More Lobbyist Donations Appear After Pay-to-Play Complaint Againt SF Supervisor Candidate

Ed Lee's pro-developer/gentrifier Assemblymember David Chiu has come to Bernal and Mission to back Josh Arce with more market rate housing in the Bernal/Mission area. Corrupt Chiu pushed to destroy working class housing at Park Merced and has taken millions from developers and land speculators who he represents. He supported every proposal of vulture capitalists land and housing speculators in San Francisco.
Arce who claims to represent working people wants to have more "market housing" in Bernal and the Mission which would drive up rents and drive out working class union people. More "market housing" ends up only being for high paid tech workers and helps some building trades workers who themselves cannot afford to live in San Franicsco.
Maybe "San Francisco Labor" should investigate the ties between corrupt Chiu and Arce.

Josh Arce Candidate for Supervisor Proposes New Mission District BART Station and more high priced housing " He said a mixture of developer’s fees from new market-rate housing in the corridor and state or federal funds could finance the project."
http://missionlocal.org/2016/07/candidate-for-supervisor-proposes-new-mission-district-bart-station/

Josh Arce standing in the Safeway parking lot at 30th and Mission streets on July 28, 2016, to announce his plan for a new Bart station on the site. Photo by Joe Rivano Barros.
By Joe Rivano Barros
Posted July 28, 2016 3:40 pm
A new BART station and thousands of units of housing may transform the area of the Mission District south of Cesar Chavez Street, if a candidate for District Nine supervisor has his way.

Josh Arce, a community liaison for laborers union Local 261 running to replace Supervisor David Campos, laid out plans on Thursday to replace the Safeway and its parking lot at 30th and Mission streets with a new BART station, and to develop dozens of parcels in the area to increase the neighborhood’s housing supply by 2,000 units.

The development, part of a proposed “Mission Street South of Cesar Chavez” plan, would “not touch any existing housing,” Arce said. The housing built would be a mix of market-rate projects and affordable housing.

“There’s never really been a plan for this neighborhood,” he added, standing with some 20 supporters in the Safeway parking lot at 3350 Mission St. where the new station would go. The Safeway itself could be incorporated into the new station, Arce said, or a new store could be built elsewhere.

The triangular slice of the Mission District between Mission and Valencia streets below Cesar Chavez Street — known by some as “La Lengua,” the “tongue” of the Mission — has no integrated transit plan, Arce said, and is ripe for housing needed to address the “displacement crisis” in the gentrifying neighborhood.

“This is a neighborhood that can play a part in the solution,” he said, saying the BART station could be the cornerstone of a new corridor. “What if that solution is just right here below our feet? And that solution, I propose, is the potential for a brand new BART station right here at Mission and 30th streets.”

The plans for the new transit station and housing are preliminary. Arce said the development “might take a long time” and estimated that the BART station alone could cost $200-$300 million. He said a mixture of developer’s fees from new market-rate housing in the corridor and state or federal funds could finance the project.

BART is hoping to pass a $3.5 billion bond in November to updates its aging infrastructure, but none of that money would go towards expanding service lines or building new stations. The current system “was built about 45 years ago to last 45 years,” said a spokesperson, who added that a new stations is “not a top priority.”

“We’ve not had any interest generated until just now in a 30th Street station, it’s not really on our radar,” said Taylor Huckaby, a spokesperson for BART. The system will look to expand services and add stations to existing track, but Huckaby said it would take time.

“It’s something that we’re interested in doing much further down the road,” he said, without giving a specific timeline.

A 2003 study by BART looked at the 30th and Mission streets site as one of several in San Francisco for an “infill” station that would sit atop existing track, Huckaby said, but nothing has been done since then. That study put the cost of the station at between $440–$530 million, but Huckaby did not know whether construction cost might be cheaper or more expensive today.

Candidates Pledge Thousands of Units of Housing

The proposal for a new BART station is only the cornerstone of what Arce said would be a transformation of the entire La Lengua corridor, however.

The thousands of units pledged would be contingent on rezoning dozens of parcels to allow for taller buildings, Arce said, up to 65 feet. Many of the lots are “soft sites,” those identified by the Planning Department as being underdeveloped with the potential for housing.

