That’s a real issue; the Mirkarimi pile-on is not. Plus: Stopping business displacement in the Mission and making tech dorms pay for affordable housing
By Tim Redmond
JULY 12, 2105 – I have been trying over the past couple of years to be nicer to the folks at the Chron. Daily newspapers – the old-fashioned kind – are having it tough there days; nobody has any money, and staffs are getting chopped back to almost nothing, and anyone who manages to wake up in the morning and try to keep the public informed under debilitating circumstances deserves some credit. (Even if the paper still refuses to ever give anyone else credit for breaking stories first; see this on July 6, and this yesterday, with almost the identical headline.)
But I keep hearing from people in the media world that the relentless attack on Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and the city’s Sanctuary law is a major journalistic embarrassment that unfortunately has politics written all over it.
Look: It’s terrible that a young woman was killed on Pier 14. It’s terrible that a federal agent left a gun where it could be stolen and it wound up where a person who had just apparently taken some drugs out of a trash can could find it. The whole thing is an awful tragedy.
But at worst, at the very worst, all Mirkarimi did was follow standard procedures in his office and a law that until recently, every single politician in town supported.
You can agree or disagree about the details of the Sanctuary law, but there’s no evidence at all that the sheriff did anything other than what he was supposed to. He had no way to know that a thus-far nonviolent offender would wind up killing someone. I suppose he could have turned the guy (and hundreds of others in similar situations) over to immigration authorities, and violated city law; or he could have been psychic and seen the future and decided that of the 10,000 or so people with ICE holds who have been released in the state, this particular one (who has never before been charged with a gun offense or any other violence) would turn out to be the person who killed someone. I’m not sure what else he could have done.
Some people (including the Chron’s editorial writers) think Mirkarimi should have been removed from office when he pled guilty to a misdemeanor false-imprisonment charge in the now-famous domestic dispute with his wife. Okay; if that’s your opinion, I can understand it.
And Mirkarimi’s tenure hasn’t been perfect; a woman died at SF General when his deputies were supposed to be watching, and some deputies apparently encouraged gladiator fighting matches among inmates in the jail. Go after the guy on his record, and that’s fair criticism.
(He’s also done some remarkable things with inmate education, visitation rights, and anti-recidivism programs, and won national attention for those efforts. Which ought to be part of the debate.)
But in this case, the paper is going after a law-enforcement official who was … following the law.
Either the Chron is just trying to be a crazy tabloid with wild headlines – anything to sell papers – or there’s a feeling among the higher-ups over at Fifth and Mission that a progressive sheriff ought to be driven out of office. I don’t know what else to say.
The Mission Moratorium failed at the Board and is now on the ballot – but in the meantime, another critical land-use issue in that neighborhood is coming before the supervisors.
According to Calle24, the 24th Street Merchants group:
We are seeing a trend by investor- type restaurants that wish to combine retail space for restaurant use. We lost two retails spaces to a restaurant (near 24th and Hampshire), we fought and saved GG Tukay and St. Peters book store, when a restaurant offered the Archdiocese 100k to evict them and combine the spaces.
Usulatan Restaurant after 25 years and the Church of Worship were also evicted and are in the process to combine (at 24th and Harrison St.) Near 24th and Bryant. Arkay Workshop left when they raised the rent from $2,900 to $4,500; both retail spaces are now being considered to combine for restaurant.
$10,0000,$11,000 and 8,000 a month are being asked for the rents. El Riconcito Nicaraguense had a rent increase from $3,150.00 to $8,150 and will probably need to close. This will increase rents further for all businesses in the area. Small family mom and pop business cannot compete with these investors and will eventually price everyone out and change the culture of 24th.
24th Street has always been a corridor for small mom and pop business’s where the locals could shop and afford.
Sup David Campos, with the support of Mayor Ed Lee, is calling for emergency short-term restrictions on the combination of small retail spaces into larger spaces. Like the original Mission Moratorium, the interim zoning ordinance would be in place for 45 days and could be extended for as long as two years. That would give city planners a chance to study the space mergers in the Calle24 Special Use District and decide on long-term action.
It would also space existing small businesses from speculation and rent hikes.
The Land Use and Transportation Committee will vote on the measure Monday/13; the meeting starts at 1:30pm.
Also on the agenda: A proposal by Sups. John Avalos and Jane Kim that would apply the city’s inclusionary housing laws to what’s known as “group housing.”
At the time the city started mandated that all market-rate projects include a percentage of affordable housing, places like SRO hotels that offer small bedrooms and shared kitchen and bath facilities were exempted. That’s because nobody ever figured that those types of living spaces would become attractive to more wealthy residents; the idea was that they would, by nature, be affordable.
Not true anymore: Developers are looking for ways to build expensive SROs aimed at young tech workers (who after all, don’t need kitchens; they get fed all their meals at work.)
So the Avalos-Kim plan would say: If it’s market-rate housing, even if it’s market-rate tech SROs, you have to build some affordable units.
Missing in all the fuss over the Pier 14 shooting is a central issue facing the city and the next sheriff. Should San Francisco build a new jail?
For most of his term, Ross Mirkarimi has said yes; now, he’s backing off a bit, saying that the city wouldn’t need a new jail if that money went to fund other places for mental-health treatment. The SF County Jail is in part a ward for mentally ill people who haven’t received treatment.
It’s also a jail for poor people – more than 80 percent of the inmates haven’t been convicted of anything. They’re locked up awaiting trial because they can’t afford bail.
Now: The existing jail at 850 Bryant is a disaster. It’s something out of the 1930s, people locked in little cages with nothing to do. The inmates in that lockup are in maximum security; you can’t send them to the general population of the much-more-humane jail in San Bruno.
Everyone agrees that the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant has to be demolished. It’s not seismically safe and won’t last much longer. So do we want to spend $260 million on a new facility, or do we want to figure out another alternative?
Kim has asked for a hearing on the subject, and it will come before the Government Audit and Oversight Committee Thursday/16 at 10:30am.
