Pricey charter flights were the only direct option to the communist country seemingly stuck 50 years in the past – commercial flights from the U.S. will fly soon – so, I booked a trip from LAX to Mexico City. There, at a check-in kiosk for a Cubana de Aviación flight to Havana, I showed my U.S. passport to a woman who copied down my information on a small slip of paper and asked me for $25. That was my visa to Cuba.

At small José Martí International Airport in Havana, I showed an airport official my U.S. passport as well as the visa. He asked if I wanted the visa stamped instead of my passport, but I said both were fine, since I was traveling for one of a dozen permitted reasons (journalism).

Outside the airport, I exchanged $400 for Cuban convertible pesos, or CUC, which tourists use and are different from the lower-value peso that locals use. Though $1 converts to 1 CUC, I only got 348 CUC after service charges. I hopped into a taxi and gave the driver the address of a place I found to stay at in Centro Havana for $25 a night through Airbnb.

I figured knocking on the door and asking for Manolito, the host whom I had booked with, wouldn’t be too daunting because I’m fluent in Spanish. He was already sitting on the sidewalk waiting for me. Manolito said his house was not available, and walked me to a multiple-story building across from his to meet Frank Martinez, owner of another casa particular, a home with rooms rented to tourists.

Frank, a cook, and his wife, Marilis, a doctor, were extremely warm and welcoming, contrary to stories I had heard of Cubans despising Americans because capitalism allows us to be so well-off. They let me pick a room in their apartment, several stories up, that faced the Malecón, a broad esplanade along the coast.

For the remainder of the day, I wandered around Havana with a paper map and no GPS, since activating a cellphone is complicated and costly. Using street signs, but moreso the waterfront as a reference point, I navigated from Chinatown into the neighborhood of Vedado and walked into the luxurious, historic Hotel Nacional de Cuba, where John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and many others stayed. As the sun began setting, I made my way back to Frank’s house on the Malecón, which came to life with locals hanging out, talking and drinking.

The excursion confirmed what I heard – that Cuba is very safe, even for females, to walk around solo at any time of the day and night. In the communist country, police come down particularly hard on violent crimes against tourists, so it’s probably one of the safest places for foreigners in the Caribbean. That night, I headed to El Bodeguita del Medio and tried the mojito – obligatory, according to what Ernest Hemingway may or may not have written: “My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita.”

Since I planned for only five days in Cuba and wanted to venture outside Havana, I decided to join another visiting guest at Frank’s house on a day trip to Matanzas, a province east of Havana. We took a small boat across the Havana bay to Casablanca, where we bought tickets for a train that afternoon. In the meantime, we walked up a hill to see a house filled with Che Guevara memorabilia, the towering Christ of Havana statue and an old, cannon-equipped castle.

The train to Matanzas was an adventure from the past, moving slowly through rural parts of the country and breaking down a couple of times. Both times, crew members climbed on top and hammered at the overhead wires until it ran again. From Matanzas, a much smaller city than Havana, we took a bus to Varadero, known for its beaches and resorts. The white sands and colorful hotels along them seemed almost like South Beach Miami, but more quaint. Luckily, we caught the last bus back to Havana.

My third day in Cuba was much simpler – I bought a tour to Viñales Valley, known for its green scenery. An air-conditioned bus picked me and other tourists up outside of a hotel and shuttled us first to a rum factory, where we got a taste of the strong drink. Then we had a traditional pork lunch beside a colorful mural on the prehistoric origins of the region, painted on a mountainside. Afterward, the tour guide brought us to a cigar plant and we watched a worker roll tobacco. The tourist experience ended with a boat ride through the Cueva del Indio cave. Back in Havana, I visited El Floridita for the second obligatory drink – Hemingway’s daiquiri.

There was no tour for the next two days to Cienfuegos or Trinidad, cities south of Havana, but I was determined to go, so early in the morning, I flagged down a classic American car – a more fun and cheaper ride than a taxi – to take me to the Víazul bus station for cross-country trips.

It turned out I missed the earliest buses, so I took a Brazilian tourist’s word and joined her on a shared ride in a Cuban’s car to Cienfuegos that cost about the same as a bus ticket. I was a bit nervous about going on the black market ride, but my new travel buddy, Ludmila Curi, said it was a common alternative for tourists. The driver picked up his wife and daughter and stopped at a few points of interest in Cienfuegos, including the historic Parque José Martí.

We got into Trinidad, a colorful colonial town with cobblestone streets, by mid-afternoon. Ludmila and I ate a fish plate at a nice restaurant and then found a room at a casa particular to share by talking to some locals. The room had a rooftop balcony with a spectacular view, and walking the streets of the hilly town around sunset was breathtaking.

Nightlife in Trinidad was surprisingly contemporary. Comedians joked at some of the changes happening in Cuba, underscored by President Barack Obama’s historic visit a couple weeks prior, and a free concert by the Rolling Stones a few days earlier. A drag show was packed to capacity.

I left the next morning on a shared ride with some European tourists back to the capital city, and spent the rest of the day exploring parts of Old Havana. Back at Frank’s house, I joined him and other guests on the rooftop of his tall building to watch the nightly 9 p.m. cannon blast from across the bay, a tradition harking back to the days when it was a signal that the gates of Havana would be closed to protect the city from invaders.

Since it was my last night in Cuba, I took a shared ride to the Fábrica de Arte Cubano, a museum I was told was popular with locals too. Unlike most of Cuba I experienced, this was like a step into the future, or actually the present in our country. The building looked old from the outside but was very modern inside, with striking artwork.

What most caught my eye was a series of prints called “Hotel Habana” by Liudmila & Nelson, juxtaposing present-day Havana with what it may look like when it’s completely open to the U.S. One work, “Malecón,” had a “Welcome to Fabulous La Habana” parody of the famous Las Vegas sign, a McDonald’s sign, a “Revolution” sky banner written in Coca-Cola font and the Golden Gate Bridge. It nailed exactly why I was glad I made it to Cuba when I did.

But as Frank walked me down the steps of his building a few hours later to catch my flight back to Mexico and then the U.S., he enlightened me on something I had not thought of as an American tourist – even though I was aware that the government gave everyone, regardless of profession, the same meager monthly income.

I asked Frank if he was looking forward to the changes Americans will presumably bring. “Yes,” he said in Spanish as he helped me with my duffel bag and put it inside the yellow cab he had called for me.

“We are 50 years in the past,” Frank said. “It’s good that people come and see, but it’s time for change. There’s no way to achieve success here.”

https://www.ocregister.com/2016/07/22/cuba-how-to-get-there-ahead-of-the-american-tourist-invasion/

“Hi, good morning,” Stan Lui said once he was inside the car. “Passes, please. Transfers.”

Passengers began shifting in their seats. Some groaned, others rolled their eyes and one rider bolted out the one unmanned door.

Lui and his two co-workers, using handheld devices, scanned riders’ Clipper cards and Muni tickets and checked the date and time of transfers. Kevin Smith, 48, who scanned a woman’s Clipper card, found it had not been tagged and contained only 60 cents — insufficient for the $2 one-way fare. After some back-and-forth, Smith let her off at the Montgomery station platform.

“I will give you a chance,” he said. “Go load your card, ma’am.”

“Yeah, I’ll load it,” she said, walking away irritated. “I always do.”

Upon getting off, the three fare inspectors encountered a man lying against a wall between the two platforms with his belongings scattered on the ground. They asked him, too, for his proof of payment, and when he failed to come up with it, they escorted him out.

“Thank you for allowing your tax dollars to go here, asshole,” the distraught individual yelled from outside the fare gate doors.

