As San Francisco parks officials plan to transform United Nations Plaza into a skateboarding and recreation haven, a longstanding farmers’ market will be relocating close by. Market leaders consider the move to be a “logistical nightmare.”

San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department first proposed a pilot project in July to make U.N. Plaza—currently considered the epicenter of the city’s open drug market and overdose crisis—safer and more inviting to residents.

READ MORE: Tiki Bars and Soul Food: Why You Should Visit San Francisco’s Most Infamous Neighborhood

If all goes to plan, the 150,000-square-foot plaza in the city’s Civic Center will begin construction in September to be transformed into a skate park and recreation space. Mirroring the work done in other major cities like Paris and Madrid, the space would include exercise equipment, chess and pingpong tables and daily programming, among other activities.

This means that the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market, which has operated at the plaza for 42 years, will also have to relocate Fulton Street between Larkin and Hyde streets starting Sept. 3.

“We are reluctantly moving because the city informs us it is necessary for the health of this community,” said Laura Brainin-Rodriguez, the farmers’ market’s board president. “We are doing everything in our power to make sure the services we provide to our low-income community aren’t negatively affected, so we can retain this essential community resource despite this enormous challenge.

The plaza transformation comes as part of the city Planning Department’s Civic Center Public Realm Plan, which aims to better unify the area around the Civic Center and City Hall with public spaces, cultural events and improved access to public transportation.

But on Tuesday, Heart of the City Farmers’ Market leaders said the construction has forced them to close earlier and have fewer vendors due to the space being “too small” for a safe load-out of vendor vehicles. They said the number of stall spaces available would prevent the market from returning to its pre-pandemic size.

“We lost 40% of our vendors due to conditions in the Civic Center as a result of the ongoing public health crisis, combined with the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and devastating wildfires on small farming in California,” said Steve Pulliam, the farmers’ market’s executive director.

“Despite these enormous challenges, [Heart of the City] has begun to recover and continues to serve our community. But now, with this relocation, we are facing our biggest and most threatening challenge yet,” he added.

The market will now operate from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays and Sundays—it previously ran from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays and 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays. Leaders cited concerns about decreased food access for the communities they serve.

“This will reduce the amount of produce the market can move into the surrounding extremely low-income and food insecure neighborhoods,” reads a press release from the farmers’ market.

Market officials also said the location is farther from the Civic Center BART Station, which makes it more difficult for people with limited mobility to access the market. They are also concerned about the reduced size of the stalls, where vendors will be able to safely park their cars and the lack of shade on Fulton Street.

“The current conditions on Fulton Street, just two weeks before the relocation, are very concerning,” Pulliam said. “We have been assured that the city will address these issues prior to our relocation. But I was out there this week, and unhoused individuals were still camping in the area.”

SF Rec and Parks officials said they believe the farmers’ market is a healthy and “joyous” park activity and said they have asked market leaders “many times over the years” to increase its presence in the plaza.

“Each time, they were unable to commit to more than their current two days a week,” SF Rec and Parks said in a statement. 

Parks officials also reaffirmed that there will be enough space on Fulton Street to accommodate all vendors, and there will be a wide array of city support available for the market. New accommodations include dedicated vendor and staff parking, overflow space on the Civic Center Plaza, free parking for customers, monitored loading zones and security assistance.

SF Rec and Parks added that crews will repave, re-landscape and install new safety bollards and directional signs on Fulton Street.

The department also said the new move could draw people in from the Asian Art Museum, the San Francisco Public Library’s main branch, the new University of California College of the Law, San Francisco campus housing and families using playgrounds at Civic Center Plaza.

“Though we know not every farmers market vendor is happy about moving across the street, we have heard overwhelmingly positive feedback from many other vendors, as well as customers, neighboring residents, schools and cultural institutions,” reads the department’s statement. “At the height of the season, the Heart of the City Farmers Market has 70 stalls, and its new location across the street can accommodate all of them. As the farmers market grows, it can expand in every direction.”

The post San Francisco Plaza Makeover a ‘Nightmare,’ Farmers’ Market Leaders Say appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Last year, Jonas Heineman was overseeing a  team of commercial project managers as they installed hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations. Heineman’s wife was also pregnant with their first child.

Given his busy days and evenings filled with planning for the couple’s growing family, the last thing that Heineman wanted was to spend his “off” hours managing yet another another construction project at his own Bay Area home. Even as he and his wife discussed renovating two older bathrooms, he knew himself well enough to acknowledge that, “I’m not going to design things. I didn’t want to go and source materials.” Then he stumbled across coverage of a San Francisco startup called Made Renovation that promised bathroom remodels “made easy.” Wanting exactly the kind of hand-holding it promised, he couldn’t believe his luck. Yet his enthusiasm would soon be squelched.

Founded in 2019, Made Renovation assures customers that it can transform their outdated bathrooms into showstoppers within months at an affordable price point. How? By inviting them to choose from a variety of templates, then pairing them with in-house project managers who help with required permits, assign contractors, order the required materials, and offer updates and assistance virtually until every renovation is complete.

It’s a compelling pitch, one that enabled Made Renovation to raise at least $31 million across two rounds of funding between 2020 and 2021 from investors Felicis, Founders Fund, Insight Partners, and actress-entrepreneur Jessica Alba among some others who liked its tech-driven approach.

