Another Week, Another San Francisco Nonprofit Scandal
City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right and duty.
San Francisco Apparently Unaware That Background Checks Exist
Last week the San Francisco Chronicle published an investigation into Patricia Doyle, the head of the Providence Foundation, the nonprofit San Francisco is accusing of wage theft and other labor violations. Their findings? It turns out Doyle ran another San Francisco nonprofit years ago that also got into trouble over fiscal mismanagement. It’s the grift that keeps on giving.
So what happened? Patricia Doyle has been the executive director of the Providence Foundation since 2019—San Francisco paid the nonprofit around $9 million during the 2022-2023 fiscal year to operate homeless shelters in the city. Earlier this year, city officials opened an investigation of the non-profit for labor violations after employees complained to the city. That’s after the nonprofit was already under scrutiny for a litany of problems like failure to maintain compliance with state and federal contracting requirements, overspending city contracts, and letting beds at the family shelter the Providence Foundation operates sit empty.
But it turns out that this isn’t even the first time Doyle has claimed taxpayer dollars in San Francisco and mismanaged the money. The Chronicle’s article found that from 2002 to 2007, Patricia Doyle led the Inter-City Family Support and Resource Network. In 2003, the nonprofit started a contract with the city’s Human Services Agency to operate a family resource center in Bayview-Hunters Point, collecting around $1 million each year.
Financial problems at the nonprofit popped up quickly, including burning through a year’s worth of funding in six months, failing to pay expenses for the family resource center they operated, and billing the city for credit card expenses without documentation. San Francisco declined to renew the Inter-City Family Support and Resource Network’s contract with the city in 2007, citing the nonprofit’s fiscal mismanagement.
So how does the head of one failed nonprofit, that San Francisco had already investigated and declined to work with again, start collecting taxpayer dollars again for a separate nonprofit years later?
It’s an incredible failure by city officials to perform even the most basic due diligence before handing out a contract. San Francisco spends over $1 billion annually on contracts with nonprofit service providers, so making sure contractors are trustworthy stewards of public funds should be one of the more important aspects of awarding a contract.
If it seems like we’re covering a new nonprofit scandal in every City Hall Digest—well yeah, accurate. For too long, accountability for city contractors in San Francisco has been seemingly nonexistent. Fortunately, District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani just passed legislation requiring nonprofits that contract with the city to use standard performance metrics, and allows San Francisco to monitor their services and activities.
Unfortunately, Stefani’s bill has not gone into effect yet, and it will take longer for the city to operationalize it. Until then, San Francisco has to find a way to thoroughly investigate the individual leaders of the nonprofits it contracts with. At the very least, run a quick Google search before handing out contracts worth millions.
Deadly West Portal Crash Highlight’s City’s Vision Zero Failure
Earlier this month, a 78-year-old woman speeding in an SUV slammed into a bus stop in West Portal, killing a family of four that was waiting for the bus. The crash shocked the community, and it’s a reminder that while San Francisco may have adopted Vision Zero policies in an attempt to eliminate traffic deaths, it’s nowhere near achieving that goal.
City officials announced Vision Zero in 2014, vowing to reduce and eventually eliminate all traffic fatalities in the city by upgrading street infrastructure, education, and enforcement. By almost every measure, it’s been a failure. Over the last decade, 299 people have been killed by cars and trucks on San Francisco streets, and San Francisco had its worst year of traffic deaths in over 15 years in 2022.
So what went wrong? Vision Zero policies are effective in other cities around the world—Jersey City and New York City have effectively reduced traffic deaths after implementing Vision Zero, and global cities like Gothenburg, Sweden and Oslo, Norway have seen years with zero pedestrian fatalities. Vision Zero does work.
Per usual, in San Francisco the problem lies in the execution. The city loves to announce cutting edge policies, then implement them ineffectually or half-heartedly. Successfully implementing Vision Zero means trade offs between road users—decreased speed and car usage for drivers, increased safety for pedestrians. But so far, city officials have been unwilling to expend political capital to effectively protect vulnerable road users. Instead, San Francisco uses half-measures, trying to upset the fewest number of people, ultimately satisfying no one.