“You’re f—ing this, you’re f—ing that,” said Sgt. Larry Nichol, supervisor for the other two men. “I used to keep a journal of what people say to me.”

In the nine months that Lui, 33, has been a fare inspector, his impression from the public he has direct contact with is they generally don’t like him and his colleagues in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Proof of Payment Unit.

“I hear from people that the No. 1 hated ones are parking control officers, police officers and fare inspectors,” Lui said. “That’s how I see it, because when people verbally abuse you, that means they don’t like you.”

Catch me if you can

The SFMTA began employing fare inspectors in 1999 as a pilot program with 18 inspectors who patrolled only railway vehicles. The pilot has since become a permanent, growing program with 13 new inspectors hired last year to bring the total to 55 — 33 men and 22 women.

Increased manpower and even more positions opening up as early as December have boosted the number and frequency of inspections in each of San Francisco’s 10 police districts. Up to 20 inspectors get deployed daily to a random district or districts within close proximity to each other.

“I call it spreading the love around because we don’t want to make it so that one group thinks we’re concentrating on them,” Nichol said.

Inspectors are catching fare evaders throughout The City and offenders aren’t race-, gender-, age- or income-specific. They’ve cited homeless individuals to men in fancy suits who keep a charged Clipper cards but don’t tag them.

“Sometimes you hear people go, ‘Do I look like a fare evader?’ And I say, ‘I don’t know, what does a fare evader look like?'” Nichol said.

Fare evasion results in an estimated $19 million of lost revenue annually for the SFMTA, and without the $6.5 million fare inspector program, that amount of money lost would be “much worse,” according to SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose.

Kathy Broussard, acting manager of the Proof of Payment Unit, which includes fare inspectors, said it is worth the cost since fare evaders get $109 tickets while paying passengers see that Muni’s policy, echoed by the on-board announcement, “Please pay your fair share,” is being enforced.

“It’s a win-win,” she said.

In her 7½ years as a fare inspector prior to managing the unit, Broussard said she once wrote 45 tickets in a day, and a fare inspector has issued as many as 65 in an eight-hour shift. At the end of their shifts on that recent weekday, Smith, Nichol and Lui had issued 16 tickets between them.

“Nothing is frowned upon. We don’t have a quota,” Broussard said. “What we have is a performance standard. We came out with an amount that a fare inspector would be able to produce within an eight-hour period and it’s very low — five. That’s less than one citation per hour.”

Currently, fare inspectors cover 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., but that doesn’t mean fare evaders are safe during their off hours. The Police Department has a surge team assigned to buses in different districts, on the lookout for crime as well as fare evasion.

Despite its challenges, the job — which under the new tentative labor agreement will pay $31.43 per hour by October and $35.54 by 2017 — draws thousands of applicants to the agency and is “highly competitive,” Broussard said.

A fare balance

Fare evaders can run, but can’t always hide.

On that recent weekday morning, after removing the man lying down on the Montgomery station platform, Lui, Smith and Nichol positioned themselves inside the fare gates to check customers getting off the trains. There, they recognized the man they saw earlier escape out the unpatrolled J-Church train.

“It’s funny how that works out,” Nichol said as Smith approached the man. Learning he was a visitor, Smith gave him a break and let him buy a ticket.

On the F-Market and Wharves line, which, like other above-ground vehicles, inspectors try to hold for less than a minute, Smith encountered San Francisco resident Reina Martinez, 42, who told Smith she had accidentally taken the wrong Clipper card while rushing out in the morning. She showed him paper résumés she had with her to apply for jobs. Smith said she could explain her case to a hearing officer and wrote her a ticket.

“This can’t be,” Martinez said in Spanish. “I think he should have been a little more flexible.”

On the same streetcar, San Francisco resident Mona Shath, 42, smiled as Smith scanned her Clipper card.

“It happens very often and I guess it slows things down but you have to pay,” she said. “I do hate to see people who can’t afford it suffer.”

Inspectors sometimes make exceptions for patrons who didn’t pay but whose Clipper cards show a history of paid fares, and for tourists who can show an itinerary.

But sometimes, issuing a citation is necessary, said Smith, who has seen offenders develop a new respect for the work that the unit does.

“When people are upset, they’re not upset at me the person, they’re upset at me the uniform, so I don’t take it personally,” Smith said. “That gets me through my day.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/you-better-have-a-ticket-to-ride-muni/Content?oid=2875706

But he wasn’t exactly in a place where he could risk eviction by making complaints about the Tenderloin home to someone on the outside.

Masone’s requests to building management resulted in a few pest control and maintenance visits, which were ultimately ineffective. He tried to organize tenants in the 110-unit, 445 O’Farrell St. hotel. But amid The City’s skyrocketing rents and affordability crisis, his neighbors were worried about getting involved.

To Masone, it seemed that Winton Hotel operator Bill Thakor and manager Hari Basnyet were feeding off that fear.

“The money comes in, they smile, they take the rent and they just let it run downhill,” Masone said. “What they do is take advantage of people who have no mental capacity to know what’s going on or no family or a drug addiction. It’s basically people who are at their lowest point in their lives, one step away from a cardboard box.”

Masone, 49, finally made a breakthrough when fellow tenant Joshua Day said he, too, should file a lawsuit against property management. Day received legal representation from Steven Adair MacDonald and Partners and sued the hotel in March, a week after the law firm helped another tenant to also sue the building. When Masone filed his complaint on July 29, he was the fourth resident in the building to sue through the firm. “I had kind of been putting it off for a while, watching rents go up like crazy,” he said. “I’m doing it for me but also doing it for others. I just want to see people treat other people better.”

The hard-fought renovations have made the building more attractive to potential buyers who might further shift its residential focus, and the owners are reportedly in talks with new investors. Long-term residents are now fearful their efforts to clean up the property might have been too successful and they might soon find themselves priced out.

CITY TAKES ACTION

Those four separate lawsuits against the Winton Hotel piggyback on a suit in May from City Attorney Dennis Herrera against building operator Thakor, his family and entities that currently or in the past owned or operated at least 15 single-room-occupancy hotels in San Francisco, including the Winton, for “pervasive” violations of state and local laws that are intended to protect tenants’ health, safety and rights.

“Every day we get more reminders that there’s an affordable-housing crisis in San Francisco, and that many vulnerable tenants need the law’s protection now more than they ever have,” said Gabriel Zitrin, a City Attorney’s Office spokesman. “When someone runs afoul of the laws we’ve enacted to protect vulnerable tenants, it’s critical that we enforce those laws to the limit of our ability, and we’re going to continue doing just that.”

The Thakor family owns or controls about 880 SRO units in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market Street, South of Market and Mission neighborhoods, according to the lawsuit.

Through its stabilization program, the Department of Public Health referred homeless and other clients to four of the SRO hotels named in The City’s lawsuit, including Winton, for transitional housing. As of the day the suit was served, “We no longer do that,” said department spokeswoman Rachael Kagan of the referrals.

Winton Hotel management could not be reached for comment for this story.

But Tom Gelini, an attorney who’s representing Winton Hotel LLC, Thakor and Basnyet in the four lawsuits served by Steven Adair MacDonald and Partners, said: “It’s habitability complaints that we’re investigating and hopefully at some point we can come to a resolution.”

WINTON ISSUES PILE UP

The Department of Building Inspection, which sent Winton Hotel to the City Attorney’s Office for litigation, has 10 open violation cases on the building, seven of which are orders of abatement instructing the owners to make repairs and charging them for the department’s inspection time and a $52 monthly fee.

