“Any suggestion that this may put Stormy Daniels at risk is absurd and without merit,” Avenatti said in a phone call to Newsweek. “Ms. Daniels’s case has never been stronger.”

As Avenatti has earned a regular spotlight on television news bashing both Trump and his lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, he’s also drawn comparisons to Trump. Both have no reservations firing attacks at their opponents on air and via Twitter, and some experts told The Washington Post on Monday that such tactics could undercut Avenatti’s ability to represent Daniels, who is suing Trump over a nondisclosure agreement on their alleged affair.

“Some people seem to have a difficult time accepting the huge amount of success that we’ve had over the last eight weeks,” Avenatti said. “They need to get used to it.”

The lawyer for Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, declined to comment on claims he is acting like Trump.

Avenatti has proven to be unlike other attorneys in that his arguments go beyond his client’s complaint, New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, whose expertise is in ethics, told the Post.

“Nothing he has been doing in the last four to six weeks with his multiple television appearances advances the interests of his client in the California action,” Gillers said. “He’s catapulted himself to be the story. There are dangers when a lawyer becomes so publicly vocal.”

One of Avenatti’s boldest moves yet came last week, when he exposed Cohen’s banking transactions, suggesting he took payments from a Russian oligarch, AT&T and a Swiss pharmaceutical company into the same account he used to pay $130,000 to Daniels to stay silent about the alleged affair.

While that was damaging to Trump and Cohen, the latter’s lawyers pointed out that the documents erroneously included a few transactions made by other Michael Cohens, thus spreading information that did not concern Daniels.

Cohen argued that Avenatti, who practices out of California, should no longer be allowed to represent Daniels before a court in New York because he disclosed the private transactions.

Here is the response we just filed in response to Mr. Cohen's baseless charges last week. Facts are stubborn things. #bastahttps://t.co/srLCNCKult

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 14, 2018

Also last week, Mark Penn, a pollster and adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 2000, questioned whether Avenatti’s intention was really to represent Daniels or if he is “just using her as cover to wage a political operation.”

Avenatti called Penn’s piece “utter bullshit.”

On Monday, The Daily Caller reporter Peter Hasson tweeted an email Avenatti sent him that morning warning he would sue the conservative website, him and his colleague Joe Simonson for defamation over a story they published scrutinizing his business deals.

“We will expose your publication for what it truly is. We will also recover significant damages against each of you that participated personally,” Avenatti’s email read. “So if I were you, I would tell Mr. Trump to find someone else to fabricate things about me. If you think I’m kidding, you really don’t know anything about me.”

https://www.newsweek.com/michael-avenatti-critics-accept-huge-amount-success-weve-had-stormy-daniels-927053

“There will be increasing evidence and increasing urgency with the American people to get this guy out of office as people realize we really can’t survive him,” Steyer said during a recent sit-down with Newsweek in New York City.

“When it happens, I don’t know. Exactly what the next events will be, I don’t know. That there will be next events, I do know,” said Steyer, adding that they will support his campaign’s objective.

Before launching Need to Impeach in October to demand impeachment proceedings, Steyer said he was betting that every day would bring more evidence to back up his case that the president deserves to be booted from the White House.

“And we think that’s happening,” the Democratic billionaire said, citing a recent New York Times op-ed column on 10 ways Trump has obstructed justice.

“We’re going to see more information coming out of the investigations. We’re going to see more attempts to obstruct justice,” Steyer predicted. “We’re seeing them almost on a daily basis at this point.”

According to Steyer, there is no need to wait for the results of special counsel Robert Mueller’s intensifying investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russians in the election because he “obstructed justice and that has always been the primary basis for impeachment of the president of the United States.”

Among instances that Trump critics say show he committed obstruction of justice are his comment to former FBI Director James Comey last February to let go of an investigation on resigned national security adviser Michael Flynn, and that Trump later fired Comey because of “this Russia thing.”

Steyer added that he cannot foresee what steps may lead to Trump’s impeachment because the president constantly commits new, unpredictable offenses.

“I liken it to being on a wild horse,” Steyer said. “We as a country are on a wild horse and we don’t know where it’s going.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek.

