Transcripts For KQED KQED Newsroom 20161015

For tenants rights and Affordable Housing and was endorsed by bernie sanders. Kqed Senior Editor for politics and government scott shafer has more. Joining me now are candidates scott wiener and jane kim to discuss their political philosophies and why they want to head to scracramento. What call do you think each of you would bring thats in short supply . Sacramento . I think, one, we really need a progressive voice in sacramento. Were increasingly seeing business friendly democrats come up to sacramento. And a representative from San Francisco is going to have a lot of flexibility and independence to file for reforms, to fight for more Affordable Housing and also to work to make Higher Education affordable again here throughout the state. I have a ballot measure, proposition w, that if it passes, which i believe it will, will make San Francisco the first city in the nation to make Community College free again for all of our residents. Thats the type of work that i want to bring up to sacramento. What about you . Let me just ask if i could, you are openly gay, of course. Mark leno, who is leaving the senate is. How important is that, do you think, to have an lgbt person from the bay area . I think its very important. Right now we have one remaining lgbt representative from San Francisco, mark leno, who has termed out. And having an lgbt voice from San Francisco in the state legislature is important. Our straight allies are unbelievable important, but we have to have our own seat at the table. And ive been working for 25 years to support my community, the lgbt community. But it goes beyond that. I think even my harshest critic would acknowledge that i am tenacious. I dont just pick an issue and then get a headline and give up. I see it through till the end. So im going to go up to sacramento and fight for more funding for Affordable Housing, for better support for transit, and to really push back when the Drug Companies or the Insurance Companies are depriving people of access to health care. Affordability is a huge issue in San Francisco. Youve alluded to the lack of housing, lack of Affordable Housing. There is an issue up before the board of supervisors next week on airbnb. Theres now an amendment to an existing law to tighten the restrictions from 90 days to allow people to rent a room for 90 days versus 60 days. Do you support tightening that up, and what are your thoughts about how airbnb is affecting affordability in San Francisco . So i dont think thats the best way to describe the difference between the two legislation. There really is no limit in the initial legislation that we had written in terms of the number of nights that someone can host someone in their home as long as they live there. The problem is that theres no way for San Francisco to enforce that. How are we going to know if youre staying here on monday night versus wednesday night . What president breed has introduced is a hard cap. So regardless of how many nights you sleep at your home, which we really cant determine anyway, were saying that you can rent out your house for no longer than 60 days. Now, im not going to say 60 days is the right day or 90 days is the right day, but ive always pushed for a hard cap because that is the only way we can enforce that type of legislation. I actually support shortterm rentals, but i really want it to be true shortterm rentals. Whats your position . So ive always been an advocate for good and tough regulation of Short Term Rentals to make sure we are not removing entire units, entire apartment buildings from the Housing Stock. We should crack down on those abuses, and we have been cracking down. And ive been a supporter of better enforcement resources and mechanisms. But if someone has a Spare Bedroom in their house and they want to rent it out a few nights a week to generate extra income, we should allow them to do that and we shouldnt be banning them from doing it. San francisco has benefited in many ways from the tech influx. Theres a lot of jobs here now. People working in tech. But some people feel its also made the affordability issue worse. Net net, is the influx of tech to San Francisco a net plus or a net minus . I dont think actually the issue is the jobs that we are creating. The issue is the amount of affordable and middle Income Housing we are creating. That has always been my top priority. We should be a city that can accept and absorb jobs and greater growth here in the bay area. But what we havent done is we havent adequately protected our residents and our existing tenants, which is why i fought for and authored the boldest legislation in the country back in 2014. And we also have to make sure that when we allow Market Rate Developers to build here in our city, because they are generating profits from our land, that we need to ask them to build more affordable and middle Income Housing. That is what ive fought for. We are the only city in the country that has won 40 Affordable Housing and middle Income Housing on our projects, and im proud to have negotiated every one of those deals in the district i representle h. I think singling one industry and saying we dont want you hear. We dont want headquarters here is the wrong approach. What we need to do is address our own housing problems we created as a city by making it too hard to create housing. We need more housing and we need to make it easier to create housing. You think you can put too much of an emphasis on demanding