Meetings

By Richard Ivanhoe, HANC Board Member

Despite a move from the Park Branch Library to the Bindery due to a mix-up with the library key, February’s HANC meeting was well attended.

Park Police Station Captain Una Bailey introduced herself. She grew up in Ireland, and has been with the San Francisco Police Department since 2001. She had been captain of the Special Victims Unit until she was assigned to be captain of Park Station this past October.

Read more ...

Our November meeting featured a presentation on high speed internet access, to every San Francisco home, by fiber.  Questions remain about whether the fiber would be city-owned and controlled, or a public-private partnership [PPP].  We note that PPPs often continue the practice of privatizing the profits and socializing the costs - we pay for the new fiber system, and private companies make a profit on it.

Read more ...

By Tes Welborn, HANC Treasurer

Ed Lee vs. The People of San Francisco

Calvin Welch gave a brief summary of development since World War II. While financial interests built office space until both resident displacement and a glut came to pass, community activists all over San Francisco worked to slow or stop displacement and to create a new model, community development. Community development focused on resident needs-- transit, neighborhood retail, housing, and the related struggle for local hire. The Haight struggled with hospital expansion and fought it back to retain housing.

Welch also presented much information on Mayor Ed Lee's legacy, which focused on large development and tech. Lee focused only on jobs while he ignored the need for housing for those new workers and the folks who would provide them services. His policies led to the greatest population transfer in San Francisco's history, with 400,000 people leaving San Francisco over his 6 year term, and 400,000 new, higher income residents arriving.

Read more ...

By Rupert Clayton, HANC Board

Things seem to be moving fast on the city’s nebulous project to buy the McDonald’s site at 730 Stanyan Street (between Haight and Waller Streets) and use it for some undetermined affordable housing purpose. After vague press reports in the past couple months, we now have an official announcement that the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) will hold a community meeting on the project at 6 pm on Tuesday November 7, 2017 at Park Branch Library.

Clearly, many HANC members and neighbors are interested in how the site is developed. About 60 people gathered at our October 12 meeting to share ideas on possible uses and to learn what the planning and development process might look like. HANC assembled a panel to facilitate the discussion: Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations; Mary Howe, executive director of the Homeless Youth Alliance; and Dean Preston, from Affordable Divisadero.

Read more ...