For Need to Impeach, the biggest roadblock has been partisanship, Steyer said, with Republicans “hunkered down trying to defend the indefensible.”

Democratic Representative Al Green of Texas has forced two votes to start proceedings on impeaching Trump. The most recent one in January—after Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries”—drew eight more Democrats in favor, but failed 355 to 66.

“He has lowered the standards for Americans. I mean, just as a glaring example, no other American president used a four-letter word, bathroom language, in meetings,” Steyer said of Trump.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer have opposed pursuing impeachment while Mueller carries out his probe. But Steyer said that more politicians have shown willingness to support a movement against Trump when it doesn’t explicitly involve impeachment.

Steyer said he is relying not on the number of people in Congress whose votes are needed to initiate impeachment proceedings, but on the voice of the American people.

Need to Impeach has collected more than 4.7 million signatures on a petition demanding Congress to begin proceedings to remove Trump. Its largest event to date, Party to Impeach, will take place on Saturday, ahead of President’s Day, with impeachment-themed house parties planned in more than 500 communities across the U.S.

“Obviously, the elected officials don’t want to hear me at all. The only thing they can hear and have to hear is the voice of 4.5 million Americans” and counting, Steyer said. “That is a shockingly powerful statement.”

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-impeachment-just-matter-time-after-more-4-million-sign-petition-tom-807814

While that might be true, there is a different side to life behind the bright-red metal gate of The Negev Sixth.

Nearly all tenants in the single-room-occupancy building — mostly in their 20s and newcomers to San Francisco with few if any local acquaintances — pay $1,250 a month for a spot on a bunk bed inside a unit, share couches and a kitchen on the first floor and recreation tables and a mini movie theater in the basement of the tech co-op.

With the makeshift-style amenities come many issues. Several complaints beginning in the summer to The City’s Department of Building Inspection make the place out to be a slum. A complaint by resident Zachary Howitt, 26, on Oct. 9 identified an inoperable heater, faulty electrical wiring, no deadbolts on some doors, a faulty fire escape and smoke detectors, no secure mail receptacle, cockroaches and mice, no hot water, a consistent odor of gas from a broken water heater and 60 people living in a place with a 22-person occupancy limit. To top it off, the complaint alleges, the person behind the operation reportedly refused to fix the issues despite multiple requests.

The latest inspection came Wednesday. City Housing Inspector Luis Barahona found that debris and personal items that were blocking the fire escape were removed, light fixtures were repaired, a shower door was fixed, some work was done on electrical outlets and deadbolts were installed on several rooms.

However, the people running the property neglected to address six violations — failure to provide identified caretakers for the building, repair all windows and latches, fix self-closing doors, move garbage receptacles to an open area, provide heat to all units and have an installation permit for a hot-water tank. For all its problems, Barahona did say other single-room-occupancy buildings in San Francisco are worse off than The Negev Sixth. But he added that during the inspection, the number of units appeared to exceed the 19 residential rooms stated in the building’s certificate for use.

“I counted more than 19 rooms,” Barahona said. “I don’t know for sure. I think there are about 22 to 25 rooms, but some of them aren’t labeled.”

Today, The Negev Properties LLC, run by Danny Haber, 26, and Alon Gutman, 27, is expected to take part in an audit of records for the past two years so the department’s housing division can determine whether the company is complying with its designation of residential units. According to San Francisco’s hotel conversion ordinance, units with a residential designation must be occupied for more than 30 days, whereas tourist units — which The Negev Sixth has none of — are for stays of fewer than 30 days.

The department will be looking into whether construction work was done without proper permits.

“It looks like they have too many rooms, so that could be the main point of contention,” said Jamie Sanbonmatsu, acting senior housing inspector for the department. “Work without a permit is a life-safety issue.”

On Thursday, the department served another notice of violation to the property for electrical, plumbing and mechanical work done without permits and requests to replace a gas stove with an electrical stove and relocate mailboxes so they do not block the exit. A Department of Building Inspection hearing on the living conditions is scheduled for Dec. 4.

