In March’s primary election, Californians will be asked to vote on Proposition 1, a ballot measure proposing $6.4 billion in additional funding for homeless-related services, including new treatment beds and "permanent supportive housing units" (otherwise known as indefinitely subsidized single-room occupancies). The measure is the brainchild of Governor Newsom, who claims the money will go a long way towards getting California’s almost 180,000 homeless people “off the streets, out of tents and into treatment.”

This is, of course, utter insanity. But it’s worth looking briefly at the fine print of the legislation to understand just how insane it is. Of the $6.4 billion Prop 1 seeks to wrest from taxpayers, it will spend $4.4 billion on funding around 6,800 addiction/behavioral health treatment beds, which amounts to an average cost of almost $650,000 per bed — an obscene sum even by California’s distorted standards. The remaining $2 billion will be allocated to fund various housing projects, including the conversion of hotels and motels into homeless housing, with the eventual goal of opening 4,350 new units — amounting to an average cost of around $460,000 per unit. But these new units will house less than 3% of the state’s total homeless population. By this math, to fully “solve” homelessness in California, it would take a dollar amount — $320 billion — that slightly exceeds China’s entire defense budget.

All of this is to say nothing of the estimated $68 billion budget deficit California is currently facing; nor of the fact that the philosophy underlying this spending — which says the ultimate solution to homelessness is providing free homes to the homeless — is fundamentally flawed. Every additional dollar the state spends on homelessness also entrenches the nonprofit employees' and government administrators' vested interest in perpetuating the crisis. And, incidentally, cities across the state have already tried raising taxes to fund homeless services, to uniformly disastrous effect (see: San Francisco’s Prop C; Los Angeles’ “Mansion Tax”, etc).

I could go on for days, but the point should be clear for voters: come March, choose sanity, and try to get as many people as possible to do the same.

---

City Hall

policy, power struggles, and more from the legislative and executive branch (and their sprawling army of unelected hall monitors)

• In a sobering financial forecast presented to the Budget and Finance last week, Mayor Breed’s budget director, Anna Duning, predicted the city’s deficit could top $1.4 billion by 2027 — due mainly to shrinking tax revenue and soaring salaries for bureaucrats.

• Mayor Breed published a two-page statement announcing her refusal to sign Supervisor Preston’s resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Breed’s decision to not veto the resolution, which will now pass without her signature, happily spares us all the misery of yet another hours-long Board “hearing” (read: activist circle jerk) on the subject.

• An audit from the Controller’s Office found SFPD wrongfully reimbursed crime-prevention nonprofit SF SAFE over $79,000 for expenses including luxury gift boxes, a Lake Tahoe symposium trip (where SF SAFE spent almost $5,000 on limo services), recurring parking fees/permits, and Uber rides.

• The City finalized a 15-year lease agreement to build “tiny homes,” parking spaces, and service facilities for the homeless on an industrial site off Bayshore. The project, co-sponsored by Mayor Breed and Supervisor Walton, faces opposition from local business owners who say nearby shelters have already “increased break-ins, drug use, drug dealing, human feces and urine on the street, [and] fire risk from propane tanks.”

• Six candidates for outgoing Supervisor Ronen’s D9 seat showed up to the first debate of the campaign last week. As usual in SF politics, they ranged from “unremarkable but fine” (Trevor Chandler, signature issue: tackling the opioid epidemic) to “completely insane” (Jackie Fielder, signature issue: opening a “public bank” — essentially a taxpayer-backed slush fund).

• Next week, the Government Audit and Oversight Committee will discuss a settlement with Lyft over $5.1 million in tax payments the company alleges were improperly calculated. Curiously, Lyft is the latest in a series of companies disputing their tax bills: General Motors and Park Hotels are currently suing the city for $108 million and $8 million, respectively, and Amazon just settled a dispute over almost $500,000.

• In an interview Monday with ABC7, DA Brooke Jenkins laid out her plan to increase prosecution of drug dealers in the Tenderloin, suggesting her office may begin charging those linked to overdose deaths with murder.

• The Fillmore Safeway, which was scheduled to close this March, will instead stay open until early 2025, following “extensive negotiations” between Safeway and Mayor Breed, who promised to direct more law enforcement to the theft-plagued supermarket.

• Tech executive Bilal Mahmood has officially announced his campaign to unseat Supervisor Preston in District 5. Mahmood previously served as a policy advisor to one-time D6 Supervisor candidate Honey Mahogany, who (infamously) opposed the recall of former District Attorney Chesa Boudin — but hey, almost anyone would be better than the Millionaire Marxist.

---mMemorMemor

Memento Sacramento

a brief, essential spotlight on the state of california

• Only a third of registered voters believe California is on the right track, according to a new UC Berkeley poll, though opinions on Governor Newsom’s performance are almost evenly split: 46% approve of the governor, whereas 47% disapprove.

• The leaders of California Forever, a venture capital-backed new city in Solano County, submitted a ballot measure last week asking local voters to exempt the project from the Solano’s Orderly Growth ordinance, which requires all urban development occur within the county’s existing cities. The measure also lays out CA Forever’s plans to build 20,000 housing units, schools, retail stores, parks, and public transportation on grazing land between Fairfield and Rio Vista.

• Employees at the LA Times walked out last Friday in protest of an announcement that the newspaper plans to lay off a “significant” portion of its journalists. On social media, the strikers entreated readers to avoid “crossing the digital picket line.”

