©GCR, illustration by Denis Carrier

Three former executives of a San Francisco planning and design firm have been charged with bribing employees of the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI).

Prosecutors claim they paid bribes in return for expedited building permits and inspections.

Siavash Tahbazof, 72, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for paying bribes to city planning staff and inspectors. According to the indictment, the offences were carried out over a 20-year period.

Reza Khoshnevisan, 54, and Bahman Ghassemzadeh, 38, face a similar charge for offences covering the past 10 years. The charges followed an FBI investigation.

The charges were brought by the US District Attorney’s Office for Northern California. It says the bribes were paid to officials from the DBI, a regulatory city agency responsible for overseeing the enforcement of building, electrical, plumbing, and housing codes for San Francisco’s more than 200,000 commercial and residential buildings.

If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, and a fine of up to $250,000.

Two DBI employees, Cyril Yu, 41, and Rodolfo Pada, 68, have also been indicted.

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That opportunity for subjective review adds delays and risk for developers, O’Neill said. Her review found that the median time for approving multifamily housing in San Francisco was 34 months between 2018 and 2021 — up from 27 months just a few years before. That process can be dragged out further because San Francisco law allows additional time for appeals.

O’Neill said many of these local laws were written to encourage the proliferation of dense housing. But over the years, they have done the opposite.

“San Francisco actually has comparatively more land zoned for dense housing than a lot of the other jurisdictions in California I’ve studied,” she said. “So the local law is both written in a way to try to say we want to welcome people, we want to have multifamily housing, and yet it’s written in a way to make the process so onerous, so unpredictable, it effectively blocks the development of multifamily housing. And that has huge implications for how inclusive San Francisco truly can be.”

But changing discretionary policies works, the report states. It cites the implementation of a 2017 state law, Senate Bill 35, which required local governments to streamline approval of some projects.

Before SB 35, San Francisco approved just five affordable housing projects over three years from 2014–2017. Since it took effect, 18 were approved between 2018 and 2021, 14 of them directly because of SB 35.

Velasquez said that these numbers, and the lessons gleaned from this report and its outcomes, will help the state speed up housing production in other cities around California.

“A ministerial approval process is essential, to take politics, subjectivity out of the equation, out of the decision-making process. San Francisco needs to do that,” he said. “These lessons that we’re learning .… other jurisdictions will just learn from and try to apply.”

The report notes that to meet its housing goals, set by state law, the city would need to build more than 10,000 housing units a year, more than half of them affordable, each year through 2031. The city’s goals call for more than 82,000 new units to be constructed by 2031.

“Yet they have permitted less than one home per day in 2023,” Velasquez said. “The comparison just is egregious of what they have to approve versus what they’re approving now.”

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The head of a San Francisco city grant program, together with a former top city official, face corruption charges for an alleged four-year scheme to misappropriate tax dollars to line their own pockets, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Lanita Henriquez, 53, and Dwayne Jones, 56, both from Oakland, were the targets of the joint probe of the FBI and the San Francisco District Attorney’s public integrity task force.

Prosecutors allege that Jones, who is the founder and president of RDJ Enterprises, allegedly provided checks both to Henriquez, the head of the city’s Community Challenge Grant program, and her family members totaling nearly $200,000.

Between 2016 and 2020, Henriquez allegedly signed off on 23 contracts with Jones’ firm and other entities she and her family had financial interests in, prosecutors say.  

“The charges announced today reflect my office’s on-going commitment to hold public officials accountable when they seek to enrich themselves at the public’s expense,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement, adding that the grant funds were intended to benefit residents, “not to line the pockets of government officials.’’

The two defendants face one count of misappropriation of public funds, six counts of bribery and 23 conflict of interest-related counts. Neither could be reached for comment.

 Jones was the subject of an NBC Bay Area investigation in 2020 that found his company netted millions of dollars consulting on a city program that he helped create.

City records show Jones partnered with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in 2011 to craft the agency’s Community Benefits Program, which gave contractors and consultants bidding on public projects extra credit for donating time and money to schools or nonprofits.

But since the program’s inception, records show at least seven firms bidding on SFPUC jobs tapped Jones to help craft their community benefits proposals.

Jones’s firm was also paid $7.1 million working as a community benefits consultant on five large public projects.

