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LOCKING UP IMMIGRANTS FOR THEIR PROTECTION
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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
F
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
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SAN FRANCISCO
FROM THE EDITORS
Celebrating 10 Years of Bringing You the News PUBLIC PRESS
I
t is hard to believe that it has been 10 years since we started the San Francisco Public Press. We will be celebrating our first decade with a fabulous anniversary party on Wednesday, Sept. 25, at The Bindery in San Francisco. Please join us! We’ve enjoyed a few nostalgic moments thinking about some of the highlights from our early days, including the hours of legal prepublication review of an exposé about Macy’s, and the frantic all-nighter we pulled before sending Issue No. 1 to the printer. We DONATE NOW got that first issue back the Online: sfpublicpress. next day, spent org/membership all afternoon Mail: San Francisco Public Press, 44 Page distributing St., Suite 504, San papers to retail Francisco, CA 94102 locations and Call: 415-495-7377 then raced to the launch party we were hosting for a packed house at the now-gone Passion Cafe on Sixth Street. So much has changed about the media landscape, our city and our country since then. What does that mean for the Public Press? New challenges, thrilling opportunities and more ways to serve our community by producing serious, in-depth, public-interest journalism, and by cultivating conversations and engagement around important local issues. Running a small, nonprofit news organization is a lot of work. Still, we are excited about new challenges. We took on a big one this year with the launch of
INDEPENDENT NONPROFIT IN DEPTH The mission of the San Francisco Public Press is to enrich the civic life of San Francisco by delivering public-interest journalism through print and interactive media not supported by advertising. 44 Page St., Suite 504 San Francisco, CA 94102 415-495-7377 info@sfpublicpress.org Fall 2019 • Issue 29 (Vol. 10, No. 3) Published August 23, 2019
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Photos by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
KSFP, our low-power FM radio station broadcasting on 102.5 FM in San Francisco, and “Civic,” our daily news and public affairs radio show and podcast. We spent three years planning the audio program and are thrilled that we get to work with so many smart, dynamic journalists in our expanded multiplatform newsroom. This effort is a part of a new era of growth for local nonprofit newsrooms nationwide. We hope you will join us at our 10-year anniversary party on Sept. 25 to celebrate where the Public Press is today and what’s coming next. For ticket information, please see sfpr.es/2019party or call
415-495-7377. Hope to see you there! If you can’t make it to the celebration, you can still help. We need to raise $75,000 from individuals through the end of 2019. Join the nearly 500 members of the Public Press and support the growth of independent local journalism. You can donate and become a member online at sfpublicpress.org/donate, by calling 415-495-7377 or by sending a check to the San Francisco Public Press, 44 Page St., Suite 504, San Francisco, CA 94102. Thank you for your support!
Patricia M. Bovan Campbell Kaizar Campwala David Cohn Liz Enochs Neal Gorenflo Lila LaHood Peter Scheer Michael Stoll
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Michael Stoll
PUBLISHER Lila LaHood
DIRECTOR OF MEMBERSHIP & COMMUNITY Daphne Magnawa
Michael Stoll, Executive Director Lila LaHood, Publisher
SENIOR EDITOR Michael Winter
ASSISTANT EDITOR Noah Arroyo
NO RESPECT
DIRECTOR OF DESIGN
Crossword by Andrea Carla Michaels
ACROSS 1. Balkan resident 5. Apple on the desk? 9. Propelled a dinghy 14. Last name of a trio of baseball brothers 15. Old Roman wrap 16. One of the Brontë sisters 17. Be skeptical of the whole world? 20. Cherished by 21. Raggedy one 22. More than want 23. “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz” brand word 25. A giant among Giants 27. Shows placed bets? 35. Glass or Gershwin 36. Evergreen 37. Samantha’s mother on “Bewitched” 38. Bel ___ (singing style) 41. Coral or Cortez 43. Knock senseless 44. Outcome 46. Hosp. test 48. Cry of delight 49. Cutrate vampire? 53. Las Vegas casino 54. “Out!” or “Safe!” 55. Lots of luggage 59. Inc., in Britain 61. Wet kiss 65. Resolve an argument, in a way and a hint to 17A, 27A and 49A 68. “The Importance of ___ Earnest” 69. Part of a basilica
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70. Bruins’ college, familiarly 71. Embellish 72. Peacock feather features 73. Gloom DOWN 1. Anti-DWI activists 2. Nobel Peace Prize winner Wiesel 3. Parks who pioneered in civil rights 4. False accusation 5. “No worries” 6. Crooks’ methods, for short 7. Acapulco’s water 8. Is unable to 9. Gun, as a engine 10. Black cat crossing one’s path, e.g. 11. Put a mike on, secretly 12. Ultimate word in an ultimatum 13. Artificially blonde, say 18. “___ be a cold day in Hell...” 19. “Malcolm ___ Middle” 24. Nays’ opposites 26. Long race, for short 27. Chopped into tiny cubes 28. Persian, today 29. Hourglass grains 30. Like Caroline or Georgia Brown 31. Harem room 32. “___ Believe in Magic?” (Lovin’ Spoonful hit) 33. Dribble 34. One of the Obama girls 39. Twitch 40. “___ about....”
Kurt Aguilar
GRAPHIC ARTIST Reid Brown
“CIVIC” RADIO PRODUCER Mel Baker
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SOLUTION on Page 11
42. Rock band with the tripleplatinum album “High Voltage” 45. Opposite of innocence 47. Barley and rye, for two 50. Zilch 51. “Mater” lead-in 52. Become blocked, like a kitchen sink 55. Rum-soaked cake
56. Grew older and wiser 57. Football field 58. Thrilled 60. June 6, 1944 62. Killer whale 63. Padded pad, perhaps 64. Become well 66. Swelled head 67. “___Got a Secret”
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State Legislation Offering Little Protection of Data Free speech, public records laws seen as roadblocks by those seeking more privacy By Yuri Nagano // Public Press
I
n the five years since her doctor raped her at home, one woman in Los Angeles has had no luck getting “people search” sites such as MyLife and Spokeo to stop posting her address. Like many victims of rape, other violent crimes or harassing ex-spouses, she remains traumatized and fearful. Though she has been circumspect about where she lives, these information brokers continue to post and sell her whereabouts and other details she considers personal and private. “You don’t want a guy to go on the internet to look up where you live, and you try to protect your safety and you can’t, because you’re completely, easily Google-able,” said the woman, who lives alone Your Data, asked not to be identiTheir Dollars and fied. She just wants to vanish from the internet, a right that people in the European Union enjoy under the General Data Protection Regulation. But even in the wake The Fight of last year’s passage of Over Privacy the California Consumer Privacy Act, the first of its kind in the United States, she and many others with reason to avoid public exposure will remain visible to the world. Though consumers might ask companies to delete or stop collecting data about them, the First Amendment and open-records statutes might thwart their efforts to get these information brokers to delete data after the law takes effect in January.
PERSONAL DATA THAT’S QUITE PUBLIC These businesses argue that the information comes from government entities, such as courts and motor vehicle agencies, and is publicly available. “We actually don’t have an obligation to remove those records,” MyLife.com founder and CEO Jeff Tinsley said in an interview. The exception is for judges and law enforcement. Other removal requests, he said, are considered individually. That may surprise Californians. “Many people are under the misconception that there are laws that specifically protect them from having their personal information published online,” said Paul Stephens of the San Diego-based nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. “For the most part, there are no such laws.” The Software and Information Industry Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group representing about 700 companies and organizations, argues that the state privacy law violates the First Amendment because it contains “unconstitutional speech restrictions.” In a memorandum filed with the California attorney general, the lobbying group said the law restricts “the dissemination of accurate, publicly available information,” and that if not amended, “it is highly likely to be invalidated in court.” The state Legislature is considering adding language to exempt government records. The sponsor of Assembly Bill 874, Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), said she wanted to make sure the law did not impose “unconstitutional limitation on the use of public records, which the state and local governments make available to support transparency in government.” Any limitation on what constitutes a public record must be scrutinized, said David Snyder, executive director of the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition. “I don’t think everything ought to be public, but I think you head down a dangerous road when you start saying, ‘Well, it’s a public record except in these circumstances.’” Other privacy advocates agreed. “Laws that protect consumer data privacy should be calibrated to not unduly burden free speech,” said Adam Schwartz, senior attorney at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.
SILENT ON EMERGENCY REQUESTS Though Californians will have expanded personal-data protections, information brokers will continue to sell and make available other facts about their lives, said Alastair Mactaggart, a businessman whose self-funded petition drive spurred legislators to propose and pass the new law. That’s a big weakness, one professional data-scrubber said. “Oftentimes individuals need to be removed from sites due to doxing and/or direct threats to their physical harm,” said Will McAdam, founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based Privacy Duck, which offers to remove people from information broker sites for a fee. California’s privacy law has “no provisions for emergency removal demands and no provisions for emergency removal demands without having to turn over evidence such as police reports to private third-party people-search companies, creating more exposure,” McAdam said.
LOOPHOLE OVER SHARING DATA He pointed out that there is no clear distinction between the “selling” of personal information and the “display” of it on dozens of sites. “This creates fine lines and loopholes for the people-search companies to take advantage of,” he said. Federal law may need to be changed.
Photo by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
State motor vehicle departments have been the main source of information for companies harvesting and selling information used for people searches online.
Photo by Garrick Wong // Public Press
Court records are among those that companies harvest to obtain and share data. Above, a courthouse in San Francisco. A starting point would be the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which allows the one-time sale of motorists’ information to private investigators or to any company claiming to update its records. State vehicle departments have been the main source of information for companies harvesting and selling people-search information, said McAdam, whose clients include public figures, activists and victims of crime, including identity theft. New technology brings new forms of crimes, said Erica Johnstone, an attorney specializing in online harassment for Ridder, Costa & Johnstone in San Francisco. Sites listing family members and addresses can be used as “starter blocks” for ruthless cyberstalking campaigns, said Johnstone, who served on the Cyber Exploitation Task Force when U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris was California attorney general. She’s found harassment cases often extend beyond the targeted individual and spread to family and friends.
INFORMATION REPOSTED Misinformation is another big problem. “It’s important to remember that the
information these companies compile can be incorrect, out of date or misleading, which may mean you lose opportunities just because someone does a simple search on your name,” said Meghan Land, executive director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Other privacy advocates pointed to the problem of information brokers reposting or “repopulating” data after being asked to take it down. Rob Shavell, co-founder and CEO of a Massachusetts privacy firm called Abine, which offers the fee-based service DeleteMe, said “millions” of their opt-out requests showed that MyLife, Spokeo, PeopleFinders, Whitepages, PeekYou, Intelius and others frequently repost information several months after opt-outs. He said his company, which works with the National Network to End Domestic Violence, has seen data brokers sell lists of abuse victims based on police reports. “Of course, no company will admit it and you cannot audit them,” Shavell said. Tinsley said that to comply with local laws, MyLife.com maintains a state-bystate “suppression list” of people to exclude. He denied that his site reposted data after receiving opt-outs.
MyLife founder and CEO Jeff Tinsley maintains his company is not required to remove much data.
But McAdam and Shavell challenged Tinsley’s claims. McAdam said that in the past nine years he’s seen “tens of thousands” of MyLife.com profiles reappearing. A Spokeo spokesperson said in an email that “we pride ourselves on providing one of the easiest opt-outs in the industry.” “While we cannot comment specifically on CCPA, given that the Legislature is currently considering amendments, we agree with the spirit behind privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA regarding data transparency and control,” said the representative of the Pasadena-based company.
REPORTS, REPUTATION SCORES Tinsley launched his business in Los Angeles in 2002 as Reunion.com and later changed the name to MyLife.com. He said its mission is to make dating, home services and other marketplace sites safer and more trusted through background reports and reputation scores. “What we actually do is, we’re focused on helping making people feel safer,” he said. Privately held MyLife, which is not subject to detailed public disclosures about its business, culls information from state and municipal government sources nationwide that “make data available to others including groups like us,” Tinsley said. “We just pull it all together to make it easier for consumers.” Information may include age, birthday, past and current home addresses, phone numbers, court records, traffic citations, email addresses, employers, education, photographs, relatives, political affiliations, a mini-profile and a section for MyLife’s registered members to rate each other. MyLife automatically generates a public page for everyone 18 years and older, and its website says it has more than 300 million such pages — a “complete Wikipedia-like biography on every American.” The Census Bureau estimated the total U.S. population on June 30 at more than 329 million. About
a quarter were 18 or younger. Regardless of membership, these “public pages” cannot be deleted, MyLife’s policy states, adding, “Though if you have extenuating circumstances call our customer care department.” Tinsley would not explain the guidelines for taking down information. He said victims of rape, domestic violence or other crimes did not have to produce police reports. Tinsley could not explain how a rape victim’s information still appeared on MyLife. com. “I would need to see proof” that her file had been suppressed and later reposted, he said. “I don’t see how this would happen in our service.” In a follow-up email, he added that “there are a lot of features and benefits that are part of the premium membership which include the ability to have more controls over your Reputation Profile (think of it as a personal homepage that makes you look good) and the ability to help facilitate removal of your entries from other sites that you can’t control at all.” Monthly plans cost $9.95 to $15.95. “The value of our services is validated by the public,” Tinsley said. “Over the past 12 months our MyLife and our services has been used by more than 160 million people, to learn about others and help manage the way they look online. Most members love our services.”
