by Randy Shaw on October 7, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
Returning San Francisco to the Bad Old Days
I began working fulltime as Executive Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in September 1982. A few months later I uncovered a massive “heatless hotel” scandal that stayed on the SF Chronicle’s front page for five straight days. City inspectors had long ignored the lack of heat in the city’s SRO’s; the parent Bureau of Building Inspection (BBI) didn’t care about helping tenants.
For the next decade I worked with others to uncover heatless apartments through the Mission and other slum housing conditions. We saw how few landlords ever paid a price for not making repairs. All the cases referred to the City Attorney were for illegal in-law apartments, not slum housing.
BBI lacked any public oversight. Bureaucrats serving under a Chief Administrative Officer with a ten-year term made all the decisions. Its leadership didn’t care about tenants because they didn’t have to care.
BBI’s systemic denial of fundamental tenant rights only ended because I joined with Joe O’Donoghue of the Residential Builders Association in putting a measure on the November 1994 ballot creating a Building Inspection Commission (BIC). We collected over 60,000 signatures to qualify it for the ballot. Within a year of the BIC’s creation San Francisco went from having virtual nonexistent housing code enforcement to the nation’s best and most effective process.
You don’t read stories anymore about thousands of Latino families lacking heat because owners know the penalties are steep if they engage in such conduct. Those that do repeatedly violate housing laws pay a price: after the BIC was created the City Attorney became very aggressive in suing slumlords.
I give this history because it puts in perspective the outright falsehoods and lies upon which San Francisco’s Prop D is premised. Prop D will not improve city government. It will not make the city operate more efficiently,
Instead, by eliminating the BIC Prop D will again allow city bureaucrats to violate tenants’ rights with impunity. The unaccountable BBI prioritized wealthy interests, shortchanging tenant protections. Without commissions, unaccountable bureaucracies controlled by powerful interests will be the norm for San Francisco agencies across the board
I don’t have to guess what will happen without the BIC. I’ve already seen it. And hundreds of thousands of San Francisco tenants have lived it.
And to echo Kamala Harris, Prop D voters need to say: We’re Not Going Back!”
No Facts Support Prop D
Margaret Brodkin wrote a brilliant piece for us last week detailing Prop D’s key flaws (“Proposition D Is Terrible Public Policy and Scary Politics,”). I want to focus on the big picture failure upon which Prop D is based: separating the public from the governance of cities in a democracy.
When did it become a problem for residents of San Francisco to be involved in the city’s governance? What is the factual basis for believing unaccountable bureaucrats are more likely to do a better job if the public cannot review their work?
I continually hear only one example of how a commission has hurt the city: the Police Commission. Mayor Breed appointed a commission majority but one of her appointees disagrees with the mayor on police policies.
But how does the mayor’s current loss of control of the Police Commission majority require a ballot measure eliminating dozens of completely unrelated commissions? The Police Commission has nothing to do with Chief Scott’s failure to close open air drug markets.
Prop D backers ask: “Wonder why everything City Hall does takes longer, costs more, and delivers less in San Francisco than other cities? Prop D is the solution.”
If you believe that you probably also believe Trump saved ObamaCare. Prop D sponsors provide no evidence that the vast majority of commissions cause such problems.
When I authored the BIC ballot measure, we made an overwhelming factual case for BBI’s failure to enforce city housing codes. In contrast, Prop D backers offer no factual basis for commission votes that justify eliminating public review of city agency actions.
Can Prop D Be Defeated?
Prop D is backed by millions of dollars. Opponents, including those backing the rival Prop E, will not reach six figures. Add the free advertising from the SF Democratic Party, Grow SF, the Mark Farrell campaign and other pro-Prop D groups and it would appear that the ballot measure—-deeply flawed as it is—will nevertheless pass.
But here’s my hope. I hope that many who assume that commissions are the source of San Francisco’s problems spend at least a little time looking at the facts.
I’ve already shown how tenants would be damaging their own interests in backing Prop D. But so would anyone who cares about monitoring how well-paid bureaucrats spend whatever they want without public review.
Like at the Health Department (DPH). Many criticize the Health Commission for being a rubber stamp. But after Prop D there won’t be any budget review by non-DPH employees.
It helps a city for more residents to be engaged in governance. That’s why San Francisco added commissions and other public review bodies in the first place.
Who benefits from removing regular people from decision-making and handing power to powerful insider interests who get what they want from bureaucracies? I saw how this works firsthand from my battle with BBI.
Since the SF Chronicle and SF Examiner (at the time the latter was Hearst-owned) covered our protests against slum housing, I assumed both would back our ballot measure creating a commission. But they not only opposed Prop G but they called the Tenderloin Housing Clinic a “special interest” backing the measure.
Our “special interest”? Making sure tenants lived in habitable housing.
I was mystified about this newspaper opposition until I learned that BBI gave downtown interests priority . While tenants without heat had to wait for inspectors, staff was always available to help office renovation projects downtown.
This is how bureaucracies not subject to public scrutiny perform. And because this system driven by powerful interests is legal, it is not identified with the “corruption” of a city.
Don’t be Fooled! Vote No on Prop D.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
