very likely the first ever video of San Mateo's very first nesting pair of bald eagles in 100 years, taken earlier today. This is on San Francisco Water Department property and the closest these eagles have nested to San Francisco in our generation. Another nesting pair has been reported at Kent Lake in Marin county and more info on Bay Area eagles at Hawkman blog. And another nesting pair at Calaveras Reservoir in Santa Clara county (updated at SFCitizen)
the actual view...it's on the other side of the lake, on the other side of that eucalytus grove
this photo is with a Canon EOS DSLR at 80mm (different source)
this photo is with a 20xcanon sx20 bridge camera of the same eucalyptus grove at a different angle. This is the only place at water level you can see it and it's on Sawyer Camp Trail
you need a bigger lens than this to get close (500mm) or a camera rigged to a spotting scope for digascoping which is likely how the Audubon got a nice clear shot
we got lucky as there was a juvenile bald eagle flying around Crystal Springs unrelated to the nesting pair -just passing through
bonus! Some young deer at Crystal Springs along Sawyer Camp Trail
I work at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. The City Attorney's Office has told us that his cameras are illegal. And we are not -- I repeat, we are not -- evicting him right now.
[12] Posted by: paulhogarth | August 17, 2007 4:32 PM
Shortly after this was posted I received an email from Brock Keeling telling me that Noel Cisneros of ABC-7 news wanted to talk to me. It turns out that she wanted to talk to me about this specific statement that Paul Hogarth made on SFist. Noel had contacted the city attorneys office and they denied everything. Absolutely nobody had asked the city attorney about anything regarding the crime camera. Not Paul Hogarth, nor anyone at THC had ever contacted them about this issue, and the city attorney does not deal with such issues anyway (quite the opposite - the city attorney does deal with nuisance properties - which crime cameras help to document)
Paul Hogarth made it up.
Paul Hogarth lies
It was a complete fabrication.
If you read the comments at SFist via the Archive.org link, you'll see that others were getting suspicious about that statement as well. Five years later, I'm still waiting for a retraction and apology from Hogarth. I'm not holding my breath
Holding land and building owners accountable for blight and nuisance in San Francisco. The real and legal and historical definition of nuisance and forcing property owners to be responsible for their own property
This has never been mentioned before in San Francisco, but it has in many other cities since 1989. This is probably because many of the people writing about blight are themselves landlords, and don't want people to know about this, and instead try to divert attention to vacant buildings
The problems associated with Mid Market and the Tenderloin are not caused by vacant buildings themselves. Vacant buildings are merely a symptom of a deeper underlying problem caused by problem residents.
California and San Francisco have nuisance abatement laws which have recently been used by the city attorney to go after a liquor store in the Tenderloin. But this is just one single store and even the Bay Guardian is questioning the effectiveness of that. Look at the comments which mirror comments made for many years in publications
You are not going to 'raze the tenderloin' and start over. You are not going to bulldoze SRO's because those are protected by law, but you can make the landlords do something about the nuisance that often originates from their own buildings
Background
In 1989 a woman named Molly Wetzel and some neighbors went after a landlord on Francisco street in Berkeley because the place was a crack house, It's very simple, except that it turned out to be one of the largest civil cases and awards in California history (unprecedented judgement against a landlord in California)
Molly Wetzel then went on to form the organization Safe Streets Now!, which has since expanded to many cities across the country in various forms, but especially in California because California has a few extra nuisance abatement laws on the books
Violence. Noise. Garbage. Vandalism. Prostitution. Speeding Cars. If you've ever lived near a public nuisance, you know how distressing and disruptive its presence can be.
Many communities are traumatized by public nuisances, such as drug trafficking, and the crime and violence associated with these activities. Open drug markets flourish as neighborhood residents witness and endure the encroaching blight. Unfortunately, there aren't enough police and city resources to pursue every public nuisance in every neighborhood. However you and your neighbors can shut down the whole operation on your own by getting the property declared a "public nuisance" and, if necessary, taking the owner of the property to Small Claims Court.
What is a Public Nuisance?
A public nuisance, according to state law, is anything that is:
Injurious to health
Indecent to the senses
Unlawfully impeding free use of the streets
Obstructing free use of property so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property
Why do we need Safe Streets Now!?
With Safe Streets Now! the residents come together to define the standards of conduct for their neighborhood and enforce those standards at the neighborhood level. Some people view this as a community policing tool while others see it as a neighborhood and resident empowerment tool.
Is Safe Streets Now! Going to Make a Difference?
We believe Safe Streets Now! will be a valuable addition to the ongoing work of the City's Police Department, Prosecutor's Office, Councilmembers and Field Representatives, the Neighborhood Outreach Team, and the Human Services and Recreation Department. In over 800 cases where the Safe Streets Now! program was used, 80% of the cases successfully closed down targeted properties without going to court. Additionally, all cases taken to court have also been settled in favor of the neighborhoods and the Safe Streets Now! program.
How does Safe Streets Now! Work?
Safe Streets Now! is a step-by-step process that residents can use to address public nuisances in their neighborhoods. In Pasadena, Safe Streets Now! will include a partnership between neighbors, police, city staff, and community-based organization representatives. Safe Streets Now! began in Oakland, California in 1989 and is a nationally recognized program.
Safe Streets Now! uses a State of California nuisance abatement law. This law is at the heart of the program. It affirms that residents have a right to fully enjoy the use of their homes in peace. The process for Safe Streets Now! is straightforward and includes the following steps:
Identify property creating the public nuisance.
