I’ve been trying to leave San Francisco since 2014. After fake retiring in 2012, I thought it was only logical to move to a lower-cost area of the country, like Honolulu, to save money and be closer to my folks.

Yes, Honolulu isn’t cheap, but it’s cheaper than San Francisco! However, every time I try to leave, San Francisco pulls me back in.

Here are some reasons why:

• 2014: Found an ocean-view home in San Francisco for cheap, so I bought it instead of buying a much more expensive ocean-view home in Honolulu.
• 2017: Had our first child, so we decided to stay for continuity. As first-time parents, we had enough stress.
• 2019: Had our second child. There’s a lot of comfort in knowing your doctors when you have a newborn.
• 2020: The pandemic forced us to shelter in place for several months. Relocating to a new city with an infant and three-and-a-half year-old during a pandemic creates more uncertainty.
• 2021: Son got into a Mandarin immersion school. He’s enjoyed his experience so far, so it’s hard to pull him out and place him in a new school.
• 4Q 2023: An opportunity to purchase a dream home at a more affordable price, so we did.
• Fall 2024: The possibility of going back to work full-time once both kids are in school full-time. The job opportunities are more plentiful in San Francisco than in Honolulu.

Having A Family Makes Leaving Any City More Difficult

If we didn’t have kids, I’m sure my wife and I would have relocated to Honolulu years ago. We longed to live a simpler life near the ocean in year-round warm weather. We had enough money to live comfortably, but not extravagantly.

I imagined fixing up my grandparents’ old farmhouse in Waianae and eating off the land. After breakfast, we’d go to the beach to boogie board or surf. Then we’d come home, eat some poké, and take a nap. Then we might go for a late afternoon hike.

Although we’d lose all status and prestige, we’d be mentally and physically healthier and happier! Not a bad trade over just making money. Alas, we had kids, which are a blessing.

Once you have a family, inertia makes it very hard to relocate. Your house, school, friends, network, and healthcare providers all keep you stationary.

Why I Love San Francisco

Besides America, I’ve lived between 6 months and 4 years in six other countries. I’ve also visited over 150 cities worldwide. San Francisco is on my list of the top five best cities in the world.

Here are the reasons why:

• The weather is mild year-round, which is great for exercising outdoors.
• The city and the surrounding region are beautiful, especially if you can live in a home with views.
• Napa/Sonoma Valley are only an hour and 15 minutes away.
• Lake Tahoe has world-class skiing/snowboarding 3.5 hours away.
• Closer to Hawaii and Asia than cities on the East Coast.
• Fantastic universities such as Berkeley, Stanford, UCSF, Santa Clara, etc
• Always a top three culinary city in America
• Bountiful job and consulting opportunities that pay well
• One of the most diverse cities in the world
• One of the cheapest international cities in the world
• Tons of entertainment, like tennis tournaments, entertainers, and art shows come here

Why I Dislike San Francisco

Of course, no city is perfect. Here are some reasons why I dislike San Francisco:

• Some corrupt city officials
• Government waste
• Crime and homelessness
• High cost of living
• Intense hustle culture in some industries
• Bureaucracy when it comes to getting things done

But the reality is, every single city has these bullet points to various degrees. The one thing I love about Honolulu over San Francisco is the lack of hustle culture. Once you’ve left an intense career, you won’t want to be constantly surrounded by go-getters.

Excitement Is What Keeps Me In San Francisco

I’ve gone through the pros and cons of San Francisco many times before. But what I realized most recently is that excitement is one of the main reasons why I remain in San Francisco.

As someone who easily gets bored, I need to be in a vibrant city where there’s something exciting always going on. Let me share a couple of examples.

1) APEC Comes To San Francisco

San Francisco recently hosted APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Council. President Biden, China’s President Xi, and a bunch of other world leaders came to hob knob.

As an Asian person who lived in The Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and Malaysia until high school, it was exciting to see 21 APEC leaders come to town and build relationships. Here are some photos of who came to San Francisco for APEC.

Not only were world political leaders in town but so were top musicians like Sting and Yoshiki serenading Marc Benioff (Founder of Salesforce) and other luminaries at his event. Elon Musk came to town as well.

The world’s media was focused on San Francisco for two weeks. The spotlight brings in more interest, more investments, more jobs, and more demand to visit and live in the city.

It’s hard to leave San Francisco when you know many people want to live here.

2) OpenAI CEO Firing Debacle

After APEC ended, OpenAI’s board voted its CEO, Sam Altman out for an unspecified reason. After Atman’s firing, there was a huge outcry of support from the VC and tech community. Greg Brockton, the President quit, along with several senior researchers. As a result, the board is under immense pressure to resign and reinstate Altman as CEO.

If you’ve watched Succession on HBO, the entire OpenAI debacle feels like the show on hyperspeed. Exciting and fascinating to observe!

Once again, the entire tech world is focused on what the heck is going on in San Francisco with the largest artificial intelligence company in the world.

For a quick overview of what’s going on at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT:

1. Altman clashed with the board on the direction of the company (e.g. profits vs. non-profit, AI safety, speed of development of technology, Altman wanting to start another company, etc)
2. Power struggle between Altman and Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist
3. In a coup by Sutskever, on a Google Meet, “Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon.” Shortly after, Brockman was told he was being removed from his position as chairman of the board but would hold on to his role as president. 
4. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella found out about the board’s decision just like the rest of us on Twitter, despite having invested over $10 billion in OpenAI. Interestingly, despite the investment amount, Microsoft doesn’t have a board seat.
5. OpenAI employees were on the cusp of being able to sell their shares at a staggering $86 billion valuation. But now that valuation amount is looking suspect. OpenAI’s board may have torched tens of billions in shareholder value.
6. Now OpenAI’s board is under pressure to reinstate Altman, who is considering coming back if the board is removed. But he’s not! Emmett Shear from Twitch is now CEO.
7. Altman is joining Microsoft to lead a new AI project. Working for big tech seems like a disappointment for Altman, but a win for Microsoft to control more pieces and get an in-house AI technology.

If you’ve lived in San Francisco since 2001, as I have, you inevitably will know people involved in this drama. How could you leave? The awkwardness is going to be amazing during the next board meeting!

Be In The Right Place At The Right Time To Get Rich

Half the battle of getting rich and/or getting ahead is being in the right place at the right time. When you can easily meet decision-makers in person, it’s much easier to build relationships. And when you have good relationships, life gets easier.

I’m talking about getting a job or a consulting gig, getting your kids into school, raising money for your company or fund, starting a business, and more. If you’re a helpful and relatively nice person, you will get farther ahead than those who aren’t.

Hard To Get Back In Once You Leave San Francisco

If you leave San Francisco, like many did during the pandemic, there’s a fear you might never be able to get back in.

