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    Portland’s first ranked-choice vote elects progressive outsider as mayor

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    In 2022 it appeared the political winds in Portland, Oregon, one of the US’s most progressive cities, were beginning to shift. Residents who had grown frustrated over the city’s approach to homelessness rejected the incumbent, Jo Ann Hardesty – the first Black woman to serve on the city council – in favor of the “law-and-order” Democrat Rene Gonzalez, who pledged to back an expanded police force and “clean up” Portland.But this month, as swaths of the US electorate moved to the right, the Pacific north-west city took a markedly different approach. Residents elected the most diverse city council in Portland history, opting for more progressives, and rejected Gonzalez as mayoral candidate. Instead, they chose Keith Wilson, a businessperson who has never before held office and has promised to end unsheltered homelessness in a year.Wilson had large leads over his competitors in the election, the first in which the city used ranked-choice voting and in the latest results was leading the second place candidate 60% to 40%.The most conservative candidates for mayor and the county board, who took hardline stances, lost, Richard Clucas, a political science professor at Portland State University, pointed out.“Both were defeated significantly because Portland remains a very progressive city despite what people may have heard elsewhere,” Clucas said.The results came as the city was in the midst of what officials have described as a “once-in-a-generation” change to its government system and major voting reforms. This month, for the first time ever, Portland used ranked-choice voting to elect a mayor and a larger, more representative city council. The new officials will have different roles as Portland moves from a commission form of government to one overseen by a city administrator.Voters approved the overhaul two years ago – the same year Gonzalez won – as the city of 630,000 people grappled with a declining downtown, rising homelessness, a fentanyl crisis, growing public drug use and a sluggish recovery from the pandemic. Voters appeared to take out their dissatisfaction with crime, homelessness and drug use on Hardesty, the most progressive member of city council, said Ben Gaskins, a political science professor Lewis & Clark College in Portland.Some have speculated the city was beginning to recoil from its progressive values, particularly after voters in the county ousted the progressive district attorney for a challenger endorsed by police groups. That came shortly after Oregon moved to reintroduce criminal penalties for the possession of hard drugs, in effect scrapping the state’s groundbreaking drug decriminalization law.Claims the city is turning away from progressivism are significantly overstated, Gaskins said – instead, the shifts indicate an electorate that is more focused on tactical concerns rather than ideological ones.Gonzalez was widely considered a frontrunner in this year’s mayoral race. Calling it a “make-or-break election”, the commissioner said that as mayor he would add hundreds of officers to city streets and stop “enabling the humanitarian crisis on our streets by ending the distribution of tents and drug kits”.Wilson, who serves as the chief executive of a trucking company and founded a non-profit to expand shelter capacity and ultimately end homelessness, made the issue the center of his campaign, pledging to reform the city’s approach to alleviating the crisis. He insisted the issue could be addressed with “care and compassion”, the Oregonian reported, and said he would increase the number of night-time walk-in emergency shelters available in churches and community centers.That approach appealed to city voters, Clucas said, over harsher remedies. “They don’t simply want a crackdown, arrests and other things; they want to find some way to compassionately address it.”At a debate in October, Wilson said he would give city leaders an F for their efforts to address homelessness, according to the Oregonian. “Letting people suffer and die on our streets is unacceptable … I believe that every person in Portland deserves a bed every night,” he said.The progressive Carmen Rubio, a city council member, was also a frontrunner in the race. But she lost endorsements after reporting from the Oregonian revealed that she had received about 150 parking and traffic violations since 2004, many of which she failed to pay for months and years, and that she had her license suspended multiple times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGonzalez’s campaign was hurt by reporting from the Willamette Week that showed the “public safety champion” had also received seven speeding tickets between 1998 and 2013, and had his license suspended twice.Wilson was once considered a long-shot candidate, but he was probably bolstered by the city’s new ranked-choice voting system, experts said.His position as a businessperson coming from outside the political system allowed him to be a “compromise candidate”, Gaskins said. Wilson fit the gap of someone who is progressive but still represents a change to the status quo, he said.“I think the fact Keith Wilson was able to win shows Portland wants someone who is clearly on the left but who is focused on policy solutions and getting things done versus just being the most ideologically pure candidate in the race,” he said.“He is a candidate of this particular moment.”In an acceptance speech last week, Wilson pledged to build trust and take advantage of a “transformative opportunity”.“It’s time to end unsheltered homelessness and open drug use, and it’s time to restore public safety in Portland,” he said. “Voters aren’t interested in pointing fingers. They just want us to get things done.”Along with Wilson, residents also elected 12 city councillors, nearly half of whom are people of color, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported – a remarkable shift given that just seven years ago, only two people of color had ever been elected to city government. At least four of the new councillors identify as LGBTQ+, the outlet reported, and five received endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America chapter in Portland. More

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      ‘A once-in-a-generation change’: Oregon’s biggest city prepares for monumental overhaul of government

