I LOve THe Peoples Plan/Yo Quiero El PLan POpular

Click and download the Peoples Plan support letter below. Email it to the SF Supervisors on the Land Use Committee on behalf of the hard working families of San Francisco...

Haz click abajo y descarge la carta apoyando las familias que luchan cada dia en San Francisco. Mandelo por email a los Supervisores del Comite del Uso de Terreno...

Sophie Maxwell, District 10 Supervisor
(415) 554-7670 - voice
(415) 554-7674 – fax
Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org

Gerardo Sandoval, District 11 Supervisor
(415) 554-6975 - voice
(415) 554-6979 - fax
Gerardo.Sandoval@sfgov.org

Aaron Peskin, District 3 Supervisor
(415) 554-7450 - voice
(415) 554-7454 - fax
Aaron.Peskin@sfgov.org

Peoples Plan Support Letter - Upload a Document to Scribd

Eastern Neighborhoods Pro-Displacement Plan

The second hearing in a series of hearings at the Land Use Committee on the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan was held this past Monday. The topic of the day was housing, specifically affordable housing. By now you should know our position and the city’s position. So let’s get down to it. The hearing became interesting when District 11 Supervisor asked some hard and fair questions about the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan that was passed by the Planning Commission.

The Supervisor’s principal concern was, in effect, that the plan as it stands will further gentrify the Mission District. There were three other noteworthy issues raised at the hearing:

1. Is the Plan passed by the Planning Commission satisfactory to community serving organization? The answer is NO.

2. Why were the counter proposals by MAC and SOMCAN dismissed by the Planning Commission?

3. Why is there not an affordable housing plan for Mission Street?

It was about time an appointed or elected official called out the Planning Commission’s Plan as a plan that would further gentrify the Mission District. The community based organizations from the Mission and South of Market do not approve the current Eastern Neighborhoods Plan as it stands because it will continue to displace residents and businesses. Furthermore, than plan will do little to solve our affordable housing crises.

I hope the comments raised by the committee were not just lip service.

San Francisco is moving forward with a Plan that will not solve our affordable housing crises, will further gentrify the neighborhood, and will result in the loss of thousands of blue-collar jobs.WHY?

*October 1st: Fighting For Our Right To The City: "The Rumble For The Mission"
In this corner... you have vulture speculators, money hungry Realtors, hater NIMBY's and bottom-line developers vying for the heart & soul of La Misión and the entire Eastern Neighborhoods. Their corner is stacked with developer-friendly policies and pushover bureaucrats that have supported the block by block, house by house gentrification of the City. They lay waste to the community by displacing long-time residents and merchants; they close doors and thus opportunities to newly arrived immigrant families; and leave behind out-of-reach condos and an inhospitable environment for children and their families.

In the other corner... we have tens of thousands of hard-working families who for generations have strengthened our communities with little fanfare and less than enthusiastic support from City hall. But despite the odds- brown, black & blue-collar peoples have persevered and built amazing communities with strong social networks, thriving local economies and a legacy of cultural activism. Because of this the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition developed the People's Plan: the community's blueprint for urban land reform and the development of dignified jobs and affordable housing for all of us.

In typical fashion, the City's Planning Department rejected the People's Plan and took the developers' side. Now the Supervisors must decide:

WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON? WHAT SIDE ARE YOU ON IN THE RUMBLE FOR THE MISSION?

Join us this Monday at the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee. Let Supervisors Maxwell, Peskin & Sandoval hear our voices as we demand the Peoples Plan.

Wednesday, October 1st 3:00pm Meet at Stairs of City Hall We'll walk-in together to the hearing room 263

Fighting For Our Right To The City: "The Rumble For The Mission"

On Monday September 22...
In this corner... you have vulture speculators, money hungry Realtors, hater NIMBY's and bottom-line developers vying for the heart & soul of La Misión and the entire Eastern Neighborhoods. Their corner is stacked with developer-friendly policies and pushover bureaucrats that have supported the block by block, house by house gentrification of the City. They lay waste to the community by displacing long-time residents and merchants; they close doors and thus opportunities to newly arrived immigrant families; and leave behind out-of-reach condos and an inhospitable environment for children and their families.

