In defense of high-density housing near SSF BART

(There are proposals to build housing on a vacant lot down the trail from South San Francisco BART station. The fact that some alternatives promoted by potential developers are up to 15 stories tall has upset many residents. Here, resident John Baker makes a plea for more housing on the location.)


South San Francisco is an older city, and I’m not talking about the fact it recently celebrated its 107th anniversary.

What I mean is that it is a community where the median age of a resident has risen from 26.8 in 1970 to 38.1 in 2010 as home-owning adults aged in place and younger people moved away to start families in more-affordable locales. In fact, South San Francisco has almost 3,500 fewer school-aged kids than it did when I was born, despite the city’s population increasing by more than 20,000 in that time. (Note, I’m talking the physical existence of children, not just enrollment in our public schools.) Families increasingly cannot afford to stay in this city.

That’s why meaningful housing construction, like the proposals for homes on the former SFPUC location just south of the South San Francisco BART station, are important for South City’s future.

I recently completed a seven-year stint as a commissioner on the South San Francisco Public Housing Authority. I’ve seen the damage done to families by a housing supply that is far short of demand: runaway rents, soaring housing costs, and an influx of money that is both directly and indirectly leading to displacement of some of our most vulnerable. The waiting list for our Public Housing is so long that the Authority won’t even quote wait times. The waiting list for a Section 8 voucher is long as well, and good luck finding a landlord that will accept one.

We have a profound need to increase housing supply. I think many people in South City agree on that. However, some people say, “I support more housing, but this is not the right place.” To me, this location is the absolute best place to build housing on the Peninsula: Hundreds of units, up to 160 of them affordable, literally right next to a BART station and a heavily used bicycle/pedestrian path, right next to the Peninsula’s longest street, and within blocks of schools and grocery stores. It will be adjacent to what will soon be the newest, most advanced-technology library in San Mateo County. This is the place.

There’s reasonable discussion to be had as to how tall these buildings need to be. I’m guessing we initially had proposals of up to 15 stories because developers realize they will likely be trimmed down to seven (which is how tall the tallest new proposals appear to be). They didn’t ask for seven, because then it would be trimmed down to four. Personally, I think we need far more publicly subsidized housing – not just BMR housing. But anything a project in this location can do to help our supply is appreciated.

I’ve heard or read many of my neighbors says something to the effect of “No one asked for this,” Well… (raises hand) … I’m asking for this.

• I’m asking for this because I don’t want wetlands and farms in the Central Valley turned into blacktop.
• I’m asking for this because I do not want any more homes on San Bruno Mountain. Or on landfill in the Bay.
• I’m asking for this because helping people get homes, or at least having homes for newcomers so those current renters are less likely to be displaced, is the right thing to do.

The single-most meaningful challenge for our younger generations will be climate change. Building high-density infill housing near transit is an impactful way to meet our state’s ambitious climate goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent of their 1990 levels. The days of the super-commute have to end. And, I would suggest, if cities want to ensure people in such buildings actually take mass transit, reduce or eliminate parking minimums for such projects.

I’ve read residents online complaining that “The Hillsboroughs of the world aren’t building their share of housing, so why should we?” To me, that’s like asking why I have to sort my recycling from the trash if my neighbors don’t. We should make sure there’s more housing, even if some of our neighbors don’t because we’re more ethical than them. We’re more environmentally conscious than them.

And finally, the leadership of this city is more responsible for the mess than them. The predecessors of the current city council promoted policies that created thousands more jobs than housing units between 2000 and 2010. And you know what? Downtown South San Francisco is more active, our streets are a little cleaner, and extra policing has made our gang problem less acute. But — and I’m not saying this is unique to South City by any means — we have fallen behind on our responsibilities to keep housing supply and demand balanced.

So I am asking the City to build this. The more units, the better. Please.

John Baker is a former chair of the South San Francisco Public Housing Authority and current trustee for the South San Francisco Unified School District. This essay is his own opinion as an individual and not necessarily representative of any organization of which he is a part.

The "shocking" fall of Peter Garrett and how it symbolizes the political process

When in Canberra a few months ago, I posted a brief note here about how interesting I found it that former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett (right) was Australia's minister of culture and the environment.

Garrett, and the Oils (my second-favorite Aussie band, and the one whose music holds up the best) as a whole, have long been known for their activism. Their 1988 single "Beds Are Burning," highlighting White Australia's mistreatment of its Aboriginal peoples, is perhaps the most-famous example. Garrett was elected to Parliament in 2004 and become a minister when the Labor party came to power a few years later. Now Garrett finds himself in significant political hot water, and how the press and public have turned against him is an interesting case study about what the public expects from its leadership.

