MORGAN HILL (CBS 5) — Two people who live in a large Morgan Hill home have been arrested on suspicion of holding a handyman hostage and forcing him to do home repairs.

Investigators said the 50-year-old victim was lured to a home on 200 block of Caldwell Court Monday morning. The sprawling 4,600 square foot home has five bedrooms and is equipped with a pool, a beach volleyball court, and a tennis court.

“He was assaulted, he was threatened with his life, and he was forced to do some work at the house,” Sgt. Jose Cardoza of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office told CBS 5.

Detectives said 36-year-old Jason DeJesus and 33-year-old Chanelle Troedson beat the handyman, threatened to kill him and forced him to fix several items in the house over a six-hour span. The repairs included a dishwasher and a broken door.

“The victim was pretty terrified. He was pretty shaken up and scared by this whole incident,” Cardoza said. “What he did tell investigators is that he was just trying to do what he was being told, wait for the opportunity to escape.”

On Monday night, authorities said the suspects forced the handyman into his truck. With one of the suspects driving, the victim was told they were traveling to a suspect’s relative’s house in Santa Clara to perform additional repairs.

They pulled over at a gas station on Santa Teresa Blvd. and Cottle Road in South San Jose. The handyman escaped when the suspects left to pay for gas and snacks. DeJesus and Troedson were arrested by police shortly after.

Other people who lived in the home declined to be interviewed by CBS 5.

Investigators said the handyman performed work for De Jesus’ mother two months ago.

“The work wasn’t performed to the likes of the suspect’s relative at the time, and on top of that there was dispute over services rendered, the victim wasn’t paid entirely. That kind of boiled over into what occurred last night,” Cardoza said.

DeJesus and Troedson face several felony charges including false imprisonment, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, criminal threats, and conspiracy.

Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to call Sgt. Julian Quinonez or Detective Sgt. Dave Roberts at the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office at (408) 808-4500. Tips can also be left anonymously at (408) 808-4431.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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Many of San Francisco’s 1,250 miles of water pipes need to be repaired or replaced, requiring years of digging as the city races to fix an aging system, documents and data from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission reveal.

To keep the water system running smoothly, the city has embarked on a plan to dig up and replace hundreds of miles of pipeline in the coming decades at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion — all of which will be covered by water ratepayers.

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To hit that goal, the SFPUC, which is overseeing the project, must more than double the length of water pipes it fixes annually, going from an average of 6 miles per year to 15.

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As construction ramps up, it will tear apart asphalt, clog traffic, shut down streets and redirect buses. Downtown, which has most of the city’s oldest water pipes, will be hit hardest, and the Sunset and Richmond districts will be heavily affected.

“Fifteen miles is 150 blocks, so that’s a lot of traffic disruption; it’s major,” said Katie Miller, manager of the water enterprise division at the SFPUC.

The city, though, has no choice but to upgrade the pipes.

Cesar Robles (right), San Francisco Water Department laborer and Martin Santos (left), Synergy laborer, work on a flat bed trucks carrying replacement pipelines as one is prepared to be placed into the ground during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleMartin Santos, Synergy laborer, inserts locking wedges between two pipes while working on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleTwo replacement pipelines are connected during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleArturo Morones, San Francisco Water Department laborer, climbs down below ground during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleMartin Santos, Synergy laborer, handles a hasp as he works on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleWorkers guide a replacement pipeline as it is moved from a flat bed truck to be prepared to be placed into the ground during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleAn excavator removes an old railway yoke during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street between Masonic and Ashbury Streets on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleCesar Robles (l to r), San Francisco Water Department laborer and Martin Santos, Synergy laborer, work on a flat bed trucks carrying replacement pipelines as one is prepared to be placed into the ground during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleCesar Robles (l to r), San Francisco Water Department laborer and Martin Santos, Synergy laborer, work on a flat bed trucks carrying replacement pipelines as one is prepared to be placed into the ground during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleMartin Santos, Synergy laborer, and other workers guide a replacement pipeline as it is placed into the ground during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleA worker grasps a weight used for measuring distance and alignment of the replacement water pipes as they work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleMike Broussard, Sa Francisco Water Department plumber, passes supplies from below ground as he and others works on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The ChronicleWorkers guide a replacement pipeline as it is placed into the ground during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

If the SFPUC maintained the 6-mile-per-year fix rate, more than half of the pipelines in the city would surpass their age recommendations by 2040. Leaks and breaks would become unmanageable, and scarce water would be wasted.

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“As everybody out West now understands, water is precious,” said Eric Goldstein, senior attorney in the National Resource Defense Council’s urban program. “The most efficient and least expensive way for us to ensure an adequate supply is to repair leaks and take steps to reduce waste.”

Starting in 1930, San Francisco went through a residential construction boom, with row houses topping the last remaining sand dunes in the Sunset and high-rises popping up downtown. In the 1940s alone, approximately 38,800 new units went up citywide, according to a recent report by Paragon Real Estate Group.

To connect the new homes to running water, hundreds of miles of pipes were laid. These World War II-era relics still make up a large chunk of the city’s water infrastructure.

Roughly 28 percent of San Francisco’s pipelines were built between 1930 and 1950, according to PUC data, and 44 percent of the nearly 500 water-main breaks over the past half decade were in pipes built during the time period.

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“It’s a higher than usual amount of breaks,” Miller said.

Part of that can be blamed on their age, but another factor is the caliber of the pipes. During the war, much of the nation’s iron was used for military equipment, leaving municipalities picking from the proverbial scrap heap.

“There was not a lot of quality assurance at the time, so there was a lot of impurities in the ore that are now resulting in breaks,” Miller said.

Replacing 15 miles of aging pipes annually will cost an estimated $48 million per fiscal year. If the pipes from the ’40s and ’50s begin breaking down earlier than expected, construction — and costs — will increase.

A weight used for measuring distance and alignment of the replacement water pipes hands above a replacement water pipe during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

Water ratepayers would have to foot the bill.

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“If this turns out to be a more severe problem than we are predicting — if it is above and beyond that 15 miles — then we may need a special funding program,” said Tyrone Jue, the utility’s spokesperson. The funds would probably come from a bond or by raising water prices.

With so many streets torn up, some are seeing possible opportunities.

“It’s an opportunity to rethink things,” said Charisma Acey, assistant professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley. “To not just lay in the old infrastructure, but also think about how we put in new infrastructure.”

One idea is high-speed Internet.