For much of the time, Jones also worked directly for the SFPUC under a $900,000 consulting contract inked in 2017, according to city records.

Critics contended Jones’ consulting work was a major conflict of interest.

In 2021, a scathing city audit found the program was “poorly designed” and at risk for potential abuse. Jones defended his role at the time, telling NBC Bay Area that his critics were jealous of his success. “There are haters in my neighborhood,” he said.

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Zeke Fraser has a lot on his desk, both figuratively and literally. He briefly stepped away from his paperwork-lined desk at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds late Wednesday morning for a quick chat about the upcoming fair, which opens on Wednesday.

Vendors and performers were arriving, and workers were bustling about in equipment-laden golf carts as tents and food booths were being assembled. 

This frenetic bustle is typical in the lead-up to the event, which draws thousands of people to the Watsonville venue.

Fraser was hired as CEO in June, and says that everything is on track.

“The biggest thing we want people to know is that we are here and we are ready to do the fair,” he said.

Fraser says that visitors will see beloved favorites such as the All Alaskan Racing Pigs, the cinnamon roll booth and camel rides.

New this year is an exotic bird show featuring condors with 10-foot wingspans, colorful macaws, hornbills and cranes. Also new is “Cartoon Poodles,” a show featuring 11 pink-dyed poodles trained to jump, dance and otherwise clown around for their audience.

“It’s a complete 20-minute show,” says Isabel Abuhadba, whose family has been doing the performances for six generations, including casinos in Las Vegas and in numerous countries. “It’s wonderful when we present the show and hear the audience cheering.”

Throughout the fairgrounds, preparations are underway, with art being hung for display and people setting up their entries.

One of these was Jackie Cameron, who last year, after a lifetime of attending the fair—and telling herself she would enter the garden competition she loved to see—took the plunge, designing her own garden in the adult category.

“I thought, you know what? I’m 52 and I’m going to do a gosh darn garden,” she said. 

Her entry earned her a best-in-show ribbon, and now she is hoping to repeat that victory in this year’s fair.

On Wednesday, she was the first gardener working on this year’s entry, which she has titled “Color Wheel.”

Visitors to the Home Arts display in the J.J. Crosetti Hall can feast their eyes on dozens of different genres, from knotting to sewing to jewelry to quilts.

Two of the latter deserve a second glance: one is a quilt made by a 7-year-old girl—her first foray into the art. This just around the corner from a masterpiece by veteran quilter Thom Adkins. 

The complexity of the latter clearly sets it apart from that of the works surrounding it. But the work of the young girl and the experienced artist represents one of the overarching missions of the display: inspiring young people to take up and carry on a time-honored tradition, says volunteer Mary Travis.

“When you can get the youth interested, it’s amazing,” she said.  

In the Fine Arts Building, Donna Giubbini, who heads up the art exhibit for the fair, said a new category will highlight professional commercial illustration. Works include locally produced posters, business signs and banners.

“We wanted to make room for this category because there is so much talent in this kind of illustration,” Giubbini said.

Also in Fine Arts, metal sculptor Pierre Riche is showing a metal sculpture from his “Golden Possibilities” series. He says the five-foot-tall equine sculpture is a result of more than two decades of working his craft, which has included making miniature horses from recycled metal to towering outdoor pieces constructed from laser-cut plate steel. 

He says his work has been featured in venues in Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as in Spain and France.

Moving forward 

Fraser took the reins as CEO in the wake of the termination of former CEO Dave Kegebein. The Fair Board alleged that many expenditures on a state-issued credit card were for unauthorized purchases, including gasoline for his truck.

Kegebein said that all his purchases were for work related to the fair, and paid back $30,000 to the Fairgrounds.

The move angered many community members, who criticized the board for, among other things, not giving Kegebein a chance to ameliorate the situation.

Fraser, who had no involvement in the termination or in the subsequent approval of three interim CEOs, says he wants to focus on this fair, and on those in the future.

“It’s in the past,” he said. “I’d love to leave it in the past and move forward. Everyone’s come together to get this fair done, and hopefully it will help us as a community to heal, that’s my hope.”

Santa Cruz County Fair Board Chair Michael Pruger agrees.

“It’s been a tough year for the fair,” he said. “However I think we’ve gotten past our roughest patch, we’ve hired a great new CEO and we believe we are going to be able to provide a great fair for years to come.”

