Civic: Recent Episodes
San Francisco Public Press & KSFP, Laura Wenus, Liana Wilcox, Mel Baker
Civic is the flagship audio program from the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit news institution, covering the city and how it works. The radio program airs every weekday on KSFP -LP 102.5 FM in San Francisco.
For nearly 60 years, San Francisco built a pioneering system to care for young people in crisis. What began during the Summer of Love with the nation's first runaway youth shelter and the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic evolved into a network of specialized clinics that combined medical care, mental health treatment, sexual health services and connections to housing and social support under one roof.Now, that model is being dismantled as San Francisco shifts young patients to larger primary care clinics and expands telehealth services. Supporters say the city risks losing more than two clinics, it may be abandoning a philosophy of care built around meeting vulnerable young people where they are. In this episode of Civic, we trace the history of San Francisco's groundbreaking approach to integrated youth healthcare and examine the city's plan to close two specialized youth clinics in the Tenderloin and Haight neighborhoods. Through archival recordings, former patients, frontline clinicians, nonprofit leaders, union representatives and city officials, we explore how a nationally influential model of integrated care collided with budget pressures driven by deep federal and state Medi-Cal funding cuts.
June 2026 San Francisco Public Press Election Guide
Yes on D campaign
Chamber of Commerce Voter Guide
After at least 19 women in San Francisco’s county jail alleged they were subjected to a mass strip search while deputies recorded on body-worn cameras, advocates, attorneys and city officials demanded answers. This investigative documentary examines what women say happened inside the jail’s B-pod — and the broader conditions women describe inside the facility, including prolonged lockdowns, overcrowding, lack of sunlight and untreated trauma. Through public hearings, legal records, interviews with formerly incarcerated women and advocates, and statements made by sheriff’s officials during oversight hearings, the story traces how a jail intended for temporary detention became a place where many women spend months or years awaiting trial.
About the panelists
Diana Greene Foster is a demographer and professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She studies the causes and consequences of unwanted pregnancy and is part of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health — commonly known as ANSIRH — which is a research program at UCSF.
Foster was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow and is the author of the 2020 book “The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having — or Being Denied — an Abortion.” She has recently published a study updating her earlier research.
Mariana Horne is the Outreach and Education Coordinator at ACCESS Reproductive Justice, California’s statewide abortion fund. Her work has been recognized by large institutions for its impact in reproductive health education.
As part of the movement-building team, Horne works at the intersection of community education and direct service support, removing barriers to abortion care and advancing reproductive justice teachings across California and nationwide.
In this episode of Civic, reporter Sylvie Sturm examines how federal policy — through executive orders, funding threats and regulatory pressure — is reshaping access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth across the United States.The debate is unfolding even though no new federal law has passed and no final rules have taken effect. Yet hospitals, clinics and families are already making decisions in response to the possibility of federal penalties.Through the story of Eric, a 15-year-old high school student in Oakland, we follow how those policy battles land in real life. The episode also explores the broader policy fight:• Federal officials who argue the treatments are unsafe and should be restricted• Medical associations and clinicians who say the care can be life-saving when carefully managed• Lawyers challenging whether federal agencies even have the authority to impose such limitsWe hear from community health leaders, legal experts, and families navigating the uncertainty, including Dr. Tatyana Moaton Santiago of the San Francisco Community Health Center, who warns that policy threats alone can make providers afraid to offer care.Subscribe to Civic from the San Francisco Public Press for investigative reporting on the policies shaping life in San Francisco and beyond.
What’s on the ballot this coming June and November? The San Francisco Public Press and The Frisc hosted a panel discussion to discuss the key issues. These included:
- the “Overpaid CEO Act,” which would modify and boost the top executive pay tax
- a major charter reform measure that would restructure city government
- the family zoning plan, which encourages more housing
- and the race to win the Congressional seat being vacated by Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi
The panelists were Jason McDaniel, associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University; Jeremy Lee, president of the Rose Pak Asian American Club; and Sin Wang, vice president of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission and founding board member of the West Side Family Democratic Club.
As part of an effort to meet state mandated housing requirements, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has introduced a "Family Zoning Plan" that would increase building height limitations along transit corridors. Supervisors have introduced amendments to the legislation which is being voted on December 2nd, 2025. SF Public Press Executive Director Lila LaHood and KALW Executive Producer Ben Trefny moderated a town hall conversation bringing together stakeholders with different ideas of how to move forward.Panelists include: Brianna Morales, the Community Organizer at the Housing Action Coalition (HAC), a member-supported advocacy organization dedicated to expanding housing opportunities for people of all income levels.Sharon Ng, a community planner representing REP-SF, the Race & Equity in All Planning Coalition.Jane Natoli, the San Francisco Organizing Director at Yimby Action. Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, an economic justice organizer. They are the Campaigns and Policy Director at Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco.The panel was recorded at KALW on 220 Montgomery Street in San Francisco.
Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, started with a homemade zine, listing cheap eats, drinks and events. Along the way he became a TV travel host, publisher and mayoral candidate. He became an influencer offline before social media made influencer viable a career choice.
When federal science budgets are gutted, the fallout reaches far beyond labs. From Alzheimer’s trials at the University of California San Francisco to cancer studies at the Veterans Administration, critical research is stalling, science students are losing opportunities to train and launch careers, and veterans are left without lifesaving care. Hear how universities, courts, and Congress are scrambling to protect the future of science as we unpack the political fight behind the cuts — and what’s at stake for you. We also explore how veterans are pushing back. To learn more, go to commondefense.us.
President Trump calls it “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but critics say the latest federal budget will slash more than a trillion dollars from Medicaid over the next decade — cutting coverage for an estimated 12 million people. In San Francisco, more than 250,000 residents rely on Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, along with tens of thousands of caregivers who support them. This episode of Civic from the San Francisco Public Press examines how the bill could affect local patients, long-term care workers, and the city’s healthcare safety net — with voices from those fighting to protect services that are essential to survival.
If you’ve experienced issues with Social Security — missed checks, delayed responses, or inaccessible services — you can file a complaint with the California Department of Justice at oag.ca.gov/socialsecurity.
APPEARING IN THIS EPISODE:
Kelly Dearman – Executive Director, San Francisco Department of Disability and Aging Services
Paul Aguilar – Social Security disability beneficiary, long-term HIV survivor
Dr. Monica Gandhi – Professor of Medicine, UCSF; HIV/AIDS specialist
Joanna Parnes – Managing Attorney, Bay Area Legal Aid
Laura Chiera – Director of Legal Services, Legal Assistance to the Elderly, San Francisco
Jacqueline Hopkins – Claims Specialist, Social Security Administration, Richmond office; union representative
Sylvia Norman – President, AFGE Local 3172, SSA workers union, Northern and Central California
About the ‘Silent Killer’ Series
The San Francisco Public Press examined recent efforts to step up diagnosis, vaccination and treatment for hepatitis B. Chronic hepatitis B affects an estimated 305,000 people in California, with the vast majority of cases affecting people in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Deep racial and cultural disparities in illness caused by the hepatitis B virus have persisted for decades. A cure is in trials, but those inequities, along with federal funding cuts, could hamper its rollout.
This reporting was supported with a California Health Equity Fellowship from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and a grant from the Pulitzer Center.
PART 1: Poorly Tracked Virus Is a ‘Silent Killer’ Affecting Asian Americans Most
PART 2: Stigma, Insufficient Screening Keep Hepatitis B in the Shadows
PART 3: Researchers Seek Hepatitis B Cure as Trump Slashes Health Agency Funding
Hep B Free
Veterans and advocates are sounding the alarm as massive federal job cuts and plans to eliminate 83,000 positions at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — championed as “efficiency reforms” by the Trump administration — threaten to strip away critical services. In this episode, we take an in-depth look at the human toll of sweeping layoffs and the privatization push at the VA. And we spotlight community resilience, with programs like Vets in Tech, co-founded by Craig Newmark, helping veterans transition into Silicon Valley careers—without tapping into their VA benefits.Learn more: vetsintech.co
The San Francisco Public Press on April 30, 2025, hosted a fireside chat recorded for this “Civic” episode about attacks on diversity, democracy and media with Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, the public editor at PBS, and Lila LaHood, executive director of the San Francisco Public Press.In addition to discussing how journalists can do better covering issues their audiences care about in a political environment that is fraught with conflict, how PBS engages with listeners and viewers about their critiques and concerns, and why public media newsrooms aim to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, Sandoval-Palos and LaHood talked about what might happen if the federal government were to cut funding to PBS and NPR, which receive a portion of their funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.The next day, President Trump signed an executive order attempting to do just that.
San Francisco's mayor and police department are facing praise and scorn for cracking down on homelessness and visible substance use amidst shelter and treatment bed shortages and jail overcrowding.
- Join the San Francisco Public Press for a screening of “Stripped for Parts” in San Francisco on Thursday, March 13. Details and tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/film-stripped-for-parts-american-journalism-on-the-brink-tickets-1250795746749
- Website for the film: https://strippedforpartsfilm.com/Rick Goldsmith’s production company: https://kovnocommunications.org/
San Francisco's immigrant communities are facing a crisis as the Trump administration threatens mass deportations. For four decades, San Francisco has been a refuge for immigrants seeking a better life and a battleground for justice when federal policies target vulnerable communities. Today, legal aid networks, rapid response teams, and mass protests are showing that the city will not stand by while so many of its residents are at risk. In this episode, we’ll hear from people affected by mass deportation efforts. We’ll also hear from experts with a historical perspective, and resistance movement organizers.
This week marks three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the conflict shows no signs of ending. On the eve of this grim anniversary, Russia launched its largest drone attack yet, causing widespread destruction and civilian casualties. Days later, the U.S. voted against a U.N. resolution calling for Russia’s withdrawal. In this episode, we revisit conversations first aired on April 7, 2022 — just six weeks after the invasion began — as San Francisco residents with deep ties to Ukraine were fearing for loved ones and desperately trying to help. From sending vital medical supplies to welcoming refugees into the Bay Area, their stories remain powerful and urgent as the crisis continues.
Ever since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, emboldened anti-abortion activists have used increasingly aggressive efforts to shut down abortion access in San Francisco. In October, an anti-abortion crusader entered the local Planned Parenthood brandishing a gun. And a new anti-abortion movement that launched in San Francisco is gaining popularity through TikTok posts of members performing clinic invasions.City officials stepped up abortion protections with new legislation and Proposition O — a ballot measure to support women seeking abortions, which passed with 84% of the vote. That’s in keeping with a long San Francisco tradition of fighting for abortion access going back to the mid-1960s when a trial widely known as the San Francisco Nine sparked a nationwide movement that led to loosened restrictions. In this episode, we take a look at San Francisco’s 60-year history in the battle for reproductive rights, a new increasingly aggressive anti-abortion movement, and what reproductive justice activists are doing to keep up the fight.
Thank you for listening. To support this work, visit: https://www.sfpublicpress.org/donate/
LGBTQ Latin Americans come to San Francisco seeking relief from oppression and hostility. But when they join substance use disorder support groups, many encounter scorn — especially if they’re transgender.When one San Francisco couple heard that transgender Latin Americans were facing hostility in peer support groups, they formed their own. Now LGBTQ people in addiction recovery across the U.S. and Latin America are turning to their group as a welcoming place to heal.
