We've Moved!

Hey folks, I'm not giving up this blog entirely, but I've finally launched my new project, 48hills.org, which will be a progressive online daily newspaper, so you can read my reporting and comments there every day? 48hills.org.

How we can fight evictions -- at home

I'm really glad that Mayor Ed Lee has gotten the message and is ready to join the fight against evictions. Although it's hard to tell exactly what he's proposing, except to try to get the state Legislature to modify the Ellis Act and give cities more control over evictions. (The Ellis Act, of course, is only part of the problem, but it's a big part: There is little in the way of legal defense to an Ellis eviction.)

The only way we're ever going to get the state to give local governments the tools they need to fight displacement is if big-city mayors get involved, and this is start. Lee ought to be trying to drag the mayors of San Jose, Los Angeles, Oakland, and every other city that is or will be facing housing pressure to join him.

But we all know that it won't be easy: Landlords dominate the state Legislature. Tenant bills are always an uphill battle, and this one will be brutal, and may take a while. So I'm still looking at what we can do now, in San Francisco.

I've suggested that the city can, and should, raise the statutory relocation fee for Ellis evictions, and Sup. David Campos is going to introduce a bill to double it, from around $5,000 to around $10,000. That's a good start, but there may be even more we can do.

Federal law already addresses the issue of displacement: If you're tossed out of a place because of any development involving federal money, you have the right to be made whole, at least for a while: The Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1970 was set up to ensure that people whose homes were taken for urban renewal or infrastructure project had the right to stay -- not just in the region but in the same city. Under the law, the government is required to pay relocation compensation equal to the difference between what the resident was paying in rent or mortgage and the current market rate -- four four years.

That would give displaced people a fighting chance to stay in their neighborhoods.

The law remains on the books. No court has ever invalidated it. The presumption -- that when you lose your home through no fault of your own, you should not also lose your community -- is pretty well enshrined in the statute.

So why not simply take the same standard -- the same legally defensible standard -- and adopt it as San Francisco law?

The relocation assistance required under an Ellis Act eviction would be designed not to punish a landlord or to make Ellis evictions too expensive, which might not be legal, but simply to ensure that the resident gets to say in town. Just like the feds have guaranteed since 1970 (when a left-wing radical name Richard Nixon was president and signed it into law).

If the state needs to get involved, this is a perfect piece of legislation for all of our local reps to carry. It's so simple and basic. It preserves existing vulnerable communities. It doesn't stop or repeal the Ellis Act; it simply states that part of the cost of evicting someone who has done nothing wrong is to make it possible for that person to rent another equivalent place at existing market rate.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

The "new" Warriors arena

The most important thing to understand about what the Chron calls a "lower, slimmer, and greener" Warriors arena is that the most troubling part of the project hasn't changed at all.

The key to comprehending this project is to realize that the arena is only a part of it -- the part the mayor and the Warriors owners want to talk about. But the owners know the arena won't pay for itself, and they don't want to spend their own money -- so they're asking to build hotels, a condo tower and a huge mall on public property.

Buried deep in the Chron story:

the $1 billion project includes two 105-foot hotel towers, a 175-foot condominium tower and about 120,000 square feet of retail space spread across Piers 30-32 and a 2.3-acre site across the Embarcadero now used as a parking lot. The new design makes no changes to the development planned on the parking lot, officially called Seawall Lot 330. Both sites are owned by the city.

Now: the waterfront isn't zoned for highrise hotels and condos -- or for that level of retail. None of this has anything to do with the maritime use that is supposed to dominate anything built on  Port land.

The defeat of 8 Washington should be a warning to these folks: Whatever you feel about an arena on the waterfront, the public doesn't seem to want highrise condos there. And if the project were limited to just the arena, it wouldn't get built.

So really, nothing new here: Just hype about a slightly modified architectural rendition that doesn't show the big towers in the background. And I don't think this will change the way critics look at the project.

What we should do with the waterfront

Art Agnos, the former mayor and foe of both 8 Washington and the Warriors arena, floated out an idea today that I've been talking about for years. Why not stop selling off parts of the waterfront to raise money, and instead ask the voters to approve a bond act that would pay for repairing some crumbling piers, demolishing the rest of them -- and turn as much as possible of the Port's underused land into parks and open space?

It's an expensive proposition, but when you look at the long term -- say , the next 50 years --is it worthwhile for the city to have a world-class waterfront filled with public space (and prepared for sea-level rise)? Or is it better to take the short view, and lose public land now for quick cash?

At least we're starting to talk about it. And I can pretty much guarantee that  in the next year or two there will be a major campaign, and probably a ballot initiative, to lock down lower height limits on Port land, the Embarcadero, and the immediately adjoining areas. That would shoot down the Warriors arena, probably 75 Howard, and the Giants ambitious development plans for the parking lots near AT&T Park.

At the very least, we ought to have a serious waterfront planning process that sets some rules -- and then follow them. Right now, every project that's planned for that part of town violates existing zoning and height limits. Every single site has to be spot-zoned. Every single developer is getting some sort of a break from the city.

Supporters of 8 Washington, like Chuck Nevius,  like to say that the developer, Simon Snellgrove, went through a long, involved planning process and got all the necessary permits. But what he didn't do was follow the existing rules. He could have built a condo complex on that site that met current zoning rules; it would have been smaller, and he wouldn't have made as much money. But he would have avoided the ballot battle -- which, after all, started off as a referendum on the single-site height increase.

So let's talk firs about what we want to do with this part of the city city, and then offer developers a chance to fulfill that mission. And keep as much of it public as possible. That would actually be logical.

After 8 Washington

As I think about it, the 8 Washington vote was about three things: Whether the mayor's popularity has any staying power and coat tails; whether the voters are satisfied with the direction of the city; and whether it's time for an entirely new approach to the city's waterfront.

The answer to the first question is clearly No. Ed Lee made it very clear that he wanted this project to move forward, and nobody seemed to care. It still lost by 20 points. That doesn't bode well for his "legacy project" of the Warriors arena. The second is pretty obvious, too -- when even the Chron puts evictions as its lead story, the anger among the populace is pretty serious. And I think the next thing we're going to see is some sort of a campaign to rethink development along the Port and nearby areas -- possibly a vote-approved height limit of some sort. Or maybe, in a more lasting way, an approach that looks at what the Port does with its land and whether we really want to continue allowing private-sector development and the money it brings in to fund Port operations. Maybe we just do a big bond act, clean up the piers we can fix, create a lot of new open space, and let the other piers decay into the Bay.

The larger, overarching issue, of course, is housing. It seemed pretty clear that the voters didn't see $5 million condos as part of the solution to the housing crisis. But the debate still goes on: Can we build enough market-rate housing to bring prices down? Is there any connection between supply and demand in this city?

That's what Urban IDEA and the SF Progressive Media Center (among others) are going to talk about tomorrow (Thursday) night at a special forum at the LGBT Center. It starts at 6 pm, and we're going to hear a wide range of expert panelists discuss the local housing market, whether new construction will bring prices down, and what can actually be done. If you care about housing in the city, you want to be there.

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We won B and C -- and maybe it's the start of something

After the speeches, after the results were final, as the crowd was thinning out at the No on B and C party, former Planning Commission member Dennis Antenore, who has watched politics in this city for many years, turned to me and said: "Wherever Mayor Lee is tonight, he better be shaking in his boots."