COMPLAINTS AND LEGAL TROUBLES The company’s public record shows a history of complaints and legal troubles with consumers and authorities, including allegations of inaccurate information, false claims and advertising, fraudulent credit-card charges and duping users into providing personal information. In 2015, the company paid a $1 million settlement to the city of Santa Monica and consumers for allegedly violating a California law regulating automatic subscription renewals. The Better Business Bureau reports nearly 7,000 complaints about the company in the past 12 months and more than 10,000 over the past three years. Since 2016, MyLife.com’s rating has risen from F to B-, but it is not accredited by the business rater. Though the new privacy law does not cover the removal of crime victim data, the California secretary of state’s “Safe at Home” program offers legal remedies for victims of domestic violence, rape and stalking, said Tara Gallegos, a spokeswoman for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. If a home address and home phone number registered with the state program are not removed after a written request, the victim may file a lawsuit and request a court order, she said. Victims may complain to the attorney general or their local district attorney. Stephens, of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, noted that people-search sites or information brokers may be sued for a “deceptive practice” if they fail to honor their own policies stating they will remove information upon request. That’s little comfort to the Los Angeles woman, who said MyLife and its competitors are victimizing her again. “All the info sites suck,” she said. “I want to be unknown and be able to fade away. The world we live in today does not allow this. I spend my life constantly combating it and removing myself. That’s my fight.”
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Researcher Analyzes Framing of Bay Area Media Coverage of Homelessness By Laura Wenus // Public Press
S
ylvie Sturm has been a reporter, editor and copy writer for 17 years and recently graduated from San Francisco State University. For a research project, she compiled and analyzed hundreds of articles and columns published in the San Francisco Bay Area about homelessness, starting with the 2016 effort led by the San Francisco Chronicle to create an annual media blitz, the SF Homeless Project. Sturm examined each article for its framing and focus, and also interviewed reporters, advocates, government officials and editors about how media cover homelessness. She then SOLVING HOMELESSNESS created a video summary of her findings. Sturm spoke with the Public Press for its podcast and radio show “Civic,” which began airing in mid-August. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Laura Wenus: About 15% of the stories you reviewed framed homelessness in terms of criminal activity, bad choices or bad behavior. And some of the feedback that I heard in the video that you produced, from a variety of people, is that the news tends to focus on criminality. Did you see any disconnect between what journalists and outside stakeholders perceived in coverage and what you actually found when you coded it and analyzed it in this more objective way? Because it doesn’t seem to me like the news necessarily always focuses on criminality, if it’s just 15%, according to your analysis. Sylvie Sturm: Exactly. No, it doesn’t actually focus on criminality that often. Certain journalists get a lot of attention
“There isn’t just one type of extreme homelessness, living on the sidewalk. There are degrees of homelessness, and there are people who first couch surf, then live in cars.’’ — Sylvie Sturm, journalist
Wenus: According to your analysis, focusing on the tragic stories, the failures of government, the failures of whoever else is involved, the bad choices of stakeholders — what comes out of that?
and a lot of flak for the way that they identify with housed people more than unhoused people. Certain journalists identify more with that perception, and then they’ll write an opinion column or they’ll frame their stories in that way. And that gets a lot of attention. So, it isn’t the majority of journalists that write that way. But it is the loud minority, let’s say.
Wenus: You wrote that 7% of the stories you looked at reference the causes of homelessness. Seven percent is nothing. And more than 45% of stories focused on solutions. How are we as journalists doing this? How are we trying to get at the solutions when we don’t even report on the causes?
Wenus: One thing that threw me when you interviewed me for this series was that I was like, “Oh, yeah, I always try to get homeless people themselves to be heard in the story.” And then you basically pulled out the evidence and said, “Well, you know, I did see this story from Mission Local,* and this other one, where there’s nobody quoted who lives on the streets.” There’s my perception of my own work. And our work as journalists. So do you have a sense of how often it actually happened? Did a majority of the stories that you analyzed quote homeless people? Sturm: Not at all, not at all. Those that do quote homeless people, they use their individual personal information. That’s how their quotes are used: to tell their story, as opposed to getting the opinion of the homeless person about what they think the solutions should be.
Sturm: When we focus on the negative — the NIMBYism, the infighting between officials and advocates — what we’re not talking about is cause. And that is not being discussed enough. If you discuss the causes, then you can naturally lead to solutions.
Sturm: Because we’re following the lead from governments and other stakeholders. The Tipping Point foundation just announced that they’re going to buy up and create 1,100 new housing units throughout the city, which is a solution. Sounds great. Doesn’t talk about the cause. Doesn’t talk about the lack of housing. How’d that happen? Do you know what I mean? Wenus: It is really interesting that we feel this pressure to come up with solutions. I think that both journalists and government officials are responding to that pressure of “We want answers, we want a solution. We need to fix this now. How is this so hard?” And it’s struck me that so little of the work is being done on, “why are people here?” Did you come across any research? Any good answers to that question? Why are people living on the streets? Sturm: One overarching theme has been the economic issue, you know, just
people coming up against financial barriers, what the problem actually looks like. because of the lack of housing, the skyrocketing price of rentals. And it’s completely Sturm: Exactly. The other problem with linked to the boom in Silicon Valley, the reporting on homelessness is that the media tech boom. So that is pretty much the tends to take the government’s word on fallback for everybody in terms of what the everything. When a press release is issued, cause is. when the press conference is given, what is The thing is that those people who say said, officially, is true. I’ve spoken to home“we don’t want to see it anyless advocates who are frustrated more,” those are the people who with that. They don’t want to are putting that pressure on the be put in the position of being politicians, and those are the the foil the way that they are loudest ones in the room. What all the time. But they also wish they’re not getting is that there’s that there was a little bit more a diversity of people who are research done before the media homeless out there. There isn’t reports on everything that the just one type of extreme homegovernment says as-is. lessness, living on the sidewalk. There are degrees of homelessWenus: I think that there’s a Sylvie Sturm has ness, and there are people who little bit of a reflexive tendency to been a journalist first couch surf, then live in cars. assume that government inforfor 17 years. There are definitely a lot of steps mation is more reliable than towards that extremely visible advocate information. I think homelessness. somebody says this in your video. There’s Even when I spoke to a couple of reportan assumption that an advocate might have ers, one of the questions I had for them was: an ax to grind or an agenda to promote, Have you ever experienced homelessness? more so than a government official. Which And only one reporter said yes. She recogis on its face not necessarily true. nized that when she was couch-surfing at her father-in-law’s place for three months, Sturm: We all know that politics is and also living in a car, she recognized that partially about votes and about the percepthat is homelessness. Two other reporters tion of the politician doing well and the city that I spoke to did the same thing back in doing well. And that’s not to say that the their youth: lived in their car, lived in a government isn’t working very, very hard to garage. But “Oh, no, no, I was never homedo what it can to solve this problem and to less.” So there they are, identifying with help people who are unhoused. But to take housed people. Because to them, the look of everything that they say at their word? I homelessness is an extreme, and certainly mean, we are reporters, we are journalists, not them. we should do a little bit of legwork. Wenus: It can be hard to overcome this ingrained image of “this is what homelessness is and looks like.” And “this” is what we want to address. So it sort of limits our solutions, in a way, if we have one idea of
*Laura Wenus previously reported for the news site Mission Local. See the video summary of Sylvie Sturm’s findings: https://sfpr.es/i29-sturm
Chiu Pushing Proposal to Bring Back Redevelopment By Mel Baker // Public Press
L
ess than a decade ago, California spent nearly $2 billion a year subsidizing local programs to add and preserve affordable housing. But macroeconomic pain forced a budgetary reckoning, and by 2011 the state killed a broad swath of infrastructure spending collectively known as redevelopment. “That just evaporated with the Great Recession,” said Assemblyman David Chiu of San Francisco, who chairs the Housing and Community Development Committee. That spending had included more than 400 redevelopment zones around the state that set aside portions of local property taxes to support long-term economic revitalization projects. Chiu said that adding in local resources, “the first version of redevelopment used to generate about $5 billion a year statewide.” Chiu is pushing for a redevelopment renaissance. In a bid to restore funding, last spring he sponsored Assembly Bill 11, the Community Redevelopment Law of 2019. The measure would allow a city or county, or two or more cities acting jointly, to create affordable-housing and infrastructure agencies that would levy fees on developers. The plan, which Chiu withdrew but plans to reintroduce this fall with changes, would allow redevelopment zones to put aside about $1 billion a year, all of it going toward affordable housing and the infrastructure to support it. Chiu’s reversal came after opposition from the powerful California Teachers Association, which expressed concern that property tax funds could be diverted from schools. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who supported reviving redevelopment during his campaign, then withdrew his support.
While statewide policies are debated, some cities have taken measures into their own hands by assembling local funds for their housing initiatives. San Francisco voters will consider a $600 million bond measure in November to create more affordable housing in the city. Proponents argue that the one-shot infusion of cash is needed to offset the combined loss of federal, state and local funding that once supported affordable-housing programs of all kinds. As part of a budget realignment in 2011, the Legislature and former Gov. Jerry Brown ended redevelopment, returning property taxes to school districts and other local agencies. The shift reduced the demands on the state for some local government functions, helping Brown close a $25 billion deficit. Four years later, lawmakers and Brown restored power to local agencies to use some tax revenue for affordable housing and public works, and to help businesses. Brown said at the time the revival “will help boost economic development in some of our most disadvantaged and deserving communities.” Chiu said the initial effect when redevelopment was “gutted” was to slow the pace of housing programs. He spoke recently about his legislation on the public-affairs program “Civic” on KSFP-FM, the new radio station from the Public Press. San Francisco’s lost share of those funds came as the city’s population exploded, stressing an already tight housing market. Census figures project that since the end of redevelopment in 2011 to the end of this year, the city’s population will have grown by nearly 105,000, to 881,000. Before redevelopment was killed, state law mandated that San Francisco use its
Photo by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
Assemblyman David Chiu’s plan would allow redevelopment zones to set aside money for affordable housing.
redevelopment funds to restore the 6,000 units that city planners destroyed decades ago, displacing minority communities in places like the Fillmore District. Fernando Martí, co-director of the San Francisco-based Council of Community Housing Organizations, told “Civic” in an interview, “The most steady source of funding through the ’90s and the early 2000s had been redevelopment. In San Francisco, we had a unique situation, where our Redevelopment Agency, unlike any other, I believe, in California, dedicated 50 percent of its revenue from what they called taxincrement financing, to building affordable housing.” Across the state, about 20 percent of redevelopment funds went to housing. Chiu’s
proposal would direct 100% of funds to housing and the infrastructure to support it. If redevelopment and other funding had remained in place, Chiu said he believed that the state could have created tens of thousands of units. “When the federal portion or the state portion or the local portion of that funding stream is jeopardized, those projects are delayed,” Chiu said. “They’re stalled, particularly in the parts of our city that are in dire need in Hunters Point and the Bayview area. The demise of redevelopment really had an impact there. But really in all corners of the city — in Chinatown and the Tenderloin and in the Western Addition.” Any mention of redevelopment and the Western Addition brings up some ugly history. Beginning in the late 1940s and into the early ’70s, the state’s new redevelopment program used the power of eminent domain to destroy homes owned or rented mostly by African Americans as part of a city planning movement that proponents called, optimistically but quite controversially, “urban renewal.” Later use of redevelopment funds to pay for sports arenas and even golf courses gave the Legislature and Brown plenty of ammunition to kill the program. A now-defunct organization called Municipal Officials for Redevelopment Reform said that 12% of property taxes were going to redevelopment zones, robbing schools and other agencies of funding. The group argued that redevelopment had gone beyond urban renewal, to become a program that allowed city and county officials to do an end run around the limits placed on the use of property tax revenues with the voter-approved Proposition 13 in 1978.
To prevent that, Chiu promised greater oversight for what could become redevelopment 2.0. “We have some very stringent antidisplacement provisions. There were a lot of allegations and, in some cases, the reality that monies were not being well spent,” he said. “And so we have many audit requirements, fiscal accountability and transparency requirements to make sure that every dollar is put to very good use.” Chiu amended AB 11 to address concerns of critics that the money would divert funds from other mandated uses. Specifically, he recognized the need to address the teachers union’s concerns by assuring that funds earmarked for education were protected according to Proposition 98, which sets aside minimum funding for schools. “The governor has really prioritized housing in a way that no governor has done before him to address the dire crisis we’re in,” Chiu said. “And our hope is, within the next year or so working with the administration, we will be able to bring back a new version of tax-increment financing, that is focused on affordable housing and infrastructure.” If redevelopment does return, there is no guarantee that a future governor or Legislature might decide to use those funds to close a deficit. Chiu acknowledged that was possible. “It is always about choices,” he said. “We have a budget every year. And we have to make decisions on what portion of it goes to schools, to public safety to public health. When funding for affordable housing has been gashed to the tune of $2 billion a year, and a half of that came from the elimination of redevelopment, we’ve got to bring it back if we’re going to have a shot at solving the housing crisis.”