Find out how to connect by emailingRecuperacionDiversa@gmail.com.
The Navy conducted radiation experiments on humans at San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, turning hundreds of servicemen and shipyard workers into unwitting “volunteers” for Cold War scientists’ biology and safety research.
Check out the full series at https://sfpublicpress.org/exposed
Decades after the Navy closed a Cold War radiation research lab at San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, the mess isn't completely cleaned up. Neighbors in Bayview-Hunters Point are demanding accountability for the toxic legacy amid charges of environmental racism.
Check out the full series at https://sfpublicpress.org/exposed
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco’s Latinx residents experienced higher rates of infection and deaths, and greater losses of income and homes compared with other ethnic groups. Widespread depression and anxiety resulting from the trauma led to a grassroots effort to heal the community. That’s when a UCSF psychiatrist asked them to test a new therapy that combines an app with trained coaches chosen from amongst members of their community. Now locals are envisioning a brighter future, and the project is getting kudos from the White House.
San Francisco’s proposition K is the most heated issue in this year’s local election. It asks whether the city should close a segment of the Great Highway, a coastal thoroughfare, to car traffic, so it could later become a park. Residents are divided: some welcome the idea of a park for families and community gatherings, while others worry that it will make north-south travel on the west side more difficult, making it harder to connect with their families and communities. In this episode, we hear from residents about why this space matters to them—whether as a road or as a park.
Check the San Francisco Public Press voter guide
Affordable housing is too expensive for many in San Francisco, leaving people in untenable living situations: rentals they can’t afford, overcrowded single room occupancy hotels, or tents on the street. Proposition G tries to combat that issue by proposing the creation of a fund to subsidize 550 to 600 units of affordable housing for extremely low income seniors, people with disabilities and families in San Francisco. We speak with an older adult about her precarious housing situation, as well as local organizations that work with vulnerable populations to understand why affordable housing is so costly in the first place, and how this measure would affect groups living on fixed incomes if it passes.
Check out our nonpartisan election guide.
In the November, 2024 election San Francisco voters are being asked to decide whether to approve a wide range of issues in the form of 15 local ballot propositions, including ones on a major overhaul of the city’s commission system, bond measures and other program funding, changes to the business tax system, and incentives to bolster the ranks of police, fire and other emergency services employees. San Francisco’s list of ballot measures is long and complex. Here are Propositions A through O as explained by our reporting staff.
You can find more detailed information on our November, 2024 Election Guide.
San Francisco commission reform is on the November 2024 ballot. If either Proposition D or E passes, they will change the city’s commissions in different ways, which have had a vital role in how the combined city and county of San Francisco has been governed since 1898. Civic speaks to John Monson, the co-author of a civil grand jury report “Commission Impossible.” To create this report, the jury carried out an extensive examination of the commissions system before Proposition D or E made it to the ballot.
Find the Civil Grand Jury report here: https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/Commissions%20Impossible%20Report.pdf
There’s a glimmer of hope in San Francisco’s overdose crisis as the rate at which people are dying appears to be slowing down. But the city’s health director warned the public that the death rate may not have peaked yet. Meanwhile, health and city officials who once advocated for a place where people could safely consume substances in case of overdose have gone silent on the topic. So we provide a reminder of what overdose prevention centers can achieve by revisiting New York City’s OnPoint, which is saving lives and cleaning up its surrounding neighborhood.
Decisions by local and state governments have major impacts on our daily lives. But as transparency about those decisions decreases, and underfunded newsrooms struggle to get answers, many affected citizens are taking matters into their own hands.
San Francisco Public Press Executive Director Lila LaHood spoke with award-winning journalist Miranda Spivack, author of the
forthcoming book, “Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities — and the Local Heroes Fighting Back.” She shared what she has learned about keeping governments accountable.
As mentioned at the end of the episode:
How California Utilities Commission Undermines the Public Records Act
Web of corruption: Explore the cronyism, lies, and federal crimes at the heart of San Francisco’s government
Increases in the number of migrants arriving in San Francisco have stress-tested the city’s shelter system, revealing the dire need for more housing and support for families. We talk to migrant parents driven out of their homes by violence and political upheaval about navigating San Francisco’s homeless response system and its impacts on their families’ health and wellbeing as they fight for a better future. A housing provider shares the limitations of the city’s data on family homelessness, and an immigration attorney tells us how a stable living situation helps migrant families with their court cases.
The impact of the COVID 19 pandemic led to a rise in fatal overdoses among the tens of thousands of Indigenous Maya living in the Bay area. That alarmed Latinx advocates and officials at the Mexican consulate in San Francisco. Indigenous Latin Americans are categorized as Latinx even though many speak limited Spanish. That means vital information, like drug awareness campaigns and the dangers of fentanyl, may not be reaching the Maya-speaking community. And service providers say culturally-sensitive treatment programs are crucial for healing but are nearly non-existent for the Indigenous population. We discuss the push for change in San Francisco with advocates and health professionals.
The first years of the COVID-19 pandemic are behind us and it’s time for an early reckoning of our successes and failures. An epidemiologist shares how a lack of public trust led to unnecessary deaths. AIDS activists discuss the importance of facing trauma and a woman who lost her father to COVID is fighting for a memorial for those who died.
Three years ago, when violence against Asian Americans spiked, local organizations took action to improve public safety. One group, the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice in San Francisco, is still doing that work. In this episode, we join them for one of their recurring community visits in the Richmond District. Outreach workers share how they connect with business owners and residents and help them feel safe.
Lila LaHood, publisher of the San Francisco Public Press, talks with Nuala Bishari from the San Francisco Chronicle, Sydney Johnson from KQED, and Sylvie Sturm from “Civic” and the San Francisco Public Press about their reporting on drug use, public policy and and substance use disorder treatment in San Francisco. They discuss the harm reduction philosophy and practice, San Francisco’s inconsistent stance on overdose prevention centers, public safety perceptions, Proposition F, and what other cities are doing to address drug use, sales and treatment in their communities.
Election Special: Voters in San Francisco registered with the Peace & Freedom, Green, Republican or Democratic parties have extra choices in the March 5th election that only come around once every four years — the party county central committees. We talk to a political strategist to discuss the power dynamics of these committees in San Francisco and find out what voters are tasked to choose. We also hear from representatives of each of these parties to learn a bit more about how they operate.
Democratic County Central Committee: https://www.sfdemocrats.org/our-party/the-dccc
Republican Party of San Francisco: https://www.sfgop.org/about
Green Party of San Francisco: https://www.sfgreenparty.org/about-us
Peace and Freedom Party of California: https://www.peaceandfreedom.us/index.php/about-us/about-peace-and-freedom
San Francisco Public Press March 2024 SF Election Guide: https://www.sfpublicpress.org/march-2024-sf-election-guide/
March 2024 Election Special: Mayor London Breed is facing one of the most pivotal moments of her political career as she campaigns for reelection amidst a dual crisis of addiction and homelessness. Her solution is a ballot measure that would compel welfare recipients to submit to drug addiction screening and treatment in order to get cash benefits. We explore the fierce debate that has rippled across San Francisco and beyond, and a very similar measure that catapulted a former San Francisco supervisor onto the national stage and political stardom — Gavin Newsom.
March 2024 Election Special: Why are San Francisco residents being asked to vote on County Superior Court Judges? We talk to University of San Francisco professor of politics Keally McBride about the slate of candidates, how the process works, and what people should be thinking about when considering their vote.
Audio fixed - Previously uploaded episode was the wrong audio and has been fixed
Fentanyl-related deaths among teens more than tripled across the U.S. from 2019 to 2021. And the CDC reports that two thirds of teens who died had someone nearby who didn’t provide an overdose response. Now San Francisco high school students are signing up for training sessions on how to recognize drug abuse and reverse overdoses. And it’s not just teens who want to help. City residents are carrying overdose reversal nasal spray in case they come across someone in need of rescuing. But reversing an overdose isn’t quite as simple as it might sound. In this sixth and final episode of our series on San Francisco and the overdose crisis, we hear about an organization dedicated to training people on how to reverse overdoses, and we drop in on a session to find out how it’s done.
Fentanyl-related deaths among teens more than tripled across the U.S. from 2019 to 2021. And the CDC reports that two thirds of teens who died had someone nearby who didn’t provide an overdose response. Now San Francisco high school students are signing up for training sessions on how to recognize drug abuse and reverse overdoses. And it’s not just teens who want to help. City residents are carrying overdose reversal nasal spray in case they come across someone in need of rescuing. But reversing an overdose isn’t quite as simple as it might sound. In this sixth and final episode of our series on San Francisco and the overdose crisis, we hear about an organization dedicated to training people on how to reverse overdoses, and we drop in on a session to find out how it’s done.
Narcan resources mentioned in the episode:
San Francisco residents can get Narcan from the Community Behavioral Health Services Pharmacy at 1380 Howard Street.
Detailed instructions on how to administer Narcan can be found on the DOPE website at harmreduction.org and on YouTube "How to Use Narcan with the DOPE Project."
The DOPE Project conducts Narcan distribution and in person trainings at the 6th Street Harm Reduction Center at 117 6th Street, during operating hours, Tuesday to Friday 11 am to 5 pm.
The Fight for Safe Consumption Sites: San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis Part 5
As overdose fatalities reach two to three deaths a day in San Francisco, demands for supervised consumption sites are getting more urgent. But city leaders are increasingly reluctant. And health officials who once campaigned for them are now conspicuously silent. We investigate San Francisco’s long fight for safe consumption sites and what changed. And we visit an overdose prevention center in New York City that’s having a real impact on the neighborhood and people’s lives.
The War on Drugs Revisited: San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis
Some San Francisco city officials are advocating jail for unhoused people who use drugs and murder charges for people who sell drugs. Critics say their approach mirrors the abysmal failure of the 50-year-old war on drugs. In the fourth episode of our series on San Francisco and the overdose crisis, we take a historical look at the justice system’s approach to drugs, its racial inequities, what has changed, and what may be making a comeback.
San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis Part 3
Content Warning: Explicit language and a description of an overdose experience.
San Francisco city officials have decided that arresting unhoused people for using drugs is the way to get them into treatment programs. Critics say jails are no place to get clean. And besides, forcing people into rehab doesn’t work. Based on the rate of treatment refusal by those arrested, the critics have a point. In the third episode of our series on San Francisco and the overdose crisis, we take a historical look at policing drug use and the massive hurdles that are getting in the way.
Civic Presents: San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis Part 2
While San Francisco is on track to break records for the highest number of fatal overdoses in one year, health experts say the city is failing when it comes to one surefire way to save lives: housing. San Francisco’s history has made housing a huge challenge. In this second episode of our series, we take a historical look at the city’s homelessness crisis, how it worsens addiction and drug-related fatalities, and how the city is responding.
Civic Presents: San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis
San Francisco is experiencing its worst rate of drug-related fatalities ever, and as city officials impose increasingly punitive measures against people who use and sell drugs, the problem only seems to be getting worse. In this first episode of our series on San Francisco’s overdose crisis, we take a historical look at opioid addiction, and we assess the damage of stigma on the city’s most vulnerable residents.