Seriously: The election was over almost before the night began, and when all the votes were counted, the 8 Washington project went down in a landslide. Outspent more than 4-1, the opponents (a crazy coalition) won by 20 points. And for better or for worse, Lee was the face of the Yes campaign.

In TV ads and fliers, Lee (along with Lite Guv Gavin Newsom) talked about parks and "neighborhood housing." The developer, Simon Snellgrove, made every effort to turn the  mayor's popularity into a yes vote on luxury waterfront condos. And it was a total failure.

The vote tonight was a lot more than a referendum on one development project. It was a statement by San Franciscans that they're fed up with the direction the city is going. It was as much about the epidemic of evictions and the influx of rich techies as it was about height limits on the waterfront. And it was a vote of confidence in the mayor --one that he lost, badly.

As I sat and watched a range of speakers who not so long ago would never have appeared on the same stage -- retired Judge Quentin Kopp, former Mayor Art Agnos, former City Attorney Louise Renne, former Supervisor Aaron Peskin -- I realized that something profoundly important was happening here. People of all political stripes who have lived in San Francisco for a while are realizing that their city is being stolen away from them.

Now: There have been many times in the past when Old San Francisco complained about newcomers, from the Beats to the Hippies to the Punks to the Gay and Lesbian population -- but this was very different. Nobody at the party tonight cared a bit about how new arrivals looked or smelled or what they smoked or wrote or who they loved. It was, and is, all about money. About longtime residents being forced out of town purely because they aren't rich enough to stay.

As David Campos put it, in a preview of the coming state Assembly race: "There is a tale of two cities. We have an affordability crisis, Ellis Act evictions are up 170 percent, and City Hall doesn't get it." He noted that the supervisors just hours earlier voted (with Sup. David Chiu the swing vote) for a bill to push homeless people out of the parks.

"Enough is enough," he said in a fiery speech. "San Francisco is a city for all of us, not just for the ultra-rich. We have a crisis here, and we have to act as if it's a crisis."

It was stunning to hear Renne -- an appointee of Dianne Feinstein and never a foe of development -- proclaim that "To all those developers, this is a message: Don't mess with our waterfront." Renne even praised environmental lawyer Sue Hestor, who for man years fought bitterly with Renne over planning policy.

Everyone was talking about how to turn this momentum into something bigger. As Kopp put it, "This is the beginning of the end of five more years of a Willie Brown administration." Added Agnos (who used to fight bitterly with Kopp): "This is the beginning, and it feels like a movement."

Among other things, the Warriors arena, the 45 Howard highrise condo project, and the Giants development on the waterfront are now all very much in play. There's likely to be a ballot measure to set strict waterfront height limits.

And Campos is already talking about introducing legislation to start attempting to control the evictions.

There was hope in the air tonight. Labor, environmentalists, neighborhood folks, along with a whole lot of San Franciscans who used to be on the opposite side of major issues, came together to say, as Campos put it, "Enough is enough."

I rode my bike home from North Beach thinking that maybe we can still save San Francisco.

Why I voted No on B and C (and why I think we will win)

Not many people at my polling place today. At least half of the ballots cast were mailed in over the past few weeks. Somehow, I always wait for Election Day; it seems a lot more festive.

At any rate, I proudly voted against the Wall on the Waterfront, No and B and C. I was feeling crabby and unsure about Sup. Mark Farrell's health-care reform measure, Prop. A, so I went with the League of Pissed Off Voters and SEIU 1021 and voted no. Prop. D is harmless enough.

The Chronicle's coverage makes it seem as is Props B and C are just about one development on one site where the developer is promising housing and parks. Actually, the project won't add more than a few square feet of new public open space. And the housing is all for the very, very rich.

But there's a much larger issue here: The city never rezoned the waterfront for taller buildings. In fact, over the past 30 years or so, the trend has been exactly the opposite: Height limits have come DOWN along the Bay.

If Simon Snellgrove and his partners had come to the Port, the Planning Commission, and the Board of Supervisors and said: Hey, we think the city should allow intense, highrise development along the Embarcadero and the southern piers, we could have had that debate. And the developers would have lost.

Instead, they asked for spot zoning, for a special exception to the rules for this one site, so they can make a whole lot of money. And if the voters go along with it, every other greedy developer with a vision for a new Fontana Towers will try to grab waterfront land and start building what will become a real Wall.

I'm honest about my position: I don't think the city should build ANY more high-end housing until we catch up on the need for affordable places to live. And if you think that building more luxury condos will bring down prices, perhaps you should read this.

But whatever you think about housing, this is the wrong way to make planning decisions in an area as sensitive, and as important to the public, as the waterfront. If you are reading this and you haven't voted yet, go out right now -- your boss has to give you time off from work -- and say NO on B and C.

And despite the millions Snellgrove has spent on this campaign, we have a real chance. Low voter turnout might actually help us, since the people on the East Side of town who take five minutes to go to the polls will more than likely be on our side.

The polls are close on Prop. B. But I think Snellgrove's camp is nervous, which is why you've seen the flurry of last-minute TV ads featuring the mayor and lite guv. TV is expensive -- and this wasn't just late-night cable stuff. This was World Series, Monday Night Football ... shows why you're buying not just SF but the whole region, paying for millions of viewers just to reach a few thousand. You don't do that unless you're really nervous.

If B and C go down, the path to building a Warrior's arena and a highrise at 45 Howard and a giant complex near the Giants stadium gets tougher. Because it will send a message that the voters want the waterfront open. Here's hoping.

You can park in the bus stop if you go to church

I've been pissed for years about the rules that allow church-goers to park in the middle of the street on Sunday morning, while people who engage in secular activities (yoga? the gym? brunch?) get tickets.

But it's getting worse.

I was riding my (secular) bicycle down Valencia this morning and I saw a car parked right in the bus stop next to a "church parking only" sign. That's normally like a $250 ticket. It's a BUS STOP. You can't park there. But yes you can, apparently.

And there was a parking control office right across the street, giving out tickets, as he should have been, to people who didn't feed the (secular) meter.

I asked why the people who park in the bus stop don't get tickets Sunday morning, and he said he was as frustrated as me. But his supervisors have made it clear that anyone going to church gets a pass on the tickets that the rest of us have to pay.

This would never stand up in court.

If we want to suspend parking rules Sunday morning, fine: Let everyone park in the middle of the street and in the bus stops. But how can we possibly decide that a religious service gets a special privilege? 

Check it out.

Free parking, if you

Tenants agenda will dominate local politics

A coalition representing every major tenant group in San Francisco released a set of proposals yesterday that will become a major political test for the mayor, the city attorney, and every member of the Board of Supervisors.

It's been quite a while since we've had such a clear litmus-test issue, one that will force local officials to side with an organized, effective tenant movement and an increasingly angry public fed up with rent hikes and displacement -- or to show that they're unwilling to go up against the well-funded real-estate lobby.

The ideas coming out the tenant groups are strong, and would have the effect of making Ellis Act evictions more expensive and, perhaps, impossible. They're the best sort of creative thinking, ways that the city can use its local power to limit a state law that's destroying communities.

Among the two most critical: A proposal to significantly increase the mandatory relocation costs of an Ellis Act eviction (which I suggested here) and a proposal to reclassify tenancy-in-common units as rentals -- making evictions for TIC conversion illegal.

The landlords and speculators are going to howl. They're going to say this is illegal and threaten to sue. They'll bend the ear of every official who they've given money to in the past. They'll try to line up the tech types like Ron Conway to argue that this would hurt job growth in the city's tech sector. (Actually, the conversion are hurting the city's biggest industry, hospitality and tourism, by driving its workers out of town. And the new arrivals don't have any special right to live here.)