Pruger also tipped his hat to the people who help out every year to help keep the fair going and the fairgrounds running. 

“If it wasn’t for the great volunteers that come out every single year we would be in trouble,” he said. “We appreciate their commitment to the fair. We have had nothing but great turnout again, the fairgrounds are in beautiful condition.”

The Santa Cruz County Fair runs from Sept. 13-17.

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San Francisco officials stopped the installation of the new Twitter logo today atop the social media company’s headquarters. Officials have launched an investigation, claiming that the giant “X” sign didn’t have the proper design and safety permits.

Earlier this week, officials halted removal of the old Twitter logo, a giant bluebird, from the building. In that instance, officials claimed workers hadn’t taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.

More from Deadline

The Washington Times had the initial reports on the logo snafu.

Regarding the “X” on top of the building, any replacement letters or symbols require a permit to ensure “consistency with the historic nature of the building” and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign, Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection said.

Erecting a sign on top of a building also requires a permit, Hannan said Friday.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Jesalyn Harper, the only full-time code enforcement officer for the small, agricultural city of Reedley in California’s Central Valley, was responding to a complaint about vehicles parked in the loading dock of a cold-storage warehouse when she noticed a foul smell and saw a garden hose snaking into the old building.

A woman in a lab coat answered her knock, and behind her were two others in plastic gloves and blue surgical masks, packing pregnancy tests for shipping. Harper said they spoke broken English and told her they were from China. Walking through the lab, she found dozens of refrigerators and ultralow-temperature freezers hooked to illegal wiring; vials of blood and jars of urine in shelves and plastic containers; and about 1,000 white lab mice being kept in crowded, soiled containers.

The women said the owner lived in China, provided a phone number and email address and asked her to leave. Alarmed by what she saw, Harper, whose work mostly entails ensuring people have permits for yard sales and are keeping their lawns mowed, contacted Fresno County health officials and then the FBI.

The discovery last December launched investigations by federal, state and local authorities who found no criminal activity at the medical lab owned by Prestige Biotech Inc., a company registered in Las Vegas, and no evidence of a threat to public health or national security. Nonetheless, it was just the beginning of a case that this summer fueled fears, rumors and conspiracy theories online about China purportedly trying to engineer biological weapons in rural America.

During a March inspection of the lab in Reedley, a city of about 25,000 people some 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco, officials did find infectious agents in the refrigerators including E. coli, coronavirus, malaria, hepatitis B and C, dengue, chlamydia, human herpes, rubella and HIV.

But the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there was no sign that the lab was illegally in possession of the materials or had select agents or toxins that could be used as bioweapons.

“CDC has taken no further action in this matter,” the agency said in an email to The Associated Press, referring further questions to county and state officials.

After company representatives stopped communicating with city and county officials, they got a court order to shut down the operation, euthanized the mice and cleaned the biological materials. Officials thought that would be the end of it.

Then on July 25, the Mid Valley Times, a local online news outlet, published a story about the lab that quoted court documents saying a representative of Prestige Biotech, which makes pregnancy and coronavirus tests sold online, told officials in March that the mice had been genetically modified to catch and carry the virus that causes COVID-19.

That was likely a miscommunication by Prestige Biotech representative Wang Zhaolin, whose English is not perfect, Harper said.

“She stated that the mice were bred, and then she hesitated and said they were modified to carry COVID,” Harper said Zhaolin told her and other officials. After the lab was shut down, she added, Wang stopped cooperating with them.

Wang’s comment prompted Reedley authorities to hire Nina Hahn, an attending veterinarian at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to examine the mice. Hahn found they had not been injected with any infectious agent and were simply used to grow COVID-19 antibody cells to make testing kits. She also determined they were not subjected to experimentation, Harper said.

But that hasn’t stopped the furor, however.

After the Mid Valley Times article, national media outlets published stories saying the lab had bioengineered mice to carry COVID-19. A Fresno city official questioned the lab’s proximity to Lemoore Naval Air Station, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) away in neighboring Kings County. In a war with China, the official said, fighter jets would deploy from the base.

Last week House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who represents a Congressional district neighboring Reedley’s, said during a visit to a nearby town that he plans to raise concerns over the “very disturbing” case with colleagues on the Select Committee on China and follow up with the FBI.

