High SF Rents Courtesy Tom Ammiano & Democrats

Tom Ammiano, the current supervisor for District 9 (Mission & Bernal Heights) deserves to be inducted into a Hall of Shame, along with the rest of his Democratic Party, for the high rents we have in San Francisco due to lack of vacancy control.

We have rent control, so long as we remain in our apartment for at least a year, thanks to the thousands of San Francisco tenants who fought for rent control and founded the San Francisco Tenants Union in 1979, and we contiue our fight to defend and expand rent control as tenants are 2/3 of San Francico residents, and in a high voter turnout election, such as the governor's and president's general election, we are 50% of the voters.

Our rent control is not a gift from Tom Ammiano and his worthless Democratic Party. We fought for it with our blood, sweat and tears. The only reason the Democratic Party went along with it in 1979 was because we intended to put a more all-encompassing proposal on the ballot if they did not.

Meanwhile, we have no vacancy control, a state law, because all the good Democrats from San Francisco, such as the politically powerful John Burton, a supporter of Tom Ammiano and vice versa, has done nothing, not even when we had a Democratic governor, Gray Davis, for 5 years, to seriously fight for vacancy control. Thus, when a tenant moves out, the landlord can and does raise the rent to whatever the market rate is.

The net result is we have studios going for $900/month and up and one bedroom apartments for $1250/month and up, both in 90-year-old buildings that are just now, 15 years after the 1989 earthquake, having seismic retrofit. The plumbing, etc. are still repaired on an as needed basis, that is, crisis maintenance, not preventive maintenance. The Democratic Party election-fraud machine has been sitting a City Hall for 40 years, and has done nothing to encourage preventive maintenance and seismic retrofit on an expedited basis.

The Democratic Party's election fraud team for this year's election is the Guardian Angels, good friends of Tom Ammiano. For more on the SF Democrats' election fraud, see
http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium
and
http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown

The reason all these good Democrats do nothing is because they represent the same capitalist class as the Republicans. Thus, all Democratic and Republican politicians support giving $4 billion annually to the US military base known as Israel to protect US oil profits in the Middle East, while the federal government cuts back on building affordable housing for the workingclass, those of us who sell our labor for less than $70,000 per year (and usually much less), since we cannot have guns and butter.

The only reason the Democrats exist is to keep the Reds, and to some extent, the Greens, out of office. It is time the workingclass stop voting for this con game.

There are many of us tenants who resent the SF Tenants' Union being used by the Democrats as their plaything, which tenants' union currently has a campaign publicity stunt inducting Tom Ammiano into a Hall of Fame; he should be inducted into a Hall of Shame.

Steve Zeltzer, a member of the socialist Peace & Freedom Party, like all socialists, supports rent control and vacancy control and will fight to extend both. He also opposes giving any money to Israel and will work to stop using the City's pension fund to buy Israeli bonds. Our federal tax dollars need to be spent right here at home on housing, healthcare, transportation, education and all social services, not on making blood for oil wars around the world. Most of the funding for these services comes from our federal tax dollars; the City of San Francisco cannot begin to raise the money needed for all services.

For more on the Steve Zeltzer's campaign for supervisor in District 9, see http://stevefor9.org.