T.J. Johnston is a San Francisco-based journalist. He has been published in Newsdesk.org; Street Sheet; Street Spirit; Poor Magazine; Race, Poverty & the Environment; and Now Public, among other publications and Web sites.
Ignoring ‘quality of life’ fines can lead to warrants, jail
San Francisco is an expensive place to find an apartment, sure. But it can also be a costly place to live outside. Police served homeless people in the city with almost 40,000 citations over a five-year period, according to records compiled by the city agency that provides homeless services.
This story appears in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
Opponents of the ranked-choice voting instant runoff system say he relatively novel approach is still confusing to voters, while foes of the traditional system that often results in a second runoff election is a waste of money. Dueling measure on how San Franciscans elect their top office holders by Supervisors David Campos and Mark Farrell could end up on the November ballot.
The San Francisco Human Services Agency has won a state grant to refurbish a building next to the United Council of Homeless Services, a community-based organization, that could offer overnight shelter to 100 people a night by early next year.
A proposal to regulate two popular Castro District hangouts by restricting chairs and shopping carts is a step closer to becoming city law. The Board of Supervisors will decide Tuesday on an ordinance, which passed the Land Use Committee this week, that would ban nighttime sitting, sleeping, vending, smoking and even pushing a shopping cart in Harvey Milk and Jane Warner Plazas.
While there are many aspects of culture and politics that unite the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of more than 7 million people, attitudes toward school discipline do not seem to be among them. What happens to students when they disrupt the classroom or commit crimes depends largely on where they live. That is because approaches to expulsion and suspension vary widely across school districts and across the region. While reforms such as restorative justice appear to coincide with decreases in expulsion rates across the region in the last year or two, school administrators at the county and local level have a wide range of views on the best ways to preserve order in schools after a student has misbehaved.
A national homeless advocacy organization says San Francisco continues to make criminals out its homeless population. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty reported recently that the city and several other communities across the country penalize homeless people for behaviors related to their lack of housing. The Washington, D.C.-based group studied 234 U.S. jurisdictions, finding that San Francisco places prohibitions on 10 of 14 behaviors. Another local advocacy group recently graded San Francisco with a “D” for its policing efforts, but city representatives say alternative justice experiments are working.
Incumbent Ed Lee was elected as San Francisco’s mayor following Tuesday’s ballot, in the first truly competitive race for the office using ranked-choice voting, according to unofficial results announced late Wednesday. George Gascón, who like Lee was appointed to his position during the previous administration, was sent back to the office for a full term, while Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi became the first sheriff elected in 31 years, preliminary results show.
On the same day that San Francisco voters were deciding who would be the next mayor, the method used to elect that person was under attack. At a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, Supervisor Mark Farrell introduced a charter amendment for the June 2012 ballot that would eliminate ranked-choice voting as a way of elevating candidates to city offices.”Ranked-choice voting is an experiment whose unintended consequences continue to pile up election after election,” Farrell said.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement gains momentum nationwide, a band of housing activists occupied 10 vacant buildings in San Francisco on Monday. Following a late afternoon rally at the Civic Center, at least 30 members of Homes Not Jails entered the Cathedral Hill Hotel at 1101 Van Ness Ave. by cutting the gate open. Then they started occupying some of the 600 vacant units.
Supervisors Scott Wiener and Malia Cohen Tuesday introduced an ordinance to establish a sentencing commission in hopes of reducing recidivism. The commission would be led by District Attorney George Gascón and would include representatives from the police and sheriff’s departments, public defender’s office, nonprofits serving victims and ex-prisoners, among others.