Photo by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
A quarter of the housing measure’s money would go to upgrade public housing, including at the Sunnydale-Velasco site. Even the earmarked $150 million is not expected to be enough money to complete needed improvements. HOUSING BOND from Page 4
Photo by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
This year’s housing bond measure would prioritize things like elevator repairs, mold cleanup, lead paint abatement and plumbing repairs at the Potrero Terrace housing complex and other public housing developments.
S.F. measure seeks $600 million to build and revamp affordable housing HOUSING BOND from Page 1
abatement and plumbing repairs in the Potrero Terrace and Sunnydale-Velasco public housing communities. Both complexes are massive and even this year’s bond, if approved, is not expected to finance the completion of their overhaul. Some $30 million would fund acquisition and rehabilitation of buildings at risk of becoming unaffordable or uninhabitable. That includes apartments that could be taken off the market through Ellis Act evictions, used by property owners to evict tenants in a building and exit Kate Hartley, the rental market, who recently or through converstepped down as sions into condos, or San Francisco through creation of housing director. tenancies-in-common, in which a multi-unit property is split into separately owned units. “We know that we’re losing, year by year, large numbers of rent-controlled units,” said Fernando Martí, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, a nonprofit coalition of 26 community- and faith-based housing developers and advocates. Housing built after 1979 is generally
WHERE THE MONEY WOULD GO San Francisco voters will decide Nov. 5 whether to authorize the city to sell $600 million in bonds to create, rehabilitate or preserve affordable . housing. In 2015, voters approved a similar $310 million bond. Both let landlords pass through to tenants 50% of resulting property tax hikes. PROGRAM CATEGORY Educator housing Affordable housing preservation Middle-income housing Public housing Senior housing Low-income housing TOTALS *Estimated
HOMES PRODUCED OR PRESERVED* TIMELINE
ALLOCATION
ELIGIBLE AND PRIORITIZED USES
$2O mil. $3O mil.* $3O mil.* $15O mil. $15O mil. $22O mil. $6OO mil.
Construction of rental housing for public school and City College employees earning from 30% to 140% of area median income Acquisition and rehabilitation of existing buildings at risk of losing affordability Down-payment assistance for households earning between 80% and 200% of area median income Repairing and rebuilding distressed public housing developments and related infrastructure New affordable senior rental housing Construction, acquisition and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing
Source: Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development
not subject to rent control, and the supply of older, regulated units is dwindling. So city government has taken it upon itself to acquire, rehabilitate and administer legacy buildings to keep their tenants, and rents, stable. When a tenant leaves a city-
controlled unit, rents remain restricted. In privately owned buildings, by comparison, rent-controlled units can reset to market rates for new tenants. In 2015, city voters approved a $310 million housing bond to fund construc-
6O 9O 9O 965 5OO 1,O5O 2,755
2020-2025 2020-2025 2020-2021 2020-2025 2020-2025 2020-2024
Graphic by Reid Brown // Public Press
tion or preservation of about 1,500 units of housing for vulnerable populations like low-income working families, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. A March report from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development shows more
“We know we are losing, year by year, large numbers of rent-controlled units.” — Fernando Martí, Co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations than $217 million of that money has been disbursed, with the rest expected to be spent through the beginning of 2020. The 2015 bond, like the November proposal, included money for preservation and rehabilitation of units. Several projects funded by the bond — acquiring small multi-unit buildings and managing them through the city’s low-income housing programs — have been completed. The 735 new units are at various stages of construction, with completion expected between 2020 and 2023. A city committee is studying whether affordable housing could be included in the city’s 10-year capital plan, as are parks and infrastructure, for example. That could establish an expectation of recurring cash infusions rather than requiring city leaders and advocates to declare every few years that San Francisco is in an unprecedented housing crisis and ought to invest aggressively in affordable homes. HOUSING BOND continued on Page 5
Even so, the potential money on the table is far from what it would take to “fix” the city’s housing crisis. That number? “Billions. It’s in the billions,” said Sam Moss, executive director of Mission Housing Development Corp., an affordablehousing developer. A shortfall in the number of units being produced also is apparent. “It’s an estimate, and it’s probably even a low estimate: We should be building a little over 2,000 units of affordable housing every year,” Martí said. Typically, he said, the city builds or preserves around 600 units of affordable housing a year, well under its goal. It takes considerable subsidy to construct below-marketrate units. Under the November bond, the cityfunded subsidy for each new unit would average about $210,000. But Moss Renters is quick to counter comvs.that building affordable units costplaints Landlords ing up to $800,000 each is too expensive. “I would like to stress: Cost per unit is a very difficult metric to compare affordable housing to market-rate housing, because when we build a new building, we also build a lot of infrastructure on the ground floor,” he said, referring to things like artist space, a computer lab, child care, a food pantry and tutoring. “That goes into the total cost of the building. So, yes, it’s expensive, but there’s a lot of social safety nets, that people who maybe have a higher socio-economic level take for granted.” Part of the reason San Francisco and its affordable-housing builders are stretching toward such lofty goals as billions of dollars and thousands more units is that the federal government has mostly stepped away from the fight over the past 40 years. “In some ways, we’re on our own,” said Kate Hartley, who at the time served as
HOUSING CRISIS
Photo by Laura Wenus// Public Press
Mayor London Breed adjusts the microphone for Stacey Provost during a rally in support of the housing bond measure at City Hall in July.
Photo by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
The Sunnydale public housing site is part of a city initiative to revitalize public housing. Once completed, the Sunnydale community will serve more than 1,500 families. The city initiative is partly paid for by a 2015 housing bond measure. director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, and has since moved to another role with the city. “Since essentially the Reagan administration, there’s been a very serious disinvestment in housing for low- and middleincome people at the federal level. When
redevelopment was dissolved in 2012, that deprived San Francisco and other localities of a significant source of funds for affordable housing.” Factor in a dramatic rise in construction costs — highest in the world last year, averaging $416 per square foot, according
to the management and consulting firm Turner & Townsend. Add to that a skilledlabor shortage in construction, the cost of land, the addition of thousands of jobs at a pace far outstripping new homes, and the cost of construction balloons quickly. But the pressure on San Francisco alone
may be lifting, Moss said, because of a regional effort to address a far-reaching crisis. California voters approved a $4 billion affordable-housing bond last year and state legislators continually propose regulatory changes to accelerate development. Also, other counties passed housing bonds in 2016 — $580 million in Alameda County and $950 million in Santa Clara County. “You know, I joke, but the housing crisis has started affecting middle-class white people. And so we’re going to solve it, finally. It might be crass, but that’s the truth,” said Moss. “I am cautiously optimistic that when you interview me in five years for the next bond, we’ll be living in a much better place.”
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Photo from Shades of San Francisco, S.F. Public Library
A certificate from 1972 gave a resident and his family preference to get new or rehabilitated housing in the Hunters Point redevelopment project. FILLMORE from Page 6
Photo from San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
A block bounded by Turk, Laguna, Eddy and Buchanan streets is cleared out in 1953 to make way for hundreds of low-income public housing units.
FILLMORE REVISITED
HUMAN REMOVAL
How redevelopment tore through the Western Addition, once a focal point of black community activism
Photo from Lee Sims Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TOOR) Photograph Collection, San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
Proponents of redevelopment pointed to poor upkeep, such as this dilapidated yard of a Fillmore Street house in 1971.
By Rachel Brahinsky
T
he Western Addition in the 1970s was still a hotbed for black radicalism, a center for the Black Panther Party, the welfare rights movement, and emergent civil rights groups. Activists had their hands in many pots, and were deeply connected to important organizations, movements, and religious institutions throughout the city and nationally. At the same time, and not coincidentally, it was a community in crisis, reeling from decades of fighting with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) over the fate of the community’s housing stock and its once-thriving business district. The neighborhood struggle was set off against a backdrop of rising downtown skylines, symbolic of the influx of corporate-backed development capital flooding into the city, which was angling to flow rapidly
into the village-like neighborhoods. Simply put, the Western Addition/Fillmore District community was locked in a battle for the right to exist in San Francisco. Although significant aspects of the city’s redevelopment scheme for the area were already completed or well underway before the mid-’60s, the decade of the ’70s was a time when community members amplified their struggle for permanence, drawing on the larger narratives of ethnic solidarity and sustainability that were ascending in San Francisco and nationally. Looking back from the 2000s as an outsider, it’s difficult to call much about the redevelopment plan a success. A walk down the drab beige, cement-heavy, lower Fillmore — a study in contrasts between a few remaining low-rent businesses and high-end restaurants that pay homage to the decimated 1940s Jazz district — reveals a muffled sense of place. The neigh-
borhood would feel entirely different had the Victorians that once lined these streets remained, as they do just a few blocks to the north, south, and west. Much more urgently: it’s not just the buildings that would be different — the population, had the city done more to fund rehabilitation than demolition, might be quite different as well. On the other hand, without the multiple complexes of affordable housing that now fill out the community, most black families — and nearly all of the low-income families that still live there outside of federal public housing — would probably be long gone from the Fillmore. These were mostly built through the Redevelopment Agency in the middle years of the long period of redevelopment that stretched from 1948 all the way to 2009. Much of this housing was a concession from the agency in response to intense community pressure. Residents had revolted quite dramatically in the FILLMORE continued on Page 7
1960s, laying bodies in front of bulldozers and clogging the SFRA’s top-down demolition program with lawsuits. Through the ’70s, residents worked to embed humane values in the bureaucracy, with some positive results. These facts are just some of many contradictions that make up the socio-geographic landscape of the Fillmore District. Conversations with activists, pastors, and residents who have remained since the ’70s uncover something of a communityscale existential crisis that is intimately connected to a larger demographic shift underway in San Francisco today. As the numbers of African-Americans in the city decline year by year (since the peak in 1970), the city’s black cultural and economic base has eroded tremendously. In the 2000s a mayoral task force convened to study the “black exodus,” which largely stems from the nexus of rising housing costs with the continued erosion of the black community’s economic stability. It’s a story that has played out in many northern cities, where black families have moved to the more affordable suburban fringes, but the speed of San Francisco’s AfricanAmerican dispersal has been unmatched nationally — and it essentially began here the moment the first bulldozers hit the Fillmore in 1953. Most accounts of urban renewal blame a walled-in imperial Redevelopment Agency, which is an appropriate and easy target — since most of the key players are gone from the spotlight or have died. But the agency was not the only player, and a look at the ’70s uncovers a time of both dynamic opposition and determined cooperation in the black community as it struggled to both be a “community” and to reform and challenge the top-down politics that characterized urban planning in the 1950s and ’60s.
Copyright Rachel Brahinsky. Book chapter excerpted and lightly adapted, with permission of Chris Carlsson and Lisa Ruth Elliott, editors, from “Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-1978,” published by City Lights Books, 2011. https://sfpr.es/i29brahinsky.
[…] A 1974 independent documentary film built the case against redevelopment with a sharp critique of the city’s plans by a young Arnold Townsend (later to become Rev. Townsend). “The problems of urban decay that face the Fillmore… were manufactured,” he insisted, noting that the first public step in the crusade to tear down the Fillmore was a newspaper campaign highlighting isolated examples of deterioration and extreme overcrowding. Images of boarded-up businesses and vacant lots shared space on the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle with 1940s and ’50s headlines reading “San Francisco Slum Areas Breed Disease,” “More Blighted Housing Found in SF,” and “City Planners to Move 10,000 Out of Slum Area.” Those headlines presaged the initiation of a complete re-scaping of the neighborhood, a concept that was first hatched back in the 1940s when business leaders formed an alliance focused on revamping a few key neighborhoods. It was one prominent variation of a nationwide effort to restore land values in US central cities following the Great Depression and World War II. The racial and political overtones of the choices made (in terms of which neighborhoods would be targeted for change) set off decades of community response. What had been pitched nationally as “urban renewal” was re-christened by writer James Baldwin as “Negro removal.” Indeed, many redevelopment zones selected in San Francisco were workingclass areas, often home to people of color, including the old produce market near the Embarcadero (now developed as the Golden Gateway), South of Market (which was home to working-class single room occupancy hotel dwellers and gay leather bars), two massive portions of the Western Addition, which by then was largely (but not entirely) African-American and Japanese-American, and Hunters Point Hill, by then a largely African-American community overlooking the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. City planners and mayors legally justified their claims to these spaces by naming them “blighted,” and called for an urban reclaiming in the name of the public good. The public that would benefit the most from these new land claims was a specific group, narrowly defined. As best described in Chester Hartman’s epic City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco, a downtown-government coalition emerged to promote a very specifically targeted urban makeover. The rise of businessclass leaders as de facto urban planners was solidified through the formation of the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee and the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), which promoted targeted neighborhood revivals that emphasized demolition rather than preservation. Redevelopment czar M. Justin Herman, by most accounts a brilliant and autocratic official, was the agency’s most infamous figurehead. City officials — organized after passage of the federal 1949 Housing Act through the new Redevelopment Agency — first identified what would be named Western Addition A-1 by the mid-’50s, basically in tandem with the City’s plan to widen Geary Street into a four-lane boulevard at the in-
Photo by Larry Mitchell // San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue, San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library
A Victorian at Octavia and Sutter crushes two cars after a 1959 demolition mishap. It slipped its foundation after workers pulled down an adjacent building.
