Community Leadership Alliance: questionnaire for Rob Anderson, candidate for District 5 Supervisor

Dear SF-Supervisor Candidate,

The August 1st deadline for our candidate questionnaires to be completed and sent back is soon approaching, it will be followed by an endorsement meeting of our endorsement advisory committee. At which point we then will publish our endorsements on-line, and send it out to our 1,836 subscribers, SF-DCCC, and on-line web news affiliate (http://www.sfnewsfeed.us/).

Folks city wide have come to rely on our endorsements as a voters guide taking a print-out copy with them to the polls. If you have already e-mailed back your completed questionnaire you may disregard this e-mail. For those of you who have not yet sent your completed questionnaire back to us, attached is a copy.

Community Leadership Alliance

"Together we can"

http://www.communityleadershipalliance.net/

District Supervisor Candidate/s Questionnaire

1.) What are the three most important issues of concern to the voters of your district? How would you address each of these issues?
I can tell you the issues that concern me as a long-time resident of District 5. The most shocking trend since 2000 is how progressives are allowing the Planning Department to accelerate gentrification in the city with projects like the luxury highrise condos on Rincon Hill, the Market/Octavia Plan, and UC’s rip-off of the property on lower Haight Street for a massive housing project. Supervisor Mirkarimi supports all these unwise, destructive projects that provide mostly market-rate housing.

He also supported the city’s illegal attempt to rush the 527-page Bicycle Plan into the city’s General Plan with no environmental review. Mirkarimi supports Critical Mass and whatever else the anti-car Bicycle Coalition wants to do to neighborhood streets.

Finally, like other progressive leaders, Mirkarimi has been silent on the homeless issue, even as Mayor Newsom implements successful programs to deal with this ongoing social emergency on our streets (see my blog for a list of the people who died on city streets in 2007.) The city needs to continue Homeward Bound, supportive housing, and outreach through Project Homeless Connect. The city also needs to begin applying Laura’s Law to the homeless that are a threat to their own safety and the safety of others.

2.) How would each of the issues above affect the voters city wide?
Housing, traffic, and homelessness are clearly of concern to all city residents.

3.) How do you plan on continuously addressing services to seniors and persons with disabilities?
Is there a problem in delivering these services? If so I’d like to hear about it. I am now the fulltime caretaker for my 92-year-old mother, so I have a personal interest in these issues.

4.) Housing is a very serious issue in San Francisco especially for low income working families and those on fixed incomes. What would you do to help solve the issue around housing that these low income working families can afford? We are faced now with the fact that many San Franciscans are “baby boomers” that need to have subsidized housing that is not readily available to them and those in our neighborhoods that are persons with disabilities, so how could you work to aid these fixed income residents in San Francisco?
Those in need of course should get housing subsidies. I can tell you what I won’t do, and that is make the situation worse by supporting large projects that provide mostly market-rate housing for the well-off---Rincon Hill, the Market/Octavia Plan, and the UC/Evans project on lower Haight Street. All of these projects, supported by Supervisor Mirkarimi, required that the city change zoning regulations to encourage developers.