from developers a certain percentage of affordable units. I think its important for developers to contribute to Affordable Housing. Also the transit. I authored the legislation that for the first time requires residential to pay. But developers through their fees cant solve on its own our housing crisis. Ultimately we as a city have to take responsibility, and ive done that by authoring legislation to allow for new inlaw units or legislation to make it easier to build Student Housing or legislation to allow for smaller studios, socalled microunits, or to relax density and increase heights. We as a city have to take responsibility for our housing problem. Both of you have been running ads or ads have been running on your behalf. Were going to take a look at one from each of you. Well start with one that was run on your behalf, scott, called see jane run. Lets take a look. See jane kim support Affordable Housing. See jane support projects with no Affordable Housing. See jane kim support the twitter tax break. See jane oppose it. Scott wiener, i know that ad w wasnt run by your campaign, but it was on your behalf. It ends up by saying jane kim, why does she portray herville yews. First of all, second largest lgbt Civil Rights Organization in the country, and prioritize my race as a game end. I have had my own critiques of supervisor kim. Do you stand by that ad . I mean does she betray her values . Thats not my ad. Ive criticized supervisor skim f kim for opposing the soda tax or not supporting legislation to stop academy of Bart University from cannibalizing rent control Housing Stock or for supporting sidewalks. Is that an unfair charge, then . Those are my criticisms, and i can only speak for myself. Its not my ad. I will speak for my ads, which i stand by. Supervisor kim and i have had many debates and weve talked about our differences of opinion. To me, thats what its about as a candidate. Jane kim, you know, you have been criticized for whatever you want to call it, flipflopping on. You were for him. You were against him. Twitter tax breaks. Is that an unfair accusation that you are a kind of, you know, finger in the wind politician . Im not a one dimensional elected official, and if people want to see someone who is simplistic, then im probably not right for them. But if you read my statements on Affordable Housing, on the sheriff, on what our tax exclusions for our companies, youll see ive actually been very consistent. Around the sheriff decision, i was very clear about the fact that i dont think 11 elected officials have a lot of purview to remove another elected official. The city charter is very clear. If voters give you the job, voters should take it away. And i said that day i didnt believe the city charter allowed the board of supervisors to remove the sheriff. But if the voters want to do a recall, then i would be happy to support it because i have also lost faith in him as one of our elected leaders. I was actually very consistent on that front. I have never supported a project without Affordable Housing, but there are cases in some projects where we can get more Affordable Housing off site than we can on site. So in those cases, i will support those projects because then the net effect is more Affordable Housing for more middle and working class families here in San Francisco. Lets take a look at another ad. This is from your campaign, jane, and it has to do with landlords and tenants. Lets take a look. He wants you to believe hes done something to stop evictions. He hasnt. Weiner opposed to stronger protection for renters. He wants you to beev he isnt in the pocket of landlords. He is, and he said he was proud of their support. Youre saying this man is in the pocket of landlords. Is that what you mean . What im saying is that when you look at the money that has come into this race, we have seen over 700,000 come in from realtors and speculators that oppose the 2002 and 2006 Affordable Housing bond here in San Francisco. And the ellis act reforms in sacramento. My opponent will say that his supporters dont represent all of his values, and i think thats a fair statement on his part. But those individuals and entities have certainly decided who they feel will best represent their interests in sacramento. Theres definitely a lot of outside money, about a quarter Million Dollars from the soda industry has come in to fight me. In terms of rent control, senator mark leno, the champion for ellis act reform, has endorsed me. I have been a strong supporter of ellis act reform. I authored legislation to extend rent control to new in law units. I authored legislation to extend rent control to long term hiv survivors with federal housing subsidies who didnt have rent control. There is a perception, fair or not, that youre a little conservative by San Francisco standards. Youre a little even maybe coldhearted when dealing with like tents and the homeless, that kind of thing, renters. Whats your response to that . Thats you know, we all get caricatured in politics, and that is absolutely true in terms of how some people characterize me. That is not at all accurate. To call me conservative is, you know, honestly, its laughable. I authored legislation to ensure universal Health Care Coverage for transgender people, legislation to expand water recycling and require developers to put solar panels on their units, to extend rent control. Im not sure in what universe someone could be considered conservative with that record. In terms of being