SAN FRANCISCO — Edwin M. Lee, the mayor of San Francisco, began his career as a lawyer fighting for public housing tenants in the city’s Chinatown and likes to think of himself as a champion for those who are struggling.
But with his city flourishing and dotted with construction cranes and tech start-ups, he finds himself in an unexpected position: backed by the city’s new and powerful technology elite, and condemned by housing advocates who accuse him of aggravating a shortage of affordable units and making life difficult for middle-class residents increasingly anxious about rising prices.
Perhaps nowhere in America is the debate over income inequality being carried out as fiercely as in San Francisco, where the technology industry’s success has led to a roaring economy, social disruption and widespread protests.
“Probably 25 years ago I would have been in this cultural war on the advocacy side,” Mr. Lee, a Democrat, said in a recent interview, describing himself as “a little bit” surprised by the intensity of the anger.
“When I represented tenants in Chinatown, it was a cultural war about low-income seniors and immigrant families trying to make the city respect them,” he said. “Fix the elevators in public housing, fix the lights. Some of the advocates remind me that we’ve got to keep paying attention to this, because there is poverty in the city. There are people struggling.”
Mr. Lee, 61, who grew up the son of working-class Chinese immigrants in public housing in Seattle, continued: “Now that I’m mayor, I can do something about it in a big way. So if there is a cultural war, I’m in it, but I’m in it to solve as much as I can.”
So recently, in what many in the city see as a course correction, the mayor has emphasized what he calls the “affordability agenda.” He has spoken with urgency about a growing housing shortage, presenting a plan in his State of the City address to build 30,000 housing units for low- and moderate-income people by 2020 and to protect existing ones. Critics remain skeptical, saying that Mr. Lee was late in recognizing the problem and that his plan was cobbled together in response to political problems.
Navigating all this will test the political skills of an accidental politician. Mr. Lee, who spent his career in the city administration until three years ago, when he became San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, often seems disposed to work out of the spotlight. Saying he is not “into the pomp and circumstances of this office,” he has chosen a Chevrolet Volt as his official car.
“When I pull up, unless you know I’m coming, nobody knows I’m there,” he said. “They say, ‘Where’s the mayor?’ They’re looking for the S.U.V., and I’m already there. So I love that, it’s fun to do.”
In his time in office, the city’s unemployment rate has been cut in half, to a record low of 4.8 percent. His policies have helped turn San Francisco into Silicon Valley’s newest, and perhaps most dynamic, extension. Construction cranes rise above even Mid-Market, a long-blighted downtown district that bedeviled his predecessors. President Obama even presented the mayor as an American success story, giving him a prime spot in the audience as Michelle Obama’s guest during the State of the Union address last month.
“Everyone should be high-fiving him,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, 36, the chief executive of Yelp, the review website for businesses. “In the wake of that, it’s essentially a high-class problem, which is, ‘Oh, no, we have so many jobs in this city, and the economy is doing so well here. Now costs are going up, rents are rising.’ That’s sort of the natural product of success.”
But the mayor’s critics disagree. “He’s privileging a certain group of people, tech, over the rest of the city,” said Rebecca Gourevitch, 27, a tenants’ rights advocate at Eviction Free San Francisco, who recently helped organize protests against private commuter buses that carry technology workers between the city and Silicon Valley’s suburban campuses. “There’s a two-tier San Francisco right now. The mayor is in conversation with one of the tiers and not the other.”
Mr. Lee joined the city government in 1989 as San Francisco’s first investigator charged with rooting out corruption. He rose steadily, eventually being appointed city administrator in 2005 by Gavin Newsom, then the mayor.
After Mr. Newsom was elected lieutenant governor, Mr. Lee was selected in 2011 to complete Mr. Newsom’s term as mayor by two local power brokers, former Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. and Rose Pak, an outspoken advocate for the city’s Chinese population. Going back on an initial pledge that he would not seek a full term, Mr. Lee ran successfully in the 2012 election, strongly urged on by Mr. Brown, Ms. Pak and a new powerful ally, Ron Conway, a well-known technology investor.
As mayor, Mr. Lee successfully pushed for changes to taxes on payroll and stock options that benefited certain tech start-ups and helped persuade them to stay in San Francisco. While critics described the policies as corporate welfare, Mr. Lee argued that the tech sector was creating most of the city’s new jobs. Every week, he has made it a point to visit one tech company as part of his Tech Tuesdays.
Mr. Stoppelman of Yelp, which went public two years ago and recently expanded into larger headquarters here, said he viewed the mayor as being pragmatic and problem-solving, qualities that tended to appeal to people in the tech industry.
“I think he really tries to be a neutral party and bring people together,” he said. “He hasn’t been a lifelong politician. He’s been somebody working in the city, and I think that shows. He doesn’t feel as political.”
But Art Agnos, a former mayor who gave Mr. Lee his first job in city government, has become one of Mr. Lee’s most vehement critics, saying he has become captive of the tech elite. Mr. Lee, he said, lacked the political instincts to steer San Francisco through the current turmoil.
“His whole career was leading to the top of the bureaucracy — that’s his mind-set,” said Mr. Agnos, who led a successful fight against the development of waterfront luxury condominiums last fall. “Being at the top of public office is something totally different. You set the policy, you are the leader, you step up.”
San Francisco had a housing shortage long before Mr. Lee took office. In the 1970s, the city began passing regulations that made it extremely difficult and costly to build new housing in the city, said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR, a public policy center devoted to planning and urban research.
The situation has worsened considerably in the past year, according to tenants’ advocates. Not only has the influx of highly paid tech workers led to higher rents, but it has also increased evictions of longtime tenants by landlords seeking higher rents, said Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. San Francisco has the highest rents in the nation, with the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment at $3,250.
In December, in a meeting organized by Mr. Conway, the mayor met with 30 technology chief executives to discuss the city’s housing and affordability problems. Sf.citi, the organization that Mr. Conway founded two years ago and now effectively serves as the tech industry’s business and political voice, will focus on helping the city government with housing, philanthropy and education, Mr. Conway said.
“This a long-term issue that’s not going away fast,” he said of affordable housing. “So let’s buckle down and work together.”
Mr. Lee said he believed that much of the current tension would be defused once the 30,000 housing units were built. “I think people will feel less fear that they can’t live in the city, and hopefully, it shouldn’t be ‘us versus them, let’s blame tech,’ ” he said.
Was there a danger in his being too closely identified with the tech industry? “Well, if I was a politician, I suppose there might be,” Mr. Lee said with a smile. “I don’t think that way. But I do think that tech needs to help me with the affordability agenda.
via:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/us/a-mayor-in-the-middle-of-two-san-franciscos.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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