SF Measure Taxing Wealthy Businesses For Homeless Services Becomes Law

Here's some good news! So good that instead of writing a summary, we're simply copying and pasting from KPIX CBS 5 Bay Area's article:

SF Measure Taxing Wealthy Businesses For Homeless Services Becomes Law; State Supreme Court Denies Challenge

Prop C, the 2018 initiative that taxes wealthy San Francisco businesses to pay for homeless services, became law Wednesday after the California Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to it.

Prop C, which implements a .5% tax on businesses making over $50 million a year, passed in 2018 with more than 61 percent of the vote.

But the law’s been held up in the courts by lawsuits filed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the anti-tax lobbyists. The group claimed that the tax needed two-thirds of the vote to pass, but the state court of appeals rejected this argument back in June.

Now that the state supreme court refused to hear the case, the city can collect an estimated $300 million in fees for services supporting San Francisco’s homeless population.

And the news doesn't stop so to keep the congratulations coming, please click this link to KQED's longer article on this same topic.

The meek will inherit the earth and the wealthy will fall on their own sword. Let the good times start to roll...

Utility & Service Companies - How To Cut The Cost

We came across a recent utility bill that should not have been sent to us since we suspended services months earlier. We've kept on top of this issue and demanded refunds but we wanted to ensure you're aware of what's transpiring: Utility companies are auto charging without providing a service. It's the oldest revenue trick in the book because people don't check their bills like they should.

During this pandemic, office have closed down so utility and service bills should simultaneously have been cut to a minimum from less use. But this isn't the case and these corporations are using this time to boost their business model by charging for services they're not providing.

With one company trying to bill us monthly for no services rendered, we shut off auto pay and demanded a full refund for one month owed. They refused to comply until we emailed the CEO. Within minutes, we were given an apology and a justified refund check.

But what if you're not even screening your bills, your auto pay set ups and assuming that these companies need to be paid regardless of whether you receive minimal or no service? 

We urge you to take this issue head on. Companies making big cash during a pandemic is horrifying in itself. Taking advantage of panicked customers is not the way you should be treated. Please check through every single bill you've incurred since mid March. If you have auto pay, maybe suspend this until you're up and running again since it's easier to dispute an invoice than try gain a refund. If the utility, trash or service company has a statement on their website that all services are suspended due to shelter in place, yet you've still been charged, screenshot the web page and demand a full refund. Not a credit to your account - but an entire refund check by mail. Not a mailed refund in two weeks - a refund by check in the mail TODAY.

Cash is really tight so paying what you justifiably used is deemed the norm. But being charged an arm and a leg for services you did not receive since March is illegal.

Utility and service companies generate billions of cash in revenue per year. Their business model is based on people forgetting to turn auto pay off, or not checking their bill's accuracy, or using scare threaten tactics over hidden fees. If businesses go down the drain, the homeless population increases. We cannot afford to see this happen. Every penny counts.

Please be sensible and check the past six months of bills or you're literally throwing money in the trash, which the garbage company won't collect but will nevertheless auto charge you. And if you're in a tight financial spot at home, please complete this form to receive utility bill reductions for your house.

 

 

Negotiate Rent With Landlords To Reduce Homeless Stats

In the past month alone, articles have been popping up like spring daisies about tenants that have re-negotiated rent with their landlord. Let's back-peddle first with some background history: Since March when shelter in place started, thousands lost their jobs and couldn't pay April's rent. If they couldn't pay April's rent, then they had a nightmare trying to pay subsequent rents and so the amount owed to landlords (today) adds up to a walloping six months if September's check isn't handed to the property owner or manager. Due to local leaders empathy, eviction freezes took place, giving panicked residents time to scramble for 1st month cash or consider leaving the city for good. The problem was that this legislation only covered suffering tenants until yesterday, 1st September. Nevertheless, the law has extended until December yet it comes with conditions. You can read more about it in the San Francisco Public Press. 

One thing that most tenants (residential AND commercial) didn't consider during their near 1st month frenzy of coughing up cash or finding a new home was the opportunity to re-negotiate rental rates with their landlords. We know it sounds strange since a (lease) deal is a deal, but what about those tenants that could pay 80% rent yet didn't want the burden on their heads to one day pay the 20% owed? Tenants took their own initiative, spat out a bit of gumption laden with common sense and bartered a deal with their landlords. Residents knew that if they left, the landlord would have multiple problems on their hands: #1 An empty property that may not result in new tenants, since so many were leaving the city, #2 Plunging property prices by nearly 20% in the past month alone and continuing to plummet, #3 Safety and security issues since an empty apartment is a cat call for squatters. These are the three main issues yet there are half a dozen more.