“My concern is to get to the bottom of what happened here but to also look at where this is happening in other parts of this country as well,” McCarthy said.

Lok Siu, a professor of Asian American and Asian diaspora studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said the fears being fanned online reflect anti-Chinese sentiments that have existed in the United States for centuries and were heightened during the pandemic.

“Ultimately all Chinese people are connected to the Chinese state. They’re not given the ability to act as responsible or irresponsible individuals and they are seen as agents, and the only reason for that is because ethnic Chinese people are seen as not loyal and always foreign,” Siu said.

In Reedley, where the laboratory failed to officially register, officials took a dim view of the operation.

“They were bad actors. They never came to the city and they moved in in the middle of the night. Those are pretty big elements that tell us they did not want us to know they were here,” said Nicole Zieba, Reedley’s city manager.

The California Department of Public Health said in a statement that all clinical laboratories must get state and federal licenses to operate, and it is still investigating whether Prestige Biotech has a state license. Federal officials said they found no illegalities.

Several Prestige Biotech representatives including attorney Michael Lin in Las Vegas did not respond to emailed requests for comment sent by AP.

There were also questions from some about why the federal investigation was not made public until the Mid Valley Times reported on it.

Zieba said that early on, state and federal officials advised the city to not share information with the public about the lab, which had been operating illegally in the city since October 22, because the investigation was still ongoing.

And after California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control checked the air and water and found no threat, she decided to heed that advice.

“It was fairly quickly apparent to us that there was nothing airborne, nothing in the water, nothing in the sewer system, so our public was safe,” Zieba said. “Had there been any hazard to their safety, we would have immediately notified the public.”

Reedley officials said what has been most concerning about the discovery was finding out there is no single government entity overseeing private medical laboratories.

“What’s frustrating is that we’re focusing on these myths, bioengineered weapons and stuff like that, rather than the real issue, the lack of regulation of these private labs,” Harper said.

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San Francisco lawmakers have reached an agreement to temporarily scale back the need for affordable housing for new housing construction in the city. This is the latest move aimed at boosting the economic recovery and boosting dozens of stalled projects.

Real estate developers have long blamed affordable housing demands for increasing the high costs and challenges of building in one of the country’s most expensive housing markets. The agreement reflects a local economic downturn that has garnered national attention after the market, which saw the fastest rise in office rents of any major US city before the pandemic, now has some of the highest office vacancy rates.

Under officials’ housing fee reform plan, quotas would be scaled back, reducing the number of affordable units developers must include for approved projects as well as projects proposed over the next three years. The measure also lowers some development effect fees that are charged when new residential buildings are built to cover all or part of the cost of providing public services for a project such as open space or transportation.

“We are fundamentally changing the way we approve and build housing in San Francisco,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement to CoStar News. “By reforming our fees and setting them based on data, we can ensure we create new housing, jobs and the economic benefits we all want our city to have.”

It is estimated that the measure will push through about 8,000 housing units across the city that have already been approved but have not yet started construction. Approximately 2,500 of these units are planned in and around downtown San Francisco, which has evolved from a vibrant hotspot to an area with significant office vacancy rates.

Even then, multifamily rates in the city remain among the highest in the United States, averaging more than $3,100 per month.

Across the country, leaders in major cities like San Francisco, New York and Washington, DC are scrambling to restore momentum lost by the pandemic by attempting to shift the focus to new housing construction to spur demand and activity. Some have suggested ways to facilitate the conversion of vacant office buildings into housing, while others are cutting red tape around development to streamline the permitting process.

However, the commercial real estate situation in San Francisco is relatively grim compared to other cities in the United States, with the office vacancy rate rising to over 17%, according to data from CoStar, compared to about 7% in 2019. In some parts of downtown, the Availability rate at nearly 30% and with rental activity largely subdued, there are no signs of a turnaround imminent.

The combination of remote work, record-breaking sublease availability and office vacancy rates, and deteriorating socioeconomic conditions has resulted in a budget deficit of nearly $800 million since the pandemic began. Additionally, office leasing and investment is now a small fraction of what it was before 2020, meaning this important source of tax revenue is unlikely to be available again any time soon.

The housing fee reform plan is expected to go into effect on November 1 after being approved by the Board of Directors and signed by Breed. The changes expire after a period of three years unless otherwise renewed.

