Legislation would shield Mission’s Latino businesses
The city’s efforts to protect the Mission’s historic Latino business district from displacement and gentrification would be strengthened under legislation to be introduced Tuesday by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and new Supervisor Hillary Ronen.
The legislation — Ronen’s first bill after taking her place on the board — would impose zoning regulations on new businesses looking to open within the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, which is bordered by Mission and Potrero streets to the west and east, and 22nd and Cesar Chavez streets to the north and south.
Businesses would be required to obtain a conditional-use authorization — an extra layer of scrutiny that can take six to nine months — in two situations:
When seeking to merge two or more separate storefronts that, when combined, total more than
for her own name and gender changes. Like many trans people, she began to feel a certain anxiety after Donald Trump became president-elect. “It started to feel urgent,” she said. “I have a court date in February.”
Securing government IDs with accurate information has always been a difficult task for trans people. The process can be expensive (the initial court order, in California, costs more than $400) and time-consuming for those who don’t know how to navigate the many bureaucratic steps involved, which vary by state and form of ID.
A Trump presidency, advocates worry, threatens to make the process even harder.
In the weeks since election day, transgender advocates say they have seen a dramatic increase in the number of individuals looking for help changing their name and gender markers on official documentation. Clinics, like the one in Oakland, have been held in response all along the West Coast — in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Seattle and Portland — and as far away as Atlanta and New York.
“Trump ran on such a clear platform of intolerance,” said Kris Hayashi, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center in Oakland. “There are real concerns and fears about what that will mean for a wide range of targeted communities.”
Though transgender issues rarely came up during the 2016 campaign — and Trump, as with many areas, rarely offered a coherent stance on trans policy issues, including the North Carolina bathroom bill — Hayashi and others point to various signs that some of the progress the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community has seen over the past eight years could be rolled back.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence has taken a number of anti-LGBT stances. As the Supreme Court readies itself to take up the bathroom issue, Trump has pledged to nominate a conservative jurist as soon as he takes office. And, if the Republican Congress succeeds in dismantling the Affordable Care Act, many trans people could be left without access to much-needed health care.
Almost immediately after the media called the election on Nov. 8, trans organizations and advocates began to rally. Facebook posts popped up asking people to start stockpiling hormones should access to health care and providers be cut off. The hashtag #Trans LawHelp gained traction on Twitter as people sought to offer legal help for those looking to change their names and gender markers on official documents. Web-based spreadsheets were passed around where trans people could list their financial, legal and medical needs and donors could indicate what they were able to provide.
The Trans Assistance Project sprang up out of one of those spreadsheets after it became clear that the need for financial assistance with IDs and health care was larger than expected. The group is now a nonprofit, run out of Portland, Ore., and Oakland, but offering support nationwide. Already, organizers say, they’ve given $8,000 to trans people who needed financial help procuring their documentation. (They also raised money for the three trans women killed in the Oakland Ghost Ship fire.)
“It’s been really hard for our community,” said Phos Ivestei, the organizing director for the Trans Assistance Project. “This has been a big punch. And it’s on everybody’s mind.”
Given that many transgender individuals live on the margins, financial support can be invaluable, especially as court, state Department and Department of Motor Vehicles fees begin to stack up. “Those fees are sometimes waivable, but that can delay it,” Ivestei said. “Who has that kind of time?”
Ava Summers was one of the recipients of the Trans Assistance Project funds. She said she’d been meaning to update her documentation for a while, but finding the time and cash was difficult. “I don’t really have disposable income at all.” But Trump’s election motivated her. “Especially for me and the people around me, Mike Pence in particular ... it’s really scary.”
Summers, who lives in Portland, said she’s on track to get her Oregon driver’s license as well as an expedited passport, all of which will ultimately cost hundreds of dollars. The process won’t be quick — she has a “messy bureaucracy” to move through. Securing a court date, the first step, takes at least 14 days. Still, the prospect of getting identification with her name and gender on it, is comforting.
Constantly seeing a name you no longer use on your ID “feels really uncomfortable,” she said. “You are something else and not having your documents say that can be really, really hard.”
Hayashi, the director of the Transgender Law Center, said these efforts are heartening. “There’s been this real upswell in people who see the need, understand it and are wanting to help.” But, he cautions, “the need is very vast and there’s definitely much more that needs to be done.”