“We actually have quite a few hotels that have serious problems, though this certainly is the only one that has these kinds of problems,” said David Herring, acting senior housing inspector for the department. “They tend to be in that general area – the Tenderloin and also South of Market on Sixth Street.”

Attorney Richard Stratton, representing Winton in The City’s lawsuit, said several San Francisco agencies, including the Building Inspection and Public Health departments, did an extensive inspection June 12 and follow-ups revealed the issues identified had been corrected.

“Mr. Thakor had the work done almost right away in almost every instance,” Stratton said. “Winton Hotel has been in pretty good shape for at least a month or so.”

Some maintenance issues remain. The most recent room-to-room inspection July 28 found incorrect door locks, broken window latches, rusty sinks, and damaged walls, ceilings and floor coverings.

COMPLETELY NEW LOOK

Bernard Strong, 84, is a 16-year resident of Winton Hotel and also the third to sue through MacDonald’s firm. Over the years, he collected bed bugs and taped them to pieces of paper and filmed videos of the dismal conditions. Strong said he’s relieved fixes were made and that some tenants, like the other three plaintiffs, were willing to speak out.

“They’ve repaired the rooms, repainted them, put on new doors,” said Strong. “The building is pretty much good.”

But as living conditions are looking better, Winton’s future is in question.

“Multiple local investors, apparently with knowledge of the niche or possibly some ‘new thinking’ of what to do with the building, are speaking to the owners about a purchase,” MacDonald said.

Craig Ackerman, a broker at Ackerman Realty Group, said the 445 O’Farrell St. property is not on the San Francisco Multiple Listing Service, which feeds into many real estate sites. The listing service discloses property and ownership information that operators of a building plagued with issues may not want to make more readily available.

“It might be that someone is trying to sell this on the down-low,” Ackerman said. “It’s not uncommon for someone to try to do a private sale when there are ‘issues’ with the building.”

Notices of abatement “encumber” a property, making banks wary of loans for buyers, said spokesman William Strawn of the Department of Building Inspection.

But with the recent tech boom and overall surging local economy, many properties are being sold for cash to skip the traditional loan process. A building can be sold with outstanding orders of abatement, though the new owners inherit all the problems.

THE CATCH-22

Now Masone, the Winton resident, said he is worried the hotel may be sold and longtime, disenfranchised tenants will be evicted — putting on the line their housing situation that was finally turning around after multiple lawsuits.

“I sincerely doubt anybody will buy this building and keep it the same,” Masone said. “If it were me, I would buy it and renovate it and do something else.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/after-sf-residents-actions-improve-dismal-sro-units-they-could-be-without-homes/Content?oid=2872745

The tall, hard-to-miss, curly-haired blonde took over as deputy director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Taxis and Accessible Services Division in December 2008, a time when the industry was in dire need of reform.

A lawyer by trade, Hayashi, 51, maneuvered the transition from the now-defunct Taxicab Commission to the cab industry’s regulation under the SFMTA, and she took the lead in implementing a transferable medallion system that taxi drivers desired. She informed colleagues of her imminent retirement for the better part of a year and leaves as The City’s taxis are in a tight race for riders with Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and similar mobile-app-based services.

“I’m ready to hand off this continuing process to somebody else — in a responsible way that’s not going to diminish what I’ve done or slow down the progress,” Hayashi said. “I’m just ready. Really, a large part of the decision is about timing with my years of service to The City and my age.”

“It’s not,” she added, “because Travis has kicked my ass.”

That’s Travis Kalanick, founder and CEO of competitor Uber.

Hayashi said she is “extremely proud” of the changes she fronted, which include a taxi enforcement team after the Police Department backed away from the role, and that it seems the industry in the past five years has moved “100 light-years forward.” Then, enter Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and others formally known as transportation network companies.

“Here I am, trying to steer the Titanic and someone hits me over the head with a baseball bat, is pretty much what the TNC issue is like,” Hayashi said. “We were about to clear, and all of a sudden here comes billions of dollars of venture capital for people who are willing to break every law in the book.”

At that stage, she said, she didn’t have the backing of government officials and it was a state agency, the California Public Utilities Commission, that got regulatory oversight of the TNCs.

Hayashi managed a very difficult job well, one that often had dozens of angry cabdrivers screaming at SFMTA meetings, Transportation Director Ed Reiskin said.

“The one thing I would hear from people from all parts of the spectrum of the taxi industry,” he said, “is, ‘I don’t agree with what she did, but she was fair and listened to us and I respect her for that.'”

SFMTA board member Malcolm Heinicke said, “She gave it her best as a public servant and she deserves a lot of credit for that.”

But DeSoto Cab Co. president Hansu Kim, who agreed that Hayashi shepherded the industry through some of its most trying times, said that with Uber, Lyft and the like, he would be surprised if the cab industry survives another 18 months in The City.

“The bottom line is, the taxi industry is in big trouble and it’s not her fault,” he said. “But she’s leaving at a time when it’s critical to have strong leadership.”

Before becoming the head of taxis, Hayashi spent 18 years as a deputy city attorney with the city attorney, and was a leader in the rewriting of The City’s procurement laws. She reached her current position in part through experience on the city attorney’s transportation team.

“She was gifted at listening to all the stakeholders and finding a compromise,” said Deputy City Attorney Mariam Morley, her former colleague.

The SFMTA is continuing with a recruitment process that started six months ago and had hoped for more transition time for Hayashi’s successor, Reiskin said.

“She’ll leave some very big shoes to fill,” he said.

After she leaves the taxi world, Hayashi, who has long loved Afro-Cuban art and music, will tour the East Coast for books she has translated on the culture.

Her retirement party July 7 will double as a cabdriver appreciation celebration, an annual event that ceased to exist along with the Taxicab Commission. She has booked a Brazilian band with a member who drives for DeSoto Cab Co. and a piano player who drives for Royal Taxi.

“I’ve had a line item all these years to do a taxi driver appreciation party but it was either something we haven’t been able to focus staff time on, or considered a waste of time,” Hayashi said, choking back tears. “But before I go, I’m determined to make sure we have the party they deserve.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/head-of-sf-taxis-to-retire/Content?oid=2810569

Making a living in The City, however, was more difficult than they expected.

It took Chen’s father, who fixed excavators in China, nearly two years to get a part-time job repairing cars in San Bruno because he didn’t speak English. Chen’s mother, who knew a little English, had a slightly easier time finding work — as a seamstress. Now, three years since immigrating, all their income still goes to rent, food and basic necessities.

“We don’t have any money left at the end of the month,” said Chen, 18, a senior at George Washington High School. “We don’t think we can stay here for a long time since my parents’ jobs are not stable and they might get laid off tomorrow.”

The perception, Chen said, is that Asians living in the west side of San Francisco are wealthy and own homes. But the reality for Chen’s family is they will likely need to move to another city in order to save money.

And they are far from the only Asian family in that part of The City living in poverty.

Although higher incomes were reported overall in the Sunset, Richmond, Lakeshore and Parkside areas than in other areas with Asian and Pacific Islander residents, almost 30 percent of San Francisco’s poor Asians live there, according to a report released today by the Asian Pacific Islander Council.

The report, Asian and Pacific Islander Health and Wellbeing: A San Francisco Neighborhood Analysis, is the first granular look at poverty and health issues across Asian ethnicities citywide, according to the council, a coalition of 29 organizations that formed in 2012 in response to deep budget and social-services cuts at the local level.

For years, individual organizations and policy advocates made their case for support from local government through stories such as Chen’s, but that hasn’t always been enough to leverage funds, said Malcolm Yeung, steering committee member of the council and deputy director at the Chinatown Community Development Center.

