The Honorable London Breed
President, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
City Hall, Room 244
San Francisco, CA 94102-4689

Re: Presidio Terrace Tax Sale Rescission Hearing on November 28, 2017
Dear President Breed:
I have followed with interest the tax sale of the Presidio Terrace Common
Areas by San Francisco's Treasurer and Tax Collector since it was first reported
several months ago, and I write to express my concerns about serious principles at
stake in the matter you will consider at the Board's tax sale rescission hearing on
November 28, 2017.
As you might expect, and as I readily concede, my own family's time as
Presidio Terrace residents lends a measure of personal perspective to a dispute
involving many of our friends and former neighbors. While that is an appropriate
basis for the personal empathy I hold for the neighborhood's families, I
acknowledge it here as a preliminary point of emphasis for what this letter is not.
My family's history in the neighborhood is neither a legitimate basis to influence
Board decision-making, nor a factor in underlying principles that should be
decisive to a just resolution. My interest in the dispute derives instead from more
than four decades of service as a public official - much of it for the City and
County of San Francisco - and priorities reflected in my career's work to ensure
fair play and equal treatment as foundational duties of those of us entrusted to
govern.
When the improbable story of Presidio Terrace's tax sale first made
headlines last August, my own reaction of near-disbelief seemed widely shared by

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 others. I would not have guessed bureaucracies still held surprises for me. But this
one did.
For decades , the San Francisco Treasurer/Tax Collector's Office sent tax
bills to the wrong address. And for decades, those bills were presumably "returnedundeliverable" to the same office. Yet continually informed by the apparently
decades-long feedback loop that the wrong address was still wrong , the office's
ignorance endured. Finally, the office initiated a tax sale proceeding for tax
defaulted property. To meet the constitutional burdens imposed by that process, the
Tax Collector sent notice to the property's owner - to the same wrong address
once again! The office made no further effort to contact the property owners for
whose benefit the street exists, and it posted no notice whatsoever on the property
itself. After all of that, the Treasurer/Tax Collector's office's insistence that
taxpayers were wholly to blame for that office's own fiasco was breathtaking.
Among plot twists recounted in news reports on Presidio Terrace that
seemed near disbelief, however , one stood out to me as fully unbelievable. In the
United States of America, no one should lose property at the hands of the
government without knowing about it.
For a government proceeding to meet the constitutional burdens necessary to
deprive property from an owner without the owner's awareness , one would
reasonably expect to see rare and highly unusual circumstances. Yet the San
Franciscans deprived of their property without their knowledge in April 2015
presented no such unusual circumstances - apart from the wholly insufficient
efforts of their city's Tax Collector to notify them . Adding insult to the
unconstitutional injury of being denied their due process rights, they collectively
remained unaware of the sale for two years until first learning of its new owners.
It is for the reasons above that I urge you and your colleagues to overturn the
tax sale at the Board's forthcoming hearing. Thank you for considering my views
on the serious principles at stake. If I can be of further assistance, please feel free
to contact me.
Sincerely ,
YllVI~·~~~

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

 CC: Members, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
Angela Calvillo, Clerk of the Board of Supervisors

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