The company also nailed a minimalist and highly popular aesthetic. A sleek website offers virtual tours of a dozen bathrooms, all with gleaming tiles, modern fixtures and magazine-worthy vanities. For its efforts, the company has attracted both customers and some glowing press. In 2021, in Made Renovation’s second year of operations, Architectural Digest wrote that the outfit was “primed to be the largest bathroom remodeler” and touted its digital tools for “more efficient project management, design renderings, and an improved pricing algorithm.”

Tech can only do so much, however, and Made Renovation’s promises of smoothly remade powder rooms have seemingly collided with the realities of construction complexities, turning some of its makeovers into anything but hassle-free endeavors. Says Heineman now of his own experience, “It was a joke.”

While promised project management, for example, Heineman says that Made Renovation later disbanded its project management team without alerting him and spun the cost-cutting development as a positive for customers. The company subsequently sent Heineman a downloadable “Self-Management Construction Support Guidebook” that he describes as a “thorough resource” and also beside the point of why he chose Made Renovation in the first place.

Other errors, delays, oversights, and cost overruns also became par for the course, judging by email correspondence seen by TechCrunch. One issue centered on a toilet that was shipped eight months late; Heineman says he was also sent faulty fixtures that he struggled to return, and lost the first general contractor who was sent by Made Renovation because this individual refused to take on the job for the agreed-upon amount of money.

Heineman didn’t blame him; instead, he asserts that it’s the fault of Made Renovation. “That’s why they end up with these subpar contractors,” he says. “The only people willing to take these jobs for a cut rate can’t do business development and suck at communicating with customers.”

Heineman isn’t alone in feeling like he was sold on a vision that dissipated as soon as he became Made Renovation’s customer. Airbnb employee Deanna Bjorkquist says she, too, was abruptly left to fend for himself when faced with the labyrinthine intricacies of permits, unexpected construction hurdles, and the logistical nightmare of warehousing materials. For example, Made Renovation didn’t launch her bathroom remodel until six months after she signed a contract with the company last October, stranding a new toilet in her living room in the interim.

She also says a general contractor assigned to her project refused to demolish her old bathroom, dismantling only the top half and moving forward only after she found and paid a separate drywall company to finish the job.

As with Heineman, a bevy of other problems ensued, says Bjorkquist, including payments made to Made Renovation that were not received by the people renovating her bathroom. She suggests that part of the problem ties to the fact that the contractor who was assigned to her home hired a subcontractor, as happened with Heineman. Further, she says she elected to use financing that was offered, then revoked, then reinstated again by Made Renovation through a third party, a stressful process during which she says she was warned that her credit might be damaged.

Her bathroom (pictured right) was still not complete as of late last month.

In fairness, Made Renovation is taking on an industry where few customers wind up fully satisfied, no matter the players involved. Further, its timing couldn’t be worse. To enable customers to check out its design ideas, it launched its very first storefront in a popular shopping district of San Francisco in February 2020. roughly one month before the pandemic caused most of the U.S. to shut down.

Presumably, materials were harder for the young company to access, too, owing to the broader supply chain issues that many manufacturing businesses experienced during this same period.

Asked several times to discuss some of his customers’ complaints, CEO Roger Dickey, did not to respond. Investors don’t have much to say, either. Felicis Partner Sundeep Peechu told TechCrunch late last month via email, “We are a small seed investor but honestly don’t know much since [I’m] not on the board and don’t get updates.” A query sent to Nikhil Sachdev, a Managing Director at Insight Ventures who led Made Renovation’s $23 million Series A round in 2021, has not been met with a response. Felicis lists Made Renovation on its website; the brand does not appear on the sites of either Insight Partners or Founders Fund.

Made Renovation wasn’t alone in springing up amid the national housing boom that ended last year, when interest rates began to quickly rise. Though most startups to form are marketplace businesses that connect designers and contractors to customers, another company to emerge around the same time as Made Renovation — with similar promises to make bathroom renovations easier and affordable — is Block Renovation. The Brooklyn-based business raised $104 million over a series of quick funding rounds between 2018 and 2021. Block has since expanded into kitchen remodels.

Both have been chasing what is expected to become an $80 billion market by 2027. But Made Renovation seems unlikely to see much of that market share if customer complaints continue to stack up.

On HomeAdvisor, a digital marketplace that connects service professionals with customers, Made Renovation has received half a star of five across seven reviews listed. Made Renovation is “[w]here dreams of great-looking bathroom remodeling and belief in seamless project management go to die,” writes one reviewer. “Absolute nightmare of an experience!” writes another.

Seventeen reviews post at the Better Business Bureau website are as uncharitable. Writes one reviewer: “I wish I read these reviews before we started the project with Made Renovation. It is exactly as it is described in previous reviews. All was going extremely well until we transferred money. After that it went downhill.”

The post Made Renovation promised “tech-enabled” remodels; prospects describe “absolute nightmare” appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The end of a standoff between landlords and tenants at an apartment building near Mission Dolores Park was heralded with a jubilant April 6 press conference announcing that a nonprofit organization had acquired the building — and allowed tenants to remain.