Should violations remain outstanding at The Negev Sixth, the operators will be penalized and tenants are eligible to go to the San Francisco Rent Board for rent reductions. Tenants found to be living in illegally converted units could be evicted, but it would take more to shutter the entire building.

“When you’re talking about shutting down an operation, you’re talking about a lot of people without homes and making a lot of people homeless is something we try to avoid,” Sanbonmatsu said.

Prior to becoming The Negev Sixth, 219 Sixth St. was the San Francisco Gospel Mission, a nonprofit, Baptist-based mission for homeless people. Joann Knight said she sold the building in August 2013 after the death of her husband, who ran the mission that housed people until the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“We had three different people bidding at $1.5 million,” Knight said, adding that it was sold to a party that “paid all cash.”

Beyond the building issues documented on paper, some tenants at The Negev Sixth have had relational problems with Haberand Gutman.

According to Superior Court records obtained by The San Francisco Examiner, The Negev Properties filed an unlawful detainer summons, the first step in an eviction proceedings, Sept. 30 against Howitt, claiming he owed $625 in unpaid rent.

Howitt said the eviction was retaliatory and, following legal advice, he complied with a law allowing him to deposit the rent into an escrow account instead, because of concerns over the legality and habitability of the building. These violations included heating, electrical and sanitary deficiencies. A judge on Oct. 21 dismissed the complaint after she agreed that Howitt had no opportunity to respond because he was never served with the complaint in the first place. According to court documents, Gutman signed that he allegedly served the complaint.

Haber and Gutman also run The Negev Folsom at 1040 Folsom St., which was the subject of a lawsuit filed Nov. 12 from tenants displaced by a fire there who claim they were not offered their units back at their former rent rate, as required by the San Francisco rent-control ordinance. Before opening The Negev Sixth, Haber and Gutman started The Negev Twelfth at 200 12th St., which is an open room stocked with bunk beds.

Other tenants say Haber, who leased 219 Sixth St. from Howard Six Bros LLC, intimidates residents into making repairs themselves or kicks them out of buildings if they consistently complain about living conditions.

Dewaine Torregroza, 28, moved into The Negev Sixth in February and paid $1,000 per month for a shared bunk-bed room. He said Haber then tried to increase rent to $1,250 for everyone paying $1,000. Since the rent-control ordinance applies to the building, the maximum allowable rent increase this year is only 1 percent.

Haber also assigned director roles to tenants, Torregroza said. As director of the basement, Torregroza was expected to revamp the dingy basement on his own time and with his own money.

“He was kind of preying on the weak in a lot of ways,” Torregroza said of Haber. “A lot of people moved in from different parts of the world without any experience in California or San Francisco as far as tenants’ rights. As far as they were concerned, things were going OK.”

The final straw for Torregroza — he moved out in early October — was when construction workers entered his unit without notification and drilled holes through his closet for water heater piping.

Group housing like The Negev seems to be popular among younger residents, said neighborhood Supervisor Jane Kim, but the company needs to clean up its act.

“The limited facts that we’ve gotten do not reflect well on this company,” she said. “It seems to be a company that is willing to break the law and exploit residents in order to make a profit, and we do not support that type of behavior.”

Haber refused to comment on The Negev Properties’ operations.

If run right, the communal type of living behind The Negev “would be brilliant,” Torregroza said.

“It really is a beautiful thing and I’m hopeful that someone, some tech entrepreneur can figure this out legally and do it right,” he said. “Because I really feel that I grew a lot there and there are friends I still have there because it’s an awesome community. At the heart of it, everyone wants to be a part of something.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/sro-tenants-tales-tell-scary-story/Content?oid=2912562

Boarded up and draped in scaffolding until recently, the single- and double-occupancy-room Park Hotel at 1040 Folsom St. appeared uninhabited.

Kirkbride said she had no idea the building repairs were complete until one of the new building lessees, Danny Haber, 26, knocked on the door of her new home at another single-room-occupancy hotel a few weeks ago and offered her $500 in cash if she waived her right to return and all claims against him — basically a buyout. She didn’t take the money.

News of his sudden death two weeks ago, just weeks before the November election, leaves the activists he nurtured with the Herculean task of passing the anti-real estate speculation-tax measure, Proposition G, which could be his legacy.

