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Adam Echelman
Adam Echelman

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Published in The Frisc

·Sep 15, 2022

SF’s Mayor Breed Has Spent 4 Years On the Job. What’s Her Housing Record?

Breed’s early goals are only part of the story. Her legacy hinges on the battle, with help from state allies, to change how SF builds homes. — From day one of her administration in 2018, San Francisco’s London Breed fashioned herself as the housing mayor. “Yes, we need more affordable housing,” she said during her first inauguration. “Yes, we need more middle-income housing. And yes, we need market-rate housing.”

San Francisco

15 min read

Mayor Breed Has Spent 4 Years On the Job. What’s Her Housing Record?
Mayor Breed Has Spent 4 Years On the Job. What’s Her Housing Record?
San Francisco

15 min read


Published in The Frisc

·Jul 20, 2022

SF’s Tax on Empty Storefronts, Delayed by COVID, Is Just Getting Started

While city voters mull an ‘empty homes’ tax for November, let’s consider how the commercial version is rolling out. — John Yelding-Sloan is offering a 50 percent discount on rent, but no one is calling. The ground-floor commercial space in his three-story Hayes Valley building has been vacant since the last business there closed in January 2020. It’s not for lack of effort. He has spent an additional $10,000 over…

San Francisco

9 min read

SF’s Tax on Empty Storefronts, Delayed by COVID, Is Just Getting Started
SF’s Tax on Empty Storefronts, Delayed by COVID, Is Just Getting Started
San Francisco

9 min read


Published in The Frisc

·Jun 24, 2022

Polk Street’s Cinch Saloon, Its Pride Roots Showing, Straddles Gay SF Old and New

With naughty selfies and Star Wars props, the bar will witness the revival of an old tradition Sunday. — Long before its shops sold $19 salads, Polk Street had a reputation. It was gay and illicit. In 1970, the pride flag didn’t exist, and the Castro was still coming out of the closet. (Harvey Milk didn’t open his shop, Castro Camera, until 1972.) …

San Francisco

5 min read

Polk Street’s Cinch Saloon, Its Pride Roots Showing, Straddles Gay SF Old and New
Polk Street’s Cinch Saloon, Its Pride Roots Showing, Straddles Gay SF Old and New
San Francisco

5 min read


Published in The Frisc

·Jun 17, 2022

SF’s Aaron Peskin Says His Rent Control Plan Will Build More Housing. We Checked His Sources

To bolster his new bill, the city’s progressive stalwart leans on two studies. Turns out their authors don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. — For decades, San Francisco has suffered from sky-high rents and a shortage of available housing. But now California is mandating that its cities and towns build more homes, and the state’s top cop says he’ll enforce it. …

San Francisco

8 min read

Sup. Peskin Says His Rent Control Plan Will Build More Housing. His Sources Say No
Sup. Peskin Says His Rent Control Plan Will Build More Housing. His Sources Say No
San Francisco

8 min read


Published in The Frisc

·Jun 2, 2022

SF Needs to Build More Affordable Housing, But Funding It Just Got Tougher

Some state money, once a ‘cookie jar’ for builders, is now harder to tap, just as the city must add tens of thousands of new homes. — If all had gone well, 130 low-income families in San Francisco would have moved this summer into new homes that are walking distance from major BART and Muni lines, two grocery stores, and a high school. …

San Francisco

8 min read

SF Needs to Build More Affordable Housing, But Funding It Just Got Tougher
SF Needs to Build More Affordable Housing, But Funding It Just Got Tougher
San Francisco

8 min read


Published in The Frisc

·May 16, 2022

SF Voters Approved Big Money for ‘Social’ Housing. Officials First Have to Squabble Over It

A higher tax on real estate is raising millions of dollars. It’s not going to solve our affordability crisis. — In the thick of San Francisco’s housing crisis, a recent tax increase is raising cash meant to build more housing. But the distance between the spirit and the letter of the measure behind the tax has put it at the center of City Hall’s feckless politics about growth. November 2020’s…

San Francisco

8 min read

SF Voters Approved Big Money for ‘Social’ Housing. Officials First Have to Squabble Over It
SF Voters Approved Big Money for ‘Social’ Housing. Officials First Have to Squabble Over It
San Francisco

8 min read


Published in The Frisc

·Apr 15, 2022

Longtime Eyesore Theater Cursed by Kismet, COVID, and Now SF’s High Costs of Revival

The Alexandria, once a draw on Geary, has sat empty for years. Affordable housing is the latest idea to flop there. How does this movie end? — The curse of the pharaohs has plagued 5400 Geary Boulevard since 2004. The Alexandria Theater, once guarded by sphinxes and Ramses heads, sits abandoned along the busy commercial corridor, gathering graffiti along with garbage, cobwebs, and soot. Behind the curtains, in the bureaucratic bowels of the city’s building and planning…

San Francisco

9 min read

Longtime Eyesore Theater Cursed by Kismet, COVID, and Now SF’s High Costs of Revival
Longtime Eyesore Theater Cursed by Kismet, COVID, and Now SF’s High Costs of Revival
San Francisco

9 min read


Published in The Frisc

·Mar 24, 2022

A Day in the Life of an SF Day Laborer: Waiting for Work, Struggling to Get Paid

A jack of many trades sleeps under Highway 101 and keeps falling through the cracks of what appears to be a heated market for construction. — On the first Saturday of March, Jorge Florencio Sierra Mendoza’s paycheck bounced. He’s owed $3,780 for roughly four weeks of construction work that he did for a contractor based in Millbrae, south of San Francisco’s airport. …

San Francisco

8 min read

A Day in the Life of an SF Day Laborer: Waiting for Work, Struggling to Get Paid
A Day in the Life of an SF Day Laborer: Waiting for Work, Struggling to Get Paid
San Francisco

8 min read


Published in The Frisc

·Mar 1, 2022

To Recover from a Major Earthquake, SF Needs Housing Now, Not Just Later

If you think the shortage of homes is a crisis today, wait till the Big One hits. Retrofits are going well but will only take us so far. — There is a 72 percent chance that a magnitude 6.7 earthquake or higher hits the Bay Area in the next two decades. That means more than a fifth of San Francisco’s housing could be damaged or destroyed in a matter of minutes. In a city already mired in a housing…

San Francisco

11 min read

To Recover from a Major Earthquake, SF Needs Housing Now, Not Just Later
To Recover from a Major Earthquake, SF Needs Housing Now, Not Just Later
San Francisco

11 min read


Oct 15, 2021

Let’s Make Online Learning Within Reach For All

This Op Ed was narrated to Adam Echelman as part of the Humanity in Action Alfred Landecker Democracy Fellowship. By Tania Evora Every child should have their own computer. When the pandemic hit, I suddenly became a full-time remote-working mother of three while working to get my Bachelor’s degree at…

2 min read

2 min read

Adam Echelman

Adam Echelman

69 Followers

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