“It’s the pervasiveness of the ‘model minority,'” Yeung said, “And I think when we start talking about it, we’re able to talk about it as anecdotes, but what we’re missing in the narrative is hard facts to back it up.”

The report, conducted by Davis Y. Ja and Associates starting last October, drew from existing data including the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from 2010 to 2012. While some findings confirmed familiar tales of poverty like overcrowding at Chinatown single-room-occupancy hotels, others surprised even members of the council who work with the Asian communities every day.

Asian and Pacific Islander people were affected by poverty at lower rates than other racial groups — 14 percent compared to 30 percent and 17 percent among blacks and Latinos, respectively — but by population numbers they were the largest minority group affected. A 44 percent increase in Asians and Pacific Islanders living below the poverty threshold, from 25,413 in 2006-2008 to 38,497 people in 2010-2012, was “another piece of the puzzle that nobody expected,” Yeung said.

Also shocking to the council was unemployment data. The report noted 7.3 percent of Asians were unemployed, more than the overall rate in the city of 5.4 percent, and the rate was nearly three times that for Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians at 14.2 percent.

Hunters Point resident Fiapapalagi Montufau, who belongs to San Francisco’s little-known Samoan community, recently became a certified nursing assistant but has only been able to find on-call work. About 90 percent of The City’s Samoan families, including her own, live in low-income housing.

“The juvenile justice system, gang affiliation, violence — we see it all the time,” said Montufau, 35. “And then the other thing is obesity and health issues. Samoans and Pacific Islanders are large people.”

San Francisco’s Samoan population, between 5,000 and 7,000, is often overlooked because they don’t “yell and scream and protest,” explained Patsy Tito, executive director of the Samoan Community Development Center on Sunnydale Avenue.

“A lot of our folks tend to go more toward the blue-collar jobs rather than the white collar because of a lack of education or skills,” she said.

Other neighborhoods in the south — Visitacion Valley, Bayview-Hunters Point, the Excelsior, Oceanview, Crocker-Amazon, Portola and Silver Terrace — had 74 percent of their Asian population report being foreign-born. Despite overall lower rates of violent crime in those neighborhoods than in the past, 77 percent of residents said they still did not feel safe.

The north — which the report defined as Chinatown, downtown, Civic Center, Nob Hill, North Beach, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, the Tenderloin and South of Market — had the highest rate of Asian unemployment at more than twice the citywide rate, and with 24 percent below the poverty line. And the Tenderloin and Civic Center neighborhoods had the highest rates of violent crime.

For Lourdes Hitones, 80, who immigrated to San Francisco from the Philippines in 1988, living at a low-income apartment at Tenderloin Family Housing on Turk Street has meant getting used to coming home before dark.

“Every time we go out, we don’t stay long outside,” she said. “We’re afraid that something might happen.”

The north side of The City had the most overcrowding in households, with 24 percent of rooms in Chinatown considered overcrowded. The SRO hotels in which families pack into spaces as small as 8-by-10 feet with their belongings is not a living condition of the past.

At a four-story SRO building on Jackson Street, Cui Ping Zhang, her husband, and 14- and 2-year-old daughters share two bunk beds, the top half of one which is stacked to the ceiling with clothes and diapers. The room has one window and the family keeps its only door open to allow for ventilation. For privacy, a sheet hangs over the doorway alongside banners inscribed with “May money and fortune be plentiful” and “Bringing in wealth and prosperity” in Chinese characters.

“It’s hard to breathe,” said 14-year-old Sophia Yu from the top bunk.

Her mother, Zhang, 42, said she never imagined they would live like that when they moved to Chinatown.

“In China, our place was not as packed,” she said in Cantonese. “We didn’t know it would be like this until we came here.”

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, whose district includes Chinatown, said the report is the first time more than two dozen Asian community groups have come together to highlight disparities in areas including workforce development.

“Every year, I have conversations with each of those groups, but separately,” Chiu said. “It is unprecedented for them to come together to ask my colleagues and I this year to focus on the workforce,” among other issues.

Support from local government has been restored to levels before the recession, but costs for resources have risen with inflation, said Amor Santiago, co-chair of the council and executive director of APA Family Support Services, based in Chinatown.

“What we’re hoping for in this next budget cycle,” he said, “Is that the mayor and supervisors will help us with at least some resources to meet the need.”

The council’s goal is to release updates annually or every other year to make the case to city, state and federal agencies that much of the Asian community in San Francisco doesn’t fit the “model minority” stereotype.

“The perception is that Asians by and large don’t have socio-economic issues going on in our community,” Yeung said. “This report really starts to shine a light on how that assumption is false.”

Chinese Hospital caters to specific community needs

In Chinatown, more than in any other neighborhood in The City, the streets are packed with elderly Asians, rarely obese, going about their business up and down steep hills, and so often they are typically lauded as healthy.

“At Portsmouth Square, there’s tai chi going on, and so there’s a perception of health,” Chinese Hospital Chief Nursing Officer Peggy Cmiel said. “The underlying issues don’t really show.”

But a report on Asian and Pacific Islander health and well-being released today details a different picture. Health concerns specific to the community include high rates of diabetes, tuberculosis, liver cancer, smoking and mental health issues.

At the Chinese Hospital on Jackson Street, founded more than a century ago by 15 family associations and the only health care facility in the country dedicated to serving the Chinese, according to staff, anyone who gets admitted with a cough with a slight possibility of tuberculosis is immediately isolated.

“Living in SROs and tight quarters, the chances of it being communicated, spread to others is high,” Cmiel said.

A 65-year-old living with diabetes, Catherine Lee from Hong Kong, said about 70 percent of Asians she surveyed for Self-Help for the Elderly at the Manilatown Senior Center said they had diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.

“People say I don’t look like I have [diabetes],” she said in Cantonese. “But it’s very common.”

The finding from the report that most surprised Cmiel and other staff at the Chinese Hospital was that the HIV/AIDS cases almost doubled among Asian and Pacific Islanders between 2000 to 2010.

“I’ve been here for eight years and have never seen one case,” said Gigi Lim, a nursing supervisor at the hospital.

The report also found Asian and Pacific Islanders had lower rates of using health care resources like cancer screenings, mental health services and HIV testing. The vast majority of health and wellness organizations in San Francisco do not have cross-cultural services and programs, a concern given the continued increase in immigrants from Asia.

It underscores the importance of facilities like the Chinese Hospital, where about 90 percent of staff speak Cantonese and even most of the food is Asian.

“We probably have the largest wok in the kitchen of any hospital, and jook,” said Lim, using the Cantonese word for porridge. “Other hospitals don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

Asian poverty throughout city

Comparing Asian and Pacific Islander populations with the entire population of San Francisco (broken down by region of The City):

Poverty distribution

– North 37.1% South 16.9% West 29.4%

– 34,750 Asians living below poverty level in San Francisco

– 110,889 San Franciscans overall living below poverty level

Unemployment rates

– North 11.7% South 10.4% West 7.2% City overall 5.4%

Overcrowded households

– North 10.4% South 10% West 4.3%

– City overall 5.1%

Exposure to violent crime

– North 2.8 times citywide average South 1.04 times citywide average

– West 0.3 times citywide average

Regions defined:

 North: Chinatown, downtown, Civic Center, Nob Hill, North Beach, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Tenderloin, South of Market

 South: Visitacion Valley, Bayview-Hunters Point, Excelsior, Oceanview, Crocker-Amazon, Portola, Silver Terrace

 West: Richmond, Sunset, Lakeshore, Parkside

Source: Asian and Pacific Islander Health and Wellbeing: A San Francisco Neighborhood Analysis

https://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/model-minority-struggling/Content?oid=2798764

The driver at fault had little to no assets, so all Stevens can receive is $15,000 — the state minimum liability to cover bodily injury or death. That figure became state law four decades ago and remains the minimum today.