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Martin Santos (l to r), Synergy laborer, and Arturo Morones, San Francisco Water Department laborer, secures a polyurethane wrap to prevent corrosion around a replacement pipeline during work on the pipeline replacement project along Haight Street at Ashbury Street on Thursday, October 1, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

Though the city is home to some of the world’s biggest tech companies, its Internet speeds lag. Thanks to the city’s Dig Once ordinance, though, authorities must at least consider installing fiber conduits for high-speed Internet during any pipe work that requires excavation.

With so many water pipes due to be replaced and repaired, there will be plenty of opportunities to speed up Web browsing.

“The PUC project will be a big part of the opportunity” to expand, said Miguel Gamiño, executive director of the Department of Technology. “It’s not just having more fiber, but where we put fiber, which allows us to have a very resilient, cost-effective network.”

That’s small consolation for some business owners in the Haight neighborhood.

For the past two months, tractors, sparks and pounding sounds have supplanted shoppers on stretches of Haight Street, as the city repairs local sewer and water lines.

The PUC expects the project to impact 12 city blocks and stretch into fall of next year.

“Construction has to be done. We understand that,” said Luke Martinez, manager of the novelty toy and clothing store Super 7. “But September is already a hard month for all of us, and I doubt anyone has made more money because of construction. … I wouldn’t want to shop on Haight Street right now.”

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By Isabel Keane

Published
Oct. 3, 2023, 10:57 a.m. ET

Residents of Millennium Tower, better known as the Leaning Tower of San Francisco, have been left to foot a $6.8 million bill after a much-needed renovation project failed to fix the troubled luxury building’s 29-inch tilt and caused nasty sewage spills.

Repairs to correct the infamous tower’s 29-inch tilt concluded with residents being billed $10 per square foot of condo space — costing tenants $6.8 million in total — as the project cost $20 million more than the $100 million expected, NBC Bay Area reported.

The 545-foot-tall tower continued to tilt and sink further west after architects attempted to repair its foundation last fall. While the issue has not been fixed, residents were told they had until October to pay for the so-called repairs.

“I don’t know what to do with this place, because it is costly – I cannot live in it,” said Mehrdad Mostafavi, who moved out in June after sewage began to flow out of his kitchen sink.

Residents of Millennium Tower have been hit with a massive bill following so-called repairs done to fix its tilt. San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

While scrambling to clean up the sewage backup, which Millennium fix engineers warned could happen due to the tower’s tilt, Mostafavi was slapped with a bill for nearly $14,000 from the Tower owners association.

“It’s a luxurious building and famous building, but unfortunately it is not like this for me as an owner,” Mostafavi told the outlet. “I am really suffering.”

Mehrdad Mostafavi moved out of the building in June after sewage began coming out of his sink. NBC Bay Area

Mostafavi said the bill had come after he already dipped into his retirement savings account to pay for his wrecked kitchen.

“I’m really having a hard time seeing how can I leave for the retirement — how to get out of this apartment and do my retirement” he said. “It is very costly…. they keep asking for more money and this is not acceptable for me.”

Mostafavi said he had to dig into his retirement savings to fix the damage the construction caused to his home. NBC Bay Area

Residents were charged $10 per square foot, costing Mostafavi nearly $14,000 for his condo. NBC Bay Area

After homeowners were compensated for lost property value, the tower association was given $150 million to cover costs — but it still was not enough given the troubled project’s numerous setbacks, the association said.

“The delays and the city’s heightened requirements resulted in significant unforeseen project cost increases,” the association’s letter to residents said.

The bill noticed shared a rough accounting for the $6.8 million owed by residents — and tried to assure homeowners that they were not alone in having to pay, since the tower’s developer and the fix contractor pitched in $10 million to offset overruns.

According to recent monitoring data, ever since the construction wrapped in June the building’s tilt has only improved by a fraction.

The 29-inch tilt was first revealed to the luxury building’s residents in 2016.

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• Residents in San Francisco’s Millennium Tower have been slapped with bills as high as $14,000 each following a project to stabilize the leaning building 
• One resident – who was not even living in the building when he received his bill due to sewage backup in his condo – received a bill for $14,000 over the summer
• Prior to the stabilization process, the tower leaned 29 inches 

Residents within the luxury Millennium Tower – dubbed the ‘leaning tower of San Francisco’ – are being slapped with bills up to $14,000 to fix the building’s issues which include raw sewage in their sinks and pipes.

Homeowners and renters have been shocked to receive the bills, which puts an estimated $6.8 million of the overall $20 million in overrun fixes on residents.

Mehrdad Mostafavi, who owns a condo on the third floor of the building, recently received a bill for $14,000, which amounts to $10 per square foot of the apartment.

‘It’s a luxurious building and famous building, but unfortunately it is not like this for me as an owner,’ Mostafavi told NBC Bay Area. ‘I am really suffering.’

To make matters worse, Mostafavi was not living in the building when he got the bill as he was dealing with a sewage backup purportedly caused by the tower’s tilt.

The Millennium Tower – designed by Gary Handel and Handel Architects – is still tilting at 29 inches but the sinking has stopped following a stabilization project.

Residents within the luxury Millennium Tower – dubbed the ‘leaning tower of San Francisco ‘ – are being slapped with bills up to $14,000 to fix the building’s issues Sewage overfill from the tilt Sewage overflow from the tilt inside the building

Mostafavi was just one of a number of residents to find a bill from the Tower owners’ association and asked to pay it by October 1.

He told the Bay Area outlet it may be the final nail in the coffin for him.

‘I don’t know what to do with this place, because it is costly – I cannot live in it,’ said Mostafavi.

The San Francisco resident had already moved out in June after a sewage backup in his kitchen sink, which some engineers had warned could happen due to the tilt.

At the time that he received the bill, he was already in the middle of trying to figure out who should pay to clean up the sewage mess in his place.

He also told NBC that he had already had to tap into his retirement savings to cover the costs of the kitchen issues.

‘I’m really having a hard time seeing how can I leave for the retirement – how to get out of this apartment and do my retirement’ Mostafavi said. It is very costly.’

‘They keep asking for more money and this is not acceptable for me,’ he said.

DailyMail.com reached out to management for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

According to Harry Poulos, a tall building expert, efforts to stop the building from sinking were successful but the tilt has not been fixed.

‘Their objective of correcting that tilt to a significant extent – I fear that expectation has not been met,’ Poulos told NBC in September.

‘I don’t know what to do with this place, because it is costly ¿ I cannot live in it,’ said third floor condo owner Mehrdad Mostafavi in an interview with NBC Bay Area Workers repair crumbling walls that have been the result of leaking water in the garage of the Millennium Tower in San Francisco A stress gauge is seen on a wall with floor-to-ceiling cracks in the parking garage of the Millennium Tower

Overall, residents of the building have been saddled with $6.8 million of the roughly $20 million extra the project ended up costing over the original budget.

