Want to Get People Talking? Write about Rent Control in SF

When people ask me what my column is about, I tell them my agenda is always the same: to present something new that I think is interesting and worth having a public discussion about.

Well, my latest column has certainly started that discussion — and then some.

I wrote about a growing quandary: as more and more wealthy people live in San Francisco, should they be eligible for rent control? After all, rent control was meant to help the poor and working class. Now landlords of relatively modest means say the have ended up subsidizing the housing of the rich. Talk about unintended consequences.

The column received a huge response: an online debate of about 200 comments so far. It’s one of the largest reactions to date on The Bay Citizen, which requires registration to comment publicly. Partly because of that restriction, the website typically doesn’t get the large volume of anonymous snarky one-liners that most news sites receive.

What’s striking about the comments is that many are quite substantive (some are as long as my column) and thoughtful.

And rather than being limited to the narrow issue that I raised, the conversation has evolved into a much larger debate over the very existence of rent control.

The first comment, by a reader identified as LawSci, went right to this broader controversy:

“Class warfare all the time by the media knows no bounds. How is it somehow unfair to have people of relatively modest means subsidize more wealthy, and somehow fair to have them subsidize less wealthy? … Rent control is the government forcing home owners to subsidize rent at below market rates. Actually this is a ‘government taking without just compensation’ forbidden by the Constitution.”

Many jumped in to defend rent control and vilify “greedy” landlords.

Eric Brooks challenged just about every comment that was sympathetic to landlords. He took issue with the idea that rent control is a form of subsidized housing.

“My landlord (like most landlords) doesn't subsidize shit. They buy as much property as they can, pay others a pittance to maintain it, and charge myself and my fellow tenants vastly exorbitant rents so that they can sit on their asses, go on continuous vacations, play golf, and most importantly flip both their real estate and financial investments for even higher profits, so that they can become even wealthier and buy more property with which to rob the rest of blind through rent and speculation.”

People also chimed in with their own personal experiences as a way to shed light on the issue. John Smith wrote:

“Speaking for myself I am in a rent controlled 1 bedroom apartment in an old Victorian and it costs $1600 a month which is huge portion of my income. In my neighborhood the current Craigslist price of a 1 bedroom is at least $300 more than that. If I didn't have rent control I would have had to move out of San Francisco long ago.”

MC Under, a landlord, shared in great detail the finances and saga of a family-owned rental property. “We're losing about $20,000 per year.”

There was plenty of vitriol aimed at me personally for writing about this subject at all, prompting longtime local political consultant Jim Ross to post on Twitter: “@scottjames You are a brave man or a glutton for punishment.”

You see, in San Francisco, rent control is the considered the third rail — no one is supposed to go near the subject, or else they risk harm.

But if the comments are any indication, many people are itching to talk about this. And if my column has provided all sides a platform to do begin doing that, then it has done its job.

Why Your Newsletter Went Missing

Updated Feb. 16, 2011, 1:15 p.m.

News junkies, are you missing your morning Bay Citizen fix?

The daily email newsletter sent by The Bay Citizen to more than 10,000 subscribers has been blocked by the news organization’s email service, after one reader filed a spam complaint over a Valentine’s Day fundraising pitch.

Richard A. Knee, a freelance writer in San Francisco, objected to the annual email solicitation sent to “our biggest news lovers” offering a Valentine’s Day discount of 30 percent on an annual membership. The offer was sent by Rose Roll, The Bay Citizen’s vice president of membership, to people who had opted to receive the daily Morning Briefing newsletter, which summarizes the top stories on baycitizen.org.

“I find the Bay Citizen's daily news updates useful but not so with fund requests or ad/promo messages,” Knee said Wednesday. “I believe I relayed these sentiments to The Bay Citizen several weeks ago.”

So when Knee received the annual “love letter” on Valentine’s Day, offering a Bay Citizen annual membership for $35 instead of the usual $50, he filed complaints to The Bay Citizen’s email provider, Atlanta-based MailChimp, and to the Federal Trade Commission’s anti-spam database, spam@uce.gov. The FTC’s spam database was created to allow people to report “false or misleading” emails “involving pyramid schemes, money-making chain letters, credit card scams, credit repair scams, bogus weight-loss plans, fraudulent business opportunities, and other scams that were promoted via email.”

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A Note to Our Readers

Access to The Bay Citizen’s website was interrupted briefly Friday when the computer server that manages its incoming traffic forgot its name for reasons we’re still trying to sort out.

Anyway, in just a few minutes our technical gurus were able to remind the server of its true identity and our services were restored.

But then a bunch of people tried to visit baycitizen.org all at once to see what all the hoopla was about, resulting in a traffic jam that slowed response time to a pace that would be familiar to people who drive on Highway 101 at rush hour. The sudden popularity of the baycitizen.org site traveled through the Internet toward our hosting servers like a pig moving through an anaconda, and the “task server” that handles things like our user accounts and content management systems choked, which certainly didn’t help. As a result, you might have been able to visit baycitizen.org to read articles, but not to post comments. On our side of your computer screen, our ability to post new stories to our site was erratic for several hours.

The offending server has now received a software transfusion, and all is better now. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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The Making of an American Hero

We live in a media-saturated world where celebrity is all too often manufactured by armies of publicists who wage cynical, manipulative and expensive battles to grab the spotlight for their clients.

This week’s rise of Menlo Park’s Carl Clark from obscurity to American war hero is not one of those stories.