Seven months after being violently removed from their grandmother’s Santa Cruz home and taken to reunification therapy, Maya and Sebastian take to social media to announce that they have escaped. We touch base with Maya and get an update on the push for reforms.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides confidential assistance to anyone affected by domestic violence through a live chat and a free 24-hour hotline at 800-799-7233.
San Francisco is considering reparations for Black San Franciscans. To understand why advocates are pushing for reparations in the city, we dive deep into the history of redlining, urban renewal, and other discriminatory housing policies, as well as their impact on two historically Black neighborhoods: the Fillmore and Bayview Hunters Point. The final plan, created by the African American Reparations Advisory Committee, outlines recommendations to address mass incarceration, the war on drugs, disparities in health and education and more. The plan is due June 30th to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors. Go to sfpublicpress.org for the companion piece with a link to the draft plan (publishing 5/25/23).
The extreme winter storms put San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management to the test. Early in the storm cycle, the department faced challenges communicating with people experiencing homelessness. Internal confusion over the forecast delayed the opening of its Emergency Operations Center until a major storm was under way. In at least one instance, flood barriers were deployed too late to prevent homes and businesses from being inundated.
Content Warning: Audio of children in distress, discussions of child sexual abuse and child abuse, & swearing
When a family court rules that a child was brainwashed into lying about parental abuse, judges routinely order the child into programs called reunification camps. The goal is to make the child recant abuse claims and embrace the parent they allege harmed them. The process involves forcibly removing the child from their preferred parent’s home and transporting them to a reunification camp in another city or out of state. It’s a process that’s caused trauma to an untold number of kids. They then go through four days of “deprogramming therapy” at a cost of $25,000 to $40,000, with parents footing the bill. A viral video showing two teens being violently removed from their Santa Cruz home for transport to a reunification camp has now spurred protests and politicians’ calls to ban the practice. We dive into what drives reunification camps, their impact on children, and the horrific story of one survivor who is now fighting to shut them down.
Family court judges routinely grant full custody to a parent after a child alleges they’re abusing them. That’s because they believe the other parent brainwashed their kids into lying about the abuse. The judge’s decision is often influenced by a pseudo psychological theory dreamt up 40 years ago by one guy who created a cottage industry out of defending child abusers. That cottage industry has now become a booming business for many family court lawyers. One lawyer we talked to said that in every single one of his cases, the court decided the child was lying about being abused. A ton of those kids are all grown up and say they weren’t lying, and were handed over to their abusers. We talked to one who is now fighting against these harmful family court decisions.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides confidential assistance to anyone affected by domestic violence through a live chat at TheHotline.org, a free 24-hour hotline at 800-799-7233 and by texting "START" to 88788.
The National Dating Abuse Helpline, can be reached at 1-866-331-9474, by texting "LOVEIS" to 22522, or through live chat at LoveIsRespect.org.
More information about Pierce's Pledge can be found at PiercesPledge.org
Content Warning: This episode discusses sensitive topics, including accounts of domestic abuse and violence.
NEW: Monkeypox emergency declared; Laguna Honda patients can stay; face masks on BART; Supe supports psychedelic mushrooms; SRO workers strike; Mayor veto stands NEXT: Up Your Alley fetish fest & Outside Lands music fest return; Supes on summer recess.
In 1978, the U.S. government created a path to recognizing Indian tribes in the United States. Four years later, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, a tribe native to Yosemite Valley, submitted their initial request to become a recognized tribe. They’re still waiting. We talk to Chairwoman, Sandra Roan Chapman, about her tribe's pursuit for federal recognition. We also explore the nuts and bolts of the process with SFSU professor and journalist Cristina Azocar.
NEW: $28 billion budget passes; DA gets pushback over criminal justice reform; SFPD policy for surveillance camera access; problematic BART plaza fenced off; ballot measures to 1) permit cars on JFK Drive 2) maintain car-free JFK 3) change election schedule. NEXT: monkeypox vaccines; stopping fatal Laguna Honda patient relocation; mayor vetos housing density law; LGBTQ cultural heritage hearing.
A new District Attorney hires new staff and fires staff hired by the previous D.A. We look at the history of the crisis at Laguna Honda Hospital that has displaced some frail and elderly patients. COVID infections on the rise. Our station KSFP-LP is back on the air and the Board of Supervisors looks at new ballot initiatives for November.
In part two of our coverage of the pending closure of Laguna Honda Hospital, we hear about the potential impacts of relocating patients - a directive from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to move all patients out of the facility before applying for recertification in the fall. We also hear about concerns regarding the recertification process and additional efforts to correct issues uncovered during the inspections.
NEW: Mayor picks new DA; prioritizing housing for veterans; Supes demand PG&E accountability. NEXT: Mayor wants watered down ethics rules; changes to Geary Blvd; Department of Homelessness oversight; shifting election years; SFPD improvement update; big money for affordable housing projects.
Nearly 700 live-in patients at Laguna Honda Hospital are in limbo after the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it would pull federal funding following multiple damning inspection reports. San Francisco Department of Public Health officials are scrambling to regain the certification needed for funding. Meanwhile, two former hospital physicians say they warned city officials about a potential crisis nearly 20 years ago.
NEW: Supes, mayor reach $28 billion budget deal; $4M estimate for abortion services; victory for safe consumption; call for city overdose plan; no more slow Lake Street; school board suspends meetings; two controversial housing bills pass; questions over monkeypox. NEXT: nixing new street cleaning department; potential vacant home tax; cost-of-living adjustment for elder city pensioners; shifting the election cycle; abortion rights protests.
NEW: Supreme Court decisions on abortion & gun rights sends city officials scrambling; SFPD won’t negotiate budget requests; school board reverses decisions on Lowell High School admission and controversial mural cover-up. NEXT: SFMTA decision makers to vote on union salaries and $7M cost for temporary facility; voters will decide fate of sales tax; SFPD equipment scrutinized; proposal to add gender identity to anti-discrimination rules; mitigating impact of ride-hailing and self-driving passenger service; upcoming 4th of July celebrations; supervisors weigh in on proposed $717M budget.
The largest display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in ten years took place in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in June. Now the quilt is being taken on the road to the southern U.S., where new HIV infections and lower levels of treatment for those infected are the highest in the country. We also speak with the White House official overseeing the Biden Administration’s response to the pandemic, after resources for HIV care were diverted to battling the COVID pandemic.
NEW: Tenderloin Center will shut down in December; proposed drug enforcement zones; “massive mismanagement” of addiction and mental health services; proposal to permit behested payments; reopen JFK Drive fight continues; money for Asian and Pacific Islander residents; bridge toll crackdown; town halls after traffic deaths. NEXT: expediting housing development; vaccines for young kids; Golden State Warriors parade; racial makeup of city workers; city budget public hearings; Pink Painted Lady owner breaks contract.
NEW: San Francisco recalls DA with 55% in support; voters approve three anti-corruption measures; COVID rates spike while testing sites are defunded NEXT: school board rethinks Lowell High admission changes; public hearing on Laguna Honda shutdown; housing help for low-income residents; law to allow police access private surveillance cameras.
With the proliferation of social media channels, misinformation and disinformation now spread as fast as the click of a trackpad. Even for a trusted outlet like PBS — nationally recognized for its family friendly programming and sober, nonpartisan news coverage — this era has brought a flood of digital rumors to quell. As the public editor at PBS, Ricardo Sandoval Palos fields complaints for the organization and uses community feedback to cultivate conversations between viewers and PBS’s creative teams.
NEW: Get nonpartisan analysis of June 2022 ballot measure at sfpublicpress.org; Honey Mahogany will run for District 6 supervisor; Pride Parade organizers & SFPD reach compromise; driverless car service permitted; Mayor London Breed’s 2-year, $28B budget. NEXT: Street patrols for every police district; reviewing beleaguered Below Market Rate housing Program; charter amendment to forfeit pensions of city employees found guilty of crimes.
NEW: Supe reacts to mass shootings; schools step up policing; nearly $50M for city center; proposed change to city elections; city sues slumlord; SF population drops. NEXT: Update on botched school payroll; Pink Triangle returns; protest against gun violence.
HIV activists and healthcare professionals are warning city officials that while everyone is paying attention to COVID-19, rates of HIV infection and HIV related illness have been creeping in the wrong direction. We talk to Monica Gandhi, the director of the center for AIDS research at UCSF, about the history of HIV research in San Francisco, how the pandemic affected resources, and her advice for a path forward. We also hear from HIV survivors and SF officials about the importance of inclusion when it comes to funding decisions.
NEW: Laguna Honda takes another step towards closure; a drop in the city’s unhoused population; $1.3 billion shortfall in affordable housing goals; fired anti-vaccine firefighters fight back with misinformation and conspiracy theories NEXT: Resolution to change garbage rates after $23.4 million overbilling revelation; a new Department of Sanitation and Streets; proposal for gun violence trauma response; expanded Castro Theater landmark designation; pushback on proposed homelessness oversight commission.
NEW: A breakthrough in the vehicle smash-and-grab epidemic; police commissioners may ban minor traffic infraction stops; former SFPD communications director appointed to Board of Supervisors; Supervisor wants public parking lots opened to unhoused vehicle dwellers; School District rescinds nearly all lay off notices. NEXT: Supervisors ask state to help beleaguered City College; hearing on shutting down juvenile hall; hearing on funding shortfall for affordable housing; town hall with city’s homelessness officials; proposal to protect wrongly evicted tenants.
John Muir is considered the father of the National Parks and has been honored extensively around California. But in 2020, the Sierra Club began reexamining their founder’s words. Was John Muir racist? Civic took a trip up to Yosemite to speak with Lee Stetson, a Muir historian and actor, and Sandra Roan Chapman, chairperson of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, to discuss Muir’s legacy, current efforts to increase recognition of and resources for indigenous people, and the impact of the conservation movement in the region.
NEW: Supervisors respond emotionally to possible overturning of Roe v. Wade; City College is laying off over 160 full and part time teachers; Great Highway weekend closure may be extended; U.S. Department of Justice microgrant will pay for more community policing in the Tenderloin. NEXT: Proposal for a ballot measure to create a Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing oversight commission; a hearing and report on racial equity in city department hiring patterns; presentation on the Southeast Rail Station Study’s new train station in the Bayview; ordinance requiring the city to add 20 housing units for homeless youth in the Haight-Ashbury.
When we look at the massive wealth gap between the rich and poor in this country, what stands out most is how differently it affects white and Black populations. In part two of this series on extreme income inequality, we dive into the federal programs that helped World War II veterans acquire housing, and the resulting maps with bright red lines around Black-populated areas deemed unsafe for federally backed mortgages. We also examine early union-busting practices and where they’ve led, and how Reagan-era policies created the billionaire class.
NEW: Redistricting Task Force approves a final map despite protests; BART reinstates a mask mandate; JFK Drive permanently closed to traffic; city-funded childcare workers getting pay raises; new pandemic recovery funding for small businesses and nonprofits NEXT: Rules Committee hearing to look into Board of Appeals president potential ethics violation; Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit performs better than expected; Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing on federal AIDS funding and services reduction.
