View the San Francisco for Thursday, October 24, 2024
The West Portal neighborhood lies within District 7, where challenger Matt Boschetto is looking to unseat incumbent Supervisor Myrna Melgar.Her top challenger, small-business owner Matt Boschetto, agreed with the sentiment, though he had an issue with the phrasing.
He framed the race around another question: Are they pro-change or anti-change? “Of course, she’s gonna bring it back to herself,” Boschetto , who seldom minces words when talking about his opposition, told The Examiner. “It’s really not all about you, Myrna, it’s about the edifice that you claim that you’re from.”, the battle to represent a large chunk of San Francisco’s west side remains up for grabs. The race pits the upstart Boschetto, armed with a fundraising advantage and endorsements from The City’s ascendant moderate groups against Melgar, a narrow victor in 2020 who has the backing of politicians from across San Francisco’s ideological spectrum. The district is generally considered one of the most conservative in San Francisco, encompassing wealthy enclaves such as St. Francis Wood, Forest Hill and Westwood Park that are filled with expensive single-family homes. Redistricting in 2022 brought the Inner Sunset, a dense neighborhood where streets are largely lined with multifamily homes, into District 7. Melgar said her district has always been more diverse than people give it credit for. Over the last 30 years, she said, the district has transformed from a mostly upper-middle-class white population to a melting pot of different income levels, age groups and ethnicities. A Salvadoran immigrant, Melgar said that range of attitudes is why she was able to win the first time in 2020 — albeit narrowly — and why she is confident she can do it again on Nov. 5. “I would just caution folks who look at this as a conservative district to actually look at how the demographics have changed,” Melgar said.Supervisor, Myrna Melgar, District 7, during a Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall in San Francisco on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. At the same time, Melgar acknowledged that winning will not be easy, although she’s bullish on her chances. She admitted her belief wavered earlier this year, whenMelgar said that surprised her. She said both organizations told her privately they did not plan to endorse anyone in the race because they viewed her as a “strong incumbent.” But, a few months later, she said, they both endorsed Boschetto, and Melgar said that forced her to take him more seriously. GrowSF’s political-action committee has spent more than $50,000 to elect Boschetto, according to campaign-finance data. Steven Bacio, co-founder of GrowSF, denied that anyone from the organization ever told Melgar they were not going to endorse anyone in District 7. He told The Examiner in a text that Boschetto is the “best candidate for safety, small business and housing. Pure and simple.” Kanishka Cheng, co-founder of TogetherSF Action, would not say whether she or anyone from the organization originally told Melgar they would abstain from endorsements. But she said they “heard loud and clear from our community that voters in District 7 want change, so not endorsing wasn’t an option” — and Boschetto aligns with the group’s values. Boschetto, who comes from a wealthy family, has raised more money than Meglar during the campaign. He had raised nearly $394,000 as of Wednesday, while Melgar had raised just over $326,000. Boschetto defiantly maintained he had plenty of legitimacy in the race even before getting TogetherSF Action and GrowSF’s blessing.“I was light years ahead of Myrna on fundraising by the time I got those endorsements,” he said. “I worked hard for these people to come to me, not the other way around.” Boschetto, who grew up and currently lives in Miraloma Park, co-owns a flower delivery business with his wife on Burke Avenue. He has said he was not politically active prior to the campaign — he did not even vote prior to 2020, a fact his competitors have frequently highlighted. He admitted that was a mistake. Often touting his bonafides as a fifth-generation San Franciscan and District 7 resident, Boschetto said lifelong friends, business owners and city officials encouraged him to become politically involved. Their common message: Melgar does not represent us. “She’s not this person who wants to get down and dirty and work with all the neighborhood groups and do all this, right?” he said. “She comes in, I think, with an agenda, and she has that agenda, and she’s very good at executing it. She’s very good at working at City Hall. But whether that’s actually a focused representation of her district, I think is very questionable.”, Boschetto has made it a central part of his messaging that he’s an outsider who can shake up a stale and corrupt City Hall run by lifelong bureaucrats such as Melgar. Melgar retorts that inexperience is a major pain point for Boschetto and the distant third-place challenger — Stephen Martin-Pinto, a firefighter, Marine veteran and former Republican whose presence in the ranked-choice race could swing the results. “ don’t really understand the issues,” Melgar said. “They have opinions about what they want to see done, but not really a how.” She said that has been clear during the whopping seven supervisorial debates in recent