And so, the battle lines will be drawn.

I laughed when I saw David Chiu talking about how he prefers Tales of the City to A Tale of Two Cities because the Armistead Maupin book is about "San Francisco’s new and established residents finding their way and addressing the challenges and the possibilities of living in this city." You can't "find your way" if the real estate speculators catering to the new residents are forcing you out of town. There's no way I want to get along with and find my way with the people who are evicting elderly Asian families and people with AIDS just to make a fast buck.

No: We have to fight back, and the mayor and the supervisors are going to have to tell us which side they're on. There's not a lot of room for compromise here; the evictions have to stop, the Ellis Act has to be defanged, and we need six votes and a mayoral signature to do it.

We also need the support of City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who will have to be willing to be as courageous about tenants rights as he was about same-sex marriage. Anything that puts a serious obstacle in the path of the Ellis Act will almost certainly lead to litigation. But he's got a talented staff of lawyers who have shown in the past a remarkable ability to find ways to make the law work for us. We need nothing less on this one.

There will be multiple elections in 2014. Chiu and Sup. David Campos will square off in the first round of a state Assembly election in June, and most likely will both be in a runoff in November. Districts 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 will be up in November. And in the middle of all of that, one of the most important battles for the city's future will take place.

Here's the detailed press release with all the information:

A Policy Agenda to
Halt Housing Speculation and Preserve Housing for Working People and Seniors
October 24, 2013

Asian Law Caucus, Causa Justa Just Cause, Chinatown Community Development Center, Community Tenants Association, Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, San Francisco Tenants Union, Tenderloin Housing Clinic

The fight to save the Lee family has brought renewed attention to the eviction and displacement crisis in San Francisco. While that one family’s eviction may ultimately be resolved, our challenge now is to address the growing number of others who face a similar threat to their homes.

Since the Lee family received their eviction notice in May of 2012, more than 280 other apartment units have been the subject of formal Ellis Act notices. Hundreds more have been or in the process of being evicted through other means. And those who have been displaced are finding a housing market in which only the very wealthy can afford an apartement.

The evidence is clear. We are facing not only an eviction crisis but also a crisis associated with the loss of affordable rental housing across the city. Speculative investments in housing has resulted in the loss of thousands affordable apartments through conversions and demolitions. And the trend points to the situation becoming much worse. We need action now by the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor to halt this crisis before we lose the diversity and character that makes San Francisco strong and vibrant.

What follows is an agenda seeks to address this crisis:

1. Control the unregulated conversion of apartments into condo-lite ownership units.

Background: Thousands of working, senior, and disabled San Franciscans are being pushed out the City via the Ellis Act loophole to just cause eviction protections. By and large, Ellis Act units removed from the rental market are converted into tenancy-in-commons (TIC's) and sold to individual owners via a fractionalized loan product. These fractionalized TIC units walk, talk, and quack like a condo but are not subject to the stringent consumer protection and health/life safety controls placed on condo conversions. As we learned during the debate around TIC / condo conversion last spring, a large number of TIC purchasers are "trapped" in a product that they cannot afford to retrofit and/or upgrade because these TIC purchasers have stretched the limit of their credit to purchase their TIC unit. This places TIC owners at financial and physical risk and reduces the resiliency of San Francisco's neighborhoods in event of catastrophe's. The current lack of regulation over fractionalized TIC's also forgoes San Francisco's last best chance to upgrade our neighborhoods while simultaneously preserving their physical form/character.

Legislative Proposal: To protect the resiliency and long term future of SF neighborhoods and to protect TIC consumers, San Francisco should amend the Planning Code to create a use category to capture TIC's formed through a TIC agreement and fractionalized loan product (FRACTIC). San Francisco should require that as a condition of changing from any existing use into a FRACTIC, that the project sponsor must seek a CU, for which a condition of approval be that the underlying building be brought up to the then existing State and City building code standards (as opposed to building code standards at the time of construction).

Precedent: San Francisco regulates non-physical changes in use with some frequency. Most recently, the city created a category of use for conversion into institutionally controlled student housing and CU requirement to effect any change of use into that category. San Francisco frequently regulates building health and safety through numerous mechanisms . Most notably, the city typically requires building code upgrades as part of the condo conversion process - to enhance life safety protections of purchasers.

Policy Outcome: This proposal is similar in nature to the numerous "value capture" mechanisms placed on new development. In new construction projects, the city consistently imposes community benefits requirements, thereby capturing a portion of the value conveyed on the project sponsor by the increase in use. In this way, the City gets a benefit from the bargain. Currently, there is no similar benefit of the bargain with regard top FRACTIC creation. While FRACTIC's generate enormous additional value for the real estate speculators who create them, these speculator are not required to contribute any of this value back to the City (note that the increased property tax base resulting form FRACTIC creation is born by the consumer, not the speculator). By requiring FRACTIC project sponsors to commit to significant building upgrades, the City captures back value in the form of increased health and life safety, resilient neighborhoods, and consumer protection.

• Require approval by the Planning Department of conversions of apartments into condo-lite individually for-sale units
• Close the loophole that allows ‘new’ ownership units, created through conversions, to evade building code upgrades

2. Stop conversions, mergers, and other discretionary city approvals of projects facilitated by non-fault evictions.

The wave of speculative evictions results in the demolition, conversion and merger of rental units. In order to increase the profits from the resale of buildings, speculators purchase buildings with long-term rent controlled tenants, evict them through the use (or threats to use) the Ellis Act, and then demolish, merge or convert the rental units to more lucrative “luxury” housing or commercial uses. The Avalos Amendment to the Planning Code being considered at the Planning Commission this afternoon would prohibit the approval of a demolition, merger, or conversion of a residential dwelling unit if one or more of the units had been subject to a no-fault eviction within the last ten years. 

Often speculators simply try to drive the tenants out by conducting extensive and harassing construction in the building while the tenants are in place, hoping that they will just move without having to invoke the Ellis Act. The City should increase building inspections of buildings where there is construction with tenants in place, and adopt standards to protect against constructive evictions during construction. The City should also restrict non-essential building permits where no-fault evictions are pending, such as during the one-year eviction notice period during an Ellis Act eviction. This would protect tenants from speculators turning their homes into a construction zone in order to force the tenants out and discourage fighting their eviction.

• Pass the Avalos demolition and merger control legislation to prevent the loss of existing housing
• Increase building inspections of buildings with construction with tenants in place – adopt standards to protect against constructive evictions during construction
• Restrict non-essential building permits where no-fault evictions are pending.

3. Strengthen rent control protections for tenants to the fullest extent allowable under law.

The wave of Ellis Act evictions that are driving San Francisco’s long-term senior, disabled, and working class tenants of color from their homes follow the same basic pattern time and time again: (1) a real estate speculator targets a rent-controlled building, (2) invokes (or threatens to invoke) the Ellis Act to evict all tenants, and (3) after displacing the tenants and removing their units from the City’s shrinking stock of affordable rental housing, sells the empty units as TICs to the highest bidder. The City can and should strengthen the protections afforded to vulnerable tenants under the San Francisco Rent Ordinance and curb the ongoing abuse of the Ellis Act by the greedy speculators who target our most vulnerable tenant population. 