The job you vacated will have been taken by a hungry colleague. Your network will forget about you once you leave. And the prime property you owned will be scooped up by another family and not be available for the next 30 years!

I’ve lived in San Francisco since 2001 because I felt the tech/internet boom was here to stay. Yes, the dotcom bubble had burst in March 2000, but the groundwork was laid for Web 2.0.

Given I couldn’t get a job in tech, I bought public tech company stocks. Then I bought as much San Francisco real estate as I could afford. Picks and shovels for those who’ve been shut out!

It seems obvious that artificial intelligence will revolutionize the world again. However, this time, the stakes may be even higher because AI could eliminate my children’s jobs as well as yours.

Fear Keeps Me In San Francisco

With Web 1.0 and 2.0 companies, there was a greater possibility of getting rich by joining these companies or investing in them after they went public.

But with artificial intelligence, there seems like less opportunity given fewer people are needed to scale. These private AI companies are staying private for longer, shutting out public investors. In addition, artificial intelligence is a direct attack on eliminating jobs in many industries!

By staying in San Francisco, I feel like I’m acting as a loyal soldier of the Night’s Watch in the Game of Thrones. The White Walkers are coming to destroy us, it’s only a matter of time when. But when they do, I want to be here to defend my family!

AI is like the Night King

I’m always thinking 10+ years ahead because you have to if you want to effectively plan for your future. With a three and six-year-old, I’m concerned for their futures.

From Non-Profit To Mega Profits In AI

OpenAI went from being a non-profit whose mission was to help humanity to being a for-profit company worth $86 billion and largely owned by Microsoft.

Huh?

No matter what the OpenAI leaders say, the reason why the company became a for-profit company was to make tons of money for its leaders, owners, and employees.

This is Capitalism 101!

Think about it. No matter how rich you already are, you can’t help but want more money, more power, and more fame.

Listen to all the corporate speak you want from AI leaders promoting a “harmless technology” for the greater good of humanity. There will be positive benefits from AI for sure. However, there will also be negatives as well, including massive disinformation, fraud, and millions of job losses.

ChatGPT and Claude.ai already scrapes the internet for data and makes it their own without given any attribution to creators like me. Yet, AI folks say this isn’t stealing. No wonder why Medium is blocking all AI crawlers from its content.

Investing In AI For My Family

So what is a dad of two kids and a non-working spouse going to do? Accept reality and adapt!

There’s no way I can beat AI. As a result, I need to either work in AI or invest in AI companies determined to wipe my kind off the map.

Getting a lucrative AI job is going to be difficult. Everyone wants one. But investing in private AI companies is accessible to me, and now it is accessible to all of you through funds like the Fundrise Innovation Fund. `

I’ve already committed $1,000,000 in various private venture capital and venture debt funds which invest parts of their portfolios in AI companies.

I plan to invest another $500,000 in venture capital funds that invest in AI companies over the next three to five years.

If AI revolutionizes the world, then my investments will likely pay off. If AI turns out to be overhyped, then my children will likely still land good jobs.

A Parent’s Fear Is The Greatest Motivator

One of a parent’s fears is spending 18 years educating their children, then spending a small fortune sending them to college, then ending up with despondent adult children who can’t get jobs in their fields of study.

This fear is one of the reasons why I’m reluctant to encourage anybody to pay full retail for college. Going to a public college or community college is the way to go! Lower price equals less possibility for disappointment.

With AI, sadly, I think more high school and college graduates will find themselves underemployed and disillusioned in the future.

By thinking 20+ years ahead for my 3 and 6-year-olds, I can better hedge against potential career disappointments. If they can’t get relevant jobs that provide purpose, I’ll pull them aside one day and share a version of this note.

A Conversation To My Adult Kids

“Dear Son/Daughter,

I wish life wasn’t so cruel. You studied your hardest in school and did your best over the past five years to find a job in your field. I’m so proud of you because you tried!

Even though things might not have turned out as you planned, your mom and I are here for you. Don’t give up! Good things are yet to come.

We have a surprise for you. In 2023, your old man recognized the future and invested accordingly. Here are the proceeds from various AI investments we made.

You’re a grown adult now. Feel free to use the funds to pursue what you really want to do. Don’t forget to come visit sometime OK?

We love you,

Mom and Dad

So there you have it folks. There’s too much excitement, fear, and AI going on to leave San Francisco. Maybe in our 50s will we finally move to Honolulu. But not now. We need to protect our children’s futures.

Reader Questions

Anybody live in San Francisco and find it difficult to leave? Are you worried about artificial intelligence taking away jobs for your children as well? Besides working in AI and investing in AI, what else can we do to protect our financial futures?

Besides politics and not being able to afford to live on San Francisco, why else do some people who don’t live in San Francisco hate San Francisco so much?

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The post Why It is So Exhausting To Go away San Francisco: Pleasure, Concern, AI appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Joanna Haigood, Love, A State of Grace (2022). Performance at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. Pictured: Saharla Vetsch. Photo by Walter Kitundu.

In art and beyond, money is fundamentally based on trust. Our economic system works on the basis of society’s trust and enables cooperation and exchange. However, if we trust money itself, why is art philanthropy so largely lacking in trust in artists? The limited nature of many forms of grantmaking—such as project-based support—implies that we lack confidence in an artist’s ability to direct how they allocate funds to support their practice.

Enter trust-based philanthropy – a style of support characterized by reciprocity, transparency and unconditional funding. This is a model that has gained popularity throughout the philanthropic sector, but has not yet caught on in art. However, it offers a promising solution to artist trust and offers a model for deeper, more meaningful support.

Artists have been asking sponsors this question of trust for years, a dialogue that has significantly shaped the development the Rainin Scholarship– an annual program we created with United States Artists to honor four anchor artists in the San Francisco Bay Area with $100,000 in unrestricted grants and additional support. The Fellows can spend the money on anything they see fit. This approach recognizes that artists’ individual needs are different and they are the best experts on how to improve their practices. Whether they choose to spend the money on housing, healthcare, or future projects, our approach emphasizes autonomy and real impact, values ​​consistent with the trust-based philanthropy model.

The Rainin Fellowship embodies trust-based philanthropy and is rooted in the work of Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, A Five-year peer-to-peer funding initiative and platform addressing the inherent power imbalances between foundations and nonprofits. At the heart of this model is listening and learning. In establishing the Rainin Fellowship in the Bay Area, we worked with both national and local partners to better understand the needs of artists in our communities.

Portrait of Ted Russell, director of arts strategy and enterprise at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Copyright: Mitch Tobias. Courtesy of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.

Our research partners at Helicon– a consultancy that works with artists, cultural leaders, philanthropists and other sectors to help mobilize the power of culture and creativity for an equitable and sustainable future— found that the top four concerns expressed by artists in the region across all disciplines and age groups were housing costs and displacement; the rising cost of living; a brain drain as artists move out of the region in greater numbers; and structural difficulties faced by artist-run organizations that struggle to recruit and retain staff.