The Mission Economic Development Agency acquired the building at 3661 19th Street for $7.48 million under the city’s Small Sites Program, funded by the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

As the Bay Area Reporter reported back in 2021, the 12-unit rent-controlled complex was purchased by two limited companies in August 2018. Shortly after the purchase — despite alleged assurances from a previous owner — the LLCs began seeking evictions from the tenants through the Ellis Act.

The Ellis Act, enacted in 1985 by then-Governor George Deukmejian, is a state law that prevents local authorities from prohibiting evictions if the owner decides to go out of business as a landlord. It was one of the few forms of evictions allowed to continue during the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the mayor’s housing office, MEDA has now bought the building through the city’s small construction program.

“MEDA officially purchased the site on January 27, 2023, ending a no-fault eviction under the Ellis Act that would have ousted longtime BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color]LGBTQ+ and seniors,” explained Anne Stanley, communications manager for the office. The building is now preserved as permanent, affordable housing and will be rehabilitated to address seismic, electrical, plumbing, elevator and roofing improvements.

According to a fact sheet from the Citywide Affordable Housing Loan Committee, the city has committed $9.9 million in permanent financing for the building, including acquisition and rehabilitation. The source of funding is general notes.

Jose Garcia, head of the conservation program at MEDA, said at the press conference: “We are proud to have worked with these residents and the community to make this possible.”

Eric Shaw, a gay black man who is the director of the MOHCD, told the BAR that “central to our office’s mission is investing in programs that support efforts to combat displacement and increase housing stability for all San Franciscos.”

“The takeover of 3661 19th Street ended an innocent Ellis Act eviction that would have evicted longtime San Francisco residents,” he said. “The 12-unit building now remains permanently affordable for current and future tenants.”

Tenant Paul Mooney – who played a key role in organizing his flatmates – celebrated the win.

“I’m happy to announce that we won!” said Mooney. “I moved to San Francisco as a gay man, looking for a community of my own, looking for a place to call home. I love it here: this wonderful, weird, crazy city and neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else as magical as this place.”

Mooney’s persistence was applauded several times during the press conference — from diverting his morning walk so he could check in at MEDA’s offices to buying fake charcoal and having it delivered to the former landlords at their homes in Redwood City, like the BAR did at the time reported .

Mooney said it was proof “that you can beat the Ellis Act.

Steve Collier, a gay man and attorney for the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, said, “It was really a struggle on all fronts.” By pushing the previous landlords both in and out of the courtroom, Collier said the tenants were able to clear them make it make more financial sense for them to take a deal.

“Their whole business plan was to get the tenants out in three months,” Collier said at the news conference. “It’s crazy to think they can get away with it in San Francisco.”

“Not with Steve Collier,” interjected Rafael Mandelman, District 8’s gay supervisor. The building is in his district.

“It’s a great outcome for these tenants, and it’s also great that District 8 will have 12 more sustainable affordable units in a neighborhood that has experienced significant gentrification and displacement,” Mandelman told the BAR. “I am very grateful to the Mayor’s Office, MEDA, the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, community attorneys and the residents themselves for their perseverance.”

Mandelman said at the press conference that Districts 8 and 9 (the Mission) are the epicenter of no-fault evictions in the city.

“These are wonderful communities and the things that make them wonderful to live in make them wonderful for speculators,” the supervisor said.

“There’s a special place in heaven for lawyers in San Francisco, on the frontlines every day,” he added, thanking Collier for his 36-year commitment to fighting evictions.

The building’s current occupants are 60% LGBTQ, 50% Asian American/BIPOC, and half seniors, “a large majority.” [of] People with disabilities,” says a MEDA leaflet.

Larry Kuester, a gay man who has lived in the building for 33 years, the longest of any tenant according to MEDA, is just glad it’s over.

“It was extremely stressful,” he said. “I am very happy. This is the best news we could have received.”

The former owners of the property could not be reached for comment.

Help keep the Bay Area Reporter going during these trying times. To support local, independent LGBTQ journalism, consider becoming a BAR member.

The post SF tenants’ lengthy eviction nightmare ends with constructing bought to nonprofit :: Bay Space Reporter appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Step 3: The economy… but that step hasn’t happened yet.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

San Francisco was the hottest office market in the US in 2019, when the office vacancy rate was just 7.1%, as tech and social media companies and all kinds of startups piled on top of each other, renting office space they didn’t need and couldn’t use , to prepare for a future that would not come.

Now, Q1, 2023: The vacancy rate is 32.7%. According to Savills, almost a third of San Francisco’s office space was for rent, an all-time high. And all trends are going in the wrong direction. In the worst year of the dot-com bust, 2003, the vacancy rate reached 18%.

First quarter vacancy rates ranged from 28% in the South of Market Area (SOMA) to 55.4% in the Yerba Buena area.

Of the 86.6 million square feet (msf) of total office space, over 28 msf is vacant and on the market. This includes a record leasable area of ​​8.9 msf, up from 7.7 msf a year ago.

This type of aggregation of sublet space is gross. At that moment, companies like Meta realize they’ll never move into the spaces they rented years ago for a future that didn’t come, and then try to find a tenant for the remaining years of the lease to help out you bear the transport costs. They tend to undercut landlords who try to rent their own vacant space directly, as the goal of subletting is not profit but lowering operating costs.

