Monday, December 27, 2021

Happy Belated Christmas and Stepping Up in 2022

From all of us at SF CARES, we hope everyone had a happy Christmas with good food, great company and a bucket full of love to give and receive. As we venture into an uncharted 2022 that is riddled with uncertainty, instability and more questions than answers, we turn to our Creator for guidance. All we can hope to be is better than we were in 2021, be kinder, to help those less fortunate and to never (physically and metaphorically) walk around or over the homeless as if they don't exist. It's the easiest act of humanity to give the poverty half your sandwich, pop into a store and buy them an energy bar or just look them in the eye and say hello, with sincerity. There are so many complex reasons why someone is homeless and it's not our job to judge them with the most obvious conclusion. It's our job to only look down when we're helping someone up, as this could give them the drive to change their life path for the better.

Finally, please start your new year on the right note by paying forward through signing up to volunteer for a couple of hours. Even if that's just once a month, you'll have given 24 hours worth of your time to help someone else. Here are some websites you can volunteer, today, and leap into 2022 with the most ethical foot stepping forward. Guaranteed, it'll be your best one yet.

https://www.mobilize.us/togethersf/   

https://www.handsonbayarea.org/calendar 

https://www.volunteermatch.org/

https://www.sfmfoodbank.org/

Blessings!





 

 

Monday, December 20, 2021

Seeing Signs of Speculation, SF Allocates Millions to Buy Housing

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

Amplified chants and drumming broke the weekday calm on 19th Street near Dolores Park in mid-November as residents of a 12-unit building protested their impending eviction.  

“Here in this building, six out of the 10 units that are occupied have LGBTQ tenants, five out of the 10 have Asian Americans. And we have seniors in this building who have been here for decades. And we’re all getting evicted,” said Paul Mooney, a gay man who has lived in the building for 18 years and came to San Francisco because of its LGBTQ community.  

Tenants, advocates and city legislators are worried about real estate investors buying multi-unit housing properties like this one only to evict all of the tenants and sell the buildings for a profit. They have called for an end to the state law that makes this possible, the Ellis Act, under which the tenants on 19th Street are being evicted. In the meantime, they want the city and the nonprofits it works with to buy those buildings instead of leaving them for speculators to snap up.   

“The Ellis Act is devastating neighborhoods like ours, communities like ours,” Mooney said. “There’s 20 of us that are at risk of losing our home from this neighborhood that we’ve lived in for so long. And it’s happening all over the city, because of the Ellis Act.” 

But the state Legislature is unlikely to repeal the Ellis Act, one local legislator acknowledged.  

“I think everybody here wants to see the Ellis Act repealed. And we all know that real estate and real estate money has tremendous power and influence in Sacramento,” said District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman at the demonstration.  

In the meantime, however, local government can step in. Last week, the Board of Supervisors voted to allocate $64 million of revenue brought in by the 2020 real estate transfer tax measure Proposition I to an emergency fund for housing acquisition. Supervisor Dean Preston, who proposed the allocation, said there are signs that speculation is threatening many apartment buildings in the city, and that the allocation could help combat that. 

“Preliminary analysis of market trends shows exactly what we fear: A repeat of trends we saw a decade ago,” Preston told the board. “Of 117 buildings between three and 50 units on the private market, 99 of the sellers are individual or families with no connections to big real estate, in contrast to the folks who are lining up to buy these buildings.” 

He said members of the city’s Housing Stability Fund Oversight Committee have been keeping a close eye on the buyers of multiunit properties that go on the market and finding that many are limited liability corporations linked to large corporate real estate investment companies. 

A program called the Small Sites Acquisition Program already exists. Nonprofit landlords and the city collaborate to acquire housing, keep the tenants in place and keep rents below market rate. The city also has the Community Right to Purchase Act, which gives nonprofit organizations the right to make offers on buildings with three or more housing units, or lots that could accommodate such units, before other buyers.       

Some of the supervisors expressed concern that the Small Sites Program is not ready for an acquisition spree and needs serious reform.  

“Promising folks that we’re going to save them from eviction because we’re putting money into this program that is not currently viable, to me is an empty promise,” said Supervisor Myrna Melgar. While she supports funding the acquisition of apartment buildings, she said, “It is like putting gas in a car that has two flat tires and is in the shop getting fixed, and promising people a ride.” 

Most of the acquisitions executed so far through the program have been made by one nonprofit that is overextended and has taken on excessive financial risk, she said. Other supervisors criticized the program for not preserving enough housing. Since the program was launched in 2014, it has acquired 368 units across 47 buildings. 

Mayor London Breed also voiced opposition to the allocation, announcing in a press release that her office would be taking steps to reform the Small Sites Program and allocating up to $10 million from the city’s general fund through June 2022. While the supervisors ultimately voted 8-3 to allocate the $64 million to allow the city to buy housing through any of its acquisition programs, the mayor is not obligated to spend that money and several supervisors expressed doubt that she would. The mayor’s press office did not respond to a request for comment on her intentions. 

Preston, for his part, is optimistic.  

“These funds are going to be appropriated, they’re going to be available,” he said. And the investment is a significant one in terms of how many people could remain housed if their buildings are acquired by a nonprofit.  

