Spike Kahn is also a community advocate, supporting organizations that:
- fight for civil, women's, and immigrant, refugee and asylum seekers' rights
- provide safe and accessible abortion and women's healthcare
- build affordable housing in the Mission District of San Francisco
Spike tries to walk the walk, not just talk.
Retired after 20 years as a Union organizer with AFSCME, SEIU, and IFPTE, Spike has continued to serve her community. Her current volunteer work is as coordinator of NYC4ALL, a network of volunteers and donors supporting unaccompanied and abandoned young immigrants in NYC. She is also the Trustee of her Charitable Trust, which funds immigrant and refugee, civil rights organizations, and groups supporting women's right to choose. She co-founded ARMS-SF, a group of dedicated individuals raising funds and convening educational talks on abortion access, clinics, financial, practical and legal support.
History:
Spike grew up in Little Havana, a Spanglish-speaking kid. She translated for recent arrivals and helped guide the new kids. She has been helping immigrants and refugees ever since. Spike worked with the Coalition for Immigrants and Refugees in San Francisco, and helped the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union immigrate their members during the Amnesty reform of 1986. From there, she worked at SEIU helping janitors and home health aides, and then worked with hospital workers at AFSCME. Most of the members were immigrants, and her 5 languages came in handy.
Spike also is an advocate for affordable and safe housing. As an ethical property owner, has testified at the SF Fire Commission, advocating for landlords to take greater responsibility to provide fire extinguishers as well as CO2/Smoke alarms, and has lobbied public officials to require this by law, pushing local government to provide incentives for owners to install sprinklers in rental properties. She advocated to bring the SF Fire Commission to hold a hearing in the Mission District after the neighborhood experienced several devastating fires.
After the Ghost Fire tragedy in Oakland, Spike organized a community meeting to teach artists how to make their spaces safer, even if not legal. Spike invited experts from the SFFD, Planning and Building departments to answer questions and distributed hundreds of free smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and other safety devices for SF artists.
As an ethical landlord, Spike has called for greater tenant protections from arbitrary evictions, increased inclusionary housing requirements, and restrictions on airbnb.
Spike also lead the community fight against a proposed luxury condo project, called the Beast on Bryant, uniting Labor, artists and Mission activists to stop the development. In the end, 40% of the property was gifted to the City by the developer for 100% affordable housing to be built on the site, with affordable arts space on the ground floor.
Spike's pet project is the Neighbor-to-Neighbor (N2N) fund, providing bridge funding to preserve and build 100% affordable housing. To date almost 1000 affordable units have been saved from the speculative market or will soon to be built on land banked and designated for new affordable units.
Spike is the founder of Pacific Felt Factory, a non-profit arts organization in the SF Mission District, providing space to a diverse group of artists. The space is a result of community activism protesting a luxury condo development on the site. After a battle, the developer provided the space as a community benefit, to give back to the Mission artists who were displaced. PFF's deed requires that it will forever be arts space, and the artists will never be displaced nor will the building ever be turned into unaffordable tech office space.
In 2019, Spike created an endowment to support affordable housing, immigrants and refugees, abortion access, and civil rights organizations worldwide.
Currently, Spike volunteers with various local non-profits helping immigrants and refugees, which assisting unaccompanied minors and asylum seekers with Legal advocacy, Food, Housing and Clothing. If you are interested in helping in this effort, contact Spike via ContactNYC4ALL@gmail.com.
