New vehicle center for the homeless coming to Candlestick Point

Featured in the San Francisco Examiner:

A new temporary vehicle triage center in San Francisco’s Candlestick Point State Recreation Area for people living out of their vehicle to safely park will move forward after it was approved by the California Department of Parks on Thursday.

The center will be located in the park’s Boat Launch parking lot, providing 150 parking spaces for as many as 177 people, as well as security, staffing, lighting, electricity, bathrooms and showers, potable water, and other necessities.

The residents will also have access to social services with opportunities for permanent housing, health care, and employment, city officials said.

“As we continue to move forward with our historic Homelessness Recovery Plan and work to get people off the streets, we must find solutions for our unhoused population living in their RVs or in their cars,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “This Vehicle Triage Center will provide individuals with a safe place to sleep, regular access to stabilizing services, and an opportunity to move forward on their path out of homelessness.”

“This vehicle triage center will bring badly-needed security, services, and hygiene facilities to the Candlestick Point Recreation Area,” Assemblymember David Chiu, D-San Francisco, said. “The center will improve conditions for all Candlestick Point residents and help connect those living in their vehicles to permanent housing solutions. I was happy to work with community members and city leaders to help secure funding in our state’s budget to make this project a reality.”

Supervisor Shamann Walton, whose district includes the neighborhood, said, “The number of people living in their vehicles around the old Candlestick Park has created a situation that needs immediate and direct attention. The Vehicle Triage Center will provide a space for this population to live in dignity, while addressing concerns of the surrounding community. We cannot ignore the need for support and this compassionate response will resolve a lot of expressed concerns.”

According to city officials, the city will next work to negotiate a proposed two-year lease with the California State Parks for the center.

The Bayview Hill Neighborhood Association has opposed the center, citing concerns about illegal dumping, deteriorating roads, and restricted access to Candlestick Park.

 

Pandemic & Now Crippling Inflation - Please Volunteer

Due to swift rises in inflation, the @SFMFoodBank has seen a 20% increase in hungry people needing food - and that's just at one pop-up pantry in the past week alone! Please do your part, pay forward and sign up to volunteer. Just two hours once a week keeps stomachs full. Supermarkets have already confirmed that food prices will rocket even higher, items will be scarce due to the supply chain collapse and essential foods will be classified as a luxury item. In the past two weeks, vegetables have tripled in price, heating bills will be at least 50% higher (per month) and people will have to choose if they can afford to eat or stay warm. It's a real problem that's not going away any time soon and will affect the entire planet shortly.

So please click here to volunteer for the SF Marin Food Bank - at the warehouse or a pop-up pantry. We must all do our part because during these turbulent times, we cannot come out the other side saying we didn't help someone else. This is a great testing period in our lives and if you can't even give 120 minutes, once a week to pay forward, then you'll fail the test. Please share this post because this is a pivotal moment where everyone must rally together.

 

 

 

Poll finds more than half of Bay Area residents plan to leave for good.

Why? 'It's housing, stupid'

 

Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Another day, another poll about how expensive it is to live in the Bay Area.

Only this time, San Jose think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley found a majority of residents actually planning to leave the region in “the next few years” — around 56% of more than 1,600 people surveyed in five counties. That compares to a broader pre-pandemic poll of all nine Bay Area counties by business group the Bay Area Council, which in 2018 found that 46% of residents considered moving away.

While there’s no shortage of factors contributing to today’s uncertainty — remote work, peak wildfire season, a lingering global pandemic — the report authors zeroed in on one key motivation.

“It’s housing, stupid,” said Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. “That is driving almost all of the results we see in this poll.”

The new survey, which was conducted online in late September by polling firm Embold Research, highlights a growing tension between the Bay Area as a beacon of job opportunities but a place that looks a lot like a financial trap for both renters and aspiring home buyers. While the concerns aren’t new, Hancock said the big question is how many people may be newly emboldened to leave as the pandemic wanes.

Among the registered voters surveyed in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties, 71% said the Bay Area is still a “good” or “excellent” place to pursue a career. But only 45% said it’s an appealing place to raise a family. A mere 11% were optimistic about buying a house here.

