When Elephants Fight, it’s the Grass That Suffers
San Francisco, my home, is one of the most beautiful and magical cities on Earth. However, San Francisco is also home to one of the most infamous housing crises on Earth. It is one of the most expensive places to buy, to rent, and to build. Over 100 years of racist and exclusionary city planning and zoning have had a disproportionate effect on marginalized communities and have led to de facto segregation by income and race. The only practical way to cut through these various levels of exclusion is affordable housing, of which there is very little, impossibly expensive to build, nearly impossible to get, and typically located in the most under-resourced parts of the City.
A little over a year ago I made the decision to try and do something within my limited means to help. I proposed to the City a modest mixed-affordable housing project that would add four apartment units, including two below market rent affordable housing apartments, to my home here in the Corona Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. My small project certainly won’t solve San Francisco’s housing crisis but for the low income families that would live in these units, actually it would.
It has been very rewarding working on this project and uplifting to receive notes of encouragement from so many people in this city that care about affordable housing. My project has also been met with fierce opposition from a handful of very active individuals in my immediate neighborhood that absolutely do not want to see this affordable housing project become a reality. Given San Francisco’s reputation for NIMBY-ism, I anticipated some level of opposition. However, what came as a surprise to me was the very personal nature of the attacks I’ve received. I’ve been the target of profanity-laced tirades and angry outbursts, harassment from neighbors filing frivolous complaints with the City, and a smear campaign aimed at undermining my project by attacking me personally. The most disingenuous line of attack I’ve been made aware of relates to my tenure as an Assistant Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, D.C.
In late 2007, I traveled to South Carolina to work on then-Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign. Six primaries and one general election later - working as an attorney fighting for voting rights - I had the honor of joining the Obama Administration as a political appointee. A year later I left the Administration, jumping at the chance to work at Elizabeth Warren’s newly created Consumer Financial Protect Bureau. What a dream come true to be able to continue the fight on behalf of the middle class and marginalized communities against the big banks and other bad actors that caused the Great Recession. Within two years I was put in charge of the largest, most diverse Office at the Bureau. Under my leadership, my team reported among the highest employee satisfaction ratings within the Bureau, and on behalf of the Bureau we delivered the crown jewel of consumer protection - a first-of-its-kind public facing consumer complaint database.
Of course all of the great work that the CFPB was doing made it a major target of Congressional Republicans, themselves beholden to the same big banks that the Bureau had been holding to account. And as the old Kikuyu proverb goes, “when elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.” Sadly, myself and many other staffers at the Bureau became the grass.
In 2013 an employee on my team was having serious performance issues; she lashed out at her colleagues and at me, eventually filing a number of frivolous administrative complaints. These complaints were examined by the Bureau and independent third parties and not once, not twice, but three times found to be wholly without any merit. The underlying truth, however, didn’t stop Congressional Republicans from dragging me personally into the larger fight they were having with my employer, the CFPB. Over the course of the next year, Congressional Republicans held four, partisan and factually dubious hearings attacking the Bureau, myself, my staff, and my Office. Despite the fact that I was implicated by name during some of these hearings, I was not invited to testify, when I formally requested to testify on my own behalf my request was denied, and when I submitted exculpatory documentation to the Committee - the same that has been used to disprove the allegations three other times - Congressional Republicans refused to even include these documents into the official Congressional Record.
What does any of this have to do with my affordable housing project here in San Francisco? Well unfortunately, some of the neighbors opposed to my project have made the lies of Congressional Republicans the centerpiece of their smear campaign. Having been made aware of these attacks I’ve taken a few steps. First, I worked with a law firm to finally correct the Congressional Record; submitting this cover letter and an accompanying memo leaving no doubt about the truth of my record as a leader at the CFPB. Second, I’m writing this open letter to the internet. When the above events took place, I was an employee of the government and it was a personnel matter; unable to defend myself publicly, I relied completely on my employer for due process and vindication. Well, I received some due process; the matter was investigated and dismissed in full and in fact shortly afterwards I received a major promotion. However, vindication on the internet never came. For the last six years I have had to suffer in silence the indignity of false and damaging misinformation about me on the internet. However, that ends today.
For those interested in the truth, I’ve provided the truth in detail. For those interested in spreading misinformation, I would ask that you consider the impact of your actions and consider acting more kindly.