So residential tenants talked with their landlords and arranged a new six-month lease whereby they'd honor to continue renting, yet with a 20% discount that wouldn't be repaid once the half year was up. By using this elbow grease of logic, pretty much everyone wins - landlords aren't out of pocket, tenants aren't out of a home and the homeless numbers don't rise.

Commercial tenants also followed a similar rule of thumb yet with a twist: The cost of packing their office furniture in a commercial storage unit + hiring a moving company to store items (and deliver them once a new office is secured, post Covid-19) became so much more attractive than paying rent + overheads. Therefore, commercial tenants took the leap of faith, explained this to their landlords and re-negotiations of rent were set in stone for the short term, with a lease number that swung anywhere between the storage costs vs current office rates. This has slowed down the most depressing sight that no one wants to witness: For Lease signs in windows of every other building.

Our biggest feat is to stop the number of homeless rising, especially during a pandemic. Using our noodles, simply calculating the benefits to both landlord and tenant, and producing a very simple 'this is what I can afford over the next six months' can result in a major win/win...and avoid more displaced people on our streets. Please spread the word with friends or family who are struggling with office or home rent. It's important we support each other since positive knowledge benefits everyone. 

 

Barcelona Has Created San Francisco's Affordable Housing Solution

Please read this article in Bloomberg about Barcelona and how landlords are being reprimanded for keeping rental homes vacant. It's a fantastic strategy: San Francisco's affordable housing problem has extended over a very long eight years since the tech industry flooded into our city and residents were given notice, a great number of those due to illegal evictions by landlords using the Ellis Act as bait/switch. With two thirds of the city's residents being tenants, the number of evictions rocketed and landlords bumped up rental prices that only the wealthy could afford. This ultimately led to the groundbreaking, first city ever adoption of Proposition F (free legal representation for all tenants) being passed in 2018 because the eviction epidemic required stabilizing.

Even though Prop F has been a relief booster for tenants, by the time the proposition came into effect, it was too late. The number of homeless in San Francisco hit the stratosphere in 2013 and continued to rise year on year. With the flood of tenants now leaving our great City by the Bay for cheaper homes, due to shelter in place validating working from home can mean any geographical location, empty apartments are adorning our 7 miles x 7 miles region and property prices have plummeted over 15% in the past month alone. It's a renters market once again.

Landlords are obviously waiting for shelter in place to lift, jack up rental rates and wait for the demand flood to inject our city...yet this time, it may not happen or so fast. Barcelona, on the other hand, has taken the helm providing a pressure cooker solution:

"This week, the city’s housing department wrote to 14 companies that collectively own 194 empty apartments, warning that if they haven’t found a tenant within the next month, the city could take possession of these properties, with compensation at half their market value. These units would then be rented out by the city as public housing to lower-income tenants, while the companies in question could also face possible fines of between €90,000 and €900,000 ($103,000 and $1,003,000), according to Spanish news outlets."

It'd be a wonderful plan if San Francisco follows this Spanish city's rule of thumb. People that were evicted years ago tried to source affordable housing yet this became a massive problem, because affordable housing was given the back seat to luxury condos being built at record speed. Therefore, there just hasn't been enough affordable homes for residents and it's certainly resulted in a thorn in the city's side for nearly a decade. This time though, no one's being evicted thanks to 2020 laws stopping residents from being evicted if they're unable to pay rent due to Covid-19. This blog post is focusing solely on residents that are packing up from their own free will so apartments are sitting ducks, waiting to be occupied once again.

If our leaders could adopt Barcelona's blueprint and put pressure on landlords to rent empty apartments or face being converted into affordable homes, the number of homeless could easily drop by 15% within a month. Please share this blog post and @ tag your district supervisor, along with the @sfbos. The more we spread the word, the greater the chance that this tremendous problem of affordable housing is fixed and diversity leaps in abundance, once again. Please rise above the noise and help create more affordable homes with this incredibly simple yet effective innovation that Barcelona cooked up.