Part of Garrett's portfolio included supervision over federal energy conservation measures, and that included supporting a home insulation program. As most of us know, proper insulation can lower energy costs by keeping the insulated building either hotter or cooler, as desired. Thousands of Australian homes received insulation in their attics as part of this program -- insulation that was coated in metal.

That insulation has directly resulted in the deaths of four workers, either through electrocution or heat stroke, and has been implicated in about 90 house fires (the metal has in some cases contacted electrical wires, causing short circuits). As word got around about the program's poor safety record, pressure on Garrett steadily increased, with calls for his resignation being heard far and wide. Eventually, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd demoted Garrett, stripping him of his energy duties.

This was an interesting case for me. How far up the ladder should someone fall on their sword in such a debacle? Did Garrett know about the safety problems beforehand? Apparently not. Does he have a background as an electrician? No.

A recent experience with the South San Francisco Housing Authority showed me that the public expects its officials (elected or otherwise) to be able to micromanage all the way down the food chain. Sometimes that's quite simply not possible.

Take the example of the SSF HA. Of the board members, two are retired from non-technical backgrounds, two (including myself) are college/university students and two are "resident" commissioners, who live in the authority (not to cast any dispersions, but one has to be low-income to live in the complex, so it's unlikely they have expertise in municipal finance). Those might not be the best backgrounds for the kind of work we do, but I don't consider us unqualified -- we truly are representatives of the general public, regular Joes who are trying to serve the community. For technical matters, including contracting and finance, we have to rely on the expertise of paid staff.

So it is with Garrett as well. He certainly has the background for the "cultural" part of his ministry. But like us has to rely on the experts' opinions on technical matters beyond his background. His consultants with expertise should have known better and warned him of the dangers, and should face discipline. Should Garrett?

I don't have a good answer. In my case, I'd certainly be a better commissioner if I had a background in contracting or even painting (my MPA will hopefully help address at least the former). But one beauty of America (and Australia, for that matter) is that credit is due to concerned individuals who do their best while others sit and complain when things don't go their way.

It happened to us, and it happened to Garrett.

Response to KGO story

Above: My moment of TV fame. How long has my nose been that big?

The story on the South San Francisco Housing Authority's painting contract aired last week, and the funniest comment I heard was when my wife's uncle agreed that I was the "least-incompetent" sounding member of the Board of Commissioners. High praise indeed.

The story is up on the KGO site (click here), with a video link.

What's even more exciting is that Axios linked to my previous blog posting and offered me some good-fun criticism (maybe it wasn't meant as such, but that's how I choose to take it). The owner, Nicolas Theodorides, felt obliged on Feb. 7 to register Axios4Fairness.com simply to belittle my blog posts (at least that's currently — as of 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 9 — the only content). I'm sure he meant it to take apart my side of the story, yet I really enjoyed it (save for one particular part, below). Apparently, I wrote a bunch of stuff between the lines that I wasn't even aware of!

(Also, being nervous on camera is apparently incriminating, according to Axios.)

Axios keyed on my love of cookies (which, I might add, I buy myself and bring to my SamTrans meetings) and the company's blogger even offered to buy me cookies in thanks for my entertaining them with my post. While I'd like to say I prefer toll house with walnuts (or if Theodorides wants to introduce me to some Greek cookies, kourambiethes), Theodorides seems to have so much bile for the SSFHA that I'm worried some will get into the batter. Therefore, I must decline. If he'd like to donate some cookies to a local food bank (such as Second Harvest) on my behalf, it would indeed be appreciated.

Also, they seem to think that my linking to a "bizarre" Twitter post made at 2:17 a.m. one morning was somehow relevant -- apparently there's some significance that I'm awake at that hour tweeting about cookies. Well, Mr. Theodorides, like your employees, I have to work for a living. It just so happens that my shift is overnight. (As for it being "bizarre," if the folks at Axios bothered to read my Twitter timeline, the tweet would have made more sense). As for it being included at all, this was a personal blog post not an official statement.

I can take criticism, good-natured or not. The only thing that was truly irritating to me in Axios' post was the insinuation that I was trying to suck up to Dan Noyes as a "peer." I realize I am in no way close to Noyes' class as a journalist. He has much more experience and insight than I do (there I go sucking up again). But I do indeed have a BA in journalism, three years experience on staff for local newspapers and, yes, another decade's experience stringing for newspapers and magazines both in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The wonderful thing about this country is there's no licensing authority for the media and it's not for anyone else to tell me whether or not I'm a "journalist."

While the author of Axios4Fairness remains anonymous, he (or she) seems to think I made a mistake by being forthcoming. While I did want to present the facts on the bid as I saw them (and most folks would probably agree that such a perspective is valuable), the primary focus of the blog posting was to give an insight into the process from the interviewee's side. I agree with Theodorides (or whoever wrote the Axios blog) that I was unusual in being so forthcoming in my blog -- but don't you want that from your public officials? (We have to register our holdings with the FPCC, so yes, we are classified as public officials.)

