Uncategorized

Wildfire crisis: Federal firefighters could quit en masse if Congress allows a massive pay cut

By Kurtis Alexander : sfchronicle – excerpt

​​Thousands of wildland firefighters in California, and thousands more across the West, may see pay cuts of up to 50% next month as lawmakers in Washington fail to agree on a plan to continue pay raises for federal fire employees.

The pay reduction, which could come regardless of whether the U.S. government shuts down in the current budget battle, would leave many firefighters in California with the personal hardship of making less than minimum wage. It also could send employees packing for higher-paying jobs and exacerbate staffing shortages already plaguing federal firefighting ranks…

Without permanent funding for higher firefighter wages, efforts to maintain the current pay have gotten caught up in the larger budget debate playing out in Washington. Congress this week continued to feud over the appropriations bills needed to keep the federal government up and running in the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

Short-term money to at least partially fund the government, which could include keeping firefighters whole at least temporarily, is being discussed. Some Republicans, particularly in the House, remain hesitant to move forward with funding out of concern about high levels of spending…(more)

Politics

Once-homeless former criminal defense attorney finds his ‘calling’ helping those living on Sonoma County streets

By Jeremy Hay : presdomocrat – excerpt

“I just got burned out on that kind of law and when I got this job, I knew right away that this is where I was always supposed to be,” Legal Aid of Sonoma County’s Justin Milligan said.

On a recent Thursday morning in Petaluma’s Walnut Park, attorney Justin Milligan opened his laptop on top of a Recology garbage bin in front of his audience — the city’s Downtown Streets team, a work program for people experiencing homelessness. As a desk, it would have to do.

The team — a dozen men and women, most in Downtown Streets T-shirts, who spend mornings tidying up Petaluma’s streets — sat back and waited for him to start…

“My role,” he said, “is to remove legal obstacles to housing.”…(more)

Uncategorized

Berkeley Landlords Celebrate End of Eviction Moratorium With a Cocktail Party

by Astrid Kane : sfstandard – excerpt

A group of Berkeley landlords have chosen to celebrate the end of the East Bay city’s Covid-era eviction moratorium with a full-on cocktail party.

Members of the Berkeley Property Owners Association will gather Tuesday evening at local venue Freehouse, as first reported by Berkeleyside

“Come enjoy drinks, appetizers, and networking with other Berkeley rental housing providers,” the event invite reads. “We will celebrate the end of the Eviction Moratorium and talk about what’s upcoming through the end of the year.”…(more)

Politics

San Francisco’s Glossiest New Political Group Is Ready To Party

By Josh Koehn : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco political groups come and go, but a new clique of concerned residents who want to save the city—but also kind of want to mingle and party—are coming together to take a seat at the table. And, preferably, that table will have good lighting to make the evening Insta-worthy.

WE San Francisco started popping up on social media feeds last month as it began hosting summertime events in the city. The organization’s members appear to be a clean-cut group of young professionals, some of whom have sizable social media followings. While the group’s own Instagram account had fewer than 160 followers as of Monday, organizers say they have already recruited the support of 500 residents since June and have ambitions to grow to a “magic number” of 8,000 members.

“I like to create movements or to make things go viral,” said Ben Kaplan, the founder of WE San Francisco and the CEO of multiple marketing and PR companies. “And when we do that, we basically need 1% of the population to really buy in to something, get aligned, be kind of die-hard about a message, and it will spread in the whole population.”…

Once the community survey is completed, WE San Francisco intends to hold town hall meetings before formalizing operations by filing for nonprofit status and creating a political arm to get involved in next year’s elections and budget cycle, Kaplan said. A focus will be using community pressure to reshape city department priorities. Kaplan cited pro-vaccine education programs he led in Georgia during the pandemic as a successful model for pressuring lawmakers into action.

“I don’t think we have to wait for the mayor or a Board of Supervisors member or the head of some department to be like, ‘Here’s our plan,’” Kaplan said. “I think the community can do it. And that’s one of the big differences is we’re trying to, like, community-lead stuff. And the idea is that if we get enough of our community behind one voice, then politicians, elected leaders and others will follow it.”…

Those paying attention to the local political landscape might think WE San Francisco’s mission will overlap with moderate, public safety-focused policies being pushed by organizations like TogetherSF and Grow SF—and they might be right! Podcast episodes for the fledgling political group feature interviews between Kaplan and billionaire Chris Larsen, affordable housing developer Sam Moss and TogetherSF founder Kanishka Cheng…

Jim Ross, a longtime political consultant in the city, was dubious about the new political group’s chances of making meaningful policy changes, but he appreciated the social angle, noting that “San Francisco politics have been kind of boring lately.”…(more)

This may be a group to watch. They may not be dedicated to any positions yet, other than “things need to change.”