If approved, the proportion of inclusive housing – or the number of affordable units required for each housing project – will be reduced to between 12% and 16%. Breed’s office said this would bring “special relief” to projects that have already been approved but have been halted due to rising construction and financing costs.

Market pricing developers in San Francisco, under current requirements, are required to allocate 22% of a project’s total number of housing units to affordable housing, which is limited to households earning 50% or less of the metro area’s median income.

And based on 2023 data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a household of four earning less than $72,050 per year is eligible for affordable housing in San Francisco.

The measure would also change the way the city calculates development impact fees, which the mayor’s office says is based on a structure that is “unpredictable and results in significant increases in costs over the life of a project.” The proposed changes would limit these charges to a 2% annual increase going forward.

According to the Breed Bureau, impact fees, which vary by project and square footage, have increased by more than 30% in just the last five years.

“Our inclusive housing laws have always been about maximizing the largest possible number of affordable housing units that the private market can handle,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who helped draft the measure, said in a statement.

He added, “This temporary reduction in affordable housing commitments is intended to spur housing construction at this critical time of San Francisco’s economic recovery.” which they have already received approval.

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San Francisco officials believe the office-to-home conversion could help the struggling local economy as the city known for its pre-pandemic tech growth is now facing record-high office vacancy rates.

The Planning Department and Office of Economic and Manpower Development have issued a request for information to scout out potential redevelopment sites and assess how viable these projects would be and what is needed to remove any regulatory hurdles.

The move coincides with recent regulations passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to help the city’s economic revival after years of weak leasing activity, lack of sales momentum and office and retail tenant migration.

With the request, officials hope to not only simplify the redevelopment process for developers and property owners, but also figure out how to focus the city’s efforts to make it a reality. To qualify, the request states that respondents must “either be in control of the site, be in discussions with the property owner about a possible purchase, lease or other investment in the property, or be a design professional or a other authorized representative of a property owner.” or developer.”

City leaders across the country have opened up to the idea of ​​converting one property use to another to adapt to the changes brought about by the pandemic in recent years. As demand for office space in particular has waned, the idea of ​​converting vacant buildings into alternative uses such as housing, research and development space, or even hotel rooms has been mooted in markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and more in Washington, DC

However, the situation in San Francisco is relatively dire compared to other cities in the United States, with the office vacancy rate rising to over 17%, according to CoStar data, compared to about 7% in 2019. In some parts of downtown, the vacancy rate is around almost 30%, and with rental activity largely subdued, there are no signs of a turnaround imminent.

The combination of remote work, record-breaking sublease availability and office vacancy rates, and deteriorating socioeconomic conditions has resulted in a budget deficit of nearly $800 million since the pandemic began. Additionally, office leasing and investment activity is now a small fraction of what it was before 2020, meaning this key source of tax revenue is unlikely to return any time soon.

As city officials debate how to encourage alternative uses for office space, it takes a while for the talk to translate into action. For example, some office buildings are less suited to residential use than others, and such a move away from office buildings can represent a big bet for an owner that remote working will continue to be as common as it is today.

Only a limited number of existing office buildings are really suitable candidates for possible conversions. according to CoStar analysis, and are unlikely to have a major impact on office or apartment building market fundamentals.

Nevertheless, while the city office market Although the demand for housing in the city is still increasing, although it is only a shell of what it used to be.

According to data from CoStar, asking rents average nearly $3,050 per month, making San Francisco the most expensive multi-family market in the United States. By comparison, the city has lost its reputation as the country’s most expensive office market — it was overtaken by Silicon Valley and pushed to second place — and with its tech-heavy workforce boasts the lowest return-to-office metrics of any major market in the nation .

The motion and recently passed legislative package are likely to provide more flexibility in transforming traditional office properties into potential residential or retail properties and are the latest in a series of strategies San Francisco has adopted to reposition the city as it moves ever further from Removed from its original location pre-pandemic focus on the technology industry.

San Francisco officials say it’s worth the effort.

When it comes to the potential for converting office towers into apartments, demolishing buildings for new construction and attracting startups to settle in the city, “we need to re-imagine what downtown can look like,” said Mayor London Breed recently. “We open the door to do more. San Francisco has never had to work hard for tourists, visitors or people who want to shop here, so many restrictions have been imposed on people in certain parts of the city. The policies we implemented have changed that, so you can now convert an office into living space much more easily.”