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      When voters in Portland, Oregon, head to the polls next month, they will be tasked not only with selecting new leaders, but also the implementation of a monumental overhaul of the city’s government.Two years ago, residents moved to fundamentally alter their local government structure and adopted what experts have described as some of the most “expansive voting reforms” undertaken by a major US city in recent decades. Come November, the city will use ranked-choice voting to elect a mayor and a larger, more representative city council as Portland moves from a commission form of government to one overseen by a city administrator.The shake-up comes after challenging years for Portland in which the city of 630,000 grappled with a declining downtown, rising homelessness, a fentanyl crisis, growing public drug use and the continued economic impacts of the pandemic years.While some news coverage has portrayed the shift as Portlanders rejecting the city’s historically progressive values, those involved with the project counter that residents are embracing democratic reforms that will lead to a more equitable government better equipped to solve the city’s problems.“It was really clear that this system was, as operated, very inequitable,” said Jenny Lee, managing director of Building Power for Communities of Color, a non-profit that was a key proponent of the effort.“And the challenges in governing are going to be felt the most by those who already have been marginalized in our political system.”Now the city waits to see what the “once-in-a-generation” change will mean for its future.Since 1913, Portland has used a commission form of government. The commission consisted of five people elected citywide and who were responsible for passing policies and also acting as administrators in charge of city departments.The system was briefly popular in other major US cities, but then largely abandoned, said Richard Clucas, a political science professor at Portland State University.“Most cities who adopted that form of government realized there were problems with it,” he said. “Someone may be good as a legislator but it doesn’t make them good as an administrator.”View image in fullscreenAnd Portland’s system had long failed to adequately represent different demographics in the city, Lee said. The city’s elected officials historically have been white men from more affluent areas where residents are more likely to have a higher income and own their homes, according to the Sightline Institute. In 2017, only two people of color had ever been elected to the city council.Under the charter system, simple decisions – such as where to put a bike lane – were politicized, said Shoshanah Oppenheim, the charter transition project manager.“It was based on the political tide,” said Oppenheim, who is also a senior adviser in the city administrator’s office.For more than a century, Portlanders rejected attempts to reform the commission system, but that changed when the 10-year review of the city charter coincided with upheaval and challenges of the pandemic years.The pandemic exacerbated the existing limitations of the city’s form of government, according to a report from Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation chronicling Portland’s reforms.Meanwhile, Portland was the site of widespread racial justice protests and an ensuing federal crackdown, the city’s economic recovery from the pandemic was slow, and residents grew increasingly disillusioned with their leaders’ ability to make meaningful progress tackling homelessness and drug abuse.Those challenges created an opportunity to have meaningful conversations about elections and government, Lee said.Clucas echoed that sentiment: “I think the public was looking and happy to take on some sort of change.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCommunity leaders had spent years educating themselves about electoral reform, and saw an opportunity to create change in the city, the report stated.With support from community organizations and local activists, the commission brought a measure before voters that would make key changes to the city’s system, allowing voters to rank local candidates in order of preference, expand the city council from five to 12 representatives elected from four newly created districts, and move to a system of government overseen by a professional city administrator.Despite criticism about the complexity of the measure and opposition from political leaders and the business community, 58% of voters approved the package of reforms proposed by the commission.Although the timing coincided with major changes and social issues, Lee said the reforms were not reactionary and instead an example of Portland being willing to try new things, which ties into Oregon’s long history of democratic reforms aimed at making government more participatory.“It was a message about change, but it was definitely a hopeful one,” she said. “It was always about these changes will make our government more effective and equitable.”The city has spent the last two years preparing for a project unlike anything Portland has seen before,Oppenheim said. “We had a really short timeline … It’s been an all-hands-on-deck approach,” she said. “There is no playbook. We are making it up as we go along.”Next month, voters will decided among more than 100 candidates for 12 council seats and 19 candidates for mayor. A recent poll from the Oregonian suggested a once-longshot candidate, whose campaign has focused on ending homelessness, is well positioned to win.In a poll of roughly 300 voters from early October, before election packets were sent out, two-thirds responded that they understood how voting works very well or somewhat well. People tend to understand the system right away given that they rank things every day, Oppenheim said.The city has also developed a voter education program to inform residents about the changes and trained operators on its information line how to explain ranked-choice voting.The hope is that voters will feel the increased power of their vote, Lee said. “Every vote has a lot of power. Your constituents’ voices really matter. Their second- and third-choice rankings actually really matter.”After the election, the other major test comes next year when Portland’s new government takes the reins. “We want to be ready on day one so all the city business can continue,” Oppenheim said.“Portlanders have huge expectations for change and we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do things better,” Oppenheim said. “They want a more representative government. We have it in our power to deliver that.” More

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      AOC introduces legislation for low-cost housing programme backed by US funding

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Congress member for New York, has introduced legislation aimed at establishing an ambitious social housing programme that would see millions of new homes being built with US government funding.With Tina Smith, a Democratic senator for Minnesota, Ocasio-Cortez has introduced the Homes Act in the House of Representatives to address what they call a “housing crisis” that has left millions of low-income people unable to find rental accommodation they can afford. Smith has introduced the proposed legislation in the Senate.If passed, it would provide federal funding for millions of new homes and apartments that would have to remain affordable by law.The initiative comes against the backdrop of mounting concern that has seen soaring housing costs emerge as one of the salient campaign issues in the forthcoming presidential election.Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has tried to address it by pledging $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers – a proposal which critics say would drive up house prices.In their joint legislation, Ocasio-Cortez and Smith propose setting up an authority within the the Department of Housing and Urban Development to acquire properties and provide homes with explicit tenant protections.It would also set rents based on tenants’ incomes and mandate permanently affordable purchase prices.The homes would be run by non-profit organisations, housing associations or cooperatives.“For generations, the federal government’s approach to housing policy has been primarily focused on encouraging single-family homeownership and private investment in rental housing,” Ocasio-Cortez and Smith wrote in an editorial in the New York Times, which argues that the current system has led to America’s 44 million private tenants struggling to meet rental payments.They blame high rents and home shortages on decades-old “restrictive zoning laws” and rising building costs, meaning not enough new housing has been built.“There is another way: social housing,” they say. “Instead of treating real estate as a commodity, we can underwrite the construction of millions of homes and apartments that, by law, must remain affordable. Some would be rental units; others would offer Americans the opportunity to build equity.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe pair argue that the model already exists in some European cities, including Vienna, as well as in some projects in Ocasio-Cortez’s native New York, and in St Paul in Smith’s home state.Citing the New York complex of Co-op City in the Bronx as one template, they write: “[It] stands as not only one of the largest housing cooperatives in the world – with its own schools and power plant – but also the largest, naturally occurring retirement community in the country, a testament to its financial and social sustainability.”They invoke research estimating that their proposal could build and preserve 1.25m new homes, including more than 850,000 for the lowest-income households.“This is the federal government’s chance to invest in social housing and give millions of Americans a safe, comfortable and affordable place to call home – with the sense of security and dignity that come with it,” Ocasio-Cortez and Smith conclude. More