Uncategorized

Controversial downtown plans from Monaco billionaire may change Carmel

By Andrew Pridgen : sfgate – excerpt

Dee Borsella makes pajamas. She draws up patterns, cuts the fabric and sews her creations right in the back of her Carmel store. People come from all over to purchase her custom bedtime ensembles. She has her regulars from New York, LA and even London. But she likes it best when people are walking by and happen to spy a pretty set in the window. She loves to talk sleepwear. And that’s all she would ever talk about, if she had the chance.

But for the past six years, the first thing people say when they step through the threshold of Ruffle Me To Sleep is: “What’s with the hole in the ground?”

“It’s become …” she pauses mid-thought for a moment as she readies to close, “more than a distraction, a fixture? It’s, ‘What’s going on across the street? What’s going on across the street?’”…

Enter a billionaire heir from Monaco

The project proposal, unanimously approved on Aug. 9 by Carmel’s Planning Commission after three years of back-and-forth with the developer, includes 14 shops with more than 9,000 square feet of retail space, along with a dozen one- and two-bedroom apartments.

The buildings are designed to adhere to Carmel’s 30-foot height limit and to the architectural lineage of Carmel, as something of a greatest hits of the town’s traditional styles. The renderings feature a mishmash of Contemporary Craftsman, Spanish Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival styles. Final approvals and permits, along with a groundbreaking date, have not yet been set, but according to developer Esperanza Carmel’s website, “We are now able to proceed to the next stage of the planning process.”…(more)

Housing, Politics, Uncategorized

Secret in-flight recording sparks rage over wildfire insurance ‘bailout’

By Sophia Bollag, Joe Garofoli : sfchronicle – excerpt

SACRAMENTO — A conversation with a lobbyist secretly recorded on an airplane is shedding light on discussions of possible wildfire insurance legislation that consumer advocates are worried will be pushed through the Legislature in the final two weeks of the session.

“We are trying to jam a bill in the last three weeks,” longtime insurance industry lobbyist Michael Gunning says on the recording, which was taken on a Southwest flight from Los Angeles to Sacramento. He went on to explain that major insurance companies, including Farmers, State Farm and Allstate, have been reducing their footprint in the state…

The conversation goes to the heart of a question roiling Sacramento in the last days that bills can be written before the end of the legislative session: What can state lawmakers do to stave off concerns of an insurance crisis in California — a state that boasts the strongest insurance protections for consumers in the country?…

Consumer Watchdog has long been a thorn in the side of the insurance industry, and its founder was the chief backer of Proposition 103, the 1988 voter-approved ballot measure that created California’s strict rules governing insurance policies in the state. That measure also created the office of the insurance commissioner.

Gunning, a registered lobbyist with the firm Lighthouse Public Affairs, did not return a call seeking comment for this story. A colleague from his firm followed up with an emailed statement, characterizing the recording as an example of Gunning’s work to address California’s housing crisis.

“Let’s not do a bailout at the end of session with no public scrutiny,” she said. “It never ends well for consumers when lawmakers push through a bailout at the end of session.”…(more)

This news broke on national broadcast news so the secret is out.

Most bills are created by lobbyists who go to great lengths to hide the details from the public until the bills are passed. People have been complaining about backroom deals for years, but, the information has fallen on deaf ears.

All of a sudden the media is acting surprised. We shall see how far they go with it. Will they only despair of insurance company scams or will they admit how widespread the practice is? How many bills are passed without public knowledge or participation?

Isn’t this how we got SB35 and SB2011 that are now being blamed for such monstrosities as 2700 Sloat and a little known project going up on a greenway next to Sunset Blvd.? Is this how they will confiscate the parks and golf courses and waterfront sites that are not tied down to a trust of some kind? In San Francisco our public parks are being leased to private enterprises for a pittance . Not much is of limits when the developers get greedy and the state reps are hooked on their largesse.