Stevens’ lawyer, Anthony Label, who took the case pro bono, said situations in which a victim is hit by a driver with no assets to sue for are “very common.” The victims simply end up with the state minimum.

In the 1970s, $15,000 went a lot further than it does today. With inflation, that figure should now be called “fender-bender responsibility,” Label said.

He, like others, said an increase is needed.

“We just have to be careful because when we take stands like that, we get some really powerful forces to come attack us and oppose us on it — insurance companies, among others,” Label said.

RESISTING CHANGE

Enacted in 1974 when the average new car cost $4,440, California Vehicle Code 16056 dictated that drivers need to have insurance with $15,000 to cover bodily injury or death to one person in a motor vehicle accident, $30,000 to cover two or more people and $5,000 to cover property damage.

California is one of only seven states in the U.S. — the others are Arizona, Delaware, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — with limits that low, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. Only Florida has lower minimums, at $10,000, $20,000 and $10,000, respectively. Alaska and Maine have the highest at $50,000, $100,000 and $25,000.

Stevens, 31, said many people she has talked to about the $15,000 — which she has yet to receive — did not know the amount would be so little.

“Everyone is shocked that it’s that low because everyone knows that $15,000 doesn’t cover much,” she said. “I think it’s a crime of its own — especially for how much our medical world costs.”

Furthermore, since 1999, California has set limits even lower for low-income drivers — $10,000 for bodily injury to an individual, $20,000 for two or more injured people and $3,000 for property damage.

John Feder, president of Consumer Attorneys of California, an organization of about 3,100 attorneys promoting increased safety for Californians, said the policy behind mandatory insurance is “perfectly sound” in that people who get hurt should be made whole after the accident. But, he added, the state minimum coverage “is way too low and it makes that goal impossible.”

“The law should be updated to reflect the economic reality of 2014,” he said.

Feder said his organization has been meeting with groups that represent low-income drivers and insurance companies, which have traditionally opposed an increase in the minimums, to hopefully move toward raising the limits next year, if not this year.

Michael Gunning, vice president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, said his group could not state a position on the matter, but voiced the concerns of those against an increase.

“The challenges that we’ve talked about are the cost and the impact on low-income drivers and a down economy,” he said. “I just don’t know if that could be done in this Legislature.”

Other groups have been more adamantly against an increase.

In February 2013, the Association of California Insurance Companies said raising the state’s financial responsibility limit from $15,000 for an individual to $30,000 would mean paying more for coverage, and that would “negatively impact” roughly one-third of insured drivers.

As of 2011, the estimated population of uninsured motorists in California was 15 percent — higher than the 13.8 percent nationwide average, according to the Insurance Research Council.

The average bodily injury in California is $12,788, just below the limit. The Association of California Insurance Companies concluded that “[a]ny proposal to raise the [financial responsibility] limits should be defeated — keeping costs down should be the most significant consideration.”

Mark Sektnan, president of the Association of California Insurance Companies, added, “You have to ask yourself, ‘What is the trade-off to make it more expensive? Do more people decide not to get auto insurance and increase the risk of uninsured motorists?’”

No legislation to change the minimum financial responsibility has been introduced in Sacramento in the past few years, according to California Department of Insurance spokesman Patrick Storm.

A LOCAL FOCUS

On the local level, following a year with the most pedestrian fatalities since 2007, pedestrian and bicycle advocacy groups have focused on pushing the Vision Zero plan to eliminate pedestrian fatalities within 10 years. While some city agencies have adopted the plan, it remains a vision that needs funding to become a reality.

After learning about Stevens’ situation with the $15,000, Walk San Francisco Executive Director Nicole Schneider reached out to California Walks. The statewide pedestrian safety organization is pushing to expand the definition of a victims’ compensation fund to include pedestrian victims injured while crossing the roadway when they have the right of way.

State Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Oakland, sent California Walks’ proposal to the Legislative Counsel to translate it into a bill, but it has run into a roadblock: The fund was initially set up for victims of crime.

State vehicle code categorizes injuring someone while failing to yield as an infraction, so California Walks is exploring replacing that with reckless driving since that’s a misdemeanor, said Deputy Director Tony Dang. The deadline to find a sponsor and introduce the bill is Feb. 21.

“It’s a huge disappointment because it’s extremely visceral — when a driver is not yielding we think it should be a crime,” Dang said. “Most incidents that relate to pedestrians and bicyclists are not crimes, they’re infractions, so I think that has a huge bearing on how law enforcement then chooses to enforce laws to protect vulnerable road users.”

The Police Department announced at a Jan. 16 hearing on pedestrian fatalities that it would begin issuing citations to parties at fault in an accident that results in an injury after not doing so for years. The policy applies retroactively for a year, so the driver who hit Stevens received a ticket for failure to yield to a pedestrian at a crosswalk, said Cmdr. Mikail Ali, who works with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

“We’re going through approximately 4,000 collision reports so we’re not done at this point, and more importantly it’s about moving forward,” Ali said. “We’re hoping that with this additional enforcement that we’re going to see people’s behavior change.”

THE AFTERMATH FOR STEVENS

For Stevens, life changed Sept. 26 as she was walking to work and a driver hit her at Bush and Taylor streets, a block away from her studio apartment. She lost her sense of taste and smell, and permanently has a piece of chipped bone in the back of her brain.

In order to keep her apartment, she’s recently had to return to work at the hair salon despite chronic back pain. And she uses some money earned for massage parlors “because I just can’t function without it.”

Stevens was not insured at the time of the collision and relies on Healthy San Francisco for her care.

In between physical therapy and counseling sessions, Stevens has committed to working with Walk SF and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition on initiatives and has become a face for pedestrian-vehicle victims through a short documentary her friends created. Injury prevention continues to be the groups’ focus, and increasing the state liability minimum may remain on the back burner unless an organized effort is initiated.

“Right now I can’t organize something on my own,” Stevens said. “Because I can’t even organize my own life.”

How auto insurance works:

California insurance requires bodily injury and property damage liability

Other states also require uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage

The total cost of pedestrian injuries in San Francisco was $75.8 million from 2004-08

Approximately 76 percent ($56.7 million) of that was paid for through Medicare, MediCal and patients themselves

Conversely, 24 percent ($17.6 million) was paid for by private insurance

The minimum amount billed directly to an uninsured victim was $5,143 and the maximum was $505,952

Sources: Property Casualty Insurers Association of America; San Francisco Injury Center for Research and Prevention

To help Stevens with her medical bills, click here to visit her fundraising site.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/injured-sf-pedestrians-medical-bill-highlights-gap-in-insurance-coverage/Content?oid=2692708

Splashed across the screen in blindingly patriotic red and blue,the mission statement of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks opens with the four core tenets of of Elkdom.

“Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity.”

From the third floor of its 15-story, multi-million dollar headquarters a half-block from Union Square, San Francisco’s Elks Lodge No. 3 — the oldest in continuous operation, since 1876 — prides itself in donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities, schools and veterans each year.

Like all of the 1,978 local Elks chapters across America, Lodge No. 3 is a nonprofit fraternal organization; a charitable, non-partisan social club where its 874 members leave business and politics at the door in order to drink, eat, and, in San Francisco, work out at a Lodge-owned health club and swimming pool.

