Last month, the Ninth Circuit clarified that people who reject a valid shelter offering cannot be considered involuntarily homeless and, therefore, the city can enforce its laws against public sleeping and camping on sidewalks and in parks, in those cases.

In reviewing San Francisco’s appeal, Ryu asked the city to report how it trains law enforcement and street clearing crews, and to also identify which city workers have and have not been trained on the specifics of the injunction.

Regardless of the injunction, the city has been able to carry out most of its street cleaning and public safety operations, and can enforce many of its laws governing street and sidewalk activity. For example, under the injunction, the city can still clear encampments for accessibility, such as in the case of an emergency or providing room for a wheelchair passage, if they give 72 hours notice. The injunction does not impact law enforcement around health and safety codes, including drug use, and the city can still clear encampments for certain health or safety reasons.

Gov. Gavin Newsom — formerly the mayor of San Francisco — meanwhile has also criticized the judge’s rulings in San Francisco’s homelessness lawsuit, as well as similar cases and rulings that have provided the basis for Ryu’s decisions.

Those cases include Martin v. Boise and Johnson v. Grants Pass (PDF), which both have directed cities not to force unhoused residents to move unless they are offered shelter.

On Friday, Newsom issued an amicus brief (PDF) asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Grants Pass, Oregon case and urging the court to give cities more freedom to clear encampments.

“While I agree with the basic principle that a city shouldn’t criminalize homeless individuals for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go within that city’s boundaries, courts continue to reach well beyond that narrow limit to block any number of reasonable efforts to protect homeless individuals and the broader public from the harms of uncontrolled encampments,” Newsom said in a press announcement. “It’s time for the courts to stop these confusing, impractical and costly rulings that only serve to worsen this humanitarian crisis.”

Breed wrote on Monday on Medium that “over the next few weeks we will be reiterating and updating [city workers’] training and making sure they understand what they can and cannot do in line with the injunction and Ninth Circuit’s recent clarification.”

Shroff, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said that there’s never been any dispute over the definition of involuntarily homeless, and agreed the city can enforce sit-lie laws when someone rejects an appropriate shelter option.

He disagreed, however, with the idea that shelter is commonly rejected. Instead, he argues that the city has continued to sweep encampments without following protocols outlined in the city’s own policies, which include to offer shelter and to “bag and tag” personal belongings rather than disposing of them.

“The shelter system is at capacity every single day of the year because there is such a high demand for shelter and because for decades the city has failed to meaningfully invest in affordable housing for vulnerable residents of the city during the time of a tech boom and unprecedented and skyrocketing rents,” Shroff said. “They’re clearly seeking some justification for their continuing enforcement operations.”

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In response to the retail exodus from Union Square, San Francisco City Hall and the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to relax zoning laws and reduce the red tape involved in converting commercial and office space. By facilitating the conversion of these spaces to housing or other uses, city officials hope to combat rampant vacancy and revitalize downtown. The passed law also allows for office space on the upper floors, which is currently reserved for retail only, and relaxes restrictions on indoor and outdoor entertainment. Although the rise of remote work and e-commerce has fundamentally changed the retail and commercial landscape, this move aims to fill vacancies creatively and adapt to changing conditions. Continue reading the full article on SFist →

Image: Tim Foster via Unsplash

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco officials are investigating Twitter after six former employees allege that owner Elon Musk’s leadership…

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco officials are investigating Twitter after six former employees allege that owner Elon Musk’s management team broke laws by turning the company’s headquarters into a “Twitter hotel” for workers who would be pushed to stay up late to transform the social media platform.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that city officials are launching their latest investigation into the company Musk acquired late last year.

This comes after the former employees, including a former vice president of real estate, claimed in a lawsuit filed in a Delaware federal court that Twitter failed to pay them the promised severance package. Twitter wants to dismiss the case.

They also allege that Musk’s team ordered numerous changes to the company’s headquarters in a 1930s Art Deco building in downtown San Francisco that violated building codes. According to the lawsuit, those changes included disabling lights and adding locks that would not open in an emergency.

