Dianne Feinstein urges Ed Lee to run for SF mayor

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is calling on Mayor Ed Lee to run for a full four-year term, saying she believes "San Francisco needs his steady leadership and unifying presence in City Hall."

In a statement released to us late Tuesday, Feinstein said that despite Lee's earlier pledge not to run, "his responsibility is to the people of San Francisco, and the voters alone should determine whether this talented public servant should continue on the job."

Feinstein cited the former city administrator's success with both the budget and pension reform, and her own "unusual circumstances" in becoming mayor after the 1978 assassination of Mayor George Moscone.

"I worked to earn the voters' trust during those early months in office, and they rewarded me with two full terms," she said.

Feinstein pulled Lee aside at the Giants' White House meet-and-greet Monday to make one last pitch to him.

In response to Feinstein, Lee  also issued us a statement, saying he "appreciated and valued" her counsel and advice but stopping short of saying he intended to run.

Feinstein first lobbied Lee to run back in April when they met before a breakfast with President Obama, then renewed her efforts during a trip home to San Francisco, according to former Mayor Willie Brown. Brown, now a Chronicle columnist, is also among those urging Lee to run.

At City Hall, the phone calls have been pouring in from people on both sides of the issue - some asking supervisors to come out in support of a Lee run, others urging them to go public against the idea.

The mayor's people are also fielding phone calls from business and labor groups relaying the message that if Lee does get in, he'd better do so quickly or risk missing out on key endorsements.

They have been told the mayor will have a decision within days. The filing deadline is Aug. 12.

Although Lee is still being coy, his biggest backers think he's in.

"When this is all done, I'm going to send a box of chocolates to Chronicle Editorial Editor John Diaz," said Lee booster Rose Pak, referring to an editorial a week ago Sunday urging Lee not to run.

The editorial "had just the opposite effect," Pak said. "It might have just been the kick in the pants he needed."

Judicial pot luck: Like a lot of America, Gov. Jerry Brown got his first glimpse of UC Berkeley law Professor Goodwin Liu during contentious Senate confirmation hearings last year.

Senate Republicans ultimately blocked Liu's nomination to the federal appeals court in San Francisco, but Brown was impressed. On Tuesday, he nominated Liu for the state Supreme Court.

That followed a series of conversations between the two men on judicial philosophy - but no quizzing on Liu's stands on such hot-button issues as same-sex marriage or the death penalty.

Eventually, the deal was sealed at a sit-down at the governor's private office loft on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland.

Just Brown, Liu and - of course - Brown's wife and chief adviser, Anne Gust Brown.

Boho bounce: Pacific Heights socialite and society page regular Laney Thornton was tossed from the annual Bohemian Grove encampment up on the Russian River.

His alleged offense: pulling out his cell phone, supposedly to check the time.

A camp memo was promptly sent out to club members, reminding them that cell phones are a one-strike-and-you're-out crime.

Giant play: Nothing unusual about public officials flocking to Giants events - but you don't often see them paying their own way.

But that was just the case for the team's White House visit.

Police Chief Greg Suhr, a lifetime Giants fan, spent $2,000 of his own money to fly back in the hope of getting President Obama to autograph a ball.

What he got was a room packed with 250 people and little chance of even shaking the president's hand.

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano did get to meet Obama. "I thanked him for his change of position on the Defense of Marriage Act," he said.

"Well, you know," the president replied, "it's a high priority for me."

"Well, in that case," Ammiano told Obama, "let's get married."

By the way, it turns out that Mayor Ed Lee and his wife, Anita, were nearly locked out of the affair when their names were inadvertently left off the guest list with security.

Fortunately, Sen. Dianne Feinstein was there and vouched for them - but not before she was asked to produce her own ID.

Ed Lee: No good reasons he shouldn't run for mayor

Of course Ed Lee should run for mayor. I'm surprised we are even debating the idea.

He's qualified, he's popular and, most important, he's already doing the job well.

It is not like people aren't getting a good look at him. He shows up everywhere. The other day Lee was at a beach cleanup, unannounced. I am trying to remember when the last time former Mayor Gavin Newsom did that. And if he did, how big his entourage was.

OK, Lee benefits from the anti-slick factor - Newsom was a fine and popular mayor, but Lee is a welcome contrast - but that's no reason to make him mayor. This has to be a smart choice for the city or there is no reason to do it.

Right now I think it is. Sure, a bruising campaign might change my mind. But that's the reason we have bruising campaigns. Put them in the cage, and see who the winner is. We like to call it democracy.

But, you say, there are compelling reasons why Lee should stay out. All right, let's take a look at those.

He would be breaking a solemn promise not to run. Right. And I promised my mother that alcohol would never pass my lips. Look, at the time of the selection of an interim mayor, City Hall insiders were begging Lee to run. They didn't think he'd be a threat but, just in case, they added a poison pill.

Now it turns out he's more popular than anyone imagined. So the candidates are saying, OK, he might be doing a good job and he might be a good choice, but he swore he wouldn't run. I must have missed the part where Lee made a blood oath to the voters of San Francisco. Because, unless I skipped civics class (and I did, and I regret it today), they are the ones who will be making this decision.

As for the politicians who are thundering about how Lee looked them in the eye, shook their hand and promised not to run - get over yourselves. You are going to tell us, the residents of San Francisco, we can't vote for Lee because you made a backroom deal? I wouldn't want to campaign on that platform.

If he runs, he would become a politician. Yep. He would. It is a political office. We don't elect yoga instructors or professional snowboarders, we elect politicians. He'd have to give speeches, answer criticism and take stands on issues.

That's the idea. It might turn out that Lee isn't good at those things. We would like to know that. That's the job description.

As for the idea that it somehow cheapens Lee's brand to come out and say he's an actual politician, what does that say about the other 30-some candidates? They are admitted politicians, and I have papers to prove it.