months, one of which Melgar missed. The last event, held in Forest Hill, was Deidre Von Rock, a lawyer and president of the West Portal Merchants Association, is among those fed up with what she described as Melgar’s inaction. She said her organization is a nonprofit that does not endorse candidates — but she also made clear her base is fully behind Boschetto. “Our thought is that Melgar does what she wants without asking or really wanting community input,” Von Rock said, pointing to Melgar’s ongoing effort to mitigate traffic in West Portal after aRed lanes at the West Portal station pictured on Oct. 12, 2024 in San Francisco. “It is clear, and it has been from the beginning, that what she was doing was not related to safety, but rather to electability — sheerly political,” she said. “That goes in line with the fact her values are very different from the majority of our district’s.” Martha Ehrenfield, president of Inner Sunset Park Neighbors, said Melgar and her aides have always been responsive to her community. She said the organization’s members were relieved when they were redistricted into Melgar’s domain because she said they didn’t feel well-represented inWhile Melgar trails Boschetto in fundraising, she has amassed a bevy of endorsements. She’s backed by the local Democratic Party, more than half the Board of Supervisors, former Mayor Art Agnos, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and a host of other top local Democrats and neighborhood organizations and labor groups. Melgar pointed to endorsements from moderate politicians such as Mayor London Breed and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins as indications of her viability on both sides of The City’s Democratic divide that show she is not a straight-line progressive. Boschetto’s list of endorsements is much shorter, but does include other prominent moderate-leaning organizations such as the Chinese Democratic Club, the Ed Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club and Connect SF. He’s also backed by former San Francisco Supervisor and current state treasurer Fiona Ma, as well as both the police and firefighters’ unions. Robin Pam is president of the Westside Democratic Club, which endorsed voting Melgar as its first choice and Boschetto second. Pam said Boschetto has primarily campaigned on a pro-public-safety platform, citing the need to shore up responses to crime and drug use in the neighborhood, while Melgar has spoken about a much broader set of issues. “Within our club, it was clear that Myrna was the No. 1 choice, and I think the people that wanted to endorse her were the people that cared most about housing and transportation,” Pam said. “They appreciated safety, but also really wanted to prioritize her positive vision for change.” But Boschetto made it clear that other matters remain among his priorities, including what he called his “favorite topic” — housing. The issue has been top of mind for many west-side voters, in light of several ongoing housing projects at the Balboa Reservoir and Stonestown, and amid a tug-of-war between neighborhood preservationists and advocates for housing developments in a part of The City where it’s been historically tough to get such projects approved. Boschetto ardently pushed back against anyone who labels him a supporter of the NIMBY — “not in my backyard” — position. He called himself a “very pro-housing person.” But, he said, he thinks San Francisco needs to be pragmatic about where that housing goes, and most of the District 7 constituents agree. “I don’t think upzoning is the effective way to actually produce housing in The City,” he said. “I think being more targeted, putting more risk onto certain parcels that are big enough to pencil out, that could really move the needle on the housing stock question is a better way to go about it.”of a state-mandated plan to add more than 82,000 homes by 2031. She has earned the support of San Francisco YIMBY — short for “yes, in my backyard” — an organization advocating for housing development. It remains to be seen where the electorate’s attitudes stand and which issues will influence voters’ decisions the most — whether it be housing, public safety, or transit, including Melgar’s support and Boschetto’s opposition of Prop. K, a hotly contested measure which would permanently close a section of Great Highway to cars.Melgar said her door-knocking over the last six months has shown that most of the electorate remains behind her. Meanwhile, Boschetto said, he believes he has a “massively good shot to win.”Carmen Marquez speaking along with Faith in Action Bay Area outside of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing at 440 Turk St. on Oct. 1, 2024. A Venezuelan immigrant who claims she contracted meningitis at a San Francisco homeless shelter — an infection that she said led to the amputation of nearly all of her fingers and part of her leg — says she is still without city-provided housing more than a month after being discharged from a six-month hospital stay during which she underwent multiple surgeries. Representatives from the nonprofit advocating for Carmen Marquez — who claimed she contracted meningococcal meningitis after drinking spoiled milk at the Buena Vista Horace Mann shelter in March — will meet with Mayor London Breed’s office Thursday to get more clarity on how The City is