Listen to groups that Lodge No. 3 supports, and you’ll hear nothing but praise.

But listen to some current Lodge No. 3 members and former leaders, and you’ll hear serious questions about how the 137-year-old 501(c)(8) nonprofit has chosen to spend members’ money.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in lodge funds were spent on travel, booze and cigars — including cabanas and suites in sundrenched locales — by Lodge No. 3 leaders, their spouses and guests in recent years, according to current Elks members, documents obtained by SFBay, and IRS tax returns.

And $523,339 in additional spending — reported as “postage and shipping” from 2005 to 2007 on Lodge No. 3 federal tax returns — stumped and shocked multiple current and former Lodge leaders when asked by SFBay to recall what the money was used for.

Earlier this year, four Lodge No. 3 members were suspended after joining together to raise questions to club leaders over chronic patterns of overspending. Two other popular members were also fired from their jobs at the Lodge.

Accusations over spending and their bitter aftermath thrust Lodge No. 3 into a state of “turmoil” — in the words of the head of the national Elks Grand Lodge — and prompted a review of Lodge No. 3 finances by the parent organization.

Yet, as allegations swirl, members say Lodge No. 3 leaders continue to drink and smoke at the Lodge’s expense, while fending off persistent questions — from both inside and outside the club’s wood-paneled walls — over spending, governance and oversight.

*               *               *

“All Lodge records should be open for inspection by a member at all reasonable times.”

– Elks USA, Annotated Statutes, Section 12.050 (2012)

The February 2013 complaint — prepared by San Francisco attorney and 11-year Lodge No. 3 member Arthur Brunwasser — was filed within the Elks’ arcane system for adjudicating internal disputes.

Brunwasser declined multiple requests from SFBay to be interviewed for this story.

In his complaint, Brunwasser describes how he and other members sought $3-per-hour pay raises for longtime workers at the Lodge’s health club and swimming pool at their Post Street headquarters.

When told the Lodge could not afford the pay raises, Brunwasser reviewed spending at Lodge No. 3, discovering $230,000 were spent in past years on national and state conventions.

In violation of the Elks’ governing Annotated Statutes, Brunwasser was denied access to reimbursement reports for hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending at 2010 Elks conventions in Orlando and San Diego.

In late February, Brunwasser circulated his complaint to Lodge No. 3 members, part of a series of e-mails critical of club leadership over spending and governance.

The first e-mail — sent in the days leading up to a Lodge election — also urged members to vote against candidates and longtime Elks Lodge No. 3 leaders Eric Wright and David Harmer, calling them:

“… part of the small group of individuals who have essentially run the Lodge and moved from one office to another … treating our mutual benefit association as their own private fiefdom.”

Brunwasser’s message struck like a double-edged sword within Lodge No. 3. His financial allegations brought more than 100 people to the February 21 election when normal attendance at meetings is around a dozen.

But many members were infuriated after Brunwasser mistakenly exposed their private e-mails in his bulk message.

Candidates Harmer and Wright, criticized by Brunwasser in his e-mail, were overwhelmingly rejected by Lodge No. 3 members in the election.

Days later, in another e-mail to members, Brunwasser accused Nasir Shakour — then-incoming and now-current Exalted Ruler, Elk-speak for Lodge president — of “retaliating” against the defeat of his “friends” by firing Steve Micros, a popular manager at the health club and Lodge No. 3 member.

On Feb. 28, Shakour fired a Lodge bartender — also an Elks member and recent “Elk of the Year” — after, according to multiple sources within the Elks, she was heard discussing Brunwasser’s first e-mail with members at the bar.

The official reason stated in her termination letter was “behavior inappropriate to an employee representative of the Elks.”

At an internal hearing on March 14, Brunwasser and three other members had their Elks privileges suspended for their e-mail gaffe.

None were present at their own suspension hearing because, according to Elks members and internal Elks documents obtained by SFBay, Shakour stood in the Lodge doorway, preventing them from entering.

In April, nearly 150 Elks members turned out for an appeal hearing to overturn the suspensions for Arthur Brunwasser and his three supporters.

Before the contentious hearing began, Elks Treasurer Bob Merjano confronted and had to be “pulled apart” from Micros, according to an Elks member present at the meeting. During the hearing, the suspended men fell nine votes short of the 96 needed to overturn the suspension.

In an e-mail obtained by SFBay from current national Elks Grand Exalted Ruler Thomas Brazier to Brunwasser sent in early April, Brazier recuses his office from getting involved in the issue which has brought “turmoil” to Lodge No. 3.

But in May, the suspensions of the Brunwasser group were stayed while the national Grand Lodge considered an additional appeal.

Later that month, according to documents obtained by SFBay, an internal Elks arbiter ordered Lodge No. 3 reveal to Brunwasser the records he first requested in July 2012 associated with convention spending from 2008 to 2012.

In mid-October, in another decision, a Grand Forum of the National Elks order overturned, on appeal, the suspensions of the Brunwasser group.

The four members’ due process had been violated, according to the decision, when they were turned away from the hearing at the Lodge door by Nasir Shakour, and not properly notified of the hearing by mail.

*               *               *

“In no event shall the travel allowance exceed coach air fare plus applicable per diem.”

– Elks USA, Annotated Statutes, Section 4.240 (2012)

“My interest, and the interest of other members, is to obtain sufficient data about the way officers are spending our funds, present it to the membership, and then seek membership approval to stop the wasteful spending and to redirect necessary funds to properly compensate our gym employees and fund our charities.”

Brunwasser’s complaint specifically questions $230,000 in Lodge No. 3 spending on state and national Elks conventions from 2008 to 2011.

IRS Form 990 tax returns for Lodge No. 3, public documents due to their nonprofit status, reflect a total of nearly $460,000 spent on conferences, meetings and conventions from 2005 to 2011.

Lodge No. 3 media relations chair Tina Shakour — wife of current Exalted Ruler Nasir Shakour — told SFBay their convention spending is “not out of line” with other Bay Area Elks Lodges.

But an SFBay review of 26 California Elks Lodges with assets of more than $1 million showed none of them reported spending nearly as much on conferences, meetings and conventions as San Francisco.

On their 2010 tax return, Lodge No. 3 reported spending $121,348 on conferences, meetings and conventions.

The other California Elks lodges examined by SFBay — including several with assets many times that of Lodge No. 3 — reported spending an average of $6,920.

According to figures cited by Brunwasser, the 2010 spending includes $66,057 for the five-day Elks national Grand Lodge convention in Orlando, and $24,821 for a four-day state convention in San Diego in 2010.

Only each Lodge’s Exalted Ruler is required to attend the annual Grand Lodge convention, according to the “Exalted Rulers, Lodge Officers, Committee Members Manual” distributed to lodges by the national Order of the Elks.

Lodge No. 3 would not provide information to SFBay about attendees at the 2010 conference, though Brunwasser’s complaint said 11 and 13 officers were sent to Orlando and San Diego, respectively.

After finally receiving access to the reimbursement receipts in May, Brunwasser summarized his findings in a message to Lodge No. 3 members obtained by SFBay:

“Review so far has disclosed why they sought to keep the information from the members. … $2,700 was charged for 110 bottles of alcoholic beverages for our ‘hospitality room’ with top of the line brands. … $2,448 for liquor was charged to us at another convention. … For one dinner and drinks, we paid $1,602 for 11 officers, an average of $145 each.”

The document included additional expenses charged to the Lodge, including cabana rental, spa fees, diapers and baby wipes.

Shakour said all officers who are required to attend conventions have their travel expenses paid by the Lodge:

“With three major conventions a year, plus four training sessions, things add up when you start looking at all the travel costs.”