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      Biden housing plan seeks to curb rent increases by penalizing landlords

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      President Joe Biden wants to curb rent increases by penalizing landlords who hike rents beyond 5% each year, but he needs the help of Congress to put the plan into action.The Biden administration will announce the idea in Nevada on Tuesday along with a host of other housing-related policies, including an influx of funds to add more housing in Nevada and elsewhere and a plan to use public federal lands for affordable housing near Las Vegas.The rent control plan for larger landlords with over 50 units would restrict increases to 5% or less, or those landlords who increased at higher rates would lose access to tax breaks. The administration estimated it would apply to 20m units nationwide. It would be in place for two years if Congress approves Biden’s plan, cast as a way to help renters while developers build more housing stock to meet demand and increase affordability.The announcement comes as Republicans gather in Milwaukee for their convention to officially appoint Donald Trump as their nominee. Affordability has become a main issue for voters this election, as the price of housing and goods has increased over the past four years.The likelihood is low that Congress would work in a bipartisan way to pass Biden’s rent control plan and deliver him a legislative victory to use on the campaign trail.In a statement, Biden said he is determined to make housing more affordable after “decades of failure to build enough homes”.“Today, I’m sending a clear message to corporate landlords: If you raise rents more than 5%, you should lose valuable tax breaks,” he said. “My Administration is also taking action to cut red tape and repurpose public land to build more affordable homes – including thousands of new homes in Nevada – and announcing new grants to build thousands of homes from Las Vegas to Syracuse. And I’m reiterating my call for Congress to pass my plan to build 2 million new homes – to lower housing costs for good, we need to build, build, build.”The Biden administration announced other plansto try to lower housing costs in the absence of congressional action.The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $325m in grants for affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization that will bring more than 6,500 units of new housing and add childcare centers and parks in communities around the country. One grant of $50m will go to the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority and the city of Las Vegas to restore existing units and build new ones, and will go toward small business support and an early childhood center, the agency said.For renters in multifamily properties that are financed by federal Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loans, the administration announced renter protections like a 30-day notice before rent increases and a five-day grace period for late payments.Also in Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management plans to sell 20 acres of public land to Clark county, Nevada, below market value in what the administration says will allow for about 150 affordable homes to be built. Another land sale will go to the city of Henderson to build about 300 affordable housing units.Several other agencies, including the US Forest Service and US Postal Service, were directed to explore using their land or properties for affordable housing.“This is a crucial component of our agenda,” Neera Tanden, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said in a press call. “The federal government is the biggest landowner in the country, and some of its land is currently underutilized or entirely unused. President Biden is asking federal agencies, from the Department of Interior to the Department of Defense, to identify opportunities to repurpose surplus property to build more affordable housing.” More

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      Flojaune Cofer: surprise progressive star in California capital’s mayoral race

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      In an election year in which California’s races have the potential to be among the most consequential in the US, one of the most fascinating contests is shaping up somewhere unexpected: Sacramento.The leading candidate to replace the city’s mayor is a progressive public health expert running for elected office for the first time. Flojaune Cofer has pledged to reject corporate donations, cut police budgets in favor of workers trained to deal with issues such as mental health and tackle the city’s spiraling homelessness crisis.Cofer, a 41-year-old epidemiologist who would be the first Black woman elected as Sacramento mayor, won the most votes of any candidate in last month’s primary with an almost 8% lead over her closest competitor.Her rise comes as political commentators have argued Californians, disheartened by crime, are growing frustrated with progressive policies. In March, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the city’s status as a longtime liberal bastion is no more after voters approved a controversial measure that will require welfare recipients to be screened for drugs.Sacramento has struggled with many of the same issues as San Francisco and Los Angeles from a growing unhoused population and unaffordable housing to downtowns that have struggled to rebound after the pandemic. Cofer’s vision for the city, which she hopes will one day serve as a model for dealing with the most pressing problems of the era, has appealed to voters, particularly those in lower-income neighborhoods.“I just feel we are so close to being able to do something powerful,” she said in a recent interview. “We don’t have to live in a city where people don’t have their basic needs met. This can be a city that’s affordable, prosperous, innovative, that’s connected.”Cofer, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, moved to Sacramento 20 years ago for a public health fellowship and decided to make her home in the city after finding a deep-rooted sense of community. “It reminded me a lot of Pittsburgh, with the tight neighborhoods and rivers flowing through it and being a midsize city in a state with larger cities that often get more of the attention,” she said.She worked for the state’s public health department before becoming a senior public policy director for a public health non-profit. In recent years, Cofer served on several city committees and was a visible presence in Sacramento politics before she decided to run for office.She faced a crowded field with well-known and high-profile candidates, including two former state lawmakers, vying for the role and arguing they were best equipped to address the problems ailing the city.Sacramento has changed considerably in recent years with the redevelopment of its downtown, growing population and a seemingly ever worsening housing shortage.Homelessness has been the defining issue in city politics in recent years. The capital is in the midst of a growing emergency as the number of unhoused residents climbed almost 70% from 2019 to 2022.At least 9,278 people in the county are estimated to be without a home, the majority of whom sleep outdoors or in vehicles. Encampments have developed on levees, near schools and next to busy roads, while advocates have said the city has failed to create meaningful solutions to match the scale of the massive problem.“I think one of the things that we’re already in agreement on is that what we’re doing right now is not working,” she said. The crisis is affecting everyone in the community, she said, from unhoused people who say they are being harassed and targeted without receiving the support they need to business owners who say people don’t want to go downtown.The city can create change “if we do right by the people who are experiencing homelessness, and we actually make sure people have a place to go, instead of just moving them block to block without a clear destination, and we make sure that they have the facilities and things that they need, like showers and bathrooms”, she said.“There’s data to show us that these things can work. Instead, it seems like we are insistent upon trying to do things expediently that don’t work and that make the problem worse.”Cofer has backed greater protections for renters as well as managed encampments. She has also advocated cutting $70m from the police budget and redirecting that funding to hire trained workers who can respond to calls about mental health and homelessness while police prioritize violent crime.She wants to invest in programs from non-profits and community groups that have a track record of reducing violence in the city – pointing to the city’s investment in similar initiatives that led to a two-year period with zero youth homicides before that funding was cut.“That’s the kind of thing that you can feel in a community when you’re not worried about being shot, when your young people aren’t worried about it, when nobody is in the active stage of grieving and hanging up RIP banners on their high schools,” she said.“I’m looking at what will save us money, what will save us lives, and will allow us all to be able to experience safety, not just the performance of safety.”Despite the so-called backlash against progressive policies in other parts of the state, Cofer’s message appears to have won over voters across the city. Her campaign knocked on 30,000 doors, she said, and she engages directly with voters on Twitter, even those who are frequently critical of her.She saw support from all income levels, but particularly in the lowest-income neighborhoods in the city, according to an analysis from the Sacramento Bee.“Our message resonates,” Cofer said. “We’re talking about people who have largely not felt seen, heard and represented. When we change the narrative, invite people into the conversation, they see things differently and they’re hopeful in a different way and they’re reaching out in a different way.”She was endorsed by the Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, which described her agenda as “[in] some ways fiscally conservative and in other ways socially and economically progressive”.“She has the most potential to dramatically transform the Sacramento political landscape in the next four years, and that landscape desperately needs transformation,” the board wrote.In November, Sacramento voters will choose between Cofer and Kevin McCarty, a Democratic state lawmaker. Some political analysts have argued Cofer faces long odds with votes no longer divided among multiple candidates, but Cofer remains hopeful about her candidacy and the progressive movement in the city.“Sacramento is in a different position than some of the other places where we haven’t actually had an opportunity to try these progressive ideas out here,” she said. “We have the benefit of having watched what did and did not work in places in the Bay Area and southern California and to really learn from that.” More