allocating resources for homeless families. Advocates say Marquez’ situation is emblematic of an overlooked group within The City’s unhoused population: immigrant families, aware of San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary city, who’ve made the journey from South America. They say many of these families have found themselves caught within the complexities of The City’s housing- and shelter-assignment systems, with even more potentially uncounted in San Francisco’s Representatives from Faith in Action Bay Area’s Recently Arrived Families Committee said they hope to discuss Marquez’ case Thursday with the Mayor’s Office and homelessness officials as part of a wider conversation about what The City is doing to support similar families. Marquez said she is staying with a former client whose house she used to clean and has yet to hear from The City about when she will receive permanent housing. “The illness took away the movement from my body,” Marquez said through a translator. “It damaged my limbs, my hands, my feet. My left foot burned from underneath. I developed two holes in my buttocks.” The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing told The Examiner it could not “substantiate the claim that her infection developed because of conditions at a shelter ” and that “we have not had reports of an outbreak at any of our city funded shelters.” A spokesperson for Mayor London Breed’s office said they could not confirm the subject of Thursday’s meeting, and an HSH spokesperson said there was no agenda yet. In regards to Marquez, the former spokesperson said the department would “continue to work with the family on a long-term placement.” “HSH works closely with the social workers who manage discharge from hospitals and skilled nursing facilities to identify the best possible placement for homeless patients upon discharge,” the spokesperson for HSH told The Examiner in a statement. “The family, social workers and HSH placement team reviewed all possible shelter and/or housing placements and worked with the family to determine which placement options were available prior to hospital discharge.”Marquez said her family arrived in San Francisco in October 2023 after a brief stint in Tucson, Ariz. Her 21-year-old daughter didn’t make the trip from Venezuela, she said, and her husband died of COVID-19 in 2021. She said they learned of the shelter at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School, a Spanish-immersion at which San Francisco Unified School District students and families can stay overnight, through a member of their Mission church congregation. Marquez and her daughter stayed there from December to March, at which point she was admitted to the hospital. She said she spent six days in a coma and was intubated for another 16, while her daughter watched on helplessly. Ultimately, Marquez had nine of her fingers and part of a leg amputated. She said she has lost a lot of mobility, and her fingers remain sensitive where the bone is now close to the skin. Marquez said she can no longer perform the jobs she did before her surgery, when she cleaned homes, cooked, and handed out flyers for a construction company.“San Francisco doesn’t have a comprehensive plan to support newcomer migrant families at all, and they’re letting the homeless emergency-response system be the catch-all system, and it is not resourced on its own to be this catch-all system,” said Hope Kamer, a spokesperson for Compass Family Services, a local family-housing nonprofit. “It also isn’t connected to the other social services units that it would need to be connected to effectively meet the comprehensive needs of this population.” San Francisco recorded a 94% increase in family homelessness over the last two years as part of the Point-in-Time Count, its federally mandated survey of the local unhoused population on a specific night. The City recorded 437 unhoused families in 2024. There are more than 100 additional families on the waiting list for housing. “Traditionally, the Point-in-Time Count is not reflective of how many homeless families there are,” Kamer said. “It’s catching only families on that single night who are falling into the stricter definition of homelessness.”tallies the number of families the department has verified as homeless. Through July and August — the first two months of fiscal year 2025 — the department had counted 340 homeless families in The City. Other San Francisco metrics report staggeringly different numbers. A San Francisco Unified School District report published last year, for instance, recorded more than “That is way too many people and families who are experiencing homelessness,” said Eleana Binder, the policy manager for the GLIDE Foundation’s Center for Social Justice. “If a family is going to experience homelessness, ideally, it’s extremely brief, and they’re able to get sheltered, yes — but also get housing as quickly as possible. But there are just a lot of challenges with that right now.” San Francisco’s coordinated-entry system — which provides the data underpinning the HSH dashboard — includes a priority assessment and then a score for families. The score, graded on a 160-point scale, is used to determine what level of need they have for housing or services. Kamer said one of those factors is how long a family has been homeless in the U.S., while substance and sexual abuse and mental health are also considered. Rocio Blas, Alvaro Castillo and their 6-year-old daughter scored a 93 on their August assessment. They said they were told they needed a higher score in order to qualify, and they could reapply in three months.