Gullicksen, who was 61 when his roommate found him dead Oct. 14 in his Bayview apartment, took the humble title of office manager of the Tenants Union in 1988, “with his typical humility to reflect the collective nature of the group, his nonautocratic style,” said Bobby Coleman, a longtime organizer with the union.

SFO received a permit agreement signed by Lyft on Friday and one signed by Uber on Monday, airport spokesman Doug Yakel said. The deal details are identical for all three transportation network companies, allowing them to pick up and drop off passengers at the airport, he said.

“When we announced the news about Sidecar, we did say we hoped this would encourage others to do so, so we’re very happy that Lyft has also sent us a permit,” said Yakel, adding the same applies for Uber.

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

Chinatown community advocates warn that this latest trend of placing SRO units on short-term rental sites, such as Craigslist and Airbnb, could exacerbate The City’s housing crisis by displacing vulnerable families, many of whom don’t speak English, who have traditionally relied on these less expensive accommodations.

Privately owned SROs have traditionally been rented for $650 to $700 per month and on a word-of-mouth basis, but listings on Craigslist and Airbnb show furnished units going for $800 on average and sometimes more than $1,000 per month, said Tina Cheung, a housing counselor with the Chinatown Community Development Center. Those listings, and others, could be violating San Francisco law.

“Folks that we normally serve would not know to access Craigslist, nor can they afford to pay that much for a single room,” Cheung said. “So we can speculate who those rentals are going to. They’re definitely not going to people we normally serve.”

The Department of Building Inspection is charged with investigating violations to The City’s administrative code, and Chapter 41A prohibits any building with four or more units to engage in short-term rentals.

More than a decade ago, a hotel conversion ordinance was passed, allowing SRO hotels to rent up to 25 percent of vacant residential units for tourism on a short-term basis between May and September, but on the condition that they don’t displace residents to do so. Cheung said she is concerned that these units are now being pushed out of the reach of families who need them.

“It was drawn up originally to make sure that there was residential housing and that a lot of things didn’t get converted for only tourism purposes that would take away from residential housing stock,” said William Strawn, a Department of Building Inspection spokesman.

So far this year, nine complaints citywide have been investigated for Chapter 41A violations and five proceeded to administrative hearings, a noticeable increase from the 15 years prior in which three complaints were reported and none had merit, according to Andrew Karcs, senior housing inspector for the Department of Building Inspection.

Meanwhile, the city’s Planning Department, which has its own process of investigating short-term rental violations, has received about 119 complaints this year. San Francisco law prohibits residential units in buildings with four or more units from being rented for less than 30 days.

New legislation by Supervisor David Chiu, scheduled to go before the Planning Commission on Thursday, would amend city code to permit permanent residents of residential units in buildings with two or more units to rent their unit as short-term rentals for up to 90-days per year.

The legislation, Chiu said, is designed to reinforce the prohibition of “hotelization” – when residential units are converted into full-time, de-facto hotels.

Cheung said she found a Craigslist post, which has since expired, that advertised an SRO unit at 705 Vallejo St. in North Beach on the Chinatown border for $215 per week, with a photo that showed a bed, desk, chair, lamp and microwave and promised free in-room Wi-Fi.

Such furnished listings suggest the SRO units are targeted at students, said Angela Chu, a community organizing manager for CCDC.

Another concern for housing advocates is seeing SROs on Airbnb, which allows tenants to lease their residences on a short–term basis.

Two Airbnb listings online Tuesday showed accommodations available at the Balmoral Hotel, showing a building at 640 Clay St. in Chinatown, for $40 a night and $280 per week, with a minimum stay of seven days.

Cindy Wu, the CCDC’s community planning manager and president of the Planning Commission, said she has noticed the Craigslist and Airbnb “phenomenon” since last year.

“Every one of these postings to me is like a small red flag,” she said. “Where is the tipping point?”

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If Uber, Lyft and others are allowed to expose loopholes in the regulatory process — which boost their bottom lines exponentially — then so too can the traditional taxi industry, he realized.