The City should take steps to protect vulnerable tenants from speculators by defining “tenancies in common” agreements as lease agreements so as to maintain the City’s limited housing stock and discourage abuse of the Ellis Act by speculators. TIC agreements provide each owner an exclusive right to occupy a unit, just like a rental and, therefore, should be treated as rentals. 
The City should also increase the relocation assistance available to displaced tenants so that the relocation reflects the full costs of displacement in San Francisco’s unforgiving rental market. The City should investigate and prosecute abuses of the Ellis Act, including the illegal rental of apartments. And the City should require and publish additional reporting on the use and status of Ellis Act buildings, so the full magnitude of the damage caused by greedy speculators is transparent and easily accessible to the public. 

The Real Estate speculators driving out our most vulnerable long-term tenants have no interest in being a San Francisco “landlord” or in contributing to the City in any meaningful way. To these speculators, the longest-tenured tenants are the least desirable. Because these speculators desire to renovate and flip their properties as soon as possible for as much profit as possible, they have no interest in acting as a landlord any longer than the law requires. As a result, tenant abuse and harassment through bad-faith capital improvement evictions, unsolicited buyout offers, unending construction, and a disproportionate devotion of resources to vacant, rather than occupied, units are the norm now in San Francisco. The City should prohibit these abuses and, where already prohibited, vigorously enforce the tenant harassment provisions of Rent Ordinance 37.10B. 

• Define ‘tenancies in common’ agreements as lease agreements
• Restrict capital improvement evictions where there is an intent to Ellis
• Increase relocation assistance to reflect the full costs of displacement
• Require reporting on status of Ellis Act units 
• Investigate and prosecute illegal rental of Ellised apartments

4. Support victims of Ellis Act evictions to find alternative housing

Actions to restrict future conversions of housing will help slow or even halt future evictions. But with many evictions already in process, the city needs to also assist the most vulnerable victims of our present crisis. The proposal to provide a limited and targeted preference for the city’s affordable housing program is an important first step towards addressing that need.

• Pass the Chiu, Breed, Campos, Kim, et al. Ellis Eviction Displacee Assistance Ordinance

A different perspective on the BART strike

So much -- so much! -- of the news about the BART strike has been tinged with blame-the-workers headlines, quotes, and rhetoric. But if you look around a bit, you can find some really interesting perspectives that show there's a lot more to the story than the "overpaid" workers who don't have or need any particular skills.

I've been doing pretty much the same thing as union leaders, and not trying to draw much more than a terrible human tragedy out of the recent fatal train crash. But Bob Gammon at the EB Express does a sensitive, but compelling, job of explaining why this accident ought to be a part of the contract discussion:

the killing of two transit workers provided strong evidence that union officials have been right all along about two major aspects of the current labor dispute: Being a BART train driver is a highly skilled position and that BART workers sometimes toil in dangerous conditions. Moreover, union members were right to warn before the strike that BART managers should not attempt to drive trains in the event of a shutdown, because it’s too risky.

BART trains are pretty highly computerized, but the operators are the ones who prevent accidents. A computer can't tell you that there's someone up ahead on the tracks. And the main BART control room is also staffed by union workers, and when they aren't there, lots of things can go wrong.

I also like this analysis by Dylan Tweney at VentureBeat:

What's more, it took a tragedy to drive home the fact that the BART strike is not about a bunch of entitled people demanding more. Well, BART workers are demanding more -- but, for all the system's dysfunction, most of them are not what you'd call "entitled." They're hard-working people who put in long hours to move thousands of people safely from point A to point B. And for some of those people, their jobs are in fact a matter of life and death.

 And Davey D explains why this is about more than just the BART strike.

The media narrative has been to interview people and paint a story of how the average commuter is inconvenienced by the ‘evil BART workers’ who are striking… Now corporate owned news outlets are running around with cameras in hand asking how you feel..Now they are expressing concern.. This is the same news outlet that went nowhere near an unemployment office, WIC lines or into your poor neighborhood to ask how you felt when the government was shut down for the past two weeks.

In fact, there's been precious little coverage of the computer malfunction at the Employment Development Department that left 158,000 people without benefits (or the fact that the private contractor got paid -- many, many millions -- while people were unable to feed their kids or make rent.)

I hope they settle today. But the BART Board is going to have a lot to account for after the trains start running again.

More details emerging on BART strike

So we're getting more details on the reasons for the BART strike, and it seems pretty clear to me that management is at fault.

The economic stuff is done. Wages, benefits ... settled. The remaining issue is work rules.

There are places where work rules are a bit crazy. (Check out the California prison guard's union rules.) But it doesn't seem that anything at BART is that over the top. At least, not worth this strike. Not unless I'm missing something.

The Chron lays out its account the disputed rules, and they go like this:

BART wants all electronic paystubbs. Some workers want paper. Someone has to hand them out every two weeks. Takes four hours. This is absolutely NOT worth shutting down Bay Area transit over.

BART wants workers to actually work 40 hours before they can collect overtime. The workers want to be able to collect overtime if they're sick one day and then work a schedule day off. This doesn't seem like that huge a deal. Hell, there are substitute prison guards who have a deal where they get a call in the morning to come in to work, and if they say they're sick they still get paid for the day.

The other issue seems to be scheduling. Management wants to be able to tell someone who's already worked 40 hours (many BART employes work four ten-hour days) that they still need to come in on the fifth day. The union wants predictable schedules.

The union even offered to take the work rules to binding arbitration. They'd win some, maybe lose some.

And management refused.

For this -- not money, not pensions, not health care costs -- we have a shutdown. Orchestrated by a labor negotiator with a history of problems. Sorry, I put this one on the BART Board.

Behind the (ugh) BART strike

It looks as if BART workers are going to strike at midnight. And if it happens, I fear that BART management will try to turn public sentiment against the workers.

Here's what I know at this point:

The two sides were pretty close, essentially settled on wages and benefits. But management wanted the unions to give back on some work rules, and union negotiators say the membership would never go for those changes.

I just spoke to BART Board president Tom Radulovich who said, for example, that the two sides were arguing over a current rule that allows a worker who calls in sick one day, then works on a scheduled day off, to get overtime. BART wanted no overtime unless you actually work more than 40 hours a week.

There were some discussions, he said, and BART agreed that if a worker misses a day because of a scheduled vacation or because of military leave, he or she would get overtime for working an extra day. "But not the people who just don't show up," Radulovich said.

Now: I'm all for running a system efficiently, and I'm sure there are some work rules that ought to be changed. But this one? Well, think about it: A sick day is a day you're getting paid as if you were at work. That's in the contract. If you called in sick one day and worked four more, at 8 hours each, you'd get paid for 40 hours. You get a limited number of sick days a year, and those are, in essence, days you are getting paid not to work. (We all know you shouldn't take a sick day unless you're sick. Is there any employee anywhere in the world who gets paid sick days and hasn't called in to extend a vacation, apply for another job, or sit in the backyard in the sun?) You EARN those sick days; it's part of your pay.

So you take a sick day and work beyond your scheduled 40, and put in for overtime? Somehow, that doesn't outrage me.

Then there's the story of the pay stubs. Apparently, according to Radulovich, one BART worker gets paid to hand out pay stubs to the other workers, even when most got their money through electronic banking. That takes half a day, every pay period. "We can't do anything to modernize the system," he told me.

There has to be more at stake than that. I can't believe either side would engage in a costly, damaging strike over one worker taking four hours once every two weeks to hand out pay stubs. It's insane to think BART would be shut down over that.