Lee won't get his old job back if he runs for mayor. First, if he wins, he doesn't need his old job. But let's say he runs and loses.

By all accounts he was very good at his old job, city administrator (whatever that is). So the idea is that we should not go back to where he was serving the city well because he had the temerity to run for office. Can you really say that with a straight face?

Besides, being interim mayor is a nice little resume polisher. I'd imagine he'd get loads of job offers if he needs to find work.

It will skew the race if Lee enters because he would be an immediate favorite. Oh, boo hoo. This isn't peewee soccer where everyone gets a trophy. This is an election for one of the most powerful positions in the state. If you can win only if you limit the field, you don't deserve it.

Finally, as Chinatown power broker Rose Pak would say, he's not Leland Yee, who looks like the likely winner now. Yee has lots of opinions, sometimes two or three on the same subject. Better the Lee you know than the Yee you don't, I'd say.

S.F. supervisors urged to back Lee run for mayor

San Francisco business and development interests are pushing members of the Board of Supervisors to publicly endorse Mayor Ed Lee's potential run for a full term in November, although the lobbying appears to be bearing little fruit.

The blessing of a majority of the 11-member board could give Lee political cover to go back on his pledge not to run for a four-year term, a stance he took before he was appointed in January to serve out the remaining year of Mayor Gavin Newsom's term after Newsom was elected lieutenant governor.

The endorsement effort came as Lee on Wednesday refused to rule out running, saying, "There are interesting discussions going on."

Those asking supervisors to back a Lee run appear short of garnering support from a majority of the board, where two members are mayoral candidates and two Lee allies said they don't want him to jump into the race.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, one of six supervisors who voted to appoint Lee as interim mayor in the crucial early round of voting when Lee garnered one more vote than Sheriff Michael Hennessey, said he had been repeatedly lobbied over the past week by leaders "across industries and, surprisingly, by people who I thought were lined up with other candidates."

"They have told me they are reaching out to all of the members of the board, or at least all of the members of the board who aren't running for mayor," Elsbernd said. "I've been clear ... that I wanted a (caretaker) mayor that would not be a candidate in November."

Supervisor Scott Wiener also said he had been asked to back a Lee candidacy. Wiener, who has endorsed City Attorney Dennis Herrera, his old boss, in the mayor's race, declined to say who made the pitch, other than to say it was not anyone from the mayor's staff or Lee's prominent backers, including former Mayor Willie Brown or Chinatown power broker Rose Pak.

Other supervisors, including Ross Mirkarimi, said they'd had informal discussions with supporters of a Lee candidacy but weren't asked to publicly back him.

The current board, though, is largely the wrong target if Lee wants to be released from his promise not to run, Elsbernd said.

"If the intent of this is to relieve the mayor of his pledge to the board, it's not necessarily this board that should be consulted, but the six members of the board who last January truly elected this mayor," Elsbernd said. "If not for the six of us, Mike Hennessey would be mayor right now."

The six - Elsbernd, board President David Chiu, Supervisor Carmen Chu and former Supervisors Bevan Dufty, Michela Alioto-Pier and Sophie Maxwell - cast the critical votes that were essentially ratified a few days later when a newly sworn-in board voted 11-0 to appoint Lee.

Only one of those original six - Carmen Chu - voiced support for a Lee candidacy. Three of the others - Chiu, Dufty and Alioto-Pier - are already candidates

"I think that the possibility was always out there," said Chu, who said she never asked Lee to promise not to run before she voted for him. "I certainly think he owes it to himself and the city to think about it, to consider it."

Others see a possible Lee run as a betrayal.

"I certainly would feel like he did not keep his word," Maxwell said. "That would be very troubling to me, that he did not keep his word, because based on his word, I voted for him."

Chiu and Dufty both said they believe Lee to be a man of his word and don't expect him to run.

If he does, Maxwell, a staunch Herrera backer, said Lee won't get her vote again - even under the city's ranked-choice voting system that allows voters to pick up to three candidates.

"Would Ed Lee be one of my three people?" Maxwell said. "No, because he said he would not run."

Sen. Leland Yee campaign quick to hammer Mayor Ed Lee on promise

Well, it's pretty clear who is concerned about the possibility of Mayor Ed Lee reversing course and jumping into the mayor's race.

Right at the head of that pack would be state Sen. Leland Yee, who also happens to be a frontrunner in the race.

Within hours of reports that Lee was vacillating in his commitment not to run, a scathing YouTube video titled "Promise" began circulating among City Hall types. A political consultant for Yee's campaign, Jim Stearns, actually uploaded the video two weeks ago but then sent out a tweet about it today to his 260 followers saying: "If I were to make a video about Run Ed Run, it might look something like this."

The video features everyone from then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to former Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who voted to appoint Lee, saying the post called for a caretaker, not someone who would run in November.

Some of those urging Lee to run say he's the only candidate who can prevent Yee -- who critics say shamelessly panders to whatever audience he faces -- from winning.

Others are fuming at the possibility he'll break his promise not to run.

Stearns said the video was "certainly not meant as an attack."

It's "more of a friendly reminder that Ed Lee would not be mayor today if he hadn't made a promise not to run," Stearns said in an e-mail. "That the Chamber of Commerce, the Chronicle, former Mayor Newsom and the Board of Supervisors would not have approved his appointment if he hadn't made that promise. And that we all need help sometimes keeping our promises, especially in the face of intense pressure from (Chinese Chamber of Commerce head) Rose Pak and other powers."

Lee hasn't even said he's going to run, so if this is any taste of what the campaign will be like, buckle up.