Given longstanding issues relevant to the Bay Area’s arts ecosystem, the program was designed to address the changing needs of artists. Working across generations, practices, spaces and communities, each of our artist groups has different needs. Trusting them, communicating their experiences, breaking down funding barriers and giving them the space to offer new perspectives is crucial.

While this artist-centric approach emerged organically in our conversations with anchor artists in that particular region, we’ve found it resonates with larger conversations and shifts in the philanthropic landscape. Through the lens of trust-based philanthropy, we have discovered ways of emphasizing reciprocity and the redistribution of power in our relationships with artists, reimagining the traditional patron-artist dichotomy and transforming it into a partnership and amplifying values, which are noticeably absent from our current social framework.

These values ​​emerge at all levels of our community, beginning with the selection process. Through community nominations and peer and field review panels, decision-making for the community is decentralized and collaborative, harmonizing both local and national perspectives. United States Artists, which administers the program, provides applicants with detailed feedback and constructive criticism from the reader and panel reviews, allowing for transparency around the process itself. Finally, by providing unrestricted funding as well as complementary, tailored support – such as partnerships with web designers, videographers, financial planners, mentors, PR and communications experts, and archivists – the grant opens up an infinite realm of generative possibilities for further artists’ practices and furthers artists’ careers.

Joanna Haigood, Invisible Wings (1998). Performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, Massachusetts. Pictured left to right: Paul Benney, Robert Henry Johnson, Amara Tabor-Smith and Ralph Rotondo. Photo by Christian Duggan.

This year’s Rainin Fellows explore the region’s history, amplify diasporic narratives, highlight systemic injustices, and honor and advance the Bay Area’s activist legacy. Through our close partnership with them, we have learned more about their process-centric work and see further evidence why project-based funding is not the only answer to artists’ structural challenges.

For example, the work of Public Space Fellow Related Tactics—an artistic collaboration founded in 2015 between artists and creators Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya and Nathan Watson—foreground transdisciplinary exchange and collective art-making, which has led to the group’s projects and conversations taking place across multiple timelines. Theater grantee Sean San José is also committed to the organic processes of collaboration and longstanding creative partnerships across Magic Theater that don’t necessarily follow a linear timeline. Similarly, film grantee Mohammad Gorjestani and dance grantee Joanna Haigood develop projects that are site-specific, iterative and engage members of their community. Whether collaborating with the Public Defender’s Office or with aspiring dancers at Zaccho Dance Theatre, the continuous and multifaceted nature of their practices requires flexible schedules.

Confidence in the artists’ unique processes, the methods they choose, and the longevity of their collaboration is a central pillar of the Rainin Fellowship. Through unlimited funding and additional support, we recognize that their impact lies not only in the individual projects they exhibit and execute, but also in the enduring legacy of their pioneering creative frameworks.

The very architecture of our grantmaking process is deeply rooted in what we have learned from artists and the cultural field in general – lessons about emotional intelligence, empathy and the tremendous impact that holistic support can have on artists’ lives. We believe the bursary’s trust-based model could serve as a blueprint for other cultural funders, demonstrating how meaningful support of individual artists can strengthen our local and regional arts networks as a whole.

If society’s relationship to money is one of trust, it is imperative for us as art patrons to also base our support of artists on trust. We challenge other funders in this space to reconsider how we can fuel creative innovation and enable artists to truly thrive by trusting artists—not only with unrestricted funding, but also by allowing them to share how we do can best support them.

Ted Russel is Director, Arts Strategy and Ventures for the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. He leads the Foundation for the Arts’ strategic direction, supporting diverse, visionary artists and working with artists, partners and funders to foster an equitable ecosystem.

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The post Philanthropy in Nearly Each Sector Is Transferring Towards Unrestricted Funding—Besides within the Arts. Why Is It So Arduous to Belief Artists? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

This story was first published by Stateline. Read the original article here.

Stroll through America’s vacant downtown areas, and a seemingly obvious solution to many states’ housing and homelessness problems emerges: Why not turn all those vacant offices into housing? Especially in cities like Portland, Oregon, where the core office vacancy rate peaked earlier this year at an estimated 27%?

The answer is as complicated as the unequal conditions that produced the office glut that began during the pandemic and accelerated in cities with high percentages of teleworkers who continued to work from home.

Office vacancy rates across the country neared a 30-year high of 17.1% last year, according to CBRE, a global commercial real estate services and investment firm. The decline in business and pedestrian traffic has been particularly dismal in Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, but New York and Washington, DC are also considering ways to convert more offices into apartments.

Modern high-rise buildings lack the plumbing, outward-facing windows, and internal footprint of buildings intended for residential construction, making some buildings expensive and difficult to remodel. However, some states are attempting to encourage conversions by waiving development effects fees, introducing tax incentives, and streamlining zoning changes to encourage office-to-residential conversions.

“We have to figure out how we can get units on the ground and how we can do that in a way that we’ve never tried before,” said State Rep. Pam Marsh, a Democratic lawmaker from southern Oregon who sponsored the necessary legislation major cities in the state to facilitate commercial-to-residential conversions without requiring zoning changes or conditional occupancy permits.

Marsh’s legislation would also require local governments to waive most system development fees, or impact fees, to reduce their costs. These fees go towards water, sewage and transport infrastructure.

The approach is one of the ways state legislators, governors and city leaders hope to address the nation’s 3.8 million housing unit shortages while revitalizing inner-city districts flattened by a decline in visitors and an increase in crime or the perception of crime.

In California, State Assemblyman Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced legislation to prevent local officials from delaying or denying commercial-residential projects. His proposal would allow such projects in all areas of a city, but they could not exceed certain height and density parameters. The cities would also have to speed up the approval process.

Haney’s proposal comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed legislation last year making it easier to redevelop malls in California’s business districts designated for retail offices and parking lots.

“We must act quickly if we are to prevent our inner cities from crossing the tipping point into urban decay,” Haney said in a statement announcing his bill. “This law will stop bureaucracy and will allow us to act quickly to build much-needed housing and breathe life back into our inner cities.”

Washington, DC last year approved a 20-year tax break for eligible commercial projects converted to housing. New York City wants 20,000 new office-to-apartment conversions over the next decade, according to the Mayor’s Office. In Portland, the city recently waived system development fees for building conversions equivalent to seismic upgrades when they become residential, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. In order to create incentives for conversions, the exemption expires in 2027.

But so far, conversions are “a marginal trend at best,” according to a 2022 Moody’s report. Office values ​​and rents would need to fall much further “for the trend to become anything more than anecdotal,” according to the report.

According to CBRE, there was an average of 39 completed conversions each year nationwide, beginning in 2017 and ending in 2021. That’s just a drop in the bucket of the entire US office stock, according to the report. All planned conversion projects add up to only about 2% of the available office space. The conversions are concentrated in the coastal and northeastern states.