Those sites could add more housing by building atop parking lots and other empty spaces, though some sit on existing buildings like single-story storefronts.


The “soft sites” identified by the Planning Department on Mission Street south of Cesar Chavez Street. Photo by Joe Rivano Barros.


Arce’s plan parallels that of one of his opponents, Hillary Ronen, who is also running for District Nine supervisor and currently serves as chief of staff for Supervisor Campos. Ronen announced in January her intention to build 5,000 affordable housing units in the Mission District in the next decade, saying she would develop empty lots and raise heights to accomplish the feat.

The Mission District has seen no new units of affordable housing constructed in the last decade and just 455 units approved across four sites for the next four years. Those will be joined by a couple hundred more once funds from the housing bond passed last November are disbursed, but that would still be a fraction of the total Ronen has pledged for her term in office.

On Thursday, Arce said he doubted Ronen’s plan, saying it lacked detail.

“I don’t know that she has a plan,” he said. “I’m someone who thinks things should be very specific.”

Arce’s plan does identify specific sites but would require that private developers construct market-rate housing on their own, feeding impact fees into the proposed BART station and affordable housing in the area. To incentivize developers to build there, dozens of parcels in the area would need to be rezoned for taller buildings.

A similar rezoning effort that would have granted height bonuses to projects with higher percentages of affordable housing was bitterly opposed earlier this year, and it is unclear how Arce would accomplish the change needed to incentivize construction.

At the press conference on Thursday, Arce was joined by Assemblymember David Chiu, who represents the eastern half of San Francisco in the State Assembly. Chiu , and quipped that he would have gotten to the conference earlier himself if there were a BART station on-site.

“I was supposed to get here at 10 o’clock. I got here at 10:12. I would’ve gotten here on time if we had a 30th and Mission BART station,” Chiu said. “That’s why this vision is so important, this vision of doing something that has not been proposed in decades, and that is to add a new station.”

Nicholas Josefowitz, a representative on the BART Board of Directors, also spoke on Thursday in support of the plan, saying the city needed to make better use of its remaining lots to build up housing and transit infrastructure.

“We’re sitting here today in a half-empty parking lot,” he said. “Is that really what we want for our communities, half-empty parking lots?”

Josefowitz acknowledged that “there is no point building new stuff if our system is falling apart,” but added that Bart must also look to “move forward” and anticipate greater demand for transit in the area.

“We don’t want to just plan as a system to rebuild what we have,” he said.

Is Airbnb to blame for high housing prices in SF?
http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/airbnb/economics/
By Carolyn Said
July 22, 2016

Brian and Sarah Grzybowski had to find a new apartment in Potrero Hill after their landlord evicted them last year. James Tensuan, Special to The Chronicle

After four years in a rent-controlled flat on Potrero Hill, Brian and Sarah Grzybowski were evicted, with their landlady saying she needed their apartment for her grown daughter.

Months later, they stumbled across their former apartment advertised as a vacation rental. They investigated further and found it listed on Airbnb, FlipKey, Craigslist, Cozy and Zeus Living at prices ranging from $185 a night to $5,500 a month. Their rent had been $2,950.

“We knew the way they got us out was hinky,” Brian said. Their landlady had characterized the maneuver as an owner-move-in eviction, a legal maneuver around renter protections that requires a landlord or a family member to have “honest intent” to live there three years.


Sarah Grzybowski pulls up Airbnb listings in her neighborhood; she found her old apartment listed after her landlady evicted her so her daughter could move in. James Tensuan, Special to The Chronicle

Sarah put it more simply: “It was disappointing,” she said.

Their case encapsulates critics’ biggest beef with vacation rentals: Landlords and tenants have an incentive to turn regular housing into more-lucrative temporary rentals. Housing advocates say there are thousands of such conversions that drive up rents and increase scarcity.

Our analysis showed that the number is more likely in the high hundreds. Economists and city experts say short-term rentals, while a factor, are not the biggest one in San Francisco’s housing issues.