It had originally been calculated as costing some $100 million.

During construction, however, the tower experienced more sinking and leaning.

Along with the bills sent to homeowners, the Tower owners’ association included a letter that said residents are being compensated for lost property value.

In total, the association was allotted  $150 million to pay for securing the high-rise, pay for legal bills, restore reserves and pay for other expected costs.

It ended up costing more than that, the association said.

‘The delays and the city’s heightened requirements resulted in significant unforeseen project cost increases,’ the association’s letter to residents said.

The Millennium Tower was designed by Gary Handel and Handel Architects By 2016, the building (to the right of the tallest building) had sunk nearly a foot-and-a-half into the soft soil and landfill upon which it was built. Residents of the building subsequently sued the developer and designers

Earlier this year, lead engineer of the project, Ron Hamburger, told NBC data taken from rooftop measurements regarding the lean are prone to weather fluctuations.

He also said that and that data on the building’s foundation was more reliable.

That data indicated that the tilt was more significant than previously noted, only by about of a quarter of an inch, however.

Hamburger at the time claimed the number was ‘negligible.’

‘We are fully confident that following transfer of the remaining design load to the piles,’ said Hamburger, adding that ‘there will be no further … movement of the roof to the west,’ he said.

The luxury 58-story tower opened in 2009 and quickly sold out its 419 apartments, with buyers including former San Francisco 49er Joe Montana and former Giants outfielder Hunter Pence.

By 2016, the building had sunk nearly a foot-and-a-half into the soft soil and landfill upon which it was built in San Francisco’s financial district.

It was also leaning, creating a two-inch tilt at the base, and a 6-inch lean at the top. Residents of the building subsequently sued the developer and designers.

A confidential settlement reached several years ago included $100 million to install 52 concrete, 140,000-pound piles to anchor the building to bedrock located 250 feet below ground, with the idea that the piles would provide foundational support to the leaning, sinking tower.

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The San Francisco Unified School District says it will need $1.7 billion to repair and renovate its buildings over the next five years.

The estimate is based on an assessment of SFUSD’s 148 locations, which was detailed Tuesday at an Education Committee meeting. The consultants’ report lays the groundwork for a new facility master plan and eventually a bond operation to fund that plan.

To meet that need, the district could ask San Francisco voters to approve a $1 billion bond issue in 2023 or 2024 — roughly the district’s operating budget.

The last issue approved for SFUSD facilities in 2016 was $744 million.

“We were bond rich and lacking in sustenance,” said Dawn Kamalanathan, SFUSD’s head of investments. “Without maintenance money to keep this going, there will be deterioration. Underinvestment in the capital structure is a nationwide, if not a national problem.”

Annuity funds cannot be used for operational expenses, including maintenance. Voters across the country routinely approve measures that allow governments to sell bonds to raise money for a cause, such as a school, over time.

According to the district’s presentation Tuesday, electrical systems made up nearly $500 million of the estimated cost and HVAC systems made up a little less than $400 million. Of the total estimated cost, $340,000 was identified as necessary to address life safety risks.

Based on the facility’s Health Index scores, the consultants concluded that the Rooftop Pre-Kindergarten-8 School’s Mayeda campus has deficient buildings and is in need of $14 million in upgrades.

Schools thought to have poor facilities include Mission High, which needs an estimated $140 million, and Balboa High, which needs an estimated $156 million.

The facilities of the John McLaren Early Education School, the Garfield Elementary School and the Dr. Charles Drew College Preparatory Academy, among others, were in excellent condition.

The district must also consider the impact of moving to a universal transitional kindergarten and a new elementary school student allocation system.

SFUSD is issuing the remainder of its 2016 bond issue on a new Mission Bay elementary school, long-planned renovations to the Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 School, and automated “Columbine” locks for school security. Projects to modernize 23 of its schools were shelved from the 2016 bond.

The county’s Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee, for which the board admitted five members Tuesday over some objections, has raised questions about transparency over where some funds have gone. This includes using bond funds to cover legal costs related to a controversial mural at George Washington High School.

Committee Chair Rex Ridgeway recommended allowing the group to report monthly to the Board of Education.

“These are real dollars being spent today,” Ridgeway told the board on Tuesday. “We as a school need transparency.”

As 2023 begins, school officials anticipate learning more about the endowment plan and school assignment zones to shape their next bond. If local elections are moved to even-numbered years under Proposition M on the November ballot, the district would have to wait until March or November 2024 to put a new bond measure on the ballot.

“This,” said Superintendent Matt Wayne, “is an important conversation in laying the groundwork for our facility master plan to be implemented next year.”

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Sewage seeps into rooms. Deteriorated tubes. Fifteen broken bathrooms. A staircase that had reached the “end of its life”. When Mayor of London Breed announced $5 million to repair San Francisco’s crumbling housing stock for the homeless last year, the requests started pouring in.

Overall, the nonprofits that run permanent housing programs in the city requested $21.6 million worth of repairs and renovations — more than four times the amount Breed has committed in the current two-year budget — according to The public records chronicle . And yet, more than six months after the funds were made available, no money was spent to address safety and quality of life issues in 82 buildings.

The lack of action leaves thousands of formerly homeless renters, often struggling with mental and physical disabilities to endure substandard living conditions. It also notes that despite spending more than $600 million a year on homelessness, the needs often far outweigh the city’s resources. Difficult decisions about how to spend the city’s funds will only worsen as San Francisco grapples with projected deficits in the years to come.

Del Seymour, a longtime resident of Tenderloin and a member of the town’s Local Homelessness Coordinating Board, said, “This is such an embarrassment for the city and such an embarrassment for the state that we still have people in such degraded conditions.”

Gabrielle Lurie, Contributor / The Chronicle

“This should be one of the most important initiatives,” said Del Seymour, a member of the city’s Local Homelessness Coordinating Board. “This is such an embarrassment for the city and such an embarrassment for the state that we still have people in such degraded conditions.”

Breed pledged the $5 million investment last May in response to a Chronicle investigation that found residents at city-funded single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) often faced appalling conditions. Reporters found that many of the century-old hotels that form the backbone of the city’s permanent housing system are overrun by pest infestations, plumbing problems, chronically broken elevators and crime.

Since taking office, Breed has focused her attention and resources on buying and creating new housing for people currently living on the streets. More than 3,000 new units have been opened or signed since 2018. At the same time, however, The Chronicle found its administration has long neglected the thousands of people languishing in seedy hotels.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said last year that $5 million was earmarked for repairing run-down SRO hotels. But none of the money has been spent yet.

Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle

Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for the mayor, said it’s an ongoing “compromise” in deciding where to allocate resources.

“We need safe and habitable places to live, and that’s important,” Cretan said. “But it’s also about making sure people can live indoors.”

The money was officially available in late July when the mayor signed off on the city’s two-year budget.

Seventy percent of funding requests came from buildings owned by not-for-profit housing providers, who say limited rental income and insufficient public support can make it difficult to keep track of maintenance.

The remaining 30% came from residential hotels that non-profit organizations rent from private landlords. Dubbed a master lease, the arrangement can be a boon to building owners, who can be paid more than $1 million each year while shifting the ongoing costs of operating and maintaining their properties to nonprofit organizations. Owners are usually responsible for major structural improvements to their buildings, such as: B. the replacement of the roof or the modernization of elevators.

But if the landlord doesn’t cooperate or falls short, the non-profit organizations often have to rely on the help of the city or private donors.

Breed’s pledge of $5 million in capital repairs was an attempt to fill some of the gaps.

Community Forward SF requested $165,000 from the city for much-needed repairs to the elevator and plumbing system at the Coronado Hotel in the Tenderloin, according to the list of requests to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing obtained by The Chronicle.

Sammie Rayner, chief operating officer at Community Forward SF, said the elevator has since been repaired with other funds the group received from the city. “It is a challenge; We all inherited these buildings that aren’t in the best condition,” Rayner said. “These investments are really critical for us to serve our tenants.”

At the Mission Hotel, San Francisco’s largest SRO with 240 units, the Tenderloin Housing Clinic requested $609,000 to renovate several shower rooms. Last year, after a tenant complained to the building inspectorate about “dirty conditions” in the shared bathrooms, inspectors confirmed peeling paint, broken showerheads, malfunctioning locks, graffiti, a leaky ceiling and missing tiles in some facilities.

At the Senator Hotel, non-profit organization HomeRise asked for $1 million to “address significant structural needs, including the replacement of an “underperforming and aging boiler” and a “replacement roof that will ensure the long-term integrity of the building.” The SRO was subpoenaed over the past year for multiple violations of the Housing Code, building inspector records show, including water damage in rooms, holes in the ceiling and windows in “various states of disrepair”.

Reality House West, the non-profit organization that owns and operates the Cadillac Hotel, requested $250,000 for unspecified “building improvements.” The residential hotel is home to many formerly homeless seniors and people with disabilities, but public records show that its elevator frequently breaks down, sometimes trapping residents on the upper floors. In the past year alone, the fire service responded to 15 calls about people being stuck in the broken elevator.

Reality House West executive director Kathy Looper has not responded to multiple emails from The Chronicle for more specific information about the funding application.

Meanwhile, Episcopal Community Services, one of the largest sustained providers of supportive housing, asked for more money than anyone else — $5.9 million for upgrades at 11 hotels and apartment buildings. Episcopal’s chief program officer Chris Callandrillo said the nonprofit’s requests are an “abbreviated picture” of what’s actually needed.

He said the funding shows the mayor takes the problem seriously, but the $5 million provided by Breed isn’t enough “to solve all the problems in the SROs.”

Some requests seemed less urgent, such as $15,000 from Mercy Housing to install bike racks in each unit of the newly built Tahanan.

Emily Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homelessness and Assisted Housing, said the department must carefully consider which requests to grant — especially as the city braces for a projected deficit of $728 million over the next two fiscal years, as tax revenues fall in a slow recovery from the pandemic.

Cohen added that improving the quality of buildings is a “priority,” but given the bleak fiscal outlook, the department also needs to sharpen its focus on getting more people off the streets. At the same time, she said, the department is working with private landlords to hold them accountable for the repairs they are responsible for making.

“When demand exceeds what is available, we need to have a fair process for allocating the resources,” she said, adding that she expects funding decisions to be made within the next few months, with a view to the biggest resource impact the well-being of the tenants.

Joe Smith, who is staying at the Cadillac Hotel, said he would welcome the extra money to fix his SRO. While the on-site consultants have helped him regain some stability, the chronic maintenance issues have discouraged him. Mice are eating his food and clothes, he said, and the floor in his room is starting to peel off

“When I finally get somewhere that I can stay and live comfortably, maybe I can move on and get my life together, save some money, go home and see my kids,” Smith said. “But it’s quite difficult to buy cockroach spray or duct tape to tape the floor together. It’s nerve wracking. It’s very depressing right now.”

Trisha Thadani and Joaquin Palomino are contributors to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com, jpalomino@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani, @JoaquinPalomino

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There’s at least one place in California where even households making six figures can get help paying for child care: San Francisco, the state’s most expensive county when it comes to child care.

As providers across the state await reforms for their financially fraught industry, voters in San Francisco have gone ahead and created their own solution: a commercial tax that now generates $180 million in revenue a year for local child care.

“Why did we go after a revenue source? Because that’s the only way we’re going to get ourselves out of this problem,” said Mary Ignatius, an organizer with Parent Voices, a group that advocates for affordable child care and campaigned for the commercial tax.

Child care — crucial for children’s well-being and necessary for many families to work — has long been a market failure in America.

The real cost of child care

California’s child care aid reaches only a small fraction of the families who need it, and it’s stretching providers to the limit. Education reporter Kristen Taketa examines how the system is falling short, and who pays the price.

The inherently high cost of quality care causes a chain reaction of challenges for both consumers and providers: Parents can’t access child care because it’s too expensive, especially for infants and toddlers. And because quality care costs more than what parents can pay, providers are in constant financial stress and unable to pay their staff much — which in turn limits how many children they can serve.

The San Francisco tax, narrowly approved by voters in 2018, is that rare example in California of a dedicated, permanent funding source intended to solve those problems.

In the first year of its rollout, the measure has paid for 1,000 more children to enroll in subsidized care, increased wages for 2,500 early education teachers and made 10,000 more children eligible for subsidized care on top of the 15,000 who were before.

“I’m hoping that if people see San Francisco can do it, then why not somewhere else?” said retired San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee, the main architect of the tax measure.

In 2018, after months of organizing from local officials, parents and child care workers, San Francisco voters passed the commercial tax with a measure dubbed “Baby Prop C” by a margin of less than one percentage point. A failed legal challenge by taxpayer and business groups delayed its implementation, but last year, funds collected under it began reaching the child care field in July.

As a result, families making up to 110 percent of San Francisco’s area median income — or up to $152,400 a year for a family of four — can now qualify for subsidized child care for their kids under age 4.

