Fog City Guide

Yes we are live! The Bella Vista Neighbors in Action (BVNIA) Over 200 homes are affected by the change made at the last minute by the staff of the Transit Effectivness Project to run the 36 on Bella Vista and Molimo to Myra instead of up Reposa to Myra. Two hundred homeowners that bought houses on streets without a bus line on it are faced with the loss of quiet enjoyment and thousands of dollars in lost property value. The reason why this was done? To “save two minutes off the run time”.

Two minutes. For two minutes thay are going to risk the safety of the families whose kids play on the sidewalk, who cross Bella Vista to get to the ball field and the little ones crossing with parents going to school. Not to mention all the drivers that use Bella Vista to get from Teresita to Yerba Buena and the rest of the south slope of Mt. Davidson.

You want to know why they won’t save anytime by driving on Bella Vista instead of Myra. The homeowners on Myra bought houses on a street that a bus is on. The bus has been on that route as far back as I can remember and that would be the early sixties. They know to park thier cars in the garage or on the sidewalk to avoid being sideswiped. The owners on Bella Vista park on the street and we walk on our sidewalks. The drivers that use Myra know there are buses on the street and they move to the side. The many, many more drivers on Bella Vista will not have that opportunity because of the number of cars parked on both sides of the residential street. It will entail multiple cars backing up for long distances to let a bus go by. When two busses meet on Bella Vista or even worse the hill of Molimo. the drivers had better be some ot the better MUNI drivers. I do believe that there are still some, even though they can’t seem to obey speed limits or stop on time. I can’t imagine backing a 20 person van up the hill of Molimo around the turn. Better not try to back down that would be a disaster.

I can’t decide which is worse. The fact that they think this is OK or that we were given no notice. No one from the community was involved in discussion with the TEP staff before this “recomendation” was included.

The only opportunity to comment is in writting to the full board of the SFMTA and at the next meeting of the board.

Please get involved by signing the petition and,

1. E-mail MTABoard@SFMTA.com  and Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org  to say why it’s a bad idea. Speak about on the traffic already on Bella Vista, the steepness of the block of Molimo, the difficulty of the turn, the width of the streets, blind spots on Bella Vista, speed, safety, long time problem etc. and anythinig else you can think of.  Please BCC me at jed@BVNIA.org I will compile all the messages and bring them in as added proof of our strong opposition.
2. Call 311and speak in opposition to the issue. They will give you a case number, please pass that along to me also.

Muni is tinkering with the routes to “serve the greatest number” in the most eficeint way.

I can’t figure where this fits in that goal, but this came out today. We, by that I mean people in the neighborhood were able to stop the cancellation of the bus. The old new proposal was to not go to Forest Hill station. This would have effectively cut off public transit to Tower Market and West Portal.

The new propsed route in Miraloma Park  will take the 36 on it’s usual route up Forester and Teresita till it gets to the intersection of Marrietta, Bella Vista and Teresita where it will turn left onto Bella Vista and squeeze through to Molimo. On Molimo it will try to make a very hard right turn and climb the steep hill to Myra where it will head down hill to Reposa. After Reposa it will turn left onto Teresita and be on it’s way to Forest Hill Station. On the reverse route it will run the same route in the opposite direction. God forbid they meet each other.

Obvioulsy no one has ever actually driven the streets because if they had they would know that they would not be able to make the turn from Bella Vista to Molimo with anything larger than a mini-van. They also could not have done any kind of traffic analysis or they would know the amount of traffic that already uses Bella Vista as the cut around Mt. Davidson. The street feeds all the traffic on the south side of the mountain from Yerba Buena along Hazelwood and Burlwood to Bella Vista. Those of us that live along it know how often we have to dive into an open spot to avoid head on collissions.

I’ve posted only a section of the route change. Here is a link to the entire map;

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mtep/documents/proposals/rte_036.pdf

As of this eventing I’ve made a motion to the MPIC board to oppose the change on the grounds that the stree can’t bear the traffic and it cuts off all the homes on the top of the hill and the access to Mt. Davidson. When the motion passes I will get petitions out to my neighbors along the affected route and together I feel we can stop this.

This is the latest action by some dog owner against the people of this neighborhood that care about our jewell of a park.

Over $250,000 was spent to resod the ball feild this year. The Rec & Park policy is that dogs are not allowed on playing feilds because the urine kills the grass.

Someone doesn’t think that they should go to the areas that are set aside for dogs. No their sense of entitlement is so high that they feel they can damage the feild and express their sentiments with paint on the wall.

The individuals that say they are ”responsible dog owners” should find out who did this and turn them in to the police. If the dog owners of this area are not enraged by this action they should be ashamed.

