By Christin Evans, HANC Board

At our January 14th meeting, the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council will kick off the new year with its first member meeting focused on an update on the Politics of Affordable Housing.  With so many recent victories, including from 2018's Proposition C delivering $300M annually in new revenue through a gross receipts business tax, 2019's Proposition A authorizing $600M for affordable housing and 2020's Propositions A and I delivering even more funds, the question now is how quickly can those funds be pressed into service to bolster the city’s stock of permanent affordable housing.

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By Christin Evans, HANC Board

At the December meeting, we discussed the state of the Haight Ashbury commercial corridor and the opportunities for the community to play a role in its economic recovery.  The Haight Ashbury Merchants Association (HAMA) has been counting storefront vacancies since 2016.  In that time the commercial corridor saw storefront vacancies rise from 9 in 2016, to 21 in February 2020, to 31 in December 2020. 

This increase in vacancy rate from 6% to 21% of Haight storefronts is a challenge but also an opportunity for community involvement.  In November 2019, the voters passed the Storefront Vacancy tax which creates an economic incentive for landlords to quickly fill their storefronts with new tenants.  That legislation was put on hold by the Board of Supervisors at the start of the pandemic and will be taken up again in 2021. 

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By Calvin Welch, HANC Board

We looked at how the Haight-Ashbury voted for  President,  Supervisor and  16  ballot measures HANC recommended to Haight-Ashbury voters.  We analyzed how each of the three sub-areas of the neighborhood voted and compared that to the rest of District 5 and the Citywide vote.

Since 2010 HANC has made recommendations on 75 state and local ballot measures to its members and Haight-Ashbury residents.  Of those 75 recommendations  Haight-Ashbury voters have agreed with 70 over the last decade, or 93% .  This year we made 16 recommendations, 9 local and 7 state. With COVID 19 forcing HANC to suspend its monthly meeting in which these measures were usually discussed, HANC board members dropped over 4,000 newsletters with the reasons for our our recommendations door to door  in the neighborhood.  Of the 16 recommendations, our neighbors agreed with 15 for a 94%  average.

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By Richard Ivanhoe, HANC Board

It would be an understatement to say that 2020 was a year like no other.  We are still living through the global pandemic and economic crisis that both hit us last year.  Nationally, we had an impeachment, a primary election, and a general election.  Here’s a recap of 2020 from a very local perspective—HANC and the Haight-Ashbury.

We ended 2019 with a celebration of HANC’s 60^th anniversary (our first meeting was in October, 1959, and our bylaws were adopted in March, 1960).  We had a new Supervisor (Dean Preston).  Our new District Attorney (Chesa Boudin) would be sworn in in January.  Our new Park Station Police Captain (Renee Pagano) had just started in November.  The Panhandle Playground had reopened in November, after 7 months of construction.  The Coalition for a Complete Community (CCC) held a community meeting in December to discuss the long-range development of the 730 Stanyan site.

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By Richard Ivanhoe, HANC Board

As you may remember, there was a shooting on February 8, 2020 at Haight and Ashbury.  A few weeks later, on February 24, two pedestrians were injured in a vehicle hit-and-run.  The victims in both incidents were homeless or formerly homeless individuals.

There were community meetings about the shooting at the Bindery on February 18 and later that same week at the Park Branch Library.  HANC was planning to discuss both incidents at our March, 2020 meeting, but the earliest response to the Covid-19 pandemic was to limit or prohibit gatherings, and the meeting was canceled.

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San Francisco moved into California’s purple Covid-19 tier on November 28.  A (limited) curfew has been imposed from November 30 to December 21.  This means that outdoor gatherings are not allowed between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.  You are still allowed to be outside, alone or with people from your household, and you are still allowed to travel to or from an essential job at these hours.  More detail on what is and is not allowed can be found here:  https://sf.gov/news/sf-assigned-states-purple-tier-will-roll-back-many-non-essential-activities . With increasing cases and hospitalizations, another order, with additional restrictions, was issued on December 4:  https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/files/C19-07-Shelter-in-Place-Health-Order.pdf .

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By James Sword, HANC Board

Our November general meeting was well attended by those logging on, calling in, and following a live twitter account of the meeting – which has become the norm.  We’re repeating a couple of announcements from the meeting: 1) if you are calling in to attend our meetings, please recheck your call-in number, so you can avoid possible high charges; 2) The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council is very sad to learn about the passing of former board member, and long-time Haight Ashbury merchant, Dave Groeschel of Mom's Body Shop. Dave embodied the Haight-Ashbury in many ways and was a good soul.

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By Calvin Welch, HANC Board

At HANC’s December General Membership meeting we will look at how our neighbors cast their vote for national, state and local races.  We will look at the three sub areas of our neighborhood - five precincts that make up the North Panhandle, seven precincts that make up the "Flatlands" and five precincts that make up the Hill precincts.  We will compare votes in selected races - President and Supervisor - to earlier elections in the same sub-areas and see what we may learn : hint—Trump’s vote INCREASED in the Haight Ashbury, more in some areas than others but an increase occurred in all three sub area

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