Surge in SF Vacation Rentals Squeezes Residents

Last year, Pamela Kelley went to her landlord with a business proposition: She would move out of her rent-controlled apartment in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco if the owner agreed to turn the unit into a vacation rental and pay Kelley to manage it.
“Tourists are our bread and butter in this city, and many want that real San Francisco experience, not a hotel,” said Kelley, 48, who previously ran a cleaning service and a trophy engraving business.
The arrangement has been lucrative for both Kelley and the landlord, Harold Wong. As a tenant, Kelley paid $2,100 a month for her one-bedroom apartment. It now brings in $225 a night for Wong — more than $6,700 a month if the unit is fully booked. Kelley receives a 10 percent commission.
“It’s just better utilizing your assets to get a better return,” Wong said.
He has since turned over to Kelley a second apartment to manage as a vacation rental, and he is exploring additional conversions at the 13 properties his family owns throughout San Francisco.
Such conversions are largely illegal under San Francisco’s rent-control laws, but according to census figures released last month, the practice of converting private residences into what are effectively hotels is widespread. In some popular San Francisco neighborhoods, there are now more housing units dedicated to “seasonal, recreational or occasional use” than there are available apartments for rent.
In one section of Russian Hill, 176 second homes were available for rent, compared with 115 vacant apartments, the census showed. In Rincon Hill near AT&T Park, there were 594 second homes and 189 available rentals. Another census tract, in Pacific Heights, had 129 vacation homes and 95 units for rent.
“It’s become a very active speculative industry to be affirmatively turning rental apartments into hotels,” said Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union.
The census counted 5,564 vacation homes in San Francisco — up from 3,764 in 2000 and 1,509 in 1990. (San Jose, by contrast, had 845 vacation homes, according to the census. Oakland had 633.)
Christine Haw, code enforcement supervisor in the San Francisco Planning Department, said the trend was “deeply troubling.”
“They are taking away from the city’s affordable housing stock and the amount of units available for permanent residents,” Haw said.
And yet the city is enabling the rapid growth of vacation rentals.
A three-decade-old ordinance forbids San Francisco property owners from renting out a private residence for fewer than 30 days without acquiring an expensive permit to convert the property to tourist use. But the measure is essentially unenforced.
Haw said the city did not have enough staff members to investigate dozens of complaints the Planning Department had received about illegal rentals. “We’d have to go out at night to verify that the person is renting out the property illegally,” she said. “They are difficult cases to prove.”
Jack Song, a spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said Herrera was “aware that there are violations.” But the city attorney’s office has not initiated
legal action against a single property owner, Song said, because neither the Planning Department nor the Department of Building Inspection has referred a case.
At the same time, San Francisco’s treasurer has begun collecting a 14 percent hotel tax from landlords who rent apartments to out-of-towners on a short-term basis.
Everyone “should pay their tax and bring in revenue regardless of being a big operator or small operator,” said Greg Kato, a spokesman for José Cisneros, the city’s treasurer.
Kato said the city collected $186.8 million in hotel tax in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010, but he could not estimate what percent of that came from short-term rentals. Owners of some properties, like Wong, have voluntarily paid the hotel tax, believing that will lessen the possibility of enforcement from other parts of city government.
Hundreds of San Francisco properties are listed on websites like Vacation Rentals by Owner (VRBO), Airbnb and Craigslist. Douglas Quinby, senior director at PhoCusWright Inc., a travel analysis company based in Connecticut, said on-line listings had been a major driving force behind what he called an “extraordinary transformation of the residential real estate market over the past decade.”
“Ten years ago as a second home owner, you would have to list it with a local real state agency or work with a property management company in a destination to make it work,” Quinby said. “With the advent of on-line listing services you can spend a few hundred dollars a year and get your property in front of all sorts of eyeballs and potential guests.”
When Julia Bergeron of Woodland Hills, Calif., decided to take her family of four to San Francisco for Memorial Day weekend, one of the first places she looked was the VRBO website. The apartment she liked most was Kelley’s old one on Larkin Street in Russian Hill.
“Even though Union Square is in the middle of downtown, sometimes it feels kind of grungy,” Bergeron said, “but there was none of that where we stayed.”
By then, Kelley had remodeled the unit to accommodate vacationers, hiring an interior decorator who redid the kitchen in a country-modern style. New curtains were installed, comfortable bedding was provided and an ancient radiator was replaced. The entire apartment was painted bright blue.
For Bergeron, who has two daughters, 8 and 11, the main attraction was that it was a one-bedroom priced at $225 a night, parking included.
“With a hotel, there’s no privacy, and you spend a lot of money eating out,” she said.
Kelley has taken on three additional properties since moving out of her place on Larkin Street. She manages an apartment on Union Street owned by Wong, and two three-story town houses on Green Street at the top of Russian Hill.
Gullicksen, of the tenants union, argued that the expansion came at a cost.
“We call it the ‘hotelization’ of San Francisco,” he said. “Seniors, families and low-income tenants are being pushed out. We have to fight for every affordable unit.”
But Kelley said she doubted that the city would ever enforce laws against short-term rentals as long as property owners continued to pay the hotel tax.
And Kelley predicted that more units would be turned into vacation rentals as landlords sought to avoid rent-control laws available to long-term tenants.
“The city has made its bed with restrictive rent-control laws,” she said, “but with a vacation rental you can avoid that.”
Fred Waldman, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who owns one of the Green Street properties managed by Kelley, agrees, saying, “It certainly avoids some of the downsides of long-term rentals. Waldman’s 2,088-square-foot condo, with breathtaking views of the Golden Gate Bridge, rents for $650 a night.
“Pamela does everything” to make the unit suitable for vacationers, he said. “All I had to do was go in once and fix the Wifi, and the income more than covers my mortgage payments.”

New public works chief to be picked

Now that San Francisco public works chief Ed Reiskin will be shifting gears to take over as head of the Municipal Transportation Agency, there's a hole to fill at the Department of Public Works.

