overdose, and her brother, who is in prison for pushing an accomplice, who later died, out of a robbery getaway car. 

Breed’s grandmother was right about “tough love.” Hopefully, in the face of rising crime, San Franciscans, and progressives nationwide, will finally start to deliver some.

Michael Shellenberger is the author of “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.”

 

 

San Fran’s Mayor London Breed (right) is struggling to clean up the city but DA Boudin is standing in her way. AP (2)

 

 

 

 

 

No Need To Starve!

In this very short post, we want you to click the link and share this because there are people who are really hungry and can't afford food. Today, with inflation now hitting 7%, people are deciding if they can eat or heat their homes. This should NOT ever be up for discussion with a country that has food in abundance (albeit, also food waste in abundance). Here are food banks where you can get free food for the entire week. Please, please, please share.

Has SF hit rock bottom? Former mayor says city's 'humanitarian' ethic is to blame for recent issues

Featured in ABC7 News:

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown isn't sugar coating his assessment of San Francisco these days.

"It looks pretty bad there is no way to hide it," Brown said in an interview with ABC7 News contributor Phil Matier Tuesday.

The former mayor is speaking about the impact of high visibility crimes, the ever-present homeless problem, and the drug-addicted or mentally ill people are having on a city once known for both its tolerance and beauty.

"When you walk in certain parts of the city, you can't even walk on the sidewalk without getting permission from the people who control the sidewalk. And they are the allegedly the homeless," Brown said.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Brown lays much of the blame on the city's overly "humanitarian" ethic.

"Anything you do in this town with reference to the homeless is a political risk," Brown says. "Why? It's simple. San Francisco has a reputation for being so humane. And there are so many organizations and individuals who want to display that. They don't want you and they don't want San Francisco accused of not being humane."

Matier: "So what you're saying is that at the heart of the problem is that when it comes to the homeless and drug-addicted, San Francisco offers an array of carrots but it refuses to pick up any kind of stick?"
Brown: "No question because, you see, once you want to help the homeless, sometimes homeless don't want to be helped. And if you don't have any legal way in which to force it upon them, you got a real problem."

Brown says the only elected leader at City Hall trying to make a change is Mayor London Breed, who is drawing heavy criticism from homeless advocates for bringing in police as well as social and medical workers to deal with the problem

On the other hand, Brown says the residents of the city are fed up with the situation.

One reason for the change in heart is the images of robberies, open drug dealing, and drug use they are seeing on TV.

And that ongoing coverage is "in fact, what caused, in my opinion, the mayor's reaction," and her police crackdown in the Tenderloin, Brown says.

"No politician would move, simply because I have no reason to. Period," Brown says.

But, "I think London Breed is genuinely committed to the idea that we ought to make San Francisco for everybody," Brown said.

Whether the city's legendary "humanitarian" voters will back Mayor Breed has yet to be tested.

"When it comes to voting or going or getting involved, they say 'I know I want it to be humane. I don't want it to be I don't want people having the choice between rehabilitation and jail," said Brown.

It's a political Catch-22 that has residents demanding a clean-up but unwilling to back the mayor when she pulls out the broom.

Meanwhile Brown says if residents don't see and feel a change on the streets then every elected official - especially the mayor - will be in peril.

"They'll elect somebody else. And if she doesn't succeed, it'll be trouble. It'll be trouble," said Brown.

 

Multiple suspects have been arrested after a Louis Vuitton store in San Francisco was hit by thieves.