One of the plaintiffs is Tracy Hawkins, a former vice president of real estate and employment at Twitter, who was responsible for managing the company’s physical offices and leases. The lawsuit states that Hawkins initially did not oppose Musk’s acquisition but was “forced to resign when Elon Musk and his transition team insisted that she violated her professional ethics by inducing Twitter to intentionally violate his leases and other contracts.” The lawsuit alleges that Musk refused to pay rent on the building.

This isn’t the first time San Francisco officials have fallen out with Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and laid off much of its workforce by converting part of the company’s headquarters into bedrooms.

Earlier this year, San Francisco building inspectors gave Twitter’s contractor two weeks to file a revised zoning permit if the company wanted to continue using two conference rooms as bedrooms.

The city launched an investigation in December after Forbes reported on the beds, prompting owner Musk to take action against San Francisco Mayor London Breed, despite there being no evidence she was involved in the inspection.

Copyright © 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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Expanding Power Beyond “Landed Gentry”

San Francisco prides itself on protecting tenants. But empowering renters is another matter.

Few renters sit on key city policy making bodies. Tenants are rarely appointed to the Planning Commission and Board of Appeal. This is true despite both bodies deciding land use cases directly impacting renters’ lives. Pro-tenant San Francisco even denies tenants the right to file signatures for appealing conditional use approvals, reserving that power to property owners.

This latter discrimination is about to change.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, backed by Supervisors Aaron Peskin, Shamann Walton, Dean Preston, and Hillary Ronen, is moving to equalize tenant appeal powers. As her press release puts it, “Excluding the majority of San Francisco’s population harkens back to the days of only the ‘landed gentry’ having voting rights. Supervisor Melgar’s legislation adds leaseholding commercial and residential tenants to the list of allowable signatories to restore basic fairness.”

This reform is long overdue. Absentee property owners should not get more say about neighborhood land use issues than longtime tenants in the community.

I know what some are thinking—why give more people the right to appeal housing approvals? Isn’t the appeal system already broken?

But so long as San Francisco allows such appeals it should not discriminate on the basis of wealth and class in the power to file.. Tenants deserve equal rights.

San Francisco and other cities that promote “diversity” and “inclusion” must do a better job extending these principles to tenants. Tenants deserve equal rights to appeal land use decisions and far more representation on key city commissions than they have ever gotten.

Disempowering tenants

Melgar’s measure was introduced a day after a virtually all-homeowner California Assembly defeated AB 854, which stopped speculator evictions under the Ellis Act. The measure fell short for many reasons, but it doesn’t help that there are far more landlords than tenants among California Assembly Democrats.

Almost all state legislators are homeowners. Renters are a rarity despite their large numbers across the state. Even in majority tenant San Francisco, only two of eleven supervisors are tenants (Haney and Walton).

Why are renters so rare on key San Francisco land use commissions? Why does a “pro-tenant” city give tenants less power over land use decisions than it grants absentee landlords?

A lot has to do with a long legacy of San Francisco treating tenants as undeserving of equal representation and rights. After all, discrimination against tenants in land use matters is nothing new.

In 1987 I authored a law requiring public sign posting of notices of applications for renovations to buildings over four units. I did so to protect tenants living in buildings whose owner planned major renovations that could displace them. Prior to our law many tenants first learned that a renovation was planned for their building when they got an eviction notice. By then it was too late to appeal the permits; stopping the eviction once landlords had “all of the necessary permits” became an uphill fight.

Sponsored by Supervisor Nancy Walker (one of only two strong pro-tenant supervisors of the 1980’s, along with Harry Britt), our sign posting law passed. It made a huge difference.

Tenant notification about renovation plans often prevented landlords from carrying out their displacement strategy. Once the tenant got notice, attorneys from my office (the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, publisher of Beyond Chron) would request formal notification of permit issuance from the Central Permit Bureau. We could then file our appeal within the then short ten day period for challenging these permits at the Board of Appeal.

My colleagues and I spent a lot of evenings down at the Board of Appeals after the sign posting law passed. We won so many cases that fewer landlords used questionable renovations as an eviction strategy.