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      AOC and Sanders aim to place public housing at center of Green New Deal

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      With a sweeping legislative proposal, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders are attempting to place public housing at the center of the green energy transition, tackling the twin crises of global warming and soaring housing costs.“Public housing should be the gold standard for affordable, environmentally friendly, and safe communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an email. “This bill is how we ensure that.”The Green New Deal for Public Housing aims to decarbonize all of the nation’s public housing units – and build more of them – with an investment of between $162bn and $234bn over the next decade. In doing so, it would avert 5.7m tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing 1.26m cars from US roads each year, while creating jobs and public health benefits.The proposal is co-sponsored by a slew of other progressive lawmakers and supported by dozens of environmental groups, housing justice organizations and labor unions.“We are going to provide decent-quality, affordable housing for millions of Americans, and at the same time, we’re going to create good-paying union jobs,” said Sanders at a Thursday press conference. “That is a win, win, win situation.”It is not likely to pass, but supporters say it can help build support for the vision.The bill’s reintroduction comes as the nation faces an unprecedented shortage of affordable housing. In 2022, a record half of US renters spent more than 30% of their incomes on rent, a January report from Harvard University found – and more than half of these “rent-burdened” Americans gave more than 50% of their earnings to the landlord.Public housing remains an affordable option that 1.7 million Americans rely on. But amid a chronic lack of investment, it is often allowed to fall into disrepair, creating a maintenance backlog of $70bn.In the absence of funds to mend these units, they are often demolished or privatized instead. As a result, the US public housing stock shrunk from 1.2m units to just over 900,000 between 2009 and 2022 – a 25% decline – according to an analysis from the progressive thinktank Climate and Community Project, which informed the policy proposal.Instead of allowing the nation’s public housing stock to wither away, the bill seeks to transform it. Units would not only be repaired and freed of contaminants like lead and mold, but also made efficient and green.Each would be insulated and weatherized to conserve energy, as well as outfitted with fossil fuel-free electric appliances. Renewable energy would be installed on-site. And developments would be made climate-resilient with increased green space and decreased paved areas, which can help absorb heat and soak up water during heavy rains.In addition to slashing greenhouse gas pollution, the bill would come with “major health and comfort benefits”, said Kira McDonald, a researcher at Climate and Community Project who co-authored the report.Removing fossil fuel-powered appliances would lower air pollution and therefore improve residents’ respiratory health. And insulation and heat pumps could cut energy bills, while making homes easier to keep at a comfortable temperature amid extreme weather.The Green New Deal for Public Housing would not only improve the nation’s existing public units, but also “finally help build more”, said Ocasio-Cortez. Currently, the 1998 Faircloth Amendment in effect prevents the federal government from funding new public housing, but the proposal would immediately repeal that policy in order to erect more state-of-the-art, green units.The policy would benefit the US’s most vulnerable residents. Public housing residents are disproportionately likely to be people of color, and 24% of public housing residents are living with a disability.“The Green New Deal for Public Housing is going to change the game for those of us and our neighbors who are being hit hardest by the climate crisis,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.The policy also would have knock-on effects for the entire nation, including by spurring the creation of about 280,000 jobs over a decade. The bill includes language to ensure those jobs are all unionized.It could also help create a supply of efficient technologies for all residents. Last year, New York City’s public housing authority invited manufacturers to compete for a contract to create and install at least 10,000 induction stoves in New York City Housing Authority (Nycha) buildings, specifically calling for apartment-sized models that do not require electrical upgrades. The winning model will become available on the market for all US residents.“Those models are available elsewhere, but not in the US because producers basically don’t see that there is a strong enough market,” said McDonald. “This can change that.”Nycha has launched a similar program to bring small heat pumps on to the US market, and back in the 1990s put out a call for small, energy-efficient refrigerators that helped shape the green fridge market.“There are gaps in green building technology and green appliance markets in the US,” said McDonald. “Public housing can help fill them … so this policy is also a form of green industrial policy.”Public housing is the only form of US housing whose affordability does not rely “solely on the market and solely on billionaires”, Ocasio-Cortez said at Thursday’s press conference.Jasmine Sanchez, a housing advocate who lives in a Nycha development, said many public housing residents face the “constant threat of privatization” and often feel left behind by the US government.“Everyone deserves to be invested in and everyone deserves to live threat free,” she said.Though the bill is not expected to pass, Climate and Community Project says support to expand and improve public housing is growing. In 2021, the report notes, the House voted to repeal the Faircloth Amendment and most Democratic lawmakers supported including $60bn for public housing in the spending package that later became the Inflation Reduction Act, though both measures ultimately failed to pass.“While just a couple of senators ultimately blocked these reforms, it was clear that there is already strong support for saving public housing that advocates can build on,” the report says.The policy represents a “visionary future that will uplift everyone”, said Levin of Green New Deal Network.“By lifting up the world we need,” he said, “we are building toward that vision”. More