City Administrator Amy Brown, who makes the hire, briefly talked to Mayor Ed Lee Thursday about who would be best to replace Reiskin. More conversations will take place next week. The goal is to have someone in the job by Aug. 15, the day Reiskin begins at Muni.

Brown said the next DPW director will probably get the post on an interim basis - at least in the beginning. The pick most likely will come from inside city government, she said. DPW has three deputy directors and a squad of bureau chiefs, and there are plenty of public works alums scattered throughout city government.

DPW, which oversees road repaving, public landscaping, city construction projects, street cleaning and other programs, has an annual budget of $176 million and about 1,200 full-time employees.

City Hall insiders say the front-runner for the job is Mohammed Nuru, the deputy director of operations for public works. He has close ties to Lee, who before becoming mayor served as city administrator and director of public works.

Nuru is also tight with former Mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsome, and has strong working relationships with members of the Board of Supervisors and neighborhood groups.

Known on Twitter as MrCleanSF, Nuru has been the longtime go-to guy for street cleaning and graffiti removal. He knows the grittiest corners of the city, and is often seen pushing a broom himself. When asked about a possible promotion, Nuru said, "Nobody's talked to me. I'm just out here sweeping trash."

- Rachel Gordon

Quick "reminder": Well, it's pretty clear who is concerned about the possibility of Mayor Ed Lee reversing course and jumping into the mayor's race.

Right at the head of that pack would be state Sen. Leland Yee, who also happens to be a front-runner in the race.

Within hours of reports that Lee was vacillating in his commitment not to run, a scathing YouTube video titled "Promise" began circulating among City Hall types. A political consultant for Yee's campaign, Jim Stearns, actually uploaded the video two weeks ago but said he only starting telling people about it Thursday.

The video features everyone from then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to former Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who voted to appoint Lee, saying the post called for a caretaker, not someone who would run in November.

Some of those urging Lee to run say he's the only candidate who can prevent Yee - whom critics say shamelessly panders to whatever audience he faces - from winning.

Others are fuming at the possibility Lee will break his promise not to run.

Stearns said the video was "certainly not meant as an attack."

It's "more of a friendly reminder that Ed Lee would not be mayor today if he hadn't made a promise not to run," Stearns said in an e-mail. "That the Chamber of Commerce, The Chronicle, former Mayor Newsom and the Board of Supervisors would not have approved his appointment if he hadn't made that promise. And that we all need help sometimes keeping our promises, especially in the face of intense pressure."

Lee hasn't even said he's going to run, so if this is any taste of what the campaign will be like, buckle up.

- John Coté

Ed Reiskin named new head of S.F. transit agency

Katy Raddatz / The Chronicle

Ed Reiskin, head of S.F. Public Works since 2008, now will oversee the city's Muni, parking, traffic management, bicycle, pedestrian and taxi programs.

San Francisco -- Ed Reiskin will be named today as the new executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, The Chronicle has learned.

Reiskin, the city's public works director since 2008, starts one of the most demanding jobs on the city payroll without experience at a transportation agency but with the reputation as a top-notch manager with a passion for city living.

The Municipal Transportation Agency governing board interviewed Reiskin behind closed doors for an hour Tuesday, but delayed an announcement until today, said a knowledgeable source.

Before arriving in San Francisco, Reiskin served as interim city administrator and deputy mayor of public safety in the District of Columbia and as deputy city manager in Oakland. He came to San Francisco in 2007 to run the city's 311 customer service center. He has close ties to Mayor Ed Lee, the former city administrator who was his boss at the 311 center and the Department of Public Works. He also is well regarded by members of the Board of Supervisors.

In his new job, he will oversee Muni - the nation's eighth-largest transit system - and San Francisco's parking, traffic management, bicycle, pedestrian and taxi programs. The agency often lands in the city's political crossfire, with close scrutiny from citizen activists, labor groups, elected officials, and Muni riders and operators.

Reiskin has agreed to a three-year contract, and will be paid $294,000 annually, the source said. That's nearly $15,000 a year less than the base salary for Nathaniel Ford, who left the agency's top job last month after a 5 1/2-year tenure. Reiskin is scheduled to start his new gig Aug. 15.

He will head an agency with 5,000 employees and a $780.6 million annual operating budget that has been troubled by a chronic deficit, low employee morale and a public long frustrated by unreliable Muni service and rising parking fees and fines.

At the same time, the transportation system is one of the most dynamic in the United States when it comes to transit coverage and ridership numbers. It also boasts the popular cable cars - rolling national landmarks - and a fleet of historic streetcars. It recently launched SFpark, an internationally watched program that will attempt to combat congestion by micromanaging the public parking supply through pricing.

One of Reiskin's first challenges will be to implement the new contract for Muni's 2,000-plus operators. It was imposed by an outside arbitrator last month after the rank and file voted overwhelmingly to reject it.

Reiskin was one of two finalists for the job. The other was Debra Johnson, the agency's director of administration, taxis and accessible services, who has been serving as interim executive director since Ford's departure.

ULI expert: More condo pain, rental gain to come

San Francisco Business Times

Date: Thursday, June 23, 2011, 7:04am PDT

San Francisco is about to see a flurry of rental housing construction unlike anything seen in a long time -- and it may be a good thing, according to John McIlwain, the Ronald Terwilliger Chair For Housing at the Urban Land Institute.

McIlwain says apartment rents will continue to escalate for another three years but for-sale housing prices will remain sluggish through 2012. Approximately 3,500 units of rental housing could be under construction this time next year if developers are successful in obtaining financing.

McIlwain, who was in San Francisco this week for a ULI panel, said apartments rents will escalate 3 to 5 percent through 2014 and then slow down.

“As jobs come back Gen Y people will be forming households -- there is a huge pent-up demand in household formation,” he told the Business Times. “The anticipation is they are not going to buy, they are going to rent.”

Meanwhile, home ownership is on the decline and will continue to drop, he said.

