By Santiago Mejia : sfchronicle – excerpt

In 2018, San Francisco political campaign manager Jen Snyder was in the early stages of running a ballot measure to provide free legal aid to tenants facing eviction when she got a phone call “out of the blue” from someone she had never met before: veteran South of Market nonprofit housing boss John Elberling.

Elberling, the president of the South of Market low-income housing owner TODCO, said he supported the measure. They discussed strategy, potential direct mail pieces and what it would take to win.

“Afterwards he wrote us a check for $20,000,” she said. “He didn’t want anything in return for it.” .

While the infusion of cash was a boon to a shoe-string campaign going up against a well-funded landlord lobby, it was the sort of spending that has led critics to argue that Elberling continues to play politics — and wield tremendous power — with millions of dollars generated through the refinancing of buildings originally constructed with taxpayer money…(more.)