At any rate, Roxanne Sanchez, the president of SEIU Local 1021, said that the unions asked to submit the work rule changes to binding arbitration, but BART refused. Radulovich said that wasn't true, although the general manager, Grace Crunican, said that management wouldn't submit just one part of the contract to arbitration. "They want the money on the table but they don't want the work rules on the table," she said on Channel 7.

Of course, it's tough for reporters at this point to know exactly what the details are, since both sides have agreed to keep the negotiations confidential. But it will all come out, and we'll be able to evaluate pretty quickly how reasonable or unreasonable management has been.

But for now, this is looking bitter -- and it's an odd place for Radulovich, who has long been considered the most progressive voice on the BART Board. If this strike happens, labor -- always among his biggest supporters -- is going to be furious at him, and a lot of the rest of the left in the city is going to go along.

That goes double if BART tries to demonize the employees. The Right has been trying for years to create the perception that people who work for the government are lazy and overpaid and that they cheat the system. Some do. So do private-sector workers. But most BART employees show up every day and do difficult jobs (you like cleaning shit out of elevators? I'd be taking sick days all the time). You can argue wages and benefits and what's appropriate, but BART management has an obligation not to play into the anti-public-employee handbook.

Why can't the Twitter IPO winners live in Stockton?

Pretty much everyone agrees that the Twitter IPO is going to drive up housing prices in San Francisco to even more atrocious levels. Gabriel Metcalf, the director of SPUR, thinks the solution is to build at least 5,000 units of new housing a year (although the city's planning director seems to agree with me that building vast new housing developments might not do anything for affordability.)

It's an interesting question, and we'll be talking about it at a special forum Nov. 7 sponsored by the San Francisco Progressive Media Center, Urban IDEA, the SF Information Clearinghouse and San Francisco Magazine. We'll have a debate on the central issue: Can we build our way out of this housing crisis? It's at 6 pm at the LGBT Center.

It features Doug Engmann, who runs Engmann Options; Calvin Welch, from the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse, Michael Yarne, of Build Inc., Tim Colen, from the Housing Action Coalition, Farhad Manjo, a writer at San Francisco Magazine, and Christina Olague, Past Planning Commission President. Fernando Marti, from the Council of Community Housing Organizations, will moderate. 

I'm not on the panel, so I get to put out my idea right now. I think we have to find ways to regulate our way out, by treating housing as a public utility. If we could do that -- in essence, bar evictions for anything but just cause and extend rent controls to vacant apartment -- we could protect the vulnerable populations in the city, protect the character and diversity that makes San Francisco such a world-class city.

And what would happen to the Twitter millionaires? Well, a lot of them couldn't live here.

There aren't enough vacant rental units in this city for all the newcomers attracted by tech jobs (jobs in SF, but also on the Peninsula.)  So for a while, until somebody voluntarily moved or a new unit was built, they'd have to live ... on the Peninsula. Or in the East Bay. Or in Stockton, where the longtime San Franciscans who are getting evicted are winding up.

In other words, the long-time residents, who have already put in the time and energy to build community, get to stay here. The recent arrivals, no matter how much money they make, have to live outside of town, somewhere else, for a while. 

It's the reverse of current policy: Now, the newcomers with money get to force existing residents to live far out of town, in a place that isn't as exciting or fun as SF. Under my theory, money doesn't allow you to force out an existing resident. So you wait your turn.

Sure, if you want to offer an existing homeowner some insane amount of cash to sell you their place, you can do that. Because if I own a home and I don't want to sell, I don't have to. And if developers want to build new units for the new arrivals, that's great. Do it. Let the tech workers who just got here live in the sterile towers downtown. Just as long as they don't force anyone else out of the Mission.

That has to be the starting point for any housing discussion. The people who are here now get to stay if they want to. After that, we can talk about development.

 

The latest attack on pensions (and why it makes me crazy)

The reason a proposal like this one makes me so crazy is that it may get some traction -- because the news media as an institution has done a horrible job of explaining what pensions really are.

When employees at a unionized shop, public or private, negotiate pension payments, they're accepting deferred compensation. That's what a pension is. So instead of, say, a five percent raise as part of a contract, the union agrees to take a three percent raise, and have two percent (or the equivalent) go into a pension fund.

Social security is, in essence, a deferred compensation plan: I pay into it every month, and when I'm 65, I get it back. (Of course, if I die before I'm 65, I don't get it at all, and if I die at 67, I only get a little, and if I live to 104, I get more than I paid in, maybe.)

And since nobody wants that pension money to sit around in a bank, it gets invested in the stock market, and when the market does really well, then the employers figure they can get away with better pensions without paying for it. That's what happened for much of the 1990s and 2000s -- politicians who didn't want to make tough calls (higher pay for workers might mean higher taxes) promised nice pensions instead. And they thought they'd get away with it because the stock market would keep rising, at least until (as in the case of someone like former Mayor Willie Brown) term limits kicked in and it became someone else's problem.

But this is how union negotiations work. You bargain for a better pension and healthcare deal instead of higher wages? Hey, that's the deal you took. But it's your money either way: You paid into that pension system whether you contributed directly or not. You paid for your health insurance whether you pony up $92 a month of $250 a month. Because if the health plan cost more, you'd demand higher wages.

And that's what the BART workers are saying now: You want to pay us less, by reducing the amount you spend to underwrite our health care? Then you have to pay us more in cash every week to make up for it. Seems entirely reasonable.

Again: Health insurance -- the employer contribution-- is part of the pay that you earn as a worker. Pensions are your money, in deferred compensation, invested in a stock market that goes up and down.

The Republicans would like us all the have defined contributions but not defined benefits; that's what a 401K plan is. You put in your money, you take your choices with the stock market.

Unionized employees, with better bargaining ability than individuals, have been able to demand defined benefits. But that's part of the pay package; if you work for BART, your pension is your money.

Now: If BART or any other employer wants to change the contract in the future, and the unions agree -- say, paying more into their pensions or paying more for healthcare, and balancing that with a larger cash wage -- that's fine. That's called collective bargaining.

But you can go backward, and say: Hey, We promised you a pension as part of your pay, and now we're going to retroactively change the deal. That's like going to a group of workers and saying: We paid you $40,000 last year, but now we're broke so we've decided you were only worth $35,000, and you owe us $5,000. Pay up.

Doesn't work that way.

The Mission displacement march

It was festive at times at the Saturday march against displacement in the Mission, with drums and dancers. But underneath it was an air of frustration and anger.

I counted about 250 people, but it was hard to be sure; still, a solid turnout. The demands -- including a rent freeze for the Mission -- were in some cases beyond the ability of the city, and probably the state, but they showed how furious people (particularly younger people) have become at the destruction of their neighborhood.

The march started on 24th Street, which is the new epicenter of the displacement battle, a place where longtime family-owned businesses are facing eviction to make room for more Valencia Street-type upscale restaurants. It's scary.

I don't know what's going to happen next. I have some ideas, and tenant groups are meeting to talk about how local government can respond. In the meantime, the people facing the threats to their future and their communities are taking to the streets. And the protests are just going to get louder, and bigger, and angrier.

My photo editor seems to be acting up, but there are some great pictures here.

And more great pictures here.

The cost to taxpayers of mid-Market displacement

Fascinating hearing last week on the displacement of nonprofits from mid-Market. Sup. Jane Kim asked the Budget and Finance Committee to look into the problem, and a long list of speakers pointed out how rents have soared in the area -- and the mission of service providers is at risk.