“We are looking at hundreds of units,” he said. “It will depend on the exact purchase price of each of those, and the size of the different buildings. But it’ll be hundreds of units and at least double or triple that in amount of people protected.” 

 

 

A process server delivers the court documents to Paul Mooney initiating his and other tenants’ eviction under the Ellis Act from a 12-unit building on 19th Street. 

(The above is a segment from SF Public Press's radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen daily at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on 102.5 FM in San Francisco, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher.) 

 

 


Monday, December 13, 2021

Project Open Hand Food Available

Megan Sue Belafonte and Project Open Hand (POH) are giving away food boxes that they receive on Mon. and Fri. mornings at the corner of Folsom and 22nd St. You need to get in line by 10am to get a ticket for a box of food. Then at 11am you may pick up your box. This is a POH program and there is usually milk, two types of protein, lots of vegetables, rice, beans and sometimes even eggs.


POH usually do not do this on days like holidays or the Friday after a holiday (such as Thanksgiving). Sometimes they skip a week so it's best you check with them to see when their next food giveaway is. (415) 447-2300 and https://www.openhand.org/

If you or someone you know can use this service, please do let people know. Please also share this since this catastrophic rise in inflation is crippling people's ability to buy basic food.
 

 

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Should California have a $18 minimum wage? Voters may get to decide

Featured in the LA Times:


California voters could get to decide whether the state minimum wage goes up to $18 an hour, at a time when rising prices and living costs are eating into workers’ household incomes.

Joe Sanberg, a Los Angeles investor and anti-poverty activist, spearheaded the Living Wage Act of 2022, which was filed with the state attorney general’s office Friday. Sanberg said he will finance the signature-gathering process to qualify the ballot initiative for the November election. It would gradually increase the state minimum wage starting in 2023, then rise to $18 an hour for all-sized businesses by 2026.

The current minimum wage is due to reach $15 an hour for large businesses starting in January, and for all businesses by 2023. The state minimum is now $14 an hour for businesses with 26 or more employees and $13 an hour for smaller businesses.

“If you work full time, you should be able to live with full financial security, and that’s not the case in California,” Sanberg said in an interview. “We were a leader in pushing for a $15 minimum wage, but now we have to move the ball forward and farther. It’s overdue for $18.”

He said the time is right to push for a higher minimum wage because the pandemic highlighted how many Californians working full-time jobs still cannot afford basic needs.

Sanberg made his fortune on Wall Street and then shifted to investing in start-ups, including meal-prep company Blue Apron.

He is well-known in Sacramento, having cajoled legislators beginning in 2015 to create a California version of the earned income tax credit — a program that has been expanded in recent years to help more low-income residents. He founded a nonprofit to launch an advertising campaign to make sure eligible people got their money.

He’s also a co-founder of Aspiration, an online banking service that allows customers to choose their own fees.

Although it’s rare for wealthy Californians to personally bankroll all costs involved in an initiative signature campaign, it has happened occasionally through the years.

And under state election law, Sanberg could stop there — choosing to withdraw his proposal once it qualifies for the ballot if lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom agree next year to pass a similar law on their own.

The initiative would mandate that base pay at businesses with 26 or more employees go up a dollar each year until it reaches $18 an hour in 2025. Smaller businesses with 25 or fewer employees will have an extra year to reach the $18 minimum.

After reaching $18 an hour, the minimum wage will be adjusted yearly to keep pace with the cost of living, according to the initiative.

California’s current gradual rise to $15 an hour was the result of a bill signed in 2016 by then-California Gov. Jerry Brown. The law, which went into effect in 2017, raised the minimum wage steadily each year to reach $15 an hour. In 2016, the minimum wage for all businesses was $10.

The rise to a $15 hourly wage has had a “real, measurable effect on workers’ pay in the state,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. The center has estimated that 5.6 million Californians would receive a wage increase because of the move to $15 an hour, with an average annual earnings increase per person of $3,700.

By the time the minimum wage reaches $15 an hour, it will equal a total of more than $20 billion a year in wage increases, which is more than the combined value of all the state’s major public assistance programs, Jacobs said.

Still, “it was still an important increase but ... costs have continued to rise,” he said. “It’s also important to note that, especially with rising housing costs in California, that in our major cities, $15 is still not enough.”

Advocacy group United Ways of California calculated that a family of four — two adults, one preschooler and one school-aged child — living in Los Angeles County would need to make an annual income of $95,112 to meet basic needs. That calculation, known as the Real Cost Measure, is based on publicly available data on expenses such as housing, food, healthcare and child care.

California’s high cost of living is a main reason why Sanberg and others are advocating for an $18 an hour minimum wage.

The minimum wage should now be $24, if it increased in line with the growth in worker productivity since 1960, Sanberg said.

The fact that the state base pay is one year away from $15 an hour “doesn’t mean it’s the right minimum wage,” he said. “The job will be done when everyone who works full time can afford life’s basic needs.”

A man in a black striped shirt stands in front of a doorway. 

Joe Sanberg, a millionaire investor and anti-poverty activist, is financing the signature-gathering process for a ballot measure to raise California’s minimum wage. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)