As for the piece itself: I’m disappointed that Noyes did not ask for our side of the story about the rejected bids, nor mention one key point — the Board wholeheartedly agreed with Tripsas that the exclusion of bids such as hers over semantics was ridiculous and immediately changed the policy. We now do not require any specific language, simply a clear statement to the same effect as “sealed bid.” Unfortunately for Tripsas, to make the policy retroactive would have required the board to reopen ALL bids and delay the painting contract for at least a month. These buildings — again, not painted in seven years — had spots where the paint was peeling and needed the work done fast. Not to mention such a move would inevitably draw a protest from one or more of the previously accepted bidders who would think the change unfair.

An ethical question for all you journalism professors out there (with probably no right answer): Noyes produced many documents and e-mails (including bid packets) that Axios’ lawyer gathered through a Freedom of Information Act request. Noyes used them in his package, yet did not once include the disclaimer that he got them through Axios. (There was no request to the Housing Authority seeking documents from Noyes, ABC 7 News or any other media organization.) If I recall Prof. "Mac" McClary's media ethics class up at Humboldt State more than a decade ago, a reporter should mention that the bulk of the documentation comes filtered through one of the interested parties so the readers/viewers can judge for themselves if they've been filtered).

Otherwise, hey, good piece. The unfortunate portrayals of a couple fellow Board members, at least compared to how I perceived my own performance, did reaffirm my belief that silence in the face of a media investigation is counter productive. We had nothing to hide and I stated as much, answering Noyes' questions to the best of my ability to remember events from seven months previously. (I am disappointed that the only bit of the five-minute interview that Noyes used was the part where I seemed to throw my fellow board members under the bus!)

To summarize my thoughts on this process, yes there were problems in accepting bids. I agreed with Tripsas at the June meeting and urged the board then and there to change the policy. Yes, I think that the recommendation to throw out the highest and lowest bids was arbitrary, which is why I dug deeper. And yes, I think that the next-lowest bidder should have gotten the bid and my motion at the meeting reflected that. I still, however, stand by my not accepting Axios' bid. Again, no references were listed (if Axios' owner had people willing to vouch for him from his previous company, the company should have listed them) and the insurance certificate was listed as "pending" in the bid packet. Sorry, but I don't gamble like that.

For once, I'm on the other side of the media ... and it's more exciting than it should be

A couple buildings in the South San Francisco Housing Authority.

Note: The following contains my own personal opinions and recollections and is in no way meant to represent the opinions of the South San Francisco Housing Authority, its Board of Commissioners or the City of South San Francisco.

I will be on TV during the Thursday night newscast on San Francisco's channel 7, and am not particularly thrilled about it.

In April of last year, I was appointed by the South San Francisco City Council to a term as commissioner on the city's Housing Authority (SSFHA). Now it might come as a surprise to some that South City even has public housing, but we do -- about 80 units in 37 buildings on a C Street cul de sac near South San Francisco High (map below).

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Like my involvement with SamTrans, where I am the chair of the Citizen's Advisory Committee, I take my duty as a housing commissioner seriously. It is a great way to give something back to the community and is just a step above volunteer work -- we are compensated with a mere $50 (taxable) per month for a job that usually involves about three or four hours work (including meetings, site visits, discussions with staff and residents, reading large agenda packets and the like), plus cookies at meetings. Cookies at meetings are important. The commissioners are tasked with, among other duties, approving regulations in the authority and (relevant in this case) approving contracts with outside companies for maintenance and the like. One contract approval last year has turned into an interesting spectacle, with one rejected contractor taking its disappointment to the media.

Last spring, the Housing Authority sent out a request for proposals to paint the exterior of the authority's 37 buildings, which had not been repainted for seven years. The job would be paid for using ARRA stimulus funds doled out by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which has oversight over public housing. We had about 22 bids -- 14 of which were deemed "noncompliant" due to one procedural misstep or another (that process in itself was difficult, as the minutes of our June meeting attest).

Ultimately, the Housing Authority's staff submitted eight bids to the Board for its review. The report the commissioners received from the staff did not include a recommendation about which contractor to select, but did include a notation that the Housing Authority wanted an "inexpensive but quality job" (paraphrased) and staff thusly recommended that the two highest and two lowest bids be rejected (kind of like when the highest and lowest judge's scores are thrown out in the Olympics, I guess).

"Now, wait a minute," you might be asking, "Aren't public agencies obliged to choose the lowest bid?" No. We are actually tasked with accepting the lowest responsible bid. This means that, besides price, public agencies are supposed to also consider all criteria associated with a bid, including experience, insurance, perceived ability to do the job, etc.

