The neighborhood best known for its immigrant Latino community and culture had an ally in Mayor Ed Lee — but the alliance was strained by the fallout of Lee’s well-intentioned business and development policies. Mission nonprofit leaders, like everyone else who came into contact with him, remembered San Francisco’s late Mayor Ed Lee as almost an anti-politician: humble, gentle, considerate....
Members of the Mission District Chinese community reacted with varying degrees of surprise, sadness and bitterness to the sudden death of Mayor Ed Lee, who collapsed from an apparent heart attack on Monday at around 10:30 p.m. while shopping at the Safeway near his home in Glen Park. “I was so shocked this morning,” Tina Tsang, who owns City Discount...
Our mayor, who died today at 65, is recalled near universally as a decent man. As for how he affected the city, however, that’s harder to say. San Francisco City Hall was awash in black suits, white coffee cups, and red eyes. Public servants, many of whom had formed a pre-dawn convoy to Mayor Ed Lee’s bedside in Zuckerberg...
During Mayor Ed Lee’s tenure as mayor, housing, police and homelessness were overriding issues in the Mission. For many Mission voters, he was not always on the right side of those issues and in the 2011 election, they favored his opponent John Avalos. Nevertheless, Lee occasionally courted the Mission and he had his supporters here. Perhaps the biggest decision affecting...
Despite promises from city leaders that the 58 tenants displaced by the fire at 29th and Mission streets would be housed, at least two tenants from the Graywood Hotel, which was ravaged by a five-alarm fire in June, are again homeless and living in a tent on 16th Street near Folsom Street. “The mayor said that none of us was gonna go...
Mission tech workers reacted to a proposal for a tech tax to curb the city’s growing inequality with comments ranging from skepticism to wondering why such a tax had not been imposed earlier. Mission-based tech worker Erini Blakey said that while the tax would rightfully “force tech companies to be good citizens,” she questioned its efficacy since it targets only...
StormMiguel Florez is a filmmaker and artist who wrote this open letter to State Senator Mark Leno in response to the Senator’s remarks at Friday’s Trans March, where he and other politicians were shouted off stage. Dear Senator Mark Leno, I am writing to you as a trans Latinx person who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for...
At about 11 a.m. on Thursday, three Department of Public Works trucks pulled up to a row of tents pitched alongside the 101 freeway underpass. At the same time, a group of protesters gathered across the street at the corner of Division and Trainor to expose citywide sweeps of encampments they say are inhumane and have robbed the homeless of their property....
On a beautiful day on Mission Street, Annice Jacoby of City Poets saw people walking past a homeless man at their feet. Fearing that San Franciscans have grown “numb” to homelessness, Jacoby turned to what she knows best: participatory art. UNDERCOVER, a collaborative arts effort, is sewing and distributing waterproof hooded blankets for the city’s homeless. The project draws on organizations for...
“Welcome to the House of Murder, Ed Lee has blood on his hands,” protestor JawanaNicole Aguirre announced to guests flooding in to City Hall for Mayor Ed Lee’s inauguration ceremony. She was joined by activists and organizers from the Bayview and the Mission who have united their causes to protest shootings by police. Once inside, guests got a different greeting from London...
The election is just around the corner, and while the fights over the Mission moratorium and short-term rental regulations have dominated airwaves, there are candidate races that will shape San Francisco for years to come. The mayoral race is all but decided as there was no alternative candidate able to match incumbent Ed Lee in campaign spending or name-recognition. The...
A new proposal designed to give San Francisco tenants increased protections against evictions became law Friday afternoon when Mayor Ed Lee returned the legislation unsigned, despite earlier fears that he would veto it. “The [housing] crisis is so acute, and the anxiety and reality of eviction and displacement real for so many, that we must take unprecedented steps to help,” said...
Though Mayor Ed Lee is widely predicted to win re-election this November, he faced staunch opposition from five candidates at a forum Thursday night as opponents zeroed in on suspected corruption in city hall and a failure to address San Francisco’s worsening housing crisis. “We need to take our city back,” said candidate Stuart Schuffman, better known as comedian and blogger Broke Ass...
Listen Local is Mission Local in audio form. We go live on a biweekly webcast every other Thursday morning from 9:30 to 10:00. Here’s our latest show: In this episode, we talk about the mayor’s state of the city address last week. Housing is, of course, one of both Ed Lee’s and our top priorities. We chat about funds for...
Last week was a full one in the legislative debate about fixing San Francisco’s housing crisis. Here at Mission Local HQ we could barely keep up with all the various proposals, amendments and votes. To help you sort through the administrative mess, here’s a (hopefully) useful guide to the latest in housing legislation: What’s Happening in Sacto Ellis Act Reform...