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      Inside tech billionaires’ push to reshape San Francisco politics: ‘a hostile takeover’

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      In a way, it’s a story as old as time: ultra-wealthy figures pouring a flood of money into city politics in an effort to shape the way it is run.Still, the political-influence machine that tech billionaires and venture capitalists have recently built in San Francisco stands out for its size and ambition. A new analysis of campaign filings, non-profit records and political contributions by the Guardian and Mission Local reveals the extent of this network, which is using its financial and organizational muscle to push the famously progressive city into adopting policies that are tougher on crime and homelessness, and more favorable to business and housing construction.In the past six years, prominent tech and venture capital leaders – including the hedge fund manager William Oberndorf, the billionaire investor Michael Moritz, the cryptocurrency booster Chris Larsen, the PayPal co-founder David Sacks, the Y Combinator CEO, Garry Tan, and the Pantheon CEO, Zachary Rosen – have invested at least $5.7m into reshaping San Francisco’s policies, according to the analysis of public data. Because not all of their donations are publicly disclosed, the sum of their contributions may be far higher.In a solidly Democratic city, they have joined forces with traditional business and real estate elites in an effort to oust some of its most progressive leaders and undo its most progressive policies.To achieve those goals, they have created a loose network of interlocking non-profits, dark money groups and political action committees – a framework colloquially known as a “grey money” network – that allows them to obscure the true scale of their involvement in San Francisco’s municipal politics.View image in fullscreenThe three major groups in this network – NeighborsSF, TogetherSF and GrowSF – have pulled in more than $26m in contributions since 2020, according to campaign finance and tax records, more than $21m of which they have spent on various political issues.“They’re using multiple layers of organizations to hide the sources of their money, and to hide how much they’re spending,” said Jim Stearns, a political consultant with decades of experience in San Francisco politics and a critic of the groups.“This is a $20bn hostile takeover of San Francisco by people with vested real estate and tech interests, and who don’t want anyone else deciding how the city is run,” he said, referring to the combined wealth of the most prolific new donors.Billionaires’ increasing involvementIn its storied history, San Francisco has always seen tycoons seek influence over city business. In the 2010s, the tech investor Ron Conway played a crucial role in the election of the mayor Ed Lee and was a major factor in the ascent of the current mayor, London Breed, after Lee died in office in 2017 . But the entry of a libertarian billionaire class into local politics is new, said political operatives and people who have been targeted by them. So are the vast amounts of wealth created in the most recent tech boom that these figures can tap into.View image in fullscreenPolitical observers trace the newcomers’ involvement to 2018, when a special election brought Breed to power. Their engagement grew as progressive candidates won a number of narrow but surprising victories in 2019, including the district attorney office and several seats in San Francisco’s legislative body, the board of supervisors. But, those observers say, their political participation really intensified during the pandemic, when frustrations over rising visible homelessness, a sharp increase in petty crime and fentanyl-related overdose deaths, and an economic downturn in the city boiled over.“There is a growing sense … that the city’s progressive political class has failed its citizens,” Moritz, the billionaire investor and a former journalist, wrote in a May 2023 feature for the Financial Times. “Online discourse about San Francisco’s ‘doom loop’, a downward economic and social spiral that becomes irreversible, feels less like hyperbole by the day. Even for a city that has always managed to rebuild after flattening financial and geological shocks, San Francisco – emptier, deadlier, more politically dysfunctional – seems closer to the brink than ever.”The priorities of these deep-pocketed figures have varied. Oberndorf, the hedge fund manager, had been a long-time charter school advocate and major Republican party donor. Larsen, the crypto investor, has been a strong backer of expanding police ranks and surveillance capabilities. Tan, the Y Combinator CEO, has pushed for business policies favorable to crypto, artificial intelligence and autonomous cars.Broadly, though, they maintain that San Francisco needs a tougher approach to homelessness and drug problems, a more punitive approach to crime, and a climate more friendly to business and housing construction. Some have called for centralizing more power in the office of the mayor.In past years, several of these operatives have set up organizations to advance policy on those issues – non-profit organizations, so-called dark money groups, political action committees and even media outlets.View image in fullscreenDogged reporting by Bay Area outlets has previously exposed some of the money flowing into these groups. But their structure makes it difficult to easily uncover all sources of donations. Political action committees, or Pacs, are required to name their major donors. But the so-called dark money groups, which are technically civic leagues or social welfare groups, were formed under the 501(c)4 section of the tax code, and do not have to disclose donors or political contributions. Since the 2010 supreme court ruling Citizens United v Federal Election Commission relaxed regulation around political donations, 501(c)4 groups have exponentially increased their involvement in political donations, to the tune of at least $1bn by 2019 nationwide, according to ProPublica reporting.However, the Guardian and Mission Local’s analysis of financial records shows several of the organisations donating money to one another, and several groups sharing personnel, addresses and donors. And it reveals the sheer financial deluge they are spending ahead of the 2024 elections.Complicated contributionsAmong the most prominent and resourced groups in this network is Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy, which was founded by Oberndorf, and an affiliated 501(c)4 started by the longtime San Francisco real estate lobbyist Mary Jung, among others. Oberndorf sits on the board of directors of the dark money group.NeighborsSF says it is committed to improving public safety, public education and quality of life in the city, backing what it calls “pragmatic” and “responsible” groups and candidates. The group has funded publicity campaigns for moderate candidates and bankrolled other 501(c)4s working to advance related issues.NeighborsSF has been primarily funded by a handful of extremely wealthy donors from the tech and real estate worlds. Campaign contribution data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission and state election disclosures show that Oberndorf has poured more than $900,000 over the years into the 501(c)4s. The group’s biggest donor, Kilroy Realty, a southern California-based firm with major holdings in downtown office property and highly desired parcels in the South of Market district, has given $1.2m since 2020. The dynastic real estate investor Brandon Shorenstein has contributed $899,000 through his family’s real estate firm. Larsen has donated at least $300,000. Moritz donated $300,000 in 2020 alone.View image in fullscreenMoritz is one of the most prominent