“You cannot say that Airbnb (and other vacation sites) are causing the housing crisis, but they probably are exacerbating it,” said Jake Wegmann, a planning professor at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote an analysis of vacation rentals’ impact in San Francisco and four other cities.

The impact is strongest at the micro level — in popular neighborhoods where vacation rentals are heavily concentrated. The Mission, SoMa, Western Addition/North of the Panhandle, Bernal Heights, the Richmond District and Noe Valley have the most listings on Airbnb.


“The same neighborhoods undergoing the strongest gentrification pressures are also where some of the biggest concentrations of Airbnb units are,” Wegmann said. “In the Mission or North Beach, it’s adding fuel to the fire, but not in the Excelsior or Outer Mission.”

On the other hand, Wegmann said, “Airbnb would say it’s helping people cope with the housing crisis by giving a means to bring in extra income, and I’m sure that’s true for some people. But not everyone is in a position to do that.”

Svenja Gudell, chief economist at housing website Zillow, said vacation rentals have an impact. Zillow shows about 2,000 units for rent in San Francisco. That number may understate the total because big buildings often just post one ad for several available apartments, she said.


Zillow chief economist Svenja Gudell says vacation rentals have an impact on the housing crisis. Cody Duty, Houston Chronicle

“Say there are 1,000 units” functioning as year-round vacation rentals, she said. “If they otherwise would be long-term rentals, they could make a considerable dent if you added them to the overall stock. It’s definitely enough to have an impact.”

Zillow shows San Francisco’s median rent at $4,528, the highest in the country.

But most economists finger the same culprit for high rents — and it’s not Airbnb. “By far the biggest aggravating factor is the very low pace of housing supply addition, going back half a century,” Wegmann said. “San Francisco has been so far behind for so long.”

Another way to look at vacation rentals is in comparison to new units. The city produced a net of just under 3,000 new housing units last year. Its 10-year average production is 2,244, according to a Planning Department report.

“It doesn’t seem sustainable to undercut what you try to build” by removing units from the market,” said Roy Samaan, a research and policy analyst at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, who wrote a report critical of Airbnb’s effect on that city.

Airbnb commissioned an academic study last year that found its impact on rents in San Francisco and New York was minimal. But the company declined to share the study or allow the researcher to discuss it.

The Grzybowski story has nuances — some of which illuminate landlords’ perennial complaints with rent control, which could lead them to remove units from the market whether or not vacation rentals are a factor.

Their former landlady, Sadie Graham, 85, said her daughter did move from Oregon but couldn’t inhabit the former rental because it needed so much work from damage caused by the tenants and their cats. (The Grzybowskis dispute that, saying they left the flat in the same condition as they found it.) After four months bunking with her mother, the daughter decided to move back to Oregon for other reasons. Graham said — and the Grzybowskis concurred — that she didn’t raise their rent in four years.


A Zeus Property sign is posted outside the apartment where Brian and Sarah Grzybowski used to live until their eviction last year. Besides on Zeus Living, the couple found it listed on Airbnb, FlipKey, Craigslist and Cozy. James Tensuan, Special to The Chronicle

She has now finished renovations and turned the place over to a property management company called Zeus Living, trying to recoup her repair costs, she said. Zeus rents it for 30-day minimums, she said, making it legal under San Francisco’s short-term rental laws.

But critics say that can be a ploy.

“We routinely see landlords falsely claim they are renting for 30 days to get around the short-term rental laws,” said Joe Tobener, the Grzybowskis’ attorney. “Some have even gone so far as having tourists sign fake 30-day leases. But once you go to the Airbnb listing, you see that many different tourists have stayed in any given 30-day window.”

Graham said her experience with the Grzybowskis soured her on being a landlord.

“It will never, ever be a rental; I don’t want to go through that again,” she said. “I’m not going to deal no more with tenants. I don’t blame landlords who want to do this in and out (with temporary rentals). That way, if it doesn’t work out, the renters are gone.”