A child eats lunch on Pizza Friday at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Those income eligibility rules provide access to far more families than the state’s rules, which only allow subsidized care for families who make up to 85 percent of the state median income — or up to $95,289 annually for a similar family. Because it’s far more expensive to live in San Francisco than in California overall, some families who make even less than what it takes to get by there have not been able to qualify for state-subsidized care.

And unlike the state, which has required many families to chip in an income-based monthly fee toward their subsidized child care, San Francisco plans to charge no fees for city-funded care thanks to Proposition C funding, said Wei-min Wang, a director in the city’s early education department. That’s true even for moderate-income families who are newly eligible, he said.

“Now that we have Baby Prop C money, we don’t have to treat it like a scarce good we have to allocate and ration,” Wang said. “We don’t want high-quality early care and education to be so much a privilege as the right of every child, regardless of your background.”

Eventually, the city’s child care leaders expect to use Prop C to fund subsidized care for families making up to 200 percent of the area median income — as much as $277,100 for a family of four, according to current salary data. But the priority now is serving lower-income families, city officials said.

About half of Prop C revenue goes to expanding access to subsidized child care. But crucially, in an industry where low pay has often thwarted expansion of child care slots, the other half goes to pay raises for child care teachers, who in California are paid on average just $17 an hour. Many in San Francisco were making as little as $18 an hour — far shy of the $31 an hour it takes for a single person to get by there, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator.

Prop C was designed not only to pay early educators a living wage, but to build a salary structure to put them on par with their counterparts in K-12 education, where starting pay is generally significantly higher and teachers are paid better the more higher education they have.

Prop C is working toward a new minimum wage of $28 an hour for early educators serving at least half low-income children by providing them semi-annual stipends or raising their hourly rates. Advocates expect that will not only improve current teachers’ quality of life but also help draw more quality applicants to the field and thus enable providers to serve more children.

Teacher Matthew Sullivan drapes a blanket over a child during nap time at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

It may be too early to judge Prop C’s success.

Still, San Francisco is further along than most of the state in advancing child care reforms. In 1991, San Francisco became what was believed to be the first city in the U.S. to establish a municipal fund exclusively for children’s services, including child care. Since 2004, it has worked toward establishing universal preschool, and since 2013 it has had a city office dedicated to early care and education.

And for more than a decade, the city has paid child care providers who serve low-income kids higher rates than what the state pays its subsidized care providers, knowing that the true cost of providing quality care has typically exceeded what the state pays.

“We now have this dedicated source of early childhood funding that is the first municipal source, where we can really draw from forever,” said Ingrid Mezquita, director of the city’s Department of Early Childhood, of Prop C. “It gives a level of stability that this sector hasn’t had in a very long time, or ever.”

The push for Prop C

Families shell out more for child care in San Francisco than in any other California county.

The vast majority of San Francisco families must pay as much as $2,700 a month — more than $32,000 a year — for full-time infant care, according to a 2021 statewide survey. That’s compared to a statewide average of about $1,600 a month.

Yet California’s income eligibility levels for subsidized care are set so low that many families can’t qualify for help paying for child care, and many families who make enough to get by in California are automatically disqualified from subsidized care because they make too much. In San Francisco, a family of four with two working parents needs to make $167,920 to get by, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, which is more than $72,000 above the state’s income limit for subsidized child care.

Meanwhile, there has not been enough public funding or child care providers in California to accommodate all the children who already do qualify for subsidized care. In San Francisco, more than 2,400 children were on the city’s waiting list for subsidized child care at the time Prop C was being proposed to voters.

There were other reasons to go after a child care tax measure, advocates said. For one thing, child care teachers in city-funded programs were seeing staff turnover rates of 75 percent, according to the early education department, which didn’t bode well for the quality of children’s education.

A child leaps during an outdoor activity next to San Francisco’s Stern Grove at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Prop C was meant to be San Francisco’s answer to those problems.

The measure is largely the brainchild of Yee, the former board of supervisors president and a longtime child care and education advocate who had led one of San Francisco’s two child care referral agencies for 18 years before entering politics. He and fellow Supervisor Jane Kim led the effort to collect more than 9,400 voter signatures to put the initiative on the 2018 ballot.

Before, Yee and other advocates had to keep asking city leaders every year for one or two million or so dollars in the budget for child care. But those incremental, one-time amounts weren’t going to build a better child care system, which would require several reforms, he said.

Those reforms would need to address four areas, he said: giving more families access to subsidized care, expanding facilities to accommodate them, raising teachers’ pay and investing in their professional development to improve quality.

“Prop C is really a game-changer, because it provides the resources to do so many of the things that we wanted to do for our early education system,” Yee said in 2021, after Prop C survived the court challenge. “It gets us to close to universal child care access for everybody, including middle-income families, and it provides living wages for our early care educators.”

The real cost of child care

In this series, education reporter Kristen Taketa examines how California’s system of subsidized child care falls short — and who pays the price.

Before Prop C, commercial landlords in San Francisco generally paid a commercial rent tax rate of 0.3 percent.

Prop C now collects 3.5 percent from the rents of most commercial spaces and 1 percent from rents of warehouse spaces in San Francisco. Landlords paid less than $1 million annually in rental income and rents paid by government, nonprofit, arts and other tenants are exempt. Fifteen percent of the funds collected by Prop C goes to the city’s general fund, and the rest goes to child care.

It makes sense for large businesses to pay a tax for child care, advocates said, considering they possess some of the city’s greatest wealth and benefit from the availability of such care, since their employees need it to do their jobs. “Business is going to invest and support children in San Francisco so workers can go to work,” said Gina Fromer, CEO of the Children’s Council of San Francisco.

That was a key point supporters made during the 2018 campaign, volunteers said. Parents and providers held rallies, distributed flyers and did phone banking daily, targeting the people who would benefit most, said Maria Luz Torre, a Parent Voices organizer: women and low-income families.

“We even rallied at 555 California (Street). Trump is a co-owner of that building,” she said. “We rallied there to show these are the people who are paying for this, and not you.”

Isabel Daniels (left) and Pat Sullivan (right) run through activities with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Two months after Prop C passed, a coalition of landlord, business and taxpayer groups that had opposed the measure sued in an attempt to invalidate it. Those groups — the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Building Owners and Managers Association of California, California Business Properties Association and California Business Roundtable — argued that Prop C actually needed a two-thirds majority to pass because a government official, Yee, had been heavily involved.

“Our issue had nothing to do with where the money was going, but rather that it was an illegal tax,” said Brooke Armour, vice president of the California Business Roundtable, in an email.