Nonetheless, conversion is progressing and has been for some time. This also applies to rededications that allow more housing to be built in commercial areas. New York City rededicated the Financial District in 1997 to make room for more residential buildings. Now she is also considering such a rezoning for Midtown Manhattan. Los Angeles made similar zoning changes in 1999, leading to a boom in downtown housing units.

these achievements were ahead of the current commercial real estate spate, suggesting there’s room for even more conversions, said Mary Kyle McCurdy, associate director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, an anti-sprawl advocacy group. The bill “makes sense for cities,” McCurdy said at a lawmakers’ hearing.

“These buildings are already on roads, possibly transit lines, that have infrastructure and are currently vacant or partially vacant,” she said. “Not only are the buildings not using existing infrastructure, but the fact that they are vacant means that the existing infrastructure is not being utilized.”

While embattled downtown areas are an obvious focus of Oregon’s legislation, the measure could also help convert vacant large suburban stores into apartments or convert hotels in commercial areas into apartments.

Adaptive reuse can be a climate-friendly strategy to increase housing supply in small-to-medium-sized cities, said Nicole Possert, executive director of Restore Oregon, a statewide historic preservation nonprofit. According to the CBRE assessment, conversions usually have a lower environmental impact than new buildings. They can also retain unique design features, including historic buildings “whose character cannot be replicated in new construction,” the report suggests.

Downtown areas of smaller cities “suffer from housing, affordability and accessibility just as much as downtown Portland,” Possert said. “It’s a really common problem, although the solutions might be a little different.”

One success Possert cites is the Palace Hotel in Medford, a former single-occupancy hotel (formerly known as the Dosshouse) in southern Oregon. The hotel provided affordable accommodation from 1893 until it closed in 1972. According to Restore Oregon, commercial activity continued in the hotel’s ground-level spaces. But more than 70 rooms on the upper floor remained unused.

“People in the housing industry start building new buildings immediately. And that’s fine because we have to build, but it’s not the only tool in the toolbox,” she said. “And so this is an opportunity to add more tools to the overall production toolbox. So it might be easier to deal with existing properties, or at least they should be on par with building new builds.”

Fortify Holdings, a developer experienced in converting hotels into apartments, is converting the hotel into 40 smaller apartments that will blend into the existing downtown fabric. The company’s president, Ziad Elsahili, testified on behalf of Marsh’s bill, in part because he would forego a large portion of the system development fees (SDCs) that developers pay when they create new projects.

“This is a huge benefit for developers and could really help offset some of the costs of developing and converting these buildings and leading to more housing options,” Elsahili said.

But some Oregon cities and park counties initially opposed Marsh’s legislation over mandatory waivers of SDCs. In Springfield, a city of 62,000 people about 110 miles south of Portland, the planning team was concerned about losing money upgrading water, sewage and transportation infrastructure. Based on her feedback and that of other cities, Marsh amended the bill to allow SDCs for water and wastewater in some situations.

“We have to think innovatively,” Marsh said. “All of these things need to be on the table.”

The post Changing Workplaces to Housing Is Laborious. These Modifications Might Make It Simpler appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

As the cost of a new building at Manatee County’s Bishop Animal Shelter in Bradenton continues to rise, county commissioners have laid down their financial leg.

A $17 million estimate by county employees to construct a building in Bishop to triple the shelter’s 53 kennels was presented to commissioners on February 14 for the first time.

After the district commission approved the Bishop Animal Shelter’s donation in December 2021 and then took control of the facility the following March, the conversation focused on whether the district could close its existing 85-kennel shelter in Palmetto and whether to build a new facility would be needed in the Lakewood Ranch area.

Sarah Brown, department head for the county’s animal services, told commissioners that a centralized facility would best serve the county so animal services staff could work together more effectively, rather than being split across different facilities.

District 5 Commissioner Vanessa Baugh told Brown that the palmetto plant “definitely needs to be flattened.”

With $8 million in county funds diverted from a potential facility in the Lakewood Ranch area and earmarked for the Bishop Animal Shelter, the commissioners made it clear that they are committed to a centralized individual animal shelter.

However, the commissioners rolled their eyes when told that plans for a new building at the Bishop Animal Shelter had skyrocketed to $17 million. According to Tom Yarger, Manatee County Construction Superintendent, a $17 million facility would have consisted of about 15,000 square feet with 100 kennels.

As of March 2022, the donation of the Bishop Animal Shelter and associated 14 acres was estimated at $18 million.

Do taxpayers want a $35 million animal shelter?

“I see you need more kennels,” Baugh told Brown. “Right now we need to find an $8 million solution. Jokes aside, I don’t know if we can afford to give you more. I don’t see how we can add anything to that.”

Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge agreed.

“I don’t see more money coming into play here,” he said. “But we want to get you out of Palmetto.”

Commissioners urged county staff to come up with a plan for an $8 building at the Bishop Animal Shelter — and no more. They said when that plan is in place to return to the commission with a presentation.

At the February 14 meeting, the commissioners went through a list of capital improvement projects that had become far more expensive. The commissioners said they were not informed of the project’s grossly inflated costs by former administrator Scott Hopes.

Related article

The animal services improvements were just one example of spending running amok and unbeknownst to the commissioners of the plans.

One of the arguments for building a shelter in the Lakewood Ranch area was that residents there would not use shelters in Palmetto or West Bradenton.

This was felt to be a problem as animal shelters could not rely on their fastest growing area to take in abandoned pets and thus make room for more pets.

Commissioner General Jason Bearden said the county should be able to overcome such a problem by increasing its marketing to the Bishop facility and by targeting residents of Parrish and the Lakewood Ranch area.

He said many people he spoke to didn’t know there was an animal shelter in Bradenton.

Van Ostenbridge said he spoke to Hopes about providing $500 in advertising money for Manatee County Animal Welfare’s public relations and events specialist, Hans Wohlfahrt, to refer residents of Parrish and Lakewood Ranch to the bishop could draw attention to.

In June 2021, then-Commissioner Carol Whitmore said the need to build an emergency shelter in East County was all about smart planning for the future in the face of a growing population. At the time, some commissioners suggested the county wait until the donated Bishop facility was operational for a period of time before making a decision.

The current Bishop facility includes a veterinary clinic and cat homes.

Yarger said the new Bishop facility would include an educational component but not a veterinarian component like the current building does.

He said a new building would need a lift station, as well as the standard ventilation for both dog and cat kennels, and enough plumbing for each kennel to have access to a drain and hose.

The construction of a new building would require the removal of much of an old building, originally constructed in the 1950s and renovated in the 1970s but which has since deteriorated.

Some of the bricks used in this building would be preserved for historical value.

Deputy Administrator Charlie Bishop talks about the shelter.