Meta said in January that it plans to list its 435,000 sf office at 181 Fremont Street for subleases.

Salesforce, the city’s largest tech employer, put another 125,000 sf on the sublease market in March, this time in the Salesforce Tower, owned by Boston Properties. This brings Salesforce’s total sublease space to over 1 million sf.

I mean what were these people thinking when they rented this space? These big tech companies that think they’re going to grow forever have big real estate divisions run by highly paid executives with titles like VP of Global Real Estate whose job is building campuses and leasing offices, and they’ve done that, and that is what they end up with.

The first major defaults – because of the interest. PIMCO’s Columbia Property Trust defaulted on two downtown office towers: 201 California Street and 650 California Street. In the latter, Twitter rented the 30th floor and simply stopped paying rent after Musk acquired it, according to a lawsuit filed by Columbia in December. In theory, Twitter is on the hook for the lease until January 31, 2025.

One problem behind the default is the adjustable rate mortgage bond. Columbia completed the adjustable rate mortgage in December 2021. I mean, what were these people thinking? That was the time when inflation was spiking and the Fed was choking on QE and warning of rate hikes and these idiots who might have been holed up in the pivot trader camp threw out the Fed and got a 3% floating rate note and up By early 2023, it had doubled to 6%. OK, game over – this is where the talks begin.

The company said it was in talks with the lenders to restructure the mortgage. Lenders definitely don’t want the towers. Defaulting on the mortgage of office towers in this market is like putting a gun to your head. And they will talk.

But this time it’s not the economy yet, this shoe has yet to fall. This time the main drivers are two factors:

1. Confiscation of office space in the years leading up to 2019 to prepare for a future that would not come. As everyone ate up office space they didn’t need, an office shortage ensued, fueling the office shortage even further. Human brains are funny when it comes to hogging, as we learned during Spring 2020’s Empty Shelves episode.

2. Home office since the pandemic. Many San Francisco employers have embraced it fully, while others are desperate to hybridize some workers back into the office for a few days a week. But they realize they don’t need all the space they’ve hogged over the last few years.

Leasing activity fizzled out in the first quarter. Only 900,000 sf was leased compared to 1.5 msf in Q1 2022 and 2.5 msf in Q1 2019.

The largest transaction was Gap’s sale-leaseback of its Athletica headquarters. It sold the 162,000 sf building at 1 Harrison Street to Sobrato Organization for $80 million and leased it back for a year. So that didn’t take any office space off the market.

The third largest transaction was an extension by Bank of the West. This has not taken any office space off the market either.

The fourth-biggest deal was Reddit’s downscaling move: It’s moving out of its 78,000-square-foot Market St. office it subleased from Block and moving into a 47,000-square-foot space at 303 Second St. This move will create even more vacancy space on the market.

Average asking rents continued to fall. For Class A space, they dropped to $74.59 per square foot per year. This is about 16% down from the peak in 2019.

Price would normally solve demand problems by causing prices to fall until demand occurs. But with heavily leveraged commercial properties, landlords aren’t able to lower rents past a certain point because even if they could fill the building, landlords couldn’t pay the mortgage with lowered rents, and contract language could put them in default. And so they fall behind.

Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it very much. Click on the Beer & Iced Tea Mug to learn how:

Would you like to be notified by email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Login here.

The post San Francisco Workplace Market Turns into Nightmare, in Two Straightforward Steps. Step 1: Hogging Workplace House; Step 2: Working from Dwelling appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Tyler Hayes was at a Silicon Valley office when his phone buzzed with a string of frantic texts from his girlfriend: Water had seenped into their one-bedroom apartment at 33 Tehama St., a swanky, glass-skinned tower in San Francisco’s South of Market district.

Hayes’ girlfriend caught the first sign of trouble — a pool forming at the doorway — as she cooked dinner. When she opened the door, she found the outer hallway so soggy that her shoes left footprints in the carpeting. Glancing toward the stairwell, Hayes said, she saw “a river” cascading past the 29th floor where they lived down to the tenants below.

“I tell her, ‘You need to leave the building,'” said Hayes, the CEO of a robotics company. He hastily excused himself from a meeting and rushed to the nearest Caltrain station.

The ordeal that began in early June reached a critical point last week, when city officials gave the property manager 10 days to fix the water main after it burst a second time — and the property manager stopped reimbursing hotel stays for hundreds of displaced tenants.

“It’s like a nightmare that never ends,” Maarya Abbasi, who lived in a one-bedroom on the 12th floor and said she’s spent thousands of dollars on hotels since the pipe first broke, while devoting hours each week trying to get compensated by Hines , the property management company for 33 Tehama. She’s been living out of two suitcases, unable to retrieve her bed, couch, artwork, family heirloom jewelry, Polaroid photos and other possessions since the second pipe rupture and flood on Aug. 10.