Around 90% of respondents expressed concerns about housing, cost of living and homelessness. Across the board, just 48% of those polled said they believe the Bay Area is “moving in the right direction.”

“As a pollster, I don’t tend to see a lot of consensus,” said Alex Chen, a data analyst at the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. “But there are some very strong signals here.”

Biggest concerns for Bay Area residents

A new poll by think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley found that 56% of residents are considering leaving. Here's why, based on how many people considered each problem "extremely" or "very" serious. 

 

Now, the fear for people like Hancock who are tracking the data is that these shifts will ultimately compound the region’s “grotesque disparities” and undermine its prosperity. The poll also asked how many tech workers in particular are considering moving, and found that a similarly high 53% are also mulling an exit in the next few years, with about 70% opposing a full-time return to in-person offices.

“Folks out there in the tech companies especially are saying, ‘That’s my deal breaker. I need flexibility,’” Hancock said.

Whether all the talk about moving actually translates to sizable population declines in the Bay Area will hinge on several hard-to-predict factors, including how many new, young transplants step in to fill any void. In recent months, rents have started rising again in cities including San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, suggesting that pandemic price declines may have been only temporary.

In the meantime, all the anxiety about housing is boiling over in local eviction battles and fueling policy reforms in Sacramento, including recently approved SB9 to allow for denser housing in all residential neighborhoods. That measure and others to increase building have also stirred up intense controversy at city halls around the Bay Area, reinforcing divides about the region’s trajectory evident in the new poll.

“Half the people are with you, half the people are not with you,” Hancock said. “We have this deliberate opportunity to take some steps forward.”

While other recent reports suggest that fears of a large-scale Bay Area exodus to other states are overblown, significant numbers of Californians are decamping for places like Texas. Even within the Golden State, a diverse cross section of middle- and working-class residents have been moving farther away from the Bay Area, to regions like the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the Central Valley.

Migration out of the Bay Area has fueled super commutes and exurban boomtowns for decades. But in this awkward phase of the pandemic, traffic is creeping back onto working-class arteries like the Altamont Pass, even as Silicon Valley tech campuses remain ghost towns.

 

 

 

 

 

Eviction-free SF: Know your rights

Featured in 48 Hills:

Eviction-free SF: Advocates say that renters still have options

Know your rights - the moratorium is over but renters have a lot of remaining protections.

Tenant advocates and District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston announced Friday the launch of an outreach campaign to inform tenants in District 5 of their protections against evictions - one day after the September 30 end of the statewide moratorium on evictions for non-payment of rent.

“District 5 will be an eviction-free zone as we move into the next stage of this pandemic,” Preston said.

Preston’s outreach campaign is partnering with Daybreak PAC, founded by former state Senate candidate Jackie Fielder, and will use its automated texting services and pool of volunteers to call District 5 residents to inform tenants of the eviction protections still available to them.

“When we learned about this effort by Supervisor Dean Preston we wanted to pitch in and offer our resources and volunteers to call every resident in District 5 and inform them of their rights,” Fielder said.

Although non-payment of rent evictions are allowed to proceed, as the state moratorium preempted the city from passing its own rent non-payment eviction ban, advocates reminded renters that evictions other than those related to non-payment of rent, violence, or health and safety issues, such as owner move-in, capital improvement, or demolition, will remain banned in San Francisco, thanks to a recent ordinance unanimously passed by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, which will last 60 days once it is enacted.

Advocates say that reaching out to inform tenants about how they can avoid eviction is especially important as COVID continues to spread and mutate.

“No one should be evicted right now because we are still in the middle of COVID. The best way to take care of yourself is to have protection in your home,” said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, speaking on behalf of the Anti-Displacement Coalition.

While the state eviction moratorium for rent non-payment is over, the state’s $5.2 billion rent-relief program, which disburses funds to eligible tenants to pay back rent and utilities, is still active, and an open application for rent relief can be used as a defense if your landlord take you to court over an eviction for non-payment, according to advocates. Renters who make 80 percent or less of the Area Median Income and swear under penalty of perjury that they have been impacted financially by the pandemic are eligible.

