View the San Francisco for Thursday, March 20, 2025
Joy Qiao, founder and chair of governors at Wellington College China, recently purchased the building at 99 Rhode Island St. to serve as the site of a new Chinese-English bilingual academy she hopes to launch by 2026.
A citizen of China who has lived and worked in England and Germany, Joy Qiao said that founding and running bilingual English-Chinese schools has become a “calling” and a “higher purpose” as a means of bringing people from disparate backgrounds together.“I’m a firm believer of globalization, of breaking down barriers rather than putting up barriers,” Qiao said during a recent visit from Shanghai, her hometown. “This is something that I live and breathe — cultural diversity, understanding differences, bridging different opinions,” Qiao said. “That’s my higher calling, and that’s why I do what I do now, which is why I’ve taken my bilingual school all the way here to America, to San Francisco.”, said that since 2009 she has launched six schools in four cities in China that today serve 5,300 students and employ 1,400 people.. Qiao said the Wellington College China organization provided financial backing to enable the purchase of the San Francisco school property, which cost about $23.5 million, according to city records. Qiao said the timing was fortuitous for her school project because a few years ago, such a property would likely have been out of reach. The new school will eventually serve students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in a three-story, roughly 60,000 square-foot commercial building at 99 Rhode Island St. that was built in 1948 and was once theThe school — which has large windows, a nearly 10,000-square-foot parking lot that will become a play yard, and a large roof deck — will initially only have classes up to the first grade. Long term, Qiao has ambitions of serving middle- and high-school students in The City, as well. Hiba also announced late last month that it had hired a founding head of school, Colette McWilliams, who has international experience and most recently was head of elementary for Trinity School in Menlo Park. Construction of the San Francisco school is slated to begin this summer, with classes starting in August of 2026. Qiao’s team visited nearly 60 potential sites around the Bay Area over a one-year period before settling on the Rhode Island Street property. “In the end, we decided that urban San Francisco is the place to be,” Qiao said. “I’m from Shanghai. I personally like the urban feel of a metropolitan city.” The San Francisco venture is the latest step in an entrepreneurial journey that Qiao said has evolved into an encompassing mission as she has witnessed political and cultural divisions and seen the widespread inability of people to understand each other, particularly in China and the United States. “There’s not nearly enough non-Chinese who can speak fluent Chinese and understand the Chinese culture well and deeply enough to form a realistic opinion and perspective of China,” she said. Chinese is very difficult to learn to speak as an adult, and there are “far more Chinese people who are fluent English speakers than the other way around,” she said.Demonstrators wave the flags of the People’s Republic of China and the U.S. outside the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco in 2023. Joy Qiao said she hopes the United States and China can maneuver peacefully around each other. Qiao, who speaks fluent English with a British accent, said she grew up in Shanghai, attended public schools and started studying English at age 11. She said her father worked for an insurance company, and her mother was a senior government official. Qiao said she studied at University of Oxford in England, where she got an undergraduate degree in computer science. She later worked for most of a decade as a marketing manager for semiconductor giant Intel, with posts in England, Germany and China. Qiao said she also got an MBA from the China Europe International Business School, and married an Englishman, with whom she had two sons. One of them is currently at an East Coast college-preparatory boarding school, and the other is attending the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, she said. Looking for a school for her son, Qiao said she saw an opportunity for herself to start one that could provide the kind of bilingual academic and cultural education she wanted. She said she was feeling “a bit stagnant” — though well-paid — inside a giant corporation, and so she started her own business. “I was an entrepreneur in spirit,” Qiao said. “My aim, I would say the first phase of my motivation, was running a successful business. You know: be in the driver’s seat, be in control of my own destiny, compared to being a small cog in a very big company.” Qiao said that through a friend, she connected in 2009 with a real-estate development official, and her first school was included in a large project in Tianjin, China. Today, that campus accommodates about 600 students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. Qiao said she has been “riding on the wave of the rapid economic development of China,” where people have quickly been becoming more affluent, the middle class has been expanding hugely and many more people can afford “a premium private education.” All of her schools are very rigorous academically and highly ranked, she said. Over time, Qiao said, she came to see providing top-quality bilingual education as “a higher purpose,” a way of helping bring people together across cultural and linguistic boundaries.