NEW: Supervisor Matt Haney defeated former Supervisor David Campos for the 17th Assembly District seat; Redistricting Task Force approves a new supervisor districts draft map; Human Rights Commission says city is failing Asian American victims of violence; Street Crisis Response Teams divert calls to police, but more is needed; calls for a public hearing on bedraggled SFGH emergency psyche unit; plans are in for a $400M Transamerica Pyramid redesign NEXT: public hearing on JFK Drive shutdown to private vehicles; keeping track of sub-acute psyche patients discharged out of county; third try for a public hearing on lot subdivision hung up on address confusion.
"Income inequality is at a crisis point in America. But it’s not the first time the country has faced an extreme wealth gap. In part one of a two-part series, we explore the Depression-era policies and programs that were meant to address wealth inequality. And we talk to Bay Area residents who were stripped of generational wealth when their ancestors were barred from opportunities to capitalize on support programs."
NEW: Tuesday is voting day for Assembly District 17. Supervisors consider incentives to bolster lagging police ranks. Laguna Honda is again at risk of shutting down. The redistricting process could be settled in court. DA alleges bogus lawsuits are targeting hundreds of small businesses. NEXT: Proposed committee for unhoused residents locked out of shelters. Supervisors will consider a $1.5 million settlement over a homeless man’s police custody death. Supervisors will analyze whether Street Crisis Response Teams are making a difference.
In an episode from last Spring, “Civic” spoke with Tere Almaguer, an environmental justice organizer with PODER, which operates the Hummingbird farm in San Francisco’s Crocker Amazon neighborhood. As the state heads into another year of drought, we talked about how the drought already had an impact, and how the group has adapted to years of inconsistent rainfall.
NEW Another top city administrator resigns over dubious ethical conduct; a judge resurrects a lawsuit alleging ties between the mayor and a City Hall corruption scandal; school district deputy superintendent to resign over major payroll snafu; SF’s Ukrainian diaspora is angry and anxious; Ukrainian refugees coming to the Bay Area need homes. NEXT SF Election Commission will not remove redistricting task force members; ex-planning commissioner retaliation lawsuit settles for $1.8M; demolishing the private Kearney Street pedestrian bridge; a hearing on shelter access for unhoused BIPOC and pregnant residents; and new adult sex venue zoning in historically LGBTQ neighborhoods.
More than 4 million Ukrainians have fled the country as Russian forces destroy entire cities. A local aid agency is racing to get medical supplies into Ukraine and bringing refugees into the Bay Area. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of the Ukrainian diaspora are angry, anxious and desperate to connect with loved ones in their ancestral homeland. We caught up with a few during a sunny weekend afternoon in mid-March where hundreds gathered at the bandshell in Golden Gate Park music concourse for a show called "Slava Ukraini" — Glory to Ukraine.
First, what’s new? Laguna Honda hospital has two weeks to fix serious problems or risk closure. SF Public Press’s rent relief tracker found that requests exceed authorized funds by $116 million. New possible district boundaries are drawing furious backlash. And a new poll has uncovered a deep malaise among locals. What’s next? The Board of Supervisors urge the state and federal governments to help survivors of domestic violence. The Land Use and Transportation Committee weighs in on Car Free JFK, and on a controversial plan to end most single-family zoning in the city. And the Battery Bluff area of Presidio Tunnel Tops park opens on April 23rd.
San Francisco is not alone in experiencing an alarming rise in overdose deaths. A lot of them are due to fentanyl, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid. But many fatal overdoses are the result of multiple substances. In this episode, the second in a two-part series examining the factors contributing to increases in drug overdoses in San Francisco, we talk to experts and community advocates about what measures have been taken to address this health crisis, how people who use drugs are reversing overdoses themselves, other harm reduction efforts, what treatment and recovery can mean and how activists, volunteers and the city are trying to help people find their way there.
First, what’s new? A proposed ordinance would require the city to provide a safe place to sleep for every unhoused person. Supervisors decide to put a new Amazon warehouse on hold. Supervisor Preston wants a hearing on police propaganda, aka copaganda. San Francisco’s outmigration is the second largest in the country. What’s next? The Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit finally starts rolling. And the planning commission gets busy with hearings on the proposed Lake Merced recreational park, the massive San Francisco Gateway industrial project in Bayview Hunters Point, a new outer Mission residential complex, and more.
San Francisco saw more people die from drug overdoses than from COVID-19 over the last two years. We take a deep dive into the complex factors contributing to the crisis and possible ways to mitigate the problem in this first of a two part series.
First, what’s new? Former Supervisor Jane Kim is being investigated for ethics violations after failing to register as a lobbyist while on the payroll of a man campaigning to block a new apartment complex. Teachers hold a sit-in to force an agreement on proper payment procedures. A new poll shows DA Chesa Boudin may be on thin ice over his recall campaign. What’s next? Supervisors consider a new law to regulate how police store victim DNA. The public gets to weigh in on progress over San Francisco Department police reform. City and county union workers will march to demand increased staffing.
Read the Public Press and Mission Local stories:
Track fires in the Mission, day-by-day
Little fires everywhere: Fires rose by 26 percent in San Francisco last year
SF Fires Linked to Homeless Surged as Pandemic Set In
Grassroots Nonprofits and Homeless Communities Create Their Own Fire Prevention Solutions
First, what’s new? Three new school board members were sworn in by the Mayor London Breed after three elected members were recalled. Vaccine mandates are lifted for most indoor public settings. The District Attorney will not re-file a case against a police officer charged with excessive use of force. after a jury acquitted him. Mayor Breed said the police department is making progress on reform, but needs to hire more officers. What’s next? The Board of Supervisors will vote on a measure pushing back on a state law that makes it cheaper to build housing. The supervisors will vote on the rules for restaurants who want to make their pandemic parklets permanent and they’ll take up Mayor Breed’s plans to crack down on rampant drug dealing and use in the Tenderloin.
The last remaining tenant protections against eviction for pandemic-related rent debt that were granted by the state are expiring at the end of the month. They were based on tenants having applied to the state’s rent relief program, which according to a new study is slow to make decisions. The report indicates applicants are waiting months for the state program to make decisions on their cases, and that the majority of applicants have not received any payment. Still, the state should have enough funds to be able to pay every eligible applicant, even those who apply in the last weeks before the program closes.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Mayor withdraws request for more police funding; Mayor withdraws surveillance ballot measure, and a supervisor removes his competing proposal; voters to consider reassigning responsibility for garbage rate hike proposals; Coming up: 100 households to receive estate planning assistance; committee hearing on Amazon center; supervisors to weigh “monster homes” legislation; school board to discuss implementation of zone-based school assignment.
Americans, Ukrainians, and Russians gathered in San Francisco to protest the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. San Francisco Police promise they will no longer use DNA collected from rape kits to match suspects to crimes. Mayor Breed’s office said they will go forward with plans to arrest some drug users who refuse to engage with support services. Later this week the Board of Supervisors will consider new rules compelling employers to provide their employees more flexibility and predictability to give caregivers more regular schedules. The school board will vote on a plan to lay off dozens of educators, classroom staff, and administrators to close a $125 million budget shortfall.
The San Francisco School Board has decided to delay the application process for picking a new superintendent until the end of March, following the recall of three board members, who will be out of office before then. The board of Supervisors voted to place a recall reform measure before voters this June and passed an ordinance allowing renters to set-up tenant unions with the same negotiating powers of labor unions. We’look ahead on the city calendar on proposals to allow easier police surveillance of events in real time and how much you pay for garbage collection.
San Rafael-based nonprofit Roots of Peace stayed in Afghanistan after the Taliban reclaimed power, working to clear minefields for farmland, while also helping Afghans who wanted to leave get their families out of the country. Siawash Safi, director of technology at Roots of Peace, says relatives still in Afghanistan say they don’t have enough food and are worried about the future — and hope that Americans will consider their plight and try to help.
The end of indoor mask mandates in San Francisco. The San Francisco Police Commission orders the Police Chief to work out his differences with the District Attorney, the Mayor outlines her new budget and we look at important votes this week by the Board of Supervisors.
When you get bombarded with polarizing political ads during elections season, you might go looking for a neutral, straightforward explanation of a ballot measure or race. Often, the search will lead to Ballotpedia. This elections encyclopedia is written and edited by humans — it’s not automated. To get a better sense of where the material comes from and how staff try to earn voters’ trust, we talked to Ballotpedia writer Amée LaTour.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The new: New calls for San Francisco to take over the PG&E power grid in the city. An investigation into fires affecting unhoused people. The SFPD abruptly ends an agreement allowing the District Attorney to investigate the use of violence by police. Coming up: Supervisors will consider plans for a new homeless shelter. A committee will decide whether or not to continue a program moving unhoused people into current hotels and a report on what a drop in commercial real estate rents means for the city.
Four people with varying political and activist backgrounds are competing to serve out the rest of former Assemblyman David Chiu's term representing District 17 in the state Assembly. On Feb. 15, voters will make their choice in a primary election for this seat. Hear highlights from conversations with David Campos, Matt Haney, Bilal Mahmood and Thea Selby about how they think the state should address the pandemic and recovery as well as concerns like education, housing and economic equity.
Editor's note: On Monday afternoon we removed an upcoming item from the "next" section of this roundup. It was related to city supervisors requesting a report from the budget and legislative analyst about residential vacancies, and we removed it because the meeting has now occurred and the requested report has already been issued.
Measures A, B and C on the February 15 ballot ask if school board members Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga, respectively, should be removed from their positions. Recall proponents say the board should have been more focused on reopening schools during the pandemic. Since voters will be making their choices based not only on the board members’ records but also on their policy stances, we asked all three how they would handle issues like the ongoing pandemic and the budget if they stay in place.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the Omicron surge has peaked in the city. The California Public Utilities Commission failed in its mission to oversee ride hailing companies like Uber and Lyft. Thousands of tenants could be evicted as programs to help them pay back rent fall short. San Francisco Supervisors will consider legislation to help tenants impacted by COVID-19 and more.
You can find information about how to register to vote as a noncitizen here. The registration form is here. The registration deadline for the Feb. 15 recall election is Jan. 31.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: SFUSD and unions reach agreement on masks, testing and sick leave; pandemic depletes certain tax revenues but SF projects budget surplus; point-in-time count of homeless people delayed. Coming up: School board to discuss COVID safety and get an update on elementary school diversity policy; Health and Planning Commissions to meet jointly to discuss CPMC development agreement compliance.
Editor's note: A reference to negotiations between the school district and unions representing SFUSD employees has been updated to reflect that the parties reached an agreement on mask supplies, testing and sick leave.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Massive coronavirus case spike; schools scramble to find substitute teachers; hospitals strained by COVID-related staff absences; homeless shelters see outbreaks. Also: Money pours in to February election campaigns. Coming up: Q&A session between supervisors and Mayor about Slow Streets; supervisors to weigh open-source voting pilot program.
Editor's note: The wrong audio file was uploaded to this episode. Apologies to our listeners for the confusion! As of 2:47 p.m. on 12/30, the audio file should be correct.
Read Julia Flynn Siler's additional reporting on allegations against a later director of the Cameron House here.