Photo by Ian Swaby

Assistant District Manager Charlie Bishop said while he could not elaborate on the project in its “quiet phase,” the district is preparing to select a project architect.

It is also being considered whether a new building must be hardened for hurricanes up to category 3 so that the animals do not have to be taken to another area in the event of a large storm.

The new building in Bishop is hardened.

Yarger estimated that not hardening the new building would save about 25% on construction.

Bishop said he recommended spending $50,000 to add double-throw separation so a generator could be activated by the flick of a switch in the event of a strong storm. The commissioners agreed that this was a good idea.

Manatee County Animal Services division chief Sarah Brown told commissioners that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent on the Palmetto facility’s “patch care.” She said that despite significant repairs, problems with the installation arise every day.

“It’s a money pit,” she said.

The post Manatee commissioners draw arduous line on animal shelter spending appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

English

Bob Tillman owned a laundromat in San Francisco’s Mission District and wanted to replace it with apartments. In a city desperate for new housing, it seemed logical enough.

But eight years later and after countless community meetings, hearings, appeals, studies, a legal challenge and a court settlement—the site of the former laundromat at 2918 Mission St. still sits empty.

Tillman, who owned 10 laundromat businesses in the Bay Area, made out just fine: He bought the laundromat property in 2005 and 2006 for a total of $1.75 million, and after finally obtaining initial permits, he sold it in 2019 for $13.5 million to Lawrence Lui of Cresleigh Homes. 

But his story, and the continued absence of housing at the site, reveals the massive hurdles developers face in the city and helps to explain why new housing permits this year cratered to about half of the 10-year average.

Bob Tillman stands outside the site of the former laundromat he owned at 2918 Mission St. in San Francisco on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. | Paul Kuroda for The Standard

San Francisco is on pace to build an anemic 3,000 new units this year, and the lull in construction couldn’t come at a worse time. State law demands the city have a plan to build 82,000 new units over the next decade, and state officials led by Attorney General Rob Bonta are now investigating the city’s land-use practices and holding up the city as a poster child for housing dysfunction. 

Indeed, the city represents an extreme version of a national housing crisis that is especially severe in big coastal cities. Costs are spinning out of control as builders face soaring pricing for materials and labor and a gauntlet of not-in-my-backyard activism, bureaucracy and cutthroat politics. 

“It’s basically mafia government,” Tillman said. “People doing shakedowns of various sorts.”

“Nineteen times out of 20, they get away with it,” Tillman added. “And the 20th example, which is me, they cut a deal quietly, sweep it under the rug, and keep on doing what they’re doing.”

Higher Costs, Lower Rents 

From the beginning, Tillman realized he would have trouble financing a big housing project. When he first applied for permits in 2014, the estimated average cost of $700,000 for each of the 75 planned units seemed exorbitant. Today, the per-door cost of housing, a common metric for developers, is closer to $1 million in the city.

Even in the best of times, San Francisco is an extremely expensive place to build. Space is limited, the land itself is expensive, and the city’s high cost of living means higher cost labor, too. 

That makes San Francisco’s average building cost—at about $440 per square foot—the highest in the world, according to data research group CBRE. A combination of rising materials costs, a labor shortage and supply chain disruptions are pushing costs even higher: In the Bay Area, construction bids have surged 17% over the past year, according to consulting group TBD Consultants. 

Costs are rising in tandem with an unusual market pullback in the city, with rents still below pre-pandemic levels, home prices receding and low demand for office space. 

“It’s really hard to make a project work in San Francisco right now,” said Brynn McKiernan, an associate at Emerald Fund, a local developer. “The type 1 construction, the towers, just aren’t financially feasible.”

But market conditions aren’t what’s driving many developers away. Instead, it’s the city’s political climate, which poses a host of challenges that don’t exist in friendlier pastures like Oakland and San Jose. 

Developer Eric Tao shows a corner condo construction taking place on the sixth floor of 950 Market St., a hotel/condo development, seen on Friday, March 13, 2020, in San Francisco, Calif. | Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Three trends, in fact, worry local builders the most: The city’s multitude of fees that layer dollar after dollar onto every new project, its costly labor mandates—both tacit and explicit—and its tortuously slow permitting process. The capper is that even if the years-long permitting process goes well, there is the threat of arbitrary project denial at the Board of Supervisors. 

Death by a Thousand Fees

The city’s “inclusionary housing” fee is where Tillman began his long odyssey to try and get permission to build. Unlike many other cities, where new development is allowed without a special process if a project fits zoning and other rules, San Francisco gives much greater power to commissions and politicians to decide on individual projects.

When he began the process in 2013, Tillman sought to build as many housing units on the site as he could, 14.5% of which were required to be below market-rate under the city’s so-called inclusionary housing rules. But after doing some legal research, Tillman discovered a loophole: If he used the state’s “density bonus” law, he could increase his planned 55 units to 75 without adding additional below market-rate units. 

And if his project was fully up to code but still denied—which would likely be illegal under another state law that bars arbitrary housing denials—he could sue all the way to a state judge and set a precedent.

Adopted in 2002 and twice amended since then, the city’s inclusionary housing fee now requires developments larger than 10 units to include anywhere from 20% to 33% below market-rate units or pay a hefty fee equivalent to about $230 per square foot of the building’s residential area.

Affordable housing activists say the fee is a lynchpin of efforts to prevent displacement and assure that the city remains a place for everyone. Bad-mouthing by developers, they say, is just that, and affordability requirements remain a point of heated debate.

Jeremy Lui, a development manager at Cresleigh, described the fees as an example of good intentions with unintended consequences. The current inclusionary housing framework can kill projects, he said, because requiring a high percentage of low-rent units can outstrip any profitability.  

“If I were a policymaker, it’s like saying ‘I only get 4 out of 5 votes sent in the mail,’” Lui said. “At some point, it just doesn’t make sense.”

The inclusionary housing fee is the 800-pound gorilla of San Francisco development fees, but is one of dozens of fees currently on the books. The city charges a boatload of neighborhood-specific impact fees, imposed in areas like Balboa Park and the Mission District, purportedly to help to offset the strain of new developments on existing neighborhoods. 

Other fees are imposed citywide, like the $600 the city charges per bicycle parking space eliminated for new housing and the $2,302 per tree that cannot be planted. When piled onto a project, the city’s fees can amount to as much as a quarter of a project’s total “soft costs”—a term for the costs of architects, consulting, insurance, permit fees and other non-construction costs. 

The Controller’s Office raises development impact fees every year alongside inflation. And 10 new fees have been added since 2014.

Other rules, like the city’s definition of a “high rise” and its building code requirements have evolved over the years to the point where Tillman says his project, if proposed today and therefore beholden to higher fees, would no longer be feasible. 

“If someone … just gave me that lot [today], I don’t know that I could afford to build and design a project that would be economically viable,” Tillman said. “The city has done everything possible to increase the costs.”

