Sewage, billionaires and rent control

A right-wing organization financed by a billionaire Republican donor has weighed in on San Francisco’s lawsuit against the federal Environmental Protection Agency and is using dubious arguments to attack two supervisors seeking re-election.

Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy is sending mail to at least two counties — D1, where Sup. Connie Chan has a tight race and D7, where Sup. Myrna Melgar also faces a challenge.

The mailers don’t talk about sewage, environmental protection, or that San Francisco is going to give the U.S. Supreme Court the ability to gut the Clean Water Act. Or that dozens of environmental groups are calling on the city to drop the lawsuit.

Instead, they insist that unless the city allows the Supreme Court to overturn half a century of environmental law — and it almost certainly will — water rates will go up. By tenfold. Which is a complete fabrication.

While the mailers do not urge voters to oppose these two suggestions – they are so-called “issue ads” – the message is quite clear: If Melgar and Chan vote to urge the SF Public Utilities Commission and City Attorney to file a challenge to the Supreme Court recalls, they will cost residents a lot of money, so you should vote them out of office.

Background: San Francisco has a combined storm and sewer system, and during periods of heavy rainfall, the city discharges raw sewage into the Bay and Pacific Ocean.

The EPA required the city to reduce toxic emissions, and the city made every effort to comply. However, the SFPUC argues that EPA’s rules are too vague. City Attorney David Chiu, joined by the mining and petrochemical industries, is asking the court to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision requiring the city to comply with state and federal water quality standards on the Pacific Coast.

The legal arguments are complex, but the politics are simple: Every major environmental group is on one side. On the other side is the city and the chemical and mining industries (and several other large cities that discharge pollutants into the water).

Now real estate and tech billionaires are siding with the city and trying to intimidate Melgar and Chan.

Supervisors have no direct authority over the SFPUC and the city attorney, and the Melgar and Sup. resolution. Aaron Peskin is simply urging these agencies to drop their appeal, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court later this month.

Theoretically, the superiors could cut off funding for the appeal, but it is a bit too late for that.

Therefore, if Mayor Breed and Chiu ignore the resolution, the case will continue.

If the city loses (unlikely) or if it manages to convince key officials to drop the case, the idea that water prices will increase tenfold is absurd. If Donald Trump is elected, the EPA will all but be disbanded anyway. If Kamala Harris is elected and Republican Nancy Pelosi is re-elected (which is guaranteed), San Francisco will have a lot of influence in Washington to reach an agreement that protects water quality without requiring tens of billions in new spending.

The Committee for Spatial Development and Transpiration will consider the Melgar-Peskin resolution Monday/7and the next day there will be full board.

Neighbors for a Better San Francisco has shown no interest in the issue until now, when the group apparently sees it as a way to promote its conservative board candidates. I wonder which of the supers will side with the billionaires in this matter.

Peskin’s solution that could extend rent control to 100,000 additional tenants if State Proposition 33 passes comes on full board Tuesday/8—and the debate will reveal a lot about the real estate industry’s success in promoting the theory that rent control means less housing.

We’ve heard this phrase over and over for decades, every time someone tries to expand rent control, and there’s no evidence it’s true. As we noticed:

Now: Every time someone suggests expanding rent control anywhere in the state, the landlord lobby claims it’s an “anti-housing” move because it will discourage new construction. Corey Smith, director of the Housing Action Coalition, said of suggestions that Mayor London Breed has vowed to veto any “anti-housing” legislation that comes before her and suggested it will be included.

This is the same Corey Smith who recently told supers that rents in San Francisco need to go up even more for developers to want to build more apartments, which undermines the central tenet of the Yimby movement: that more apartments will lower prices.

The full board meeting begins at 2 p.m.