The branding of Gavin Newsom
First there was Care Not Cash. Now the mayoral hopeful is pushing more dishonest housing and homeless measures.

By Rachel Brahinsky

BY NOW, San Franciscans who follow the career of supervisor and mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom have begun to recognize a familiar pattern. The patrician candidate makes headlines and garners support in promoting initiatives he says represent caring for the city's poor and its struggling middle class.

It started last year with Care Not Cash, the welfare reform measure that sought to reduce cash grants to the homeless to $59 a month. It continues this fall, as he makes his mayoral pitch to the electorate, with the Workforce Housing Initiative and Proposition M (the anti-panhandling measure), two central planks of his platform.

Newsom argues that workforce housing is key to keeping middle-class citizens from fleeing the city. And that Prop. M represents a caring approach to solving homelessness. On the face of it, it all sounds pretty good: who could oppose housing for workers and more treatment for homeless in need?

In fact, a close reading of the measures reveals the truth behind these proposals is far fuzzier than Newsom presents. Workforce housing will likely help build dense apartment buildings of primarily market-rate units – not exactly the most urgent need in the city at this time. And while Prop. M promises treatment and referrals, it's redundant legislation that does nothing to fund new services and will further criminalize the city's poorest citizens.

But the mainstream press has hardly investigated the measures. So Newsom is able to look like he's doing something compassionate about the burning issues of the day, tapping into San Franciscans' desire to help people, their fears about the ever tightening housing market, and their need to – as his campaign slogan says – get things done.

In a sense, it's classic political gamesmanship. Brand Newsom is sold as compassionate while pitching conservative values. And so far the candidate seems to be riding favorable public opinion in the direction of City Hall's Room 200.

But there's more to it than that. The city's most powerful interests have long been working to shift the financial and ethnic makeup of the city's residents – and thus transform S.F. politics with initiatives designed to expel the homeless and firm up the grip of the upper middle class (see "The Empire Strikes Back," 10/9/02).

As housing activist and nonprofit housing developer Calvin Welch puts it, "Who lives here, votes here."

Housing for the masses? Not quite

With its proletariat ring, the term workforce conjures up images of manual laborers, retail clerks, hotel attendants, and others who do the city's dirty work. But the proposed ballot measure, currently being circulated in a signature-gathering drive by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, is actually aimed at higher wage earners.

A single person earning up to $76,850 annually would qualify as a member of the workforce under the measure, and would be eligible to buy an apartment in one of two proposed developments along the waterfront – one near downtown and another on the eastern foot of Potrero Hill, commonly known as Dogpatch.

As Tenderloin Housing Clinic director and affordable-housing advocate Randy Shaw puts it, "Whose workforce? This is a workforce of CEOs."

Two people pulling in $87,750 annually, or three earning a total of $98,800, would also qualify for the housing, which would be allowed to exceed height limits as long as they included about 27 percent "workforce" homes. Another 12 percent would be affordable under current city standards, as is already city law. The rest would be at market rate, which is among the highest in the country.

Right away, it's clear the workforce defined by the chamber – and by Newsom, in a nearly identical measure he's introduced as legislation at the Board of Supervisors – is hardly made up of average San Franciscans. Median household income is just $41,101 and is lower among women and nonwhite ethnic groups.

The disconnect between the image the measure's backers have presented and the actual incomes of the workers it would benefit is only the most obvious of problems with the measure. There's also the actual cost of the proposed housing, the potentially sweeping changes the measure could herald in for the city as a whole, and the potential fluctuations in the amount of workforce housing required under the law (as interest rates rise, the percentage of workforce housing required drops).

Significantly, it doesn't address the city's housing needs, as defined by the draft Housing Element, a document prepared by the San Francisco Planning Department staff. The report says the city's most urgent housing needs are for lower-income families with several children.

"The average income for the San Francisco workforce demonstrates the lack of housing affordable to many San Francisco workers," the report says. "With an average rent of $2,057 for a two-bedroom apartment in 2003, an employee must make $98,400 to afford such a unit. Not even the average office worker was able to afford this rent."