How enormous S.F. redevelopment projects rocked Western Addition
ary zoning (which requires a portion of new housing developments contribute to a city’s affordable housing stock), local hiring requirements (so that development projects employ local residents), and the mandate that governments provide replacement housing for redevelopment evictees. The black community in the Fillmore was largely made of three wings, as activist Wade “Speedy” Woods remembers it. The ministers and few remaining business owners made up one flank; the Afro-centric cultural nationalists (following Kwanzaa creator Maulana Karenga) formed another; Woods was part of a third, politicized wing, made up of the Panthers and many others who were focused on class struggle. The three were not necessarily at odds with each other; it was a time during which African-American politics was consciously expanding and evolving. All three camps were connected to the greater Bay Area black political scene, where black people were challenging the white power structures of the East Bay (gaining some institutional success through the election of black — and self-proclaimed socialist — Ron Dellums to the US Congress in 1970). Terry Collins, who migrated from Indiana via Los Angeles in 1967, remembers study groups where people read Marx’s Photo left by Bill Koska // San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library. Right: San Francisco Redevelopment Records, San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library “Capital,” and where political consciousness At left, heavy equipment brings down buildings at Laguna Street and Golden Gate Avenue late in 1970. At right, an aerial view of the was crafted through a collective process. Fillmore Center site of the Western Addition redevelopment project in the early 1970s. Collins was sucked into the redevelopment fight immediately, and became an active tersection of Fillmore Street. The 44-block class and largely African-American lower was felt in the Fillmore. Residents had member of WACO. “We watched Victorians area of A-1 included a small chunk of lower Fillmore from the generally white and become increasingly radicalized through on Gough Street ripped to the ground. I Fillmore Street, spanning from Japantown increasingly wealthy Pacific Heights. By the formation of the Western Addition Comactually cried,” he remembers now. out to St. Mary’s Cathedral at the corner then a larger zone, A-2, was also underway. munity Organization (WACO) a few years A group steeped in Saul Alinsky’s orgaof Geary and Gough (the Japantown mall, The new project increased the SFRA zone earlier, in a political milieu that was heavnizing model, and inspired by the antimany nearby hotels, and the massive catheby 60 square blocks, from Van Ness Avenue ily inflected with the national and internabulldozer writings of Jane Jacobs, WACO dral were all products of the A-1 plan). on the east side to St. Joseph’s Street to the tional movements of the times. There were was the central organization for radical It was just one piece of what had become west (near Masonic), and north to south cooperative houses where residents tried anti-SFRA activism. (Herman opposed the City’s primary majority African-Amerfrom Bush to Grove Streets. carving out alternative lifestyles. WACO, calling it a “passing flurry ican neighborhood, during the population The A-2 program did not move forward James Farmer’s Congress of Racial of proletarianism.”) Collins had boom that came with the World War II with the same pace and vigor as A-1, Equality had an active local chaplinked up with WACO as a memlabor surge — and with the forced removal largely because the A-1 experience polititer, and many residents were ember of the Black Students Union and extended incarceration of Japanesecized the community — and because an broiled in the San Francisco State (BSU), based at San Francisco American families in isolated camps during A-1-related lawsuit forced the SFRA to College (later University) fight for State. The SF State branch was the war. Property owners in the district, promise replacement homes for the disethnic studies programming that a largely working-class group, once the area was named blighted and placed. The trick of holding the SFRA (or erupted that same year. The Black part of a national web of BSUs, targeted for demolition, stopped or slowed any agency) to that goal is still a problem Panther Party had an office on Filldevoted to tying student members repairs in anticipation of the neighborhood today, but a 1968 lawsuit was one of many more Street, near the intersection to local community struggles. (The overhaul. While SFRA policies called for legal efforts nationally that gave displacees of Eddy Street (on the block where BSU mission had been sealed at the purchase of structures and payment to a legal promise of relocation assistance. Yoshi’s jazz club was for many the 1967 Black Youth Conference Renters families to leave rentals, displaced families The fight against A-1 had offered a years; now the Fillmore Heritage Center), vs. in Los Angeles — the same event that Landlords and businesses reported dealing with intemplate for resistance in the next round. alongside neighbors who had played a key spawned the boycott threat against the timidation tactics and years-long struggles The fight over A-2 would be materially difrole in electing a young and relatively radi1968 Olympics.) Graduates from this time to get loans or other support to keep their ferent, with more community participation cal African-American candidate, Willie were among the founders of KPOO radio structures whole, struggles that typically and more affordable housing built. Still the Brown, to the very white California State (89.5 FM), the first black-owned indepenended with their displacement. Many were SFRA would demolish hundreds of strucAssembly back in 1964. dent station in the western US. not technically evicted, but they argue that tures by 1970, displacing 10,000-13,000 In the context of the federal War on […] by virtue of facing a system that refused to people. Poverty, which created funding streams One of the key figures in the community help them invest and develop, their proper[…] for social programs, many of the keystone was Mary Rogers, a neighborhood icon selfties crumbled and were then easily devalideas of the affordable housing movement schooled in redevelopment legalese. Rogers ued as slum structures by the SFRA. POLITICS AND NETWORKS emerged during this time, and the Western was one of many residents who risked their By the mid-’60s, most of the A-1 demoAddition housing battles — which influlives in front of the city’s bulldozers, and lition was complete, with 4,000 people The double blows to civil rights politics enced policymakers like Brown and US she remained an outspoken advocate until displaced — and Geary Street had become represented in the slayings of Martin LuCongressman Phil Burton — played a key her death in 2006. a “Mason-Dixon Line” dividing a workingther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 role. This included policies like inclusion“Mary was the one,” remembers Collins. “She knew more about this stuff than anybody. She saved so many houses. A lot of the 236 [federally funded affordable] housing was because of her. She was involved in education, housing, welfare rights, everything.” Rogers was part of a political cohort that included many female leaders, as Collins recalls: “There were a lot of women who were really something in those days, really strong women who’d get out and fight against any injustice: Inez Andres, Lily Ransom, so many others.”
HOUSING CRISIS
Left: Lee Sims TOOR Photograph Collection, San Francisco History Center, S.F. Public Library. Right: Shades of San Francisco, S.F. Public Library
A member of Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment explains his group’s concern while protesting across the street from the Convention and Visitors Bureau Annual Luncheon in 1971. Right, Mayor Dianne Feinstein and other officials at the 1984 groundbreaking ceremony for Sutter Park West, the first redevelopment complex to go up in the Western Addition.
Rachel Brahinsky is an associate professor of politics and urban studies at the University of San Francisco, where she directs the master of arts program in urban and public affairs. Her book, with Alexander Tarr, “A People’s Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area,” is forthcoming in 2020 from University of California Press.
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New S.F. Legislation Could Lead to Housing Density Increase together they would strengthen the city’s program to “bring thousands of units to the ver the past decade, waves of real city.” estate development and gentrification He added that “it is a big deal in the have crashed upon San Francisco’s east sense that it’s changing people’s perspective side — especially the Mission District in how they approach density.” and South of Market neighborhood — inSupervisor Aaron Peskin, who in 2016 undating it with new residents, increasing sponsored the legislation creating the city’s congestion and dramatically altering the program, said he supported greater housing local character. density and giving property owners tools The rest of the city has been relatively to foster that. But he underlined that this untouched. But that might start marked a dramatic shift in urban changing, though only slightly. planning. That’s because accessory dwell“Let’s talk about what this is. ing units — often called ADUs or This is legislation that, for all in-law units — can now be built as intents and purposes, means that part of new single-family homes, single-family zoning in San Franbecause of legislation the Board of cisco no longer exists,” Peskin said. Supervisors passed in June. PreviZoning designates what can be ously, the additional units could be built where, specifying residential, added only after the main dwelling commercial or mixed use, and it can was built. limit housing density. The new regulations, sponSingle-family homes account for Renters sored by Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, 27% of all housing units in San could gradually increase housing density vs. Francisco but take up 62% of the city’s Landlords citywide, especially in western neighborresidential land, according to the San Franhoods, with many of the new units being cisco Planning Department’s 2018 Housing rent-controlled. The approval process could Needs and Trends Report. also accelerate for units that satisfy all The legislation was intended to also renlocal design requirements, because the der moot a lawsuit by the California Rentpublic may no longer appeal to the city’s ers Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, a Planning Commission to review them. The nonprofit organization led by Sonja Trauss, changes make San Francisco’s Accessory who helped found the local Yes in My Back Dwelling Unit Program conform with state Yard movement. The pro-building group law, which already allows the units in new sued San Francisco in December 2018 construction. because the city’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Safaí acknowledged that this legislation Program failed to follow the state’s requirewas unlikely to spur a rush of development. ments that builders be able to incorporate He said other regulations would follow, and extra units into new construction, and that By Noah Arroyo // Public Press
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HOUSING CRISIS
the units satisfying all local zoning laws be exempt from discretionary review — a process in which members of the public can ask city staff to consider whether a project should proceed. The nonprofit group argued that the local program was slowing down dwelling unit construction, thereby increasing costs that eventually hit renters. “The city is guaranteeing that the only ADUs approved will be constructed by those with the most money and able to charge the highest rents,” wrote the Education Fund’s Dylan Casey. But in July, Casey said that the group was satisfied with the legislation. “We are in the process of voluntarily dismissing our lawsuit with the city,” he said Through the city’s program, such dwelling units are rent-controlled as a condition for waiving design requirements, such as for bicycle parking or open space. That means the rent is generally set at the market rate for a new tenant, with modest annual increases thereafter regulated by the Rent Board. Without the city waivers, these units would not be covered by rent control, which applies to buildings constructed before 1979. Accessory dwelling units are not allowed on properties where tenants have been permanently evicted within the previous five years through an owner move in, or within the previous 10 years as part of a condominium conversion, demolition, lead abatement, rehabilitation or improvement to the structure. Mark Hogan, a principal architect at OpenScope Studio and a specialist in ADU construction, said the legislation’s impact
would be limited. Commissioner Rich Hillis said that if he “There are barely any vacant singlehad his way, these units would be required family lots” for developers to build the new in all new single-family homes and small projects, Hogan said, “so it’s never going to multifamily buildings. “I’d like to see develbe common.” In its 2018 Housing Inventory, opers build to maximum density,” he said. the Planning Department said that only 37 Absent that sea change, Hillis called the single-family homes were built that year. legislation “a great solution.” Sean Keighran, president of the Residen“Is it going to solve the housing crisis in tial Builders Association of San and of itself? No,” he said. “But Francisco, agreed. Compared with it’s one additional tool.” the cost of building a larger strucAn uptick in construction would ture, designing an ADU into a be a good thing in light of the project is “kind of a wash,” he said. persistent housing crisis, said “There’s no financial incentive for Charley Goss, government and us to do this.” community affairs manager at Instead, Keighran said, the the San Francisco Apartment impact will occur incrementally as Association. The group’s members Supervisor the Planning Commission weighs include more than 4,000 landAhsha Safaí in on projects that must come lords, more than half of whom sponsored the before it because they do not fully own either single-family homes or legislation. satisfy city code. In exchange for buildings with between one and approval, the commission often four units. asks builders to modify their projects in Goss said some property owners might ways that increase density, he said. This welcome the Planning Commission’s atlegislation will give them an additional tempts to tack additional units onto projmeans to do that. ects, if it helped clear bureaucratic hurdles. “The commission will exercise this right “That’s a carrot for sure,” he said. “A lot and ask people to put them in,” Keighran of our members get nothing but sticks.” said. But he questioned how many owners Planning Commissioner Myrna Melgar would actually take a bite out of that carconfirmed that intent. “That’s exactly what rot. Presumably, they want a single-family we’re trying to do,” she said. home, with all its appeal. And the commission may have frequent “It’s more privacy, you don’t have people opportunities to do it. living on site, you don’t have a tenant who “At least once a week, it comes before us potentially could live there for the rest of that someone wants to build a single-family their life,” he said. house,” Melgar said, adding that projects “Would those people all of a sudden, willtend to be in western neighborhoods — the ingly put themselves under potentially rent Richmond and the Sunset, and Ingleside. control?” Goss asked. “Maybe, maybe not.”