Shakour said meals served to new members, their sponsors and guests at indoctrination dinners, as well as food served at initiation meetings — also accounted for some of the $460,000 spent between 2005 and 2011.

By 2012, according to figures in the Brunwasser complaint, convention spending at Lodge No. 3 had shriveled to just $14,000.

Shakour also told SFBay the finances at Lodge No. 3 are examined annually by an internal auditor and by the Elks national lodge and that:

“No one in our organization has ever questioned our spending.”

Brunwasser’s complaint, though, details months of being stonewalled by one Lodge No. 3 leader after another over his requests to view details and accompanying backup for hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending.

Louis Grillo, former national exalted ruler and current liaison between California lodges and the national order of Elks, told SFBay no red flags had been raised regarding spending at Lodge No. 3 until more than 10 member complaints were received, spreading what Grillo called unverified rumors:

“This is nothing but a bunch of baloney. You should have more important things to do than worry about an Elks lodge with a bunch of troublemakers. Your paper should have something else better to do.”

Grillo also told SFBay that the national Elks office has been investigating the member complaints:

“Absolutely we’re looking into it. We want to get to the bottom of this because our main concern is that the money the lodge raises is spent properly for its officers, facilities and even charities.”

He added:

“We have over 2,000 lodges but each is an independent entity and we do not step in unless we are contacted. It comes down to the lodge. The whole lodge should not be condemned if somebody has made a terrible mistake and done something wrong.”

*               *               *

From April 2007 and to March 2008, the Exalted Ruler of Lodge No. 3 was Patrick Murphy. Murphy joined Lodge No. 3 in 2000, serving in various leadership positions before ascending to the top position.

Murphy left Lodge No. 3 after family health issues required him to stay closer to his North Bay home. He is now a member of Elks Lodge No. 2655 in Novato.

In an interview with SFBay, Murphy described himself as a “frugal” Exalted Ruler whose main priorities were stepping up veterans programs and working with local kids on track teams:

“The San Francisco Elks do a wonderful job with children, youngsters and veterans. We are a community-oriented organization and I think we’ve been very successful.”

When asked about misspending at the Lodge, Murphy told SFBay:

“I have heard in the past that it existed. It did not exist when I was president because I’m a rather frugal individual and I believe that the membership money should be spent on what we’re supposed to be doing, and that’s charitable.”

Murphy said he recalls hearing accusations about spending at Lodge No. 3 after his days as Exalted Ruler were over:

“2008, 2009, 2010, that’s when I started hearing rumors of this spending. So it’s been fairly recently. Old-timers said since San Francisco has the income, sometimes people have spent money that they shouldn’t have but that has been corrected.”

Lodge spending grew only 0.5 percent under Murphy’s term as Exalted Ruler in 2007.

But in fiscal years 2008 and 2010, under Exalted Rulers Josh Hachadourian and George Flamik, Lodge No. 3 spending would hit record levels.

Increased building maintenance and improvements were taking a bigger bite of revenue, which itself fell sharply during recession-starved 2010 and 2011.

But even as revenues receded, spending at Lodge No. 3 continued to surge, peaking in 2010.

Sharply higher professional fees, convention and “miscellaneous club” expenses ballooned spending to $1.46 million in 2010 and contributed to $275,000 in cumulative operating deficits in the 2010 and 2011 tax years.

Neither Hachadourian or Flamik would agree to an interview with SFBay for this story, nor would Treasurer Bob Merjano or Exalted Ruler Nasir Shakour.

No current members at Lodge No. 3 — other than Tina Shakour, as media relations committee chair — would agree to comment on the record.

*               *               *

A woman answered the door, and, prompted by their questions, revealed a laundry list of problems: she recently had been robbed and raped, and was being evicted for the $2,000 she owed in rent.

“Do you have a place to go?” one of the men inquired.

The woman, a mother of a 14-year-old girl, shook her head and asked who they were.

“We are from Eviction Assistance,” said the man with the plaid tie, Deputy Diego Perez.

“We are from the Sheriff’s Office,” added Deputy Joe Crittle, revealing what their dress and vehicle were intended to disguise. “Is that a surprise?”

“Kind of? Sort of?” the woman said with a smile, accepting a brochure with referrals for housing, social services and legal assistance.

“All right, good luck to you,” Perez said.

With that, the two men went back to their minivan and moved on to the next eviction site on their list.

ONE OF A KIND

Together, Crittle and Perez form the one-and-a-half-man Eviction Assistance Unit of the Sheriff’s Department.

The unit, according to the Sheriff’s Department, is the first and only one of its kind in California.

“The Sheriff’s Department was not designed — none of them are in the state — to be a housing facilitator or temporary shelter facilitator,” Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told The San Francisco Examiner. “And that is exactly the role that we have attached.”

On weekdays, except for Wednesdays, the two men drive to anywhere from one to a couple of dozen residences in The City going through court-ordered evictions. These include evictions related to the Ellis Act, nonpayment, owner move-ins or foreclosures. The unit is there to assess tenants’ situation and help them find a place to go.

On Wednesdays, when the Sheriff’s Department carries out evictions, the assistance unit’s job is to patrol and advise deputies of potential problem situations.

“There aren’t any [eviction assistance units] anywhere. From what we know, we’re the only ones in the state,” Crittle said. “We got a call from Cook County, Fla. They were all interested. There have been other agencies that have wanted to do a ride-along.”

OFFERING SERVICES

Crittle, 52, who has worked in the unit full time for almost a decade, said they walk a “fine line.”

“We do not help people not to be evicted,” he said. “We refer people to services that they might not know exist.”

The team regularly refers people to services that are offered through programs such as the Eviction Defense Collaborative on Market Street; Tenderloin Housing Clinic on Hyde Street; and Swords to Plowshares on Howard Street, which they make sure is open before recommending it to an evicted veteran.

The deputies say they’ve seen it all, but never know what they’re up against.

“If you’ve seen the show ‘Hoarders,’ that is literally what we do,” said Perez, 30. “Open the door and there’s feces piled up, they’re using the toilet as a sink, there’s bedbugs jumping off furniture. It’s to the point where it becomes almost a hazmat situation. I get out and have to burn my clothes, carry a can of Lysol.”

The scenes, according to Crittle, can resemble a Hollywood horror movie.

“Then we have the little old lady with newspapers from 50 years ago and she has dead cats that she couldn’t bear to part with,” Crittle said. “And the worst instance — two dead bodies on the same day.”

The mark of a successful day, according to Crittle, is making contact with the evictees.

“It doesn’t matter to me what the contact is,” Crittle said. “I would prefer something that would actually help them versus a 5150 [involuntary psychiatric hold], but we get them the help they need, whether it was the help they wanted or not. That is the whole point.”

THE GROWING ISSUE

The Eviction Assistance Unit was the brainchild of Mirkarimi’s predecessor, Sheriff Michael Hennessey, in 1980 and follows a tradition of San Francisco sheriffs who hesitated to carry out court-ordered evictions. In 1977, Sheriff Richard Hongisto served five days in jail for refusing to execute a massive eviction order at the International Hotel in the former Manilatown — a fight that led to The City’s rent-control laws and many of its tenant protections.

Over time, the workload of the unit has grown. Last year, the department posted 1,318 notices to vacate, executed 998 evictions and provided about 2,040 referrals to those evictees, Mirkarimi noted in a letter to Mayor Ed Lee dated Oct. 3. The sheriff, who expanded the unit from one deputy to the one-and-a-half he has now, requested a full-time clinical outreach worker for the unit in the 2013-14 budget.

