The Weekly Digest (January 8, 2023)
Happy New Year, Brionies! In case you missed it, episode 3 of the Briones Society podcast dropped on Wednesday, featuring a riveting conversation with addiction recovery advocate Tom Wolf! Check it out on Apple and Spotify, and don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Here’s what you need to know about San Francisco politics this week, and beyond:
City Hall
Tuesday, January 10 at 2 p.m.: Regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors (agenda and call-in instructions here)
Mayor London Breed will attend this session (the mayor attends one meeting per month) to discuss items submitted by the supervisors beforehand. Only one item was submitted, by Supervisor Matt Dorsey: emergency preparedness.
The board will vote on a motion to reappoint Cindy Elias to the Police Commission. You may remember how Supervisor Aaron Peskin tried to fast-track her reappointment in December, four months early, to discourage other applicants and to prevent newly elected District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who was inaugurated this weekend, from having a say. Although Peskin failed in that attempt, he did succeed in pressuring the board to vote on a resolution stating its “intent” to reappoint Elias. We’ll see if any of the eight supervisors who voted in favor of that resolution find the backbone now to stand up to the Napoleon of North Beach.
You’ve probably been hearing a lot about the nonprofits that contract with the city to provide services. This week the board will hold a final vote on three of these contracts, totaling more than $34.5 million over the next five years.
On a lighter note, the board will also hold a final vote on whether or not to pay a guy $100 thousand to settle a lawsuit filed because a sinkhole opened up on a city street and ate his car.
Happenings around town
Wednesday, January 11 at 6:30pm, Mission Neighborhood Center
Editor’s note: This panel, promoted by Supervisor Hillary Ronen and moderated by Chronicle columnist Heather Knight, looks to be heavily slanted in favor of safe consumption sites. As discussed in the most recent episode of our podcast and elsewhere, we’re skeptical that, with our city facing a major budget shortfall, hundreds of millions of more dollars should be diverted toward enablement and away from recovery.
SF Politics 101 with Together SF and Supervisor Joel Engardio
Thursday, January 19 at 5:30pm, 2505 Mariposa St
What we’re reading
Brother, can you spare $1.45 billion? The Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department released its A Place for All Report, which details the city’s plan to comply with Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s A Place for All legislation, passed last summer. That legislation, broadly speaking, requires San Francisco to provide adequate shelter within three years to all homeless individuals in the city. Of course, rather than focusing on treatment pathways and shelter, the plan revolves around a costly and ineffective permanent supportive housing approach. Reaction to the report was swift and unfavorable, with Mandelman calling it the “social services version of a $2 million toilet” or, you know, half a million dollars for a trash can or $100 thousand for a shed.
We’re seeing a lot of analyses like this one on Judge Donna Ryu’s preliminary order against the city conducting homeless sweeps. But a closer read of the order suggests that it’s being misinterpreted. This is understandable, because the case law precedent that the order relies on, Martin v. Boise, was terribly and confusingly written. The holding that people too often cite from it is that if there are more homeless people in a city than there are shelter beds available, the city can't enforce anti-camping laws. That would be an insane conclusion that would practically mean it’s never constitutional to clear an encampment. But Martin goes on to clarify that as long as the particular individual subject to enforcement has access to a shelter bed – e.g., if offered one by city officials – then his/her tent may be cleared. That's a lot more sensible, though still arguably incorrect as a matter of constitutional law. It appears that’s what Ryu holds in her order, as well. On page 38, she notes that the city’s policies – which do require offering shelter beds to people whose tents are cleared – are not at issue. Even the plaintiff's concede that those policies are constitutional. The problem rather is that the plaintiffs put forward detailed evidence specifying multiple instances of San Francisco violating its own policies, and the city did not rebut those allegations convincingly. In fact, on page 41, Judge Ryu explicitly states that she is not ruling on any interpretation of Martin, because she doesn’t have to in order to rule on the order. Of course, it’s certainly possible that the doomsayers are right and Ryu did intend to dramatically expand the scope of Martin – we’ll know for certain by next week.
“San Francisco is the Titanic. It believes it cannot sink. San Francisco is considered one of the largest bureaucratic cities in the country, yet it’s also regarded as one of the top worst-run cities. Running efficiently, lean and mean is not representative of how we run our city. We are a bloated bureaucracy that fails to get anything done and yet we are home to some of the country’s most well-paid employees.” Not for nothing, but the Briones Society did propose a solution to address this (insert proverbial self-pat on the back).
Yes, San Francisco got rid of Chesa Boudin last year, but there’s still a lot of work to do. For example, his “drug dealers are victims of human trafficking” science fiction tale is still making the rounds, and many of his ideological fellow travelers remain in the judiciary.
Tweet of the week
It’s perfect: Everything wrong with national politics in one photograph.