Little interest in S.F. to limit ability to claim banked rent hikes BANKED from Page 1
sonal incomes inadequate to afford necessities like housing, health care, transportation and food, according to a 2015 study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of British Columbia. Because the San Francisco Rent Board doesn’t track when landlords apply banked increases, there is no data on how common the practice is across the city’s roughly 172,000 rent-controlled housing units. Key information about affected tenants — age, duration of tenancy or whether the increase caused displacement — is not tracked. To the landlord, a banked increase is merely a delayed increase that’s inevitable, and “rent increases are a lifeline to survival for a lot of our members,” said Charley Goss, government and community affairs manager at the San Francisco Apartment Association, a landlords organization. Tenants “are better off in the long run if the owner banks their increases,” Goss said. When an increase is banked, it means the tenant is saving money by paying less than the landlord is allowed to collect. Even when a banked increase happens later, the tenant keeps those savings. “Whether they budget or not is a tough thing. But, quite frankly, it’s not the role of the landlord,” Goss said. Noni Richen, landlord and president of the Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute, said that like tenants, many landlords of rent-controlled buildings are perched on the financial edge. “Most people do the increase every year, and they need every penny,” she said. But she defended the practice of rent banking. “I think that I’m sort of a free-market person. I think it should be available,” Richen said. She recalled a particularly good tenant who had a low income and was on disability. She said she wanted to retain him, and knew that he would have struggled to afford any type of increase, so “we just opted not to do it.” Every year, the city’s Rent Board tells owners of rent-controlled buildings the maximum percentage that they may raise rents, based on fluctuations in regional inflation. Over the last decade the median annual limit was 1.9%, and this year’s limit is 2.6% through February 2020. Here’s how a banked increase would work: If someone paid $1,000 per month in 2009, and the landlord banked all subsequent rent increases, then in 2019 the monthly rent could rise by a maximum of $153, or about 15%. That’s an additional $1,836 for the year. Though such an increase would likely be negligible for many working in tech, finance or other highly paid professions, it could prove daunting to seniors or low-wage earners struggling to make ends meet. Tenants can actually wind up paying more when landlords layer other legal increases — such as so-called pass-throughs. Pass-throughs let landlords recoup costs for such things as electrical work, mandatory seismic retrofits or additional property taxes resulting from voter-approved bond measures. Many of these levies are temporary, though others can last years or be permanent. Landlords must often petition the Rent Board for pass-throughs. The board reviews those requests, and may exempt tenants who prove financial hardship. Not so with banked rent increases, which cannot be blocked because of a tenant’s financial situation. Landlords don’t have to notify the Rent Board or get its approval to apply these raises, but they are supposed to give tenants documents explaining the underlying math. Landlords also don’t have to notify tenants annually when passing up an increase or inform them that banked rents
could be collected in the future. Actually, no one gives tenants a headsup about this possibility — including the Rent Board, which does not provide tenants information about how banking works. “And I doubt anyone would read it if we did,” said Robert Collins, the board’s executive director. Tenants are on their own. They can petition the board to see whether a banked increase is illegal if, for example, it’s greater than the accumulated percentage of the foregone annual increases.
claims. “For decades, San Francisco residents have been and continue to be able to enjoy the benefits of a rent-controlled rent,” a spokesman said via email. “That’s designed to be fair to residents and fair to property owners who operate the properties to exacting city, state and Federal requirements. “We at Veritas are committed to the happiness of every one of our Residents, we welcome every Resident to stay in their apartments as long as they wish, and we work with every Resident who raises concerns of affordability.” Veritas is the target of a lawsuit by 106 of its tenants, living in 39 buildings, who allege that the company fosters poor living conditions in order to push long-term residents out. Veritas denies the allegations.
ALAMEDA RETHINKS ‘BANKING’
POLITICAL INERTIA
San Francisco is one of 10 Bay Area cities that control rents — there are at least five others statewide — though policies vary, according to a 2018 study by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. All are subject to the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which restricts cities’ abilities to enact or expand rent control. The city of Alameda, which adopted rent control in 2016, offers a sharp contrast to San Francisco regarding rent banking. In April, the Alameda City Council tasked staff with researching best practices in other cities for how to craft a rent-control program almost entirely from scratch. On July 2, the council reviewed those findings and deliberated late into the night. Perhaps the most contentious question: How to set the rules on rent banking to prevent abuse by landlords and benefit lowincome tenants? They were divided on even allowing it. “I actually don’t like the idea of banking,” said Councilwoman Malia Vella, arguing it would effectively push out tenants who couldn’t afford the increase. “OK, you’re going to get a 6.5% increase this year. And next year you’re going to get another 6.5% increase. ... I don’t know who is able to afford 6.5%.” Vella advocated giving landlords a simple choice each year of raising rents or not. But Vice Mayor John Knox White argued that the city would be “cutting off our nose to spite our face” if it didn’t allow banking, because landlords would be more likely to take the maximum increase every year. “Banking incentivizes landlords to lower the rent now, with a possibility that they might go back up to where they would have been” in the future, White said. “The renter who had a landlord who banked for three years, that renter has paid significantly less year over year.” Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft said she wanted to limit how much of a banked increase a landlord could impose each year. City staff had recommended a 5% ceiling, but Ashcraft said that “strikes me as a little high,” because it would be in addition to the regular annual increase that the landlord could impose. Vella agreed that 5% was too high. So that renters were never caught by surprise, she suggested allowing banking only when tenants consented. White pushed back. “I just think that makes it too complicated,” he said, adding that the inconvenience might discourage landlords from banking at all. Ashcraft laughed. “OK, um, so this is a little more complex than I was hoping.” Councilman Tony Daysog opposed the whole rent-control program that was being considered. He presented U.S. Census Bureau data showing that, for almost all years from 2005 through 2017, most Alameda renters on average paid less than 30 percent of their incomes on rent. People paying beyond that proportion are considered “burdened” by housing costs, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “That’s the data that really we need to focus on, because that’s telling a story that
Why did San Francisco sculpt its bankedrent policy this way? “There was a bit of a learning curve,” said Polly Marshall, appointed to the Rent Board in 1984 by then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Marshall had a background in housing-policy activism and had begun a career practicing law, specializing in affordable-housing finance and development. On the Rent Board, Marshall was one of two commissioners appointed to seats reserved for tenants. Two others are landlords, and a fifth commissioner is considered neutral. She served on the board until April, when Mayor London Breed chose not to renew her term. Marshall said the city’s rent banking policy was the brainchild of politically centrist Supervisor Louise Renne, who wanted to make landlords feel comfortable foregoing rent increases by giving them the option to impose them later. “It really was seen as tenant-protective,” Marshall said. Back then, “it wasn’t the professional gigantic landlords that are dominant today and are using the banking in their purchase or sale agreements.” If the city supervisors were interested in revisiting rent banking, they would logically first ask the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office to research other cities’ approaches. But to date, no such request has been received, said Fred Brousseau, the office’s director of policy analysis. The Public Press asked all district supervisors whether this was on their agendas. Three of their offices responded. “In the year that we’ve been here, I haven’t heard a ton about this” from constituents, said Juan Carlos Cancino, legislative aide to District 5 Supervisor Vallie Brown. “We have no plans to take any legislative action on this topic,” said Ivy Lee, legislative aide to board President Norman Yee, who represents District 7. “We have very little constituent contacts in regards to any displacement as a result of the banking of rent increases.” Supervisor Hillary Ronen, representing District 9, said that “this has not been an issue that we have heard many complaints about from our constituents.” Mecca, however, said the problem is real. “If the city is really serious about stopping displacement, the city’s got to look at the whole pass-through and banking thing,” he said. “Something has to happen here.” Changing the policy might not even be controversial. Goss said he could envision landlords surviving without banking as long as the city didn’t void unimposed banked increases. Richen agreed that rent banking is not a crucial tool, and added that it in fact can carry financial risks for the landlord. She cited her experience of about a decade ago, when her tenant petitioned the Rent Board to review his rent. The board found it had been too high — Richen said the discrepancy was slightly more than $100 per month — and she had to repay him three years’ rent, or about $8,000. That was the last banked increase she attempted. “We learned our lesson,” she said.
Photo by Sharon Wickham // Public Press
Former Rent Board commissioner Polly Marshall, above, said the policy on banking increases was designed to protect tenants. Tommi Avicolli Mecca, below left, of the Housing Rights Committee of S.F., objects to banked increases being transferred between building owners. Charley Goss, of the Apartment Association, below right, says banking benefits tenants.
landlords, for the most part, are doing their level best to provide affordable rents,” said Daysog. After 3½ hours of debate, the council voted 4-1 for several restrictions on banked increases for a rent-controlled tenancy: • Landlords must notify City Hall of every banked increase. • A landlord’s total bank may grow to a maximum of 8%. • In a single year, landlords may draw from their bank to increase the rent by a maximum of 3%. This is in addition to the regulated base annual increase — which, like San Francisco’s, is calculated on regional inflation. • Banked increases may not occur in consecutive years, and cannot happen more than three times during the same tenancy. • The bank of unapplied increases zeroes out when a building is sold. Alameda was inspired by other cities’ policies, some of which were relatively new. As of 2018, Richmond landlords can use their banked increases to raise tenants’ rents by up to 5% in a single year, layered on top of the base annual increase that the Richmond Rent Board has issued. But in years when the board’s allowed increase already surpasses 5%, landlords can’t tap into their banks at all. And in 2016, Mountain View legislated that the annually allowed increase, plus any banked increases, cannot raise a tenant’s rent more than 10% in a single year. Banked increases are voided when a building is sold.
UNFETTERED IN S.F. San Francisco, by comparison, can be seen as the Wild West of rent banking. There’s no limit on the amount of banked increases, which can stretch all the way back to 1982, when the current policy was in place. Landlords may grow their banks to any size, and may tap into any portion
of that bank in a single year, as long as they provide 60-day notices for increases surpassing 10%. That means a landlord who never raised the rent in the past 37 years could impose a non-negotiable hike of 95% in 2020. And when a rent-controlled building is sold, the previous owner’s banked increases pass to the buyer. This especially irks Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee. “I feel like, if a landlord decides not to take a rent increase, then why should a new landlord be able to go back and take it? I don’t understand the rationale,” Mecca said. “Because Prop. 13,” said Goss of the Apartment Association, referring to the 1978 state ballot measure that caps annual property-tax increases. Reassessments occur when real estate changes hands. “OK, so I bought my building in 1965, my property taxes were capped in 1978, when Prop. 13 passed. You buy it from me, and yours aren’t,” Goss said. “It’s going to cost you potentially twice as much to run that building, just because of the property taxes.” What if the buyer could no longer inherit the increases, making it more difficult to break even? “The worst-case scenario would be disinvestment in San Francisco,” Goss said. “It’ll just be people not buying these buildings and then not maintaining them.” But Mecca said it’s the giant corporate landlord Veritas Investments Inc., not individual buyers, that he and his colleagues have seen capitalizing on banked increases. “Sometimes I think that might be a business model,” Mecca said. “You buy a building, you know that the rents are low, there’s a good number of long-term tenants, so you buy with the idea that you’re going to do a banked increase” in concert with other types of rent pass-throughs. “What I’ve seen is, a new landlord comes in and they immediately hit the tenant with everything at once,” Mecca said. Landlords win either way — tenants generate more revenue or get priced out, making way for people who will pay much more. In rent-controlled units, rents may rise to the market rate when new tenants move in. Mecca said the cumulative rent hikes can blindside a tenant on a tight budget who has been “counting on the generosity of the landlord” for years before finding themselves with a new owner. Veritas did not directly address these
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, FALL 2019 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | 9
With cameras and smartphones, people document the changes in coastal areas
Addressing Sea Level Rise Through Citizen Science By Casey O’Brien // Shareable
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oastal communities across the United States are experiencing tangible impacts of climate change as sea level rise worsens. “Sunny-day flooding” and “king tides” range from annoyance to serious danger in cities like Miami, San Francisco and Seattle. Coastal commissions and city planners are working against the clock to calculate and prepare for a future in which entire neighborhoods may disappear. In order to create effective plans, sea level rise and flood rates need to be carefully documented. But the sheer scale of the problem makes it difficult to track for scientists and lawmakers; researchers simply can’t be everywhere. In California, advocacy groups have found a solution: Citizen scientists from impacted neighborhoods can track sea level rise, and their findings can be put into public databases that can be utilized by thought leaders to understand the state of sea level rise in their community. The King Tides Project, run by the California Coastal Commission, is a successful example of a citizen-science tracking project. The project’s map (available to the public) tracks sea level rise all over the state through photos submitted by local citizen scientists. To participate, citizens need just a camera or smartphone — they take photos of the rise in their area and submit them to the commission to be put into its database. Whitney Berry is the climate change program manager for the Ocean Protection Council, a close partner of the commission, that utilizes the project and hosts it on the council’s website. She said citizen science is immensely useful for research like hers: Citizen science “advances scientific research by providing extra hands or eyes, and it includes everyone, so you get participation from folks who might not have a Ph.D. or a master’s degree, but they have years of local knowledge and have a closer relationship with the area.” Citizen-science projects help researchers, but they are also beneficial for communities that participate. The King Tides Project and those like it are opportunities to increase scientific literacy and foster critical thinking about climate change through the lens of local needs. “Citizen science allows a better engagement with local people. Just by getting engaged they raise awareness and become a bigger part of the scientific discussion. … It gives people a glimpse into
Photo by Tom Hilton // Creative Commons via Flickr
King tide flooding along Highway 101 in Marin County submerged some of the Sausalito-to-Mill Valley bike path and threatened parked cars in December 2018. the field,” Berry explained. Sea level rise tracking lends itself particularly to citizen science, because participants don’t need specialized knowledge or training, and they can take photos of whatever they feel drawn to, since impacts can be seen in a variety of ways. Pictures might be of flooded sidewalks or higherthan-usual tides, erosion and other visible signs of the changes that sea level rise can cause a place. Photos taken before and after king tide season, to show the impact that tides have, are particularly helpful, Berry explained. “One of the great parts about the sea level rise project is that it’s really easy to access. We have other projects, like one where we train scuba divers. But
for that project, you need to know how to scuba, have the equipment, (and) the time to learn,” Berry said. “With this, anyone can do it with their phone and we get photos of what people care about. … I often tell people to take photos of areas that are impacted which have a special connection to them emotionally, like a favorite park, so we can see that.” When the photos are taken, they are used in data bases and reports to help guide policy. Photos from the King Tides Project were used to develop the Ocean Protection Council’s Sea-Level Rise Guidance, which is being updated. The council also uses the photos to drive home the realities of climate change through community engagement.