An analysis of the initiative by Welch shows the measure wouldn't create more affordable units – in fact, it could make things worse. That's because the costs are based on median incomes that factor in wealthy Marin and San Mateo counties, numbers typically about 20 percent higher than San Francisco's own average.

"The number-one problem is it changes the city definition of affordability and substitutes a far more permissive state definition," Welch told us. By Welch's analysis, monthly housing costs for a two-bedroom would be $3,293. According to the city's affordability standards, that same apartment would go for $2,264 – 30 percent less.

"It's really a thoughtfully clever undermining of affordability standards," Welch said. "Newsom's saying we should give public planning preference to upper-income families. What social policy is that about?

"This is the city granting a preference to housing that we already have a preponderance of. The market doesn't need incentives to build this kind of housing. It needs incentives to build affordable family housing, and senior housing."

Still, Newsom spokesperson Eric Jaye insists the initiative "will stimulate the creation of low-income housing [and will] incentivize more development."

Perhaps if the Chamber of Commerce and Newsom had solicited community input – for example, by holding a public hearing – they might have come up with a different document.

Both Newsom and the chamber insist they culled widespread community input in drawing up the measure. The chamber's Roberta Achtenberg said, in an e-mail to us, that the chamber planned the initiative after consultation with Welch and other affordable-housing activists, as well as private developer Oz Ericson. She also said she sought broad community input, including that of the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association. She said Dogpatch community leader Joe Boss, among others, was consulted about the initiative "as it was finalized."

But Welch, Boss, and Susan Eslick (the president of the Dogpatch group) remember the story somewhat differently. As Eslick, who is not antidevelopment, put it, "We were completely mystified by the workforce housing proposal. There was no process whatsoever. It's an insult to the community."

Eslick and others say they were told about the proposal in vague terms in early summer, and they asked to see something in writing. Chamber representatives agreed to come back with firm numbers but never did.

Welch has a nearly identical story. He was told a plan would be forthcoming and that he would have an opportunity to see it. That never happened. "To use my name is untrue," he said.

If they'd taken Boss's input, he would have told them about his concern that the measure will transform citywide planning practices. "It's not just affecting the central waterfront," he told us. "It will become a de facto deal [citywide]."

Plus, as Boss pointed out, "there is absolutely no dictation of community benefits [such as money for open space or transportation]. And they have to be dictated, or they don't get done."

Prop. M: Even less care than Care Not Cash

Flanked by cheering supporters, Newsom kicked off his mayoral campaign in March with a message that would give rise to a new campaign against the homeless. Fresh on the heels of the success of Care Not Cash, he declared, "I want to end the tolerance for panhandling in the city and county of San Francisco."

If Prop. M passes Nov. 4, we will have done just that.

Backers insist they are after "aggressive panhandlers" only and are out to protect the public. But as with the workforce housing measure, Prop. M's problems can be found in the fine print.

The core of Prop. M is that begging "aggressively" or in specified locations – such as roadway medians or near ATMs – will be outlawed. Violators can be arrested and either fined or sent to a diversion program yet to be created by the city's health department.

Critics of the plan have found a host of problems, including the fact that the city already has an aggressive-panhandling law on the books, and violators already have the option of going through a diversion program to avoid fines or jail time.

"It's a rehash of what went on in the 1990s, with [then-mayor] Frank Jordan," Coalition on Homelessness director Paul Boden told us. "That's when we literally saw a whole series of these laws. That's when we started closing our parks at night [to keep the homeless out]."

But Newsom's proposal is even more stringent. "Each time, we keep broadening the definition of [what's illegal]," Boden said. "Literally, under this ordinance, kids asking for money so they can wash your cars could be breaking the law."

And there are other problems. A review by California's Legislative Analyst's Office, requested by state senate president pro tem John Burton, showed that key portions of the measure may be unconstitutional.

Burton has been one of the measure's most prominent opponents. "The police department has more to do than worry whether there's an aggressive panhandler with all the killing that's going on," he told us. "Panhandlers probably need a job, maybe a place to stay, and something to eat. I don't think it rises to the level where we need to get law enforcement [more] involved."

