San Francisco leaders, neighbors not on board with ‘ridiculous’ skyscraper for Outer Sunset District

ABC7 News Bay Area

Nobody seems to like this one.

KPIX Special Report: S.F. gets mixed grades on Tenderloin turnaround

Tenderloin Emergency in the news

Special report by Wilson Walker.

How the city authorities are paying attention to what these people are saying. We don’t need to spend more money on studies and counting. We need to see more actions are requested by the Tenderloin residents and businesses.

Tiny cabin village for homeless people is finally coming to San Francisco

sftimes – excerpt

San Francisco has ended the long years of resistance as it finally decided to shelter homeless residents through a tiny homes strategy, The Chronicle reported, with plans to establish those in the parking spaces between Market and Mission streets.

Since December, the spaces located at 33 Gough St. have been holding a “safe sleeping village”. Some 44 tents are present in these lots and residents have been receiving counseling to move them into permanent residences.

Cabins or tiny homes will soon replace those tents by late fall. The strategy has already been used in San Jose, Oakland, and the Peninsula.

The nonprofits Dignity Moves and Tipping Point Community have come together to establish the cabin – which will cost $1.7 million in total.

The tiny homes will stay for 18 months when the lease signed by the city for utilizing the space expires….(more)

Some people may complain about mask mandate confusion and the back and forth on rules and regulations for various businesses to carry out and enforce, but I would like to complain about the outlandish lack of reasoning behind the way government entities and their contractors have handled the housing crisis, starting with closing the shelters, moving people in and out of tents and temporary housing and generally having not coherent plant in place to do the one and only thing that government needs to do. Get people situated and leave them where they are.

I hope that when the dust is cleared we are able to figure out who among the many of private contractors “helping” the homeless made a profit and how they made that profit, because that profit was paid by the taxpayers and if their programs were lacking in quality or consistency and complaints were filed against them, as I know some were, there needs to be an evaluation on how the programs are handled and why some profits were made on the backs of the homeless.

We hope the media will cover these cases as well as they cover some of the non-stories about vaccines masks and other errata.

Protest caravan demands hotel rooms for homeless

By Garrett Leahy : 48hills – excerpt

Medical, faith, and homeless communities puts the obvious question: why isn’t the city moving to take over, and ultimately buy, failing hotels for housing?

The streets around City Hall were filled with the sounds of cars honking, wooting, and chants of “housing is the cure!” on Friday evening as roughly 50 cars participated in a caravan protest calling for the city to house San Francisco’s homeless population in hotel rooms as well as increase their focus on acquiring long term affordable housing for the homeless.

The cars passed by city hall, the Painted Ladies, and along Pierce St. near Mayor London Breed’s home. The caravan protest was organized by homeless rights advocacy organizations the Coalition on Homelessness, the Do No Harm Coalition, and Faith in Action.

“We’re coming from different directions but we have one common goal which is to house the vulnerable for moral reasons, for health reasons, and it’s for the benefit of us all,” said Reverend Sadie Stone, a pastor at the United Methodist Church on Sanchez St and a member of Faith in Action… (more)

Navigation Centers Heading Towards Full Capacity

by Bettina Cohen : potreroview – excerpt

The Embarcadero Shelter Access for Everyone (SAFE) Navigation Center, located at Seawall Lot 330, opened last December. By February, 130 beds at the facility were taken, 100 percent occupancy for the startup phase. Plans to ramp up to 200 beds by the end of the year were put on hold when the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) issued new guidelines last month intended to maintain physical distances between facility guests.

Five Keys, a nonprofit that operates a 128-bed navigation center at 125 Bayshore Boulevard, is managing the Center. The Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center Advisory Group (ESNCAG) was formed last year to facilitate communication between community members, City and Port of San Francisco officials, and Five Keys. Last month’s was held as a webinar rather than an in-person assembly, in response to DPH’s recommendation not to hold public get-togethers as a means to reduce COVID-19 exposure risks…

At last month’s webinar it was announced that as of March 23 the City was no longer accepting new referrals to any Navigation Center…

As this article went to press, the City had activated temporary housing sites for people who have tested positive for the virus and/or need to quarantine due to possible exposure… (more)

Clipper Cove marina boondoggle is back

By Hunter Cutting : sfexaminer – excerpt

Over the holiday break the Mayor’s Office quietly submitted to the Board of Supervisors a proposed 66-year lease to build a controversial private luxury marina in Clipper Cove at Treasure Island. Currently the Cove hosts the sailing programs of the non-profit Treasure Island Sailing Center that put thousands onto the Bay each year, including over 1,500 4 th graders from San Francisco public schools.