One bidder, Axios Painting of San Francisco (I feel comfortable naming them because the company has taken its case to the media), had the lowest of the eight bids submitted to the board, saying it could paint the buildings for a little over $72,000. Another contractor, Ljungquist Painting of Palo Alto, said it could do the job for about $97,700. The third-lowest bidder, Metro Structural Painting of South San Francisco, submitted a bid for $116,000.

I didn't quite buy the "throw out highest and lowest" logic in picking a responsible bidder, so I closely examined the two lowest bids. Axios, at the time, was a very new company. It DID NOT LIST A SINGLE REFERENCE in its bid and its insurance certificate was listed as "pending" in the bid packet. As a result, I did not consider it a complete bid. I wouldn't hire someone with no references or insurance to paint my home, so I certainly wouldn't hire it to paint the homes of 80 other families either.

(It should be noted that the director of the Housing Authority determined, using estimates of total man hours needed to complete the project, that Axios would not be able to pay what are called "Davis-Bacon Wages." Davis-Bacon wages are pay rates determined by the US Department of Labor to meet the prevailing wage rates in the area to be paid on federally paid-for construction projects. If the contractor the SSFHA picked did not pay Davis-Bacon wages, we ran the risk of not being reimbursed by HUD.)

Ljungquist had all the required references and paperwork in my opinion, and was $18,200 cheaper than the next-lowest bid. So I moved that Ljungquist be awarded the contract. As the minutes indicate, my motion died for a lack of a second. The other board members, so I gathered from the discussion, agreed with staff's recommendation that the lowest bids be rejected in search of a high-quality job. In addition, the SSFHA's procurement policy at the time had a provision that a "preference" be shown to South San Francisco contractors (that provision has since been removed at HUD's recommendation), so the it was moved that Metro Structural get the contract.

The Board voted unanimously to award Metro Structural its $116,000 bid. While I would have preferred Ljungquist get the contract, I did vote yes for Metro Structural after seeing that it had the rest of the Board's support. Sometimes, politically, it's better to present a united front. Besides, other that the price, Metro Structural did have a good bid with many references, including local schools.

Normally, the story would end there. The buildings would get painted and most folks would be happy. But the owner of Axios didn't take losing the bid lightly. He first complained in a letter to the SSFHA and attended the July board meeting, I guess to see what we do. He then took his protest to HUD, which bounced it back because we followed our then-current procurement policy -- but not before holding up our stimulus payment for several months, forcing the SSFHA to take money from its reserves to pay the painting bill.

Not satisfied, Axios took its case to KGO TV news in San Francisco, alleging we were wasting stimulus funds. Lo and behold, investigative reporter Dan Noyes and the "I-Team" were at our January board meeting. I recognized Dan immediately, becoming a fan after he did a story recently about alleged spending abuses by San Jose/Evergreen College District Chancellor Rosa Perez, whom I myself profiled a couple times, most recently in 2004 for The Spectrum Magazine when she was president of Cañada College.

I also knew why he was there, having dealt with the aftermath of this painting contract for months. Dan asked to speak with me on camera, and I agreed -- knowing from almost a decade's worth of reporting experience that silence speaks volumes. I wasn't quite prepared for the way Noyes asked the questions, but I did the best I could -- taking extra care to not once say "I don't know," probably the most incriminating thing a public official could say.

You'd think, having been on the other side of hundreds of interviews, that I'd have been comfortable giving one. But I could feel the slight nervous tick developing, could sense an inordinate amount of "uhs" coming from my mouth and uttered my words probably a whole octave higher than my usual speaking voice.

Was I nervous? Sure. But mostly I felt a bit of anger. Not at Dan Noyes, who was just doing his job. But at the circumstances. I felt we were being pilloried for rejecting an unqualified bid. If Axios had references and an insurance certificate, I would have been happy to move that the company get the contract. But now, it seems like sour grapes on Axios' part.

My only regret in this whole scenario (other than the stuttering interview that will probably be reduced to a few frames of me looking like I don't care about the public's money), is that I didn't push harder for Ljungquist to get the contract. I was new on the board at that time and a little hesitant to make enemies. I also may or may not instead have voted "No" in awarding Metro Structural the contract, but it was a fait accompli.

According to ads on channel 7, The I-Team story will run during the 6 p.m. newscast on Thursday, Feb. 4. Ironically, I'll be in my "Managing Budgets in the Public Sector" class at San Francisco State's downtown campus at the time. The ads seem to state that we misspent stimulus funds by "overpaying" 60 percent. Lovely. Again, I'd like to ask you folks if YOU'D pay an uninsured contractor with no references to paint YOUR house.

I'll post a quick reaction after the story airs.

(Update, Feb. 9, 2010: My response is up. A criticism of the above blog post from Axios is available at Axios4fairness.com.)