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.

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

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

Losing – by a lot – seems to be a recurring theme for the Bulls the last several times they’ve fallen to the Reign. San Francisco has lost by an unlucky 7 goals in three of their last four encounters.

What exactly is it that the Reign have managed to do so perfectly?

Reign goalie Chris Carrozzi, who racked his second shutout of the season, wasn’t exactly sure, but did say:

“Maybe it’s the killer instinct that we put into our games. We try to push the pace, try to dominate the away games and at the home games we dominate.”

The Bulls — like in their last visit to Ontario on Nov. 14 when they lost 8-1 — left Citizens Business Bank Arena without commenting.

Reign head coach Jason Christie told SFBay his team played strong from the moment their skates slid onto the ice:

“I thought we came out hard. I thought we took pressure to them though we didn’t capitalize.”

A slow-paced opening period gave way to an action-packed middle frame when Reign defenseman Paul Mara swept home a power play goal at 3:49 that Bulls goalie Taylor Nelson didn’t even come close to stopping.

Ontario’s next two goals came a disillusioning 31 seconds apart. At 13:11, center C.J. Stretch passed the puck to forward Kyle Kraemer, who fired it past Nelson into the net. Then, at 13:42, right wing Dan DaSilva scored his tenth goal of the season. Couture, who assisted, described the goal that put his team up 3-0:

“It was a great play. Dan hit (Colton) Yellow (Horn) who found me in the slot for the one-timer.”

The Bulls managed only three shots in the second period, all turned away by Carrozzi. Ontario stretched their lead to 4-0 at 18:30 thanks to a power play tally by Couture from in front of the left circle.

An overpowered Nelson in the Bulls’ goal got little defensive help from his teammates. In the final period, Reign forward Jason Beeman scored quickly at 2:24 from a difficult angle from the left.

The Reign’s next two goals came on power plays, both by Couture shooting from the left. Both Couture goals were assisted by defensemen Chris Huxley and Vincent LoVerde. Of this coincidence, or not, the hat trick man said:

“I’m surprised they didn’t adjust after the first power play. The second power play was an exact replica. I’m surprised but I guess I’m glad they didn’t.”

The Bulls took out their frustrations on the Reign and racked up 26 penalty minutes in the third.

Many of the 5,513 spirited fans sounded off their now-familiar “you suck” chants a couple of times in the final period. Nothing the Bulls hadn’t heard before. Ontario fans later gave their players a standing ovation.

Carrozzi, who stopped all 21 shots by the Bulls, said he was able to see the puck the entire time, thanks to his teammates defensive effort. In one play in the post, he said:

“I was lucky. If I was a (Bulls) player, I’d be pretty mad not to score.”

Still, Christie remained careful not to underestimate the Bulls’ potential. He told SFBay:

 “There were two good teams out there in the battle. The puck was going our way tonight.”

The 10-15-1-2 Bulls — now in third place of the Pacific Division — face the division-leading Reign (17-6-1-0) again in a home-and-home next weekend, the first at the Cow Palace on Friday.

“We [built this business] because we’re human beings who care about this planet,” says cofounder Eric Ryan. Method pulled in revenues of $100 million last year, selling bathroom cleaner, dish soap, hand soap and the like made from non-toxic, plant-based ingredients. In January it launched an eco-friendly laundry detergent. Method puts its products in sleek, often clear plastic bottles that give it a fresh look–notably different from traditional packaging.

It’s up against some stiff competition. Clorox ( CLX – news – people ) launched an eco-friendly cleaning line called Green Works in January 2008. A big marketing campaign, not to mention Clorox’s existing relationships with retailers, has helped it grow. Clorox claims on its website that Green Works is the “#1 brand in natural cleaning.” Procter & Gamble ( PG – news – people ) has an element of green in its cleaning products for professionals such as janitorial and housekeeping services. Smaller competitors to Method include Mrs. Meyers Clean Day, which says it sells “aromatherapeutic” household cleaners.

For all their apparent popularity, “green” household cleaning products still make up just a tiny sliver of the overall market for home cleaning goods. In 2008 environmentally friendly cleaning products accounted for just 3% of the market, according to research firm Mintel International. It’s a fast-growing sector, though. Mintel predicts that green products will grab 30% of the market by 2013.

Andrea Kerr Redniss, an analyst at marketing communications firm Optimedia, gives Method considerable credit for spurring the conversation about green cleaning products. “They definitely brought along the concept that you’re cleaning with poison in your house and really pushed it before it was the trend,” she says.

Method has used marketing smarts (its tagline is the unifying slogan “people against dirty”) to get itself into 160 retailers across the U.S. Its products are also available in Canada, England, Australia, France and Japan, on Amazon.com ( AMZN – news – people ) and on its own Web site. Four pillars define the product experience, according to cofounder Adam Lowry: high performance, a healthy profile, product design and fragrance.

To get its goods into Target ( TGT – news – people ), Method promised Target executives that its product line would continue to expand–Method wasn’t planning on being a one-shot wonder. Not long afterward, some of its products started to leak on Target’s shelves. Method quickly figured out the packaging problem, fixed it and kept selling at Target.

The company got its start in 2000, when high school buddies and former roommates Lowry and Ryan crossed paths in San Francisco. The pair had complementary skills: Lowry studied chemical engineering and environmental science at Stanford University and Ryan–who serves as chief brand architect–had worked in advertising and brand positioning for The Gap ( GPS – news – people ), Old Navy and Saturn. They started in a 200-square-foot room, pooling $90,000 of their own money. The duo borrowed $200,000 from friends and family members. In 2002 Method raised some venture capital funding, which enabled the company to go after the national market.

Method outsources production but has in-house scientists (known as “green chefs”) work only with materials that meet strict environmental and health standards. The focus on a simple, clean aesthetic is always front and center. Boasts Lowry: “Nobody does the combination of style and substance in the way that we do.”