But in 2021, a state appeals judge sided with the city, saying that because the measure had been placed on the ballot as a voter initiative — and because Yee’s involvement did not change that — it needed only a simple majority to pass. Later that year, the state supreme court denied the plaintiffs’ request to review their appeal.

San Francisco is lucky, Luz Torre said, in that it has a wealthy tax base to draw from to fund child care. Other counties may have to get more creative, she said.

At least one other California county has also passed a tax to fund child care. In 2020, just across the San Francisco Bay, voters approved a half-percent sales tax in Alameda County to raise child care workers’ wages and offer more subsidized care slots, as well as fund pediatric health care.

That measure, Measure C, has been held up for more than two years by a similar lawsuit. Last July, a trial court judge ruled in the county’s favor. The decision is now being appealed.

Raising wages to raise quality

Prop C is not just about raising pay for teachers, child care leaders said. It’s about professionalizing and improving the quality of a field that has long been underpaid, has often been degraded as babysitting and has lacked greater access to higher education and training.

Teacher Sophia Lam (center) supervises an animal card game with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Many child care providers have faced obstacles to gaining higher education and professional development, such as language barriers and a lack of money and time. Thirteen percent of family child care providers in California speak only a language other than English, according to the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. About half of family child care providers and 20 percent of child care center teachers lack a college degree, according to the UC Berkeley center.

To address this, San Francisco officials have long made their child care funding contingent on providers meeting the city’s quality standards. They plan to use Prop C funds to improve early educators’ access to higher education and training. Some have suggested funding apprenticeships, tuition reimbursement and other programs to build a pipeline of workers that child care, unlike other education fields, has lacked.

The wage increases and stipends that come with Prop C are only available to teachers working for the 416 child care providers and agencies who have met the city’s quality standards and who are willing to serve low-income, subsidized children.

“That’s a foundational requirement for us, because part of the reason why we justify this investment in early childhood education is based on research that shows that high-quality care makes a big difference,” Wang said. “The goal of our department is to get all children to school readiness standards and to make sure that their families are able to have the resources necessary to raise their kids.”

Among those city-required quality standards: Providers must have low adult-to-student ratios, have a certain number of early childhood education college units, and use a developmentally, culturally and linguistically appropriate curriculum approved by the city early childhood department.

To be approved for city child care funding, providers must be visited by independent observers who look for quality interactions between teachers, note areas for improvement and decide whether the program passes a quality test.

Isabel Daniels (bottom) runs through activities with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The city department created a new standardized salary structure for early educators, similar to the kind that school districts make for K-12 teachers. The model rewards higher compensation to teachers who serve more subsidized children and who have more higher education or an early childhood teaching permit.

Stipends range from $8,000 annually for full-time assistant teachers who have few or no early childhood education units and serve fewer than 20 percent subsidized children to as high as $39,100 for family child care owners who serve at least 50 percent subsidized children.

By making the funding available only to providers willing to serve subsidized children and boosting pay for those who serve more of those children, the city means to focus Prop C funding on the highest-need programs first, Wang said.

That could also help incentivize more providers to serve low-income, subsidized children. Historically, providers say they have not had much financial incentive to do so, because the state’s subsidized payment rates have been low.

But as providers and advocates statewide have warned, just adding funding for more children to receive subsidized care doesn’t automatically mean more kids will be served. Child care providers have to expand their staffing and facility capacity to take in those additional kids, too.

So San Francisco is budgeting for $35 million of Prop C to be used for child care facilities projects next fiscal year, Wang said.

And the city department continues to encourage child care programs that are not enlisted in the city’s quality network to join. The department offers onsite coaching and funding to new members to improve their facilities and take professional development, Wang said.

There have been challenges in rolling out the Prop C funds.

For one thing, child care programs are still seeing under-enrollment, Wang said. That could be due to parents’ anxiety about spreading sickness, be it flu, RSV or COVID-19. Some families choose to stay with their kids at home or have relatives, friends or neighbors watch them, while others take them to private programs. And child care programs are facing growing competition from public schools, as more children enroll in free transitional kindergarten.

Some programs are also still struggling to hire enough staff. But Wang has heard anecdotally for the first time that they are seeing higher interest and better-qualified applicants for jobs after Prop C. “Staffing is always an issue, but with the wage improvements, it’ll hopefully be less of an issue,” he said.

Owner Pat Sullivan (middle) supervises a card game with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The pay increases have already helped Pat Sullivan, a family child care provider of 30 years who owns the Baby Steps Nature School.

Like many family providers who run small child cares out of their own homes, Sullivan had not been able to pay herself from her business. And since providers can’t charge families more than they can afford to pay — which is far less than the true cost of providing quality care — she was barely breaking even.

To get by, many family providers depend on a spouse’s income. Without one, Sullivan has worked two other jobs on nights and weekends, too, teaching at local colleges. She had been working as much as 80 hours a week between all three.

Prop C changed that.

She was recently able to hire one new full-time teacher and two part-time teachers. She can now pay her teachers $28 an hour, she said, when she previously struggled to pay them $20 an hour.

Now Sullivan has some more time to run her business, rather than just teach children. She still works a lot — but “not the same way, not with the desperation I used to work with,” she said. She’s down to 60-hour weeks.

And finally, Sullivan earns an income from her business.

This story was produced as part of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2022 National Fellowship.

The post Can San Francisco’s “child Prop C” tax assist repair baby care? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Sanchez walked her street with an album full of photographs and news clippings as she retold stories of the floods.

Pointing to one house, she recalled the death of her neighbor’s dog in 2004 when six feet of water poured into their garage shorting the electrical outlets. That family has since left the neighborhood.

The same 2004 flood devastated Sanchez’s home.

“I lost everything that was down in the basement,” Sanchez said. “My pictures, memories, things that I had from my kids, a sewing machine, everything that I had.”

The loss of irreplaceable items was only the start. The flooding damaged her home’s foundation, warped her garage door, left her drywall contaminated with mold, and flooded her backyard garden with residential, commercial and industrial waste.

Maria (left) and her mother, Victoria Sanchez, stand in front of their home on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco on Nov. 28, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

“We didn’t have flood insurance because we couldn’t afford it,” said Sanchez’s daughter Maria. “The house’s foundation is still damaged to this day.”

Neighbors recounted similar experiences of a 2014 flood that once again inundated Mission Terrace homes and businesses with sewage.

“We are always on edge for the next rain,” Sanchez said. “Until this is fixed, the flooding will likely happen again.”

