Randy Shaw

In 1982, the "heat-less hotel" scandal[5] was exposed whereby thousands of San Francisco's SRO tenants were living without heat. The story was front-page news for a week, ultimately resulting in the emergency enactment of tough new heat and hot water laws, which he helped author.

Shaw then went on to work with tenants on new police rules preventing illegal lockouts of tenants in lieu of legal evictions. In 1984, a campaign against Guenter Kaussen[6] was launched. Kaussen was known as the "world's biggest slumlord". Overcharging rent to Cambodian immigrant tenants in the Tenderloin led media to investigating the West German-based real estate mogul. At the time, Guenter Kaussen was the Tenderloin's largest apartment owner; this led to a story on 60 Minutes CBS-TV February 3, 1985[7] and Kaussen's suicide.[8]

In 1988, Shaw proposed San Francisco to adopt a modified payments program (MPP), enabling homeless single adults receiving welfare to obtain permanent housing. He talked to hotel owners and found that many would be willing to charge rents affordable to welfare recipients if they could ensure rent payments. Under the MPP, welfare recipients agreed to have their checks "modified" so that THC was also named on the check. These two-party checks would be delivered to THC's offices, and THC would then deduct the rent from the check and give the tenant the balance.[9]

The incoming mayor's (Art Agnos) administration implemented the MPP on a trial basis, so if it worked, the city would fund it. With a small grant obtained for THC to start the program in 1988, it proved successful. By 1989, over 1,000 formerly homeless single adults were living in permanent housing through enrolling in the MPP. The program is still used by housing providers throughout San Francisco's extensive supporting housing system today.

In May 1999, an innovative approach to housing homeless single adults was launched through the Department of Housing Services, called the hotel leasing program.[10] THC became San Francisco's leading provider of permanent housing for homeless single adults, and the leasing program was the foundation of the San Francisco's Care Not Cash program, which began in 2004.[11]

In 2018, he published a book on the urban housing crisis talking about how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing the working and middle classes out of urban America.[15] [16] Several points he emphasizes in his book are:[17]

• One can be both pro-tenant and pro-development.
• Single-family home zoning and owners are part of the problem.
• Building new housing does not make existing housing more expensive.
• Tech and other high-paid workers are not the problem.
• Housing markets are not free markets.

"In The Tenderloin, Randy Shaw offers an incisive history of one of the nation’s most underappreciated neighborhoods. From its wild swings through vice and repression, surprising presence at the heart of the domestic Cold War, unique role as the locale where today’s transgender movement began out of a strange mix of federal antipoverty programs and faith-based political organizing, and as the landing pad for refugees from U.S. wars in Southeast Asia, San Francisco’s Tenderloin is an historic neighborhood whose stories unfold at an astonishing pace. Shaw’s thoroughly documented and profusely illustrated work will be a basic resource for scholars and urban investigators for years to come." —Chris Carlsson, co-director Shaping San Francisco, editor of Reclaiming San Francisco and Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78 [18][19]

Described by UFW community and labor organizer Fred Ross, Jr. as a "powerful and moving account of how the UFW transformed people's lives, instilling a lifetime commitment to social justice,[20] Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century also traces the roots of Barack Obama's 2008 election outreach model to the UFW campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, and the electoral strategies that UFW alumni brought with them to 21st-century campaigns.[21]

Reclaiming America: Nike, Clean Air, and the New National Activism[22] (UC Press 1999) argued that local activists needed to also focus on the national issues that increasingly shape local communities. Medea Benjamin, political activist and co-director of Global Exchange, said of the book, "Randy Shaw provides the definitive account of the historic national campaign to reform Nike's labor practices. Reclaiming America is a must read for everyone seeking to achieve greater social and economic fairness in the 21st century."[23]

A guide to making social change happen, The Activist's Handbook: A Primer for the 1990s and Beyond[24](UC Press: 1996, 2001, 2013) is described by Howard Zinn as "enormously valuable for anyone interested in social change. It is practical in its advice, and inspiring in its stories of ordinary people successfully confronting powerful interests."[25]

A completely revised and updated edition of the original book, it brings the principles of activism into the Obama era. The book describes the tactics and strategies of immigrant rights, marriage equality, and other movements that grew in strength in the 21st century. This handbook[26] is a book with legs. First published in the early 1990s, it has now been updated as a guide to "winning social change" in the new millennium.