Chronicle Promotes Showroom that Housed Evicted Tenants

by Paul Hogarth, 2008-04-25

Two weeks ago, we reported that the Marine View Residence – a Pacific Heights SRO that housed 56 low-income tenants until the landlord did an Ellis Act eviction – is now an elite decorator’s showroom. This week, the Chronicle wrote a puff piece promoting the showroom’s grand opening – in a shocking display of arrogance to the plight of San Francisco tenants.

At a time when the Chronicle berates our homeless, the article in their “Home & Garden” section was oblivious that the two issues are somehow connected. Maybe because Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein spends too much time at lavish parties in Pacific Heights – where he learned at Dede Wilsey’s mansion last week that Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier wants to repeal district elections. According to Alioto-Pier, her own constituents complain to her that they're not well represented.

At first glance, you can’t even tell by reading Susan Fornoff’s April 23rd article that the Marine View Residence – a.k.a. the Pink Palace – was once home to dozens of single adults who could not otherwise live in San Francisco. In a light-hearted essay called “If These Walls Could Talk,” Fornoff interviews the mansion’s “walls”– who detail the renovation work that the 1905 Italianate mansion has gone through. The “walls” explain how wealthy and well connected the current owners are – and that such an undertaking cannot be done by the average homeowner “without [the owner’s] contacts and money.”

A reader has to look hard to find mention that the prior tenants were evicted under the Ellis Act – and when it does the Chronicle pins the blame squarely on overzealous tenant laws. “In 2003,” writes Fornoff, “the Marine View/Pink Palace caught the attention of city inspectors, who demanded sprinklers in every room. The owners decided instead to get out of the boardinghouse business and invoke the Ellis Act to oust the old-timers - just another bit of only-in-San-Francisco lore.”

So a law that saved scores of low-income tenants from being burned out (and supported by every Supervisor from Gavin Newsom to Chris Daly) is the culprit for why the tenants were evicted? Never does Fornoff ask whether greed was why the owner used the Ellis Act, or mentions that the landlord’s attorney once suggested that SRO tenants should live in the Tenderloin rather than Pacific Heights. To add insult to injury, we learn from the Chronicle article that the new owners installed a sprinkler system in the building.

Fornoff also doesn’t mention that the eviction spurred the California State Legislature (and then-Governor Gray Davis) to pass a law exempting SRO’s from the Ellis Act – so that such an atrocity could never happen again. None of these concerns matter to the Chronicle, because isn’t it nice that a beautiful historic mansion has been renovated?

Perhaps the Chronicle is out of touch because its editor-at-large, Phil Bronstein, goes to parties at Pacific Heights mansions – where he hobnobs with the City’s political gentry who plot the next anti-progressive move. In an April 18th blog entry at SFGate, Bronstein reported on a party at the home of Dede Wilsey – the millionaire socialite who led the charge against Healthy Saturdays in Golden Gate Park and Question Time at the Board of Supervisors – where she announced a plan to repeal district elections.

District elections – which by Bronstein’s own admission every city of San Francisco’s size uses to elect its City Council – is how grass-roots neighborhood activists have managed to wrest control of the Board of Supervisors. It has resulted in a Board that is more progressive, more accountable and more responsive to people who make less than six-figure salaries. But for this crowd, district elections means that they can’t just throw money at a candidate who then runs a citywide campaign.

Wilsey told her guests that district elections have been a “disaster,” and welcomed Pacific Heights Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier – who offered her support for repealing them. “Dede is not alone,” said Alioto-Pier, who went on to add that a lot of her constituents tell her: “we really fought for district elections – but now we want to go back to citywide because we're not being represented properly.”

Of course, if residents of Pacific Heights feel like they’re not being represented properly, they could blame Supervisor Alioto-Pier – who has the worst attendance record on the Board.

But repealing district elections wasn’t the main topic of discussion at Dede Wilsey’s mansion. George Schultz, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, was the party’s guest of honor – and was on hand to give out free autograph copies of his new book. San Francisco isn’t exactly a Republican town – George W. Bush did not win a single local precinct in either the 2000 or 2004 elections, and we’re the only major City in America that the President has not visited in his seven years in office.

That’s not a concern, however, for this crowd. How many of them will be attending the grand opening of the Marine View Decorators Showcase this weekend – where they can admire what a great job Ann Getty and other such interior decorators have done to the bedrooms that once housed low-income tenants? Meanwhile, the rest of us in San Francisco struggle hard to get by – as the city gets more and more gentrified.