By Christin Evans, HANC Board Member

Starting with our March meeting, the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) will begin recording its monthly meetings and streaming the meeting video live on the Council’s Facebook page.  

The HANC board believes that not only will video streaming create an accurate record of the meeting discussion but that it will also create greater accessibility to HANC’s programming to current and prospective members.

To access the video content, search Facebook Groups for the “Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council.”  Or enter this URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/177524865599522/

Since the group is set up for Public access, there is no need to create a Facebook login to view the video content.  Feel free to like or leave a comment on each video if you’d like to continue the conversation beyond the meeting. 

By Christin Evans, HANC Board Member

HANC's monthly (except August) general membership meeting is usually held downstairs at the Park Branch Library, 1833 Page Street (between Cole and Shrader) on the second Thursday of the month, beginning at 7 pm.  Our meetinngs are open to the public and free to attend. 

At the February 13 meeting of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC), we will host speakers in favor of Propositions D and E.

Proposition D

Proposition D had more than a year-long journey to the ballot.  Initially floated in 2018, the proposal by Supervisor Aaron Peskin sought to respond to concerns by neighbors and businesses about the increasing number of storefront vacancies in the North Beach district.

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At our February 13 meeting, There will be a presentation by David Williams of the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) about the Schools and Communities First initiative ( SCF ).

The SCF ballot initiative will reclaim $12 billion for schools and local communities by closing corporate loopholes and requiring commercial and industrial property owners to pay fair market value property taxes. The initiative maintains critical exemptions for homeowners, renters and seniors from increased property taxes while also implementing new small business tax relief.

Note that although this measure will reform 1978’s Proposition 13, it shouldn’t be confused with the Proposition 13 that appears on the March ballot.  The March Proposition 13 is a bond measure for the renovation and construction of education facilities. 

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Greetings HANC members! As your new District 5 Supervisor, I wanted to extend a warm and grateful hello to the great Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council! 

Many of us have been organizing together for years. For those whom I have not yet met, allow me to introduce myself: I’m a long time affordable housing and tenant rights advocate. I’m also a Democratic Socialist, an everyday MUNI rider, and a public school parent. I’ve lived in D5 for over 20 years. I’m looking forward to working with HANC and all our neighbors to tackle the issues that are important to you. 

We’ve hit the ground running in our first few weeks in City Hall:

• Promptly responding to dozens of constituent issues
• Working to extend rent control to Midtown Park Apartments on Divisadero
• Identifying possible sites for a Navigation Center for our District -- Save the date for a community meeting on February 23rd

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Early voting for the March election began on February 3, and vote by mail ballots have been sent out and can be returned to the Elections Department through Election Day on March 3.  HANC has submitted ballot arguments in favor of Proposition D and Proposition E.  We urge you to support these measures:

  Proposition D ……………YES

  Proposition E…………… YES

By Tes Welborn, HANC President

The Coalition for a Complete Community at 730 Stanyan (CCC) held a neighborhood meeting on January 22.

Louise Dunlop reported on the Seniors Working Group.  The group has met, and is doing additional research.  The group is working on including housing and resources for seniors at 730 Stanyan.  The Seniors Working Group will be meeting monthly at the Park Branch Library, on the second Tuesday of the month, 5-6pm.  Contact Louise Dunlop for more information, at 415-346-3195.

Dan Adams, Acting Director of the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development [MOHCD] gave a presentation and responded to questions.  He said that the two top candidates for non-profit housing developer of the 730 Stanyan site were asked to work together on the site, and he expected to make their names public by January 24.  The MOHCD website does not show the names of the developers, but we have heard from other sources that they are CCDC (Chinatown Community Development Center) and TNDC (Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center).

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HANC’s January meeting was in three parts.  The first two segments were part of our 60^th anniversary celebration.  We started with a video from 1972, “A report from the Neighborhood.”  The neighborhood was, of course, the Haight-Ashbury, and the video included a HANC meeting, and some recognizable individuals.  It can be seen at https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/218071.

The video was followed with a presentation by David Wills, former Haight Ashbury resident and local artist.  David first visited the Haight-Ashbury in 1969, where he bought a sketchbook at Mendel’s and overalls at Cal Surplus.  He moved to the Haight-Ashbury in 1975  and lived on Ashbury Street from 1976 until 2008, and in the neighborhood until 2013.  David provided tables full of his art, which he showed at the meeting.  Examples included the first poster for the Haight Ashbury Street Fair, 1978 “Shop the Haight” bus ads (very few of the stores advertised still exist), and a 1982 poster showing the Haight-Ashbury surrounded by rising waters due to climate change (David gave away copies of this poster at the meeting).  There was barely time to mention David’s work with Rolling Stone, the Whole Earth Catalog, the Hookers’ Ball, Shady Grove, and Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver.

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HANC continued to celebrate our 60^th Anniversary at our December meeting, by honoring Haight Ashbury artists and writers and with a dessert potluck.  We were also presented with a poster commemorating the event by Stanley Mouse, the Haight Street Art Center, and SF Heritage.  We are offering signed copies of the poster, while our supply lasts, for donations of $25 or more.  You can either bring your donation to our January meeting, or mail it to HANC, P.O. Box 170518, San Francisco, CA  94117.

We continue our celebration in our January meeting:  we plan to show a 1972 video about the Haight Ashbury, which includes a HANC meeting, and we also planning to have a discussion with former long-time Haight-Ashbury resident and local artist David Wills.

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