Window washers clean the outside of 33 Tehama St. in 2017.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez, Staff Photographer / The Chronicle

Resident Tyler Hayes leaves footprints in the soggy hall carpeting after the first flood at 33 Tehama on June 3. Video: Courtesy of Tyler Hayes

Abbasi, Hayes and other residents have spent nearly three months in a purgatory, shuttling between hotel rooms, maxing out their credit cards, ordering meals from delivery apps or the hot bar at Woodlands Market on Folsom Street. Those who are low-income and lived in the below-market-rate units at 33 Tehama are uncertain they will find anything comparable in San Francisco. Even the higher-income tenants fear they will be priced out, or unable to return when the building reopens in 2023 according to Hines’ projections.

While repairs grind on, many residents have become increasingly concerned about the belongings they’ve left behind, particularly after reports surfaced last week that security footage captured one of Hines’ contractors stealing items from a unit. In a letter to two representatives of the company, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who represents SoMa, said he had discussed the thefts with Assistant Police Chief David Lazar and was advised that officers were investigating.

Paul Paradis, senior managing director at Hines, acknowledged the contractor theft and said the employee had been terminated. Since then, he said, “we’ve increased video surveillance” and added security guards.

Dorsey urged Hines to provide security footage to the San Francisco Police Department if it had not already done so, and also provide a detailed action plan to fix the extensive water damage and assist the evacuated tenants, as prescribed by the San Francisco Building Code. Dorsey is a former top spokesperson for the Police Department.

The building that once symbolized downtown swagger and prosperity, with apartments and penthouses priced at up to $5,000 a month, Hayes said, had become the city’s latest high-profile construction calamity.

Records from the Department of Building Inspection show 18 complaints filed since 2017, the same year a 2,000-pound wall of concrete hung precariously from the high-rise when it was still under construction, briefly threatening nearby offices and the westbound exit ramp of Interstate 80 .

As of Thursday, three complaints remained open, all filed since June 6 for plumbing disasters. The Department of Building Inspection issued its latest violation notice Tuesday, with a 10-day deadline for Hines and its contractor, Turner Construction, to obtain a permit and fix the pipe. The companies had failed to deliver an action plan that city inspectors requested last Monday, and the floors remained sodden, the elevators out of service.

While Department of Building Inspection spokesperson Patrick Hannan said it is not unusual for new high-rises to draw 18 complaints in five years, the history of mishaps has led some to wonder whether the parcel at 33 Tehama was cursed from the beginning.

Hours before the first huge leak that sprang from the 35th floor in June, building managers sent a series of emails about false fire alarms, Hayes said, leading some residents to believe they were testing the sprinkler system. The August leak started from the same pipe on the 37th floor, spilling water down staircases, corridors and into electrical closets, saturating elevator shafts and cabs, according to an incident summary from the Department of Building Inspection.

Paradis, the senior managing director at Hines, said the company’s staff triaged on the night of the first flooding, offering grants for hotel rooms and discounts on rent — or rent forgiveness for people who stayed with friends and family members.

“We’re trying to do the right thing by the residents,” Paradis said, insisting that Hines had “put a great system in place,” notifying residents when Hines staff members realized they could no longer provide living accommodations and working with the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development to seek new below-market-rate units for lower-income tenants. A spokesperson from that office said officials had enacted an emergency authorization to reserve vacant affordable dwellings for that group.

Hines is negotiating with managers of five buildings to secure those units, office spokesperson Anne Stanley said.

But Hayes and Abbasi said the company’s lines of communication have been spotty, that representatives were sometimes confusing and dismissive and that it often took persistent badgering to get the payments they were due.

Abbasi recalled that several weeks passed before she saw any money, and in the meantime she had to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket and extend her credit limit. She continued paying $400 a month to park in a garage that she and other residents couldn’t use, and has yet to receive a full refund.

Hayes said he believes he over-drafted about $10,000 from his checking account during this period. He and others said the most consistent information came from an online community managed by resident Jameson Lee, who left to live with his family in Orange County during the flooding. Lee is trying to help other tenants search for housing and said he’s called 15 apartment complexes to compare listings.

Asked whether he had paid rent, Hayes let out a clipped laugh.

“I’m not gonna pay any rent, everyone else is not paying rent — that’s insane,” Hayes said.

He misses the life he and his girlfriend had in 33 Tehama, where they enjoyed waterfront views through their apartment window, lounged on the roof deck and chopped vegetables on the granite countertops in their kitchen, all for $3,500 a month. They’ve spent the past few weeks apartment-hunting. Abbasi signed a lease for a home in Oakland.

Before the first flood, Hayes said he was considering an upgrade to a two-bedroom apartment at 33 Tehama. He remembers that on the third day of the first flooding saga, when he and his girlfriend were draining their savings to stay at the Clancy hotel on Second Street, the Hines leasing agent called to ask whether he was still interested.

At that point, Hayes decided the company was “clearly in denial.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

The post Contained in the ‘nightmare that by no means ends’ at San Francisco’s 33 Tehama St. appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

To residents of San Francisco’s Sixth District, the deplorable conditions of single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels are no longer a great shock. In the Tenderloin, Civic Center, and South of Market neighborhoods, where most of the approximately 70 SROs are located, these city-run buildings have been terrible for as long as most can remember. And they’re getting worse.