During public comment at many recent San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors meetings, Kim has explained that his 204-vehicle operation is “bleeding money” due to competing ride services subject to a different set of rules enforced by the state, not The City.

If DeSoto were to change the model of its operations, it would cut its highest cost — nearly half a million dollars in monthly payments to taxi medallion holders — but not become another Uber or Lyft (the app-based ride services dubbed transportation network companies). Instead, DeSoto — The City’s third-largest cab company — would seek charter-party carrier, or TCP licenses, intended for limousines and Lincoln Town Cars but legally obtained by nonluxury vehicles.

“Uber isn’t putting me out of business,” Kim said, speaking hypothetically. “What Uber is making me do is retool — and given the same rules, I’ll beat them all day long.”

The California Public Utilities Commission’s Transportation License Section states, “The most important operational difference is that TCP transportation must be prearranged” whether by telephone or writing, whereas, “Taxis may provide transportation ‘at the curb.'”

To have a livery plate, a type of TCP permit, a vehicle can be any sedan or SUV that seats 10 or fewer passengers including the driver.

“If a driver has applied for and received a livery plate and then becomes a driver with a TNC, that driver can provide TNC service in that vehicle,” CPUC spokesman Andrew Kotch said.

AN ALTERNATIVE PLAN

Technology-driven companies like Uber have blurred the definition of prearranged transportation and the code has not since been amended, said Barry Korengold, president of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association. That has allowed TCP-licensed cars to use smartphone apps and act as taxis.

“Somehow, they’ve played with the words so much that ‘on-demand’ is ‘prearranged,'” Korengold said.

Together, Kim said, the TCP and TNC ride services are a “double-whammy” to taxis.

“I hate to say it,” he said, “but all this deregulation is, from a financial standpoint, an opportunity for me.”

The cost factor is also important to DeSoto, as Kim pays $2,200 per month each to his 204 medallion holders for an annual total of nearly $5.4 million. If Kim decided to pull the trigger, it would take him three months to remove the cab meters and infrastructure while keeping his dispatch system, DeSoto name and two-toned blue colors. Each TCP license would be a one-time $1,500 fee plus $100 to renew annually. Kim said he would do just fine because he has built a loyal customer base over the company’s 80-year history and now receives an additional 2,000 hails daily through the hailing app Flywheel, which he hopes would adapt with him.

Since 2010, medallions have been sold to drivers at $250,000 each. Up until a few months ago, Kim was paying medallion holders $2,500 per month, but that dropped to $2,200 with competition from other ride services. The monthly rate could drop to $1,800 by September, Kim said. Yet a medallion does have advantages, like allowing drivers to pick up street hails and airport customers.

“The SFMTA is going to kill their golden goose, which is their medallion sales,” Kim said.

NO CONCERNS FROM CITY

The repeated warning from DeSoto Cab Co. about retooling was not a major concern for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Taxis and Accessible Services’ interim director, Kate Toran. DeSoto’s medallions are a small fraction of the roughly 2,000 citywide, she said, and the medallion holders could do business with other taxi companies.

“That could be a business decision that they undertake and really that’s [Kim’s] choice,” Toran said. “There would be no loss for the SFMTA taxi fleet.”

There continues to be a “strong demand” for medallions, she said, with about 1,000 people ready to buy them.

“If the industry continues the positive work of adapting to the new challenges, we believe that the value of the medallions will remain strong,” Toran added.

Ed Healy, 69, a taxi driver for more than 25 years, said he sold his medallion a year ago because it appeared to him The City was not going to regulate the app-based ride services. He now drives for DeSoto two or three days a week.

“The state is allowing these people to put in all the vehicles they want, whether they are needed or not,” Healy said of the app-based ride services.

WILD, WILD WEST

Korengold said his main issue is that The City still cannot crack down on the state-regulated ride services. A state audit last month found that CPUC failed to enforce safety laws around limousine and bus companies and lacks properly trained investigators.

Luxor Cab, the second-largest taxi company in The City, is not considering converting its entire 220-vehicle fleet to a sedan service, Assistant Manager Charles Rathbone said. But it is keeping an open mind about getting TCP licenses for vehicles to operate them commercially or getting TNC licenses.

