From the September 2009 Newsletter:

Chris Daly moves on to new role as real estate investor, suburban dad
By Joe Castrovinci, SPOSFI member

In a fitting close to a notorious career in San Francisco public life, Sup. Chris Daly recently announced that his family has moved to suburban Fairfield (Solano County), where he’s a property owner, a landlord, and the parent of a child who will soon join a local preschool. Mr. Daly has taken pains to reassure everyone that while his family has moved out of town, he is adhering to the letter of the residency law by continuing to reside (most of the time) in his San Francisco condo.

“This doesn’t exactly fit the messaging in terms of my political agenda,” is how Daly explained it. That understatement generated a few laughs, and lots of anger. But Daly’s political career continues to be a sad commentary for San Francisco and the people he claims to want to represent.

For example: it’s a pity that a Supervisor who spent so much time pushing low-income over middle-income housing has to move his family to the suburbs to afford ... middle income housing; a pity that Daly’s characteristic indifference to quality of life issues leads him to leave the city to secure ... a better quality of life; and a pity that his neglect of our schools leads him to leave the city to find ... a decent place to send his own children to school. Sad as it is, that’s not all.

In another ironic twist for the “official spokesman” for affordable housing in San Francisco, Mr. Daly paid cash for not just one, but two houses—spending a total of $545,000, according to real estate records. And he proved to be an extraordinarily efficient bottomfeeder, buying one home from a young couple with a child who had fallen behind on the mortgage after the husband lost his job as a roofer. Daly’s offer on the home was the lowest the couple received—but the only one that offered all cash. In short, as noted by S.F. Chronicle columnists Matier & Ross, Daly got the homes for a steal, feeding off the misery of others and taking full advantage of their misfortune—precisely what Daly has for years so sanctimoniously railed against, including in the Prop. M debate, where he favored forbidding owners from even talking to tenants about buy-outs, claiming that such conversations constituted “harassment by the landlord.

”San Francisco Examiner real estate columnist Larry Rosen put it this way: “When the chips were down, (Supervisor Daly) proved to be as hard as nails. What of the evicted family in one of the homes he purchased in foreclosure? Replaced by new tenants, presumably at market rate. His response to criticism has been an oft-raised middle finger. Apparently he didn’t want to be forced to deal with the landlord-choking restrictions he helped enact.” Rosen also speculates that Mr. Daly chose to move now, rather than waiting until he’s termed out, so that his elder child wouldn’t need to endure 18 months of San Francisco public schools.

While Daly may be following the letter of the law, this issue will nevertheless continue to dog him, as it should. Voters have a right to ask: can a Supervisor really serve his district when his family lives in the suburbs where he owns two properties, and where he sends his children to school? Or put another way, how can someone who has so demonstrably cast a vote of no confidence in San Francisco claim to still represent it on the Board of Supervisors?

San Francisco voters expect their leaders to be full-time, engaged residents who are committed to their home town. Former mayor Willie Brown had this to say: “Chris Daly isn’t just a lame duck, he’s a sitting duck ... (and) could find himself the target of a recall. I know a couple of union types who would gladly foot the bill to gather signatures.”

The final glaring contradiction of Daly's career was pointed out by the San Francisco Chronicle: “Chris Daly is typical of the legions of well-paid, highly-educated young people who move to San Francisco and get involved in social causes. Too late, they discover that they want to own a home and raise a family in a place where they don’t get panhandled all day, have to step over homeless people to get out of the front door, and have frequent encounters with urinestained sidewalks and alleys—and then move elsewhere to get it.

” It’s too bad Daly didn’t think about that when he was so busy making life difficult for the rest of us— who unlike him—will continue to live in San Francisco, the place we love and call home, for better or worse.

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