Take notes on nuisance.
Phone each incidence to the police.
Write 'demand letter' to the property owner and threaten to take the owner to Small Claims Court if he or she does not correct the nuisance. (The majority of cases never make it to court, most landlords voluntarily remove the problem tenants from their properties after receiving the demand letter.)
Take the landlord to Small Claims Court. The plaintiffs (neighborhood residents) file a joint suit. It costs $75 (which can be waived) per plaintiff to file and each plaintiff can sue for up to $7,500. No attorneys may be used by either party in a small claims trial. Court dates are set within 30 days of the filing and judgments are issued within 30 days of the trial. Small Claims Court is swift and inexpensive.
What About Retaliation? Will I Be Safe?
Safe Streets Now! is a non-violent, non-confrontational way to rid communities of public nuisances such as drug and gang houses. Residents are safe because they will never confront or contact the gang members or drug dealers directly when documenting the problems. They contact other neighbors and the police by telephone. The demand letter includes a Pasadena Safe Streets Now! address, the name of the facilitator as the contact person, and will is sent directly to the landlord along with the residents' documentation.
Molly Wetzel's program Safe Streets Now has been so successful, that it prompted an in depth study funded by the US Department of Justice
There are even instructional videos on Youtube on how to organize and make landlords responsible
SRO (single room occupancy hotels) in San Francisco are NOT exempt from these nuisance laws, and neither are the non profits that run many of them. The same laws have actually been used in San Francisco before, at one SRO, except it was never identified by name until now
In 1995, Antoinetta Stadlman, who is now an employee of the same Randy Shaw used this same resource to gather several neighbors and go after the landlord and won several thousand dollars in court. This is mentioned in this article in the SF Weekly
What has never been mentioned before, is that Stadlman had originally talked to the same Molly Wetzel to help start the organization process after reading about her Safe Streets Now in the paper back in 1995. More than 15 years later, the same Antoinetta Stadlman, has recently identified and made public identical issues in Randy Shaws own buildings
Antoinetta Stadlman has lived in the Baldwin House hotel since 1991. By 1995, she was fed up with its condition. Clued in by a newspaper article to a law that allows neighbors to lodge nuisance claims against property owners who allow illegal or disturbing activities to continue unabated, Stadlman and 14 other tenants took Baldwin House owner Nick Patel to small-claims court and won $5,000 each, the maximum allowable under the law.
Patel appealed the decision to Superior Court. In Superior Court, unlike small-claims court, lawyers are more or less required. Stadlman called around. A private lawyer said he'd take the case -- for $25,000, or 30 percent of the overall settlement. Stadlman thought that was too expensive, so she asked the Tenderloin Housing Clinic for help.
"Randy said he'd do it," Stadlman says. But not for free.
Specifically, Stadlman says, Shaw offered her a contingency-fee arrangement: We handle the suit for you, and we get 25 percent of the settlement, up to $20,000. And Stadlman is grateful for that -- "They gave me a $5,000 break," she says, comparing the THC's contingency rate to the private lawyer's. But still, she decided to continue looking for a lawyer who would take the case for free.
Shaw says the fees were necessary because of the amount of work the case demanded. Generally, when a lawyer takes a case on a contingency basis, he must win the case (or win a settlement) in order to be paid. If the lawyer loses, then neither the lawyer nor the law firm gets any money.
In the 17 years since 1995, Randy Shaw has become a landlord himself of sixteen different SRO's in the Tenderloin, Mid market, and Mission neighborhoods, so he would certainly know about this, since he was involved with it 17 years ago, but he has never mentioned this publicly in his beyondchron.org. The reason is obvious. Because Tenderloin Housing Clinic is the largest contractor in the city of San Francisco to house so called 'hard core homeless', many of them still on dope, and therefore a huge liability in a case like this. This is also why the City of San Francisco refuses to run these housing facilities themselves, because of the huge liability due to the nuisance...and instead contracts all of it out to private non profits
No competent attorney (Randy Shaw) in his right mind who runs such a large organization of high liability clients would ever admit this publicly, which is why you will never see this posted at beyondchron.org.
And now you know the real meaning of a massive 'containment zone' in the heart of San Francisco, funded by you..
(even worse is state privacy laws regarding welfare that applies to such non profits (State of California welfare and institutions code - reference > http://law.justia.com/codes/california/2010/wic/15633-15637.html) - as caretakers, which in itself is a highly questionable practice - simply dumping mental patients in SRO's)
This is just one part of the many buildings in San Francisco that could be a source of nuisance. It doesn't have to be in the Tenderloin, Soma, Mid Market or Mission problem areas, it could be anywhere in the city
The website to identify who the owners are of any property in San Francisco is the assessors office
Yep, it was San Francisco airport that started it all back in the 1980's. Ironic that it has almost never been mentioned in San Francisco itself. But since San Francisco leaders have spent over two decades moving 'the worst of the worst' out of outlying neighborhoods and into the Mid market and Tenderloin and Mission neighborhoods, it's not likely you'll ever hear more than crickets about this in the press
However, problems at the SRO's have been reported as with the undercover video scandal
According to SFPD’s Department of Emergency Management, police have been called to the Henry Hotel 143 times since early November, an average of just more than one call per day. Of seven residential hotels in the area The San Francisco Examiner inquired about, only one other, the Seneca Hotel, was the source of more calls: 287.
