Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

A split San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to place a measure on the November ballot that backers say would provide crucial funding and management tools to improve the city's troubled Muni system.

No one is saying that the plan would fix Muni, "but it's certainly going to help," said board President Aaron Peskin, the measure's chief sponsor.

"It will show the city's commitment to improving public transit and reducing greenhouse gas emissions" by giving people a reason to get out of their cars, he said.

The proposed charter amendment is endorsed by a politically powerful coalition of organized labor, public transportation advocates and environmentalists. It is opposed by deep-pocket business interests upset with wording tucked into the ballot measure at the 11th hour to cement existing city policy that restricts the amount of parking allowed in new large residential projects.

If approved by voters, the supervisors' measure would trump a separate November ballot initiative backed by businessman and Gap Inc. founder Don Fisher that would allow more parking in the city.

Time To Work: Job Search Strategies and Commute Time for Women on Welfare in San Francisco

Karen Chapple
University of Minnesota

The major policy approaches to welfare-to-work attempt to facilitate the transition into the workforce by providing job search assistance and transportation subsidies. Although these policies help some women on welfare, they fail to respond to the needs of most, who rely disproportionately on social contacts to find jobs, seek to minimize commutes, and lack the educational attainment that would help them penetrate the regional labor market. This article uses in-depth interviews with 92 women on welfare in San Francisco, as well as a binomial logit model, to examine the relationship between job search strategies and employment characteristics. The findings suggest that low-income women with children are more likely to rely on contacts than women without children, because they seek to work close to home. For most women, building connections to employers, improving human capital, and increasing the density of neighborhood economic and social activity will make jobs more accessible.

* Environmental Justice Report for the 2001 Regional Transportaiton Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area (PDF)

MTC is taking a grass-roots approach to identifying barriers to mobility and working to overcome them. With its Community-Based Transportation Planning Program, MTC has created a collaborative planning process that involves residents in minority and low-income Bay Area communities, community and faith-based organizations that serve them, transit operators, county congestion management agencies (CMAs) and MTC.

Launched in 2002, the Community-Based Transportation Planning Program evolved out of two reports completed in 2001 - the Lifeline Transportation Network Report and the Environmental Justice Report.

The Lifeline Report identified travel needs in low-income Bay Area communities and recommended community-based transportation planning as a way for communities to set priorities and evaluate options for filling transportation gaps. Likewise, the Environmental Justice Report identified the need for MTC to support local planning efforts in low-income communities throughout the region.

San Francisco progressives have spent decades in a multi-front battle against gentrification. The struggle to prevent the displacement of low-income working people from the city has led to rent controls and eviction protections, zoning restrictions, highrise limitations, inclusionary housing, and a constant push for truly affordable housing. But stopping gentrification alone does not make low-income neighborhoods desirable, or even livable. In San Francisco, neighborhoods that have defeated gentrification have been treated as "containment zones," meaning that unreasonable levels of crime, violence and drugs are tolerated so that such activities do not spread to upscale areas. The Tenderloin has long been one of the city's leading containment zones, but those days are over. A large contingent of residents, workers and merchants will be delivering this message to city officials today, in a March for Safety that heralds a new chapter in the Tenderloin's---and San Francisco's---history.