“We’re not about to abandon the medallion system that has worked so well in San Francisco for generations,” Rathbone said.

While there are cabs that aren’t leaving company lots, a number of drivers are returning to the cab industry, noted Steve Humphreys, CEO of the app Flywheel that is working with every taxi company in The City.

Kim’s own reservations around the sedan service route are based on his belief that vehicles transporting people should be subject to regulation.

“Of course I want to be a business that is not losing money, but I don’t want to see the industry become deregulated, because it’s not in our public interest,” Kim said.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/death-of-the-taxi-medallion-sf-cab-company-ponders-major-change/Content?oid=2856068

Both candidates are expected to face each other again in a decisive November election due to California’s new top-two primary system, under which the two highest vote-getters move on to the general election, even if they are from the same political party. Paired against Democrats Campos and Chiu in the Assembly District 17 race, Republican candidate David Salaverry is not considered much competition.

While Campos and Chiu have steered their campaigns away from identity politics, saying they’ve focused not on groups of specific ethnicities or sexual orientations but equally across the diversity of constituents, they have both succeeded to varying degrees in capturing the endorsements and support of their traditional backers.

At a May 15 rally at Portsmouth Square in the heart of Chinatown, nearly every leader in the Chinese community was present to back Chiu — who told The San Francisco Examiner on Tuesday, “I’m humbled” by the support — except for arguably the most influential of them all, Chinese Chamber of Commerce consultant Rose Pak. She announced her support for Campos on a microphone at the Chinese New Year Parade and has contributed $1,000 to his campaign.

Meanwhile, the LGBT endorsements have been somewhat split between Campos, who is gay, and Chiu, a longtime backer of LGBT issues.

Campos won endorsements from termed-out Assembly District 17 incumbent Tom Ammiano, who has tagged him as his successor, and from the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. Chiu has been endorsed by the more moderate Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance and Supervisor Scott Wiener, who is also gay.

“It weighed heavily on me that the seat has been held by an LGBT person,” Wiener said. “But despite that, for me it was about who’s going to do the best job for The City, and no doubt in my mind Chiu is going to be best.”

But Campos said he feels “very positive” that his campaign has been able to consolidate as much of the LGBT community as it has.

“In the end, it’s not about the endorsements,” he said. “It’s actually the ground campaign, that’s where we feel we’ve been getting a very good response.”

Campos has raised more than $450,000 and Chiu has raised $857,000, according to their respective campaigns.

“I think we’re in the classic case of money versus people,” Campos said. “Money power and people power, and we have the people power.”

From the outset, Campos has pitched his candidacy in a “Tale of Two Cities” narrative with himself as the leader fighting for the little guy.

On the other hand, Chiu touted he has championed three times as much legislation as Campos and has delivered on The City’s toughest issues such as jobs, building below-market-rate housing and fighting for public safety.

“I’m the only candidate in this race that has a proven record of unified leadership that’s brought a diversity of constituencies together,” Chiu said. Supervisor Eric Mar, who has endorsed both candidates, said he sees Campos as stronger with immigrants rights groups and anti-displacement groups.

“I think it breaks down beyond political lines,” Mar said. “People don’t just vote based on identity. LGBT people facing potential eviction might vote very different than more middle-class and affluent LGBT communities.”

As of Tuesday, 14.3 percent of absentee ballots had been returned districtwide and 16.2 percent from voters of Chinese descent, a result of ramped-up voter mobilization efforts, said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee.

“It could be as few as a few thousand votes that will decide who comes in first and second,” Lee said. “So any kind of mobilization and surge in turnout would make a big difference, even though numerically, it might be a small number.”

Though Campos and Chiu will likely advance past next week’s election, it will set the stage for the November election, said Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University.

Both candidates have voted similarly on many issues, and though many endorsements have already been made, some are still deciding whom to support. Lee said the winner next week will have a “commanding lead” in fundraising, endorsements and resources.

“You want to start at the pole position with a healthy gap between you and your challenger going into November,” he said. “People on the sidelines will be watching to see what happens in June. That’s why this primary matters.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/demographics-play-into-state-race/Content?oid=2808890