At its peak in 2006 more than 69 percent of U.S. households owned their homes. Since the housing market crashed, that number has dropped to 66.4 percent. McIlwain said he thinks it could further drop to between 62 and 64 percent, the level of home-ownership the United States had in the 1960s.

“That is another 3 million households that will be pushed into the rental market,” said McIlwain. “People who have been foreclosed on. People who have not moved out of the basement yet, who are still living with Mom and Pop. There is a lot of pent-up demand.”

On the condo/for-sale side, McIlwain said prices will go down 3 to 5 percent nationally in 2011, with hot urban areas like San Francisco doing slightly better. While many housing economists predict 2012 will be a strong one for condos and single-family homes sales, McIlwain is not so sure.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) Detectors Save Lives;

Most Homeowners Must Install Carbon Monoxide Detectors by July 1^st

The San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office, the Department of Building Inspection (DBI), and the San Francisco Fire Department, today announced a City-wide outreach drive to inform residents that effective July 1^st a new State law requires owners to install immediately carbon monoxide detectors to safeguard residents’ lives and safety.

The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate carbon monoxide (CO), which is an invisible, odorless and colorless gas created by the incomplete combustion of carbon fuels, kills 500 people a year and injures another 20,000 people nationwide.  To prevent these accidental deaths and injuries, the California legislature enacted SB 183 – mandating residential property owners to install carbon monoxide detectors in existing dwelling units having a fossil fuel burning heater or appliance, fireplace, or attached garage.

“This is sensible life-saving, injury-prevention legislation,” said Mayor Edwin M. Lee, ”and a new public safety responsibility we want all homeowners to know about and to implement immediately.  By acting quickly and installing these warning detectors, homeowners will protect their families and give them enough time to evacuate safely and to call 911 for emergency assistance when CO poisoning is present.”

An information brochure about these important warning detectors will be posted on the DBI, Fire Department and Mayor’s Office web sites. Visit www.sfdbi.org, www.sffd.org, and www.sfgov.org/Mayor to download.

CO devices must be installed in all specified single-family dwellings by July 1, 2011.  All other specified dwelling units must have CO devices installed by January 1, 2013.

The Office of the State Fire Marshal (SFM) lists certified CO devices that meet the requirement specified within the Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Prevention Act of 2010. Please visit the SFM’s web site at http://osfm.fire.ca.gov/licensinglistings/licenselisting_bml_searchcotest.php and select Carbon Monoxide Alarms and Carbon Monoxide Detectors for a complete list of approved devices.

Other details of the law include:

• Owners shall install CO devices in a manner consistent with building standards applicable to new construction for the relevant type of occupancy if it is technically feasible.  See the 2010 California Building Code, Section 420.4, and the 2010 California Residential Code, Section R315.
• CO devices shall produce a distinct audible alarm.
• Tenants must notify the responsible party if the CO device becomes inoperable or deficient.
• CO devices may be combined with a smoke detector, if the combination device meets all specified SFM listing and approval requirements.
• Per the California Building Standards Commission, a new device must be installed when the owner applies for a permit to alter, repair or make an addition to a dwelling unit whose cost valuation is one thousand or more dollars.
• A local enforcement agency shall provide the property owner a 30-day notice to correct, and provide (post online) Self-Certification affidavit forms homeowners are required to complete and submit.
• Local jurisdictions are authorized to adopt ordinances requiring CO devices if the ordinance is consistent with the requirement of this bill.

Page Two/Install Carbon Monoxide Detectors Effective July 1, 2011

• Violation of Health & Safety Code Section 17926 is an infraction punishable by a maximum fine of two-hundred dollars for each offense, plus applicable enforcement agency penalties.

Required Installation Locations Within the Dwelling Unit

Residential buildings shall have CO alarms installed:

• Outside each sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of bedroom(s)
• On every level of the dwelling unit, including basements

Hotels and motels shall have CO alarms installed:

• On the ceiling of sleeping units with permanently installed fuel-burning appliances

Allowable Types of CO Alarms, Required Power Source, Installation Protocol and Agency Approval

• CO alarms that are solely battery powered are acceptable for installation in existing buildings where the wall coverings are not removed for construction purposes.
• For new construction, CO alarms must be powered by the building’s wiring system, i.e. be “hard-wired,” be interconnected, and have battery back-up.

CO Alarms installed in California are required to be approved by the California State Fire

Marshal (SFM).

Some CO alarms are wall-mounted and some are ceiling-mounted. Please follow the manufacturer’s

installation instructions.

Combination CO/Smoke Alarms are available and may be used as long as they are SFM

approved.

CO alarms have a limited lifespan (varies by alarm), and must be replaced in accordance with the

manufacturer’s instructions. Homeowners should maintain the records of the date they installed

the alarm, as well as retain a copy of the manufacturer’s instructions.

Like smoke alarms, CO alarms should be tested in accordance with the manufacturer’s

recommendations. Batteries should be replaced at least annually.

For a full list of this new legislation’s stipulations please review the Department of Housing and Community Development’s Information Bulletin 2011-01 at http://www.hcd.ca.gov/codes/shl/infobulls/IB2011-01.pdf.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE            : June16,2011

Contact: DBI Technical Services, Tel. 415/558-6205, and/or Mindy Talmadge, SFFD, Tel. 415/558-3403

Death by Nostalgia

By SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN

Published: June 10, 2011

THE modern historic preservation movement started in New York City in the early 1960s, when a band of locals pushed the issue into popular awareness with their unsuccessful effort to block the destruction of the old Pennsylvania Station.

Now, nearly a half-century later, New York is home to the most high-profile attack on the movement yet: in a recent exhibition at the New Museum, the architect Rem Koolhaas accused preservationists of aimlessly cherry-picking the past; of destroying people’s complex sense of urban evolution; and, most damningly, of bedding down with private developers to create gentrified urban theme parks.

