HANC Blog

By Ed Dunn, Director, Kezar Gardens Recycling Center

The August edition of the Sunset Beacon/Richmond Review has an in depth story on the Kezar Gardens eviction. Written by Tom Pendergast, the story quotes from Recreation and Parks Department staff testimony at the December 2nd 2010 RPD Commission hearing on a concept design for a "garden resource center" and combines it with excerpts from a lengthy interview Pendergast had with Kezar Gardens director Ed Dunn.

The article outlines the RPD's dastardly, scorched earth campaign to keep the bottom one percent from getting money for recyclables. The reader will be floored by the amazing cynicism of RPD's efforts to replace a garden with a garden, destroying ten green jobs while abusing City funds.

The article is available online here.

8 Washington is designed to take advantage of public views created when the Embarcadero Freeway came down. Sue Bierman worked to make that demolition happen.   It is SUE BIERMAN PARK that will be walled off by the 8 Washington project.   The extreme luxury housing on this site would eliminate a community recreation facility (outdoor swimming pools and tennis courts) serving seniors and children and seniors.

FACT - Height limits along the waterfront have NEVER been increased since they were first adopted 50 years ago.

FACT - San Francisco voters have NEVER placed a referendum on the ballot to reverse an ordinance adopted by the Supervisors. (It’s very hard to do.)

FACT - San Franciscans are out on the street gathering signatures on a referendum petition to challenge the first ever height increase - to 136’ across from Sue Bierman Park at Washington and The Embarcadero.

FACT - The height increase is for a project designed to be the MOST EXPENSIVE CONDOS IN SAN FRANCISCO - $3 to $8 million condos.

The physical petition is over 540 pages long - the size of the phone book - because the developer and City dumped documents into “the file” to force the petition to be that long. Could you help circulate a petition? Call Sue Hestor at 846-1021 or go by the NO WALL ON NORTHEAST WATERFRONT headquarters at 15 Columbus (894-7008).   Petitions will be available for signing at the July 15 HANC picnic. PETITIONS MUST BE TURNED IN THURSDAY, JULY 19.

PLEASE HELP US GET THE 20,000 VALID SIGNATURES WE NEED.

       Kezar Gardens, our combined community garden, recycling center, and native plant nursery, at 780 Frederick Street, remains open despite the misguided efforts of the City’s Recreation and Parks Department (RPD) to evict HANC from the site. Eviction proceedings began on December 2, 2010, after a meeting of the Recreation and Parks Commission (RPC). The agenda item at that meeting was to approve the design for a community garden, with no mention of HANC’s recycling center. Yet, despite overwhelming public support for our recycling center, RPC voted to approve the plan, and also indicated that inherent in the approval was the eviction of our recycling center.   RPD served us with a 90-day eviction notice within a few days, which led to an eviction lawsuit filed on March 8, 2011.

       On that same day, the Board of Supervisors passed a “Resolution requesting the Recreation and Parks Department and the Department of the Environment collaborate to establish a comprehensive Parks recycling program using the expertise, volunteer base, and facilities of the HANC Recycling Center in Golden Gate Park, for the Department of the Environment to establish and Independent Recycling Center Master Plan, and requesting the Recreation and Parks Department to rescind the eviction of the HANC Recycling Center from Golden Gate Park.” Click here for the full text of the resolution.

       Despite this resolution and despite a letter from HANC’s attorney to RPD explaining that the eviction notice was served on the wrong day to effect an eviction, RPD proceeded with its eviction lawsuit. RPD must have eventually realized its error, because on May 26, 2011, (through its attorney, the City Attorney’s Office), it dismissed the eviction. But that’s far from the end of the story.

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SUTTER EXPANSION PLAN FUELS CONTROVERSY

At the June HANC general membership meeting a presentation was made by two panelists from San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing Jobs and Justice (SFHHJJ) , a coalition of some 60 community, neighborhood and labor organizations seeking amendments to the draft Development Agreement for the proposed Sutter/CPMC 550 bed hospital at Cathedral Hill at Geary and Van Ness. Little did HANC members know that within two weeks of the presentation dramatic chinches would occur in the project calling its final approval into question.