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LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles city officials are recommending the removal of a bankruptcy trustee who was tasked with rehabilitating 29 derelict buildings owned by the defunct Skid Row Housing Trust and overseeing the well-being of about 1,500 low-income tenants.

With the bankruptcy administration facing a financial collapse, the Los Angeles Housing Department also recommended that the City Council approve a $10 million loan to maintain and repair the buildings and pay bankruptcy costs for several more months.

Ann Sewill, director-general of the Housing Department, recapitulated a series of disputes with bankruptcy trustee Mark Adams over his alleged lack of progress and inability to obtain credit on reasonable terms, and said the loan should be made conditional on Adams being recalled becomes.

“The city has been considering possible alternatives to address the unfortunately disappointing performance of the current receiver,” Sewill wrote.

The recommendation is due to be heard by the city council’s budget and finance committee on Monday and could be presented to the full council as early as Tuesday. A spokeswoman for prosecutor Hydee Feldstein Soto, who selected Adams for receivership, said she agrees with the recommendations.

However, the city cannot independently replace Adams because he was appointed by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge at the city’s request. Instead, Judge Mitchell Beckloff would have to seek a motion to dismiss Adams and appoint a new receiver. Beckloff gave Adams a clear endorsement at the final hearing on the case.

“I appointed you because I believe you are the right person for the job,” he said during the June 15 hearing. “I still think you’re the right person for the job.”

In the report released on Friday, Sewill also gave a sober assessment of the difficult road ahead. She wrote that some of the buildings may be “damaged beyond repair” and should be demolished, and that repairs and maintenance of underwater properties will likely cost well in excess of $10 million for an unknown amount of time.

Conditions inside the buildings have deteriorated in recent years as cash flow problems caused the nonprofit to default on maintenance and cut staff and security. Nearly 800 of the trust’s 2,000 units have been foreclosed on rent subsidy due to unlivability. Residents complain of dirt, clogged pipes, pest infestations and the constant intrusion of street dwellers who use drugs, set off fire alarms and sleep in hallways.

“We know that to attract responsible, experienced, supportive homeowners, the city and other government partners need to increase loan amounts to fund repairs, replenish reserves and (pay) all bankruptcy obligations,” Sewill wrote.

These costs could be borne in part by the limited partners who own some of the buildings at the Housing Trust. But the non-profit organization, which collapsed financially earlier this year, is the sole owner of 12 of the buildings. Then the city would likely have to bear all the costs, possibly with the help of government housing programs.

The report says the $10 million is necessary to ensure sufficient funding for at least four to five months. At this point, more than half of the properties are expected to be taken out of receivership and taken over by other not-for-profit general partners.

But the remaining buildings, generally the oldest and most expensive to maintain, could run monthly deficits as high as $700,000.

Beckloff has approved the release of six properties to be acquired by PATH Ventures and one by LA Family Housing, both non-profit organizations that provide homeless services and develop and operate housing. A further seven are expected to be released in late fall once permanent funding can be secured to replace the building loans used for construction or refurbishment.

However, these buildings are the most financially profitable in the portfolio. They have been built or remodeled in recent years and still have limited partners who bear part of the cost.

Dissatisfaction with Adams had grown since his provisional appointment in April. City officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, slammed him earlier this month after the property management company he hires sent eviction notices to hundreds of rent-arrearing tenants. The terms of his appointment prohibit him from terminating a tenant for non-payment. Adams said he did not approve the eviction notices and sent out letters withdrawing them.

The city’s confidence in Adams further soured when it learned that he had agreed to pay 15% interest on loans for costs he estimated were already up to $1.7 million for collateral was included. The city claims that the terms of his appointment put a 10% cap on any loans.

During the June 15 hearing, Assistant District Attorney Alia Haddad Beckloff said the city was in talks with a possible replacement.

Sewill’s report elaborated on the city’s concerns.

Aside from being unable to secure adequate funding, she wrote, “he has not hired, and perhaps more importantly, has, sufficient staff to secure and operate the properties and make the necessary repairs.” he failed to submit the court-ordered reporting and accounting.” City and other authorities require.”

