City Hall Digest: Officials Cry Gerrymandering, City Suffers Tax Revenue Losses, and the Housing Element Looms

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.

Local Elected Officials Call Recent Redistricting “Gerrymandering,” Questioning Election Results—And It’s a Cheap Trick

Echoing Republicans on the national stage, District Five Supervisor Dean Preston published a lengthy thread on social media in which he blamed “gerrymandering by conservative operatives” for Supervisor-Elect Joel Engardio’s recent win in districts four and six. But an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle points out why these claims are bogus at best and irresponsible at worst. 

Gerrymandering is the deliberate manipulation of district boundaries for political gain, and it’s bad. But redistricting is a nonpartisan civic process that happens every 10 years based on the census to rebalance the districts and account for population changes. San Francisco went through redistricting this year—not gerrymandering. The process was led by an independent task force who completed their jobs despite Preston’s call to oust three of the members when he was unhappy with the map they drew. If anyone is promoting interference with district lines, it’s Preston.

Plus, claims that the redistricting efforts were in bad faith fall flat when Supervisor Connie Chan's own legislative aide was seen tampering with the district maps.

Perhaps more importantly, though, the narrative that districts four and six were gerrymandered  ignores the more salient facts of both campaigns. Engardio’s voting record more closely matched those of the majority of residents in his district. And Supervisor Dorsey’s district experienced more population growth than any other district within the past decade. This is a direct result of so many supervisors’ anti-housing positions (including Preston’s). The Sunset, for example, has seen such slow housing growth that the redistricting task force had to move 8 percent more residents into its boundaries to make its population equal to that of other districts. Mar’s supporters argued that Engardio had just moved to the Sunset when in fact, the district lines were redrawn around his home as a result of lopsided population growth.

Borrowing language that sounds a lot like “stop the steal” in order to distract from the fact that voters are undeniably requesting solutions to their most pressing problems is disappointing behavior from our elected officials, who should be listening to voters instead of gaslighting them.

San Francisco’s Housing Crisis, Explained

San Francisco’s seeming inability to build new housing is a result of a complex web of factors. Soon, many of them will become illuminated as the board of supervisors and the San Francisco Planning Commission work to complete the Housing Element, or the city’s plan to build new housing for the next eight years. If this plan is not accepted by the state, the city could lose local control over housing production.

Recently, the Board of Supervisors held a hearing to check the progress on completion of the Housing Element. Some members of the board of supervisors, including Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Dean Preston, blamed the State of California for not giving the city enough money to accomplish this. The discourse is a microcosm of the warring ideologies around housing in San Francisco, so we took a closer look on our blog:

We’ll continue to update you as news around the Housing Element breaks in the coming months.

A Study on the Tenderloin Linkage Center was Conducted Using Dubious Methods. Did City Officials Think Residents Wouldn’t Notice?

A recent report on the state of the Tenderloin and the efficacy of the Tenderloin Center by a contractor for the Department of Public Health showed that the center’s efforts have been successful—but the study’s results and methods are questionable. The report specifically seems to contradict everything that residents experience: people in the Tenderloin and Mid-Market areas suffering inexcusably little to no visible change in drug usage and dealing. And the price tag is raising eyebrows. The Department of Public Health paid $500,000 for the policy research firm RTI to complete the report.

The report found that the presence of the center resulted in less discarded drug paraphernalia and overall improved street conditions. How RTI came to those conclusions is pretty wild, though. The data on drug problems in the area surrounding the center was collected by two people who walked each block of the Tenderloin just once in 2018, 2019, and 2022 each.

Additionally, the data points in RTI’s final presentation are all from publicly available data dashboards on the city’s website. Given how expensive this report was—the lead researcher was paid an average rate of $334 an hour—taxpayers should be asking questions.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman criticized DPH for this, calling the study “a very expensive advertisement for safer consumption facilities.” 

Work from Home Policies Lead to Loss in City Tax Revenue

San Francisco’s tax revenue has been acutely affected by permanent work from home policies instituted by many of its biggest employers in the wake of the pandemic. Just how acutely was recently revealed in a presentation to the board of supervisors by the city controller’s office, which showed that the city faces a $1 billion loss in projected tax revenues over the next six years, forecast to increase to $200 million lost annually. 

Then there’s also the problem of companies increasingly selling off their office space, leaving hundreds of thousands of square feet vacant in downtown. This means the city also pulls in less from office sector property taxes, which constitutes $360 million, or 18 percent, of all property taxes collected by the city.

This is a serious problem for the future of the city, as critical city programs like public safety and transportation rely on that tax money to function. Part of the solution? Working to restore downtown as an attractive place for international tourists and conventions. That means the city must be willing to come up with actual solutions to address street conditions in the area. Without those policy efforts, San Francisco faces severe financial shortfalls and as a result, a less prosperous city.

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City Hall Digest: Killer Robots, More Scandal at DPH, and a Plan to Build Housing on Vacant Lots

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The Board of Supervisors Should Work Together to Produce a Plan to Build Housing—Before It’s Too Late