Face time with San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu

Some San Francisco city supervisors have been known to sit at neighborhood cafes in their districts and hold informal office hours. Others prefer to leave their office door open at City Hall once in a while so that people can drop in.  

But at the beginning of this year, Board President David Chiu decided to try something different. He started holding office hours at the Chinatown Branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

DAVID CHIU: I wanted to bring City Hall back into the neighborhoods, particularly into the heart of my district; particularly into the part of my district where many of the residents don't go to City Hall, and don't feel comfortable going to City Hall. We want to bring City Hall to the people.

Reporter Japhet Weeks stopped by the library recently and has this story.

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JAPHET WEEKS: It's a wet Friday afternoon in San Francisco's Chinatown. You can hear the dull whir of cables running underneath Powell Street along the cable car route past the public library.

Downstairs, in the library's community room, a small group of mostly elderly Chinese men are signing their names to a list. They've come for a chance to talk to San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu, but they'll have to wait a bit. Chiu is busy talking to a group of reporters. 

DAVID CHIU: I am a thousand percent focused on the tremendous problems that are facing San Francisco.

Chiu is the first Chinese-American to serve as president of the City's Board of Supervisors. His career is being followed closely by the local Chinese language press.

KTSF REPORTER: From your own perspective, in terms of your political career…

A television reporter from KTSF asks Chiu about Mayor Gavin Newsom’s announcement that he plans to run for lieutenant governor. If he wins, Supervisor Chiu will end up serving as the city's mayor until an interim mayor is chosen.

Office hours get going a little later than usual because of the reporters' questions, but no one seems to mind. People sit down with Chiu one at a time. Dressed in a smart suit, the Supervisor leans in close and listens carefully as people ask him questions, pitch development projects or explain problems like: 

CHIU: The lack of housing, tenants facing evictions, homeowners facing foreclosures. I've heard a lot of complaints about that. And I think there's a lot of hurt and pain around our budget cuts, and our city service cuts, about the impact of the economy on jobs and on families.

Sitting in the chair beside Chiu is his aide, Victor Lim, who's also his translator.

Chiu grew up in Boston, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, but he never learned to speak Mandarin or Cantonese. He says his parents...

CHIU: ...Wanted me to learn to adapt as the first kid of immigrants, so there you go.

There isn't much privacy in the library's community room. One man, who asked that his name not be used, whispers to Chiu in Cantonese. He says he was hoping to move into senior housing in Chinatown and that his name was on a waiting list. But he lost his place because of a computer glitch. He riffles through a pile of papers and fishes one out for Chiu.  

CHIU: This is the letter?

But there’s not much the supervisor can do to help. 

CHIU: We should let you know that unfortunately our waiting lists for public housing projects are very, very long. 

Chiu says a lot of the meetings take a similar course.  

CHIU: What I often find is people bring me many, many pages of the bureaucratic forms that have been stymieing them from either getting public housing, dealing with a parking ticket, trying to navigate different parts of the city bureaucracy. And so we do what we can to help move their issues through the process faster.  

The next visitor is Xiao Yunxia, a petite, energetic woman with dark wavy hair. She’s a massage teacher, and she's upset because her students can’t get statewide licenses. She says the organization that grants them does not recognize her school.

XIAO YUNXIA: (In Chinese)

FEMALE VOICEOVER: We just want them to tell us why it's not okay if you study massage at a Chinese school? Why is it that you have to go to an American school? We don't speak English well enough to go to an American school. And besides, massage is a Chinese specialty.

Xiao says this is a big concern in the Chinese community. But Chiu tells her he can’t help. This is a state issue, not a city one. That’s not the answer Xiao was hoping for.

YUNXIA: (In Chinese)

FEMALE VOICEOVER: I feel a little bit unhappy. I wasn't able to help my students to fight for their rights.

She may be disappointed, but Chiu says just connecting people with the right agency, or helping them cut through red tape, can make a big difference.

CHIU: At our last session where a half a dozen constituents came in, different constituents, all of whom had been defrauded…

The six had been cheated by an immigration services agency in Chinatown. They each paid around $5,000 to have their citizenship applications processed. It turns out that the agency never sent their applications in. Instead, it shuttered its doors and disappeared.

Chiu referred the case to the non-profit Asian Law Caucus, which is now helping the six immigrants process their applications. That service will cost them nothing.

It's just the kind of outcome Chiu says makes these sessions worthwhile.

In San Francisco, I'm Japhet Weeks for Crosscurrents.