To vote.

Shea, 51, is one of an estimated 800 Bay Area residents who have plunked down the cash and taken the time to fly back to their native Taiwan and vote in today’s presidential election.

At issue, Shea and others say, is a question that strikes at the identity of the Taiwanese people: Should they continue to court mainland China and its booming economy or maintain ties with the West and its democratic values?

The two main presidential candidates offer competing answers. President Ma Ying-jeou says a close relationship with China offers the allure of a booming economy that can carry Taiwan into the next century. His main rival, Tsai Ing-wen, wants Taiwan to continue to pursue formal independence, a position that has long angered the Chinese government. Polls show the raise is too close to call.

Shea, who is one of estimated 200,000 Taiwanese expatriates who have returned to vote, said she has a duty to help define the future of their county.

“We always want to give the next generation a better future, so we feel like we should be here, we should give them this,” Shea by phone from a relative’s apartment in Taipei. “We want to have democracy, and we want to keep it.”

Unlike in the United States, Taiwanese expatriates can’t simply vote at a consulate’s office or mail a ballot. They have to return to Taiwan to vote at the polls.

Shea, a real estate agent, left her husband and younger son in the Bay Area last week while she, her daughter and 80-year-old mother headed for Taiwan.

Of the estimated 400,000 Taiwanese expatriates in the Bay Area, roughly 800 were expected to fly back for the election, said Manfred Peng, press director with San Francisco’s Taipei Economic and Cultural Office.

“These two political parties have a different perspective on the future of the country, and the members of the parties see a different future for the country,” Peng said. “They probably think the results of the election will affect them so much they want to go back and vote.”

Michael McCarron, a spokesman for San Francisco International Airport, said the flights to Taiwan have been slightly more crowded than normal, in part because of the upcoming Lunar New Year celebration.

Shea, who was up before dawn on Saturday, said the younger generations who support Ma looked only at the money to be made, not the story of Taiwan.

“We feel that we want to tell young people, ‘When you saw the fight two generations ago, you forgot what it was about, maybe your parents didn’t tell you,’ ” Shea said. “They can’t see the big picture, they can’t tell you why.”

E-mail Will Kane at wkane@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A – 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/13/MNMN1MP9QA.DTL&type=politics

To know one big reason why, ask Wayne Koniuk. By trade, Mr. Koniuk fashions artificial limbs for amputees. By habit, he fits prostheses at no charge for people who cannot pay. This has left him a less-than-wealthy man.

But he does have one substantial asset: a Divisadero Street building that his father, Walter, an orthotist, bought in 1970 and gave to his only son in 2001 so Wayne could run his business on the ground floor and Wayne’s adult children would always have a place to live.

“For eternity,” Mr. Koniuk recalls his father saying, “my grandkids will always have a place they can go. No matter whatever happens, that building should stay in the family.”

Mr. Koniuk, who himself lives in suburban Belmont, gave a half-interest in the building to his older son in 2007 so he could evict a tenant and move in himself. But under San Francisco’s extraordinarily pro-tenant housing laws, landlords can do this only once per building.

So while Mr. Koniuk desperately wants to move his younger son into the building’s other four-bedroom apartment, he cannot. He is exploring legal options. Robert Murphy, who has lived there for 30 years without a lease, remains, paying $525.82 a month.

Last spring, Mr. Koniuk offered Mr. Murphy $45,000 to move out. Mr. Murphy’s lawyer demanded $70,000, a sum Mr. Koniuk says he does not have. Meanwhile, the city’s Rent Board notified Mr. Koniuk that he was allowed to increase Mr. Murphy’s monthly rent this year by $2.63.

Mr. Murphy did not respond to several phone messages left over a two-week period. Harold Jaffe, the lawyer who wrote the demand letter, said he no longer represented Mr. Murphy.

Increasingly, small-time landlords like Mr. Koniuk are just giving up. One of his Divisadero Street neighbors has left two large apartments on the second and third floors of her building vacant for more than a decade, after a series of tenant difficulties. It’s just not worth the bother, or the risk, of being legally tied to a tenant for decades.

“Vacancy rates are going up because owners have decided to take their units off the market,” said Ross Mirkarimi, a progressive member of the Board of Supervisors. He attributes that response to “peaking frustrations in dealing with the range of laws that protect tenants in San Francisco that make it difficult for small property owners to thrive.”

Perversely, that is hurting the city’s renters as well, as a large percentage of the city’s housing stock is allowed to just sit vacant, driving up rents that newcomers pay for market-rate housing.

San Francisco is a notoriously tough city for small-time landlords. “It is the dream of every landlord to be a landlord in the most lucrative market in the country,” said Ted Gullicksen, head of San Francisco’s powerful Tenants Union. “There’s no sympathy whatsoever.”

Without strong protections, tenant advocates say, only the wealthy would be able to afford to live here. Countless longtime residents, especially the elderly, would be out on the streets.

This is a consensus view in many circles, as illustrated by a recent feature in The San Francisco Chronicle. “Throwing senior citizens out on the sidewalk is never a good idea, but it isn’t stopping North Beach developer Peter Iskander,” it began.

Left unsaid was that one of the article’s featured characters, Carlo Tarrone, pays $450 a month in rent. Or, more significantly, that Mr. Tarrone in 1999 bought (half in cash) a two-unit residential building near Telegraph Hill that the real estate Web site Zillow values at $1.7 million. Mr. Tarrone, whom I interviewed by phone, is by no means poor or facing homelessness.

Mr. Koniuk is not a slick developer who aims to toss widows and orphans into the street. He could sell, but he does not want to. He wants to honor his father’s wishes and allow his own sons to live in his own building.

“My name is Koniuk. My sons’ name is Koniuk. My father’s name was Koniuk,” he said. “We should be able to move them into a building we own.”

estevens@baycitizen.org

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/us/01bcstevens.html