San Francisco Single Family Market

The top graph shows the number of homes available on the 1st day of the month. The bottom graph shows the number of homes sold in the previous month.

San Francisco Condo Market

The top graph shows the number of condos available on the 1st day of the month. The bottom graph shows the number of condos sold in the previous month.

This graph shows the absorbtion rate for different product types in San Francisco. The absorbtion rate is a product of the number of units available divided by the number of units sold in the past month.

When there is less than a 3 month supply it is a buyers market. If there is between 3 and 5 months supply it is generally a balanced market and above 5 months is a sellers market.

You can see that our market is running pretty consistantly in both homes and condos.

NAR reports there is a 10.5 month supply of resale homes nationally and CAR give about the same number statewide.

The Executive director of the San Francisco Association of Realtors passed along excerpts from an article on Barron’s web site. The article relates news that shows the real estate market showing signs of recovery. He excerpted really nicely and I’m going to pull his quotes and add some of my own. The whole article can be read if you desire.

From SFAR:

• “Recent data suggest real estate market pessimism may be overblown. Even economist Karl Case, father of the S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Index, admits many industry pundits and members of the media are ignoring key facts—as demonstrated by their focus on negative year-over-year price figures rather than more recent monthly data. An example: Home prices actually increased slightly in eight of 20 Case Shiller markets between March and April. Instead, the focus of most media reports was on year-over-year figures, which continue to support the notion that the market may not have hit bottom, let alone begun to improve.
• Transaction-related indices may be skewed at present by a far larger than normal share of subprime-derived default and distress sales. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, more expensive homes (those priced over $721,548) have dropped in price by only about 10.7 percent from their peak, compared with homes priced under $473,711, which have tumbled by 40.9 percent.
• Even new housing construction numbers suggest an improvement, according to Case. He notes that housing starts, which fell to 975,000 in April from 2.27 million in January 2006, have fallen by similar percentages three times during the last 35 years. Case observes that each previous time this has occurred the market has staged a surprising upturn within a quarter. Only a slide into a recession would temper his optimism about the potential for a similar recurrence of this trend.

When I read the article this just jumped right out “Other than Larry Kudlow of CNBC, none of the journalists who interviewed me after the latest release seemed at all interested in any of the positive developments,” says David Blitzer, chairman of the S&P Index Committee. “They seemed focused on the bad year-over-year number.”

Doesn’t that really just say it all! It is a very good article and I’d strongly recommend it to every real estate professional.

The summation of the article is for all the posting chuckleheads on the real estate blog platforms. I’m going to refer them back to this every chance I get. “It is important to remember, as well, that even after a steep drop in the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices, long-term buyers in the top 20 U.S. metro markets have seen their properties appreciate by 70% since 2000. Home prices often take five to 10 years to recover fully from severe declines such as this. But at least the available data suggest the scary dive in home prices soon will be over.”

70% appreciation, after the drops, in 8 years in all the top 20 markets. Outstanding! But bad news for the chuckleheads.

A very intreresting article came out from Barron’s written by Jonathan R. Lang which I’ve excerted and commented on in my Trulia Blog.

It talks about signs of change in the realaity of the real estate market that the mainstream news media is ignoring.

This quote really sum’s up what we are being told; ‘”Other than Larry Kudlow of CNBC, none of the journalists who interviewed me after the latest release seemed at all interested in any of the positive developments,” says David Blitzer, chairman of the S&P Index Committee. “They seemed focused on the bad year-over-year number.”

We had a sunny day and we accomplished much. It is very visible now that we pulled weeds and raked the hillside.

Robert Gee, Bella Vista neighbor and board member came for the first time and joined Sean Elsbernd, Hilary Reichart and myself. Peter Zepponi was there but he waited till he saw us stop working before he came over. Daniel Homsey came by but his back is out of whack so he could only offer moral support.

I had a conversation with Marianne Bertolucci, of Rec & Park. The citizens of the City and County will not pay what it takes to maintain our parks. We don’t like to pay taxes and I know that we don’t really trust the bureaucrats to handle the money, but a park as large as Miraloma Park needs money and she is only given 30% of the needed funds by a national measure.

It is important for me to understand that when I ask for a gardener to supervise a work day it is taking away from other duties that they would be doing. The upshot of this is I will be forming a “Friends of Miraloma Park” group. We will organize volunteers to keep this jewel of a playground in good shape.

When I started this project it was to clean up and plant the hillside that runs along Bella Vista. It is clear that we need to work on the whole park not just a part of it. If we can provide additional work hours to Rec and Park we will get more beautification. The hillside on Bella Vista had been last prioity for years and it still is. If we can help them on the top, front, sides etc. they will have the time and resources to help us make that stretch of hill really wonderful. I hope to work with the administration of Miraloma School. Please join with me in this effort.