For example, Vision Zero recommends separating vulnerable road users (think pedestrians, bicyclists, wheelchair users) from larger vehicles like cars and trucks with hardened infrastructure like bollards. San Francisco doesn’t really do that. Instead, San Francisco’s Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) installs flimsy plastic safe-hit posts on streets to protect people. Fun fact: they’re called safe-hit posts because they don’t damage cars when they’re run over. A post that can be “safely” run over doesn’t really provide an adequate amount of protection for pedestrians.
Likewise, reducing traffic fatalities requires enforcing the rules of the road, and accountability for dangerous drivers. But police in San Francisco essentially stopped pulling people over for traffic violations at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and never really started enforcing traffic laws again. Today, SFPD stops for traffic violations are 75 percent lower than they were pre-pandemic, while traffic deaths remain steady.
But there is hope on the horizon. Last week, Mayor London Breed announced a set of new traffic safety policies she wants SFMTA to enact. Mayor Breed wants increased enforcement for dangerous drivers, expanding the ban on right turns during red traffic lights to more intersections throughout the city, and potentially making Haight Street car-free.
These would be welcome changes, and we hope the SFMTA and city officials get serious about public safety. Unfortunately, any changes in the city will come too late to save the West Portal family, and the hundreds of other people that died on San Francisco streets over the past decade.
Housing Policy by Neighborhood Will Not Work
Oh Aaron Peskin, is there anything you won’t do to preserve the waterfront views you and your neighbors enjoy from your homes on Telegraph Hill? Apparently not, as last week the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to override Mayor London Breed’s veto of District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s anti-housing legislation.
That might sound convoluted, but it’s actually pretty simple. Last year, in a surprising act of unity, Supervisor Peskin and Mayor Breed worked together to pass legislation that would allow taller buildings in previously height-restricted neighborhoods around downtown. This was meant to stimulate downtown’s recovery by allowing more people to live near San Francisco’s economic hub, and the bill passed unanimously.
But then, developers began proposing projects. Some of those projects were towers. Towers smack dab in the middle of Supervisor Peskin’s view of the water (Did Supervisor Peskin forget where he lived when he first drafted his legislation with Mayor Breed? Unclear.)
So Supervisor Peskin drafted new legislation to once again limit the height and scale of new developments in Jackson Square and the northern waterfront—neighborhoods in his district. The Board of Supervisors passed that legislation 8-3, with Supervisors Matt Dorsey, Joel Engardio, and Myrna Melgar voting against it. Mayor Breed used her veto power for just the sixth time since she’s been in office to overturn Supervisor Peskin’s bill, but last week, the Board of Supervisors overruled her veto, voting 8-3 again to keep Supervisor Peskin’s height restrictions for new developments in place.
It’s a disappointing outcome, especially since we’re so far behind on our housing goals. San Francisco needs to build 82,000 homes by 2031—the city built just 1,524 homes in 2023. Limiting the number of new homes we can build with height restrictions makes it harder for San Francisco to meet its housing needs for residents and newcomers, and drives up the cost of all housing by artificially constraining the supply of housing.
Supervisor Peskin talks a lot about “responsible planning” and being “sensitive to neighborhood context,” but his track record shows that he has consistently worked throughout his career to limit the amount of new housing in San Francisco. If we’re ever going to build a city with abundant, affordable housing, Supervisor Peskin and other anti-housing factions in San Francisco need to change.
TODAY I LEARNED
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TODAY I LEARNED •
TIL what a sunshine law is. Government employees are public employees—public tax dollars pay their salaries, so public employee records and messages are public information. “Sunshine Laws” are designed to give the public open and easy access to government meetings, records, and communications between government employees. All elected officials and public officials are subject to sunshine laws, and any reporter or member of the public can request these records.
San Francisco adopted its current Sunshine Ordinance in 1999, and they’re still some of the strongest sunshine laws in the country—to the point where it can be difficult for city employees to do their jobs because they’re afraid to put things in writing.