Bob Prentice, former Assistant Director of the Department of Public Health and Paul Kumar, former Political Director of SEIU, Local 250 presented SFHHJJ proposals for improving access to health care at the new facility, improving Sutter’s poor record of providing “charity care” for the medical indigent and assuring the continued operation as a full service hospital of St. Luke’s hospital, acquired by Sutter in 2004. Both speakers made the case that this huge expansion of Sutter in San Francisco would give it “market control” of heath care which demands that the City, as a condition of approval of the project, make sure that it not result in lower health care services and higher health care cost.

Two major concerns were discussed: the impact on City health care costs for its workers and “Healthy San Francisco” given Sutter’s market dominance and the requirement that Sutter maintain St. Luke’s for a minimum of twenty years as a full service hospital in the medically underserved southeast portion of the City. The fact that the first issue has yet to be resolved has meant that none of the Boards conservative members have stepped forward to endorse the project.

But it was the St. Luke’s issue that now threatens the approval of the project.

At a hearing before a Board Committee on June 25^th, a representative of the Mayor reported that the “deal” reached with Sutter regarding an “escape clause” which if met would allow Sutter to get out of operating St. Luke’s and originally thought to be based upon a remote set of conditions in fact, was not at all that remote and, indeed, was close to being met even before the project was approved allowing Sutter to end its operation of St. Luke’s within as few as five years, far short of the twenty year requirement in the draft agreement.

The announcement was greeted by stunned anger by the Board of Supervisors for having this significant fact held from them nearly two weeks. Not one Supervisor had co-sponsored the Mayors draft deal and with this announcement some Supervisors have called for the entire project to be sent back to “the drawing boards” and fundamentally re-negotiation.

Local Urban Agriculture and Land Use Report

At the general membership meeting on Thursday July 12th HANC hosted a discussion in the round with guest presenters Rob Joyce, from Hayes Valley Farm, Please Touch Community Garden, and a developing network of urban agriculture sites on the Blue Greenway; Pancho Ramos Stierle from the Free Farm, and the Occupy the Farm initiative at the Gill Tract; and, Ed Dunn, from the Kezar Garden and Ecology Center.

Rob shared his perspective on the conditions that have become a pattern of success for initiating and maintaining a successful urban agriculture site. He suggests having a track record of success, a "champion" or connection with a public official, and support from a local organization from the immediate area around the site are crucial to success.

He also recommends having people in public positions or those with strong opinions about urban agriculture to visit the site where they can see and reframe their expectations.

Pancho shared the story of the Gill Tract and the astonishing and passionate community support for maintaining food production for people on that site and not in favor of developing the site with housing and grocery store. He maintains that love and supportive compassion for all parties involved will be critical for having urban agriculture reaching its potential of creating community and connection.

Ed Dunn shared the latest update on the status of the Kezar Gardens and Ecology Center and took questions from those gathered as to what they can do to support the site and prevent it from being evicted by San Francisco's Recreation and Parks Department.

Also at July's meeting will be representatives from Mercy Housing and the Arc to answer questions about their plans for 1500 Masonic.

Mercy Housing and the Arc San Francisco are collaborating to renovate the long vacant property at 1500 Page, at Masonic, to provide 15 units of housing for low-income persons who are developmentally disabled.  Renovations will create 12 studio and 4 one-bedroom apartments as well as spaces for resident services.  Funding for the renovations has been committed by the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mercy Housing California is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to create and strengthen healthy communities through the provision of quality affordable, service-enriched housing for individuals and families who are economically poor.  It developed the old Southern Pacific Hospital site at 333 Baker into 158 senior and 36 family affordable homes.

The Arc San Francisco is a non-profit service and advocacy organization for adults with autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families living in San Francisco and San Mateo counties.  The Arc provides a range of services relevant to all areas of adult life, from independent living supports and skills building to employment training and creative expression.