Unfriendly Neighbors 

Tillman’s development plan met stiff resistance from the Mission District group Calle 24, which set in motion multiple appeals that wound up stalling the project for years. 

Calle 24 wanted the site to be converted to 100% affordable housing and objected that the laundromat had been a site of activism in the 1970s, sending it to the Historic Preservation Commission for a study. Four months and $23,000 later, that commission did not find that the site had historic value.  

Tensions boiled over at a January 2016 community meeting, when an irascible crowd hurled insults and homophobic remarks over concerns that the housing would displace existing residents. One attendee reportedly told Tillman that he wished his daughter, who lived in Boston, had been blown up in the recent marathon bombing. 

At this point, Tillman says he saw the writing on the wall: There was little chance he’d get his project approved over neighborhood opposition. So he set out to get the project denied at the Board of Supervisors so he could settle out his building rights in court, allowing him to sell the site with entitlements, at a tidy profit, in a neighborhood where few new properties were getting the go-ahead to build new units.

Tillman’s housing plan—a 75-unit, eight-story housing project with 14.5% below market-rate units—eventually obtained a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission in 2017, three years after it was introduced. 

That timeline is far from unusual in San Francisco, where it takes more than two years on average to permit housing projects—an unusually slow pace compared to peer cities, according to a draft study published last year. 

The longer a project languishes in the city’s byzantine permitting process, the more expensive it gets for the eventual builder. Joe Ollá, vice president of business development and marketing at Nibbi Brothers General Contractors, estimated that for every six months of permitting purgatory, overall costs tick up by around 3 to 4%. 

“If it gets delayed two years, that can destroy a job,” Ollá said. “It’s just this kind of neverending battle to try to catch up to the dollars.”

Knowing he was likely headed to court, Tillman refused to jump through the hoops normally required for getting a housing project off the ground in San Francisco. He didn’t cater his plans to the neighborhood and political groups and didn’t sign a voluntary agreement promising to use union labor.

That’s one of the unwritten rules for local builders, and it’s a double-edged sword: Those labor agreements tend to yield higher quality work, say builders, but also ratchet up costs.  

Perhaps most importantly, not signing a labor agreement can make your project a political non-starter. 

By the time he got that far, Tillman knew he was selling and didn’t want to tie a buyer up in a labor agreement. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway: The so-called “historic laundromat” had become a cause célèbre on both sides of the city’s housing debate, with Mission District activists saying it would further gentrify the neighborhood and pro-housing groups countering that building housing at an old laundromat couldn’t possibly displace anybody. 

“I was going to get opposed by Mission activists whether I had the unions or not,” Tillman said.

See Also

Sure enough, Calle 24 appealed Tillman’s conditional use permit, sending the matter to the Board of Supervisors.  

Chilling Effect

San Francisco’s system of housing review, which gives both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors discretion over housing approvals, is ripe for abuse. 

In San Francisco, anyone—even non-residents—can ask the commission to take a second look at a development. It takes just a few hundred dollars and a claim of historical significance or environmental impact to stall a project. 

There are opportunities for public input and appeals at almost every stage of the process. Within two weeks of filing a pre-application for permits, applicants on bigger housing projects must notify everyone who owns property within 300 feet of the project of their initial plans and then hold a community meeting. Some buildings, like Tillman’s, require additional notifications before a hearing and can be subject to “postponement” to give the opposition time to organize. 

Even once permits are approved, project opponents then have 30 days to appeal the permit to the Board of Supervisors. And that’s all just for the entitlement process—opponents have additional opportunities during the building permit phase to send projects to the city’s Board of Appeals.

An archival photo of the former laundromat at 2318 Mission St. in January 2016 (top) and a drone photo of the same lot (bottom) which remains empty on Monday, September 12, 2022. A housing development at the site has been delayed. | Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images ; Paul Kuroda for The Standard

The most common weapon of choice for anyone trying to stop a project is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a state law that requires most housing projects to undergo an environmental review. “Environmental impacts” can be interpreted broadly, and the Board of Supervisors has been accused of using CEQA as cover to tank projects for political reasons. That was the case in the much-publicized delay of 469 Stevenson, a proposed 500-unit development on a downtown parking lot, which led to a state investigation of SF’s housing policies.

“That just has a chilling effect,” said Jonathan Fearn, a builder with Greystar who sits on the Oakland Planning Commission, of the denial of projects like 469 Stevenson. “Why would I move forward?”

Likewise, the board cited CEQA in denying Tillman’s project in 2018, saying it could cast shadows over a nearby playground. Tillman sued, spurring the planning department to launch an independent “shadow study” and ultimately re-approve his project. That was five years after he first proposed it. 

“If you’re on the political playing field, they can do anything to you,” Tillman said. “But once they turn you down…then you can go into the courts and that’s a different playing field. They don’t have control over it.”

A drone photo of the lot at 2918 Mission St., formerly the site of a laundromat (left) and the former owner of the property Bob Tillman (right) outside the location on Monday September 12, 2022. | Paul Kuroda for The Standard

Greystar, which manages more than two dozen apartment buildings in San Francisco, cleared planning hurdles on its last construction project in the city in 2014 and hasn’t done one since, said Fearn. 

The pullback wasn’t calculated, but the South Bay, with its ample tech jobs to support rents—and more importantly, its simplified approach to approving housing compared to San Francisco—has proved a much more reliable market.

Cresleigh Homes, which purchased the 2918 Mission St. site from Tillman in 2019, demolished the old laundromat but still hasn’t secured final approval from the city’s building department to build beyond a foundation. Lui said it’s no surprise that builders decide that San Francisco is not worth the hassle. 

“There’s a whole ecosystem of would-be builders that go elsewhere,” said Lui.

‘We Go to Oakland’

Pro-housing groups say the city’s “solutions” to the housing crisis are only making matters worse. 

Local politicians are launching a yearlong process to redesign an existing state law to avoid relinquishing their role in project approvals. The Board of Supervisors approved a “streamlining” ballot measure with affordability and labor requirements so strict it’s unlikely to be utilized by developers at all.

Efforts at the state level to tear down barriers to housing may force San Francisco to change its ways, or set the stage for a legal showdown with local policymakers unwilling to cede local control of housing. 

But for many of the city’s top builders, it’s too little, too late. They’re already spooked by projects like Tillman’s and 469 Stevenson that leave hundreds of units dead in the water for reasons they call arbitrary. 

When asked what keeps builders in the city, McKiernan had a simple answer: “We go to Oakland.”

English

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San Francisco-based Rob Price has hiked in California’s Sierra Nevada many times while wildfire smoke was blown through the air.

But the thick, sooty air that choked Yosemite National Park on Saturday when he and his partner were backpacking was like nothing he had ever seen before.