“Sea level rise is one of the most obvious manifestations of climate change, and it helps people to see that it is real and it is going to impact them,” Berry explained. “When you show people photos of these areas that they are used to seeing, like San Francisco, it is huge.” For those interested in participating in the project in their own community, safety is paramount; Berry advised to make sure to stay away from areas that are too risky to walk or where waves are dangerously high. She also recommended that participants be aware of delicate species that could be in the area, since during hightide events, animals will often be seeking shelter themselves. Interested community
members can also attend local city council meetings or coastal planning meetings, and advocate for action on sea level rise in their community. The photos taken through citizen-science projects like the King Tide Project are invaluable to researchers and policymakers. “It serves as a living record of change,” Berry said. Casey O’Brien is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Shareable is a nonprofit news, action and connection hub for the sharing transformation. King Tides Project: https://sfpr.es/i29-tides.
10 California School Districts Show Slow, Uneven Progress Under Common Core By John Fensterwald // EdSource
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or five years, a San Francisco foundation funded, and a research organization closely monitored, a collaboration by 10 California districts to raise achievement under the Common Core math standards. With math proficiency lagging behind English language arts performance on the new academic standards, the project took on one of the biggest impediments to student success and challenges facing California schools. The findings, laid out in six lengthy studies, are both sobering and encouraging. Progress was slow and uneven, and average increases in standardized test scores, which have been largely stagnant statewide, were small, with considerable variation among districts and schools. There was an upward trend in third through sixth grades toward the end of the initiative in 2018. And there was some progress among English learners in those districts, compared with English learners statewide, but no closing of the gap between English learners and other students. There was no increase in middle school scores. Yet the findings of the reports also offer insights from trial and error and a consensus, developed over time, on promising strategies and instructional choices to raise the odds of improvement in math. The overall watchword is patience, said Neal Finkelstein, co-director of the Innovation Studies program at WestEd, the San Francisco nonprofit research and policy organization that evaluated and provided technical help for the districts. Math in Common, as the K-8 program was called, produced “not a crazy miracle” but a noticeable gain in the latter years, he said. Meaningful improvement in Common Core math will require “long, enduring, grinding progress” that touches “every teacher, every day,” he said. “There is not a shortcut to it.” The S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation funded Math in Common. The 10 districts were chosen, out of 27 invited to apply, because they had shown some success in raising achievement with some capability and systems to implement the then-new math standards. The unified districts, with an average of 72 percent low-income students, were Dinuba, Elk Grove, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Oakland, Oceanside, Sacramento City, San Francisco, Sanger and Santa Ana. Bechtel spent more than $50 million on the program. Bechtel paid for periodic meetings of the districtwide teams, additional math specialists, in-school and in-district trainings and the collaboration time of math teachers since 2013. That
was when districts were beginning to turn their attention to the significant shifts in instruction and concepts demanded by Common Core math. California Education Partners of San Francisco, which directs education networks throughout the state, oversaw the initiative. Districts received grants ranging from $2.5 million for small districts like Sanger and Dinuba to $7 million for Long Beach over five years. “There was no model for implementing Common Core” when the initiative started, and the foundation was “agnostic” about approaches, said Arron Jiron, Bechtel’s associate program director for education. “We wanted to shine a light on what worked. We wanted districts to figure out how to do it within their own visions and capture what they learned, mistakes and all.” The five-year effort did not shake the foundation’s or the districts’ faith in the Common Core standards. But there were — and still are — what WestEd called “roadblocks” to effective implementation. There was a shortage of good materials and textbooks on Common Core math, leading teachers to spend immense time creating their own lesson plans. There weren’t teachers in every school with the expertise to improve instruction, and districts couldn’t find substitutes or schedule release time for collaboration. Based on their experiences, some teachers were skeptical of dedicating time to “continuous improvement.” But over time, districts came up with “routes” around roadblocks. They refined strategies and came to realizations — WestEd calls them “inflection points” — that guided their work and hold promise for other districts and providers of assistance, primarily county offices of education. Among those are the following: Pursue district collaborations. They can make a difference. Districts, like teachers, “can learn more quickly and effectively together than by working in isolation,” the studies concluded. The reports pointed to practices and ideas that districts shared, like Dinuba Unified’s adoption of Garden Grove’s “math huddles” — monthly meetings of all elementary schools’ head math teachers. District teams should include math experts and administrators committed to the effort with the power to make decisions. Collaborations also need time to build trust to encourage candor about successes and failures. Narrow the focus to a specific area of instruction. That might appear obvious, but it often isn’t. Districts tried to tackle too many math standards at once and the district teams should have shifted their focus sooner from “vision statements” to improvements in instruction. “District staff should not try to tackle every facet —
Photo courtesy of Phil Halperin // California Education Partners
Haley Marquez, a teacher in the Sanger Unified district, and district administrator Karl Kesterke, join the discussion during a meeting of the Math in Common collaborative. or even most facets — of systems change all at once,” WestEd wrote. Make mastery of “academic discourse” a district priority. Academic discourse refers to the ability of students to show orally and in writing that they understand what they have learned, by explaining the logic behind their own answers and critiquing the reasoning of others. One of eight fundamental practices of Common Core math, along with the abilities to reason abstractly and apply math logic outside the classroom, the Math in Common districts eventually chose it as their focus. Academic discourse presents perhaps the biggest Common Core challenge, since it requires that teachers move “away from memorization, drills and rote procedures” toward a “deeper conceptual understanding” of math, Rebecca Perry, senior program associate at WestEd, wrote. It also “ups the ante” for what districts need to do to successfully and equitably implement the standards, particularly with English learners. Concentrate professional development at the school level. Common Core demands that teachers teach differently, moving from lectures to encouraging student problem-solving. These are new skills best developed through teachers working together in school-based work groups centered on lesson planning, not districtled trainings. These efforts require release time for teachers to meet and a math coach or, if there are not enough coaches to go around, a lead school math teacher. Dis-
tricts that relied on the strategy of having teachers train other teachers reported poor participation if teachers lack confidence in lead teachers’ expertise. San Francisco created podcasts for tips on lesson plans. Observe teachers in their classrooms. “We have data on student outcomes, but we still know little about what teachers do in the classroom that influences those outcomes,” WestEd wrote. Direct observation is critical to helping teachers improve. But the factors for learning are hard to analyze and measure. Garden Grove has revised its tool for measuring lesson effectiveness a dozen times. After analyzing 201 lessons in 141 classrooms in nine of the 10 districts in the project, WestEd staff found little improvement in instruction over three years but concluded the rubric it used may have been too complex. Although gathering observation data was difficult and time intensive, most participating districts felt it should it be “a firm priority“ to understand implementation success, WestEd wrote. Develop principals’ instructional leadership. Shifting professional development from the district office to schools magnifies the importance of principals’ role as instructional leaders and advocates for math instruction and resources. Principals ideally should participate in classroom observations and teacher trainings. Those who have not been in the classroom for years or have not taught math find these roles difficult. In some districts participating in the initiative, math coaches tutored principals and created separate learning
groups for them. WestEd concluded that Math in Common has provided “many valuable lessons” on how to implement the standards, but Jiron, of Bechtel, and others acknowledge it’s not clear where other school districts will find funding to hire more math specialists in the elementary grades and the expertise to help them shift instructional practices. Six years ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown appropriated $1.25 billion for districts to implement the Common Core, with a choice of spending the money on training, materials or technology; districts spent the most on technology. Since then the state has dedicated no one-time money or ongoing funding for professional development, leaving it up to districts, under local control, to decide whether to spend anything on standards implementation. The 2019-20 state budget does provide $14 million in federal funding to create a 21st Century California School Leadership Academy for principals and administrators, with coaching in academic standards one of the stated purposes. And the Bechtel Foundation is funding work with the organization that serves the county offices of education — the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association — on how to help districts adopt Math in Common findings. But otherwise, WestEd’s Finkelstein and former State Board of Education President Michael Kirst agreed that districts will have to find money from within their own budgets. They’ll have to ask themselves, “Are there ways to rearrange what you are doing?” said Kirst, who has called the lack of teacher and administrator training a critical unmet need of Common Core adoption. As for the Math in Common districts, the project ended in 2018, but the foundation agreed to continue some support for two years for eight of the 10 districts. Garden Grove and Long Beach, which were already ahead of the others in implementing the standards and made the biggest gains in test scores, ended their affiliation. But the foundation itself is winding down and going out of business at the end of 2020, leaving districts to replace the funding — if they choose. WestEd suggested the districts were still only beginning to figure out what they needed to improve classroom instruction. “It is not yet clear whether the initiative’s work has built the kind of capacity and innovation, in the participating districts, that will ultimately result in more promising (test) results down the line,” it wrote. EdSource is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that researches and publishes news about education in California.
10 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, FALL 2019
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, FALL 2019 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | 11
Yolo County officials continue federal contract to incarcerate young immigrants
Protecting Youths by Locking Them Up
Photos by xxxxxxx
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Radio host Francisco Dominguez says well-meaning people in Yolo County are fooling themselves by thinking “they can go visit them and take cookies and take books (and) somehow they’re making their lives better.”
By Patrick Michels // Reveal
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ne Tuesday morning in June 2018, a Presbyterian minister named Mary Westfall took a seat in the Yolo County supervisors’ boardroom. At a typical meeting of the Board of Supervisors, with the usual agenda of county contracts or land-use concerns, the room’s 51 seats would have more than accommodated the turnout. But that day, the seats filled up quickly. People stood in the back, holding banners, while others sat outside the room, listening to the action via overhead speakers. Westfall went to the meeting with a mission in mind: She was there to tell county leaders to get out of the business of locking up migrant children. Over the previous decade, more than 600 children had been sent by the federal government to live there, in Woodland, usually for around two months at a time, until they were transferred to another facility or released to a family member. Dozens of shelters across the country had contracts to house children like these — minors who had crossed the border into the U.S. unaccompanied by a parent or guardian — but Yolo County’s was different. It was one of only three places that were holding children in the concrete cells of a juvenile detention center. These lockup facilities, which the Office of Refugee Resettlement — the federal agency that oversees the care of unaccompanied children — calls “secure placement,” are the highest-security settings in which the government houses migrant children. Minors are directed there if they have criminal records or are otherwise deemed to “pose a danger” to themselves or others. Federal officials decide on an individual basis just what that means. Westfall had lived in the county for less than a year, and this was her first visit to the Board of Supervisors. She came to the meeting dressed in the conservative style of the clergy, with her dark blond hair short and her clerical collar peeking out beneath a black sweater. She’d worked with immigrant communities on the East Coast, and now in her new home, she’d found a new cause: holding federal officials accountable for detaining children, many of whom never had been charged with a crime and would be free if not for their immigration status. It seemed clear to Westfall what justice required the county to do. The board was going to vote on whether to back out of a three-year federal contract to house unaccompanied minors through Jan. 31, 2020. Westfall sensed a special kind of energy in the room – the stakes were high, and the community had turned out in force. She watched as the day’s first speaker approached the podium.