With a holiday coming up that usually involves a lot of boxes, we’re revisiting two previous shows about recycling. Ride along with a sanitation worker who collects everything in San Francisco’s blue bins, and learn some dos and don’ts of recycling at a Recology sorting center.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: State mask mandate refined for cities like SF; former Public Works boss pleads guilty to fraud; mayor initiates crackdown on Tenderloin drug use and dealing, including with state of emergency; school board staves off state takeover by voting for staff-recommended budget cuts; mayor proposes charter amendment overseeing school board and child services agencies. Coming up: Supervisors to vote on state of emergency declaration for the Tenderloin, SFMTA board to meet.
Read the special reports from Mission Local that raised concerns about gas lines in retrofitted buildings here.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Omicron variant prompts new mask mandate that overrides SF rules; high school students walk out in protest over sexual assault allegations; school board members present alternative budget cutting proposal to staff plan. Coming up: Mayor to introduce school board reform charter amendment to Board of Supervisors; supervisors to consider buying former Goodwill for safe consumption site; school board faces deadline for budget plan; Building Inspection Commission to get update on seismic retrofit program.
Legislators, activists and tenants are worried about real estate investors buying multi-unit housing properties only to evict all of the tenants and sell the buildings for a profit. They’re calling for an end to the state law that makes this possible, the Ellis Act. In the meantime, they want the city and the nonprofits it works with to buy those buildings instead of leaving them for speculators to snap up.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Omicron detected in SF; Supervisors vote to allocate money for housing acquisition; School board members suggest different plan for budget cuts. Coming up: School board to consider budget proposal; Supervisors to consider approving $2.5 million settlement in lawsuit over police killing of Keita O'Neil.
Could the Bay Area address housing affordability and control water use in perpetually drought-stricken California at the same time? A report from SPUR and the Pacific Institute says yes. In fact, we’ve done it before. The key is to continue improving conservation methods while building infill housing rather than allowing urban sprawl. SPUR’s Laura Feinstein explains.
We're publishing this week's episode a day early, but we'll be back to our Thursday release schedule next week.
While a judge in Los Angeles was ending Britney Spears’ conservatorship after 13 years, mental health activists who call themselves the Mad Mob were protesting the very concept of conservatorship and forced treatment here in San Francisco. Hear from Mad Mob members, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, and a mental health services coordinator who has been conserved about how this works locally.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Mayor supports school board recall, DA recall qualifies for ballot; activists mark the ending of Britney Spears' conservatorship by calling for better voluntary mental health treatment; opioid overdoses mapped; requests for rent relief far outpace allocated money. Coming up: School board and building inspection commission to discuss filling leadership positions; school board to discuss budget; Board of Supervisors to consider allocation for needs assessment at Buena Vista Horace Mann school, and making changes to the planning code to repeal oil and gas production and processing land uses.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: SF's corruption scandal, in interactive map format; off-duty SFPD officer arrested in San Mateo; SFUSD works to formulate budget cuts; Muni cutting service on some lines after unvaccinated operators suspended. Coming up: Mayor and Board of Supervisors to discuss homelessness; Board to vote on whether to get quarterly reports on domestic violence cases; Police Commission to receive report from Firearm Discharge Review Board and In-Custody Death Review Board.
San Francisco’s Healthy Streets Operations Center, a cross-departmental collaboration tasked with addressing tent encampments, is intended to clean up tents while offering residents services. But a report from the Coalition on Homelessness says only a minority of residents are successfully connected with services, and the practice of moving them and cleaning the street results primarily in property loss and distress.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Nearly 500 units of housing voted down; $40 million allocated to repairs at Buena Vista Horace Mann school; Muni adopts hybrid return plan; drop-in homelessness resource center dropped; report on City Administrator role. Coming up: Board of Supervisors to hold hearing on settlement of opioid suit; Planning Commission to consider authorizations for two more parking lot to housing conversion proposals.
Thousands of people are heading to Glasgow, Scotland for COP26, the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference, and among them are two local indigenous climate organizers. They’ll be focused on discussions about supporting indigenous rights and holding accountable the financial backers of climate-altering industries.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: An update on ride-hailing's dark data; three school board members will face a recall; new charges in city corruption scandal; reports of slow maintenance and persistent infestations in subsidized housing. Coming up: Supervisors to vote on compensation for flooding victims; school board slated to take up funding allocation for BVHM school repairs again.
Bayview Hunters Point has one of the highest estimated vaccination rates in the city, a fact one community organizer attributes to outreach workers efforts to improve education and access. Outreach workers are going door-to-door to make sure as many people as possible are immunized against COVID-19. They survey residents about their household’s vaccination status, talk to people about concerns, if they have any, and offer connections to testing, shots, and other resources. For those who are still hesitant, outreach workers hope information from trusted, locally rooted messengers will help alleviate fears.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Mask rules relax; vote on funding allocation for school repair delayed; cannabis business permitting rules tweaked. Coming up: South Van Ness road diet open house; MCCLA Day of the Dead exhibit; Supervisors to vote on property acquisitions for homelessness initiatives and response to Van Ness Improvement Project report.
Vermin infestation and electrical malfunction. A copy machine in the restroom. Falling ceiling tiles. Parents, students and staff at Buena Vista Horace Mann School in the Mission have been testifying at recent hearings about these and other maintenance problems they say have plagued the school for years. Officials have promised to allocate money to make repairs, but they’ve delayed making a decision about how much to spend. Meanwhile, the district’s facilities director says requests for electrical and other important work are backlogged district-wide.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Report alleges tent removal practices are illegal; thousands of tenants saddled with debt for paying pandemic rent they had to go into debt for; confusion about reform progress at police commission hearing. Coming up: School board member will propose spending $55 million on critical repairs to a school where students have been injured; Millennium Tower shoring to begin; Planning Commission to consider proposals for new residential buildings with SRO-style shared facilities; mask mandates to partly relax.
Thousands of San Francisco tenants have borrowed thousands of dollars from payday lenders, credit card companies, family or friends to pay rent during the pandemic. And that makes them in some ways worse off than those who let the rent bills lapse. We talk about how this happened, what the potential fallout might be, and why advocates still advise applying to the state's rent relief program.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Eviction moratorium expires and tenant advocates offer advice on what to do; rent collections by the public housing agency have been plummeting; musical chairs in San Francisco politics; supervisors call for investigation and reform of building inspection department. Coming up: Eagle bar could become a landmark; applications process for equity candidates for cannabis businesses could be tweaked; Department of Police Accountability to give report on first half of 2021; police overview of crowd control plans for Giants games and Fleet Week.
More people of color are running for office, but in the diverse Bay Area, elected officials are still whiter than the populations they represent. Some city councils are entirely white. Michelle Huang with the Bay Area Equity Atlas and Kimi Lee from Bay Rising unpack what has changed in recent years, and what hasn’t, about inclusion in local elections.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: SF the only county where Elder didn't lead as recall replacement candidate; pockets of low vaccination rates might explain neighborhood's overall high case rates; DBI scrutinized on multiple fronts; BART plans progressive policing; SF retirement fund invested in so-called "vulture" hedge funds. Coming up: Tenant advocates urge renters to apply for COVID assistance; transit agency to hold office hours and open houses on 2022 plans.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Recology fined; no in-school COVID-19 transmissions recorded; overdose crisis. Coming up: Transit Month, Stern Grove repair considerations; meeting to discuss improvements on Geary.
As wildfires rage, unprecedented heat waves become deadly and cities are drowned, climate worry is turning to climate grief for many people. We talk to a young Bay Area climate activist and a psychiatrist about how we move forward in a world in which the climate change threat has become a climate crisis reality.
Pandemic or no, sanitation workers are still collecting the city's waste material. Back in April, Civic hitched an early morning ride with Recology recycling driver Gareth Willey to get a sense for how the pandemic has changed his work. While the decreased traffic had made the streets a little less crowded, the bins he emptied have been piled high with cardboard boxes from mail orders.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: COVID cases decline; advocates call for safe consumption sites; DoorDash drivers rally; judgment against landlord for tenant harassment upheld; half-off transit fares. Coming up: CA recall election; protest scheduled for more shelter-in-place hotels; proposed "ghost gun" ordinance; Tenderloin group housing project appeal; large SoMa project seeks approval.
Every city is special in some way to the people who call it home, but as author Gary Kamiya writes, San Francisco is a more potent touchstone than most thanks to the unique place it occupies in the American imagination. In the new anthology “The End of the Golden Gate,” writers including W. Kamau Bell, Margaret Cho and Michelle Tea reflect on a city in flux. Kamiya and writer and artist John Law talk about gentrification, loving the city, and the message newcomers often hear that San Francisco peaked just before their arrival.
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Find the series "Driving Home" at sfpublicpress.org.
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You can learn more Swords to Plowshares' services here. The veterans crisis line can be reached at 1-800-273-8255, online or by texting 838255.
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The Burma Refugee Family Network recommended finding local aid groups through regional Refugee, Asylee and Immigrant Forums. These forums coordinate refugee nonprofit organizations in San Francisco, Santa Clara County, and the East Bay.
Also: We are still interested in hearing what you think about Civic — find a short survey here. Your feedback is appreciated!
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Rent assistance applications outpace disbursements; booster shot eligibility; congregate shelter intakes paused; ghost gun lawsuit; DA and police chief discuss crime. Coming up: Hardly Strictly back to virtual; planning commission to consider certain neighborhood zoning changes; proposed low-density building goes to Planning Commission.
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If you have five minutes, we'd love to get your feedback on Civic through a quick survey. Your feedback means a lot, so thanks very much!
A report on the waste picked up by cleanup crews working along the nation’s beaches and shorelines from the Surfrider Foundation showed that almost 90% of the more than 80,000 pounds of trash collected in 2020 was plastic. The report also criticizes the use of bioplastics — an umbrella term that refers to plastic alternatives marketed as biodegradable or compostable. Rachel Coccia, plastic pollution coordinator for the foundation, and Holden Hardcastle, chair of the foundation’s San Francisco chapter, talk about beach cleanups during the pandemic and the problems with bioplastics.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Vaccine mandate for indoor activities; kids return to school; first of two DA recall efforts falls short on signatures. Coming up: The DA and police chief in conversation; SFMTA board to discuss Van Ness report findings; Health Commission will get an update on coronavirus actions.
The California Geological Survey creates maps showing which areas scientists expect a really serious tsunami would affect. The latest iteration of this map shows that the areas likely to be affected have actually expanded. Rick Wilson, a senior engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey and manager of its tsunami program, outlines some tsunami basics and explains how and why these maps are made.
California voters will be asked whether they want to remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office. If the recall is approved, there are more than 40 candidates vying to replace him, and they are listed on the same ballot. These ballots should arriving in San Francisco voters’ mailboxes around August 16. They can then be mailed in or returned in person. Evangelina Peña, co-manager of the outreach division at the San Francisco Department of Elections, walks voters through the steps, from ensuring they receive a ballot to filling it out to tracking its processing status online.
“Homeroom,” from director Peter Nicks and executive producer Ryan Coogler, debuts on August 12 on Hulu and will also begin a week of screenings at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater that day.