If it's housing they need, as Burton suggests, they aren't likely to get it. According to the San Francisco Department of Human Services, there are 242 families and 1,304 homeless individuals on the wait list for just one supportive-housing program run by the city.

Opponents also fear the vague description of "aggressive" panhandling leaves open the door for targeting people of color.

Just as with Care Not Cash, there are some serious flaws in the measure's arithmetic. According to the city controller, who analyzed the potential costs of the measure, the diversion and treatment programs called for under Prop. M could cost the city as much as $900,000. The controller didn't estimate how much taxpayers would have to spend to pay the police force for its extra work.

But Prop. M doesn't say how the programs will be funded, and the city services the homeless would be directed to are already overstressed.

Perhaps funds could come from the measure's downtown backers, who have already put $546,000 into the campaign this year. Add that to the $1 million spent last year to pass Care Not Cash – plus the ugly $65,000 campaign by the Hotel Council – and downtown's boosters have funneled nearly $1.6 million into trying to cut down cash assistance to homeless people and then criminalizing those same people if they are forced to beg for money on the street.

Newsom spokesperson John Shanley defended the measure. Opponents "want to tear it down and allow what's going on in the streets to continue." He said that he doesn't know why no funding source was put in the measure but that he hopes the Board of Supervisors will choose to fund it.

Money in the bank: the branding of Newsom

When filmmaker Sara Gambin began to research Care Not Cash last year, she stumbled on something she hadn't expected to see. In random person-on-the street interviews, she told us, many people said they supported the measure.

"They really thought they were doing the right thing," she said.

Yet as she continued to look into the story, which she presented Oct. 23 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in her short film "(In)visibility," Gambin found something else as well. "I researched what happened in New York and Chicago [where similar plans were implemented]. There was an increase in homelessness and an increase in incarceration." In the end, Gambin found that "the bottom line was that the dollars were not there."

Still, she saw that Newsom's campaign had its intended effect: there was a sense among the general public that he meant well.

That goodwill toward him cannot be underestimated. Newsom's handlers are smart people who know how to target campaigns. Take the massive black-and-white billboard in the Castro (part of $80,000 in billboard space that Clear Channel donated to the campaign) that ties the tragic fact that 169 people with no known address died last year to Prop. M. While there's no evidence that arresting people and sending them to nonexistent programs will stop homeless deaths, it's a powerful billboard and is likely to draw sympathy from voters who want to help.

It gets worse. A mailer that hit the streets as we went to press quotes Dr. Michael "Mickey" Rokeach, apparently a San Francisco emergency room physician, stating that voters should support Prop. M because "last year, 169 panhandlers died on our streets." What's wrong with this statement? So much. We know from the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office that 169 people have died this year with no known address, but there has been no investigation into the circumstances of their deaths. Public health officials have said that often homeless deaths are related to drugs and alcohol – but again, there has been no investigation into this year's statistic. Which also means there is no way to know how many – if any – of the dead were panhandlers.

The ballot campaigns also provide Newsom with face time – without campaign spending limits of $500 a person. As Common Cause's Charles Marsteller told us, "M is a campaign vehicle because it's about message and image. [And it offers a] way of making a large contribution to Gavin Newsom." The workforce measure, branded as Newsom's, is also being used to promote the candidate – and it's not even on the ballot yet.

In a sense, it comes down to what we let the candidate get away with. Will the media raise questions about Newsom's promises in the final days before the campaign, or will he be let off the hook?

"It's very easy to pretend you're compassionate when the media is on your side," Boden told us. Because, as he said, it's all about a clash of values: if the voters believe Newsom is the brand of candidate who can sweep the homeless from the streets and build housing without raising taxes or cutting services, then maybe that's enough to get him elected.

"This whole focus on quality of life is just an incredibly classist standard regarding what constitutes civil behavior," Boden said. "If the downtown is clean and happy with no homeless people, everything's OK in society."

E-mail Rachel Brahinsky