The horrors of SROs were put on display to the public in a recent San Francisco Chronicle feature. The story tells of people living in buildings with collapsing ceilings, toxic mold, vermin, noxious odors, constant noise, broken appliances, and unchecked violence. It also notes that at least 166 people fatally overdosed in these hotels in 2020 and 2021. This official number, however, is suspicious for being so low. San Francisco’s medical examiner reported at least 1,300 overdose deaths citywide in the last two years, most commonly for illicit fentanyl combined with other drugs.

How can the places that the city has deemed appropriate for the economically distressed be so bad? It’s not because of a lack of funds. San Francisco has an eye-popping $1.1 billion homeless budget, much of it spent on such supportive housing.

We can lay part of the blame for the conditions on tenants who make life miserable for others—breaking into nearby apartments, threatening innocent people, or consuming drugs in common areas. But if tenants have demonstrated that they are incapable of being good neighbors, then the officials who placed them there are culpable.

“There needs to be a better vetting process,” says 25-year-old Darren Mark Stallcup, who until recently lived in an SRO. “The city was moving everyone in; people who were sketchy, violent. They were fentanyl addicts, just out of jail, or in gangs. People were breaking my door down. I would wake up having to throw punches.”

According to Stallcup, long-time tenants, many of them seniors, bear the brunt of the mayhem. “Most are Asian immigrants, and the noise scares the elders,” he says. “They would barricade themselves in. I never got a firearm, but I was thinking about it.”

In fact, many of the people placed in city-run housing are considered “high-need tenants.” Neither SROs nor supportive-housing units are the correct settings for them (or the other tenants who suffer from their proximity). They need professional assistance but don’t receive any because the city hasn’t invested in it.

This is Housing First policy in action. The idea behind it is as simple as it is misguided: put people who were living outside or who are at risk of becoming homeless inside four walls. Then, voila, you’ve solved the problem of homelessness. It’s not true, of course. More people arrive in San Francisco every day, most seeking the city’s cheap narcotics and easygoing attitude toward usage. They end up on the street until they can score subsidized housing.

Stuffing thousands of people who should be recovering in hospitals, mental health facilities, and drug treatment centers into free or low-cost apartments has been disastrous. The places in which they are housed are ruined; people get hurt, and some die. Neighborhoods fall into disorder.

The dilapidated state of SROs is only a symptom of the disease. Housing isn’t a cure. Unless cities address the underlying problem of untreated mental illness and addiction, every building set aside for the homeless under the Housing First approach will deteriorate, and the people desperately needing help won’t get it.

A long-term SRO resident who wishes to remain anonymous notes the lack of oversight and accountability. “The Departments of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and Public Health are in violation of housing rights and human rights,” she says. “Supportive housing? There is no support. DPH could give a rat’s ass about health. If you’re a woman, your life will be a living hell. No one cares. High functioning people regress. Some want to stay sober, but they can’t. Eventually they pick up a pipe again because almost everyone around them is using.”

The city’s solution: more of the same, but waste even more money. Instead of addressing the rotting SRO buildings, the administration is on a real-estate buying spree. With an influx of funding from Proposition C—a measure that taxed the city’s most profitable businesses with the intention of fixing homelessness—it is purchasing pristine new buildings in which to house needy people.

The apartments that Mayor London Breed has been proudly showing off, with gleaming kitchens, sparkling bathrooms, and clean bedrooms, are all destined for ruin. Soon these units will be in the same uninhabitable state as all the others. This is exactly what happened when the city gave people shelter-in-place rooms in the Mark Hopkins and similar luxury hotels during the height of the pandemic. The destruction was almost immediate. Fixtures were ripped from bathrooms, blood and feces stained the rugs, mattresses were set on fire, and people died of overdoses, often alone.

The push to add permanent supportive-housing units in districts with few, if any, such structures will only worsen matters. Assurances that these units are for homeless families and will include mental-health services are unfounded. As for the communities, they will suffer the same fate as those in District 6. Drug dealers will arrive to serve the new residents. Criminal activity will intensify. Building occupants with addiction issues will buy what they want, take the substances to their rooms, and use. Some will overdose and die. Meantime, the people who don’t use drugs or who are trying to stay sober will be in a dangerous environment. Abstinence is not valued. Harm-reduction activists make sure residents always have access to free needles, pipes, and foil, but never promote free recovery assistance such as Narcotics Anonymous.

Giving permanent residences to people who have not demonstrated that they can handle such responsibility is wrong, says Stallcup, who finds it painful to recollect his time at an SRO. “They were shooting up in the shared bathroom,” he says. “They basically destroyed everything. I’ll never forget the smell. They need treatment, rehabilitation, support, facilities designed for those things. We shouldn’t give out properties like this. It’s crazy. There has to be a bridge.”

Housing First has hurt, not helped, those who are in dire situations. Redoubling efforts in pursuit of this policy guarantees that the sick will get sicker, and the city’s light will continue to dim. Rather than railroad deeply troubled people into poorly managed apartments or blighted SROs, San Francisco should use its enormous budget to fund the integrated addiction treatment and psychiatric care it sorely lacks.

Erica Sandberg is a consumer finance reporter based in San Francisco. As a community advocate, she focuses on homelessness and public order.

Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529). DONATE

The post San Francisco’s “Housing First” Nightmare appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Serina Calhoun has worked as an architect in San Francisco for 21 years and has faced plenty of headache-inducing projects, but the renovation of a Bernal Heights fixer-upper that she took on in 2020 stands out as truly atrocious.