“The sky turned the ugly color of a dark blotch, black and purple,” said Price. “It was raining ash. It felt completely apocalyptic.”

Price said when the smoke first swept into the park, the temperature dropped significantly.

“There were very gusty winds,” he said. “We only saw lightning strike, but heard a drumbeat from distant thunder.”

Apocalyptic skies – smoke, constantly falling ash, and a sickly orange sun – as we broke up on our hike and evacuated Wawona, Yosemite due to #CreekFire earlier this morning pic.twitter.com/N1Ywwakx3t

– Hannah Murphy (@MsHannahMurphy) September 7, 2020

Price’s story is just one of many reports that came from Yosemite on September 5th when angry wildfire sent clouds of smoke across the area about 40 miles south of the park.

“Apocalyptic skies – smoke, constantly falling ash and a sickly orange sun – when we stopped our hike today and evacuated Wawona, Yosemite because of the #CreekFire,” wrote one hiker on Twitter.

These reports symbolize a record-breaking wildfire season in California, in which more than 2 million acres have been burned since the beginning of the year. The fires have made outdoor recreation difficult in the state, known for its majestic mountains and emerald lakes, in a month when residents typically enjoy being outdoors. As of Tuesday, 22 California State Parks were completely closed and five partially closed due to forest fires. Yosemite National Park is open, but the southern part is under fire due to the creek fire.

The Creek Fire ignited Friday night in the Sierra National Forest near the Big Creek and Huntington Lake communities and raged on Saturday afternoon. It was moving so fast that campers were trapped around Mammoth Pool Campground and needed helicopter rescue.

The intense heat in the powerful updraft created an ominous cloud of smoke and ash known as the pyrocumulonimbus cloud.

“There was a much smaller fire on the Yosemite Park border, but it’s less than 1,000 ares,” said Daniel Harty, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Hanford. “That probably made a little smoke, but the smoke from Creek Far stretched all the way into Yosemite.”

UPDATE: @NOAAs # GOES17

Measurements from NOAA satellite imagery revealed that the cloud of fire was reached at an altitude of more than 45,000 feet. Dr. Colin Seftor, an atmospheric researcher at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told NASA the cloud of fire was possibly the largest ever observed. The cloud reached more than 45,000 feet.

NASA calls pyrocumulonimbus “the fire-breathing dragon of the clouds” because they “direct their smoke like a chimney into the stratosphere of the earth”. These clouds often create their own weather and generate rain, hail and thunderstorms.

Harty said Saturday was too dry for the cloud of fire to produce rain, but there were reports of thunder and lightning.

Incredible #PyroCB (Pyrocumulonimbus) cloud created by the intense heat of the #CreekFire in California. The peaks occasionally reached heights of eight to nine miles, with updrafts strong enough to force overshoot peaks into the stratosphere. https://t.co/RPx0k8UTRP

– NWS Portland (@NWPortland) September 6, 2020

Price and his partner were on a two-day backpacking trip with a plan to hike 36 miles between Mono Meadows Trail Head and Red Peak. The trip was cut short when the smoke filled Yosemite. She and many others on the trail were confused and unsure where the wildfire that was creating the smoke was.

“One of the things we worried about was that the fire could have been between us and our car,” he said.

On Saturday at 3 p.m. they were at Upper Merced Lake packing up their gear. “The sky was so dark it was hard to see,” said Price, who is originally from the UK. “Ash swirled around the torch [flashlight]. It felt like the fire could have been just a few kilometers from us. “

They debated whether to wander deeper into Yosemite to escape the smoke or take the risk and get back to the car. Based on another hiker’s report that the road to Mono Meadows was open, they set out on their way back.

“It was pretty scary because we had this lack of information about where this fire was coming from and we didn’t know if we were going the right way or not,” he said. “The only alternative we had was to drive another 40 or 80 miles on the higher lake and risk the fire getting worse.”

After a 24 mile hike on Saturday, they arrived at Mono Meadows.

“The ashes burned our eyes, stuck to our skin and clothes,” he said. “I have never experienced something like that. Some of the pieces of ash ranged in size from tiny spots to the size of a fingernail.

He added, “There were several hours that were very stressful. In the end, the air didn’t feel safe to breathe, but we had to get out.”

MORE WILDFIRE COVERAGE:

Photos show the extent and destruction of forest fires in the Bay Area

‘Sad’: California’s oldest state park closed for at least a year due to forest fire damage

Will the evacuation of forest fires accelerate the spread of the coronavirus in the Bay Area?

California forest fires are now as big as the Grand Canyon

10 things to do when wildfire approaches your home

How to protect your pets from forest fire smoke

Amy Graff is the news editor for SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com.

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San Francisco is known for many things. Unfortunately, the deteriorating road conditions are one of them

A stroll down Market Street any morning provides a glimpse into this persistent reality.

A conglomeration of various street cleaning teams, all of whom report to the Department of Public Works (DPW), buzzes through the corridors of the city center. They can often be distinguished from one another by the color of the clothes they wear.

There’s the Downtown Streets Team, Outreach and Enforcement, Pit Stop, TLClean and Urban Alchemy, among others. Some sweep street corners or flush sidewalks. Others collect rubbish or wipe graffiti off shop windows. There are units devoted to steaming trash cans, cleaning gutters, and manning public toilets, as well as community ambassadors who get in touch with local residents, businesses, or inform people who may have slept nearby that the street cleaning is taking place will start soon.

They work side by side, but not necessarily with one another, limited to clearly defined roles and silos. The result is often a Rubik’s Cube series of blocks – some pristine and clean, others with unkempt junk or personal items tucked away in corners. Come back the next morning and even blocks cleaned the day before are likely dirty.

The sheer number of moving parts creates San Francisco’s reputation for putting red tape before progress, making it difficult for residents to know who to contact with a query or who is responsible if problems persist. One cannot help wondering whether this patchwork approach mitigates the potential collective impact of a simpler alternative.

“We have the resources,” said Rodney Fong, President and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “The problem is how they are managed, the measurement of success, the accountability and the goals. It’s really difficult. “

Downtown Streets team collects rubbish on Market Street in the mid-market area. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

The responsibility for street cleaning will eventually be outsourced to the still-to-be-created Department of Streets and Sanitation as a result of proposal B on the vote last year. For now, however, DPW oversees The City’s long list of street cleaning teams. And the agency suggests that individual actors rather than their multi-layered approach to clean-up are responsible for the ongoing problem.

“Bad behavior contributes the most, regardless of whether it is people who illegally dispose of old furniture, building rubble or household waste; Scavengers rummaging through trash cans and throwing what they don’t want on the floor, or garbage bugs casually dropping their coffee cups and fast food packaging on the sidewalk, ”DPW spokeswoman Rachel Gordon said in an email. “Warehouses also produce a lot of waste.”