The Tenant Perspective

Homeowners can also appreciate the renter experience and support tenant protections. But the lack of tenant representation on land use and transit bodies is inexcusable in 2022. When I wrote a charter amendment in 1994 creating a Building Inspection Commission (Prop G) I mandated a tenant seat. It may be the only body that has this representation requirement other than the Rent Board, which includes equal numbers of tenants and landlords despite there being far more of the former in San Francisco.

San Francisco should mandate tenant seats on the Planning Commission and Board of Appeal. Maybe Melgar’s measure will awaken the Board to this need.

I was reminded during our long struggle to pass AB 854 (Ellis Act reform) how many elected officials across the state do not understand the tenant experience. It’s a big problem. Cities should at least do their part by finally giving tenants the commission representation and equal legal powers they have long deserved.

Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco

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From Congregation Member Phil Ting –

When we ring in 2022, the Golden State will take significant steps to reduce plastic pollution and reform our criminal justice system – thanks to legislation I have written, which will come into effect January 1st, and other beverages will be available in greener packaging. Under my bill, California is the first state in the country to set standards for the content of recycled plastic that CRV beverage packaging must contain post-consumer materials.

I think it’s ridiculous that companies make new plastic every time they need a bottle for their products. At the current rate, plastic waste will exceed the number of fish in our oceans by 2050. The new law aims to reduce waste by creating a market for recycled plastic. Reusing what has already been created also supports the state’s transition to a circular economy and leads us to a more sustainable model.

California takes a step-by-step approach. The next drink you grab will initially have at least 15% recycled materials in that plastic bottle. By 2030 the standard will reach 50% – the highest threshold in the world and exceed the mandate of 30% in the European Union. The AB 793 plastic bottle standard applies to all beverages sold in our state, regardless of where the container was made. Otherwise, manufacturers face fines for failing to meet the targets.

This new law will also help prop up our country’s recycling centers. The dwindling US demand for recycled plastic has partly led to the tidal wave of recycling center closings in California, leaving consumers with fewer places to take their bottles and cans to get their CRV deposit back.

In addition, China and other overseas markets have stopped buying much of California’s recycled waste. The result? Recyclable plastic is piling up in warehouses, flooding our landfills and polluting our environment. As mentioned earlier, if we didn’t take action, we were well on the way to having more plastic litter in our oceans. AB 793 takes a different approach by strengthening the market for recycled plastic. Naked Juice has been using plastic bottles made from 100% recycled post-consumer content since 2010, showing that the move can be successful.

In addition, AB 33 is to come into force, which will help our public schools and hospitals to switch to more environmentally friendly energy. It enables them to be eligible for an existing low-interest government loan program to install clean energy storage systems and charging stations for electric vehicles. An additional advantage: They can continue to be used in the event of a longer power failure.

I’m also excited about a new pilot program starting in San Francisco that has been approved by my AB 1452 Bill. It increases the daily salary of low-income jurors from $ 15 to $ 100 to see if higher pay leads to more diversified juries. Studies have shown that different juries spend more time deliberating and are less likely to suspect guilt. The collected philanthropic funds will be used for the test phase.

An additional reform implements a “second look” policy. AB 1540 prohibits the courts from rejecting requests for re-convictions without a hearing. This will make the system fairer and more just, while also bringing California closer to the end of mass incarceration.

I am already working on my priorities for the legislative year 2022. I look forward to telling you all about it in the months to come. I wish you and your loved ones a Happy New Year!

Phil Ting represents the 19th Congregation District, which includes the west side of San Francisco and the parishes of Broadmoor, Colma, and Daly City.

Published on December 16, 2021

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SAN JOSE (CBS SF) – While his city was still rocking a mass shooting that killed nine transit workers, Mayor Sam Liccardo brought his plea for stricter gun control laws to the White House for a meeting with President Joe Biden on Monday.

Liccardo will attend the meeting of Eric Adams, President of the Brooklyn District and likely the next Mayor of New York, Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser, Memphis Police Chief, CJ Davis, Chicago Chief David Brown and Lt. Anthony Lima of Newark attend, New Jersey, Police.