Read Your Mail and Then Conclude: Striving Politico Josh Arce is EVIL! – Let’s Take a Look
http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2016/06/03/read-your-mail-and-then-conclude-striving-politico-josh-arce-is-evil-lets-take-a-look/
Well, he is spending big money to get your vote. So far, so good:



Hi Josh. You kind of look like Angry Tom Cruise, or Angry Tony Robbins, or Angry Gavin Newsom, just saying. Anyway, well, yes, he’s in the big right-of-center political faction, so yes, he’s going to be backed by realtors, sure. And he’s an Airbnb booster, sure. But I think “evades” is a bit strong here. Implies illegality, IMO. Do we know that? Moving on…



…to this. Yes, he’s prolly going to be a lot more tolerant of the SFPD Police Officers Association than the typical Friscan. And oh, Ed Lee isunpopular these days. (I’ve never seen a photo like this with Our Appointed Mayor used negatively.) And yes, if you’re going to be in Frisco’s dominant political faction in 2016, you’re going to be getting a lot of money from Developers, so that’s fair enough:



So that’s it. Josh Arce is EVIL, or not, your choice…



Yes, the (legal) scam Josh Arce is running in D9 is unprecedented
http://48hills.org/2016/02/22/yes-the-legal-scam-josh-arce-is-running-in-d9-is-unprecedented/
Nobody has ever raised this kind of (unlimited) money for a DCCC campaign while also running for supervisor.
BY TIM REDMOND - Feb 22nd
I am getting criticism over my coverage of the DCCC campaign of Josh Arce, who is running both for the Democratic Party post and for supervisor, and has raised more than $75,000 for the party job in amounts of up to $25,000.

The limit for contributions for supervisor is $500.

Josh Arce has used a legal loophole to be far ahead of others in the D9 supe race -- and it's unprecedented
Josh Arce has used a legal loophole to be far ahead of others in the D9 supe race — and it’s unprecedented
I think this is a real issue: Arce has convinced the union he works for, which tends to be on the conservative side of local issues, to put up a huge amount of money, which he can use for name recognition and positive imaging in the district, while everyone else running has to work the phones like crazy asking for $500. It’s hard to raise $75K in $500 checks. It’s easy if your employer gives you $25,000 checks.

As I said before, there are reasons that we have contribution limits.

So here’s what my critics are saying: Hey, everybody does it.

Debra Walker, who ran for supe in 2010, posted this on Facebook:

This is really hypocritical of 48 hills.

Just a few years back, many of us including David Campos, Aaron Peskin. Raphael Mandelman and myself were encouraged by [campaign consultant] Jim Stearns et al to run for DCCC prior to our supervisor campaigns.

No one, including Tim Redmond, brought this issue up then.

I recall raising this amount for DCCC as did the others mentioned.

Just saying.

Oh, I see. First of all: Because I didn’t do the story back then, it must not be wrong now. The loophole must be okay and I should shut up because other people did it way back when, and the Bay Guardian, where I worked, supported them.

Whatever.

But it turns out I didn’t miss the story. There’s a big, huge, dramatic difference between the campaigns Walker talks about and what’s going on today in D9.

First, she’s wrong: She did not raise “this amount” for DCCC when she ran for both that office and for supervisor in 2010. According to records on file with the Ethics Commission, Walker raised $9,000 in 2009 and $31,000 in 2010, for a total of $40K. None of the other candidates she mentions, all of whom ran for both supervisor and DCCC, raised even half as much as Arce has.

And far, far more important, according to Ethics Commission records, not one of them got a single contribution of more than $2,000. Most of Walker’s money came in $100 to $500 amounts. She had a couple of $1,000 or $1,500 checks, but not that many. She had widespread, grassroots support. Which is what you are supposed to have in campaigns.

David Campos ran for both DCCC and supervisor in 2008. He raised $21,000 for DCCC, and other than a couple of $1,000 and $1,500 donors, it was all checks that would have met the $500 donation limits for a supe campaign.

Mandelman raised $32,000. No checks of more than $2,000.

When David Chiu ran for both supe and DCCC in 2008 he raised $25,000 – and other than $2,000 each from his mom and dad, his donations were almost all at or below $500.