When you're running a nonprofit, you can't just raise prices to cover the increased rent. And you can't always move to cheaper space -- for starters, there isn't much cheaper space anywhere in the city, and more important, most of the nonprofits in the area say it's important to be near the communities they serve.

So if there's a fixed amount of money, and more of it goes to a landlord, there's less to spend on providing human services.

But beyond all the stories -- and the clear evidence that the tech boom set off by the Twitter tax break and the mayor's policies is causing serious problems for the non-profit sector -- the numbers are what got to me.

See, a lot of these nonprofits are city funded. San Francisco in essence outsources a lot of its social services, contracting with community-based organizations to provide everything from substance-abuse treatment and counseling to eviction assistance. Almost everyone agrees those services are desperately needed -- and the nonprofits, by and large, get high marks for their work. And in the end, if rents go up, either services are going to be cut (which nobody wants) or city funding will have to increase to cover the higher costs.

How much are we talking about? A lot.

According to information released at the hearing, there are 1,425 nonprofit organizations that have contracts with the city. The total tab for those contracts: $528.8 million a year.

The average nonprofit budget is $4.8 million, and the average rent is $224,000 -- that's about 4.6 percent of the budget currently going for office space.

In the past year, the average rent increase has been 33 percent.

Okay, let's play that out. If 4.6 percent of $528.8 million goes for rent, that's about $24.3 million a year in public money that goes to private landlords. Hike that by 33 percent and you're looking at a bite of about $8 million. A year. In taxpayer money. To make it possible for nonprofits to stay in mid-Market, Soma and the Tenderloin in the middle of a real-estate gold rush set off by Mayor Ed Lee.

Yes, mid-Market was (and in some areas, still is) rundown, and needed economic development. But there are costs to a policy aimed at attracting tenants who can pay high rents; there are impacts on the tenants who are already there. (Same goes for housing.) And the city has done nothing at this point to mitigate those impacts -- that is, to protect the existing population of nonprofits (and small businesses, too) that need affordable space.

I keep repeating my refrain, but the facts bear it out: When you do this sort of economic development planning, first you have to figure out how to protect the existing vulnerable populations. We don't bother with that in San Francisco. Not under Ed Lee.

By the way: I texted Kim after the hearing with a simple question: How much of the problem that she so effectively exposed at her hearing was caused by the Twitter tax break (which she supported)? No answer.

The West Oakland gentrification problem

The Chron today ran an entirely predictable story about gentrification in West Oakland. I say entirely predictable because West Oakland is the next front in what's happening to San Francisco: You drive up housing prices enough in one area and you're going to get spillover into adjoining areas. San Francisco may be a peninsula, but it's not an island.

Now, some of the people interviewed in the story pointed out that the new influx of people, many of them white and better off financially than the existing residents, is not all bad: The new arrivals are repairing crumbling buildings and bringing money into the neighborhood.

Which is fine, as far as it goes. The danger is, as always, to existing vulnerable communities.

That happens two ways: Higher housing prices may help longtime homeowners sell for a nice profit, perhaps enough for a decent retirement. But they make it impossible for the next generation of working-class people to say in the community.

And higher housing prices give landlords more incentive to evict tenants and rent or sell to someone who has a lot more money. The Ellis Act hasn't been a big issue in Oakland --yet. But at this rate, it will be soon.

Oakland has rent-control, but that along won't protect West Oakland. In fact, that part of the Bay Area is directly in the targets of the ABAG planners who want to see higher density -- without giving cities the tools to prevent displacement.

Will the evictions never end?

There was this. And then this. And now this. And those are just the people who have made it into the newspapers. Every month, more than 100 new Ellis Act evictions are filed as the city's affordable rental housing stock (that it, the existing rent-controlled housing where people have lived for years) is getting decimated.

Rule number one of urban housing: In a crisis, the cheapest and best way to protect affordability is not to build but to protect existing housing. The best way to avoid displacement is not through approving new market-rate housing but by protecting existing vulnerable communities.

Rule two, in California: The state Legislature has taken away from cities the exact tools that they need to follow Rule One. The Ellis Act and Costa-Hawkins have essentially outlawed effective rent control and eviction protections.

And right now, housing is so valuable as a speculative commodity in San Francisco that no tenant anywhere is safe. The Ellis Act is almost a guarantee of high profits for any landlord. It's almost irresistible. And unless there's a second tech bust and another real-estate bubble (or an actual earthquake that shakes up the housing market) it's not going to change. We're going to lose more than 1,000 rent-controlled units every year, and quite possibly more. There is no greater threat to San Francisco today.

So what can tenants and concerned residents and the city do? Well, I've been thinking about options.

It's not easy for tenants to get anything out of the state Legislature, although there's an opening: The state has mandated that local and regional agencies make plans for increased density to handle population growth -- and I could certainly argue that the places impacted by those mandates have the obligation to ask Sacramento to restore the tools they need to manage growth without displacement. Randy Shaw points out, correctly, that if all the big city mayors pushed the local-control issue, they might get somewhere. On the other hand, he dismisses most local efforts (anything that might smack of controlling the growth of tech jobs seems to be a non-starter for Randy and his friend the mayor) except for controlling tourist conversions, which is a fine idea. But none of those units will ever be rented at affordable rates.

Building more affordable housing is a top priority. It's also expensive and new construction can't possibly keep up with the need. Some17,000 new high-paid tech workers have moved into the city in the past couple of years, and most of them want to live in "cool" neighborhoods like the Mission, so you'd need massive development to keep displacement in check. Building enough affordable housing to keep up with the need -- thousands of units a year -- would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.


So what can we do to discourage Ellis Act evictions? Because that's the only way right now to save the city.

Public pressure clearly matters. The protests over the Lee family eviction got the sheriff to back off, then the mayor got involved, and the couple and their disabled daughter have a short reprieve. They still don't have a place to live, though, and the landlord hasn't agreed to halt the eviction. So we'll all be back in the streets next week when the stay expires.

And if it were possible to organize hundreds to protest every single Ellis Eviction, and sheriff's deputies had to get through crowds of people doing civil disobedience, it might slow things down. A lot of landlords don't care; they aren't the ones who have to haul the renters out and throw their stuff on the street. They can sit in their fancy cars and watch the deputies do it. But a virtual war in the streets over evictions is going to get a lot of attention. Maybe even enough to convince Ed Lee to organize his colleagues in LA and San Jose, and make a fuss at the California League of Cities, and go to Sacramento.

Noisy protests in front of landlords' houses and businesses has, in the past, at least brought some pressure to bear. And if everyone doing an Ellis eviction knew he or she would be subject to public exposure and shame, some might think twice. But greed's a powerful motivator.

It seems to me one of our only choices locally is to find ways to make Ellis evictions less profitable. Limiting condo conversions is a great step, but as we're seeing on Nob Hill, people are willing to buy long-term TICs.

There's another approach, though. The city -- the Board of Supervisors and the Rent Board -- control the mandatory relocation fees.

Right now, it costs $5,210 per tenant to do an Ellis eviction. That's what the city requires in relocation fees. The fee, which is supposed to help tenants find other housing, has gone up 4 percent since 2009, while the cost of housing has been going up 30 percent a year. Just to keep pace with increased costs, the fee ought to be tripled. (In fact, a lot of landlords will offer $15,000 or more to get tenants to leave voluntarily, just to avoid the legal hassle of an Ellis eviction.)

But in today's market, $15,000 gets you what? Five months rent in a one-bedroom apartment? For a family like the Lees, $15,000 is almost worthless; it buys them nothing close to a replacement home.