Many of the city’s worst story lines converged at the seemingly cursed house, leaving Calhoun and the home’s owners slack-jawed by all the plot twists.

It involves insanely high real estate prices. Byzantine planning codes that even the city’s planners find confusing. Neighbors who demand a say in any change near them. Squatters, drugs and vandalism. Police officers who blame the district attorney as they let criminals go. A pricey private security guard. And heaps of frustration.

Sounds like San Francisco, alright.

“This is a whole other level of crazy,” Calhoun said.

It all began in October 2020 when Jennifer Sun and her husband, Ben, purchased a house in Bernal Heights for $1.75 million. In most parts of the country, that would buy a stunning mansion. In San Francisco, it buys a rather dated fixer-upper.

The couple are wealthy, and nobody but them will shed any tears over their home remodel gone awry. Still, what happened next points to what’s broken in San Francisco — and so much is broken.

A sticker, writing on the refrigerator and a sign are some of the damage left over from squatters who trespassed and lived in the home of a Bernal Heights couple.

Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

The couple hired Calhoun to design a remodel, submitted their plans in March 2021 and hoped to secure permits within six months. They kept paying rent on their South of Market apartment so they could live there during the remodel, while also paying their new mortgage.

But six months turned into 12 months — and still, no permits.

The first hiccup was that the Planning Department said the home had been illegally converted into three units by a previous owner, and the couple wanted to restore it to its original single-family home set-up.

After some back and forth, the Planning Department said the plan was allowable because there was no record of any tenants ever living there.

Dan Sider, chief of staff for the Planning Department, said planners were ready to approve the plans including major interior work in July 2021, but then the couple submitted a proposal with a new wrinkle: extending the back of their home by just under 3 feet . That would make the back of the house even since the third story juts out beyond the lower two.

But this being San Francisco, and especially Bernal Heights, that seemingly small change is a very big deal. That’s because of a “special use district” approved by the Board of Supervisors in 1991 that governs every little change to homes in the neighborhood. The idea was to preserve the area’s character, but the details will make your eyes glaze over and, according to Calhoun, have prompted many architects in the city to refuse to work there.

In sections and subsections to subsections, it governs changes to homes in minute detail — down to the allowable width of curb cuts and garage doors.

“I can assure you that it is not a page-turner,” Sider said good-naturedly.

Jennifer Sun stands below two holes in the ceiling of her home, part of the damage from squatters. She and her husband have had to hire private security while they wait for permits to remodel their new home.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

A group of neighbors called the Bernal Heights East Slope Design Review Board — with no apparent website or easy way to find them — gets to weigh in on projects in the area. An email sent to an address associated with the group was not returned.

The rules include the length of a home can extend into the backyard from the front of its property line. But because the couple’s house sits on a curved lot, Calhoun’s been trying to get an answer on where on the front lot to start measuring from. She said she waited until November just to get a planner assigned and has spoken to four different planners about the 3-foot extension, and that none knows the answer.

“They shared that the code is confusing even for them,” she said.

Then, the planner told Calhoun the home was historic and the facade — though nondescript — could not be altered. Sorting that out would have extended the project by another six to nine months, Calhoun said, so the couple dropped proposed changes to the front.

Then things got really weird.

In February, Calhoun received an email from a member of the Bernal Heights East Slope Design Review Board who reported a neighbor across the street from the couple’s home had grown “increasingly agitated” by the couple’s lifestyle and the cars coming and going from the home at every hour.

Sun said she was shocked. They weren’t living there. What cars? What lifestyle?

So they visited the property, which had weird spray paint across the garage door and signs of people inside. They called police, who accompanied them inside the house where they found squatters had taken it over.

Photos the couple took show piles of furniture, clothes and a fridge full of food. Graffiti covers the refrigerator and walls. One message can’t be relayed in full because of antigay language, but it reads in part, “No soliciting. No shopping. No snitches.” They bashed holes in the walls and ceilings, wrecked a sink and other fixtures, left dog poop on the carpets and discarded needles and syringe caps around the house. Flies were everywhere. The house still smells bad.

According to the couple, police officers gave the squatters — all of whom appeared high — 10 minutes to collect their belongings and leave. They arrested only one. No one else faced any consequences. The couple said police explained there was nothing they could do because District Attorney Chesa Boudin “has different priorities right now” and wouldn’t prosecute.

Salar Naderi, a spokesperson with the Police Department, confirmed police found seven people occupying the house and arrested Richard Ostergard, 47, who had warrants for stealing a vehicle, possession of stolen property and theft. Naderi said the homeowners “did not want to have any of the (other) subjects cited or arrested,” disputing the couple’s version.

In any case, Sun, 36, said that just a few hours later, neighbors texted and called to tell her the squatters were back. And it doesn’t sound like they’re merely people down on their luck. Photos show nice belongings, and neighbors reported them driving a Mercedes, BMW and Dodge Durango.

Neighbors continued to report to the couple that people were entering the home over the next couple of days, and that someone tried to access the property with a crowbar.

The couple quickly hired a private security guard whom they’re paying $8,000 a month to watch over the house every night.

“If we had known the city would take so long, we would have moved in and this wouldn’t be an issue,” Sun said.