Editor's note: This podcast was updated Tuesday, August 10 because the SFUSD announced a vaccine mandate for staff.
San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is a relatively new department, but it and its budget have been growing rapidly. The newly approved city budget allocates more than $1.1 billion over two years to the department. That money will be spent on programs including placing people in housing, finding ways to keep people who are in a precarious housing situation in place, opening parking sites for people living in their vehicles, family shelters, temporary shelters, and supportive services. Emily Cohen, interim director for strategy and external affairs at the department, explains how this budget was developed and where these investments are being focused.
The proposal to create a public bank for San Francisco, in order to provide an alternative to big banks for the city's investing and lending needs, is moving incrementally from concept toward reality. A working group of experts in different relevant fields, from finance to affordable housing, has now been selected to start work on a business plan for a public bank. Fernando Martí, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, and Sylvia Chi, principal co-author of AB 857, California's Public Banking Act and a member of the California Public Banking Alliance, talk about how this would work and what happens next.
The Manilatown Heritage Foundation will host a commemoration on Wednesday, Aug. 4. Details are at manilatown.org.
With the delta variant, coronavirus infections are on a sharp increase again in the Bay Area. California recently announced that health care workers and state employees must be vaccinated or get tested weekly and wear masks on the job. There have already been attempts to challenge the legality of similar mandates around the nation. Dorit Reiss, a law professor at UC Hastings who researches the law around vaccines and vaccine mandates, lays out what considerations employers and governments must weigh when it comes to requiring vaccination.
In the streets, in jails and other detention facilities and at its program sites around the Bay Area, the Young Women’s Freedom Center provides resources and support to girls, women, and transgender and gender non-conforming people. It provides training, internships, fellowships and jobs to help people affected by poverty, exploitation and violence develop their voices. One of the center’s core tenets is the belief that people who are affected by these systems are the ones that can and must lead effective change. Julia Arroyo-Guzman, a site director for Young Women’s Freedom Center, talks about her work and her journey to it.
The daily work commute nearly disappeared in March of 2020 as the Bay Area went into pandemic lockdown, and while travel on public transit continues to lag this Summer, many Bay Area residents are getting behind the wheel to get to and from their jobs. We talk to a CalTrans spokesperson about current traffic patterns and with a radio traffic reporter about what he has seen on the roads during the pandemic.
The pandemic and related precautions affected millions of restaurant workers around the country — unemployment in the restaurant industry shot up to more than 40% nationwide in April 2020, and to 60% in the Bay Area, according to the State of Restaurant Workers report from the advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. Zoe Caras, national research associate for the organization, explains what the report found in the Bay Area and what those numbers meant for workers.
The city of Mountain View is prohibiting oversize vehicle parking on streets that are 40 feet wide or, which more than 80 percent of the city’s streets are. While the ordinance is described as a traffic safety measure, according to local reporting, the ban primarily affects homeless people living in vehicles. Last week, a group of civil rights organizations filed suit against the city over that ordinance, describing it as unconstitutional and inhumane. Michael Trujillo, an attorney with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, one of the organizations bringing the suit, and Yesica Prado, a photojournalist who has documented the lives of vehicle dwellers for the San Francisco Public Press and who herself lives in her RV, give some regional context for the ordinance and explain what the lawsuit is about.
Some of the people most at risk for infection with the delta variant of the coronavirus are those who have not gotten vaccinated. Outreach workers with Code Tenderloin head into the streets with vaccines to inoculate people right where they are and to build trust with those still reluctant to receive the vaccine.
The majority of San Francisco residents have gotten vaccinated against the coronavirus. But a lack of trust in the healthcare system or trouble making an appointment or going to a vaccination site may still pose barriers for some, especially people experiencing homelessness. Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician and researcher who directs the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, is part of a collaborative multi-organizational effort to bring the vaccines to people out on the streets.
The delta variant has arrived in the Bay Area. Though San Francisco's case numbers seem to be rising, most residents are vaccinated here. But people under age 12 aren’t eligible yet, which raises the question of what to do in schools. San Francisco will require all students to wear masks indoors, but not outdoors, while at school. Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco’s Health Officer, returns to Civic to talk about the details of the current mask rules, the delta variant, and the importance of vaccines. Update, 7/16: A few days after this episode published, Bay Area health officials made a joint recommendation that everyone wear masks in public indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status. They cited an increase in COVID-19 cases and increased circulation of the delta variant.
Bruce Wheeler was diagnosed with COVID-19 last spring, but never fully recovered, suffering a variety of symptoms of what has become known as "long COVID." He's not alone — according to a UC Davis overview of a handful of recent studies, more than one in four COVID-19 patients develop symptoms lasting for months, even if they had mild cases. Bruce and Dr. Brian Block, who has helped treat him and who is one of the founding clinicians at UCSF’s COVID recovery clinic, talk about the condition and what's still unknown about it.
Research has shown links between residential racial segregation and a plethora of health concerns, from asthma to obesity. Segregation can also be a factor in wealth — household incomes and home values in white neighborhoods are nearly twice as high as those in segregated communities of color. These are some of the key points laid out in a new report from the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. And segregation seems to be worsening. The institute’s Roots of Structural Racism Project found that among U.S. metropolitan regions with more than 200,000 residents, 81% were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990. Stephen Menendian, assistant director and director of research at the institute, talks about tracing structural racism to its roots and the importance of addressing segregation.
As some California cities move away from gas in new buildings to address climate change, and after recent news that gas lines in some San Francisco buildings have been encased in concrete during seismic retrofits, we explore the hazardous tradeoffs of burning fossil fuels in buildings. Sasan Saadat, a research and policy analyst with Earthjustice, gives an overview of the pollution created by gas use and explains some of the shortcomings of fossil gas alternatives.
California's eviction moratorium protecting tenants who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic was set to expire at the end of June. Legislators extended it, but the state law supersedes local pandemic eviction protections, and prevents city legislators from adding new ones through March of next year. Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, unpacks the details.
San Francisco and California have formed advisory committees to formulate a plan for reparations for African Americans, to study and work to make right the harms done by slavery, segregation and systemic racism. Rev. Amos Brown, senior pastor at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco and president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP is on both committees and discusses California’s legacy of racism and what form reparations could take in this state and city.
As companies mull bringing staff who have been working from home back into the office, mechanical engineer Steve Taylor's consulting firm has been fielding questions about making offices as safe as they were pre-pandemic through upgrades to HVAC systems. That's not possible, he says — but if workers wear masks, existing systems that meet ventilation standards we already have should be enough to bring the risk of infection to acceptable levels.
In recent years, the mills and foundries that receive recyclables from Recology have stopped accepting material with more than one percent impurities, so the sorting facility at Pier 96 must work at a very high standard. On a tour of the sorting center, we learn what happens when things that don't belong in the recycling end up there, and what to do about things that are difficult to recycle, like plastic bags.
As Vice President Kamala Harris visited the US-Mexico border on Friday to tour a detention facility and meet with people who have made the journey to the United States, we talked with San Francisco resident Soledad Castillo, who left Honduras at age 14. She is one of the narrators in a Voice of Witness oral history collection called “Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America.” She shared some of the hardships she faced and how she was able to pursue her education despite them, and reflected on US immigration policy.
California's remaining restrictions pertain to mega-events, unvaccinated people, healthcare facilities, and settings serving children, and the guidelines say little about social distancing. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatrics – infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University, and Dr. Lee Riley, professor of infectious diseases at the School of Public Health in the division of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley discuss the relative benefit of social distancing in concert with other prevention measures and under what circumstances distancing still makes sense.
With the state emerging from a pandemic that prompted emergency action and investment to bring people living on the street indoors, and after recent pledges from state and local officials to invest into solutions to homelessness, local nonprofit leaders discuss what long-lasting solutions might look like. In these highlights from a recent panel discussion hosted by the nonprofit At the Crossroads, Joe Wilson from Hospitality House, Mary Howe from Homeless Youth Alliance, Charles Lerner from At the Crossroads, and Julia Arroyo from the Young Women’s Freedom Center outline the scale of investment that might be needed, and why decisions should be made with input from people with lived experience. .
Local and state officials have been announcing their intentions to invest billions into addressing homelessness, and two reports laying out strategies to bring the majority of unsheltered people in the region indoors have made headlines in recent months. Tomiquia Moss, founder and CEO of AllHome, describes the need for more investment across different interventions to reduce the pressure to prioritize those who have the most complex and chronic needs over those who could exit homelessness with shorter-term help, or over prevention strategies. AllHome’s regional plan for reducing homelessness by 75% over the next three years calls for simultaneous investment in interim housing, permanent placements and prevention strategies.
Editor's note 6/30/21: The original audio for this episode was uploaded in error. We have replaced it with the correct file. Apologies for the confusion.
Hear more of The Finch Files here.
Alcatraz Island is once again drawing tourists from around the world. Visitors arriving on the island will see signage proclaiming “Indian Land!” as it would have appeared 50 years ago. A reminder that beyond the stories of prison escapes “The Rock” was the place that lit the spark for the native American rights movement in North America. We talked with the daughter of one of those occupiers about that legacy.
More than 20 years ago, a filmmaker documented the lives of a group of people in San Francisco exploring gender and what it means to be transgender, to create a film called "Gendernauts." Now Monika Treut has directed and written a new film, “Genderation,” in which she follows up with these same protagonists to see how shifting social scenes, political climate and individual circumstances of their lives have affected them. Treut and poet and documentary protagonist Max Wolf Valerio reflect on changes in the city and the nation.
Hummingbird Farm provides organic food as well as medicinal plants, and serves as a community and education hub in particular for young people. Tere Almaguer, an environmental justice organizer with PODER, which operates the farm, talked with “Civic” about how the drought has already had an impact, and how the group has adapted to years of inconsistent rainfall.
“No Straight Lines” screens at the Frameline film festival, digitally Jun 17–27 and in-person at the Castro Theater on Sunday, June 27.
Freedom of information advocates and journalists have criticized a number of instances in which law enforcement officers arrested, detained, or even injured reporters at work covering protests in California. In response, state Senator Mike McGuire authored SB 98, which aims to codify journalists’ right to access demonstrations. As the proposal makes its way through the legislature, David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, discusses the context for the bill and some of the ways in which current protections for journalists fall short.
Members of San Francisco's Street Crisis Response Team show up to situations when someone is experiencing a mental health or substance-related crisis, as an alternative to police response, which can escalate such situations. Dr. Angelica Almeida with the Department of Public Health, Chief Simon Pang from the fire department, clinician Shari Lachin and peer counselor Miguel Levya talk about how the team engages with people in distress and why the work is so important to them even if there sometimes aren’t enough resources to meet the need.
With droughts expected to continue and worsen in coming years, water managers are exploring conservation approaches. Laura Feinstein, sustainability and resilience policy director at the urban think tank SPUR, explains the difficult choice between attempting to create separate drinking and nonpotable water systems, or developing robust wastewater recycling systems, and how more efficient water management has also led to improved energy efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
With vaccination rates on the rise and lockdown restrictions lifting, audiences are returning to indoor venues. For community cinemas like the Roxie Theater, reopening is emotional. The Roxie’s executive director Lex Sloan says limited seating for recent screenings sold out quickly, filling her with hope that cinephiles are eager to return in person. Sloan also reflects on the upcoming coming Frameline film festival and improvements being made to the theater.
