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NOT SO DIVERSE: Ling Ling Chang, a non-white GOP female legislator, is a minority of one in state. | 9
Richmond’s bold experiment to heal itself one young man at a time is led by DeVone Boggan, left, and an innovative city program. | 10
SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG • $1.00
SPRING 2019 • ISSUE 27
TAKING ON BIG TECH
As city works to write rules on personal privacy, possible consequences emerge
Searching for The Truth in Suit Against Huge Landlord Renters say Veritas tries to force them out, but firm says charges are false By Noah Arroyo // Public Press
W
hen the Great Recession destroyed San Francisco’s 20thcentury kings of rent-controlled buildings — the infamous Lembi family — the founder of Veritas Investments Inc. began buying pieces of that broken, over-leveraged empire on his way to becoming what is perhaps the city’s largest residential landlord of the 21st century. Besides bricks and mortar, Veritas shares something else with the Lembi legacy: a lawsuit accusing the corporation of a litany of offenses intended to push out people paying below-market rents so that new residents will pay substantially more as rent caps are lifted. Veritas — the name is Latin for truth — vigorously denies all claims of malfeasance and in turn accuses lawyers and tenants of pursuRenters ing a frivolous suit for vs. a big payout. Landlords “Veritas chooses to invest in San Francisco and its aging housing stock,” company spokesman Ron Heckmann said via email. “There are no specific claims, fact based or other, about neglected maintenance or pushing out Residents, just boilerplate allegations.” The company, founded in 2007, says it owns more than 230 apartment buildings with more than 5,000 units, all subject to rent control because they were built at least 40 years ago, with many around 100 years old. That makes the structures cheaper to buy, while expensive to maintain or rehabilitate. The foundation of the company’s business model is to buy and improve these aging buildings, delivering “superior financial performance” to individual and institutional investors, its website states. Founder and CEO Yat-Pang Au, a Bay Area native who pursued a career in engineering before getting an MBA at Harvard, has said he plans to expand the $3 billion Veritas empire around the region, with Oakland as his next stop. The lawsuit pits a corporate landlord, answerable to investor-owners, against low- to middle-income tenants fearful of being evicted and fighting to remain in a city that has become unaffordable. When the Public Press first wrote about the lawsuit last fall after activists confronted Au in a protest, Veritas did
HOUSING
SOLUTIONS
Illustration by Reid Brown // Public Press
By Andrew Stelzer // Public Press
B
it by bit, San Francisco has become a place where it’s assumed that tech companies — many of which are based here — are tracking your every move. Until now, it has largely been up to you to find ways to stay off their collective corporate radar. But instead of having to dig deep into the privacy settings of your phone or an app to opt out of sharing your personal information to do something as pedestrian as, say, rent one of the now-ubiquitous electric scooters, imagine never having to opt in in
the first place. As city officials this spring craft a “privacy-first policy” mandated by voter-approved Proposition B, supporters hope its lofty ambitions will start to become a reality this summer. The local regulations — among the first emerging in cities nationwide — could fill potential holes in the separate landmark statewide privacy law that takes effect in 2020. San Francisco’s initiative might also accelerate efforts to pre-empt cities and states through the adoption of federal standards, which the technology and business lobbies could be expected to water down.
Already there are signs that the city could move to the forefront of enforcing limits on data collection and reshaping our relationship with technology companies. City leaders have made bold, but so far not very specific, claims about their ability to limit the personal-information freefor-all that is at the heart of the business model for data brokers, many startups and other digital enterprises. Since passage of the ballot measure in November, supervisors have introduced legislation to restrict or ban surveillance
Your Data, Their Dollars
VERITAS continued on Page 6
VERITAS’ VIEW: Representative of one
The Fight Over Privacy
of city’s biggest landlords answers questions from the Public Press. | 5
MORE INSIDE
PRIVACY continued on Page 3
Environmentalists Say Housing Talks Didn’t Include Them By Kevin Stark // Public Press
B Photo by Max Whittaker// CALmatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom says strict environmental regulations are one reason for the shortfall in affordable housing construction.
oth the California builders’ lobby and the state’s largest trade union for construction workers backed Gavin Newsom’s campaign for governor. When the Democrat won in a predictable landslide in November, they proceeded with a common purpose: to knock down barriers to fast housing construction — among them the state’s primary environmental law. Participants in the negotiations said that in addition to working with Newsom, then lieutenant governor, they also consulted with some community groups. But they did not engage with some of the most prominent
Activists object to plan to speed up construction OKs environmental organizations, at least until February 2019 — just before Newsom announced support for broad changes aimed at speeding projects that might add affordable housing to the state. “We’ve been supportive of all the major environmental policies and advances that the state of California has passed,” said Cesar Diaz, the legislative and political director of the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California. “But we’re dealing with a housing crisis.”
Diaz said the Legislature “hit the ground running” on various proposals, some of which would streamline the local environmental review process. “We have now opened up conversations with the enviro groups and will continue to meet with the majority of them to have these discussions. Whether they can agree or come to support, I’m not sure.” But several environmental leaders said they were locked out of these talks that involved what could amount to a frontal attack on their most valuable legal tool, the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA continued on Page 9
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STREET TALLY: Volunteer’s first-hand
account of the city’s one-night count of homeless residents. | 12
RENT FREEZE: Designer of affordable
projects offers his idea on how to ease the region’s housing crisis. | 8
10 YEARS LATER: Public Press’
independent voice needed more than ever. | 2