View the San Francisco for Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Cliff Yee, a lifelong resident of the Richmond district: “My family said, ‘Let’s invest over there.’ Thank goodness to my grandparents.”His grandfather, Yee See Yai, left his village in Zhongshan, China, in 1925 at the age of 15 to journey across the Pacific Ocean aboard a U.
S. naval ship in search of a better education and to “live out the American Dream,” Cliff Yee said. Yee See Yai arrived on Christmas Day, but he was detained at Angel Island for a month while border officers questioned and scrutinized his immigration paperwork, his grandson said. When the elder Yee was finally cleared to come to The City, he moved into a small apartment in Chinatown, where most of San Francisco’s growing Chinese population was confined due to an assortmentFor Yee See Yai’s family and many others, Chinatown was more than the site of their home address — it was the community where their entire lives were centered. But in the early 1960s, monthly rent for Yee See Yai and his family’s tiny one-bedroom flat off Washington Street had climbed from $85 to $250. So Yee See Yai purchased a home in a wide-open residential enclave just north of Golden Gate Park, on the opposite side of The City, called the Richmond. Back then, the neighborhood — nestled in The City’s northwestern corner and intersected by lengthy numbered streets, featured some of the cheapest single-family homes in San Francisco.More than 60 years later, the Richmond district is home to one of The City’s densest Chinese American communities, so much so that it has been nicknamed Clement Street, one of the main drags in the Inner Richmond, is lined with dim sum restaurants, boba tea shops, Cantonese deli markets and Chinese grocery stores, reminiscent of. Officials estimated that more than 5,000 people stood shoulder-to-shoulder across a four-block span of Balboa Street to take in the festivities and ring in the Year of the Snake. Attendees included Mayor Daniel Lurie,“It was surreal and humbling,” Yee told The Examiner from his home in the Richmond, the neighborhood he has lived in his entire life. “There were some ambassadors there who knew my uncle and dad when they were kids. And my kids were there too ... Here we all were, a community again.” To Yee and many Richmond advocates, the parade symbolized the growth and maturation of the neighborhood’s Chinese American body, 60 years in the making. “You got to feel the community,” said Yee, an executive at a local nonprofit and board president of the Richmond Neighborhood Center, which spearheaded the parade. “It really symbolized to The City that the Richmond is at a place where we’re organized, we’re ones that really take care of ourselves, and we’re connected and supported.”Cliff Yee and his family pose with San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan at the Richmond district Lunar New Year Parade. Chinese San Franciscans lived almost exclusively in Chinatown for their first 100 years in The City. But starting in the mid-1960s, throngs of Chinese Americans migrated into the Richmond, according to Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University.. He grew up only a few blocks from Yee’s family on 12th Avenue. Jeung’s father, a veteran, received an education through the GI Bill, giving him the training to become an attorney and the income to move out of Chinatown. Jeung said when he was young, hardly any Chinese people lived on his block. By the time he was a teenager, he said the majority of the residents were Chinese. “It was a huge shift in the ’70s and ’80s,” Jeung said. “Part of it is because it’s still in San Francisco and there was easy access to Chinatown, so it became the first ‘second Chinatown.’” In 1970, around 11% of Chinese San Franciscans lived in Chinatown. In 2023, just 1.5% of Chinese San Francisans lived in Chinatown. In 1970, 17% of residents in the Inner Richmond and 15% in the Outer Richmond identified as having Chinese ancestry, according to U.S. Census Bureau data analyzed by The Examiner. In 2023, those numbers jumped to 24% in the Inner Richmond and 33% in the Outer Richmond. Jeung characterized the Richmond as a “step-up enclave,” meaning it was a neighborhood with affordable properties where working- and middle-class families could buy their first home. It also became an ethnic network, Jeung said, meaning the more Chinese people moved into the Richmond, the more Chinese residents followed their lead. Former San Francisco Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, who represented the neighborhood from 2017 to 2021, grew up in the Richmond around the same time as Jeung. Fewer, whose father was an airplane mechanic and mother was a part-time elementary school secretary, said that back then, “you didn’t need to be a multimillionaire to buy a home.”