players in reshaping San Francisco. Since 2020, he has donated more than $336m towards various causes in the city, both social and political, according to a recent Bloomberg report.In addition to his contributions to NeighborsSF, Moritz seeded $3m for TogetherSF Action, a 501(c)4 that is most famously known for a flashy, sarcastic poster campaign decrying the city’s fentanyl crisis and campaigns for expanding the power of the mayor. The group has an affiliated non-profit, TogetherSF, that serves as a volunteering hub. According to incorporation filings with the state of California, Moritz occupies key positions with both organizations, which also share personnel with NeighborsSF. Moritz has also sunk $10m into the San Francisco Standard, a startup news publication in the city run by Griffin Gaffney, a co-founder of TogetherSF.The third big player is GrowSF, a dark money group run by Sachin Agarwal, an alum of Apple, Twitter and Lyft, and Steven Buss, formerly of Google and Amazon. Tan is a member of its board. GrowSF has several affiliated Pacs and says it endorses “common sense” candidates as an alternative to “far-left” elected officials.Campaign contribution filings show that major donors include Agarwal’s father, Aditya Agarwal, as well as Larsen ($100,000), Tan ($25,000) and Pantheon’s Rosen, a tech investor who launched the controversial pro-market-rate development group YIMBY California. GrowSF has received tens of thousands of dollars from NeighborsSF over the years, according to federal tax filings.Follow the moneyThrough varying alliances, the groups have exerted their influence on debates that go to the heart of San Francisco policy. Among the first was the February 2022 recall of three members of the San Francisco school board, whom voters ousted from office over frustrations with the slow reopening of district schools during the pandemic, a controversial proposal to rename school sites, racially charged tweets by one of the members, and changes to the testing requirements for admission to the city’s only selective academic public high school, Lowell.The campaign to unseat the members raised more than $2m, more than 20 times the $86,000 the school board members gathered to fight off the challenge, according to campaign contribution filings.The billionaire charter school backer Arthur Rock was the single largest donor to the SFUSD recalls, giving $500,000. But NeighborsSF Advocacy came in a close second, directing $488,800 into political action committees supporting the recall effort.Separate from NeighborsSF, state disclosures show, Sacks gave $75,000 to Pacs supporting the school board recall, and the Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston donated $45,000. Tan, Agarwal and Buss respectively gave $25,000, $10,000 and $5,000 to a cluster of political action committees bankrolling the school board recall efforts for each specific board member.NeighborsSF was also key to the successful recall of the progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022. A former deputy public defender and the son of convicted “new left” militants, Boudin was elected DA in 2019 on a promise to reduce mass incarceration and police misconduct. The pushback against his policies was immediate.Over 15 months, Boudin’s opponents raised $7.2m for the campaign supporting his ouster, more than twice the $2.7m collected by the anti-recall effort, campaign finance data compiled by Mission Local has shown.View image in fullscreenMost of these donations were channelled through NeighborsSF. The group contributed $4m of the $7.2m raised by the campaign, Mission Local reporting established, with the California Association of Realtors coming in a distant second at $458,000 in donations.State campaign finance records also show a $68,000 contribution to the recall campaign by GrowSF’s political action committee.There have been other victories. In 2022, GrowSF backed the successful candidacy of Joel Engardio, a former SF Weekly staff writer and former GrowSF leadership member, for supervisor through its Pac. GrowSF contributed more than $92,000 in support of Engardio’s campaign, per state campaign finance data. Since being elected, Engardio has promoted policies including increased police staffing, harsh penalties for narcotics offenses, building market-rate housing and sweeps of homeless camps.The Pac also spent at least $15,400 supporting the campaign of Matt Dorsey, a former head of communications at the San Francisco police department, for a full term as supervisor. And it spent at least $15,569 supporting Brooke Jenkins, Boudin’s successor and a supporter of the recall campaign, when she ran for re-election.It’s a “longer-term, widespread, deliberate strategy”, said Aaron Peskin, the progressive president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors. “They’re propping up innumerable 501(c)4s that are doing everything from mounting political attack campaigns to infiltrating dozens of long-term neighborhood groups … Why would you say no if someone knocked on your door to organize Saturday neighborhood cleanups?”Towards 2024With key successes under its belt, this network is gearing up to play a major role in the 2024 elections, which will determine control of the San Francisco board of supervisors and the Democratic county central committee.GrowSF is among the main drivers behind aggressive efforts to oust two progressive supervisors: Dean Preston, who represents the Haight, Hayes Valley and the Tenderloin districts, and Connie Chan, whose district includes the Inner and Outer Richmond neighborhoods.The group has set up separate “Dump Dean” and “Clear Out Connie” Pacs targeting the supervisors. GrowSF has raised at least $300,000 for its anti-Preston campaign, which has run attack ads falsely accusing him of opposing affordable housing. Larsen, Tan and a number of Y Combinator partners all have donated to GrowSF’s effort, according to San Francisco ethics commission campaign finance data.View image in fullscreenTan, who is known for his massive Twitter blocklist and recently faced ire for wishing a slow death upon progressive supervisors on the platform, has personally pledged $50,000 to oust Preston. He is publicly soliciting more donations.In addition to the board of supervisors races, GrowSF is backing a slate of moderate Democrats running to replace progressives on the Democratic county central committee, which makes endorsements for the Democratic party. Several of these moderate candidates are also running for supervisor, and while contributions to the supervisorial race are capped, there’s no limit to donations for the DCCC.The moderates have collectively raised about $1.16m, about four times as much as the progressive candidates.In light of the bruising national political landscape in 2024, San Francisco’s proverbial “knife fight in a telephone booth” may seem inconsequential. But the political network erected with the aid of libertarian tech money has already demonstrated its power to chill San Francisco’s progressive politics. So far, not one progressive candidate has thrown their hat in the ring to challenge London Breed.Peskin, who has long been eyed as a potential mayoral candidate, told Politico in January that the tech money backing moderate candidates has made it hard for progressives to fight back. It was one reason, he said, why he is leaning against getting into the race.The success of these political campaigns in one of the US’s most progressive cities could inspire similar efforts in cities around the country, Peskin warned.“There’s a sense by these guys that they are the tip of the spear,” he said. “If you can take on liberal/progressive thought in politics in San Francisco, you can do it anywhere.”This story was published in collaboration with Mission Local, an independent San Francisco non-profit news site More

