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LOCKING UP IMMIGRANTS FOR THEIR PROTECTION
CITIZEN SCIENTISTS STEP IN With their cameras and smartphones, residents are documenting the change in sea level, which is affecting California coastal areas. | 9
Activists take opposing sides on Yolo County plan to continue contract with federal government to incarcerate youths. | 10-11
SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG • $1.00
FALL 2019 • ISSUE 29
Public Press Takes the News to the FM Airwaves By Linda Jue // Public Press
I Photos by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
KSFP PERSONALITIES: Learn about producer Mel Baker and reporter/host Laura Wenus. | 12
n keeping with its interest in experimenting with new platforms for local public-interest journalism, the San Francisco Public Press is launching a city-focused news and talk show on KSFP, a lowpower radio station that the organization launched on 102.5-FM in August. The show, “Civic,” will be a test bed for emerging audio-storytelling approaches, combining the intimacy of community broadcasting with professional journalistic standards and a contextual understanding of the origins and effects of local public policy.
As mainstream media companies continue to disinvest from local news, the Public Press has been looking for low-overhead, effective ways to highlight underreported public policy stories. The one-hour daily show helps fill this vacuum. Broadcasting from a studio four blocks from San Francisco City Hall, “Civic” features interviews and discussions with a diverse array of stakeholders — public officials, community organizers, policy specialists, city employees, business leaders, artists, activists and others who can provide varied and nuanced RADIO continued on Page 12
BIG-TICKET
HOUSING PLAN FACES S.F. VOTERS November measure calls for $600 million bond to build affordable homes, refurbish public units By Laura Wenus // Public Press
I
n her free time this spring, second-grade teacher Cheryl Liu was writing love letters. Recording videos of herself. “Selling” herself. Not to find love, but to convince home sellers in San Francisco’s overheated market that she, an educator receiving down-payment assistance through one of the city’s affordablehousing programs, was a worthy buyer. “You write the love letters to persuade the seller to pick you,” Liu said at a July rally to support the $600 million housing bond on the November ballot. “There were just people coming in with bids that were $200,000 over asking. I’m like, I’m a teacher!” Liu closed on a home in early July, though as it happens, this seller didn’t need a letter or a video to be convinced. She’ll be living near where she teaches, at Starr King Elementary School in Potrero Hill. The loan assistance she received was funded by a housing bond voters approved in 2015. If two-thirds of voters approve, this year’s bond, the second of its kind in four years, will Renters authorize vs. the city to borrow money for additional affordable housing so others like Liu can stay in the city — from educators to Landlords dishwashers, landscapers to hotel workers, firefighters to seniors. The bond allots $220 million for low-income housing in the form of about 1,000 new units, deed-restricted to charge rents affordable to individuals with an income of up to $68,950 a year or families of three with a household annual income of up to $88,700. Not all the housing promised by the bond would be new. Some $150 million is earmarked for renovation or reconstruction of 965 units of public housing, a project begun with the money brought in by the city’s 2015 housing bond. This year’s allocation would prioritize things like elevator repairs, mold cleanup, lead paint
HOUSING CRISIS
HOUSING BOND continued on Page 4
MORE INSIDE
Assemblyman David Chiu tries to bring back program. | 5
Cities Grapple With ‘Banked’ Rent Hikes
GRIM HISTORY:
S.F. not joining movement limiting landlords’ ability to save up increases
USF professor explores the effects of redevelopment in the Fillmore. |6
CITY PLANNING:
S.F. legislation could lead to a gradual increase in housing density. | 8
LOCAL MEDIA:
Photo by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
This fall’s measure would partly pay for refurbishment of the Sunnydale public housing site.
by on ati r t s Illu
REVISITING REDEVELOPMENT
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Researcher analyzes coverage of homelessness by Bay Area media outlets. | 4
By Noah Arroyo // Public Press
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or most San Francisco tenants, higher rent is a yearly fact of life. Those fortunate enough to live in rentcontrolled apartments get some pain relief from city regulations that limit annual increases. But despite protections for those tenants, the rules still allow for unexpected increases that can be ruinous to older, lower-income and minority tenants who have been in their apartments for years. For nearly four decades, San Francisco’s rent-control regulations have permitted landlords to delay, or bank, an unlimited number of the allowed annual rent increases and apply them any time in the future — all at once if they would like. These banked increases never expire, even after a new landlord buys the building. Tenant advocates say banked increases catch renters by surprise and increase financial pressures that can push them out of their homes. “They’re suddenly faced with these large increases
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and can’t pay them,” said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, director of counseling at the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. San Francisco politicians show little interest in addressing this, unlike those of other Bay Area cities. This summer, Alameda lawmakers passed regulations intended to maximize tenant protections without disrupting landlords’ ability to make a profit. Mecca estimated that 10 to 12 people a month seek his organization’s help primarily because of banked rent increases. They mostly are “living on a fixed income or Social Security or a pension or something, where that 10 years of rent increases are going to be a burden,” he said. “I think it is a big deal when a building is sold. That’s probably the situation we find most often,” Mecca said. “The new landlord comes in thinking, oh, this is a good way to get a little extra money on an apartment.” Fifty-seven percent of Bay Area senior renters have perBANKED continued on Page 8