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HANC’s March meeting began with a short presentation by Jacqueline from Downtown Streets.  Downtown Streets has taken over the cleanup of Haight Street and some neighboring streets from Taking It To The Streets.  There will be groups working in the Haight-Ashbury from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm, Monday through Friday.  Housing for participants will be managed by the Homeless Youth Alliance.  Downtown Streets will manage Porta-Potty surveillance and will help with cleanup at the 4/20 event.

4/20

Captain Bailey of the Park Police Station and Supervisor Vallie Brown spoke about the 4/20 event.  Captain Bailey was at last year’s event.  This year, there will be twice as many buses, and twice as many ambulances as last year.

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By Calvin Welch, HANC Board Member

Have you noticed a new trend among local and elected officials of talking about very appealing initiatives aimed at addressing serious (and generally expensive) social problems but forgetting to tell us where the money is going to come from to implement them?

A Few Examples

State Senator Scott Wiener proposes a massive density increase of major California cities (but upon close reading of his proposal so far no such massive increase in the suburbs) along transit lines with no mention of funding the increase in transit capacity needed to ensure even existing levels of transit service. 

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By Richard Ivanhoe, HANC Board Member

Our February Meeting featured presentations by Ozzie Rohm and by Michael Barnes.

Ozzie Rohm is a co-founder of the Noe Neighborhood Council, and is a member of San Francisco Land Use Coalition.  She discussed Senate Bill 50, which in many ways is similar to the failed SB827. 

SB50 would affect “rail-rich” and “bus-rich” areas—which covers 96% of San Francisco.  The brunt of the impacts of SB50 would be borne by the City’s working class and less privileged neighborhoods—the Excelsior, Outer Mission, Visitacion Valley, and Bayview.  There is no incentive for suburban areas to  add transit or to build housing—between 2010 and 2016 San Mateo County added 79,000 new jobs, but built only 3,844 new housing units. 

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By James Sword, HANC Board Member (@sandDadSf on Twitter)

In case you haven’t heard, the Panhandle Playground is getting a $3.5 million refresh. After 2 years of planning, lots of scrutiny of the process and policies involved, the construction is scheduled to start in April and run through the end of the year, possibly into 2020. The playground will be updated for the first time in decades and many of the current features will be preserved, but modernized (the final design can be found here: https://sfrecpark.org/wp-content/uploads/Panhandle-Playground_Construction-Plan_90-percent.pdf).  There will be swings, slides, a new climbing structure and some cool new elements laid on top of a rubber floor – we successfully fought to have a sand box included, but a sand surface throughout was not realistic (if you want to know more about the sand fight throughout the city, visit https://savethesandsf.wixsite.com/savethesand).

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