“I feel there is almost a reversal of globalization,” Qiao said. “The trend of the world coming closer together, more collaboration, doing business together, multinationals operating in all countries, was what enabled me to become more who I was.” Given the “increasingly hostile rhetoric” on the global stage of late, Qiao said she hopes the United States and China can maneuver peacefully around each other. Qiao said she intends to operate in San Francisco “for the long haul” — which is why her organization bought a building — and she knows that fraught international relations could in theory pose potential complications. “It’s a calculated risk,” she said. “In some ways, this relationship getting worse gives me more motivation to do what I do, because what are the alternatives? Are we just allowing the two sides to fall further apart and stop talking to each other?” “I don’t know whether I’m going to be successful or not,” she said. “Either the Chinese government or the U.S. government could decide what I’m doing is dangerous for them for some reason and shut me down. That might happen. I hope it doesn’t.” Qiao said she has “a way of communicating with the Chinese government to say that what I’m doing in China and also in San Francisco is actually good for China. I believe the same for the U.S..” “I’m here with good will and good intention,” Qaio said. “There is no hidden agenda, apart from building a cultural bridge where there are more people being brought up being able to talk to each other and learn from each other and understand each other.”San Francisco’s tax targeting the owners of vacant homes has been put on ice while a legal battle over the controversial measure works its way through the courts. The City already faced a court order blocking it from collecting the tax, but the Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 Tuesday to make it official that the levy has been suspended pending the outcome of The City’s appeal of that decision. The vote means that the tax will only go into effect if San Francisco triumphs in court, in which case the tax would be applied in the tax year that follows the resolution of the case. The majority of supervisors rejected a proposed amendment from District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder that would have ensured that the tax snapped back into effect as soon as the court order was lifted, even if the lawsuit remained unresolved. Fielder warned that the legislation passed Tuesday could mean that even if the court’s decision to strike down the law is reversed, The City might need to wait for years to enact the tax as the broader case plays out. But Supervisor Connie Chan — who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee and represents the Richmond district — rejected Fielder’s argument. Reinstating the tax before the final legal outcome is known, Chan said Tuesday, would likely create “a burden and confusion for the tax collector office, so that the administrative cost is greater than the potentially projected tax collected.” The tax — known as the “empty homes tax” — is the product of a 2022 ballot measure championed by then-Supervisor Dean Preston, who argued the levy would discourage owners from allowing their residential properties to sit vacant for long stretches of time. Supporters of the law cited a finding thatand would have been collected for the first time in April of this year were it not for the court order blocking The City from doing so. Under the measure, residential properties left vacant for more than half of a calendar year must face penalties that range from $2,500 to $20,000. The sliding scale increases for larger properties and for buildingsThe tax has faced stiff opposition from landlord groups, who argue that property owners often have legitimate reasons for leaving their properties vacant and that the tax violates their rights. Not long after the tax first passed, a coalition of real-estate interests responded by suing The City. The group included the San Francisco Apartment Association, the Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute, and the San Francisco Association of Realtors.and struck down the tax. The next month, the court issued an order prohibiting San Francisco from enforcing the levy.Without the passage of Tuesday’s legislation, officials with the Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector warned, The City might have been headed toward an uncomfortable situation. Were The City to triumph in court, they said, The City might still need to apply the vacancy tax retroactively, back to the start of 2024. Under such a scenario, The City would “face enormous administrative challenges in attempting to collect back taxes from prior years,” warned Amanda Fried, policy chief for the agency. Nevertheless, Fielder, in explaining her dissenting vote Tuesday, suggested that she still hopes the tax could serve as one of The City’s tools to address its “So many of our vacant units are being used like shares of stock in the stock market for real-estate investors to buy them up and hold them for years, and then resell them at higher values for profit,” she said. Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents The City’s southeast, joined Fielder in voting against suspending the tax. The Controller’s Office has estimated the vacancy tax could generate more than $15 million in annual revenue for The City once the program gets up and running.will be considerable, given that it requires the owners of tens of thousands of properties throughout The City to certify their vacancy status each year. Furthermore, the added uncertainty around the program that would accompany further litigation, Fried said, would likely complicate The City’s efforts to educate property owners about the tax.Mayor Daniel Lurie — seen in February — said Monday that his administration would “fundamentally transform The City’s health and homelessness response.” San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie unveiled plans this week to strengthen proof-of-residency requirements placed on homeless people who receive monthly cash payments from The City. The change also comes as San Francisco faces a fierce budget deficit and Lurie pledges to spend money more wisely in combatting The City’s most entrenched social struggles. When implemented, Lurie’s plan will mark the second consecutive year in which San Francisco tightened the rules around its County Adult Assistance Program, which provides monthly payments of up to $714 to adults without children who are in deep poverty and have lived here for at least 15 days.that forced people who are deemed to have substance-use issues to engage in treatment as a condition of their eligibility for welfare