October 30, 2002

Why the Prop. R lies?

PROP. R speaks to what is, for many of us, a deeply held dream, the desire for independence, autonomy, freedom – in short, as translated by American culture, the dream of owning our own home. If Proposition R is such a godsend, though, why does it need to be propped up by lies, lies, and more lies?

Forget the flaws in the content of Prop. R – and there are many – and take a look at the scaffolding around the measure.

The very name of one pro-Prop. R Web site, sftenants.org, is, if not a lie, a stretching of the truth. Prop. R's backing comes overwhelmingly from real estate interests and downtown corporations. (Not one legitimate tenants group has endorsed Prop. R, though the Board of Realtors and the Republican Party have.) The primary funder of Prop. R is the Committee on Jobs, which represents the biggest and wealthiest corporations in the Bay Area and opposes every progressive measure, from public power to an increase in the minimum wage. To date, the COJ has spent approximately half a million dollars on promoting Prop. R, funneling some of the money through a political action committee called California Issues PAC, making it look as though there are at least two major backers. Though registered in Sacramento (which makes it slightly harder to trace) as a statewide PAC, California Issues has funded only San Francisco measures: Propositions N and R.

The current version of the pro-Prop. R Web site opens with a testimonial from tenant Cynthia Arnold, who often testifies against tenants' rights at public hearings. Arnold claims that "Prop R will greatly reduce – if not entirely stop – Ellis Act evictions by giving tenants lifelong eviction protections in buildings where just a single tenant buys his or her individual apartment [original emphasis]."

Arnold doesn't mention that Prop. R backers have successfully sued the city to uphold the sanctity and power of the Ellis Act. In Tom v. the City and County of San Francisco, Judge James A. Robertson II ruled this August – to the plaintiffs' delight – that the state's Ellis Act trumps the portion of the city's new tenancy-in-common law that provides lifetime leases.

The official Yes on R Web site also offers a mortgage calculator that is something of a marvel for its sleight of hand. By including prices for as far back as 1996, the ersatz calculator provides unrealistic price averages for buildings. This distortion is compounded by applying phony math: if a four-unit building sells for $600,000, why then, you can buy your unit for $150,000. That ignores the fact that the value of a building will jump immediately – by a large amount – if it can be converted to condos, and those condos will sell for much higher prices than the ones listed on the Web site. Of course, it is absolutely true that you can buy a one-bedroom condo for $150,000, if you're willing to live in an outlying area ... like Kansas.

Incidentally, the original version of the site opened with a photo of what appeared to be a working-class African American woman in modest clothes and a head scarf, sporting a button that read, "Renters Want to Own!" The visible caption read, "The S.F. Tenants Union will do anything to stop this woman from realizing her dream!"

If you right-clicked on that picture, however, the internal caption read "Mrs. Capko." That is, the wife of leading Prop. R proponent Joe Capko. The site has since been changed, and the ID of the woman is gone, but Capko confirmed to me on the phone that the woman on the Web site is his wife, Uche.

Given that Prop. R will remove 85,000 units from rent control, Joe Capko's die-hard advocacy for the measure is a curious thing. "Rent control has been very beneficial to me," said Capko, a marketing consultant, explaining that while his wife and three children spend most of their time at his brother-in-law's house in Daly City, he keeps what he repeatedly refers to as "his" rent-controlled unit in Glen Park.

If not for rent control, Joe Capko might have to leave San Francisco – as many other families will be forced to if Prop R passes.