John Avalos ran for both offices. He raised $20,000 for DCCC. Most donations were at or below $500, and none were more than $1,500.

Scott Wiener raised $71,000 for DCCC when he was also running for supervisor. That’s the closest I can find to Arce. But the vast majority of those checks were for $500 or less.

Even when he was president of the Board of Supes and ran for DCCC, Aaron Peskin never got a donation of more than $5,000, and he only got a couple of them.

Lots of people supported those other candidates for DCCC. This is very different.

By any possible standard, what Arce is doing is unprecedented in local politics. If there is any evidence that candidate who has run for DCCC and supervisor at the same time raised $75,000 for DCCC from what amounts to one source – different locals of the politically conservative union that employs him – I can’t find it.

I will repeat: The other candidates in D9 are on the phone working hard to raise money at $500 a pop. Arce starts off with $75K without doing any local grassroots work. It’s not fair.

I don’t care if you’re left, right, or center – if you are gaming the system, and I believe that while Arce has broken no laws, he is gaming the system – then we all ought to be talking about it.

SF Democrats Turn Red to Protect Cops

By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez
Wednesday, Jul 29 2015
Comments (10)

• JOE FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ

• Former DCCC member Kelly Dwyer stands up and defenders her 21st Century Policing measure before the democratic party.
It was Kelly Dwyer's first night since losing her position as a member of the local Democratic Party's board, and her last policy resolution before that body.

Down a long set of stairs at the State Building on Polk, the Democratic County Central Committee — or D-Triple-C, as it's known — gathered in a room so deep in the bowels of government, the walls block most internet and cellphone reception. The DCCC represents San Francisco's Democratic Party. Every mailer sent by a Democratic politician and ballot measure in the local November elections depends on this board to pound its impactful rubber stamp.

It's a small cog in the political machine, but a vital one.

Dwyer's resolution before the DCCC would put the city's Democratic Party on record backing concrete recommendations from President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

As the DCCC debated the merits of Dwyer's police reform, she watched side-by-side with the two San Francisco Public Defenders who helped her craft it: Deputy Public Defenders Rebecca Young and Chris Hite, two people of color.

Dwyer leaned at the edge of her chair, jaw tense.

Your Pissed-Off Narrator was there and watched as San Francisco's Democratic board sided with Republicans, voting against, and then gutting, the measure Dwyer had derived from the head honcho Democrat himself, President Obama.

Sandra Bland. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Whether by questionable arrest, a chokehold, or bullets, black deaths nationwide are prompting people to take a long look at their boys in blue — and to ask for police reform, from the inside out.

President Obama convened a task force that in March published major recommendations to reform U.S. policing. "It offers pragmatic, common-sense ideas," the president said at a news conference that month. "A lot of our work is going to involve local police chiefs, local elected officials, states recognizing that the moment is now for us to make these changes."

Obama had prompted Dwyer's measure, and the DCCC voted to gut the substantive police reforms she derived from his efforts.

The DCCC vote against police reform ripples beyond this one measure. Its loss signals a further "moderate" (read: conservative) turn for our local Democratic board, perhaps offering a glimpse at the fate of other progressive-liberal measures seeking endorsement in the coming election — the Mission Moratorium, and Airbnb reforms, for instance.

The city's Democratic politicians are backing down to Republicans with power, and to well-funded special interests. This one vote shows how San Francisco's big D rolls in bed with the local R's.

The Police Officer's Association opposed Dwyer's measure, but it always staunchly defends its officers. It steps on the neck of politicians in San Francisco until they cry "uncle."

The uncles, in this particular case, were Marty Halloran, the POA's current head, and Gary Delagnes, its former head. In terms of political weight, those two have sizable paunches.

Before city supervisors were to vote on a measure supporting the "Black Lives Matter" movement not long ago, Delagnes wrote a politically threatening note to six of them, including London Breed and Malia Cohen.

"I am sure all of you understand that working together in the future with anyone who signs on to this legislation would be impossible," Delagnes wrote.

Fearing the POA would smack down their favored political causes, the supervisors voted against that measure.

Compared to the Supervisors, the DCCC members are easy pickings.