Some of Mr. Koolhaas’s criticisms are on target — but his analysis is wildly off-base. It’s not preservation that’s at fault, but rather the weakness, and often absence, of other, complementary tools to manage urban development, like urban planning offices and professional, institutionalized design review boards, which advise planners on decisions about preservation and development.

It’s that lack, and the outsize power of private developers, that has turned preservation into the unwieldy behemoth that it is today.

Some historical context is in order. As American cities expanded rapidly between 1890 and 1930, urban dwellers and municipal governments realized that developers, who were building ever-larger and ever-taller buildings, would never reliably serve the public interest.

So cities tried to strike back: Manhattan’s hulking Equitable Building, which blocks street-level sunlight practically all day, helped provoke New York’s 1916 zoning resolution that required significant setbacks for tall buildings.

Then, in 1926, the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities could regulate the use of private property based on the broader public interest. Professional city planning was born, but systems to vet building and urban design quality at the federal, state and local levels — common in countries and cities across Europe — were never institutionalized.

By midcentury, professional urban planners were developing and sometimes designing large-scale, long-term regional and urban plans and helping write land-use and other laws to govern urban development’s shape and future.

But without design-review mechanisms, their output of low-quality public housing and ill-conceived megablocks soon turned the public against them. By the late 1960s, an emergent populist, antigovernment sentiment among voters began to shift power back into private hands.

City governments, suffering the economic downturns of the 1970s and ’80s, gave ever more leeway to real estate developers, and ever more voice and political power to hyperlocal community boards; both groups typically focused on their own narrow and usually short-term interests rather than the broader, long-term public good.

As a result, historic preservation laws, which by the late 1970s were increasingly popular in a country bored by modernism and excited by nostalgia, became, de facto, one of city governments’ most powerful instruments for influencing private development.

Tax-starved cities, inspired by earlier preservation projects like Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco and Faneuil Hall in Boston, began to use preservation to create so-called target destinations; New York’s first foray was the initially successful South Street Seaport.

Savvy developers soon began collaborating with cities and preservationists, co-opting the movement for their own interests while capitalizing on the public’s nostalgia for yesteryear. Developers became experts at including just enough of the old — a facade here, a foyer there — to ease the approval process and even win sizable tax breaks on their projects.

In other words, preservation morphed into a four-headed monster: a planning tool, a design review tool, a development tool and a tool to preserve genuinely valuable old neighborhoods and buildings. Today decisions about managing urban development are frequently framed as decisions about what and what not to preserve, with little sense of how those decisions affect the surrounding neighborhood.

Worse, these decisions are mostly left to the whims of overly empowered preservation boards, staffed by amateurs casting their nets too widely and indiscriminately. And too many buildings are preserved not because of their historic value or aesthetic significance, but because of political or economic deal-making.

Instead of bashing preservation, we should restrict it to its proper domain. Design review boards, staffed by professionals trained in aesthetics and urban issues and able to influence planning and preservation decisions, should become an integral part of the urban development process. At the same time, city planning offices must be returned to their former, powerful role in urban policy.

That’s the way things work in Europe, where vibrant contemporary cities like London, Berlin, Paris and almost any city in the Netherlands blend old and new without effacing their normal evolutionary processes.

As these cities demonstrate, preservation should be one of several instruments necessary for creating livable, attractive and vibrant urban spaces and architecture. Otherwise, in the hands of weak local governments, powerful real-estate interests and untrained panels, it is indeed an impediment to the healthy modernization of our cities: a recipe for aesthetic insipidity and urban incoherence.

Sarah Williams Goldhagen is the architecture critic for The New Republic.

Home Prices Exploding in Silicon Valley Amid More Millionaires

By Dan Levy - Jun 15, 2011 3:52 PM PT

A sold sticker is displayed on a for sale sign outside of a home in Palo Alto, California. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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June 15 (Bloomberg) -- A surge in wealth from technology stock sales and initial public offerings is spilling into the Silicon Valley real estate market as newly rich workers bid up home values in suburban cities south of San Francisco. Bloomberg's Cris Valerio reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

A sold sticker is displayed on a for sale sign outside of a home in Palo Alto, California. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

The Hoover Tower stands at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

A surge in wealth from technology stock sales and initial public offerings is spilling into the Silicon Valley real estate market as newly rich workers bid up home values in suburban cities south of San Francisco.

The median price of single-family houses sold in Palo Alto, home of Facebook Inc., climbed 20 percent in May from a year earlier to $1.63 million, the biggest jump since 2008, according to preliminary figures from research company DataQuick. In Mountain View, the base of LinkedIn Corp., prices rose 3.1 percent to $957,500, the ninth year-over-year gain in 12 months.

The advances are defying a U.S. housing slump that has sent national values to an eight-year low. Share sales such as the IPO of LinkedIn -- which doubled on its first day of trading -- and an expected offering from Facebook will fuel a boom in some Silicon Valley cities into 2013, said Kenneth Rosen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“It’s just the beginning of the story and I suspect we’ll see an explosion in the next couple years,” Rosen, chairman of the school’s Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got young people with real money, and it’s not surprising they want to have a house.”

IPO Filings

Almost 300 companies have filed for IPOs in 2011, the most for any year during the same period since 2000, and more than 10 percent of those are in California, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Silicon Valley is the U.S. hub for early-stage companies, receiving almost 40 percent of the $23.3 billion in venture-firm investments last year, estimates from the National Venture Capital Association show.

Pandora Media Inc. climbed 8.9 percent today as shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The online radio company, based about 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Silicon Valley in Oakland, raised $234.9 million in its IPO. Shares were priced at $16, above the expected $10 to $12 range.