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noosh Jorjorian, a 46-year-old community organizer with a pair of sunglasses tucked into her dark hair, introduced herself to the board. She spoke gravely about the news she’d seen that morning on Twitter: that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld President Trump’s ban on travelers from certain Muslim countries. “Our federal institutions are attacking
Community organizer Anoosh Jorjorian lobbied to renew the federal contract, saying it could offer young immigrants protection. “If these kids go, we don’t know where they’ll end up,” she told the Board of Supervisors.
“I rise to question the basic morality of incarcerating nonaccompanied minors who have not been convicted of a crime. To support the detention of these juveniles makes us complicit with the state in a broken and unjust immigration system.” — Mary Westfall, Presbyterian minister
The Safe Yolo Facebook group on Supervisor Don Saylor’s computer in his office in Davis. The activist group advocates for local discussion around immigration issues in Yolo County.
Francisco Dominguez’s collection of work documenting immigration in his home in Davis. He opposes the contract renewal to house migrant children at the Yolo County Juvenile Detention Center.
“We’re doing a rather unusual thing here. We’re trying to influence the lives of these unfortunate immigrants through a program that would not be our first choice for them.” — Don Saylor, county supervisor the principles our founders built this nation on, including liberty, due process and equal treatment under the law,” she said. This was the summer of family separation, when U.S. immigration officials took 2,700 children from their parents — an official figure that probably undercounted the actual total — as part of a broader effort to deter migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Across the country, people were organizing against local and state cooperation with the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda. For many activists, that cooperation included contracting with the federal government to house immigrants in local jails. Many communities were no longer willing to do that. Earlier that month, officials in neighboring Sacramento County had responded to activist pressure by ending a contract to hold federal immigration detainees in the county jail. But inside the Yolo County Supervisors’ boardroom, a different narrative unwound. “At this time in history, I — who do not actually believe that these kids should be held in a juvenile detention facility — I am advocating for them to stay,” Jorjorian said. “Because there are ideals, and then there are the realities that we live with. … If these kids go, we don’t know where they’ll end up.” After she spoke, other county residents cited more reasons for continuing to house migrant kids. “I’ve learned so much from these youth,” said one person who volunteered at the facility. “They’ve helped me a lot with my Spanish.” Ending the contract would amount to little more than “thumbing our noses” at the federal government, another resident said. “We owe these kids our protection.” Religious leaders and advocates for social justice spoke about the dangers of
complicity and their duty to the children who slept on rented bunks in their county’s juvenile hall.
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he secure facilities for unaccompanied minors, which previously had been seen as relatively uncontentious social service providers, had become targets of protest. Days before the Yolo County Board of Supervisors meeting, one of the three juvenile lockups, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., had announced it would end its contract with the U.S. government, following pressure from local activists. The second juvenile facility, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, was facing a lawsuit alleging that children were being physically abused by staff and strapped to a chair and forced to wear masks as punishment. The case had become a national controversy. Yolo County’s was the last remaining secure facility that wasn’t operating under a cloud of protest or scandal — and the county’s probation chief recently had asked the supervisors to end the contract. He said the money wasn’t worth the risk to his staff, some of whom had been injured by the detained kids and were overworked. The Office of Refugee Resettlement had been trying unsuccessfully to find more secure detention beds. Now it faced losing the few it had. No one knew what would follow if that happened. Would the government relent and release these kids to their families? Or would it find some other way to lock them up, perhaps even farther out of sight? Finally, it was Westfall’s turn to speak. At the microphone, she introduced herself to the county officials and made her case. “I rise to question the basic morality of incarcerating nonaccompanied minors who have not been convicted of a crime,” she said. “To support the detention of these ju-
veniles makes us complicit with the state in a broken and unjust immigration system.” It turned out Westfall was in the extreme minority. Yes, there had been plenty of anger directed at the Trump administration. But to nearly everyone, the circumstances seemed to dictate that the only right thing to do was to keep the contract. After the public testimony ended, Supervisor Don Saylor called for quiet, so everyone could sit with what they’d heard. “Gosh, I love you guys,” he told the room. Then, with one supervisor abstaining, the board took a vote on whether to continue the county’s business with the federal government. Three supervisors were in favor; one was opposed. They would keep the contract.
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Photos by Emily Harger // Reveal
Supervisor Don Saylor worked with Jorjorian to form the immigrationfocused Safe Yolo initiative. Among its first successes was a resolution to attempt to protect residents’ private data from immigration authorities.
orjorian’s campaign to keep the minors housed in Yolo County began at the Davis farmers’ market, just after Trump’s election. A progressive activist since high school, Jorjorian recently had moved to Davis from Los Angeles and had been wondering how to make a difference in her new home. She spotted Saylor among the fruit stands and approached him to talk over some ideas. Their conversation blossomed into an immigration-focused collaboration between activists and elected leaders, which they called Safe Yolo. The group drafted a “safe and welcoming community” resolution, which promised that the county would try to protect its residents’ private information from immigration authorities. Saylor presented the resolution to the board in March 2017, and it passed 5-0. Between the Sacramento River and the Coast Ranges lie the neat rows of tomatoes, nut trees, grapevines and other crops that constitute most of Yolo County’s land.
Nearly half of the county’s 219,000 residents are white, about 30% are Latino, 13% are of Asian descent, and nearly 3% are African-American. Among the farmland are a few population centers, such as the university town of Davis, that swing the county’s politics to the left. The Yolo County Juvenile Detention Facility is on the eastern edge of Woodland, the county seat. Before 2005, Yolo County held dozens of juvenile detainees in an aging building constructed to hold only a dozen. Estimating that this population would continue to grow, county leaders built a facility with room for 90 minors. Instead, the number of detainees fell to seven, prompted by a statewide movement to reduce juvenile incarceration and a sharp drop in juvenile arrest rates. County leaders decided to rent out the extra bed space — first to other counties in California, then, in 2008, to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The contract has brought in more than $28 million to date. County officials say the deal doesn’t generate profits — a recent state audit showed that the county actually had underbilled the government by $700,000 during the previous fiscal year — but it pays the salaries of around 30 employees. For the federal government, it was a lifeline. The refugee agency has no shelters of its own for migrant children and typically places them with nonprofit social service groups. For more secure arrangements — for children who have committed a crime or are considered too dangerous to house in shelters — the government has come to rely on county juvenile lockups. At least 13 local government agencies across the country had a contract to house migrant children at some point in the past 15 years. Most dropped out, but not Yolo County. Local volunteers began visiting migrant children shortly after they first arrived in the Yolo lockup. Each week, visitors would pass through the thick security doors, enter a common room and spend a few hours of conversation and recreation with the detained kids.
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e just talk and play games. We don’t do much of anything,” says Alison Pease, who has volunteered at the detention facility for more than a decade as part of the Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network. A couple of times, the network booked a mariachi band to perform. Hers is the largest group of volunteers, but others come to read stories to children, lead dance workouts or give lessons in meditation or yoga. In 2014, student volunteers from the UC Davis Chicana and Chicano Studies Department decorated the inside of the detention center with murals. “When I got here, I thought, ‘This looks like a jail. We need to lighten this up,’” Yolo County probation chief Brent Cardall said when the murals were done. “That’s why we did this. We wanted to give them hope.” The nearby university offers the detained children another benefit: the Immigration Law Clinic at the UC Davis School of Law. Professors and students meet with children, connect them with pro bono representation for their immigration cases and sometimes YOLO continued on Page 11
Photos (top and far left) by Emily Harger // Reveal; above photos courtesy of Yolo County
From left, the facility’s recreation center, a classroom, the library and one of the cells at the Yolo County Juvenile Detention Center in Woodland, top.
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fight to get them out of detention. The law clinic represented a 16-year-old boy from El Salvador who spent more than 21 months in custody and a 14-year-old Honduran boy who spent nearly a year in the facility even after having been granted asylum. With the clinic’s help, both eventually were released. Other local lawyers have represented children who alleged that they had been abused by staff or deprived of mental health treatment. Despite those complaints, as the detention facility’s relationship with the federal government became uncertain in early 2018, volunteers from the Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network remained adamant that it would be irresponsible to send the children away to a less caring community or a facility with lower standards. Jorjorian and Saylor came to agree with them. “I cannot take the ideological step of saying we cannot be complicit in this,” Jorjorian said. She decided to rally support for continuing the detention contract when it came up before the board. In fall 2018, months after the Board of Supervisors decided to keep the contract, students from Cal State Sacramento visited the detention center to see what this local intervention in immigration policy looked like. Beatriz Figueroa, a sociology major who organized the visit, says that when they arrived, officers told them not to interact with the kids, unlike the volunteers. This was difficult for her. “These kids look like my neighbors, my cousins,” said Figueroa, who is 23. After the college students had walked the cell block, toured a classroom and heard about the local volunteer programs, the mood abruptly changed. “These youth were yelling at us,” Figueroa recalled, “and telling us that the security guards abuse them and give them bruises. And the security guards say, ‘Oh no, they’re just joking.’” As the closing moments of the visit settled in Figueroa’s head, she says, she was struck by one of the murals done by the UC Davis students. Painted on a cinder-block wall, the floor-to-ceiling scene depicted children in uniforms and chains trying to scale a crumbling brick wall, above which stretched a vista of farms and mountains. Near the ceiling, a fiery sunset glowed next to a row of small windows to the outside world. Figueroa realized that there was only so much about life in this place that you could learn from a tour. “How do we know what happens behind closed doors?” she wondered.
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ehind the locked doors of the facility were kids such as B.D., a 16-year-old boy referred to in court only by his full initials, B.D.A.C., because he is a minor. He, his two adult sisters and their
families had crossed the southern border in December 2017 after a journey from Guatemala City, where B.D. had grown up surrounded by danger. He’d endured physical violence by his father, sexual abuse by a family friend and a gang kidnapping for ransom. He hoped to reunite with his mother, who had fled Guatemala alone a few years earlier and lived near Cincinnati. B.D.’s group was apprehended shortly after crossing. Despite the presence of his sisters, officials classified the boy as “unaccompanied” and sent him to Casa Padre, a former Walmart in South Texas that had been turned into a low-security shelter. According to Office of Refugee Resettlement records, B.D., isolated in the massive facility, told someone that he was a member of the Mara 18 gang and had a criminal record back home. That was all agency officials needed to hear to send him to the secure lockup near Washington, D.C. Under the Trump administration, allegations of gang affiliation were enough to land an unaccompanied minor in juvenile detention, even if the child had committed no crime. (The policy has since changed; alleged gang membership now qualifies minors for a second tier of facilities, which the government calls “staff-secure.”) Inside, B.D. mentioned having suicidal thoughts and was prescribed psychotropic medications. After a seven-month stay in the Virginia facility, he was transferred again, without explanation. In July 2018, he arrived in Yolo County, a month after the board decided to continue the contract. “At this moment, I am in a jail in California,” B.D. wrote in a statement from the
detention center, as part of a lawsuit to get him released. “I do not like being here. My room has a locked door. We spend many hours in our rooms with the doors locked. Each day, we spend one hour and no more outside where we play basketball. Sometimes there are fights between the boys as they play. There are also fights inside the building. The food is bad and I do not like it.” In lawsuits, other children have complained about the conditions inside, in particular the use of pepper spray and physical restraint. “Yolo was also a horrible place,” one complainant told the court. “I feel desperate,” another Yolo detainee said. “My only wish is to leave detention, live with my mom and study.”
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n February 2019, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released a review of immigrant detention centers across the state, including Yolo County’s. The report described a facility run by thoughtful, concerned officials that nonetheless was a troubling place for children to be. Inspectors interviewed 19 children in the facility; nine reported having attempted suicide or cutting themselves during their time there. Last summer, the county negotiated more money from the Office of Refugee Resettlement as a condition of its continuing to house migrant children, an increase from around $3 million to $6 million a year. The detention center’s current program director, Julie Burns, says she’s using that new funding to hire more mental health support and set an example for facilities
Photo by Emily Harger // Reveal
Juvenile Detention Coordinator Julie Burns oversees the migrant children program at the center and supports the program’s most recent contract renewal.
elsewhere. She says that includes pushing back against the federal government when it tries to send them children who shouldn’t be locked up. “If we are going to do this, we are going to do right by the kids. We’re not going to have kids languishing in secure care without the resources they need,” she said. “We are really focusing on treatment and servicing, and we have an opportunity to do a model program.” “We think we can make a difference, as foolish as that might sound,” said Saylor. “And I realize it sounds a little bit dissonant to the rest of our value system, but it’s actually quite consistent. We’re doing a rather unusual thing here. We’re trying to influence the lives of these unfortunate immigrants through a program that would not be our first choice for them.” “Sometimes just walking away from a sticky situation is easier than trying to deal with the ambiguities and problems in a more nuanced way,” said Alison Pease, the detention center volunteer. But critics of the contract are rallying opposition for another fight. Francisco Dominguez, a local radio host, says wellmeaning people in Yolo County are fooling themselves by thinking “they can go visit them and take cookies and take books (and) somehow they’re making their lives better.” “It was very much white privilege (to think) that somehow the good European American citizens of Yolo County know what’s best for these brown, Native American kids from Central America,” Dominguez said. “This is the biggest division (within) the immigrants’ rights community today. (It) is about these site fights,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an immigration lawyer with the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia. “There are those who say, ‘No, if we close these local facilities, all that’s going to do is accelerate the transfer of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) detainees to these massive Texas border facilities.’ The other camp says, ‘No, we have to, first of all, fight in our home communities.’ ” Sandoval-Moshenberg contributed to the opposition to the juvenile detention contract in the D.C. suburbs and doesn’t have much sympathy for the argument that prevailed in Yolo County. “It takes a hell of a savior complex to really believe that a kid in your jail is better off than being with his family,” he said. Lately, Dominguez has been pushing local advocacy groups to mount a stronger opposition before county leaders and to protest outside board meetings. He wants to see them follow the example of activists in Yuba County, north of Sacramento, who continue to protest the county jail’s contract with ICE, and in the high desert city of Adelanto, San Bernardino County, which ended its partnership with a private ICE
detention center in March. In a recent development, federal officials said they would no longer reimburse Yolo County for education and recreation programs provided to detained migrant children, and the county’s new chief probation officer proposed repurposing the juvenile detention facility, given the falling population of local youth held there. The Board of Supervisors considered the proposal over the summer, but has so far settled on a plan to keep the Office of Refugee Resettlement program for now.