Street cleaning companies collect more than 3.6 million pounds of trash across the city every month. Much of this is concentrated in the downtown area, where dozens of crew members show up for work before sunrise every day to clear the streets.

According to DPW, the agency spends nearly $ 94 million and 350 employees on street cleaning annually. Under the umbrella of street cleaning operations, it operates at least 15 different crews who contract with non-profit organizations to provide additional staff and local relationships for some. Not-for-profit boroughs – partnerships where landowners pay a fee that funds city-government-sponsored improvements – add to the mix.

At all of these facilities, workers clean the streets of San Francisco seven days a week, starting in the early hours of the morning and staying outside until late at night. Yet even in downtown, considered in many ways one of the city’s crown jewels, it’s not uncommon for people to come across rubble, graffiti, or human litter while drinking their morning coffee.

The agency stands firm that a kaleidoscope of street cleaning teams performing various functions enables it to reach more corners of the city more effectively. Gordon compares it to a baseball team – each player has a different role in a collective team effort. She said this setup allows different crews to develop expertise in specific skills, and it makes it easier for The City to partner with a variety of nonprofits that use the street cleaning groups to do things like staff development for previously incarcerated or homeless people.

It also means DPW can run a number of programs concurrently, giving some crews city-wide responsibility and allowing others to focus on specific neighborhoods that require more focused efforts. For example, there are regularly scheduled crews who drive to “well-known hot-spot areas” such as Tenderloin, SoMa, Mission, Bayview and Chinatown to remove illegally dumped garbage, manually sweep streets and thoroughly clean alleys.

Others consistently deal with commercial areas. CleanCorridors SF sends crews to a different neighborhood corridor every Thursday to do a “deep cleaning” and to discuss their responsibilities with the business owners to keep the premises clear.

Many teams are now reserved for ad hoc projects as needed, often at the behest of reports from district administrators, calls on the 311 hotline, or recommendations from the road teams themselves.

“All the work is coordinated,” said Gordon.

An ambassador from the community center is working to remove graffiti from United Nations Square. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

As simple as that explanation is for DPW insiders, the unsettling reality of the streets of San Francisco remains. And local economic recovery may depend on finding a solution to keep the streets clean and safe for everyone.

Even before the pandemic, the Moscone Center – the height of the San Francisco convention industry and an estimated $ 4.9 billion a year macroeconomic impact – lost business. In 2019 alone, 35 future events were canceled, with hosts citing road rot and safety concerns as two of the top three reasons for events being rescheduled.

“If we want San Francisco to recover – and I’m not even talking about the high watermark, but to a point where our residents and our businesses feel safe – the cleanliness and safety aspects of San Francisco need to be greatly improved.” “Said Fong.

DPW recognizes that the street cleaning project is still “in progress”. But it puts the burden on the behavior of residents who fail to behave as good stewards of their city. Gordon rejects the narrative that the agency was to blame for the internal disorder or inefficiency.

“In the short term, the goal of our street cleaning efforts is to gradually improve the cleanliness of the city’s public right of way,” she said. “In the long term, the goal is to achieve a meaningful cultural change in which people don’t ravage the streets in the first place, so that public works workers don’t have to work around the clock to clean up the dirt that others have left behind.”

cgraf@sfexaminer.com

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In the tiny parishes of Kenwood and Glen Ellen, Sonoma Counties, clumps of ash and soot continued to drift through the air on Monday afternoon, although most residents had long since escaped to safety.

Dozens of houses, farms, and automobiles along Highway 12 were reduced to little more than twisted metal and ashes, while numerous small pockets of flame burned what was left of dozens of lots.

Hassan Zaidi roamed the charred remains of the Trinity Oaks subdivision in Glen Ellen on Monday, checking to see if a family friend’s home had survived the fire that lashed through the towns early that morning.

While his friend was out of town, Zaidi was in the middle of the firestorm.

“I looked out the window and everything was burning around us,” said Zaidi. “It was disastrous.”

Despite the devastation, Zaidi’s own house on Dunbar Street was spared and he sent his family to San Francisco while he stayed to review the damage.

After climbing past the fallen branches and derelict power lines of a small residential street, Zaidi finally reached the gate of his friend’s house on Jerri Drive. Behind a knot of blackened trees was a long wall, the only piece that was left of his friend’s once stately home.

“I’m so sorry,” Zaidi said on the phone to his friend who was at his home in San Francisco. “It burned. It totally burned down, but you’re fine. That’s all that counts.”

An unbroken curtain of smoke hung in the air all day, making the sun and sky appear in various shades of yellow and red.

A small house in the Trinity Oaks subdivision seemed to catch the brunt of the fury of the fire. The house was leveled except for a brick chimney, and the ashes still streamed bands of smoke and shimmering heat. The neighborhood reeked of smoke and burned debris.

John LemMon said he was standing on the roof of his house in Glen Ellen late Sunday, armed with his garden hose and putting out any flames and embers he could see. He also cut wooden fences with a chainsaw and piled them away from the fire in hopes of fending off the flames.

“It was apocalyptic,” said LemMon. He and his family were evacuated around midnight Sunday, he said, but he “snuck back” to Glen Ellen early Monday to investigate the damage.

His house was undamaged, although his neighbor’s shed was destroyed by fire.

“I was lucky,” said LemMon.

In Kenwood, the path of fire seemed to take on a gruesome sense of randomness – there were houses with little or no damage, a few yards from the charred husks of previous houses.

While much of Kenwood’s downtown area appeared to be escaping serious damage with luxury shops and high-end restaurants, the same couldn’t be said of the city’s residential areas. Some of the city’s residents who stayed behind on Monday or were returning later reported that flames swept north to south, accelerating as they leaked along Highway 12 and destroyed homes.

On Monday afternoon at Chateau St. Jean, several acres of vines along Highway 12 were visibly unscathed and still laden with fruit. But a huge cloud of smoke that was building up just behind the main building of the property indicated that the fire burning on the hillside was coming dangerously close.

Although the fires appeared to have struck much of Kenwood and Glen Ellen, the police and sheriff’s deputies continued to block large parts of the area and keep people out.

Police blocked an eight mile stretch of Highway 12 eastbound from Melita Road near Kenwood to Arnold Drive in Glen Ellen while firefighters continued to clear a number of hot spots.

Troy Taylor from Kenwood was unable to return to his home because of the roadblock and prepared to spend the night in his pickup truck in a gravel yard off Highway 12 so he could get as close as possible to the house and the animals he left behind would have .

Taylor was able to quickly collect his dogs and cats before running away from a “fireball” that came down from the northern hill but had to leave his horses behind. He was deeply concerned about her safety and the fate of his home, which he had not seen since leaving on Sunday evening.

“I put the horses in the pasture, said goodbye, and prayed,” said Taylor. “Then I had a good shout, said goodbye to the house and we’ll see what’s there.”

Dominic Fracassa is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com

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