Our members have voted on Plan C's June 2008 election endorsements, and the results are in! The June election will be an important one - there are important ballot initiatives at stake, and the Democratic and Republican County Central Committees (DCCC and RCCC) are being elected. These groups mostly toil in obscurity, but they will make the all-important endorsements of the Democratic and Republican parties in the November board of supervisor races, so they are very important - particularly this year, when standing supervisors Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin and Jake McGoldrick have made a surprising decision to run for the DCCC themselves. Please take the time to vote for our DCCC and RCCC candidates, and share our endorsements with your friends!
Democrats: Assembly District 12 DCCC candidates: Doug Chan, Dan Dunnigan, Tom Hsieh, Mary Jung, Meagan Levitan, Trevor McNeil, Matt Tuchow, Jim Weixel, Jason Wong, David Wong and Mae Woo.
Democrats: Assembly District 13 DCCC candidates: David Cruise, Darolyn Davis, Catherine Dodd, Mike Farrah, Louise Fischer, James Hermann, Leslie Katz, Linda Richardson, Holli Thier and Scott Wiener.
Republicans: Assembly District 12 RCCC candidates: Mike Antonini, Mike Gleim; Walter Armer, Jim Anderer, James Kincaid, Chris Baker, David Kiachko, Richard Worner, Rita O'Hara and Howard Epstein.
Republicans: Assembly District 13 RCCC candidates: Bill Campbell, Alisa Farenzena, Harmeet Dhillon, Jennifer DePalma, John Brunello, Michael Cisternino, Eugene Dermody, Nicholas Gaffney, Matthew Dichiara, Brooke Chappell, Guy Vaillancourt and Sarah Vallette.
California Assembly, 12th District: Fiona Ma. Fiona Ma is a longstanding member of Plan C and has been a strong supporter of quality of life issues and homeownership. She deserves your support. We have made an exception to our normal policy against endorsing in state races, because Fiona is such a strong candidate.
Ballot Measures
Prop A: School District parcel tax No Position. Prop. A is a parcel tax of $198 per year on every parcel of real property in San Francisco to support the San Francisco School District, with no pass-through to tenants. The proceeds would be targeted to improve the quality of teaching in the district, primarily through increases in teacher pay. We recommend “no position” on this measure. Improving teacher salaries is a worthy goal; but the inequities of no pass-through to tenants and flat parcel tax amount on each property, regardless of size/residential/commercial, are troublesome.
Prop B: Retiree health reform and pension enhancement YES. Prop B requires contribution by future employees for retiree health care and increases the number of years of service required to receive employer-paid retiree health benefits. In exchange, Prop B increases pension benefits for all current and future employees and requires the City to pre-fund retiree health benefits. The measure also imposes an 18-month wage freeze on many City employees from July 2009 through December 2010. Prop B addresses the fiscal “time bomb” that the City’s current health care benefits system represents. Supervisor Sean Elsbernd led the effort to put Prop B on the ballot, and he deserves our thanks for showing leadership in addressing this easy to ignore but critical problem.
Prop C: Pension loss for committing crimes of moral turpitude YES. This measure prevents City retirees who are convicted of crimes of moral turpitude against the City from receiving the City-funded portion of their pension. This measure would affect very few people, but it is a sensible measure and deserves our support.
Prop D: Diversity on City commissions and boards NO. This measure is a vaguely worded attempt to strengthen the City’s policy to promote diversity on boards and commissions, and adds “types of disabilities” as a diversity criteria to consider. Promoting diversity is a worthwhile goal, but this measure has a number of problems. While it does add disability to the list of diversity, it leaves out other important sources of diversity such as ancestry, national origin and religion. Further, it creates an impossible goal of having each commission reflect a partial list of diversity criteria of the City. It is hard enough to find volunteers for commissions and boards in San Francisco, and this measure could have the unintended consequence of making it harder to recruit people to these bodies.
Prop E: SF PUC commissioner appointments NO. This measure establishes minimum qualifications for members of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and reduces the number of supervisors needed to block the Mayor’s appointments to the PUC from eight to six. Prop E would also result in a disruption to the PUC—potentially leaving commission seats vacant for an extended period—at a time in which it is involved in the critically important rebuild of the City’s water system. It is a politically motivated power grab by the supervisors at the expense of the executive branch. Vote NO on Prop E.
Prop F: Affordable housing in Bayview-Hunters Point NO. Prop F mandates that 50% of all new housing built in the Bayview-Hunters Point Redevelopment Area be “affordable” at specific income levels. It is a cynical ploy by Supervisor Chris Daly to defeat Prop G, the mixed-use plan for Bayview-Hunters Point that is also on the June ballot. Supervisor Daly has admitted that Prop F’s affordability requirements are so high that they would kill the proposed plan to add housing, parks and jobs to the southeast sector of the City. Vote NO on Prop F.