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      Ohio pastor fights court battle with city over shelter for unhoused people

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      A Christian pastor is fighting back against a city in Ohio after it charged him with breaking a municipal law by opening up his place of worship to unhoused people as well as others who need shelter.Police in Bryan, Ohio, filed 18 charges accusing Chris Avell – the pastor of Dad’s Place – with zoning violations at his rented church building. Officers alleged that the church lacked proper kitchen and laundry facilities, safe exits and adequate ventilation, as required.Avell pleaded not guilty. Then his church sued Bryan’s government in federal court on Monday, arguing the city has violated the pastor’s constitutional rights to religious freedom.Despite Avell making changes trying to address the city’s complaints, including the installation of a stove hood and closing its laundry facility, the church alleges in its lawsuit that officers are still harassing and intimidating them.An attorney for Avell and the church, Jeremy Dys, said he suspects city leaders do not want a ministry for the unhoused in the middle of town. He described it as a “not in my backyard” – or, colloquially, “Nimby” – issue that his client’s lawsuit seeks to reframe as a test of the federal rights of free religious exercise and protection against government intrusion on religion.“Nothing satisfies the city,” Dys said on Monday, hours after the lawsuit was filed. “And worse – they go on a smear campaign of innuendo and half-truths.”Dys also accused the city of “creating problems in order to gin up opposition to this church existing in the town square”.The defendants in the church’s lawsuit – the city of Bryan, its mayor, Carrie Schlade, and other municipal officials – deny allegations that any religious institution has been dealt with inappropriately.“The city has been and continues to be interested in any business, any church, any entity complying with local and state law,” an attorney for the city, Marc Fishel, said.The church said in its lawsuit that its leaders decided in March to remain open at all hours as a temporary, emergency shelter “for people to go who have nowhere else to go and no one to care for them”.On average, eight people stay there each night, and a few more do so when weather is bad, the church said.The city said police received complaints of criminal mischief, trespassing, theft and disturbing the peace and requests to investigate generally inappropriate activity at the church.The church said its policy had been to let anyone stay overnight and not to ask them to leave “unless there is a biblically valid reason for doing so or if someone at the property poses a danger to himself or others”, according to the complaint.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe church holds a “rest and refresh in the Lord” ministry from 11pm to 8am, which includes scriptural readings piped in under dim lights. It is open to anyone.The city argues these actions constitute housing, and the church is in a zone that does not permit residential use on the first floor of a building.Bryan’s planning and zoning administrator gave the church 10 days to stop housing people. After an inspection, police in December sought charges against Avell for code violations.The church wants a federal judge to enforce its rights to free exercise of religion and protection from government hostility. It also seeks a restraining order keeping Bryan officials from taking action against the church in connection with the charges in the case that were obtained by police, and the church additionally is pursuing damages along with attorneys’ fees.“No history or tradition justifies the city’s intrusion into the church’s inner sanctum to dictate which rooms may be used for religious purposes, how the church may go about accomplishing its religious mission, or at what hours of the day religious activities are permitted,” the church said in its lawsuit.Dys added in a statement: “Instead of supporting a church that is trying to help citizens going through some of the worst situations in their lives (and in the dead of winter), the city seems intent on intimidating the church into ending its ministry to vulnerable citizens or relocating it somewhere out of mayor Schlade’s sight. The constitution and the law say otherwise.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      This racist US housing policy that tried to fix poverty is a massive failure