In the other corner... we have tens of thousands of hard-working families who for generations have strengthened our communities with little fanfare and less than enthusiastic support from City hall. But despite the odds- brown, black & blue-collar peoples have persevered and built amazing communities with strong social networks, thriving local economies and a legacy of cultural activism. Because of this the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition developed the People's Plan: the community's blueprint for urban land reform and the development of dignified jobs and affordable housing for all of us.

In typical fashion, the City's Planning Department rejected the People's Plan and took the developers' side. Now the Supervisors must decide:

WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON? WHAT SIDE ARE YOU ON IN THE RUMBLE FOR THE MISSION?

Join us this Monday at the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee. Let Supervisors Maxwell, Peskin & Sandoval hear our voices as we demand the Peoples Plan.

Monday, September 22
3:30pm Meet at PODER
4:00pm Hearing at City Hall, Rm. 240
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, near Grove St.

Freaky Fridays

A few choice links to end your week

Our friends at the San Francisco Bay Guardian tellin' it like it is.

The New York Times (re)discovers the Mission.  It seems pretty different from the place I knew when I moved here in 1991.  

For those of you who couldn't make the first Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee Hearing on the Eastern Neighborhoods this Wednesday, here is the replay.

Have a great weekend and see you Monday at City Hall for the next Board of Supes hearing.

EN HEARING TODAY!!!

Today is the first of a series of hearings at the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use Committee on the Eastern Neighborhoods (EN) Plan. As reported earlier, the EN Plan was approved by the Planning Commission and is going to be heard this month and early next month at the Board of Supervisors. Today, the Planning Department will present to the Board one section of the Plan passed by the Planning Commission. Today’s topic is the preservation/elimination of industrial-type businesses. Please read the “Made in San Francisco” report produced by the City, that outlines the importance of industrial-type businesses to the City’s economy.

Industrial type businesses are generally defined as "small to medium-size industrial or commercial businesses that create products or provide services in manufacturing, wholesale,
commercial, logistics, construction, repairs, and food processing."

It merits to be stated once more: MAC is in favor of preserving blue-collar jobs in the city. This requires zoning controls that will prevent current parcels zoned only for industrial type uses from being converted to a zoning category that will permit market rate housing and office uses.

Aint Nothing Like a Job and Affordable Housing To Make Our Streets Safe

On Tuesday the Mission Community Council hosted a very emotional and inspiring community meeting in response to the latest upsurge in street violence in the Mission District & throughout Southeast SF . The community room at Mission Recreation Center was packed with public officials, cops, front-line outreach workers, youth organizers, reporters and concerned mothers. Many in the room, long-time and newbie residents alike, were alarmed and wanted justice for the 7 homicides that have taken place on the streets of the Mission over the past three weeks. Check out the photos on the HOMEY website.

These past months life has been challenging for many in the neighborhood, especially young Latinos and Blacks who have to navigate & survive on these streets. The recent flare ups in street violence targeted at our young people has us all worried and wanting to take action. People in the community are expressing their pain and anger through marches and vigils. Others have been holding prayer circles. And yet others have been clamoring at our local officials to do something about it. The media, especially the virulent and sensationalist Chronicle, Examiner and Fox News, has politically attacked and pointed fingers at our immigrant community thus frightening Mayor Newsom into getting soft on our Sanctuary City ordinance.

With all the attention and talk of stemming the violence, the debate being shaped by the Mayors Office, cops and reactive neighborhood associations has focused solely on aggressive police tactics. One highly controversial strategy has been the five month old Gang Injunction (already in place in Bayview and Western Addition). Youth advocates from here to LA agree that this is a free pass to racially profile youth/adults, stigmatize & label non-affiliated youth as gang members, make the neighborhood "desirable" for land speculators and weekend bar-hoppers, and has do nothing to change the conditions of our communities.

Over the past 8 years that we have been organizing amongst Mission residents on behalf of an healthy & equitable community plan, we have witnessed and experienced first-hand the multitudes of challenges working families throughout San Francisco's eastern neighborhoods are undergoing. From poverty, unemployment/underemployment, displacement of family/community networks, uncontrolled debt, inequitable education system, no or poor health care, and a disconnect from the political process.

Groups like HOMEY, Community Response Network, CARECEN and others are taking a deeper approach- holistic and equitable- towards remedying the ills that are beating down on the community. They and others see law enforcement as a small part of the equation towards realizing a safe, healthy, affordable and vibrant Mission District. The members and activists of the Mission Anti-displacement Coalition have joined in on these efforts. We believe that our young people and their families need real opportunities like affordable housing, good paying career driven jobs, strong community institutions and a land use plan that treats our community as if we matter.

