By Calvin Welch, HANC Board

September 14th at HANC will be all about District Election of Supervisors and just how and for whom it works. We are fortunate to have as our sole guest the longest serving district elected Supervisor in the modern history of San Francisco, President of the Board of Supervisors (for the second time), Aaron Peskin, who represents District 3 - Russian Hill, North Beach and Chinatown. Aaron is in the final year of his second two term stint as District Supervisor, a total of 16 years on the Board spanning four Mayors (Brown, Newsome, Lee and Breed, or five if you count the six month term of Mark Ferrell) making him, I believe, the longest serving locally elected official now in office.

The election of the Supervisors by districts had been repealed in San Francisco in the 1900 Charter with the creation of at large elected Board of Supervisors which lasted until 1977 when the first neighborhood districts went into effect after being passed in 1976.

The promise of district elections was that it would result in a Board of supervisors that looked like San Francisco. The last at-large elected Board did not have a tenant nor a person of color that was not first appointed by the Mayor. The first district elected Board had a majority of tenants and the first directly elected Black and Chinese Supervisors. Even though it lasted for but two and a half years the district board passed rent control, condominium conversion and public employee contract reforms causing business and real estate interests to view district election as similar to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

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Please join us on Thursday, September 14, at 7:00 pm. We have invited Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin to discuss the latest threat to District Elections.

This will be a hybrid meeting.

Join us in person at Flywheel Coffee Roasters, 672 Stanyan Street (between Haight and Page) or join us online. Please note that seating is limited, but we are not expecting a big crowd.

To join the meeting online, copy this link:
https://zoom.us/j/97001985280?pwd=Nkx2UVFPSTRVWGVXUVZEbFRkb0xwQT09

Or, with the Zoom app:

Meeting ID: 970 0198 5280
Passcode: 333544

Zoom also provides telephone numbers. These are not toll-free numbers. Check with your phone company before you incur charges.

The closest number is:
        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 970 0198 5280
Passcode: 333544

Additional numbers can be found at: https://zoom.us/u/acJ3FRWOWk

By Teresa Palmer, MD – Geriatrics/Family Practice

(Attending Physician at Laguna Honda 1989-2004)

Despite Mayor Breed’s relieved announcement in mid August that Laguna Honda Hospital (LHH), closed to new admissions since April of 2022, has been recertified by Medi-Cal, many questions are NOT being answered. We need to continue to ask these questions about our public nursing home:

1.When will new admissions resume?

2.Will patients evicted in 2022 (who survived) be readmitted?

(Nothing in writing yet). In addition, nursing home eligible San Francisco residents who have had to leave the county for care should have priority at Laguna Honda-but they do not.

3.Will LHH continue to admit and mismanage complex and acutely behaviorally unstable residents from ZSFG (San Francisco General Hospital)?

This puts the getting patients out of ZSFG over the well being of everyone else including ZSFG patients who are inappropriately placed in this nursing home....and will get LHH in trouble again.

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Nominations for the HANC Board are open through the election at our November Meeting. All current HANC members are eligible to serve and to nominate other members. If you would like to serve, or would like to nominate someone, you can do so before the vote at the November meeting. The term is from December, 2023 through November, 2024.

Our Bylaws require that we solicit nominations from our membership in the September Voice and present a slate at our October and November meetings. The offices open for election are: President, Vice-President, Recording Secretary, Corresponding Secretary, Treasurer, Nominating Chair, Membership Chair, Housing and Land Use Chair, Recycling Chair, and three Members at Large.

Current Board members as well as members who are not serving on our Board are eligible for these positions. Only members in good standing for at least three months are eligible to run for or hold a board position.

You can join HANC or renew your membership online at https://www.hanc-sf.org/join-us, by sending a check to HANC, PO Box 170518, San Francisco, CA  94117, or by bringing a check to our next general meeting.  Dues are $15 per year, or $5 for low income.