Residential Exodus Brings A Silver Lining

In the past month, San Francisco's seen a 96% increase of properties available. Homes are hitting the market left and right and it's spiking like crazy. This is alongside rental prices plummeting while residents pack up and head to cheaper pastures, validating that our beloved city is reaching it's decade pinnacle of a signature pattern that we like to call the 10 year switcheroo. Every decade or so, our stunning city drastically turns an epic corner and catapults into a new direction. The last encounter was with the tech tax break, causing an influx of high paid engineers to join our city which drove up property prices and strangled diversity. The prior switcheroo was the dot com bust when everyone and their landlord fled the city as the industry bottomed out. This came after the historic dot com boom with a mirror image reversal whereby San Fran was flooded with tech kids all wanting to desperately change the world. 

Each time our city has a residential spring clean, a new wave of cultural changes hits our doorstep. Sometimes we appreciate some of these spring cleans and other times, we don't. In this current pandemic, the situation is bitter sweet: People have lost their jobs, yet thanks to government support, not their homes. Instead of the homeless jammed into the Tenderloin area, Covid-19 social distancing laws expanded the poverty geographical boundaries towards various district tent villages so they could enjoy a change of scenery, a home and guaranteed food. The Tenderloin hosted 420 tents a few months ago. Last week, that number was down to a congratulatory 47 tents. Beloved, long running businesses have permanently shut up shop including the iconic Tong Kiang, Zanze's, It's Tops, The Stud and St. Francis Fountain, to name but a few while new restaurants immediately started pivoting into charitable food ventures.

It's been five months of ups and downs that's now resulting in a residential exodus. But we do ask all the ones that are leaving our famous city one thing: When you're packing up and are ready to settle in new land, think about the clothing you don't want anymore. Instead of dumping them in your trash and assuming a homeless person may see them, offer them directly to someone living on the street, give them to the Emergency Design Collective or call your local Salvation Army to arrange a handover. Just because you're jumping ship during this switcheroo doesn't mean you can't have compassion and empathy for the ones left behind. Give away socks, underwear, jackets, scarves, gloves, sweaters, shirts, trousers and blankets. 

Be kind, be sensible and please be the person that reaches out and pays forward, just before you sail off into the sunset. 

Irony Alert: Glampers Are Opposed To Tents

For a long time in the prior century, San Francisco's Hayes Valley was the overflow go-to district for the nearby poverty stricken Market Street and Tenderloin homeless residents. Hayes Valley's main access freeway to the 101 was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake yet restored in 2005. That restoration inspired a change of scenery: The homeless frequented the area slightly less while the Valley's kooky residents grew in abundance, public victory gardens were adored and bars were packed thanks to drag queen entertainment.

Along came the next phase change when Mayor Ed Lee enticed Silicon Valley tech companies with gold plates of tax free incentives so they'd relocate to nearby Market Street, with the intention that the area would receive an economic boost. This idea bottomed out due to a few oversights: The tech industry refused to buy locally and therefore failed to help neighborhood businesses, their overpaid employees demanded nearby Hayes Valley homes therefore accelerating rental prices that current residents couldn't afford, and the division of obscene wealth vs. heart-wrenching poverty became as wide as the parting of the Red Sea. Sadly, Hayes Valley became an utter gentrified mess of beige and its quirky personality was stripped clean. Droves of new hipster stores opened overnight, from restaurants, bars and trendy outdoor truck cafes - it was standard to pay $10 for a golf ball size ice-cream scoop in a plastic cup that'd take 1000 years to decompose. The beige lasted for eight years. It was painful to watch the lack of diversity.

Then arose Covid-19. 

With life coming full circle once again, the homeless decided to venture outside of their Tenderloin 'haven' and explore the rest of the city, a city they'd been elbowed from since the inception of the tax free tech days. After eight years of being cooped up and frowned upon for roaming around their stunning San Francisco, the homeless immediately headed right back to Hayes Valley. Tents popped up like daisies, just like they did a decade ago yet this naturally caused havoc for the locals. So much so, rattled and irate businesses have just announced a new initiative: Make Hayes Valley a Tent Free Zone. They demanded the mayor move every homeless person out of their perfect streets. The city complied yet the homeless returned a few days later, and rightly so. Over 5000 area businesses have closed since Covid-19, San Francisco property prices (for selling and renting) have dropped more than 10% in the last month alone and it's been reported that around 200,000 residents are moving to cheaper cities, especially since working from home means they can work from anywhere. Interestingly, with 200k less people and property values heavily dropping, the city's population and home valuations will revert back to its 2012 number. 