Mission Terrace isn’t the only San Francisco neighborhood to suffer problems with destructive flooding that both residents and government agencies trace to the city’s failure to upgrade sections of its sewer system.

A home along Cayuga with permanent sandbags. (Courtesy of Casey Michie)

Frustrated with the inaction by the San Francisco government, neighbors from several neighborhoods, including parts of the Mission and West Portal areas, have banded together in a campaign called Solutions Not Sandbags to demand action from the city.

Problems with the sewer system have also drawn the attention of state and federal regulators.

In 2021, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a cleanup and abatement order, and the flooding prompted an order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the city to begin monitoring and reporting sewage overflows like the ones on Cayuga Avenue.

A house is surrounded by sandbags on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco on Nov. 28, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

A review of hundreds of pages of court documents and studies, interviews with a dozen residents, experts and officials from multiple government agencies shows San Francisco has delayed upgrading sections of sewers that continue to cause damage to residents’ property.

“This flooding isn’t just rainwater,” said David Hooper, an advocate with Solutions Not Sandbags. “This is water mixed with sewage waste, this is contamination.”

Why it floods on Cayuga Avenue

Apart from some older sections of downtown Sacramento, San Francisco is the only California city served by a sewer system that collects both wastewater and stormwater in a single set of pipes.

According to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, each day the system handles roughly 80 million gallons of residential, commercial and industrial wastewater that is treated before being discharged into the bay or ocean.

When it rains, stormwater increases that flow dramatically, and city facilities collect and treat up to 500 million gallons a day.

Heavy rains can overwhelm the system, requiring excess flows of mixed sewage and stormwater to be discharged into nearby waters — something the SFPUC says happens about 10 times a year on average.

But sometimes those heavy flows hit bottlenecks in the system, forcing sewage up onto neighborhood streets before it can reach the discharge points.

One of the bottlenecks lies downstream of Cayuga Avenue, where a sewer main beneath Alemany Boulevard can’t handle the volume of water that arrives during prolonged heavy rain.

A map from the 2010 Sewer System Master Plan by the San Francisco Public Works showing where flood complaints are located on Cayuga Avenue and predictions of where floods will take place next over 5 years. (Courtesy of San Francisco Public Works)

Models created by the city’s Public Works department show that a five-year storm — a storm with a 20% chance of occurring in any given year — will trigger flows that exceed the capacity of the pipe beneath the boulevard and lead to flooding of Lower Alemany and along Cayuga Avenue.

Cayuga’s geographic setting is also a problem. The street runs downhill along the course of a natural stream. The lower, eastern end of the street butts up against Interstate 280 — which essentially acts as a dam to water flowing down the street. When the Alemany sewer main backs up, the lack of drainage further complicates the flooding in the area.

“Initially the Public Utilities Commission’s argument was that it’s the watershed causing the flooding, claiming that more green infrastructure will solve the problem,” said Lisa Dunseth, an advocate of Solutions Not Sandbags. “The problem is actually a structural engineering issue where the sewers are too small. And they knew it. And it’s been that way for over 50 years.”

In fact, problems with sewer capacity downstream of the Mission Terrace neighborhood were known more than 50 years ago.

In 1964, a project to enlarge a section of the sewer along lower Alemany Boulevard was listed as one of dozens of projects that might benefit from a bond issue on the city’s June ballot. The bond passed, but the sewer improvements never materialized.

Throughout the 1970s, improvements in the area were sidelined as the city invested in higher-priority projects to comply with new requirements enacted by the federal Clean Water Act.

In 2009 — five years after the flooding that beset Cayuga Avenue and destroyed Victoria Sanchez’s belongings — the SFPUC commissioned a new analysis of the sewer system and suggested needed improvements.

The resulting 2010 Sewer System Master Plan acknowledged the sewer bottleneck problem in the neighborhood and proposed two possible solutions costing roughly $250 million according to documents. A less costly “eastward solution” proposed building a 6,000-foot auxiliary sewer under Alemany Boulevard to aid in handling high flows during rain events, while the preferred “westward” solution recommended constructing a relief sewer that would route flow from the Cayuga area to terminate at Ocean Beach.

The 2010 Sewer System Master Plan evolved into the 2012 Sewer System Improvement Project in which the Lower Alemany solutions were not included due to “budget constraints and a desire to evaluate an integrated approach to Lower Alemany including gray and green infrastructure,” according to a statement from the SFPUC.

The continued inaction has led to further flooding and subsequent damage of residents’ homes in recent years. Nancy Huff and Bob Popko, who bought their house on Cotter Street in the Mission Terrace neighborhood in 2012, recounted a flood that occurred in 2014.

“We lost boxes and boxes of old childhood photographs. Things that were irreplaceable were just totally gone,” Huff said. “We had to replace the downstairs bathroom that had just been put in within less than a year. We had to cut out the damaged drywall, the tiling was ruined. It all had to be replaced because it just wouldn’t dry.”

After the 2014 flood, some Mission Terrace residents filed suit against the city and began demanding answers from officials at public meetings.

“The city was not responsive,” said Huff. “That is why there have been two lawsuits from this neighborhood against the city, both of which the city lost. We had the SFPUC and [former SFPUC Director] Harlan Kelly on our street over and over and over again, and they were just very hand-wavy and noncommittal on the issue.”

In 2018, eight years after the publication of the Sewer System Master Plan that identified needed improvements, the SFPUC included the Lower Alemany area into the Sewer System Improvement Plan.

“It’s kind of sad to me that San Francisco is not helping its residents, because we do pay property taxes like everyone else,” said Maria Sanchez.

State and federal regulators step in

The Clean Water Act requires cities to maintain a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, which outlines the conditions under which pollutants can be released into waters under federal jurisdiction.

NPDES permits must be renewed every five years, and in 2019 San Francisco challenged new requirements added to its Oceanside Treatment Plant permit.

According to a requirement in the new permit, San Francisco would have to report discharges at any point of the sewer system, not just from outfalls along the coast.

In 2020, the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board denied San Francisco’s challenges to the new permit. In a decision denying review, the board said the new reporting requirement is “an appropriate mechanism … to determine whether the permitted combined sewer system is operating in compliance with the permit, including the requirement to maximize storage without increasing upstream flooding into basements and streets, which can negatively impact human health and the environment.”

The new permit is currently on hold pending a city appeal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Amid the city’s wrangling with the EPA, the regional branch of the state’s water quality agency also got involved in the issue of overflowing sewers. Under an agreement hammered out last year, the city will comply with an order from the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board to address flooding issues in three neighborhoods.