payments. That policyNow, the Human Services Agency, which administers the County Adult Assistant Program, will make it harder for the program’s applicants to prove they live in San Francisco, particularly if they are homeless.People vote and turn in their ballots at City Hall in San Francisco, Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Fifty-eight percent of voters that month backed Proposition F, which introduced drug-screening requirements for residents suspected of substance-use issues who receive as much as $714 a month — and unhoused San Franciscans who are given $109 monthly — in assistance from The City. Starting in May, the agency will verify San Francisco residency electronically “through the City’s various systems of record” if they lack fixed addresses, according to the agency’s emailed response to questions from The Examiner. Examples of proof of residency include stays at a shelter or the use of CalFresh benefits. The City will no longer “no longer accept letters from community-based organizations ... for unhoused individuals or accept self-attestation of residency.” Housed people will continue to be able to use documents such as utility bills or leases in order to prove residency. The agency will also require program applicants to meet with HSA staff members in person prior to being approved for aid. Currently, applicants can apply online or by phone. San Francisco’s assistance program offers a cash payment, without restrictions on its use, of $714 for people who are housed. Those without fixed addresses but have been in San Francisco at least 30 days are given $109 monthly and guaranteed a shelter spot and meals.In total, the city distributed $37.6 million through the program in the most recent fiscal year, which ended in 2024. The number of people receiving benefits through the program increased from 5,800 last January to 6,600 this January, according to an agency spokesperson. The number of people who participated grewAbsent data, it’s unclear what effect further tightening eligibility requirements on welfare payments could have on mitigating homelessness and drug use in San Francisco, whereHSA does not have data on how long program participants have been living in San Francisco prior to enrolling beyond 30 days; it estimates that between 3% and 4% of enrollees have been in San Francisco between 15 and 30 days.during the most recent Point-in-Time Count — a biennial census of The City’s homeless population — asked homeless people who have not always lived in San Francisco their motivation for coming to The City. About 16% of respondents came in order to access homeless or other services; a plurality of them said they came because they had friends or family here, or for work.that 30% of people enrolling in the program have substance-use disorders. Since new drug-screening requirements took effect on Jan. 1, HSA has referred 61 new people to treatment, in addition to 23 who were already receiving it. Two people have been kicked out of the benefits program for failing to stay in treatment.and other opponents, breezed through with the support of 58% of voters, who have been increasingly fed up with rampant open-air drug use in San Francisco’s core. Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who was quick to laud Lurie’s vision, has tried to suss out through data to what extent San Francisco’s street drug use is driven by people without prior connections to or home addresses in The City. Thus far, he has been unsuccessful.Supervisor Matt Dorsey during the Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall in San Francisco on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. Dorsey hasn’t given up, however, and hopes to legislatively require The City to produce an annual report showing the last known addresses of drug-overdose decedents, people arrested for public drug use or possession, and those signing up for general assistance who are determined to have substance-use disorders. Such data could inform The City’s response to its drug problem, according to Dorsey, and prove whether or not people are really coming to San Francisco from elsewhere. Christin Evans, who is vice chair of The City’s Homeless Oversight Commission, counters that the “magnet theory” is errantly promoted by politicians as “a root-cause issue to be addressed.” “It’s largely a distraction, though, because we know that the cost of housing in The City is very high,” Evans said. Evans warned that drug addiction and homelessness should not be conflated, and expressed concern that making it more difficult to prove eligibility for the program will “lead to gaps in payment.” “The predictable effect of creating more bureaucracy is that more people will fall through the cracks even if they are 100% eligible for benefits,” Evans said., a policy that could link the progressive and moderate wings of San Francisco’s political spectrum. The Swiss city is known for its wide-ranging services for people with addiction, but Dorsey noted that it is strict about doing so only for Zurich residents — not outsiders. The roadmap published by Lurie’s administration signals a retreat from harm-reduction policies such as distribution of clean smoking supplies for drug consumption. It is among the “four pillars,” but has singularly come to define the controversy surrounding The City’s response to the fentanyl epidemic. Though embraced by local leaders and the federal health officials — under President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesSpeaking at a press conference Monday, Lurie said his administration would “fundamentally transform The City’s health and homelessness response and break these cycles of homelessness, addiction, and government failure.” Editor's note: The headline of this story was edited on Thursday, March 20 to clarify that the eligibility requirements will change for only one of The City's welfare programs. The story was also amended to clarify that The City will change in approach to distribution of clean smoking supplies for drug consumption will not include syringes.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. 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