With irony in abundance, the gentrified, the hipsters, the woke, the whiter than white, the cancel culture crew that don't blink when they spend $5000 on a two day glamping weekend are disgusted by tents cropping up on their own street. They're so sickened by the homeless, they're relocating to other cities. Ironically, they initially moved to San Francisco to change the world yet those rules clearly only apply within the work place, and not their home environment where fixing the homeless crisis would certainly be marked as a world changing achievement. More irony, the tent dwellers are most likely camping outside the apartment they once lived in before the tech influx. If rental properties keep dropping, maybe they'll be able to re-rent their original home sooner than later.

In every city, there are rich and poor. This is critical for the culture of a region because it drives different thinking milestones, epic feats and historic changes morphed from conflict and collaboration. With the gentrified leaving in droves - being pushed out by tent residents that possibly once resided in the same building - the culture of true San Francisco is already regaining a stronger pulse of diversity. Isn't life funny?

We Must All Be A MacKenzie.

We read a fantastic article in Vox about MacKenzie Scott and her 'revolutionary' philanthropic efforts. In short, the feature stated that Jeff Bezos's ex. wife hit the ground running once she cash settled in her divorce from the planet's wealthiest man and is ploughing through donating her bank balance to charities, whether they've asked her or not. 

Within just over a year after splitting from her ex., and the world's biggest divorce settlement, MacKenzie stated she's on a self, speed mission to see how quickly she can offload her enormous fortune, to help others. Usually, someone with a few million or billions under their belt, would hire a corporation to determine the best use of donating funds. MacKenzie decided that she'd not follow that route and by cutting straight to the chase, by eliminating the middle man or woman, within 12 months and advice from a few key players, she's offloaded over $1.7b to 116 nonprofit organizations that focus on varying issues.

Like manna falling from the sky during the Torah days, nonprofits started to receive donations - reiterating some nonprofits had zero interaction with MacKenzie and others never even submitted a grant request. She obviously decided that she'd dig around and self research into a: who really needed greens, and b: morphed with her philanthropic goals. And the donations then steamrolled towards these very surprised nonprofits. There were no strings attached on where MacKenzie wanted her donation to be injected into. Her stance was that she believed in what they were achieving and therefore had great faith they'd put the money to whatever good use they felt needed it. No micromanaging, no conditional grant giving and no question towards the nonprofit. It's been a case of 'I have buckets of cash, you need it, I trust you, spend it wisely and God speed.'

MacKenzie's fast and furious approach is refreshing, logical and screams common sense. Covid-19 has destroyed so many individuals and nonprofits livelihoods and grants have been taking too long to arrive at their destination. Accounting MacKenzie started her steamrolling rainy-day expedition six months before Covid-19 was a thing, it speaks volumes about her need to do good on the planet, regardless of whatever stage Earth is at, at any given moment. Hiring a vetting company to decide where the donor should spend their cash already makes a dent in the donation, since these vetting companies charge a small fortune for their expertise. Additionally, the interest MacKenzie is making on her stored banked cash will forever keep blowing through the roof i.e. for every $1.7b she donates, her interest just recovered the same amount within days and oddly, it may turn into a frustrating circle whereby the speed of offloading is rewarded with interest gains taking the phrase 'donor matching' to a very strange, new level. That pot of gold may never empty and she may never be short of cash but by gum, she's giving it all she has and we applaud her. With the most concentrated number of billionaires on the planet located in the Bay Area, these 75 rich list people have been so silent in helping others, we can actually hear crickets. MacKenzie is a breath of fresh air in contrast.

What we need are more MacKenzie's out there who trust, have faith, belief and want to help nonprofits. So they're going directly to the source and catapulting cash their way, instantly. No questions asked, no fanfare of a publicity circus in advance of donating to empower their egos, and complete disregard towards the norm of retaining grant experts who's salaries chomp away at the fund that's intended for recipients.

We must all be a MacKenzie. We don't need billions to achieve what she's doing. We just need to follow her rule of thumb: If you have something that will help the needy, give it to them. Whether it's $1, a pair of sneakers, socks, a sleeping bag or half a sandwich. And give it to them today. Don't dwell, don't overthink it. Just donate. Be a MacKenzie...