“We are looking to be in a more permanent place, somewhere that has what my daughter needs to develop better,” Blas said through a translator recently while watching her daughter play at a park near the Oasis Inn, a motel converted into a shelter. “I know it will help her a lot, both emotionally and mentally.” Blas said she and her family immigrated from Peru, where she suffered a severe injury to her heel and ankle while crossing the border and is still struggling with chronic pain and swelling despite surgery. She said they spent a weekend at the same shelter as Marquez and her daughter after arriving in San Francisco before they were told there was no more room. There was a brief stint sleeping in a car and then in a hotel paid for by Faith in Action before Catholic Charities helped them get a space at the Oasis Inn, where they’ve been since March. She said she knows her family is luckier than others, chalking it up to her husband’s stubbornness. “It was mainly my husband’s persistence because I couldn’t walk,” Blas said. “It was persistence and desperation. Because the thought of having to sleep on the street again was very frustrating and stressful, especially with a daughter. That was very hard for us, and it made us not stop insisting.” Blas said finding housing has been challenging enough, but her husband was also laid off from his job at a supermarket without notice and her daughter — a first grader at Buena Vista Horace Mann with a fondness for pink and Cinnamoroll, the puppy character from the Sanrio “Hello Kitty” universe — has also started exhibiting some behavioral issues due to their housing challenges.“We’re also currently applying for asylum and waiting for employment authorization through the asylum application,” she said. Blas, Marquez and others who stayed at the Buena Vista Horace Mann shelter formed a group through Faith in Action Bay Area, which launched a campaign earlier this year to pressure city officials to make family homelessness a priority. Some women have used their stories to highlight the gaps in services and advocate for an increase in resources. Margarita Solito and her family of six, for instance, wereCarmen Marquez, more than a month out of the hospital after losing most of her fingers and part of her leg due to meningitis, still has yet to receive city-provided housing. Matt Alexander, the communications director and lead organizer for Faith in Action credits Solito, Marquez, Blas and the other women in their circle for driving the group’s efforts over the past year in calling for increased shelter and housing, and then campaigning to support the Safer Families plan. “We give them advice or support and technical assistance,” Alexander said. “But they’re the ones leading the effort, whatever they decided to organize on. So it’s an amazing group that’s come together.” The nonprofit has called for city officials to seek an increase in shelter and housing for the past year, with their campaigning resulting in the Safer Families plan included in The City’s most recent two-year budget. The plan wouldFaith in Action Bay Area has recently turned its attention to Marquez and her situation. The group gathered outside of the Department of Homelessness at 440 Turk St. at a rally this month to call attention to her persistent lack of housing. “There are over 746 permanent supportive housing units of which one of these categories is for people with disabilities,” said Marquez through a Faith in Action translator at the rally. “I am now facing this new physical reality, and I only need one unit of those 746.”San Francisco supervisors will vote Tuesday on a proposal aiming to revive one redevelopment plan in Bayview-Hunters Point — even as it sidelines another.: the neighborhoods around the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, as well as the vacant plots once anchored by Candlestick Park. When the project first gained approval in 2010, planners envisioned that, by now, The City would be well on its way to revitalizing both areas with a redevelopment scheme that seeks to add thousands of new homes and more than 9 million square feet of commercial and retail space.that seeped into the soil and groundwater as a result of Cold War-era Navy activities has caused many delays —but the Candlestick site faces no such problems. The developer behind both projects, FivePoint Holdings, has now put forward a revised development plan that seeks to decouple the two sites so that projects at Candlestick Point can move forward. The proposal — which would see a new round of construction begin next year — includes a revised financing schedule that pushes back a number of fast-approaching funding deadlines, allowing more time to raise money for infrastructure investments and affordable-housing projects. It would also relocate more than 2 million square feet of office space that was originally intended for the shipyard over to Candlestick.When the matter landed before the full Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, dozens of residents turned out to speak. Many called on the board to reject the amendments