Uncategorized

CH Planning applies new housing law to rejected SF housing tower

TRD staff : therealdeal – excerpt

Developer adds AB 2011 application to two lawsuits over project in Outer Sunset

The developer behind a failed plan to build a 50-story condominium tower in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset has pulled another arrow from its quiver: a new law to fast-track affordable homes.

Reno-based CH Planning, led by John and Raelynn Hickey, has added Assembly Bill 2011 to two lawsuits attempting to overturn the rejected project at 2700 Sloat Boulevard, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The couple are seeking streamlined approval under the law that went into effect July 1 to redevelop the Sloat Garden Center, creating a controversial highrise over low-lying homes and businesses, a few blocks from the beach.

AB 2011, known as the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act, fast-tracks housing on commercial properties by allowing ministerial approval if certain housing and labor standards are met… (more)

Let’s see Buffy and Wierner worm their way out of this one. What would happen if they declared Sloat Blvd. a SLOW STREET? Would that make it a non High Road Jobs Act Street immune from application of AB 2011? Could refusal of insurance companies to cover the project become a factor in making it less desirable? Could the coastal commission take meaningful action or would they, considering the plan is to not protect the coastal area from rising tides? How creative can we be?

Uncategorized

People’s Park Student Housing Project Could Move Forward Under New Bill Headed to Newsom’s Desk

By kqed staff : kqed – excerpt

UC Berkeley could be one step closer to breaking ground on its fiercely contested student housing project in historic People’s Park if the governor signs a bill scrapping certain building regulations.

AB 1307, introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), whose district includes Berkeley, would amend California’s sweeping Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by exempting proposed housing developments from first having to study potential noise levels generated by future tenants.

The bill also eliminates the need for universities to prepare an environmental impact report that considers alternative housing sites for a residential or mixed-use housing project if certain requirements are met…(more)

Uncategorized

Report: Investors behind mysterious $800 million Bay Area land grab are Silicon Valley power players

Megan Fan Munce, Shira Stein : sfchronical – excerpt

The investors behind a mysterious company buying up thousands of acres in Solano County have been revealed to be a group of Silicon Valley power players.

Flannery Associates caught the attention of both local politicians and several federal government agencies after it spent more than $800 million buying up 140 properties in Solano County over the past five years, purportedly to build an entirely new city.

But until Friday, where exactly the money was coming from was unclear.

Citing three unnamed people familiar with the plan, the New York Times reported Thursday that the company’s investors included Laurene Powell Jobs, owner of The Atlantic and widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and Andreessen Horowitz, a Menlo Park-based venture capital firm that’s backed companies like Skype and Lyft, among a host of other prominent Silicon Valley power players.

The original man behind the idea was Jan Sramek, according to the Times, a former Goldman Sachs trader, according to his LinkedIn account.

Sramek’s goal was to build a new city between Fairfield and Rio Vista, according to both a poll sent to Solano County residents earlier this week and a 2017 pitch reviewed by the Times…(more)

Well, the mystery is solved. Silicon Valley wants to build a brand new city out of nothing. At least this plan will disrupt fewer settled people than bulldozing and gentrifying neighborhoods. I hope they can fill their dream cities with people who like their plans. Perhaps the investlors will even live there.

Uncategorized

California spends billions on homelessness, but political squabbling undermines efforts

By Cal Matters : smtp – excerpt

Since Gavin Newsom began his governorship more than four years ago, the state has spent upwards of $20 billion on efforts to solve – or at least reduce – California’s worst-in-the-nation homelessness crisis.

The spending continues, but the number of people living on the streets, in squalid camps or in ramshackle motorhomes and trailers continues to climb.

That sad fact was underscored recently by a new census of homelessness in Los Angeles County, which has a quarter of the state’s population but nearly half of its homeless people. The study found a 9% rise in the number of homeless people in the county to 75,518, with more than half (46,260) in the city of Los Angeles…

California’s failure, at least so far, to get a handle on its homelessness crisis has made it a target of scornful national and international media attention and a model of what to avoid for other states…

The most obvious of those squabbles has been the running feud between Newsom and local government officials. He accuses the locals of being insufficiently vigorous in implementing programs while they say they need permanent sources of financing rather than the year-to-year appropriations Newsom has offered…(more)