• San Mateo County’s (potentially based) Board of Supervisors is considering a proposal to make it a misdemeanor to camp on public spaces in areas where shelter beds are available. The proposal would also allow officials to press criminal charges against those who turn down shelter offers twice.

• California Democrats are attempting to make racial- and gender-based discrimination legal again through ACA 7, a bill that would amend Prop 209 (a measure banning discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin) to allow the state to “address disparities in business contracting, education, housing, wealth, employment, and healthcare.”

---

ROSE ALERT

notes from the bay area’s beloved class of local activists

• After Oakland’s only In-N-Out announced it was closing due to routine “car break-ins, property damage, theft and armed robberies” against its patrons and employees, our beloved class of activists took to Twitter/X to air their thoughts on the matter:
  

• From our favorite Chronicle op-ed columnist, Soleil Ho: “If In-N-Out’s primary concern is the well-being of the communities it serves, it wouldn’t be leaving.”

• From “HellaLuvOakland” (rumored to be one of Oakland mayoral policy advisor Brandon Harami’s many burner accounts): “Was it crime that closed it down, or was it the fact the largest newspaper in the bay dedicated 3 reporters to give the site really bad publicity?”

• From @emily_wherever, a member of the Oakland Tenants Union: “Why does anyone care that In-N-Out is closing?!”

• In the Chronicle, Cesar Hernandez and Mario Cortez wonder why coffee shops “often cater to white audiences, only offering the same few European-inspired drinks.” Elsewhere, opinion writer Justin Phillips suggests the closure of the Fillmore Safeway has everything to do with “unfair redevelopment history,” and nothing to do with, say, rampant shoplifting and nearby drug markets.

• Supervisor Preston gave a rousing speech in support of the protesters currently being charged for obstructing the Bay Bridge (who have apparently branded themselves ‘the Bay Bridge 78’). “The prosecution of non violent protestors does not make us any safer,” Preston said, evincing no apparent understanding of the danger inherent to obstructing one of the most traveled bridges in the country at rush hour.

---

MAN WITH MACHETE

this week, a round of tentatively positive (albeit harrowing) news from the fentanyl frontier

• Twice-deported fentanyl dealer Jonsan Valle-Rodriguez will remain in prison after federal attorneys successfully appealed Magistrate Judge Alex Tse’s order to release him. In their appeal, the prosecutors cited the fact that both proposed parole custodians for Valle-Rodriguez had previously been deported, and one had also been arrested for dealing drugs in the Tenderloin. (I promise this is not satire.)

• Jose Berrios Lopez, a fentanyl dealer who opened fire at a car and paralyzed a passenger he claimed paid counterfeit currency in a $10 drug deal, will also remain in jail after Superior Court Judge Gail Dekreon denied his request to secure bail.

• Another fentanyl dealer, Miguel Ramos, pleaded guilty to five counts of narcotics trafficking in federal court last week. Ramos had been found in possession of over $100,000 worth of fentanyl when he was arrested in October 2022 in the Tenderloin on suspicion of involvement in a violent assault that occurred the night before.

• Mauricio Hernandez, a drug dealer who went on the lam after shooting at a street rival outside the federal building, was jailed for 60 months last week by U.S. Dis­trict Judge Vince Chhabria.

• Christian Carreto, a felon who dealt fentanyl while on parole for “punching, throttling, and pointing a gun at a woman in San Francisco,” pleaded guilty to a drugs charge in U.S. District Court after federal authorities, exasperated by Superior Court Judge Marisa Chun, who released Carreto immediately after the assault, intervened.

• SF residents Gerald Rowe and Angel Anderson were convicted of first-degree murder with a special allegation for torture and poisoning for torturing, raping, and fatally poisoning a 23-year-old man with fentanyl before putting him into a suitcase and throwing him into the Bay. Both face life in prison.

---

AROUND TOWN

stories from the neighborhood you should know about

• Around 71% of overdose deaths in San Francisco appeared to happen at fixed addresses (i.e. likely inside “supportive housing”) last year, according to new data released by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

• The price of fentanyl is dramatically lower in San Francisco than in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Philadelphia or New York, a new investigation in the Standard found.

• The “Mad Max” Mid-Market Whole Foods, which has been shuttered since last April, is being marketed for lease — an indication the store will permanently close.

• Small business owners in Little Saigon are reportedly banding together against a proposed “homeless service center” to be opened in the area, for fear the attendant dysfunction will drive foot traffic and customers away.

• Protests erupted after the Parks and Recreation Department ordered Presidio Wall pickleball players to take down their nets. The order followed a conspicuous complaint from Presidio Heights denizen Holly Peterson, who alleged the sale of her $36 million house (which features its own pickleball court) was hindered by noise from public courts.

• Commercial crabbing season kicked off last week in the city, with vendors selling fresh-off-the-boat fish at Piers 45 and 47.

• TechStars’ Michelle Fang dropped a list of 50+ in person tech events happening throughout the city this week on Twitter/X.

• Sam’s Burgers, an Anthony Bourdain-approved burger joint on Broadway that stays open until 4 am, will open a second business right next to the original called Sam’s East, which will serve up shawarma and falafel.

Hope you enjoyed this issue of Dolores Park. Share it, tell us what you’d like to see more of below, and send tips and stories to sanjana@piratewires.com.