By Tes Welborn, HANC Board

What is a Farmers Market worth? The Heart of the City Farmers Market has abruptly been relocated to a smaller site without any public process. In its place, Rec and Park plans a skateboard park, ping pong, and various card table games. All of this appears to be so San Francisco looks good for the APEC event in November, Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Meeting. Biden and other Asian Pacific heads of state will attend.

The Tenderloin community, now part of District 5, has no other “supermarket” than this Farmers Market. Residents and neighbors rallied, many of them seniors, Wednesday August 30 to oppose the move and smaller site. The Market is also patronized by shoppers from other parts of the city and by tourists.

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By Richard Ivanhoe, HANC Board

On September 27, 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness, along with seven individuals, filed a lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco, the San Francisco Police Department, the San Francisco Department of Public Works, the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the San Francisco Fire Department, the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, Mayor London Breed, and Sam Dodge, the Director of the Healthy Streets Operations Center. The gist of the lawsuit was that the City and its various departments have violated the rights of homeless individuals and have destroyed their property during sweeps, in violation of City policy.

On December 23, 2022, Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu issued a 50-page order which granted a preliminary injunction to Plaintiffs (COH et. al.) on the grounds that the City failed to provide evidence of offering shelter to homeless individuals before closing encampments, and that the City has destroyed property during its sweeps. The preliminary injunction prohibits enforcement of certain sections of the California Penal Code and of the San Francisco Police Code that prohibit homeless individuals from sitting, lying, or sleeping on public property. (The court denied requests to prohibit enforcement of sections of the Park Code and of the Port Code, as evidence of enforcement had not been presented, and the court denied the appointment of a special master to monitor compliance with the injunction.)  The City filed an appeal of the preliminary injunction on January 23, 2023.

On January 12, 2023, the court granted a motion to dismiss Mayor Breed and Sam Dodge in their official capacities as duplicative. On February 28, 2023, Plaintiffs filed an amended complaint, but on May 23, 2023, the court determined that no claims were asserted against Breed or Dodge in their individual capacities.

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By Calvin Welch, HANC Board

Last month the Board of the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council voted to oppose unless amended Supervisor Melgar’s rather misleadingly labeled "Family Housing Opportunity Special Use District" that included both the Haight-Ashbury and Inner Sunset in its boundary. Sold by the Supervisor as making it easier "for homeowners to add up to four units on their lots," she said repeatedly that the legislation was for "Westside homeowners".  

The legislation’s chief objective was to allow demolitions of existing units with neither public notice nor public hearing. In its initial form the legislation would have required that the property be owned only a year prior to applying for the no notice demolition, creating an unmistakable opportunity for speculators. Moreover, there were no affordability requirements for the density and demolition concessions, making it even more attractive for "buy, demo and displace” real estate "investors," nor was there a prohibition on short term rental use for the new units.

Had the legislation only applied to western neighborhood single family home lots such an open invitation to rampant speculation would have been limited in scope. The legislation however includes all of the Inner Sunset and Haight Ashbury, neighborhoods in which tenants outnumber homeowners three and four to one. Allowing such speculation in these neighborhoods would produce far more serious displacement of tenants for no additional affordability.

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By Tes Welborn, HANC Board

The California Public Utilities Commission [CPUC] hearings August 7 and 10 were to decide whether or not robotaxis can now start charging, 24/7, for passenger rides throughout the city, with unlimited numbers of robotaxis in operation. The CPUC has the power to decide these questions, as the California Department of Motor Vehicles [DMV] has already permitted autonomous vehicles (AVs) to operate on city streets. And there are already 41 AV companies licensed to operate in California, though only Cruise and Waymo currently operate in San Francisco.

What are the issues?

• How many AVs to allow on San Francisco streets [and streets in our state]?
• Are AVs ready for mass deployment?
• What is the safety record of AVs?
• What do the San Francisco Fire Department and Police Department say about AVs?
• Are there industry standards for AVs and emergency services' communication needs?
• Are there industry standards about how to measure safety etc.?
• What is the impact on taxi drivers, and Uber/Lyft drivers, and Uber/Lyft investors?
• What is the impact on public transit of AVs?
• What is the climate impact of AVs?

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