A scanned picture from Victoria Sanchez’s photo album of the aftermath of flooding along Cayuga Avenue on Feb. 25, 2004. (Photo courtesy of Victoria Sanchez)

The order requires the city to invest up to $600 million to fix the chronic overflow problems near 15th Avenue and Wawona Street in the city’s West Portal neighborhood, 17th and Folsom in the Mission and Lower Alemany downstream of Cayuga Avenue.

The project to address flooding in West Portal broke ground last year, with an estimated completion date of spring 2024.

The projects to remedy flooding at 17th and Folsom and Lower Alemany are still in the planning phases.

“The settlement will also allow the city one year to assess alternative designs for the projects that will benefit the Folsom and Lower Alemany neighborhoods,” said Joseph Sweiss, SFPUC press secretary. “Potential approaches involve both traditional capacity improvements and surface improvements, such as green infrastructure.”

During the SFPUC commission meeting on April 12, documents were presented outlining the potential solutions to address the flooding in the Lower Alemany and Cayuga areas.

The Alemany auxiliary solution, which was first proposed in the 1964 bond measure and then again in the 2010 Sewer System Master Plan, would install 6,000 feet of a 10-foot diameter pipe to alleviate pressure on the Alemany sewer.

Documents show that design completion for the Lower Alemany project is forecast for July 2024. The project is forecast to be complete in March 2028.

Still, residents of Mission Terrace are skeptical given the city’s track record with large capital improvement projects.

“If you look at Van Ness [rapid bus project], if you look at the Central Subway, construction on both projects were way over budget and years out of date,” Hooper said.

The SFPUC acknowledges that the sewer improvements will take time.

“Since these complex and large-scale capital projects take years, the SFPUC provides support and resources tailored to these neighborhoods, including but not limited to flood insurance resources, free sandbags coordinated and delivered to these residents, and expanded stormwater grants up to $100,000 to upgrade properties for stronger resilience and flood prevention measures,” said Sweiss.

And while this is good news for many residents, it is also frustrating that it has taken this long.

A house is surrounded by sandbags on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco on Nov. 28, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

“Sandbags aren’t the answer. The Public Utilities Commission has given us the runaround time and time again, it took the State to step in to solve an issue that has been ongoing for decades,” said Dunseth of Solutions Not Sandbags.

For residents in Mission Terrace who sit in homes fortified by rows of sandbags anxiously anticipating the next rain, it’s now become a waiting game. Will the Alemany sewer, which the city has delayed upgrading for decades, be fixed in time to prevent yet another flood?

“It’s a hard issue of waiting until things settle down with the court system and planning and everything that goes on with that,” said Maria Sanchez. “While in the meantime, we have to sit here in a house that’s pretty much falling down because they can’t get their s— together.”

KQED’s Dan Brekke contributed to this story.

The City College of San Francisco Journalism Department produced this article. This project was supported by California Humanities Emerging Journalist Fellowship Program. For more information, visit www.calhum.org. 

Any views or findings expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of California Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The post ‘It is Been a Combat for Our Properties’: The Ongoing Saga to Repair San Francisco’s Sewers appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

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This November, Proposition C will give San Francisco voters the opportunity to approve the creation of a new oversight commission for the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. This body would join the more than 100 commissions, committees, councils and working groups — supplemented by a city services auditor, a budget and legislative analyst, a city attorney, a district attorney, an ethics commission and a civil grand jury — already tasked with overseeing the delivery of municipal services.

Under the watchful eye of this impressive edifice, San Francisco ought to have the cleanest, most efficient government in the world. Instead, over the last 20 years, multiple city officials have been indicted on federal corruption charges, the mayor’s annual budget has ballooned from $5 billion to $14 billion, and the government’s performance on several key metrics has only gotten worse or remained stagnant. According to one ranking, San Francisco is the second worst-run city in America.

We think there’s a better way: municipal services oversight should be centralized in a unified agency that reports to a board of auditors, which would be elected every four years and empowered to summon witnesses, subpoena documents, impound wasteful spending and levy civil penalties.

Leading audit standards bodies, whether in the public or the private sector, agree that auditor independence is the sine qua non of effective oversight. But, in San Francisco, the entities charged with ensuring that taxpayers get what they pay for are instead kept to the very departments and agencies they’re supposed to oversee. For example, the city services auditor is hired by the city controller, who is appointed by the mayor, while commissioners are appointed by varying combinations of the mayor, the supervisors and other interested parties. The city attorney and district attorney are elected by the voters, but, as political offices, they have other priorities beyond investigating corruption and waste.

San Franciscans deserve the option to vote for oversight officials who answer directly to them, and who are politically incentivized to focus exclusively on cleaning up city hall. Creating the agency we propose would align San Francisco with other California counties and US states whose auditors (or controllers with audit powers) are elected, rather than appointed. It would also professionalize the city’s audit function by entrusting it to full-time, qualified civil servants, rather than a patronage network of politically connected activists moonlighting as commissioners. Our current system is the one that put Jon Jacobo, a legislative aide, on the Building Inspection Commission, and Victor Makras, a real estate developer, on the Police Commission. Jacobo resigned last year after being accused of sexual assault; Makras was found guilty last month of bank fraud.

Variations of this proposal have been put before the voters and the Board of Supervisors before, in 2016 and 2020, but were rejected due to cost, politicization and implementation concerns. Our proposal is responsive to those concerns. First, this new agency would supplant, not supplement, the existing oversight commissions in the city, and would be funded by the resultant savings. Is this feasible? Certainly. The budgets of San Francisco’s city services auditor, Ethics Commission and Department of Police Accountability alone combine to equal the entire budget of the California state auditor, or the audits division of the state controller. To be clear, this isn’t about eliminating funds for oversight programs; it’s about entrusting them to a body that has the proper expertise and incentives to conduct them effectively. Second, electing a board, each member of which is equally authorized to deploy resources, rather than a single official to lead this agency, alleviates concerns that it would spend four years investigating that one official’s political enemies and no one else. Finally, to ensure continuity of oversight, existing commissions could temporarily operate under the authority of the board of auditors during a phase-in period until the new agency is fully provisioned.

Many government employees are competent, conscious and committed. But, over time, even the most well-meaning public servant can’t fight waste and corruption in a system that holds no one accountable. The result is a city that spends $60,000 on a tent and $20,000 on a trash can. The Board of Supervisors is empowered to put a charter amendment on the ballot to create the agency we propose and put an end to this kind of irresponsible spending. Our system is broken — let’s live up to our reputation as the City That Knows How and fix it.

Jay Donde and Bill Jackson are co-founders of the San Francisco Briones Society, a center-right club that develops and advocates for consensus solutions to urgent local issues.

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