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It has been almost two months since VTA employee Samuel Cassidy opened fire on his employees in the Guadalupe Yard transit center. He killed nine employees before taking his own life.

The VTA light rail trains have still not returned to normal as the agency has been devastated by the ongoing emotional impact of the shooting.

Two weeks after the shootings, Liccardo announced several proposed new San Jose gun ordinances, including requiring gun owners to purchase liability insurance for their guns and retailers to videotape their gun sales.

The city council unanimously approved the plan, which will be presented for final vote in the fall before the ordinances can be enacted.

On Monday, Liccardo told KPIX 5 Morning News that he would press for stricter national gun laws during the president’s meeting with city officials from across the country.

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“We’ll talk a lot about how the federal government can be a partner to cities,” he said. “We’re seeing increasing gun violence in cities across the county … So we’re going to talk about how we’re using federal funds to, for example, expand strike patrols in high-crime neighborhoods, to occupy young adults in gang-hit neighborhoods, and the resilience of.” to support the city. “

“We (will) talk more about (the) innovative approaches cities are taking to reduce gun violence, like the recent regulation we put in place to crack down on arms dealers who buy straw.”

A “straw” purchase of a firearm is when a person buys a weapon – generally in a state with less restrictive sales laws – with the intention of giving the weapon to another person.

In June, Biden unveiled a number of implementing regulations aimed at reducing gun violence. Liccardo believes that even stricter standards are needed, especially when it comes to arms trafficking and straw purchases.

“We know that there are a lot of guns in circulation – around 30,000 guns are bought for example for criminal organizations like gangs,” said Liccardo. “So we’ve got safeguards in place here in San Jose, but we need other parts of the country to do the same because we know guns are usually bought in states with no restrictive gun laws and taken to California.”

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“The possibility of federal tracking and surveillance would help enormously. So we can take action against the organizations that transport weapons in and out of cities. “

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San Francisco has long made headlines for its sky-high rents, but now our rents are making news that they are falling more than any other city, hitting new lows not seen since the Great Recession.

And yet, while story after story is being written about San Francisco becoming a rental market, it is important to remember that even dramatically falling rents are not news-making phenomena – they are simply the laws of supply and demand for them the work in our housing markets. And it’s the same laws that will continue to apply, regardless of whether we live in a world before, after, or after the pandemic.

No wonder, then, that when COVID made working from home the new normal, many San Francisco renters wisely chose to work in cheaper cities. This has driven up vacancies and reduced demand, and prices have fallen accordingly – all according to the laws of supply and demand.

Just as these supply and demand dynamics drove prices down, they will be the reason house prices rise again at the beginning of our economic recovery. Because of this, we should add significantly more homes in this downturn to be better prepared for the upturn.

The housing affordability crisis in San Francisco has always been self-inflicted, as we haven’t built enough homes for decades to meet the growing demand for housing due to employment and population growth. Our dramatic housing shortage has long pushed prices up for both renters and home buyers.

We made this mistake during the Great Recession when the city slowed housing construction as if the economy was never going to recover. When San Francisco led the nation in post-recession economic and employment growth, we were completely unprepared for renewed housing demand. That experience should have taught us to learn from our mistakes instead of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the well-known definition of insanity.

Even in this most unusual 2020, San Francisco should add 5,000 new homes this year alone. And another 5,000 a year for the next two decades, according to the city’s chief economist Ted Egan, just to keep house prices rising in line with inflation. The fact that our actual home production has been largely anemic 1,800 new homes a year for the past 20 to 30 years explains why our home prices are the highest in the country.

If, during a pandemic, we fail to build enough homes that are accessible to residents of all income levels, we end up in a completely predictable situation when we are no longer able to. And when that happens, the affordability and displacement crisis in San Francisco will again cause a stir. That’s why we’re ready to work with local and state lawmakers in 2021 to make the Bay Area and California a place where more neighbors can call home.

Todd David is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition. Contact him at todd@sfhac.org.

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