Disturbingly, the Mayor’s proposal disregards a stakeholder agreement and Board resolution approved last year that established a set of development guidelines to protect both the public interest and the pocketbooks of City taxpayers…

Under the proposed lease, the developers will not be held responsible if their project causes the rest of the Cove to fill in – as has occurred elsewhere around the Bay after construction of other marina projects…

New sedimentation also threatens to smother the protected sea grass beds on the south side of the Cove. In an inexplicable twist, City staff recommend that the Supervisors approve the 66-year lease now before the threat is evaluated, arguing that the analysis will be done later.

All of these issues were addressed by the Board resolution approved last year. So, it is surprising that the developers are now trying to work their way around the Board’s direction… (more)

This will be a big test for the new Board of Supervisors’ ability to stand up for their constituents in a show of unity.

RELATED: Proposed Treasure Island marina faces hurdles

 

Election 2018: SF voters just kicked the YIMBYS right in their backyards. Where do things go from here?

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Laura Foote sat alone in “the clubhouse,” the YIMBY movement’s inner sanctum on Mission Street. Streamers of Pepto Bismol-pink Sonja Trauss fliers, emblazoned with the candidate photogenically staring into the middle distance, still dangled from the ceiling like Christmas decorations. Literature, paraphernalia and window signs for perhaps half-a-dozen San Francisco candidates were stacked on every table…

An organization attempting to transform the way our dysfunctional city does business fritters away its clout when it backs all the wrong horses and antagonizes people. An organization known for the fervency of its volunteers gives pause to even ostensible allies when it gets out-hustled on the ground.… (more)

 

 

 

Why the cops get a raise without accountability

By Tim Redmond : 48hils – excerpt

An obscure 1990 law, that passed with a lot of progressive support, forces the city into a very bad deal that lets the POA keep blocking reforms

An arbitration panel has decided that the San Francisco cops don’t have to back off from their efforts to delay or block reforms and will get a nine percent raise anyway.

The decision undermines the position of the mayor, the supervisors, and many of the city’s communities, who have been frustrated by the Police Officers Association and its constant resistance to reasonable changes in department policies… (more)

How many obscure laws have been passed that tie the hands of our elected officials?  How do the citizens take back control of our city from the rogue agencies that are out of control and appear to be beyond the ability of our elected officials to regulate or even review?

SF needs a mayor who will tax, spend, and regulate

By Calvin Welch : 48hills – excerpt

A new life-size Chessboard has appeared in front of City Hall as a reminder that old-fashioned political strategies can work as well, if not better, than money, media buys and sound bites. Sim City does not exist in the real world, people do and people vote. Regardless who wins, new games will begin after the June 5 election. photo by zrants.

Consider a short list of the realities facing our next mayor:

The social/economic/cultural transformation of the city through unchecked hyper-gentrification caused by a development policy that has, at its heart, maximizing speculative real-estate profit at the expense of existing residents and the businesses and activities that serve them…(more)

A local-government public sector dominated by bureaucrats, policies and programs that see “facilitating the market” as the primary goal of government…

An alarming under-investment in our urban public infrastructure …

A growing assault on local democratic government specifically aimed at San Francisco led by, at the state level, real estate speculators and their legislator allies seeking an end to “local control”…

The rapidly growing re-segregation of our civic life involving the toxic brew of race and income inequality,..

Given these realities, the June 5th election for mayor has the unmistakable feeling of being a directional election defining San Francisco’s future… (more)

The tax and spend part will be a matter or who is taxed and how the money is spent. There is a growing resentment of government overreach into citizens’ lifstyles and pockets that runs counter to government priorities that appear to favor more government employees and larger tax bases to support them. Workers and consumers, overwhelmed by the load now, are being asked to sign onto more debt. They may balk and repeal some of the taxes. At least one recall is in play now. More could follow.

Evictions in SF decline for first time since tech boom

By Joshua Sabatini : sfexaminer – excerpt

One of those gentrifying new Mission Bay properties photo by Zrants

Evictions in San Francisco overall are down 21 percent in the past year for a total of 1,881, according to the newly released annual report by the Rent Board for the period between March 2016 and February 2017.
This is the first annual decline in overall evictions since they began to rise each year with the tech boom beginning in 2010.
Owner move-in evictions totaled 397 during that 12-month period, down 5 percent from the previous year when there were 417. Owner move-in evictions were the second highest type of eviction… (more)

Thanks to Kim, Peskin and Farrell for working on this problem. Maybe all it takes is a threat to stop the illegal Ellis Act evictions. There are plenty of those coming out of City Hall these days. When all the supervisors agree that enforcement is lacking the writing is on the wall for landlords considering using that method to evict long-term tenants in order to raise the rents.