Adams, she wrote, has made insufficient progress on “resolving major code violations,” including repairing the fire/life safety systems, fixing plumbing issues in communal toilets, and restoring units that were broken for minor code violations were called for rehabilitation. ”

Adams told the Los Angeles Times that he will respond to the city’s report in court next week. He also cited Judge Beckloff’s support.

A review of Adams’ filing by the Times, published shortly after his appointment last month, found that at some properties where Adams served as liquidator, tenants were at risk of eviction, owners lost their homes and several judges concluded that he had overstated his fees by six-figure amounts. Additionally, in two cases comparable in size and scope to the Skid Row Housing Trust case, Adams left years before they were resolved, omitting key facts about his involvement in the court filings.

Feldstein Soto told The Times that she chose Adams based on a recommendation and did not conduct an extensive background check.

To replace Adams, the report said the city conducted an extensive search that identified Kevin Singer, the founder and president of Receiver Specialists, as the top candidate.

According to the report, Singer served as an insolvency practitioner for 23 years and previously owned a property management company that managed 75 buildings.

He received strong support from the mayor and city attorney of San Francisco for his performance as the liquidator of 11 properties owned by a woman who became known as the city’s cruelest landlady.

“Mr. “Singer and his staff developed a very methodical, straightforward and realistic numbers-based approach to bankruptcy administration and prepared and submitted a six-month projection budget for city consideration,” Sewill said.

©2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Advocates held mock funerals Saturday in Oakland and San Francisco for BART, Muni, AC Transit and other agencies that may be forced to make significant benefit cuts because of ongoing Sacramento budget negotiations. From reporting in SFGate:

BART issued a statement last week outlining what those cuts would look like if the agency “fell off the tax cliff” without government funding for transit operations: Trains would only run once an hour and never after 9 p.m. there would be no weekend service and some stations and entire lines would be closed entirely. SFMTA said in a similar statement that without the necessary funding, Muni service would have to be scaled back to where it was at the height of the pandemic — meaning 40 percent fewer Muni routes and no service after 10 p.m

Another picture of the mock funeral from KidSafeSF Twitter

All interest groups, big and small, in the Bay Area participated and are working to put pressure on Gov. Newsom and the legislature.

Together, @SFBART and @SFMTA_MUNI are the fourth largest transit agency in the country, but these two systems are planning devastating service cuts as early as next year. pic.twitter.com/3J3OWzgbDQ

— SPUR (@SPUR_Urbanist) June 1, 2023

The rally managed to draw media attention to the issue (see SFStandard, SFChronicle, NBCBayArea, theFrisk, CBS for more information). Proponents again urge members to keep up the pressure. From Streetsblog ally Friends of Caltrain:

Can you call the governor and lawmakers NOW to save mass transit? We need to cut their phone lines during the negotiations. Noon or anytime during business hours is good.

State leaders are currently negotiating possible funding, but the proposed budget bills on the table do not yet provide enough funds to prevent larger cuts.

Hundreds of people took part in rallies over the weekend, which drew widespread media attention. Now decision makers need to hear directly from Californians.

So far, the main funding on the table would cannibalize funding for large capital projects — meaning forgoing over $6 billion in federal funding — or leave the Bay Area with a life-size railroad museum — large train stations with no rail service.

Negotiations are in the hands of the state’s leaders – Governor Newsom, Budget Chairs Ting and Skinner, Senate Speaker Pro Tem Atkins and House Speaker Rendon. The new parliamentary speaker, Rivas, is waiting in the wings.

Caltrain, BART, SFMTA and AC Transit face potentially catastrophic service cuts if the transit fiscal cliff isn’t averted.

Here’s how you can help now, ahead of the June 15 budget deadline:

* Make brief phone calls to Governor Newsom and senior negotiators during business hours. We need to burn down their phone lines.

* Send a letter to the state’s leaders telling them that we cannot sustain the state’s economy and meet our climate goals if public transportation collapses

* Sign up to volunteer to distribute flyers on trains, buses and ferries

Lawmakers are negotiating accountability measures to ensure agencies are committed to improving service, increasing ridership and long-term financial sustainability. But these improvements won’t happen unless we stave off the fiscal cliff – your help is important.

Streetsblog can only confirm this message! Be sure to make your voice heard in Sacramento.

The post Advocates and Officers Rally to Save Transit – Streetsblog San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.