coldhearted, i cosponsored the ballot measure on the ballot this year that will provide 50 million a year to permanently house homeless people. Every year in the budget, i deliver funding to get Homeless Youth off the street, to expand meal programs. I care deeply about People Living on our streets, but its not humane or progressive to let people live in tents on sidewalks. You mentioned earlier, jane, that its important to send a progressive voice, a liberal voice. But, you know, as he suggests, by any standard, by a statewide standard, youre both liberal. Youre going to go up to sacramento, and youre not going to be one of 11 like you are now. Youre going to be one of 40 in the state senate, and you may have to work with conservative democrats who support, you know, get money from the Tobacco Industry or maybe even support gun rights or the oil industry. How do you envision working with people who arent progressive because its not going to be like San Francisco . So, you know, over the last few years in 2014 and 2015, my Office Actually passed more legislation than any member of this board of supervisors, andy that without a six vote progressive majority. This is actually the first year ive had a six vote progressive majority on the board of supervisors. So i have been able to work across the aisle, and i have been able to win votes along our more moderate or conservative again, its going to be a different story up in sacramento, right . You might meet republicans, actual republicans, which dont really exist in San Francisco on the board of supervisors. What im saying, over my tenures on the board of education and board of supervisors, i have been able to pass a lot of legislation, and ive only been able to do that by crossing over and being able to partner with other people that may not necessarily completely agree with me. I am someone that is incredibly progressive in terms of my values. I fight for our renters. I fight for our working and middle class residents. I fought to raise our minimum wage to 15 an hour. I was only able to do that by crossing over and walking across the aisle and working with folks that may not agree with me. You dont pass major legislation without more broadbased support. Scott, how do you envision it being different in sacramento, passing legislation, getting it to the governors desk, than it is now at the board of supervisors. Its complicated. Youre running a gauntlet to get good progressive legislation through in sacramento. But, you know, its interesting. When mark leno was on the board of supervisors, they said he was conservative, that he was not progressive enough. And he of course has gone on to be a progressive champion in sacramento, and he understands how to thread that needle and work with people that dont agree with you and get legislation through. Ive always been able to partner with my colleagues on the board of supervisor who dont agree with me, with john avalos, with david campos, with eric marr, and ill continue to do that. To me, its about never personalizing it. You can disagree intensely, but never making it personal because you never know when you need someones vote the next day. Id like each of you to say what you admire in each other. Jane, start with you. I would say that scott is someone who always stands up, and he takes actually very hard positions, and theyre not always very popular. And as someone who also serves in public office, i will never, you know, renege on that because i know how hard it is to stand up in front of people and not always tell them something they want to hear and thats something ive seen scott do before. Scott, what about you . I have really admired supervisor kims work on Pedestrian Safety and street safety. Her district, south of market, because of decisions made many years ago, has some very dangerous streets south of market in the tenderloin, and a lot of vulnerable pedestrians, seniors, people with disabilities. And jane has really she has been a real fighter for Pedestrian Safety, and weve been able to partner on some Pedestrian Safety issues. Its an area where were in complete alignment. 24 days to the election. May the best person win. Jane kim, scott wiener, thanks so much for coming in. Thank you. We turn now to a story weve been following for many months. This week the u. S. Department of justice released a scathing report on the San Francisco Police Department after a ninemonth review. The doj found, quote, concerning deficiencies in every Operational Area assessed. Those areas include bias, accountability, and use of force. Insufficient witness statements, insufficient gathering of evidence, crime scene management. Top to bottom, we found significant room for improvement in all of the administrative investigations and criminal investigations of uses of force. 