The underwhelming candidacy of Joshua Arce
http://www.sfexaminer.com/underwhelming-candidacy-joshua-arce/
Joshua Arce, candidate for the District 9 seat on the Board of Supervisors Candidate Joshua Arce, speaks at a news conference about his plan for a new BART station at 30th and Mission streets on July 28. (Rachael Garner/Special to S.F. Examiner)
By Nato Green on August 21, 2016 1:00 am


The Realtors, Airbnb and sundry like-minded oligarchs who govern San Francisco through their avatar Mayor Ed Lee have a lot riding on the supervisorial races. If progressives win three races, our sad, misunderstood wealthy may lose control of the legislative branch for a decade.

Yet, the moderate in District 9 is Joshua Arce, one of the weakest candidates since Starchild. I’d have thought that Mayor Lee’s allies would have scrounged up a more compelling vehicle for their hopes and dreams. Arce’s public campaign strikes me as half-baked maneuvers to claim the singular mantle of being all things to all people.

For example, Arce held a presser with Assemblyman David Chiu and BART Director Nick Josefowitz (aka Tiny Malcolm Gladwell) to “announce” a plan for a new BART station at 30th and Mission. It’s not clear the announcement is more than a notion. Even if everyone loved the idea and Arce for it, nothing would happen during the entirety of Arce’s potential term. If you’re going to grandstand on a big idea, maybe pick something you can accomplish in your first term.

He’s straddling both sides of the police as well, which chafes. The Police Officer’s Association, which believes that systemic racism and excessive force in San Francisco Police Department can best be improved by unwavering denial, printed a tone-deaf joke belittling Black Lives Matter in the union newsletter (like a blog, on paper). Arce posted on social media that the newsletter was “unacceptable” and that “we need to see full support [from the POA] for” the reforms advocated by Supervisor Malia Cohen.

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Stern words from Arce — except that last July, when he was on the Democratic Central Committee, he passed an amendment to a resolution supporting the Public Defender’s plan to reform the Police Department. Arce’s amendment turned the resolution from one critical of the SFPD to one supportive of it. Moreover, the POA gave $82,500 to an independent expenditure committee backing Arce. So Arce expresses feigned outrage about the POA, while simultaneously benefitting from largesse by the POA independent expenditure committee, which is IN NO WAY related to his votes on their behalf.

Arce is using progressive messages about affordable housing, tenants, immigrants and low-wage workers. If you added “abolish private property,” his website could almost be mistaken for the Peace and Freedom Party. Despite progressive messaging, he’s considered moderate because of his endorsements: Gavin Newsom, Mayor Lee’s “Baldie No. 2” Tony Winnicker, building trades unions, the head of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the moderate slate for the DCCC and so on. Also a self-employed dog walker who had $500 to give.

The San Francisco political spectrum is unlike the national. Everyone supports abortion and gay marriage. Our moderates are not fiscally conservative. They’re eager to chuck money out the window, provided a well-connected donor gets rich off of it. Our spectrum is defined by land use, public budgets and law and order. Moderates believe the role of government is to assist the market to solve problems. Progressives believe the role of government is to protect vulnerable people from the market.

Progressives have succeeded sufficiently at framing the debate that moderates feel obligated to run as progressives “who get things done” or “will provide real leadership” or a third vacuous slogan. Then, once elected, they govern by caving in to corporations. They’re all premature capitulation in negotiations with the rich and powerful, yet Machiavellian ruthlessness toward the vulnerable. They’re Wilson Fisk in the streets and Wormtail in the suites.

Arce is just pretending otherwise, but doing a soft job of it.

I support Hillary Ronen in District 9 because obviously. If Joel Engardio can use space in the Examiner to hype his supervisorial campaign, and Willie Brown can use his Chronicle column to maintain his graft operation, I can use my tiny square of the fourth estate to say nice things about my friends. Unlike Engardio or Brown, I get no benefit other than hugs and high-fives for doing so.

Nato Green is a San Francisco-based comedian and write @natogreen. See him interrupt the movies at Riffer’s Delight at the Alamo Drafthouse on Wednesday, Aug. 24.