Commuters are slowly returning to BART after ridership fell to around ten percent of pre-pandemic levels for several months. Now the transit agency is ratcheting up service, with plans to return to the pre-pandemic schedule by August 30th. We discover how the agency has survived the pandemic and what lies ahead with BART Media Relations Manager Jim Allison.
Demonstrators in Hong Kong have been demanding more democratic freedoms, as well as an inquiry into police use of force and the release of detained protestors. As millions have taken to the streets and participated in other actions, clashes between police and protestors have gotten violent. Here in the Bay Area, Hong Kongers have been paying close attention, organizing solidarity actions and strategizing about how to stay involved from afar. Ken and Claire from the Northern California Hong Kong Club share their experiences watching the protests unfold and organizing locally.
California is back in a drought, and in many parts of the state the drought is extreme. San Francisco’s residential water use is among the lowest among large cities in California, says Steven Ritchie, assistant general manager for water for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. He explains where the city gets its water from and how it's used, and why San Francisco is fighting state restrictions on the use of Tuolumne River water.
According to a ranking from the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, all San Francisco residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, but residents of neighborhoods where most people identify as people of color have access to 56% less park space per capita than residents in neighborhoods that are predominantly white. Alejandra Chiesa, Bay Area program director for the Trust for Public Land, and Maya Rodgers, senior project manager at the SF Parks Alliance, talk about the health benefits of parks and the significance of inequities in parks access.
While California is set to fully reopen on June 15, the unemployment rate appears to be holding steady. Businesses are opening positions, but residents are also dropping out of the workforce entirely. And the state’s Employment Development Department, which handles unemployment claims, is still working to resolve thousands of backlogged cases and battling fraud. Emily Hoeven, who writes the daily WhatMatters newsletter for the nonprofit newsroom CalMatters, returns with an update on what's happening at EDD.
Every city is special in some way to the people who call it home, but as author Gary Kamiya writes, San Francisco is a more potent touchstone than most thanks to the unique place it occupies in the American imagination. In the new anthology “The End of the Golden Gate,” writers including W. Kamau Bell, Margaret Cho and Michelle Tea reflect on a city in flux. Kamiya and writer and artist John Law talk about gentrification, rents and the message newcomers often hear that San Francisco peaked just before their arrival.
City College’s Board of Trustees recently voted on a plan to reduce teacher pay instead of laying teachers off, a plan that members of the teachers union had also voted on and approved. But this is only a short-term fix to one of the college’s financial problems. Alan Wong, a member of the Board of Trustees and a legislative aide to Supervisor Gordon Mar, shares his take on the bigger picture.
Aging is often obscured from movies, or portrayed in ways that perpetuate stereotypes about what aging is. The films at thetheLegacy Film Festival on Aging counter that by exploring more fully what it means to get older. The festival will showcase films about themes often associated with aging, like memory, disability and caring, but also includes stories about how people have shown and still show courage in the face of hate or how they have advanced civil rights. Arlene Reiff, film curator for the festival, talked with “Civic” about representation of seniors in cinema and how she helped select works to screen.
Janitors have been taking to the streets in San Francisco for weeks to advocate for better working conditions during the pandemic, even going on a three-day strike in mid-March. They’ve advocated for improvements like better ventilation in buildings, better protective gear for workers, health insurance coverage, and a wage increase. Juan Hernandez, a janitor with decades of experience who works at an office tower, gives a sense of the day-to-day reality of this work during the pandemic.
Before coronavirus cases were confirmed in San Francisco, paramedic Alfredo Banuelos and his colleagues were watching case numbers in other cities, still at a distance. Then he got his first patient. When the virus arrived in San Francisco and the city locked down and everything changed, procedures on the ambulance changed too. He reflects on how the pandemic unfolded for emergency medical responders.
San Francisco’s school district and board of education have been in the spotlight for a variety of controversies. Those include school reopening, a member of the board suing the district, an effort to recall some members, and an initiative to rename certain schools. Putting the controversies aside, two education reporters — Jill Tucker with the San Francisco Chronicle and Ida Mojadad with the San Francisco Examiner — give an overview of the responsibilities of the school board as a body and the process of electing its members.
Under a new health order, San Franciscans no longer need to wear a mask while doing outdoor activities like walking or biking when they’re alone or with members of their household. Unvaccinated people should wear a mask if social distancing can’t be maintained. Fully vaccinated people can almost entirely forgo masks outdoors, with some specific exceptions. Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco's health officer, explains the details of the new order and how these decisions are made.
Listen to more of our conversations about school reopening with students, parents, teachers and the school district here.
Some students in the San Francisco Unified School District are back in classrooms — as of April 26, more than 19,000 of them. But there are tens of thousands more students in the district. The school board has resolved to give all students the option to return to in-person instruction in the fall. Gentle Blythe, deputy superintendent of strategic partnerships and communications with the district, discusses the impacts of distance learning and next steps for reopening schools.
On February 1, after a democratic election, the Burmese military seized control of the government and declared a year-long state of emergency. Burmese people have been protesting that takeover, and the military has cracked down with deadly use of force, killing hundreds including children. Demonstrations in solidarity have also been held around the world, including in San Francisco. Ko Ko Lay, co-founder of Free Burma Action Committee, and Jane Pak, adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, both of whom are board members of Refugee and Immigrant Transitions, talk about how these events have affected people living in Burma and the Bay Area.
In 2009, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, later claiming he had meant to use his Taser and not his gun. In April 2021, Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter shot and killed Daunte Wright — and police say this, too, was due to getting the less-lethal weapon and the gun confused. To get a better sense of how much these two shootings blamed on Taser confusion more than a decade apart have in common, and how the trial of Derek Chauvin is changing the conversation about killings by law enforcement, we hear from journalist Demian Bulwa, now director of news at the San Francisco Chronicle, who covered Oscar Grant’s death and Johannes Mehserle’s trial extensively.
Many people are unsure how to respond when they find themselves observing a conflict, or when someone might be bothering, harassing or even about to attack another person. In response to a wave of violent attacks against Asian-Americans, two organizations have partnered to offer an adapted bystander intervention training, which has been in very high demand. Paul Ocampo, development director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Asian Law Caucus, and Dax Valdes, a senior trainer with Hollaback, share their experiences with and strategies for safely de-escalating tense situations.
Members of San Francisco's Homeless Outreach Team — also known as the “HOT team” — walk neighborhood beats to offer support, information, and referrals to services for people living on the streets. During the pandemic, the resources available, particularly shelters, changed significantly. Meanwhile, our collective understanding of what would work best to contain the spread was changing too. Mark Mazza, outreach manager for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, shares how those changes have affected members of this team.
A youth-led, youth-run initiative called San Francisco Communities who Help Advance the New Generation of Education — or SFCHANGE — is offering workshops to young people on topics that might not be taught in their classrooms otherwise, from organizing their finances to organizing around climate change. Adrianna Zhang, founder and executive director of operations for SFCHANGE, and Samantha Chu, an 8th grader who has attended one of the workshops, share their experiences.
Redistricting, the process by which electoral districts are drawn, will happen locally as well as at the state and federal levels. San Francisco will use Census data but also, crucially, resident input, to redraw its supervisorial districts. Alison Goh, president of the League of Women Voters of San Francisco, explains how the process will work and outlines the transparency and outreach the League wants to see from the city.
At the uprisings sparked by the killing of George Floyd last year, demonstrators all over the country were calling on their municipalities to “defund the police.” In Oakland, a Reimagining Public Safety Task Force in March approved a long list of recommendations, many of them made by the Anti Police Terror Project, an organization that has been calling for reducing police budgets in order to fund alternatives to law enforcement for years. As former police officer Derek Chauvin, accused of murdering Floyd, is tried, we hear from James Burch, policy director for the Anti Police-Terror Project and the Justice Teams Network and president of the National Lawyers Guild Bay Area.
Under California's Proposition 22, passed last year, companies whose apps dispatch gig workers aren’t considered those workers' employers, so they are exempt from providing benefits for them like unemployment protections, minimum wage, and sick leave. The proposition did provide for a minimum earnings guarantee and some health care benefits like stipends and insurance for on-the-job injuries. Still, drivers and labor organizers have said that they’re left choosing between paying the bills and managing their coronavirus exposure risk, because they lack full employee protections. Cherri Murphy, a lead organizer for Gig Workers Rising who has also worked as a Lyft driver, explains.
Violence against Asian-Americans has sparked discussions about the racist policies, animus and attacks that have been part of US history for a long time, from exclusionary and segregationist policies to harmful myths and stereotypes about Asian people. Author Jeff Chang has written extensively about this history, and politics and race in America, and unpacks the ways in which white supremacy influences narratives about recent anti-Asian violence.
Nearly 4,000 attacks on Asian-Americans — including verbal and physical assaults — were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a national tracking project launched by a coalition of activist groups last year, as of late February 2021. Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, one of the founding partners of Stop AAPI Hate, reflects on the increase and how this violence can be addressed.
San Francisco based community newspaper the "Bay Area Reporter" began publishing on April 1st, 1971 chronicling the earliest days of Queer activism. On this episode we speak with the publisher and news editor about the history covered in its pages and the challenges of running a commercial newspaper amid a pandemic in the digital age.
Pandemic or no, sanitation workers are still collecting the city's waste material. Civic hitches an early morning ride with Recology recycling driver Gareth Willey to get a sense for how the pandemic has changed his work. While the decreased traffic has made the streets a little less crowded, the bins he empties are now piled high with cardboard boxes from mail orders, which poses a challenge.
Volunteers are calling seniors to make sure they know how to get vaccine appointments if they want them. Former state Senate candidate and public bank advocate Jackie Fielder recently launched a political action committee, Daybreak PAC, and has shifted some campaign organizing infrastructure toward a vaccine access effort. Phone bank volunteers now reach out to seniors living in neighborhoods like the Bayview, to ask if they would like to get vaccinated but face any barriers to doing so. Fielder and a phone banker, Sayuri Falconer, talk about the initiative.
Former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial in Minneapolis, charged with the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, when Chauvin was an officer. Charging decisions are made by district attorneys, and San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin says if the Minneapolis incident had occurred locally, he would have brought criminal charges against Chauvin. He also discusses recent cases in which local law enforcement officers have killed or seriously injured people and why he did or did not bring criminal charges against those officers.
Roger Marenco, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 250 A, says hundreds of Muni workers have been infected with the coronavirus and two have died from complications of COVID-19. For others, he said, the pressures of the job coupled with the additional dangers posed by a global pandemic have taken a psychological toll. We talked about how operators are handling this and what changes he would like to see, including actions passengers could take.
Editor's note: This podcast was updated on 3/30/21 to remove an outdated reference to a commercial eviction moratorium.
The continued rise in violence against Asian-Americans, in particular against elders, has spurred communities into action. In Chinatown, a few different groups of volunteers can regularly be seen patrolling the street, keeping an eye out for potential problems. This week, Civic walked along with the Chinatown Safety Patrol.
Do you have a perspective to add to the conversation about schools reopening? Leave us a message via SpeakPipe.