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      For 20 or so years, the architects of public housing have clung tightly to what became conventional wisdom in the field: move residents of low-income neighborhoods out of public housing and into economically resourced neighborhoods.As the theory goes, middle-class and wealthy communities with high-quality schools, healthcare and public facilities could work “wonders” on the residents of low-income and mostly Black neighborhoods. This idea – which advocates call “mixed-income housing” and includes Section 8, among other programs – depends on the idea that people with low incomes, especially those who are Black, are somehow culturally deficient. They need to be immersed in “better” neighborhoods so they are no longer exposed to food deserts, street violence and a lack of employment opportunities.More often than not, this policy experiment fails. In Chicago, many residents who were moved into higher-income neighborhoods ended up living in Black, low-income neighborhoods within five years. Mixed-income housing policy initiatives have struggled for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they are rooted in racist notions of public housing as a breeding ground for Black dysfunction.It’s clear “compassionate relocation” has been a notoriously mixed bag. Sociologist Ann Owens found that mixed-income housing policy has had a minimal impact on concentrated poverty from 1977 to 2008. Another study examined the experiences of 4,600 families who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, which offered families subsidized vouchers for private rentals. Moving improved the educational prospects of younger children and the mental health of women (who wouldn’t feel better in housing not plagued by chronic plumbing or heating problems, pests and cramped living conditions?). But relocation had no effect on employment or income for people who moved as adults. Economic opportunity didn’t magically appear at a new address.By the 1990s, scholars and politicians had made a cottage industry out of claiming that grouping poor Black people in high-density residential communities causes poor quality of life in the form of struggling schools and other ills. If you subscribe to this view, you probably believe poverty spreads among people with lower incomes like a highly contagious virus.The US Department Housing and Urban Development (HUD) bought into this narrative and, with its Hope VI transformation plans, emphasized moving former public housing residents out of their old neighborhoods. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), one of the nation’s largest public housing systems, committed to this course of action in 1999.Soon Chicago began demolishing “severely distressed public housing”. Among them were high-rise public housing developments like the infamous Cabrini-Green complex, which became a national symbol of urban blight and failed housing policy; those ideas were imprinted on the American imagination when Cabrini-Green appeared as the location of the 1970s sitcom Good Times and as the nightmarish setting for the 1992 horror film Candyman.The real experts on how relocation is not all it’s cracked up to be are the very targets of resettlement. As a political scientist who studies public housing, I’ve interviewed dozens of women who lived in properties owned by the CHA, which has a 50-year-old track record of grossly mismanaged and dilapidated public housing.I attended a memorable 2011 CHA tenants association meeting where women questioned discriminatory drug-testing policies in mixed-income housing developments. A CHA official claimed, “We don’t have a drug policy.” Chaos erupted because the women knew otherwise. Developers who managed mixed-housing programs often did as they pleased and made their own policies, sometimes in violation of CHA or HUD rules. Later in the meeting, another official seemed to admit those enrolled in mixed-income programs were subjected to more drug testing than residents who paid full market value.That contradicted talking points from advocacy groups like the National Housing Conference. It has contended that “mixed-income communities provide a safer environment that offers a greater range of positive role models and exposure to more job leads for area residents”. Transplanted residents weren’t safer, but rather vulnerable to additional surveillance, potential interaction with law enforcement (sometimes when neighbors reported them for no reason) and a different kind of stress in their nice, new homes. White supremacy and class bias followed residents wherever they moved, if they could move. Many participants in voucher programs continue to have trouble finding landlords willing to accept them.Researchers who hew to the old, entrenched school of thought – that masses of poor Black people living together are the problem – don’t seem to grasp that kids who once lived in public housing may not be accepted in their new schools. Or that their parents don’t “fit in” enough to get a nearby job. Or that groceries and life essentials are often more expensive in wealthier areas. Or that families are often placed in suburbs far from any of the public housing or welfare offices, let alone public hospitals and other support systems.Robert Chaskin and Mark Joseph coined a term for the marginalization of relocated families: “Incorporated exclusion”. People considered “lucky” enough to “get out” deal with isolation from valuable community networks. Contrary to popular belief and social entitlement policy, such networks and social support do exist in public housing. Far from being the “welfare queens” of the Reagan era, residents work hard and frequently to support each other. They provide childcare or elder care, organize meals for each other and advise neighbors on how to deal with bureaucracy that ignores the crumbling state of public housing it’s supposed to maintain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet mixed-income housing policy has shown little to no consideration of the importance of living near friends, family, church, schools and so on. Lack of easy access to community can also have detrimental effects on both community and individual health. By transferring residents all over metro Chicago, the CHA disrupted mutual aid mechanisms. Importantly, it also undermined tenants’ ability to organize and advocate for themselves.Because Black and poor Americans are presumed to be socially, culturally and spiritually broken, US poverty policy has never prioritized maintaining or protecting their communities. We don’t have enough meaningful public conversation about what redlining housing discrimination, systemic underdevelopment of places like Chicago’s South Side and police torture have done to low-income Black communities today.Housing policies forged in racism, sexism and classism do little but duplicate anti-Blackness and socioeconomic biases. Mixed-income housing policy attempts to shift the blame for what geographer Ruthie Wilson Gilmore calls “the organized government abandonment” of public housing stock and inner cities, de facto economic dead zones where white people and investment will not go.The problem is not high concentrations of Black, low-income people causing negative child and family outcomes. Rather, it’s that our government, businesses, schools and citizens discriminate against the working class, the poor and the unhoused. Members of the “underclass” – once a popular term in US poverty studies – are literally pushed out of sight and into public housing, low-performing schools and low-wage jobs.We deny them the rights to safe and secure housing, transportation and living-wage employment. White, middle-class and wealthy citizens refuse to frequent businesses or attend schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, and businesses are disincentivized to offer services in neighborhoods with high numbers of Black people.Assumptions about public housing residents have been built into the very foundations of public housing policy. It’s time to retire these damaging scripts – and eradicate them in policy because, as Fannie Lou Hamer said: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”Alex J. Moffett-Bateau PhD is from Detroit, Michigan, and is an assistant professor of political science at John Jay College in New York City More