“It remains a strong place to draw Chinese — but only for the ones who can afford it,” Jeung said. Real estate prices in the neighborhood, like everywhere in The City, have ballooned over the years. According to Redfin, thein the Inner Richmond in December was $1.8 million. The area has evolved into a trendy, quiet and convenient place for renters and homeowners to settle down just a quick walk or Muni ride from the Presidio, Golden Gate Park and some of The City’s top eateries. “It’s a much more affluent neighborhood now,” Fewer said. “I think single-family homes are being replaced many times by people who are not Chinese, just because the price is so expensive.”District 1 Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer announces she will not run for reelection at City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. But Jeung did credit that demographic shift to creating more community organization, highlighted by this year’s Lunar New Year Parade and by the recently created yearly Autumn Moon Festivals and night markets. “My parents were just surviving and working all the time,” Jeung said. “People now have more of the time and resources to organize and do more neighborhood improvement.” That has led to more nonprofits moving into buildings vacated by longtime small businesses, Jeung said, a common trend in other, which — aided by funding secured by Assemblymember Phil Ting — opened a second office on 6th Avenue in the Richmond in the late 1990s. With more local organizations like hers in the Richmond, as well as an increased Asian American presence at City Hall, CYC director Sarah Wan said the community has become significantly more “connected” over “the past 10 years.” “In the past, we’ve had to do our own advocacy,” Wan said. “But now, we have a coalition and network that comes together.” “The Richmond has developed to a point where we have our own network, our own platform, and some key anchor organizations and leaders who come together and deal with the needs of the neighborhood,” she said.“Connected networks came together,” Yee said. “We were all seeing the same thing, but maybe before it was experienced differently. But, now we’re all experiencing the same thing together.” Still, some stakeholders and residents say they are worried about the future of the Richmond. Fewer, whose family has lived there the last 50 years, is one of them.stubbornly exorbitant real-estate climate , combined with highly coveted properties in the Richmond, could drive many Chinese seniors out of the neighborhood to be replaced by non-Chinese homeowners and tenants. That, she argued, could endanger the cultural vibrancy of the area.Yee, who is co-chair of the Parent Teacher Association at Frank McCoppin Elementary School, where his kids are students, admitted anecdotally he has seen fewer Chinese kids in each new kindergarten class for the last three years.Fewer said she hopes that not only will longtime Chinese families be able to stay in the neighborhood, but that the increase in community organizing will lead to more events which celebrate all Richmond residents, not just those who are Chinese. “I think it’s rapidly changing, quite frankly. But I hope it still keeps some of that same culture of being a place where it’s very family-oriented, and we continue to build good communities around schools and our institutions,” Fewer said. “I just hope that as we change in the Richmond, that that feeling and that culture of caring for each other doesn’t change either.”A rendering depicts a possible “I Left My Heart in SF” sculpture at the California Street cable-car stop in Robert Frost Plaza, one of various measures proposed to enliven the area. The cable cars that roll up and down California Street are designated national landmarks, but advocates say the stations at either end of the line are anything but, offering little to remember or engage the riders of San Francisco’s treasured transit icons. Downtown boosters and city officials want to change that in part by installing a large sculpture of a heart bordered by the letters “SF” at the foot of California Street, one of a suite of “tactical urbanism” strategies designed to enliven the space that will include modular seating and interpretive signage about cable-car history and how to use the system. “It could be so much more than what it is,” said Claude Imbault, the vice president of planning and economic development for the Downtown SF Partnership community-benefit district, of the cable-car stop in Robert Frost Plaza at the corner of Market and Drumm streets, next to the Hyatt Regency San Francisco hotel. “It can be an experience that really reflects San Francisco’s vibrancy.” Imbault is co-lead on the plaza refresh project, to which The City has committed more than $100,000 through its Office of Economic and Workforce Development, according to partnership and city officials. In addition to being the the location where cable cars reverse direction, the plaza is crowded with other elements, including a BART/Muni entrance/exit; a bus shelter; a mounted plaque honoring Frost, a native San Franciscan; a Muni ticket dispenser next to a wooden storage box; a digital advertising kiosk: and a clock atop a pillar. The result, according to a Downtown SF Partnership document, is a place “littered with streetscape elements that lack visual coherence” that is “generally a missed opportunity for the thousands of visitors that board the cable car at this location.” The cable-car stop itself is a nondescript stretch of brick with embedded rails, bordered by bollards that are connected by ropes and wires. “If you are there and the cable car is not there, you might even miss that there’s a cable-car stop,” said María De Alva, a senior planner with The City’s planning department who is project co-lead with Imbault. While other cable-car spots are popular tourist attractions, such as the turnaround at Market and Powell streets, De Alva said the California Street line deserves “stardom” as well. “The views that you get from the California cable car are incomparable, so we want to