Prop G: Mixed-use plan for Bayview-Hunters Point and Candlestick Point YES. Prop G approves a framework for a new mixed-use development plan for Bayview-Hunters Point and Candlestick Point. Prop G will facilitate major improvements to Bayview-Hunters Point, including much-needed housing and parks, and will also help retain the San Francisco 49ers in the City (although the project does not depend on the 49ers, and provides for alternative uses if the 49ers do not remain in San Francisco). We enthusiastically support Prop G.
Prop H: City contractor contribution limits NO. Current law already prohibits City contractors from making campaign contributions to elected officials and candidates who are voting on their projects. Prop H would also make it illegal for the elected official or candidate who receives the contribution. While on first glance this seems appropriate, the problem is that there is almost no possible way to know all the people who have pending contracts with the City or other bodies. While an elected official may have this information (because they may have reviewed the agendas or their meetings for the prior 6 months), candidates will have no way to acquire this information. Well-intentioned and unknowing candidates could face serious criminal and civil penalties as a result of this measure.
Plan C “Meets the Moderates”
Plan C recently sponsored a "Meet the Moderates" event – an opportunity for voters to meet moderate candidates for the “open” supervisor races in the November 2008 election. November 2008 will be a watershed election for San Francisco politics, as seven seats on the Board of Supervisors are up for election. Four "open" races are being watched most of all, as in districts 1, 3, 9, and 11, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, Tom Ammiano and Gerardo Sandoval are all being forced out by term limits.
Speakers included Alicia Wang and Keith Wilson (District 1), Joseph Alioto Jr., Claudine Change, Lynn Jefferson, Sal Busalacchi and Wilma Pang (District 3), Eric Storey (District 9) and Ahsha Safai (District 11). Sue Lee (District 1) and Ron Dudum (District 4), who have since announced they will be running in their respective districts, also attended the event.
A crowd of almost 100 listened to presentations from each of the candidates, and then stayed to mingle with the candidates for over an hour after the presentations were over.
This was the first event in Plan C’s efforts to make a difference in the November 2008 election. Stay tuned for more: the June election will be critical, since we will elect candidates to the Democratic and Republican central committees (DCCC and RCCC), the groups that will determine those parties’ endorsements for supervisors in the November election. By August we will likely be asking our members to make candidate endorsements for the November election, and then asking for financial and volunteer support for those candidates. Please do everything you can to help – if ever there was a San Francisco election that mattered, this November is it!
Plan C protesters make the case for condo conversion reform
Joe Castrovinci 29.MAR.08 It was one of those only-in-San-Francisco moments we know all too well: 60 citizens marching on City Hall to secure their right to … own a home they’ve already bought, live in and are paying for.
The protestors were attending a Feb. 6 rally sponsored by Plan C and the San Francisco TIC Coalition that was designed to make one simple point: “The city's limits on condo conversion are outdated,” said Plan C Chair Mike Sullivan, “and no longer serve any purpose except to make it more expensive for first-time homeowners to live in San Francisco.”
The protest coincided with the city’s condo conversion lottery, held annually to determine which 200 of San Francisco’s tenancies in common (TICs) can be converted to condominiums.
The city created the lottery in 1983 to slow conversion of rental housing to condominiums and ensure that speculators eager to “flip” rental property stayed far away from San Francisco's housing market. While taking steps to keep speculators out, the rules were designed to give local, long-term TIC owners the chance to convert their units to condominiums. They could enter the condo conversion lottery three years after buying their TICs, and if they failed to win the first time, they would get an extra ticket the next time they applied, and an additional ticket every time after that. And after three years, TIC owners would be placed in a senior pool which makes winning even more likely.
They'd be able to get what they needed—at least, that’s the way the rules used to work. The reality facing many TIC owners today is very different, and far grimmer. Here's why.
The number of units eligible for conversion has remained unchanged for two-and-a-half decades, even as the number of lottery entrants has soared. As a result, the odds of winning have fallen fast—even for applicants with extra tickets who make it to the senior pool. In 2002, there were 994 units in the lottery; this year, it’s almost 2,000—which gives participants a meager 1-in-10 chance of winning. New applicants can expect to wait a decade or longer before winning the right to turn their home as a condominium. “When we first bought,” said six-time lottery participant Karen Solomon, “everyone said we'd convert within five years. Then they said seven. Now, it’s ‘you'll get it when you get it.’ We stayed away from TICs for as long as we could, but when we started looking in 2002, it was all we could afford.”