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ither side of the debate could find validation in B.D.’s story. His statement from inside suggests the toll of indefinite detention far from his family. But he ended up receiving free legal help from a San Francisco attorney who realized he never should have been detained, because agency records contained no evidence that he was a gang member. That resource, which might have been unattainable in a more remote, less supportive area, did finally get him released to his mother in November. These are some of the questions that divide people in the current era of immigration enforcement: How long do you stay inside a harmful system to try to make it better? When is the only moral choice to walk away? Is it possible to help children while holding them in a cell? The answers Yolo County settled on: A little longer. Not yet. We hope so. This story was co-published with the Journal of Alta California. Reveal is the website, public radio program, podcast and social media platform from the Center for Investigative Reporting, which was founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization.
CROSSWORD PUZZLE SOLUTION FROM PAGE 2
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THE JAMES IRVINE FOUNDATION ETHICS & EXCELLENCE IN JOUNALISM FOUNDATION THE CALIFORNIA ENDOWMENT KSFP SIGNAL BOOSTERS
PATRICIA BOVAN CAMPBELL MORITZ FLIEDNER SUSAN STARK JAMIE WHITAKER INDIVIDUALS Jean Amos • Sue Blankman Anne Bluethenthal • Alison Cohen Richard Darrough • Sharon Eberhardt Paul Kleyman • Richard and Carolyn Knee Mary Anne LaHood • Denise Levine Ethan Lindsay • Eric Lukoff Erika McDonald • Auzie Mirhashemi Prashanth Mundkur • Nate Parsons Lawrence Patrick • Rebecca Pontikes Victoria Python • Kristina Rizga Maxime Sadrieh • John Swartley John Weiss
Top photos by Sharon Wickham // Public Press. Above, from left: Peter Diggs Photography; Katy & Claire Art; courtesy of Megan Maurer; Noah Arroyo.
The radio team, clockwise from top left: reporter and host of “Civic,” Laura Wenus; program producer Mel Baker; John Dillon, who composed theme music for “Civic”; and KSFP steering committee members Megan Maurer, Linda Jue and George Koster.
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perspectives on city issues. “Civic” will air on KSFP, and segments will be made available as podcasts. Some programs will be livestreamed. The Public Press is in conversations with several potential partners, including other public broadcasters, to share content or develop other forms of collaboration. The show “provides context and depth for complex, evolving policy stories, well before they’re placed on a ballot or presented publicly by agencies,” said Michael Stoll, executive director of the Public Press. “Our goal is ambitious: to create an essential audio news source about the inner workings of one of the world’s great cities.” After 10 years in operation, the Public Press has hit its stride, moving out of its own startup phase to establish itself as a viable, award-winning, noncommercial investigative news organization. Why take on another startup project, in another medium, especially now? Over the years, the Public Press has built a paid membership program with a devoted following of donors, including many influencers in San Francisco in politics and public affairs. But Stoll said the news organization hasn’t attained widespread name recognition because of lack of marketing resources. The growth and maintenance of a broad base of donors are ways that hundreds of local nonprofit newsrooms across the country hope to achieve long-term sustainability. A key part of the organization’s mission is to increase the relevance of local news to diverse audiences. A solution appeared in an opportunity to share a radio frequency with another low-power FM station, the musicand culture-focused KXSF, run by San Francisco Community Radio. The two groups jointly operate a transmitter on Sutro Tower, with separate broadcast licenses. They hand off signals every six hours, with KSFP broadcasting from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. “Low-power FM radio offers a relatively low-cost way to cross platforms and reach new audiences in a field that is bursting with creative excitement,” said Stoll. “It will allow us to open the airwaves to diverse local voices, filling the void of varying perspectives on civic issues.”
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Linda Jue, a San Francisco native, is a member of the KSFP startup team. She is also editor at large for the Washington, D.C.-based investigative reporting website 100Reporters.
To help launch our low-power FM radio station, KSFP, we are excited to announce new members of the Public Press team. The station’s inaugural program, “Civic,” is produced by Mel Baker and hosted by Laura Wenus, who bring a breadth of multimedia experience and will lead a team reporting on local policies, culture and ideas. Baker has worked as a national network and Bay Area broadcaster for many decades. From National Public Radio’s newscast unit, to the newsrooms of KGO radio and KTVU-TV, and as a news anchor and reporter at KALW and other Bay Area stations, he has embraced the responsibility of broadcast media to “enlighten and inform.” Baker created the news department for Thrive Online, a consumer health website, and the programming for the Women’s Online Media and Education Network, which worked to bring more women’s voices into talk radio. He is a longtime San Francisco resident living with his husband, the artist Leslie Aguilar, and their dog, Wilbur. Wenus is a multimedia reporter and producer who began her radio career reporting on news and politics for her college station, a program called “Earshot.” Wenus also has experience as a print and digital journalist, reporting on San Francisco’s Mission District with a focus on housing, health, immigration and homelessness for local news site Mission Local, where she helped to launch and host its neighborhood webcast, “Listen Local.” More recently, she was a producer at “Your Call,” a live call-in program driving conversations about local, regional and national current affairs on KALW public radio in San Francisco.
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CAMEO APPEARANCE We were surprised and delighted that the artist JR chose to include the San Francisco Public Press in “The Chronicles of San Francisco,” his sprawling, life-size digital mural installed in the Roberts Family Gallery at SFMOMA. The mural is a dynamic collage of images and videos compiled from more than 1,200 interviews that JR and his team conducted with people all around the city. A copy of our Issue No. 23 — focused on solutions to homelessness with a cover story about the proliferation of vacant rooms in local residential hotels — is displayed on the right side of the mural’s newsstand. You can’t miss it. The Roberts Family Gallery is open to the public free of charge during regular museum hours.
THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP The San Francisco Public Press received support and assistance from many people who helped us secure our lowpower FM construction permit from the FCC, raise funds for the project, develop the “Civic” show concept and launch the KSFP broadcast on 102.5 FM in San Francisco. More than 60 audiophiles attended our first radio-brainstorming meeting in September 2016. Over time, a small group coalesced into a steering committee with supporting volunteers. We appreciate everyone who joined us and shared their inspiring ideas. In particular, we thank Josh Wilson for encouraging us to apply for the construction permit: We wouldn’t be on air today without his enthusiastic nudging and guidance. George Koster took the lead on partnerships and fundraising, which led to our two-year, $150,000 research and development grant from the James Irvine Foundation and a project development grant from the California Endowment for multimedia public health reporting. Linda Jue contributed her sound judgment and editorial guidance over many years in program and staff development. Megan Maurer connected us with key partners, built our studio and helped us solve all kinds of audio engineering puzzles. Phil Hartman provided engineering expertise and helped configure so many pieces of equipment essential for signal transmission — we’re still not sure how they all work. John Dillon composed original theme music for “Civic.” Jeff Shaw and Al Davis of Common Frequency contributed technical expertise, guided us through the regulatory process and helped put together a winning low-power FM application. Brad Deutsch and Aaron Edelman of Garvey Schubert Barer provided expert legal guidance. Matt Martin gave key insights during the conceptual phase that led to the birth of “Civic.” Stacy Bond offered many creative ideas about programming and building a community radio station from scratch through valuable research on other LPFM stations. Rich Bartlebaugh, Christopher Mosson and Ellison Libiran contributed to our audio planning process during the development phase. We also want to give a special thanks to the whole team at San Francisco Community Radio — especially Bill Ruck, Ted Dively, Damin Esper and Steve Zweig — for helping us get on the air and for working with us to develop a partnership and cost-sharing arrangement that benefits both organizations. We are thrilled to be sharing 102.5 FM with our friends at KXSF!
Photo by Steve Rhodes
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During KSFP’s startup phase, “Civic” is running one hour, five days a week (repeated once daily). The fifth day consists of the best stories from the week compiled into a weekly podcast. Syndicated content from the Public Radio Exchange and several local programs fill the rest of the time, and gradually through early 2020, the station will include more curated content produced by local, independent producers. “Public broadcasting has to develop programs to attract a big audience, which makes them risk averse to trying new things,” said Mel Baker, who was hired as producer for “Civic.” Lowpower FM radio, on the other hand, has the latitude to experiment. A veteran news reporter and former producer at the news radio station KGO-AM, Baker brings 30 years of broadcasting experience, including stints at National Public Radio, KTVU television and KQED public radio. Despite his long career at larger broadcasters, he still gets a thrill out of the scrappy feel of community radio. With the creative freedom that comes with the low-power FM model, combined with the chance to build an audience in the digital space via streaming and podcasts, Baker said he felt the same excitement he once experienced as a young antinuclear activist decades ago. “We had no money, no resources back then,” Baker said. “I worked in a small office, crashing on the couch the first year. But we did great things.” KSFP, he said “feels like a cause. Not a political cause. This is a cause for journalism itself.” Laura Wenus, host and reporter for “Civic,” is a former producer for KALW’s daily talk show, “Your Call,” and before that served as managing editor at Mission Local, a neighborhood news website that has long collaborated with the Public Press. Wenus was attracted to the job because of its flexible format and the opportunity to do daily news reporting again. “If I want, I could take my time and look at a story from five different angles, one each day, and then turn them into a podcast that offers a comprehensive look at what matters most about an issue,” she said. “Or we can produce stories fast. We can even decide, impromptu, to change the format, right up to the last minute. The freedom we have is radical. It’s not offered by any other news institution that I know of.” The launch of KSFP brings the Public Press full circle back to its beginnings as a nonprofit journalism organization. “We want people to think of KSFP as public radio inspired by a public newspaper inspired by public radio,” Stoll said. In other words, it’s about the best practices of community radio merged with the journalistic ambition of print-style public-interest journalism.
INTRODUCING THE RADIO TEAM
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The Public Press joins a growing movement in community radio. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that low-power stations have doubled their numbers since 2014, with about 1,500 producing a diverse mix of music and talk content across the country. Low-power stations are commercial free, and licenses are granted strictly to nonprofit organizations. These stations operate at a maximum power of 100 watts — about as much electricity as a single lightbulb — which provides a reach of several miles, depending on the topography of the community. The frequency KSFP and KXSF are using, 102.5 FM, reaches most neighborhoods in the city, but can’t be picked up behind the tallest of the city’s hills or inside some buildings with thick concrete walls. But those physical obstacles don’t limit audiences: Digital audio content production is fast expanding the potential reach of community radio via audio streaming and podcasts. That’s how the Public Press expects “Civic” will reach most listeners. “Most low-power FM broadcasters are music stations,” said Lila LaHood, the Public Press’ publisher. “In our research, we found a small number of journalist-run stations that showed it can be done. But this is mostly unexplored territory. The challenge for us is to show that low-power community broadcasting can meet high journalistic standards.” To that end, the Public Press recruited Matt Martin, the former general manager of San Francisco’s KALW public radio, to help conceive KSFP’s
flagship show. “The Public Press has always been comfortable reporting inside San Francisco’s halls of power while maintaining an independent viewpoint,” Martin said. “It brings a broader range of voices — from wonky insiders to neighborhood activists — plus a lot of context and data that’s often missing from the usual City Hall coverage. ‘Civic’ can put those voices and in-depth understanding into an immediate and approachable conversation that can give San Franciscans insights into the challenges the city faces, as well as a sense that they don’t have to be on the outside looking in.” Digital distribution, Martin said, will help “Civic” reach as many ears as possible with the greatest impact. “It will capture the people who’ll listen to the podcast while riding on Muni, or who may check out a particular episode a friend told them about.”