and push for a redevelopment agreement with more stringent accountability measures.However, many others spoke out strongly in favor of advancing the project, arguing that Bayview — a historically Black neighborhood that is home to many low-income residents — is in dire need of such an economic boost. “Our residents and community have not seen this type of economic development and infrastructure in over 100 years,” said resident Kimberly Hill-Brown, who warned that any further delay would mark a major setback for the neighborhood. “I’m 53, and my peers are afraid that they won’t live to see this project into its completion.” The two sites total roughly 700 acres. Once completed, the redevelopment plan would cover the currently vacant lots with more than 10,000 new homes. It would also bring road improvements and boost other important infrastructure like the utilities grid.When first adopted 14 years ago, the development plan envisioned building up both sites in tandem, but the shipyard’s cleanup has mired both plots in delays.Cleanup efforts at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard have been plagued since 2018 by fraud accusations against Tetra Tech EC, the company contracted by the Navy to do Since 2018, the cleanup effort has been plagued by accusations of fraud against Tetra Tech EC, the company contracted by the Navy to. The company has denied the allegations, but amid questions about the area’s safety, the Navy has set about retesting the site.Add it all together, and the original timeline for the project is now in complete disarray. “Given the amount of delays, we’re sort of restarting the clock here on Bayview-Hunters Point,” said Lila Hussain of the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure. The agency oversees major redevelopment projects for The City. Under the current plan, the Candlestick Point project is not allowed to incur debt beyond 2026, Hussain told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. The proposed amendments would push back that deadline along with several others. Other proposed changes, Hussain said, are intended to economically boost the remaining development site. For example, the proposal to transfer commercial space will be used to construct a 22-acre “R&D Innovation District” atop the footprint of Candlestick Park, the stadium that once stood at that site and served as home to the San Francisco Giants and 49ers for dozens of years.Just a small section of seating remained as demolition continued at Candlestick Park Tuesday, June 30, 2015, in San Francisco. The proposal also includes a long list of other relatively minor changes, including amendments somewhat loosening planning requirements, allowing developers to place buildings intended to house entertainment businesses or hotels more widely throughout Candlestick Point. Other amendments would increase the height limits in portions of the district from 85 feet to 180 feet. Supervisors were originally set to vote on the proposal Tuesday, but the City Attorney’s Office said a one-week delay was required to give OCII time to respond to the objections it has received over the proposed redevelopment changes. Among those who raised concerns during Tuesday’s board meeting was Nicolas Menard of the San Francisco Budget & Legislative Analyst’s Office. “I will say that the project is severely delayed,” he said. Those delays, he said, cannot solely be blamed on unforeseeable misfortune. Menard pointed out that other large-scale development projects launched around the same time — including the downtown Transbay redevelopment project and another in Mission Bay — have already completed roughly 80% of their promised housing. In contrast, the 337 affordable homes completed at the Candlestick site represent just 4% of those planned for the overall redevelopment project. A neighborhood group called Alliance for District 10 has petitioned The City to hold FivePoint to stricter benchmarks in the development process. They warn that the revised timelines will push back the completion of thousands of planned homes, meaning that many will not be finished in time to be counted towards a state-mandated housing deadline. The City is on the hook to addThe petitioners accused the developer of falling behind on community benefit payments it promised to distribute, including $28.34 million for housing and workforce development. Asked about those demands, a FivePoint spokesperson told the board the company has been conferring with representatives of a labor group, and it intends to release a payment schedule as plans for the project move forward. The company has also said that, to date, it has already invested more than $136 million in community benefits related to the project. Supervisor Shamann Walton, whose district includes both project sites, said he favors moving forward with the amended redevelopment plan. He said the Board of Supervisors can provide sufficient project oversight and ensure “a big gaping hole right in the middle of the community” is filled at the former Candlestick Park. “I am asking my colleagues to support it, so that we can ensure that infrastructure, employment, housing and vibrancy replaces the blight and the dirt that exists right in the middle of our community,” he said.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. 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