By Alison Soltau
San Francisco Examiner
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Public-housing residents are The City's most disenfranchised population yet ironically have the most to win or lose out of San Francisco's mayoral race.
So just what are the candidates putting on the table?
As a former police chief, candidate Tony Ribera said he had a lot of experience in assessing the needs of people in public housing.
He said a high priority would be to press the federal government to pump up the cash to overhaul troubled, World War II-dated housing complexes such as Sunnydale and Potrero Terrace, just as the government has laid out cash to rebuild notorious developments such as Chicago's Cabrini Green. Ribera also wanted to push for an increase in the number of Section 8 vouchers.
With a recently opened campaign office on Third Street in the Bayview District and an additional office at Eddy and Fillmore streets near the Plaza East development, Supervisor Gavin Newsom is conducting a grassroots campaign within the public-housing community, said his adviser, John Shanley.
Shanley said that the big issue is jobs and that Newsom is concerned about the slow pace of the Transbay Terminal development and the Hetch Hetchy upgrade, projects that he believes would provide apprenticeships for the community.
"That is what people in housing want," Shanley said. "They are not looking for a handout...but a decent-wage job."
The concerns of people in public housing are no different from those of other city residents, according to Hunter Cutting, spokesman for Supervisor Tom Ammiano.
People in public housing had "warmly greeted" the candidate's policy of requesting a $20 million set-aside to allow for universal kindergarten, Cutting said.
"They are upset about the crisis we have in our schools, they would like to move up into independent housing," Cutting said. "Housing is just outrageously priced in this town. And they are looking for jobs, but jobs are difficult to come by."
History will show that Supervisor Matt Gonzalez has long championed the rights of people in public housing, said his campaign manager, Enrique Pearce.
Gonzalez was one of the first public officials to bring to The City's attention the problems inherent in former Housing Authority boss Ronnie Davis' administration, Pearce said.
Davis later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor misappropriation of money, an offense committed while he was chief financial officer of the Cleveland housing authority.
City treasurer Susan Leal, in balancing the public purse, has visited many public-housing developments and has a keen sense of the issues, said her communications director, Tony Winnicker.
He said that Leal's two priorities are reviving the economy to create more jobs and making The City's public schools the best in the state. He added that Leal regards public-housing residents as keen supporters of strong public schools for their children.
"She wants to attract business and investment," he said. "Small business accounts for about 60 percent of the jobs in this city.
Attorney Angela Alioto said the San Francisco Housing Authority is "in complete disarray" and pointed to the large number of vacant units in existing housing developments.
"Apartments are boarded up when people don't have a place to sleep," she said. "I would make them a top priority and renovate them."
Alioto said that Sunnydale, in particular, had the potential to be overhauled and could be made "beautiful." "Somebody needs to go in there and care," she said.
She critized the Housing Authority's partnerships with the private sector to create new housing, a sore point for former residents of Valencia Gardens and residents of another site proposed for redevelopment, Hunters View.
Alioto said the Housing Authority had turned the Valencia development into a nightmare, unnecessarily. She said that she would appoint a "disciplinarian woman" as the next chief of San Francisco police and that her appointee would discuss with community members their allegations of police harassment in the Bayview District.