94 findings in 272 recommendations. And im proud to report that the San Francisco Police Department will accept and implement every single recommendation. The review was requested by mayor lee and former police chief greg sur after the Fatal Shooting of an africanamerican man, mario woods, and a series of scandals involving racist, sexist, and homophobic text messages. Kqeds alex ensley has been on this every step of the way and he joins us now. Hi, alex. This was a pretty damning report. What were some of the most serious short comings. I think you mentioned the big three. Use of force investigations were found to be sort of shoddy. Theyre not tracking the officer statements in these cases up to and including, you know, fatal officerinvolved shooting cases. That was one of the more surprising things to me. Theres been a lot of controversy around those kinds of cases, but the idea that the department hasnt found a way to sort of set up a strict protocol for how theyre handled blew me away. And if theres no protocol in place, then you dont know the details of these shootings theres no accountability either. Accountability is another area this report looked into and found the sfpd lacking on some of that. A lot of that has to do with another big word that weve become familiar with in San Francisco around policing too. Thats transparency, right . Maybe sometimes the department does discipline problem officers, address misconduct. But the public doesnt really know about it. These recommendations are not binding the way that a court order might be. They werent done by the doj civil rights division. They were done by a unit that focuses more on community policing. So for these changes to happen, it will require real political will. That means collaboration between city officials, City Departments, the Police Department, the Police Officers union. How likely will that kind of collaboration happen . I think that thats sort of the Million Dollar question, right . Now, i can report that the Mayors Office issued sort of an executive order just today instructing every City Department to collaborate with the San Francisco Police Department in implementing these recommendations. City leadership from the top down are taking this very seriously, and then i guess i would leave that to anybodys, you know, sort of discretion how they feel that how they feel that will play out over the long run. I wanted to ask you about the search for a new police chief as well. We heard earlier from tony chaplin talking about this. He agrees with the mayor. He too says he will treat these recommendations as binding. Any word, though, on when the decision on a new police chief will be made and whether acting chief tony chaplin is a frontrunner . Well, i think that to the extent that Toney Chaplin is the interim chief right now and to the, extent this process has become politicized, he has that name recognition, and hes been in charge of implementing these reforms even before the final report came out. You know, hes been big about saying were going to get ahead of this. Anything we know that we can address ahead of time, were going to do. And they have made some changes. Weve seen a roll out of body cameras just for one example. There are other candidates. Initially there were more than 60 from both inside the department and outside. Now the Police Commission needs to whittle that down to three, which theyre doing. Whats the likelihood, though, that the person will come from inside the department or is there a feeling it has to be someone from the outside to make wholesale changes . Theres certainly a feeling that an outsider could make these changes, but theres also an argument that an insider would know the city and know the department and be able to carry them through. All right. We will keep on top of it. I know you will keep on top of it for when that announcement on a new chief happens. Alex ensley, thank you so much. Thank you. At stanford university, its been called the most popular elective class on campus. Two professors created the course designing your life. Now they have a new book titled designing your life to help those wanting to make a Career Change or build a more meaningful life. Joining me now are the authors, bill burnett and dave evans. Welcome to you both. Nice to be here. Thank you. Well, dave, beginning with you, i hear the term Design Thinking more and more. A lot of people still dont know what it is. How would you describe Design Thinking in a sentence . Design thinking is a practical, handson approach to solving a special class of problems which are the messy human problems we call Wicked Problems by leaning into your curiosity and prototyping your way into the future that you want. Okay. So with that, ive taken Design Thinking as it applies to work projects, right . You have a concept. You build a prototype. Bill, how does that apply to life and building your life . It turns out its a really simple transmutation of the idea. We call life prototypes, things like interviews. If you go interview someone whos doing the thing you want to do, you can learn to live in the future that is maybe that thing that might be you by talking to somebody and getting their story. Or you can prototype an experience by going somewhere and having the sort of embodied experience of what that might be like. And both of those things give you a little bit of data about a possible future that youre curious about. Give maie a conkreets exampl of a dysfunctional belief and how you would reframe that. Theres a lot of dysfunctional beliefs in the book. One is this notion by a certain age youre supposed to have it all figured out. In my generation, by 20, 25, you were supposed to have figured out your career, your life, your relationships. Nowadays, thats just not true. I mean people are living longer. Theyre exploring more. And so this notion that youre late or that you havent got it figured out in time is a really big digs functional belief. So how would you reframe that . We reframe that the question, what do you want to be when you grow up we reframe as, first of all, dont grow up, because being child like and curious is great. Second, what do you want to grow into next . What do you want to become next when youre on this journey of life . Because probably the data says youre going to have two or maybe three careers. So getting good at figuring out what comes next and how you want to live into it is a really important skill. And, dave, youve had a long career in tech. You led the design of apples first mouse. You cofounded Electronic Arts and now you teach. How did that come about . Was that the result of you applying Design Thinking to your own life, saying maybe teaching is what i want to do as my next career . Yeah, im teaching the class because i couldnt take it when i was 19. We got here because im really bad at this. I was really, really bad at this when i was 19 and 20 and sort of bludgeoned my way into my own future. And noticed along the way, particularly when i was on the First Corporate Culture Committee at apple, then we wroe the manifesto before the business plan. It was all about creating places that people wanted to work. Everybody was struggling with this question and most people didnt have a way to go about it. I thought this is kind of criminally negligent. Both companies and education are not doing this well. So when the chance to teach, i jumped at it over at cal. Bill had this job at stanford. We had lunch and now were here. We live in a society where these are troubling times for a lot of young people. Success is often defined in terms of monetary terms or your celebrity status. What are the types of pressures that you see associated with that for your students, and how do you get them to work around that and reframe all that and apply this Design Thinking to cope with all that . Yeah, exactly. You mentioned reframing, which is one of the mind sets of a designer. When we say think like a designer, start with curiosity. Reframe the problem. If youre chasing fame or money, youre not going to be happy. All the data says that money is not going to make you happy. Fame is not going to make you happy. You have to find your internal compass. One thing we have them do is write a life view. What are you here for . They write something we call a work view, which is why do you work . By putting those two things together and seeing how coherent they are, you get a sort of internal sense of where you want to go. And thats very different than what the culture tells you. You have them come up with something called an odyssey plan. Talk about that. We named the 20s and really the rest of our live as the odyssey because youre never really done growing up. The odyssey is whats the next adventure going to be. By odyssey planning, we talk about what your future might be. Because theres more aliveness in each of us than one lifetime permits us to live out, theres more than one of you in there, more than one of you in there, thuy, then we cant plan your future. We can imagine your futures. So the odyssey planning process is to come up with three completely different images of your next five years, radically different ways you could be, all of which are true, which are incomparab incomparables. Theyre apples and oranges and pickles. That gives you ability to hear from yourself what it is youre really after. Okay. All this sounds good, right, if youre in your 20s, have your whole future ahead of. How do you take that and apply it to people of all ages, for example, people who are midcareer for example . Now theyve got kids. Theyve got you bet. You know, car payments. Weve worked with a bunch of midcareer folks and done this at a number of tech companies. Youre right. The degrees of freedom are a little different. Worklife balance is a big issue when youre in your mid30s and 40s and you have a new family. But everybody has curiosity, and everybody has the opportunity to kind of explore the space. In account fa, constraints are actually pretty good. If you dont give designers constraints, they dont do anything. So constraints, deadlines, the things that you have to get done, this isnt about designing some kind of fantasy life. Its about setting really low bar, clearing it, trying something else, developing your creative confidence that you can really plan and execute things for yourself, and using the process of prototyping to discover, you know, kind of like what really turns you on, what makes you excited in the world. We often get asked, isnt this really just for College Students or people starting out, or is it really for elite students with lots of choices . The answer is no. The question what do i want to do the rest of my one wildlife is really important to everybody. All right. Lots of interesting concepts to think about. Dave evans and bill burnett, thank you. Your book is out now. And that is it for tonight. Next week well be talking to the candidates competing to represent Silicon Valley in congress. Incumbent mike honda and his challenge ro khanna. Im thuy vu. Thanks so much for watching. For all of kqeds news coverage, please go to kqednews. Org. Narrator discover short films next on film School Shorts. Film School Shorts is made possible by a grant from maurice kanbar, celebrating the vitality and power of the moving image, and by the members of kqed. Narrator he thought about the women hed smoked like cigarettes and about how, one day, hed go to sleep and never wake up. He thought about the words hed swung like baseball bats and about how life can sometimes strike like lightning and burn sand into glass. [ indistinct shouting, explosions, gunfire ] he thought hed seen everything, been everywhere