The real estate gains in Silicon Valley, located primarily in the San Jose metropolitan area, are mostly occurring in towns where million-dollar values are already the norm. The median price in Cupertino gained 12 percent last month from May 2010 to $1.08 million, and values in Saratoga rose 4.7 percent to $1.62 million, according to San Diego-based DataQuick.

U.S. Price Declines

Housing in much of the rest of the nation is struggling as foreclosures and unemployment of more than 9 percent weigh on consumer sentiment. Home prices in 20 U.S. cities dropped 3.6 percent in March from a year earlier to the lowest since 2003, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values. The measure has declined 33 percent from its 2006 peak.

In Palo Alto, traffic at home showings has tripled in the last three weeks, with the average age of potential buyers dropping from about 50 to the mid-30s, said Daniel Siciliano, an associate dean at Stanford Law School who attends the tours because he’s in the market for a bigger house.

“People at startups have a lot of pent-up demand and tend to spend a portion of their new liquidity pretty quickly,” Siciliano said of his newfound competition for residential real estate. “They want to manifest their wealth.”

Past Silicon Valley property booms started in Palo Alto, adjacent to the Stanford campus, and Cupertino, home of Apple Inc. (AAPL), because of those institutional links and their coveted public schools, said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. Buyers from China have also been drawn by education resources in prestige valley locations and pushed up demand.

‘Happening Place’

“We’re a happening place because of the university and a lot of the folks that have been buying are relatively young,” said Levy, who has viewed downtown condominiums selling for double what he paid in 2005. “We have the best train service to San Francisco. I can be downtown in 35 minutes.”

Sean Scott, head of sales for Redwood City-based software firm Ingenuity Systems Inc., looked at a four-bedroom, two-bath home in Palo Alto last month priced at $1.8 million. The house has “soaring ceilings and generous living spaces,” two patios and a “lush backyard garden,” according to a marketing flyer.

A sale is pending for more than 20 percent above the asking price, or at least $2.2 million, after five bids were received, said Denise Simons, the listing agent at Alain Pinel Realtors.

“The market seems to be returning to the crazy days and the question is whether or not it is a false recovery or a sustained recovery,” Scott said in an e-mail after viewing two more homes at $1.25 million or more, and declining to make any offers. “I suspect that it is a sustained recovery, given the planned liquidity events with social-networking companies.”

Facebook IPO

Speculation that Facebook will go public in the next year is mounting even as the world’s largest social-media site remains silent about its plans. The company may have an IPO in the first quarter of 2012 with a valuation as high as $100 billion, cable channel CNBC reported June 13, citing people familiar with the matter.

Some investors have already cashed in equity in their companies through private share sales, boosting Silicon Valley housing demand and contributing to price gains, Rosen said. Stakes in closely held firms can be sold on secondary exchanges such as SharesPost Inc., which connects buyers and sellers. The exchange values Facebook at almost $53 billion.

Shares granted to employees of public companies can’t be sold until 180 days after the IPO, under U.S. securities rules.

New Millionaires

“You will probably see hundreds, if not thousands, of newly minted millionaires in the next two or three years,” said Steve Eskenazi, a tech investor in Hillsborough, north of Palo Alto, where the minimum lot size is a half acre (0.2 hectare). He sold his portion of an online advertising network to Sunnyvale-based Yahoo! Inc. in 2007.

“Most people in their 20s who find themselves millionaires feel it’s their inalienable right to buy real estate, and they’re typically not price sensitive,” Eskenazi said.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, bought a house this year in Palo Alto, said Larry Yu, a company spokesman. He declined to disclose details. Zuckerberg paid $7 million for a 5,000-square-foot (465-square-meter), seven-bedroom home in a “leafy and affluent” neighborhood, the San Jose Mercury News reported May 5, without saying where it got the information.

The purchase was made before Facebook’s scheduled move to Menlo Park, just north of Palo Alto.

15 Miles

As more firms go public and workers cash in shares, real estate within 15 miles of the office will climb, said Rosen, who gave a presentation at Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Mountain View headquarters before the company’s 2004 IPO to educate employees on housing. Sales are usually concentrated in the “middle to upper end,” he said.

In Cupertino, about 12 miles from Palo Alto, a three- bedroom home listed for $908,000 got more than a dozen offers and sold for $950,000 on June 8, said Albert Kao, an agent at Giant Realty Inc. in the city. The prior owner, who bought the property in 2002, decided to sell after her children graduated from the public schools. She made a $290,000 profit before commissions, Kao said.

Lower-priced areas are still struggling with weak demand. In all of Santa Clara County, which encompasses some Silicon Valley cities, prices decreased 5.1 percent in May from a year earlier to $498,000 as distressed sales pulled values down in the broader market, DataQuick said in a report today. The drop was smaller than in the rest of the San Francisco Bay area, with the nine-county median in the region tumbling 9.3 percent.

Groupon, Zynga

Groupon Inc., an online coupon provider based in Chicago, filed for an initial share sale June 2 and is hiring engineers in California, according to its website. As early as March, Groupon was in talks with bankers about an IPO that would value the company at as much as $25 billion, two people familiar with the matter said at the time.

Zynga Inc. of San Francisco, the largest maker of games for Facebook and valued at $8.8 billion on SharesPost, may file for an IPO by the end of the month, a person with knowledge of the matter said June 3.

Those firms are among the companies that will help Silicon Valley grow by about 20,000 workers in 2011, said Levy, the California economist. Software publishers and Web portals accounted for 5,600 of the 13,400 jobs added in the year through April in the San Jose metropolitan area, according to the California Employment Development Department.

“We’re at the beginnings of an expansion of the job base,” said Levy. “There will be a lot of hiring.”

Simons, the agent for the four-bedroom Palo Alto home, said there were five “excellent” offers for the 2,257-square-foot residence. It was constructed in 1973 by California developer Joseph Eichler, who built thousands of “progressive” tract houses in middle-class neighborhoods, according to a website devoted to the properties.