The Next Planning Revolution!

The opinions of SPUR amuse me from time to time. In their July Urbanist issue, their executive director argues that the next planning revolution is the combination of modernist and anti-modernist (think Jane Jacobs) ideologies. He claims that doing more “infill projects” while maintaining the character and livability of a neighborhood is the next planning revolution.

In other words, he wants to build high density market rate housing along Mission Street in the Mission district, further gentrifying the neighborhood and displacing residents and businesses.

I don’t know about you, but to me this hardly seems revolutionary, it isn’t even a paradigm shift. According to Webster, the definition of revolutionary is a sudden or radical change in a system or state of affairs. I do not see any radical or sudden change in planning philosophy from combining two ideas.

It would be revolutionary if the city zoned the neighborhoods to require thousands of affordable (inclusionary) family size housing units in the Mission district and the other eastern neighborhoods. It would be revolutionary if the ENP incorporated the concerns of community members over the development lobby.

Sorry Mr. Metcalf, planning for profits over people is not revolutionary.

So why is the Next Planning Revolution important to the Eastern Neighborhoods discussion? Because, the comrades who subscribe to the next planning revolution are trying to recruit the Board of Supervisors to their revolution.

I caution the Supervisors to prevent the planning and urban research revolutionaries from leading them astray; I ask the Supervisors to prevent them from running amok in City Hall.

We are not in some in some planning class Mr. Metcalf, where we can discuss the merits of the anti-modernist movement. San Francisco is not academia. San Francisco is the real world, where working class families, who do not normally participate in your ivory tower discussions, must find a decent job and place to live.

Blue Collar Pa Siempre (Forever)

Everybody pays lip service to the "working class." Politicians are especially fond of talking about people who use their hands to manufacture things (like furniture makers and bakers) or use their hard earned skills to repair stuff (like car mechanics or electricians). Its the sort of work that commands respect because, well, its hard and its essential to maintaining the quality of life of every single individual throughout this country. The respect, however, doesn't extend much further than the lip service. Government, including our local one, has done nothing in the past few decades to ensure that the lives of those that work in in traditional industrial jobs will be decent ones. San Francisco has been especially hostile to our blue collar workforce: under the Planning Department's proposed rezoning San Francisco will be left with the smallest amount of industrially zoned land of any major city in the United States and we will also lose about 10,000 industrial jobs over the next 15 years. Is that anyway to treat the people who keep our country running?

There is a silver lining. Through tireless community advocacy the City's plan does preserve a core industrial area in the neighborhood where only industrial development will be allowed. This, however is not nearly enough. MAC is fighting to ensure that those workers that have worked in traditional kinds of blue collar jobs (what the Planning Department calls Production, Distribution and Repair or PDR) find a place in the new types of businesses that are coming into or already exist in the neighborhood. Here is what we are pushing for:

New style industrial businesses will be allowed to come into the neighborhood only if they:

• Move into existing buildings which are three stories or more and were built before 1950 (to limit the number of these new businesses);
• Provide jobs for immigrants, people who have less than a 4-year college degree, individuals who do not speak English as their first language, people with disabilities, Low-Moderate Income individuals, and folks who have been displaced from other industrial jobs. We want an average of 25% or more of these jobs go to folks that are part of the traditional blue collar workforce;
• Offer training, benefits, and progression paths for these same individuals over time.

We want the City to support “traditional” and “next generation” or “hybrid” PDR businesses that meet the hiring requirements above. We also want it to support entrepreneurship and micro-business start-ups, especially those who are trying to grow future PDR or hybrid-PDR companies that will provide employment opportunities for our traditional industrial workforce.

MAC has reached an agreement in principle with the Northeast Mission Residents Association (NEMRA) and representatives of the Planning Department and the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development to try to move this idea forward. More than with most policy recommendations, the devil is in truly in the details of this idea. Without proper monitoring and enforcement mechanisms we could be left with a bunch of new office based businesses who's only job openings for community members involves a broom and a mop. MAC is working on creating a strong set of implementation measures that will ensure that our neighborhood benefits from the new wave of industrial jobs that is moving into the neighborhood and that our "working-class" neighborhood remains proudly so in the 21st century.