For Solomon, as for many San Franciscans, TICs are their only hope of one day owning a home. TICs cost less than condos because they come with more risk and fewer advantages. If you own a condo, you own the unit you live in and can do with it as you please. If you own a TIC, you own not the unit, but a percentage of the building it occupies, and you share a mortgage with the other owners. If one owner misses a payment, the others are responsible. With a TIC, you also can’t access your equity for home improvement loans, or to pay for a child’s college education, or for any other purpose. Your only hope for doing that is winning the city’s lottery.
And even if you win that lottery, the conversion process is time-consuming and expensive. After inspections, applications and fees are paid, a successful conversion can cost as much as $25,000. Each time a TIC owner makes a mistake while converting, time is lost and the city charges a $250 fine. The process is so complicated that no lottery winner has ever opted for the city’s discount “do-it-yourself” conversion package.
Small wonder that many low and middle income people just give up and buy a home in the suburbs, where they don't have to deal with these restrictions. Participants in the rally were acutely aware of the hardships inflicted on them by their desire to live in San Francisco. “We’re treated like second-class citizens,” said TIC owner Selvia Pepin. “The city makes us jump through hoops to own a fraction of a house. You’d think the city would be encouraging people to buy property and put down roots.”
Exactly. In other parts of the country, where home ownership is strongly encouraged by local governments, this kind of an issue would never come up. Until City Hall comes to its senses, all we can do is fight for change—and hope that some day we’ll have the same right to own a home as the 300 million people who live other parts of the United States. San Francisco condo conversion fact sheet:
Discussions of the condo conversions in San Francisco tend to generate more heat than light. Here are the facts:
• Evictions are no longer an issue in San Francisco: In May, 2006, the city banned condo conversions in buildings with more than one “no fault” eviction (such as ones made possible by the Ellis Act or owner-move-ins) or evictions of “protected” tenants (elderly, disabled or catastrophically ill people). So it’s no longer credible to say that condo conversion reform will cause more evictions.
• Evictions are down significantly: They have dropped by 60 percent from their peak during the dot com boom, and fell from 1,262 in 2001 to only 466 in 2007.
• Over 7,700 units of new housing are under construction in San Francisco, and will go on the market this year or next. Of that number, 2,052 are rentals—and 717 are “affordable.” There's reason to believe that the number of units at this end of the market is going up, not down.
• Condo conversion limits don’t prevent the loss of rental housing. When people buy TICs and move in, the units are lost as rentals. Limiting condo conversions doesn’t magically bring them back on the market—it just punishes people who buy them as TICs.
TIC Sales in San Francisco Continue Upward Trend in 2007 Despite Overall Housing Slump
Joe Castrovinci 28.MAR.08
Recently released data (source: San Francisco Realtors™ Multiple Listing Service) for TIC sales in San Francisco in 2007 showed a record high total of 722 TICs sold in San Francisco during the year, up 7.5% from a total of 637 in 2006. This growth bucks the trend for housing sales of all types, which showed a decline citywide. The data also yields some interesting trends:
• TICs in larger buildings. Out of the 722 TICs sold last year, 55 (or 7.5%) were in buildings with seven units or more—and all of them were done, as far as we know, without evictions, either because the units were vacant to start with, or the tenants took voluntary buy-outs.
• Buildings with seven or more units can’t convert to condominiums in San Francisco, so the market appears to be adapting to permanent TICs — a direct result of new, fractional TIC loans that are now available. We expect this trend towards TIC conversion of larger buildings to continue as fractional loans continue to grow in market acceptance.
• The geographic distribution of TICs is shifting. In the past, the number one zip code for TIC formations was 94114 (Castro/Noe Valley). In 2007, the #1 zip code was 94110 (the Mission), which had 122 new TICs, followed by 94117 (Haight-Ashbury), with 105 new TICs.
• The pace of TICs formations continues to accelerate even as evictions fall, and this will put more pressure on the city’s condo conversion lottery in the future. Current estimates are that new entrants into the condo lottery will need to wait 10+ years before qualifying for conversion. As the wait to convert lengthens, the need for condo conversion reform will become stronger.
The vibrancy of TIC sales in the face of the worst housing market in recent memory shows that TICs are here to stay in San Francisco. City policy needs to catch up with the evolving marketplace - with TIC sales up, condo lottery waits pushing well past 10 years, and with evictions at record lows, it’s time for condo conversion reform to allow TICs to convert to condos – reform that would have the added benefit of boosting City revenues when San Francisco faces a budget crisis.
DCCC Questionaire for candidates
If you are running for DCCC in June 2008, and you are interested in Plan C's endorsement, please click here for the questionnaire.