“There are people who want to get in and they’re willing to pay,” Simons said outside the home, which was repainted, landscaped and staged with furniture before the public showings. “We’re just starting to see the market come back.”

San Francisco housing official seeks ethics waiver

By: Joshua Sabatini 06/10/11 4:00 AM 
Examiner Staff Writer

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Doug Shoemaker (Courtesy photo)

The head of the Mayor’s Office of Housing is seeking a job with a nonprofit developer for which he’s approved several city contracts in recent months. 

After five years with the Mayor’s Office, Doug Shoemaker could be working as president of the well-known affordable housing nonprofit Mercy Housing California sometime this summer if the Ethics Commission gives him permission at its meeting on Monday. 

Voter-mandated rules prohibit city workers from being employed by any firm within a year of having been involved in awarding that organization a city contract — unless those officials granted a waiver from the Ethics Commission. 

In this case, Shoemaker is seeking a waiver because he signed off on five contracts with Mercy Housing California in the past 12 months, including one for work on The City’s HOPE SF program, an ambitious plan to rebuild some of San Francisco’s most decrepit public housing sites. 

He said he was not involved in any contracts with Mercy representatives since he began discussing the job with them in February. 

“I can assure the commission that I have taken no actions to create a financial windfall for myself,” Shoemaker wrote in a letter to the commission. 

This post-employment job restriction, among others, was established along with a waiver process by voters with the adoption of Proposition E in November 2003. Since 2004, the commission has approved 10 of the 12 waiver requests. 

A waiver can be granted if it “determines that imposing the restriction could cause extreme hardship.”  Mayor Ed Lee has called Shoemaker’s waiver “appropriate.”  

Lee said in a May 24 letter that the contracts Shoemaker signed with Mercy Housing “have been through a rigorous public review process.” 

Shoemaker was appointed director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing by then Mayor Gavin Newsom  in January 2009, after joining the department in February 2006. The agency oversees about $55 million of annual investments in affordable housing projects by both nonprofit and for-profit developers. He also serves as director of Hope SF, the program launched by Newsom to revitalize eight public housing sites through mixed-income development.

“[Hope SF] will continue to move forward with a new leader, but the Mayor will not be considering any candidates until the job waiver has been considered,” Lee’s spokeswoman Christine Falvey said.

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Waivers approved

Since post-employment restrictions were adopted by voters in 2003, the Ethics Commission has granted 10 of 12 waiver requests. Here are a few:

Terence Hallinan March 10, 2004

Waiver to represent clients after no longer serving as district attorney 

Tony Hall July 30, 2004

Waiver to serve as executive director of the Treasure Island Development Authority after serving as member of the Board of Supervisors

Matt Gonzalez March 9, 2005

Former supervisor sought to practice law that would necessitate interaction with the City Attorney’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office

Kyri McClellan Feb. 28, 2011

Former project manager in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development allowed to become executive director of the nonprofit America’s Cup Organizing Committee

Source: Ethics Commission

Where the jobs are: Top U.S. cities hiring now

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CCSF

Despite dreary reports on the lagging economy, certain American cities are in fact hiring. Hiring a lot, it seems. For while our national unemployment rate increased, major metropolitan areas report an increase in private-sector hiring. In fact, according to data from US Department of Labor, more than 90 percent of the country's largest metro areas experienced a drop in unemployment in April.

Don't get too excited yet. Or...okay, maybe little bit excited.

Marketwatch reported on this data too, quoting Charles Purdy, Senior Editor for Internet job board giant Monster.com. He points out that one reason for the uptick "is likely seasonal summer hiring."

The Labor Department reports that regions that see a large influx of tourists during the summer showed the steepest month-over-month declines in unemployment.

However, seasonal jobs don't account for all of the improvement Monster.com data combined with US Bureau of Labor Statistics show a vast number of job postings in cities on both coasts (typical tourist destinations) as well as in the heartland (where tourists are less an integral part of the economy). And jobs are not just tourism based, nor are they all high-tech related. Using their job growth survey analysis, Monster has designated the following cities as the best for jobs (all kinds of them!) right now- and yes, once again, the San Francisco Bay Area made the list, and pretty high up it as well.

Top 10 metro areas for jobs:

1. Washington, DC-Arlington-Alexandria

Industries to Watch: Demand is strong in architecture/engineering, as well as in the related categories of construction/extraction and installation/repair and maintenance.

2. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont

Industries to Watch: Private-sector hiring is robust, with especially positive trends in management, IT, business/financial and architecture/ engineering, among other industries.

3. Baltimore-Towson

Industries to Watch: Many jobs are available here in legal, management and healthcare (both practitioner and support roles).

4. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington

Industries to Watch: Look for lots of opportunities in healthcare (practitioners, as well as technical and support work ers), business/financial and IT.

5. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor

Industries to Watch: Consumer-driven sectors (food preparation/serving and personal care) are trending well, as are industries such as management and IT.

6. Boston-Cambridge-Quincy

Industries to Watch: The data shows strong growth in healthcare and architecture/engineering (among other industries) and fairly positive trends for computer/mathematical (IT) and business/financial.

7. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue

Industries to Watch: There's a high demand here for blue-collar or skilled-labor workers in transportation, construction, installation/repair and production.

8. Orlando-Kissimmee

Industries to Watch: Look to the private sector here for management, IT, and administrative/support jobs. Construction and protective-services jobs are also on the rise.

9. Pittsburgh

Industries to Watch: There are many jobs here for blue-collar workers in transportation, construction, installation/repair and production.

10. Kansas City

Industries to Watch: There's high demand here for people in the area of creative/marketing (arts, design, sports and entertainment, for example), as well as for workers in office administration and healthcare support roles.

Posted By: Anna Marie Hibble ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) | June 09 2011 at 10:00 AM

Listed Under: National news

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