make sure that we’re drawing that attention,” De Alva said. The signage planned around the cable car stop, which will include wrapping material around the existing storage box, would give people both history about the transit system and information about how to navigate its lines, Imbault said. Visitors frequently ask where the cable cars go, he said. The envisioned “I Left My Heart in SF” sign is meant to provide an “Instagrammable moment,” with the opportunity to take photographs with the cable car stop behind and California Street rising toward Nob Hill in the background, said Laura Crescimano, a co-founder and principal of Sitelab Urban Studio. The heart sculpture references “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” a famous song performed by singer Tony Bennett, who wasCrescimano’s urban-design firm crafted not only the “Gateway” proposal for the Downtown SF Partnership but also the partnership’s 2022 public-realm action plan, which called for various improvements for parts of downtown in and near the Financial District, including the remake of the cable-car stop. It also helped develop plans concerning an expected overhaul of the area around Other proposed elements of the cable-car stop project could include more seating; platforms for rotating art displays; decorative sidewalk crossings; space for performances by artists; creative lighting that could be built into seating or strung from trees; more signage to point visitors to local attractions, including via ground murals; additional plants; and a welcome archway over California Street framing the cable-car route. The partnership says it hopes to install some of the first elements before an International Downtown Association gathering in The City in March. The heart sculpture will likely take longer to obtain because it must be manufactured by a studio in Southern California. Imbault said the designs contemplated so far epitomize “tactical urbanism” strategies, which he characterized as “quicker, lighter, cheaper” interventions that can be replaced if they do not work. At the other end of the California Street line, meanwhile, members of the group Polk Neighbors say they have their own plans for transforming the terminus there, currently a shelter on a concrete island with traffic on both sides. “It’s the least impressive cable-car turnaround, by far,” said Parker Day, a Polk Neighbors board member. “We see too many people on the cable car come in and then go right back out on that same cable car headed downtown or to Chinatown or to the top of Nob Hill.” The “gateway” vision the Polk Neighbors group crafted starting in 2019 with an architecture firm after neighborhood meetings and input from public officials calls forfocusing on the intersection of California and Polk streets, a commercial hub down the block from the actual end of the line at Van Ness Avenue. The plan would seek to calm traffic by reducing lanes and calls for more greenery, lighting and seating, as well as wider sidewalks for pedestrians and artistic performers. After a lot of work, the volunteer group has been in “a holding pattern” while trying to figure out the next step, Day said.Rick Laubscher, CEO and President of Market Street Railway: “We believe these two projects in tandem would greatly increase regular ridership on the California Street line.”said his nonprofit — which advocates for The City’s cable-car and streetcar systems and operates a museum about them — has been supporting the efforts to upgrade the cable-car stops at both ends of the California Street line. He called the line “one of San Francisco’s underappreciated gems.” Laubscher said his organization’s position is that San Francisco city government made a “huge mistake” in 1954 by shutting down at Van Ness Avenue the western half of the original California line, which stretched to Presidio Avenue. The resulting situation at the Van Ness turnaround is uninviting to cable-car riders, Laubscher said. Traffic-calming measures that Polk Neighbors have proposed would alleviate unsafe conditions created by overly fast traffic coursing through the neighborhood, he said. Laubscher said he would also like to see the installation of transparent panels in the sidewalk at the downtown stop so the public can see the 12-foot-wide, side-mounted wheels rotating underneath the plaza. “We believe these two projects in tandem would greatly increase regular ridership on the California Street line, filling up the cars with paying passengers who will provide Muni with what it most needs right now — more fare revenue,” Laubscher said of the end-of-the-line improvementsSan Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie: “I promised San Franciscans that I would work in partnership with the Board of Supervisors to take action on the critical issues facing our city.” San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is poised to bear singular responsibility for The City’s battle against its most intractable problems. He’ll confront homelessness, addiction and mental health, as unshackled as any mayor in recent history has been.Lurie is well on his way to holding significant power — with relatively little oversight — as he attempts to rapidly expand The City’s stock of temporary shelter beds, hire more police officers and behavioral-health professionals, and open new behavioral-health beds. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved his “fentanyl state of emergency” ordinance in the first of two scheduled votes. Ten of 11 supervisors voted in favor of the legislation, which is expected to pass its second vote by a similar margin. “As a candidate for mayor, I promised San Franciscans that I would work in partnership with the Board of Supervisors to take action on the critical issues facing our city. As mayor, I am proud to be delivering on that promise today,” Lurie said in a statement following the vote. The ordinance grants his administration great flexibility to sign leases as it sees fit and forgo competitive bidding processes. For many contracts up to $25 million, the Board of Supervisors willvv have to vote within 45 days, after which the “shot clock” will expire and the administration will be able to move forward regardless of supervisors’ feelings. Lurie’s legislation also allows his administration to reach out to the private sector with an open hand and ask for cash to help fund its ambitious undertakings. Thus, as a package, the ordinance should give Lurie broad capacity to address The City’s most pressing crises. It’s also a great responsibility, and if things go south there will be no one left for the administration to blame but itself. “I think Mayor Lurie is going in with eyes open, understanding that critics will harshly judge failure while ignoring success,” said Steven Bacio, a director of GrowSF, a moderate political group that launched aIt wouldn’t be the first time a mayor has used some form of emergency powers to take on the scourge of drugs and homelessness, but Lurie’s leash is long. Most recently, Mayor London Breedthat allowed her to quickly stand up the Tenderloin Center; but that emergency was confined to one neighborhood, and the Tenderloin Center was For the Board of Supervisors, handing Lurie the reins places the burden for solving San Francisco’s problems on him and his departments, preempting accusations that legislators are obstructionists. As individual members, if street conditions don’t improve they can essentially return to their constituents and say “don’t look at me — I’ve given the mayor everything for which he asked.” And it will be Lurie, not supervisors, who needs to convince a neighborhood to welcome a new shelter or behavioral-health facility in its backyard.Mayor Daniel Lurie acknowledges the crowd at his Inauguration Day ceremony at Civic Center Plaza in front of San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. Failing to competitively bid projects generally leads to higher costs, the Board of Supervisors’ budget and legislative analyst noted during the committee hearing last week while generally striking a tone of “no, seriously, I need you all to understand this” as he reviewed the proposal. Niholas Menard, the analyst, noted that the Board of Supervisors’ approval of contracts is rarely a significant hold-up if and when an administration wants to ink a new contract. But by agreeing to the 45-day shot clock, it’s depriving itself of the right to ask basic questions about, say, a proposed shelter, such as where will it be located, the cost and whether it will be effective.“Even at the height of the pandemic, FEMA required The City to do competitive solicitations,” Menard said. He said they are a “gold standard for controlling costs and preventing a political process influencing a contract award.” As departments rush to sign leases and ink deals with service providers to confront this emergency, Lurie’s going to be responsible for ensuring every penny spent is done so on the up-and-up. “We’re doing something special,” Supervisor Matt Dorsey, the legislation’s first co-sponsor, said at the committee meeting Wednesday. “This is an emergency. It’s really going to be important that we avoid even the appearance of any issue of waste, fraud or abuse. We have to be laser-focused on the problem, the fentanyl emergency we’re facing.” Lurie’s administration is signing up for that responsibility in a city with an already long, well-earned reputation for misuse of funds. Former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru isfor his central role in a long-running corruption scheme that saw him dole out contracts to those who personally enriched him until his “To his credit, I think is an honest man,” former Supervisor Aaron Peskin told The Examiner last month. “But that in no way means the people who he’s delegating authority to, who he does not know and has never managed, aren’t going to do things that he never intended.” Facing a massive budget deficit, Lurie is banking on the private sector to chip in. He’s no stranger to raising and spending money — as CEO of Tipping Point, the antipoverty nonprofit he founded, he did just that for more than a decade.over five years in a bid to end chronic homelessness; The City spends more than that on homelessness in a little more than a month. He’ll likely need every cent if he’s to achieve his campaign goal of effectively eliminating street homelessness within six months of taking office, a promise so bold that even his allies Luckily, Lurie got a bit of a head start. After a terrifying increase in overdose deaths during the pandemic, the total dropped precipitously in 2024,But if San Francisco elected officials have learned anything in recent years, it’s that numbers matter little to San Franciscans who know what they see with their own eyes — and know it isn’t right.How to Clip Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. 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