The remarkable scene this week of the 95-year-old World War II veteran receiving a combat medal 66 years late received worldwide media attention, including from the CBS "Evening News" and ABC’s "World News Tonight." Diane Sawyer called Clark’s heroic deed “an incredible act of bravery.”

It’s possible that Clark will be the last living WWII veteran to receive a combat medal. A look at some of the complex feelings and issues raised by this week’s events is the subject of my latest column. 

Because my reporting played a role in the awarding of the medal, it’s worth explaining how this all unfolded. If not for a few twists of fate, Clark’s heroics would have remained unrecognized.

Clark risked his life to save his ship, the U.S.S. Aaron Ward, and hundreds of lives during a kamikaze attack in the Battle of Okinawa, but his actions were ignored because he’s black — a common practice in the deeply segregated and institutionally racist Navy of the time. He wasn’t even mentioned in the battle report.

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Strict Definition of 'Service Animal' a Likely Bone of Contention in Dog Wars

Twenty little dogs dressed in festive outfits for holiday photos scurried around The Animal House pet shop in San Francisco's Lower Haight last week during a fundraiser for Wonder Dog, an animal rescue service.

Skillet, a wiry-haired mutt with bug eyes, seemed especially excited, although not about wearing a yarmulke — it stayed on for about three seconds.

Such scenes of puppy love are typical here, a city named for St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. But as the city’s dog population has increased in recent years, there are now indications of a looming pushback that could soon put canines on a tighter leash. A look at the impending clashes over where dogs can play and live, and even how they are cared for, is the subject of my latest column.

One issue that’s sure to play a role in these debates is the definition of a “service animal.”

While dogs are not allowed in food establishments, California law makes an exception for service animals — pets that are assisting people who are disabled. And in a city where housing is scarce and it’s difficult to find an apartment that allows for pets, tenants can sometimes force landlords to make an exception for a dog if it’s a service animal.

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Occupying at a Slower Pace in Big Sur

After a hard 41 days of occupying San Francisco, Arthur Cascio moved south for a break and warmer weather. He ended up among the towering redwoods that dominate Big Sur’s jagged coast, professing the movement’s tenets in front of his ‘84 Dodge pickup to anyone who would listen.

“I figure since I’ve been occupying, I might as well keep on doing it out here,” Cascio, 44, said.

The open space and clean air were a welcome change for Cascio after the squalor of the camp at Justin Herman Plaza, where homeless and mentally ill people have congregated.

“They don’t know how to interact with people,” Cascio said. “Urinating in the corner is normal for them.”

Cascio, originally from Mt. Shasta, Calif., is occupying at a slower pace now. He doesn’t have to worry about being removed by riot police from his folding chair by the side of Highway 1 (he hasn’t seen the sheriff since arriving). And he can take time to discuss the movement’s ideas with locals. Last Saturday, he said, half a dozen protesters occupied a space down the road from the town's lone post office.

“There was a family with two children there,” Cascio said. “They’re about unfair distribution of wealth because it prevents his kids from getting a good education.”

Big Sur is just one stop for Cascio as he travels down the coast to escape winter’s chill. Along the way, he is pondering Occupy Wall Street’s message and how best to express it.

“I don’t got solutions, but I got the problems nailed down,” he said.

Reporting on a Church Took a Deadly Turn

Much of my childhood was spent in church. I was raised in Massachusetts and we were devoted members of a Congregational church that dated back to 1712. The building was so puritan in its design that there was no back entrance - the doors to the sanctuary were on either side of the pulpit, so you faced the entire congregation as you entered.

No sneaking in late. That’s accountability.

Still, it was a fairly liberal church in most of its views, part of the United Church of Christ that in 2004 would gain international attention by trying to buy network TV time with an advertisement that said, “Jesus Didn’t Turn People Away. Neither Do We.” The spot included the image of a same-sex couple. CBS refused to air the commercial.

Of course as a child you don’t know if you’re attending a liberal or conservative church. It’s just church.

I would learn as I grew up that not all churches are alike, and many interpreted the Bible in a way that was completely foreign to me – promoting exclusion, intolerance, and even hate. Some, like the Westboro Baptist Church, have made hate their central tenet.

So as I reported and wrote my column this week about San Francisco’s Ikon Christian Community church, my radar was up. What type of Christians were these?

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Berkeley Wealth Gap Not Caused by Students

A number of readers contacted me over the weekend to criticize our story, "Bay Area's Biggest Wealth Gap Is in Berkeley."

These readers argued that the gap between rich and poor is widest in Berkeley primarily because the city is home to large numbers of students, who, in the words of one reader, are "only temporarily poor."

But the inequality, revealed in recently released data from the Census Bureau, is not linked to Berkeley's large student population, the figures show.

For one thing, in creating its measure of inequality, the Gini Index, the Census Bureau specifically excluded all group-housing "households," meaning that the income of every Cal student living in a dormitory, fraternity or student-owned cooperative house did not affect Berkeley's ranking.

For another — and this is what made me think that the story was worth writing — the census figures showed that Berkeley has a much bigger wealth gap than other, similarly sized college towns with large public universities.

The Gini Index, measures, on a scale from 0 to 1, the extent to which an area’s wealth is concentrated within a small percentage of the population. A jurisdiction where one household controls all the wealth would be given a score of 1 on the index — named for Corrado Gini, an Italian statistician — while an area where income distribution is perfectly even would be scored at zero.

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