There's an old legal standard about "making the victim whole," that is, replacing what it is a wrongdoer has taken away. We ought to apply the same to Ellis evictions.

How about this: The supervisors raise the fee to whatever level is necessary to allow the tenant to remain in San Francisco, in the same neighborhood, for five years at existing market rents.

You pay $750 for a flat and your family faces eviction? Fine: The landlord has to pay the difference between $750 and the median cost of a comparable flat for five years. These days, that's probably around $250,000. Suddenly, Ellis Act evictions aren't so profitable.


Of course, there's a legal issue: The city's not allowed to put "roadblocks or barricades" in the way of the Ellis Act, Ted Gullicksen, who runs the Tenants Union, told me. There's some level of relocation fee that a court will find so onerous that it won't pass muster. But Gullicksen said there's no case law on that issue; nobody knows how much the city can mandate before the fee becomes a "roadblock."

It can certainly be a lot higher than it is. A LOT higher. Since we know plenty of cases where landlords have offered as much as $25,000 for voluntary move-outs, that much is clearly not a "roadblock." How about $50,000? $100,000? Let's push it and see what we can get away with.

Higher fees would both help tenants survive and discourage evictions. It might drive the landlords to Sacramento to do away with all relocation fees, but that might re-open the whole Ellis Act issue (the law was never intended to be used for evictions and condo conversions) and we might get some reluctant mayors involved. A court could strike down all relocation fees (unlikely) -- but at this point, the $5,000 makes so little difference to a typical tenant that I think it might be worth the risk.

Anybody got a better idea?

The taxi lawsuit could be serious

When the BizTimes reported that taxi industry leaders were gearing up to sue UberX, Lyft, and Sidecar,  it didn't get a lot of support on my Facebook feed. I get it -- the cab companies in SF aren't anyone's favorite consumer-service outfits. But this is serious stuff, and a lawsuit could shine some light on the downside of these ride-sharing startups.

You've all heard my rant before: Taxis are, and should be, part of the city's public transportation infrastructure. They are, and should be, tightly regulated. You want to drive a cab, and pick up strangers (many of whom may not know the language very well, and certainly don't know San Francisco streets very well) and take them places? First there's a criminal background check, then there's a mandatory training course, and if you screw up, you lose your permit. You are required by law to pick people up regardless of race or age; if a senior citizen needs a ride from the hospital to here public housing unit in the Bayview, you can't refuse her.

There are limits to the number of taxis on the streets. Those limits may be too low, but if you let just anyone drive a cab without a permit or controls, none of the drivers can make enough money to survive, so the quality of drivers goes down.

(That's my bias, by the way: I am not an ally or supporter of everyone in the industry, but I am on the side of the working drivers.)

The new folks, who are geared toward younger, better-off people with smartphones, don't have to follow the same rules. That's what gets me -- not that someone has found a better way to dispatch a taxi, but that companies that don't have the same regulatory requirements because they've created a loophole that nobody can seriously believe is real (the fares are called "donations" for a "shared ride") are competing unfairly with companies that have to follow (reasonable) city rules.

I don't know what the lawsuit will look like in the end. I do know that it could force the private startups to come clean about every detail of their business practices (including the fact that they would never be able to raise venture capital if fares were really voluntary donations and the exact status of the insurance the drivers and the companies carry).

The city let the state set the regs for these new types of services. That was a mistake; City Hall needs to treat all cab companies alike, under one set of requirements. In the meantime, I can see some fireworks here -- and a fascinating discussion of the legalities of the new "sharing economy."

The 8 Washington lies

I was walking around Glen Park on Saturday with my son, who is a volunteer on the No Wall on the Waterfront campaign, and we wandered into a laundromat where a friendly woman helped Michael hang a poster. "Is this the thing where they're going to build a park on the waterfront?" she asked.

No, actually, it's not, I told her. It's the thing where they're going to build the most expensive condos in San Francisco history, housing for the one percent of the one percent, in part on public land, with a massive spot-zoning increase in the allowable height limit for the area. It's a terrible idea.

But it's also going to be a low-turnout election, and not a lot of voters are paying attention, so there's bound to be some confusion. And developer Simon Snellgrove and his partners are taking advantage of it, pouring a truly obscene amount of money into the November election -- and running an almost comically misleading campaign.

Check out this ad. Nowhere does the ad even mention condominiums, much less condos that would be priced in the multiples of millions of dollars. Nowhere does it discuss the actual issue on the ballot -- should the height limit on the waterfront be raised from 84 to 136 feet so that exceptionally rich people can buy $5 million condos and Snellgrove can clear about $400 million?

But that doesn't matter -- Gavin Newsom and Ed Lee like the project!

The ad talks about affordable housing. It's a joke. Snellgrove will put $11 million into the city's affordable housing fund. That might pay for 30 subsidized units for low-income people. There are more than 100 families evicted every month in San Francisco right now. And, again: The developer is going to make vast sums of money from this deal. I'm not making up the $400 million number; I get that from Sup. David Chiu, who is hardly a left-wing radical. There have been public hearings on this; the figures are no secret.

The ad talks about a "private club." Actually, that would be the Golden Gateway Swim and Tennis Club, which is "private" the same way the YMCA, which I belong to, is private. You can pay a monthly fee to join. It's not like the Olympic Club, where you have to be voted in. A lot of the members are seniors who live at Golden Gateway. When Snellgrove is done, there will be a new PRIVATE club on the site, which you can pay a fee (no doubt much higher) to join.

But let's get to the bottom line here. This does nothing to solve the city's housing crisis. It's a way to bring more very rich people to the city. And it will pave the way -- literally -- for more intensive, highrise, PRIVATE development on the waterfront, which ought to be a public treasure.

Check out the numbers.  If this was such a public-spirited venture, would it take more than $800,000 in developer money to sell it to the public?

An eviction reprieve, for now

Sometimes, we win one. The locksmith was on hand and the sheriff's deputies were on call Wednesday to haul the Lee family out of a home where the septuagenarians and their disabled daughter have been living since 1979. But more than 200 people showed up to protest, the Chronicle (finally) picked up on this and put the story on page one, and the sheriff backed down. According to the Tenants Union (and the twitter feed @stopsfevictions) the Lees have a short reprieve. The eviction is off for now, and it will be next Tuesday or Wednesday before the Sheriff's Office can be geared up for the next round.

Sup. Jane Kim was there. Sup. David Campos showed his support. Mayor Ed Lee was nowhere, and his press office still hasn't been willing to answer my questions or make any sort of statement.

But Tommi Mecca, a longtime tenant advocate, said it well: "Yesterday demonstrates how fed up folks are with what is happening. We have to send the message that it's no more business as usual until the evictions stop."

That's how we ought to be thinking about this. No more business as usual until the evictions stop. Every landlord who wants to make a quick buck be destroying people's lives should be shamed and protested, and every attempt to remove longterm tenants should be met with community resistance. We need to work on TIC buyers, too, and make clear to them the social cost of evictions; the Lee's unit ought to be considered a crime scene, and anyone who moves in should be forced to remember, every day, how awful it was.

Perhaps the Lee eviction will become a version of the I-Hotel, the fight that comes to symbolize a much larger battle over the preservation of low-income communities and the struggle for affordable housing. But this one isn't over yet: The owner of the building, Matthew Miller, still plans to evict the Lee family and turn the place into TICs. The delay is just that -- a delay. And tenant advocates will need to be back on the streets next week.