Even though they’re doing well professionally, the couple said the costs have created “an immense financial impact” — and work hasn’t even started yet. Mortgage payments and property taxes on the house have topped $180,000 so far. They paid $3,000 to haul away the squatters’ belongings and don’t know yet how much it will cost to repair their damage.

Meanwhile, construction costs keep growing because of inflation and supply chain shortages, and there’s no telling how much the remodel will end up costing or when they can finally start.

“How does anyone afford this?” Sun asked.

Sun said she’s no longer excited about moving in after the remodel — which she thinks won’t be done for another year at best.

“It totally creeps me out,” she said. “Just unlocking the door, I get goose bumps. It’s uncomfortable being in here. It’s so unnerving. This is supposed to be home.”

This being San Francisco, there is one bit of good news for the couple. Redfin says their dream home turned nightmare is now worth more than $2 million.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf

The post How a San Francisco rework became an epic nightmare involving metropolis crimson tape, squatters and cops shrugging off crime appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

He had traveled to Jura for rest and isolation so that he could focus on the concept of Big Brother. He succeeded, and this book revolutionized publishing in 1949 with its history of Eternal War, ubiquitous government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda.

Many people may well believe that the 1984 fiction was put into practice during the 2020 US presidential election. And some people, like the Chinese government, were so shocked by Orwell’s story that they banned his books from their social media platforms in 2019.

Register to our opinion newsletter

Register to our opinion newsletter

Those of a certain age will remember that it wasn’t always that way. In fact, New York State Governor Mario Cuomo delivered a speech at the US Democratic Congress in 1984. Almost 80 million people watched the speech on their televisions and Governor Cuomo was interrupted by applause more than 50 times from the live audience. That was the year President Ronald Regan spoke eloquently about the US being “a shining city on a hill.” Cuomo contrasted this image that “the hard truth is that not everyone shares in the splendor and glory of this city”.

Continue reading

Continue reading

US election: Americans in Scotland fear the result of the vote

Aside from last-minute problems – like a successful legal challenge by Donald Trump – Joe Biden appears to be the elected President of the United States.

He was carried into the White House by a tsumani of people who understood he was talking about them when he said the Covid pandemic was “not over” and added, “Just ask the people at your dining table will look at an empty chair ”. Reaching for a loved one in their bed at Christmas or out of habit, only to find it is empty too.

A voice of integrity, honor and truth

Trump supporters slap the glass and chant slogans outside a room where postal votes were counted in Detroit, Michigan (Image: Jeff Kowalsky / AFP via Getty Images)

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris held up a highly polished mirror to the American people as if to say, “Is that what you really want?”

As the world has become increasingly dystopian since 1984, it strikes me that even today, amid the stormy seas of electronic mass media, a voice of integrity, honor and, yes, truth can rise above the maddened crowd.

Combining the folklore of Ronald Reagan, the sincerity of Jimmy Carter, and even the sincere wrath of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were able to overcome all odds by finding their common voice and asking a simple question.

They kept asking: “Is this the America we want for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren?”

It is a simple and at the same time profound question. If you interviewed 300 million US citizens and asked them about their dreams for the future, you would find as many splinters as you can see when you cut a huge tree in the forest.

Another morning

These factions have always been part of the American experiment. However, because of recent poor national leadership, this noble experiment has failed because of the seeds of division rather than the formation of courageous coalitions.

Now President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign slogan, “It’s Tomorrow in America” ​​seems to be true again with the advent of new leadership, albeit from an opposing party.

The challenge now for future President Biden and Vice President Harris is that they must first heal the wounds of the recent past. And while these scars will be visible for many years to come, they will always remind us of the American dream stronger and more enduring than any selfish despot, angry white racist group, or a lewd QAnon conspiracy troll.

Further from dystopia

When Governor Cuomo stood at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco and spoke to thousands of delegates, his voice did not thunder, but rather, quietly and firmly, he reminded all Americans that their country was a “story of two cities” rather than a “brilliant” one City on a hill. “

Then he threw a strong spotlight on the dark side of this hill, using statistical evidence to show how unfair America had become. He concluded with these words, which in both 1984 and 2020 will bring a deep sense of treasure and upward development: “To be successful, we need to give up some small bits of our individual interests in order to build a platform that we all do can endure “. on, immediately and comfortably – proudly – sing along. “

I believe the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris opened a new opportunity to step by step from our dystopian past and present to a new chapter for America and her friends and admirers around the world to stand together and sing again proud that these are our values ​​and that our hopes for the future will be realized with new leadership that values ​​truth, respect, kindness and, yes, love.

Professor Joe Goldblatt is Professor Emeritus of Scheduled Events at Queen Margaret University. He has both Scottish and US citizenship and has been known as an “Honorary Orcadian” because of his many visits. He voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. To learn more about Professor Goldblatt’s views, visit www.joegoldblatt.scot

A message from the editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We need your support more than ever as the changes in consumer habits caused by the coronavirus are affecting our advertisers.

If you haven’t already, support our trusted, fact-checked journalism by purchasing a digital subscription.

The post US election: Donald Trump created an Orwellian nightmare however Joe Biden may also help America recuperate – Professor Joe Goldblatt appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.