In San Francisco, a family of four with annual earnings less than $106,550 would qualify under the AMI requirement.

Non-citizens are also eligible for rent relief, and an applicant’s immigration status will not be disclosed to any other agency. You can apply through the state’s Housing is Key website.

“Tenants have more protections now than they ever had,” Sherburn-Zimmer said.

What is key, according to advocates, is that people get their applications in as soon as possible, while funding is available, as the application itself will confer protection to you, even if it takes months for a check to arrive.

“Getting your application in, is actually what protects you from getting evicted right now,” Preston said. “Even if it takes two, three months, to cut the check for that back rent, if you as a tenant have gone onto the Housing is Key website, and if you have applied for relief, your landlord is not allowed to move forward and evict you while that is pending.”

According to Maximilian Barnes from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, applicants should receive rental assistance within four to five weeks of applying.

What is important to remember, however, is that if a tenant is missing information on their application, it is up to the tenant to respond within 15 days to call and email updates notifying them of that missing information, which can land in their spam folder or come from unknown phone numbers, and to make sure that they add that information within that time period, otherwise their application may be closed without further notice and they will not receive rental assistance.

Advocates acknowledged that part of the reason that lack of information on protection and confusion around tenants’ rights is so widespread is because eviction protections have changed frequently throughout the pandemic, with different moratoria imposed at the federal, state, and local levels, leaving both landlords and tenants confused about what eviction protections exist.

“If you have a blanket ban on evictions, and you let all the landlords know, then there’s less likely that landlords will go forward, but if you do what California has done, and forced the city into, this constant maze of rules that’s constantly changing, it’s shifting the burden of learning the rules and exercising the rights onto the tenant,” Preston said.

Landlords have also expressed confusion about the swath of eviction protections for tenants as well as opportunities for landlords to receive compensation for back rent owed by their tenants.

Joshua Howard, executive vice president of local public affairs at the California Apartment Association, said in an email statement that all of the differing local regulations can cause confusion among landlords.

“Local governments make landlord-tenant laws more complicated and confusing. The state provided comprehensive protection to all renters, but some cities and counties tried to be more restrictive, creating confusion for both landlords and tenants,” Howard said. “That’s why the COVID-19 Tenant Relief Act was so important: It provided equal and consistent rules across the state. Tenants need only apply for rental relief, and they are protected from eviction for nonpayment of rent.”

What is also important for renters to know, according to advocates, is that all tenants facing eviction have a right to an attorney, thanks to Prop F, passed in 2018. While there have been issues with funding the Tenant Right to an Attorney program in the past, the city’s most recent budget allocates $6 million to bolster the program.

“This is not a great time for tenants, but at the very least, there are more protections in place, there are more lawyers, there is more money for rental assistance,” said Martina Cucullu Lim, executive director of the Eviction Defense Collaborative.

(NB from SF CARES: Remember, if you can pay at least the minimum owed for the rent you've not paid during the pandemic, pay it. Over 50% of landlords sole income in California is from renters. So please be ethical, don't hoard, get a job - they are in abundance - and be a responsible tenant that pays for the roof over your head).

 

 

 

 

Rent Payments to SF Public Housing Agency Plunged in Last Two Years, Spurring Eviction Fears

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

Rent collections by San Francisco’s public housing agency fell precipitously in late 2019 and have continued to decline to less than half of what is owed, according to a San Francisco Public Press analysis — but the agency can’t explain why.

Only 47% of rent paid directly to the Housing Authority was collected this July, the latest month for which data is available. The 974 households whose units are managed by the agency — the rest pay rent to private management companies ­— pay roughly 30% of their monthly income, or $489 on average. These residents owe at least $4.5 million in back rent to the city.

Officials at the Housing Authority said they could not provide an explanation for why the shortfalls in rent collections began increasing in September 2019. Nor could they say why San Francisco’s Housing Authority has a far higher rate of delinquencies than parallel agencies in other big cities, some of which are collecting as much as 98% of the rents due.

“Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the authority robustly embraced local efforts to keep people housed and worked with households to enter them into payment programs if they were struggling to keep up with their overall expenses,” Rose Dennis, a Housing Authority spokeswoman, said in an email. “This may have impacted pre-COVID rent collection.”

The shortfall illustrates the continuing financial challenges for both the city and its poorest residents in the midst of a global health emergency. One in 20 of the city’s residents has been infected with the virus, and at least 605 have died.

Thousands of people have lost income, and only the imposition of city, state and federal limits on evictions has prevented them from losing their homes. At least 75,000 of the 200,000 renters in the San Francisco area who are behind on their monthly payments believe they will be evicted within 60 days, according to an August Census Bureau survey. The San Francisco metro area extends out to include San Rafael, Livermore, Redwood City and cities in between. Public housing residents, with an average annual income of $18,800, have been among the hardest hit, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Rent formula punishes success

Monica Ferrey, a former resident of Potrero Terrace Annex, a Housing Authority development in Potrero Hill, estimated she fell behind on her rent as her income started to rise.

“I thought there was a grace period,” said Ferrey, vice president of the city’s Public Housing Tenant Association. “I was shocked.”

Her rent soared from $200 to $1,550 last November after she found work, since she reported higher income. Ferrey, who works as a community development specialist for the city’s Recreation and Park Department, thought she could fill gaps with a few part-time jobs. But life during a pandemic intervened. She found the needs of her four children, one of whom is too young to be vaccinated, were too great, forcing her to cut back on the part-time work. Car trouble added to her woes.

Now she’s at least $6,000 in arrears, Ferrey estimated. “I got to a point where I really don’t care about it,” she sighed.

She noted that as of August the agency is “working on having residents do a declaration that should significantly reduce what is owed.”

Records show the increased delinquencies predated the pandemic by several months. The number of Housing Authority residents paying rent on time dropped from 87% in September 2019 to 59% in November. In March 2020, when Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a pandemic-related state of emergency, it stood at 65%.

The shortfall in collections was not mirrored at other large public housing authorities. In July 2020, for example, San Francisco collected 56% of rent due, while the New York City Housing Authority collected 86% of rent. Chicago took in 91%. Los Angeles housing officials said they collected 96% of rent due in July 2020, and Denver and Houston both collected 98%.

Despite federal government stimulus payments that amounted to as much as $3,200 per adult — sent in April 2020, December 2020 and March 2021 — rent collections topped 60% only once in the last 15 months, in June 2020.

Eviction threat looms

Deborah Thrope, deputy director of the National Housing Law Project, said an increase in the number of tenants who owe back rent is a red flag that indicates problems with a city’s housing authority. Often, housing authorities don’t communicate the need for tenants to “recertify” or notify them when circumstances change, Thrope said, and tenants can wind up owing thousands when rent is raised after they get a new job or increased wages or benefits.

“Post-pandemic, nobody should be evicted for rent they didn’t pay,” she said. “It’s related to COVID loss of income and loss of employment. There is absolutely no reason at this point that public housing tenants should be evicted for nonpayment of rent.”

In a non-pandemic situation, residents who do not pay rent can expect rent collectors to follow up with phone calls or home visits. If it is still unpaid, the authority can issue 14-day notices, letting them know that they need to pay the balance or move out. If they still cannot pay, they are eventually evicted. Residents behind on their rent also are not allowed to be considered for moves to newer or larger public housing units.

“The authority is working closely with resident service providers and residents to request rent relief where available,” said Dennis, the Housing Authority spokesperson. “During the pandemic time frame, the authority has not issued notices to residents, prioritizing client health and housing stabilization instead.”

More than two-thirds of public housing residents live on “other incomes,” such as modest pensions or Social Security retirement or disability payments, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Another 5% eke out a meager living with welfare benefits. The remainder — like Ferrey, the struggling tenant association vice president — support themselves with jobs that come and go.

“It’s like, every time I kind of begin to catch up,” she said, “I just fall behind again.”