Perez spends half of his time on the unit and the other half processing paperwork, such as restraining orders in the civil division.

“Based on trend, our EAU staffing is insufficient and ill-equipped to assist qualified individuals and families who may be at risk of becoming homeless,” Mirkarimi wrote in the letter.

And there are other needs. The unit’s minivan, equipped with a Central Police Station scanner, law enforcement gear and the ability to transport evictees, has far outlasted police vehicles that normally stay in circulation for three to four years.

“She’s falling apart,” Crittle said. “The unit has evolved over the years but it’s pretty much the same thing.”

‘SAD STORIES’

On the October afternoon , Crittle and Perez made 10 stops — two in the Tenderloin, one in the South of Market neighborhood, two in the Mission and five in the Bayview.

At one Bayview apartment, Perez offered assistance in Spanish. Crittle took stickers from his clipboard and gave them to the children.

As they headed back to their van, one of the male tenants followed them out to ask one more question and thank them for their help.

“Muchísimas gracias,” the evictee said, meaning “many thanks.” “Gracias por la ayuda,” he added, which translates to, “Thank you for the help.”

Perez said that although their services are not always utilized, the people they assist always say thank you.

“Because we allow them to vent,” he said. “Nobody wants to hear their sad story, because all evictions are sad stories.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/sf-sheriffs-department-offers-unique-eviction-assistance/Content?oid=2622198

Warriors co-owner Peter Guber brought “Rush Hour” actor Chris Tucker as his guest, while part-owner Craig Johnson used Halloween as an excuse to dress up as Jack Nicholson, the Lakers’ No. 1 celebrity fan. Johnson sat courtside along with a friend disguised as Lou Adler, another big player in the entertainment business.

The centerpiece of the Warriors’ extravagant introductory ceremony was a graphic-lit curtain wrapped around the Jumbotron — something their in-state opponent kicks games off with regularly — and the players loved it, break-dancing underneath.

After Golden State’s 125-94 blowout, Coach Mark Jackson said: “First of all, I want to give credit to the people who organized the introduction, from the big screen to the curtains. I thought it was first-class. That’s how big-time organizations do it.

“I thought it was a thing of beauty from beginning to end.”

The Warriors led the game by as many as 35 points, and scored the first victory in their seven season openers against the Lakers in franchise history.

For seemingly endless years, except last season and 2006-07, the Warriors have failed to make the playoffs. But with Warriors expectations high this season and the marquee Lakers in rebuilding mode, a real rivalry could finally materialize between the California teams.

“It’s cool, to start a little rivalry. We’ve already seen each other three times,” said Warriors guard Klay Thompson, referring to the preseason games between the two teams in China. “And we’ll play them three more times this year.”

Golden State season ticket-holders are known to sell their tickets to Lakers fans when the Southern California team has come into town. But this year, the Warriors sold a record 14,500 season tickets, said spokesman Raymond Ridder, and the crowd wore a lot more gold and blue than purple and gold Wednesday.

“This is my 16th year here and that was the smallest amount of Laker fans that have been in our building,” said Ridder, who previously worked for the Lakers. “We’ve always had really good fans but I attribute that to the fact that we’re a better team now.”

Knowing Lakers star Kobe Bryant would sit out the game while still recovering from his Achilles injury made a big difference for San Jose resident Jackie Magtibay, who wore a Lakers T-shirt and attended with a fan of the home team.

“I’m mostly a Kobe fan and right now I don’t really care who wins because he’s not playing,” she said. “If Kobe was playing I would care more but I figured [the Lakers] would lose anyway.”

Warriors star Stephen Curry said it was “big for us to play well” and “make the show worth it.”

With a more-than-30-point lead in the fourth quarter, many fans were their loud, “Beat L.A.”-chanting selves, but others acted like some fans from the rival team, leaving their seats to beat the crowd since the win was in the box.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/a-hollywood-occasion-at-warriors-season-opener/Content?oid=2617046

That could change in just a couple of days.

As “Wednesday, September 25, 2013 6:01 AM” fast approaches, the Lees cannot ignore the “Notice to Vacate” posted last week in a court order and delivered in the mail Friday.

Speaking in Cantonese, Gum Gee Lee, 73, said, “We raised our family here and we paid rent for more than 30 years. This new landlord knew we lived here when he bought the building. But he did not plan to keep us. He started to evict all of the tenants right away.”

The Lee family’s case is among the most egregious examples in The City of a rising number of evictions using the Ellis Act, a state law adopted in 1985 that allows a landlord to evict tenants in order to get out of the residential rental market.

Matthew Miller bought 1506 to 1510 Jackson Street for $1.2 million in January 2012. Within four months, he had offered buyouts to the Asian longtime residents there.

Miller did the same in North Beach at 32-40 Varennes St., which was renovated into luxury tenancy-in-common units listed starting at $439,000 each.

The Lees’ attorney, Omar Calimbas of the Asian Law Caucus, has represented almost all the other tenants in the complex. He suspects that Miller, like other landlords, has used the state law to turn a profit.

“It’s the same business model — he bought the property with the purpose to flip it from rent control to luxury TICs, sell it and move on,” Calimbas said.

However, the California Superior Court determined that Miller has acted within his rights.

“The law with respect to the Ellis Act is quite clear and it requires, as my client has complied with, going out of the business of being a landlord in the building,” said Miller’s attorney, Jeffery Woo. “And it is irrelevant what subsequent use is.”

Ellis Act evictions and the alternative — buyouts — have tripled since the beginning of the year, with high numbers in Chinatown and North Beach, according to Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

“There’s really no defense for this type of eviction,” Calimbas said.

The driving factor pushing housing demand above supply is once again a red-hot tech industry, which was the case in the late 1990s as well.

“There is much more wealth to go around, so these old rental buildings are being targeted and turned into condos and TICs,” said Norman Fong, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, which has been providing housing counseling to the Lees. “This strategy, we and affordable-housing advocates call ‘gentrification.'”

Census data in recent decades has shown a decline in families and children in Chinatown and North Beach in favor of the single, white, under-30 demographic. The 2010 results showed a continuation of that trend.

“The cost of housing has gone up everywhere, not just in the core of Chinatown, so it’s imperative for leaders to work on, ‘How do we keep families, neighborhoods vibrant?'” said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee. “For that, you need the old, the young, people of different socioeconomic backgrounds. That’s what makes The City vibrant and makes people want to live here in the first place.”

Tenant advocacy groups see a 10-year moratorium on The City’s condominium conversion lottery adopted by the Board of Supervisors in June as one way to help stave off conversions of rent-controlled properties into condo units. The ordinance does not, however, stop real estate speculators from using the Ellis Act.

“We have seen an extremely troubling pattern of Ellis Act evictions in recent years, and without changes in state law, we need to counteract with local San Francisco policies to address the affordability challenges,” Supervisor David Chiu, whose district includes Chinatown and North Beach, said of the Lees’ case and others.

Chiu, whose political career began at the Chinatown Community Development Center, said he’s working with the organization to introduce legislation that would give Ellis Act-evicted tenants priority in other housing options.

But with waitlists growing for affordable-housing facilities like the under-construction Broadway Sansome Apartments, more residents are moving to the East Bay, Daly City and elsewhere.

Come Wednesday and their scheduled eviction, the 79-year-old Poon Heung Lee, speaking in Cantonese, said he doesn’t know what his family will do.

“If the police come and they take us to the sheriff’s office, I guess that is what will be,” he said. “We have not been able to find a place; what can we do?”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/ellis-act-evictions-changing-landscape-of-san-francisco-housing/Content?oid=2585077