The San Francisco Law Library sued the city Wednesday, alleging that officials would be violating the City Charter if they fail to provide it with adequate space to house its 250,000 law books.

The issue has been simmering for years and is coming to a head as the city is preparing to close the War Memorial Veterans Building across from City Hall in May for renovations.

The Veterans Building has housed the law library since 1995, when the library was moved out of City Hall for renovations after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but the law library has remained there ever since.

Now its board of directors fears it will be homeless, despite San Francisco’s charter mandating that the city provide adequate space for the law library near the courthouse.

“For nearly two decades, we have tried to work with city officials to identify the appropriate space and facilities for the San Francisco Law Library,” Kurt Melchior, a partner at Nossaman LLP and president of the law library’s board of directors, said in a statement. “In 2013, it is beyond belief that San Francisco – a city which routinely seeks to protect its most vulnerable populations – is set to abandon such a vital public benefit.”

Melchior in November warned of a lawsuit, saying: “I’m shocked at the way the city has behaved. It’s a plain violation of the City Charter. We need to find a place right now.”

City Attorney Dennis Herrera‘s office declined to comment on the pending litigation, its standard practice.

The library, established in 1865 as the first law library in the state, is allotted 14,310 square feet in a building where sunlight streaming through the skylights has warped some books, Melchior said, and buckets used to catch leaking rain are scattered throughout the stacks. Library officials say two-thirds of their collection is in storage because they don’t have enough space.

Their lawsuit contends the library needs at least 30,000 square feet of space, and it seeks a court order preventing the city from evicting the law library from the Veterans Building until it provides adequate space elsewhere.

- John Coté

An apolitical new job: Last we heard from Christina Olague, she was leaving the Board of Supervisors after losing her bid for a four-year term to London Breed. And frankly, she didn’t sound too devastated about it.

“I’m happy to be going back to a quieter life,” she said shortly after the bruising campaign, though she had no details on what that quieter life would entail. “I want something very low key. A very slip-under-the-radar kind of job. A not-be-noticed-by-anybody-in-the-media kind of job.”

Well, we couldn’t let her off the hook that easily – and when we found out she had a new job, we did take notice. It’s as program assistant at Arriba Juntos, a Mission District nonprofit that promotes economic self-sufficiency through job training.

“It’s been very eye opening, and I’m just learning a lot,” Olague said, sounding downright chatty and upbeat compared with her tenure as supervisor. “I’m happy to be back in the community.”

Olague was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee in January 2012 to fill the District Five seat vacated by Ross Mirkarimi when he became sheriff. But when Olague voted in October to reinstate Mirkarimi as sheriff after the mayor suspended him for pleading guilty to a domestic violence-related misdemeanor, Lee stopped talking to his appointee.

And it doesn’t sound as if making amends with Olague was on Lee’s list of New Year’s resolutions. Asked if they’ve talked since she left office, Olague said, “No. Uh-uh,” and burst out laughing.

After a tough year where she faced a lot of criticism from progressives and moderates alike, Olague doesn’t sound eager to run for political office again anytime soon.

“Who knows?” she said. “In 30 years, when I’m 80, maybe I’ll run for something.”

- Heather Knight

E-mail: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SFCityInsider

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Law-Library-sues-city-over-book-space-4257558.php

Editor’s note: Inman News Publisher Brad Inman is in Manhattan, waiting out Hurricane Sandy. He will be filing stories as they relate to real estate over the next couple of days. As a journalist, Inman has covered many of California and Florida’s natural disasters, including the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francsico Bay Area and the 1994 Northridge quake near Los Angeles.

By BRAD INMAN

NEW YORK CITY — The expected storm surge from Hurricane Sandy could result in loss of life and billions in property damages, not to mention delay thousands of mortgage loan approvals and home sales.

With the recent exception of Hurricane Katrina, natural disasters and man-made catastrophes tend to have only limited long-term impacts on housing sales, housing markets, and the real estate industry. Earthquakes that hit California in 1989 and 1994 were also setbacks for housing markets, under different circumstances explored below.

In a report issued Saturday, real estate data aggregator CoreLogic estimated that nearly 284,000 total residential properties valued at almost $88 billion are at risk if Hurricane Sandy hits the East Coast as a Category 1 hurricane.

CoreLogic today released data showing the top 25 zip codes in New York City, Northern New Jersey and Long Island markets. Massapequa, located on the South Shore of Long Island, holds the top spot with more than $4.6 billion in total structure value at risk.

After Hurricane Katrina killed an estimated 1,836 people in the Gulf Coast region, destroying or damaging hundreds of thousands of homes and displacing an estimated 750,000 households, it took years for many housing markets in the region to recover.

A report issued four years after the disaster found that the number of homes sold in the New Orleans metro area fell 23 percent from May 2008 to May 2009, with 686 home sales for the month.

When a massive oil spill sullied Gulf Coast beaches and the fishing industry, a $60 million portion of the $20 billion BP Claims Fund for victims was set aside for real estate professionals.

Real estate licensees who could provide documentation for a loss of income or sales could file claims of up to $12,000 for losses related to commercial transactions, commercial real estate income, commercial commissions, rental income, rental commissions, and claims resulting from property damage or other personal claims.

The effect that natural disasters can have on housing markets are certainly localized, but in those areas, they can have a chilling and immediate influence on home buyer confidence and stall mortgage operations, hurting home sales and having even more dire consequences when combined with other economic factors.

The San Francisco Bay Area housing market came to a grinding halt after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in the fall of 1989. Mortgage operations came to a standstill as lenders were unable to process loans and fearful buyers pulled out of deals. Mid-term, consumer confidence in California real estate was chilled by the looming long-term effect that the threat of earthquakes would have on California real estate.

However, California’s real estate market particularly Southern California, was harder hit by the cutbacks in defense spending in the early 1990s, as part of the peace dividend, and a Northern California tech slump in the 1980s. Then in 1994, the Northridge Earthquake further wreaked havoc on Southern California real estate and again immobilized home buyers as the threat of natural disasters loomed large.

It was not until the late 1990s that the California housing market began to recover.

A restructuring of the earthquake insurance market followed in the middle 1990s, giving consumers better protection and helping to rebuild confidence of buying a home in California. Plus, state and local building codes were modified to make homes safer, though the jury is still out on what these code adjustments actually achieved.

The New York housing market hardly missed a beat after 9/11 with many buyers taking a stand against the force of terrorism by actually buying more homes beginning in 2002. Again, economic factors probably played an important as the New York City economy and the U.S. economy experience record growth levels.

When disasters are of a large enough scale to affect the economy as a whole, that can send alarmed investors rushing into safe havens like Treasurys and government-backed mortgage bonds that fund must U.S. home loans. Investor demand pushes bond prices up and yields down.

When the extent of the Fukushima nuclear accident looked catastrophic, mortgage rates and Treasury yields plummeted, mortgage broker and syndicated columnist Lou Barnes noted at the time.

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Article source: http://www.inman.com/news/2012/10/29/natural-disasters-and-real-estate