In the Chronicle  on July 21 Bay Area section article on the transit make over, Supervisor Elsbernd was quoted “. . . it is now up to city officials to show leadership in turning the proposal into reality.

“We have to do something that is a rare thing – saying that people will have to sacrifice for the greater good,” he said. “That’s never easy.”

All too often I see situations where people or interest groups refuse to look at the “greater good”. I just spent the morning pulling weeds on the hillside at Miraloma Park with Supervisor Elsbernd. We want the parks maintained but we don’t want to pay the taxes. We want good emergency services and to be taken care of but it isn’t going to happen. Wake up and get yourself trained by the SFFD. Be prepared. 

I know that Supervisor Elsbernd will do everything possible for Miraloma Park. If the 36 is to be changed in the fashion of the original proposal, to run to Glen Park and the J Church instead of to Forest Hill and Midtown Terrace, we are going to have to work hard to convince MTA to do something different.

When you read the article the suggestion of smaller vehicles is given. We will need to offer solutions if it comes to pass. So let’s start thinking of ways to solve the problem.

In a perfect world the bus would arrive every 10 to 15 minutes, on schedule, be small at times of the day when ridership is down and larger at commute times, not pull away when you get off a connector bus, or come out of the door at Forest Hill, be quiet, run clean, not run empty but be there when you want it. What have we got but a bus that is noisy, smelly, often late, runs every thirty minutes sometimes, is never there when you want it, leaves right as you come out the door or when the 48 or 44 show up. The current situation is so bad that very few people ride it. Maybe we need to guarantee ridership. Maybe it needs to be on call for elders during the day or have some communication system that it’s needed on Myra. Efficiencies can be found in many ways and new technologies can help.

What we can’t do, in my opinion, is stand up and say “no change” without a solution. There are huge issues looming on the world, national, regional and local horizons and it will really behoove us all to be knowledgeable and able to work towards solutions with all those issues factored in.

In this case it’s limited and increasingly expensive resources, air pollution and population migration pressures.

The citizens won’t pay the cost of running the system and if any of us were in charge of the MTA we would all put the resources we have to serve the greatest number possible.

I’m reminded of NERT emergency medicine training. Do the most good for the greatest number. If you spend 3 minutes on someone 4 others could die. You have to move fast and only determine if they are breathing, bleeding or coherent.

Our world is changing. San Francisco is going to change in the next 20 years more than it changed in the 20 years after the war. My belief is that the best we can do is steer the change, we can’t stop it.

On October 15, 2007 I presented a seminar at the San Francisco Board of Realtors with Hydra Mendoza, a member of the Board of Education and Gentle Blythe, the Director of the Office of Community Outreach for SFUSD. Their presentation was focused on giving Realtors information to answer our client’s questions about admissions and the quality of education in The City.

The questions I hear all the time center on the admissions policies and local school issues. Here are some interesting facts that came out in the presentation.

When a child is entering school or moving up to the next level, middle and high school an application is filled out by the parents naming seven choices of schools the family has chosen. Although most schools have a designated attendance area, the administration has found over the past five years that the majority of families chose schools based on special programs available in individual schools rather than proximity to home addresses. The first round of admissions to those schools goes to the students that live in the attendance area and then the siblings of students that already attend the school. The remainder of the admissions go to students that have chosen it as one of their seven choices. 67% get their first choice of schools and 87% receive one of their seven choices.

If the school has more applicants than seats available the diversity index is used to assign students. The Diversity index currently is:

1. Academic background of the student. (Pre-school for kindergarten)

2. Academic background of the sending school.

3. Extreme poverty.

4.Language spoken at home.

5.Family income
We were presented with a number of facts that show perceptions to be false:
In San Francisco 70% of our students go to public school and that number is consistent with ratios throughout the country.

USA Today reports that overall performance in core subjects, student’s performance is no better if the student graduates from private high school or public high school.

SFUSD has 7 high schools in the top 5% of high schools in the country according to Newsweek Magazine. For six consecutive years SFUSD has improved on test scores and outperformed the seven largest urban school districts on the California Standards Test (CST).

SFUSD has an 11.3 year average term for teachers, which is higher than the CA average of 10.4 years. San Francisco has a declining population of school age children, but that the entire state is losing at the same rate.

SFUSD has 56,000 students and is losing 800 each year. The high cost of living and the assumption that you can’t get a quality education in San Francisco’s public schools has led to the fact that SF has the lowest population of school age children. My own experience raising two children in San Francisco has shown that there are good schools and great educations to be had. Parental involvement keeps the children on track and community involvement keeps the schools on track.

San Francisco is a great place to raise kids. They have a level of sophistication because they are a part of this City.

This presentation was so informative that Zephry Real Estate has sponsored it in various locations.