And I still wonder: Where is the mayor?

 

Biggest problem in SF: Cost of living.

Message to Mayor Ed Lee, who has been pushing what he calls a "jobs agenda" by allowing all the new development possible and encouraging tax breaks to bring in tech firms: The main concern of the majority of San Franciscans isn't jobs, or homelessness, or crime.

It's the cost of living. Something directly -- and badly -- impacted by Lee's runaway growth policies.

In fact, when you read the survey (pdf), the cost of living and the lack of housing option is overwhelmingly cited as both the biggest problem facing the city and the biggest problem people see facing their families. And whatever the authors say about the survey, it's a relatively conservative sample (see: the small percentage that read the Bay Guardian regularly.)

Mayor Lee, ironically, gets good marks -- which is, I think, part of the failure of the local news media and political leaders to connect him to the eviction epidemic that has every single renter in town living in utter fear of an Ellis Act eviction. Of course, as I've pointed out, Lee can't stop the displacement alone -- but he's not even acting as if this is an important issue. And when he does address housing, it's all about building more -- despite the fact that virtually none of the new housing in the pipleline will do anything for affordability.

The Board of Supervisors, as a whole, doesn't fare as well in the poll as the mayor, which I think is, again, a sign of a misinformed public: I have issues with the board, but its members are, by and large, smart, competent people having intelligent debates about policy. I also think the poll is somewhat a result of district elections; if you ask people in D9 what they think about David Campos, you'll get high name recognition and strong positives. Those same people may have no idea who Katy Tang is.

And it's fascinating to see how many San Franciscans get their news not from the dailies or TV but from a local website. Maybe I'm on the right track here.

Energy industry publication denounces Mayor Lee

Energy News Data, an industry publication that serves the people who work in and follow the electric utility business, has some remarkably harsh words for the mayor of San Francisco. In a piece titled "A Disempowered City," reporter Chris Rafael blast the mayor for delaying and possibly killing CleanPowerSF:

In the face of such an imminent threat [of Climate Change], one might expect the mayor of what is ostensibly the most progressive city in the United States -- San Francisco -- to approve a city plan to purchase more renewable power. Guess again. Lee helped kill the plan, which took years of painstaking work at city agencies to piece together. And so Lee, in his own way, has joined the ranks of Republicans in Congress, climate-change deniers, and the fossil-fuel industry -- all symbols that political obstruction and big business can thwart reasonable attempts to deal with climate change.

He dissects and devastates the mayor's arguments against CleanPowerSF, pointing out that the community-choice aggregation plan offers an important pathway to lower carbon emissions.

Lee, who has offered no concrete plan of his own for reducing emissions, recently explained his reasons to the Board of Supervisors for opposing CleanPowerSF. In what ranks as one of the most absurd things I've ever heard, Lee complained that the program uses too many renewable-energy credits, which amounts to saying the program should be made more expensive by building local.
As most readers know, building local renewables is very costly -- perhaps prohibitively so in San Francisco -- and procuring RECs from facilities in prime solar and wind zones these days is very cheap. A more expensive program is unlikely to attract enough participation, dooming the effort from the start. And in any case, CleanPowerSF needs revenue from the program to finance any kind of buildout.

For the record, this is not a radical left-leaning publication. It's a mainstream news service focused on (and read by) both private and public-sector utility professionals. The reporters are people with extensive experience in what is often a complex technical and economic field.

And they think Lee is utterly wrong. Something to think about.

And speaking of evictions ...

You have to wonder how bad it has to get before the mayor of San Francisco says something -- anything -- about the epidemic that is ravaging this city.

Take this Ellis Act tragedy near Chinatown. As the Examiner notes, a Chinese couple in their 70s, who live with their disabled daughter who is 48, are getting thrown out of the house where they've lived since 1979:

Speaking in Cantonese, Gum Gee Lee, 73, said, "We raised our family here and we paid rent for more than 30 years. This new landlord knew we lived here when he bought the building. But he did not plan to keep us. He started to evict all of the tenants right away."

The Lee family's case is among the most egregious examples in The City of a rising number of evictions using the Ellis Act, a state law adopted in 1985 that allows a landlord to evict tenants in order to get out of the residential rental market.

The new owner, Matthew Miller, most likely will do what he's done with another property: Clear out all the tenants and sell it as TICs, turning a tidy profit in the process. It's all perfectly legal. The state has taken away from California cities the right to protect rental housing from backdoor condo conversions.

Would any of this stop if the mayor spoke out? Would Miller listen if Ed Lee called and told him to spare this home and these vulnerable tenants? I don't know. And none of us will know unless he tries it.

To be fair, the mayor didn't create the Ellis Act, and it's not his fault that so much of the state Legislature is in the pocket of the landlord lobby. San Francisco doesn't have the legal tools to prevent this type of eviction.

But there are only two ways that will change: If every big-city mayor gets organized and demands that Sacramento return to local governments the right to regulate housing -- and if the community and City Hall make it so unpleasant for evictors that they decide it's not worth the price. 

I send Lee's press person, Christine Falvey, an email today and asked if the mayor was aware of this particular eviction, and if he would be making a statement about it. Haven't heard back. 

You know you live in the Mission if ...

You're a young, white hipster who has no clue about the people who lived here before you came, and very little concern about what you're doing to their lives. I mean, seriously, is this the worst kind of Chronicle dreck, joking about a place where gentrification is driving out longterm residents. Gross.

Even the rich face evictions

The wave of evictions that's transforming the east side of San Francisco is creeping into the wealthier areas. Russ Flynn, the owner of a 33-unit luxury building on Nob Hill, wants to turn the place into TICs, and at least half a dozen of the current tenants will have to go.

J.K. Dineen, who covers commercial real estate for the Business Times, has the scoop. Flynn thinks he could get as much as $100 million when he sells the apartments -- not a bad haul, since he bought the place for $35 million and is putting another $15 million into upgrading it. That's $50 million spent, $100 million returned, for a double-your-money profit that will make the already wealthy landlord even richer. By far.

Now: It's likely that most of the renters who are facing eviction will be okay, since nobody rents in that district without a fair amount of cash. I don't know who the six tenants are who will lose their homes, and maybe some of them are on fixed incomes and won't be able to afford a similar place, since they've been under rent control for years.

But if this works out for Flynn, it's going to encourage other owners of larger buildings to use the Ellis Act to force everyone out in the name of a big, quick profit. That's a scary thought -- for the most part, TICs have been limited to smaller buildings. Under city law, no buildings with more than six units are eligible for conversion to condos, and most TIC owners want to convert eventually (it makes financial a little easier and makes the unit more valuable.)

So Flynn is going to have to warn his prospective buyers that the apartments will be TICs -- similar to the co-ops that are popular in New York -- forever. In that past, that would put a damper on potential sales, but he's no fool, and if he thinks he can market this, he's probably right.

And if he makes $50 million, and the city can't find a way to limit this sort of thing, then no tenant anywhere in the city is safe.

Now, let's remember: The reason San Francisco has rent control today is (in part) because Angelo Sangiacomo, another big landlord, started raising rents on wealthier, socially prominent tenants in the late 1970s, and pressure from tenant groups combined with pressure from the Swells in Sangiacomo's buildings drove the supervisors to approve the Rent Stabilization Ordinance.

Is it possible that a wave of Nob Hill evictions will have a similar impact? Does Russ Flynn care? Not when he's got another $50 million in his pocket.