In late February, the City College Board of Trustees voted to approve sending notices of potential layoffs that, if implemented, would be a 30% cut to salaried expenditures. CCSF says the existence of the college is at stake, and it’s facing a projected budget shortfall of $33 million. Eira Kien, a student, Vick Van Chung, the student trustee, and Mary Bravewoman, a faculty member, have been trying to prevent these cuts and talk about the impact they expect they would have on students and the broader community.
Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced after the prime minister of Ethiopia launched a military offensive in Ethiopia's Tigray region last November. Mellay Menelik, a San Franciscan who was in Tigray when fighting began, and Henock Woldu, who has been organizing with the Bay Area Tigrayan community to call for action to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis, share their experiences.
From early on, the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare stark health inequities through infection and death rates. Testing access quickly became a concern, and now, so has vaccine access — state health department data indicate that Black and Latino Californians are under-represented among people getting vaccinated. Dr. Kim Rhoads and Dr. Carina Marquez, who have been working on community-driven initiatives to address those inequities, talk about the importance of prevention and community engagement to public health.
Have something to add to the conversation about schools reopening? Leave us a message via SpeakPipe.
At the beginning of the year, a tenant attorney predicted an “avalanche” of evictions unless California legislators reached a deal to extend tenant protections. They did, and applications recently opened for a support program designed to help both low-income tenants and their landlords with growing rent debt. Shanti Singh, legislative and communications director for Tenants Together, a coalition of 50 renters rights organizations in California, gives an overview of the protections and what tenants and landlords must do to access support funds.
Reporters Nuala Bishari and Brian Howey reflect on covering homelessness policy in San Francisco over a year of pandemic health measures. They have broken stories on hygiene stations, testing, unused RVs, encampment 'sweeps,' shelter-in-place hotels and vacancies in supportive housing.
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic we speak with a therapist about the challenges his clients have faced dealing with the stress and trauma of one of the most turbulent times in American history.
Advocates for residents of long term care facilities like nursing homes have been pushing for San Francisco to ease pandemic-related restrictions on people visiting their loved ones for weeks. Just a day before, the city health department had issued an order expanding visitation by removing strict local guidelines and aligning with state policy that allows for indoor, in-person visits when they can be done safely. Two advocates with the San Francisco Long Term Care Ombudsman program explain why visitation is so important to facility residents.
Limiting social interaction to be almost entirely online has had serious mental health consequences, particularly for young people who would otherwise be in school. But the pandemic means that help in any form, from new friendships to sessions with a professional therapist, must also take place primarily online. High school sophomore Sadie Crawford and Dr. Martha Merchant, a clinical psychologist, share how they are building those highly personal connections virtually.
Youth mental health was a growing concern even before the pandemic, but the isolation of sheltering in place has come with an increase in depression and unhappiness among young people. San Francisco high school students have been reaching out to one another despite schools being closed to offer some support. Alan Wang, Joyce Truong and Abigail Ault, who have been active in peer wellness programs, share their perspectives.
If you are affected by the decisions about school reopening, we want to hear from you. Leave us a message via SpeakPipe or at (415) 495-7377, and we may air it on a future show.
Language barriers and a largely online scheduling system make it difficult for monolingual non-English speakers and people who aren’t digital natives, often seniors, to access the vaccines that they’re eligible for. So a local organization serving primarily Asian American seniors is advocating for improved access to vaccines, and bringing doctors who can administer vaccines to the seniors who need them. Anni Chung, CEO and president of Self-Help for the Elderly, explains how they're getting seniors vaccinated.
While attention has shifted to mass vaccinations, the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco remain focused on finding therapies to treat COVID-19 and defeat future Coronaviruses.
If you are affected by the decisions about school reopening, we want to hear from you. Leave us a message via SpeakPipe or at (415) 495-7377, and we may air it on a future show.
Grocery store workers are the latest to be eligible for vaccination. As part of our “Essential Worker” series we spoke with Jim Araby, director of strategic campaigns for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 about how they are trying to get their 28,000 members vaccinated and why they are fighting for hazard pay during the remaining days of the pandemic.
In addition to mass vaccination sites and pharmacy megachains, coronavirus vaccine is being distributed by community clinics that serve populations where they’ve built strong connections and trust — through language and cultural competency or by serving low-income families. North East Medical Services has multiple clinics in San Francisco and around the Bay Area, serving some 70,000 patients, many of whom are low-income Chinese speakers. Dr. Kenneth Tai, chief health officer, and Jessica Ho, government affairs and community liaison, talk about NEMS' vaccine distribution strategy.
Even for those eligible, it has been difficult to navigate the various coronavirus vaccine sign-up, notification, and appointment systems. In response to the disjointed publication of information from various clinics, providers, and governments, a group of volunteers with some technical know-how got together to build a statewide resource for finding vaccine appointments. What began as a spreadsheet is now a website, VaccinateCA. Zoelle Egner, one of the co-organizers of VaccinateCA, and Carroll Lachnit, a phone banker for the project, talk about how it works and how it's unfolded.
People who provide services to homeless individuals and families have become essential workers during the pandemic, often doing their jobs in person rather than from home. While they have been considered health workers and thus eligible for a vaccine, some have struggled to get them, even being turned away from the city’s vaccination site at Moscone Center. Mary Kate Bacalao, director of external affairs and policy at Compass Family Services and co-chair of the Homeless Emergency Service Providers Association, talks about how workers in the sector have experienced the process of figuring out their eligibility for a vaccine and receiving one.
The vast majority of staff and residents at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living, one of the largest nursing homes in the region, have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. 94% of staff and 97% of residents have received the vaccine. The facility’s director of nursing and clinical operations, Peggy Cmiel, explains how this was done.
A series of violent crimes against Asian seniors in the Bay Area have sparked concern and calls to action, and a coalition of community groups organized public gatherings in San Francisco and Oakland this weekend to emphasize the need for additional resources and services to advance public safety. Lai Wa Wu, policy and alliance director at the Chinese Progressive Association, and Sara Wan, executive director of Community Youth Center, explain how community based groups have been responding to violence.
Carmen Chu is San Francisco’s new City Administrator, which means she is stepping in to a position with wide-ranging and extensive responsibilities — her office comprises more than 25 departments and programs — at a time when the city is under pressure to address the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, get residents and workers vaccinated, balance the budget and to address a corruption scandal. Mayor London Breed appointed Chu to the post after her predecessor Naomi Kelly resigned following corruption charges against Kelly’s husband, another city department head. Chu, who had been the city’s Assessor-Recorder since 2013, discusses her plans for charting a path forward in difficult times.
George Koster, host of the podcast and radio show “Voices of the Community,” returns to Civic to talk about new research on how the nonprofit sector is faring during the pandemic and share stories from nonprofits leaders he has interviewed about how they’re handling current economic challenges.
State legislation paved the way for public banks in 2019, and now, a local supervisor has authored city legislation that would create a working group to figure out how to create one in San Francisco. Jackie Fielder, co-founder of the SF Public Bank Coalition, has been advancing this model for years and outlines what this local legislation proposes.
Nine California legislators have proposed a slate of reform bills that would try to address some of the biggest obstacles to getting unemployment benefits to those who are eligible for them. Among them is state Assemblyman David Chiu, who says his office has been flooded with calls from desperate unemployed constituents.
At this year’s SF Urban Film Fest, several programs examining homelessness include activities in which participants will be asked to connect with one another. One of the films around which the events are arranged, “Quarantine Diary,” is a self-documentary about life in an RV produced by multimedia journalist Yesica Prado. She and Fay Darmawi, the film festival’s founder and executive director, discuss the events and how participants might gain new perspectives on homelessness.
Last year’s Proposition 22 allowed companies that dispatch app-based workers to continue considering them independent contractors, while adding some limited worker benefits. Veena Dubal, a professor of law at UC Hastings who conducts ethnographic and legal research on the gig economy, relays workers’ experiences and examines how the measure might be laying the groundwork for other industries to shift toward gig work.
Undocumented workers have suffered severe income losses and are shut out of many types of government support. A mutual aid effort called Undocufund has raised and distributed more than $3 million. But thousands of applicants are still on a waitlist. Alejo, a co-director with Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, one of the organizations that run Undocufund, recounts the story of how the collaboration began and what impact the grants can have.
The Mission District, and the city’s Latino population, have been among those hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, so the Latino Task Force has been working to help bring testing and the vaccine to where those most affected live and work. On Monday afternoon, after a new Mission vaccination center opened, Latino Task Force Health Committee Chair Jon Jacobo reflected on the effort.
This episode was updated at 8:15 p.m. on 2/3 to an extended version with the full statement from San Francisco's Covid Command Center.
San Francisco has a new poet laureate, city native and child of local organizers Tongo Eisen-Martin. He reflects on national politics in the wake of the summer uprisings against police brutality and racism, the Jan. 6 capitol riot, and the presidential inauguration and talks about the role of poetry in political organizing.
Millions of Californians have gotten a push notification on their phones asking them to opt in to get warnings from their phones if they have been in close proximity to someone who later tests positive for the coronavirus, all while keeping everyone involved anonymous. We wanted to know more about how exposure notifications work and exactly how well privacy is protected. Gennie Gebhart with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties nonprofit, explains how the system works and what information is exchanged.
Playing for Keeps will screen virtually Feb. 4-21 at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival.
San Francisco health officials have set an ambitious goal of vaccinating all 900,000 people who live and work in the city by the end of June, and took a step toward that goal Friday by opening a mass vaccination center at City College of San Francisco. The opening followed a hearing called by Supervisor Matt Haney earlier this week to answer outstanding questions about the city’s vaccination plan, where health officials and several representatives of private health care providers presented their plans to the supervisors. The main problem, they said, was not having access to enough supply of the vaccines.
As local mainstays — cafes, bars and restaurants — launch fundraisers to ask neighbors to help them survive indefinitely extended shelter-in-place orders, governments at all levels are offering up various forms of aid. In San Francisco, many of those supportive programs for businesses and workers come through the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Director Joaquín Torres returns to Civic to talk about how the city is trying to help.
If a police officer was found to have used deadly force or inflicted serious injuries on the job, until 2019, disciplinary records about that incident had been kept secret. That changed when SB 1421, authored by state Senator Nancy Skinner, went into effect. In 2020, she moved to expand the legislation to also grant access to records about officers who engaged in biased or discriminatory behavior or used excessive or unreasonable force. Skinner talks about the impacts of the original transparency law and how she intends to improve it.
San Francisco has a vastly different attitude toward Cannabis than it did as recently as the 1990s. That's when Dennis Peron was fighting to get marijuana to HIV and cancer patients. Despite being repeatedly arrested, he helped lead the effort to legalize medical marijuana. A new documentary screening at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival from February 4 to February 21 tells his story.
Every year, organizers with the Anti Police Terror Project mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day with public actions meant to reclaim King’s radical legacy. This year they have adapted those actions to the pandemic and are working in the context of the recent riot at the US capitol. On the morning of Friday, January 15th, activists announced their plans and cited some of King’s stances and ideas that have been erased from common narratives about his work.
In these highlights from a recent reporter roundtable discussion, journalists share their experiences with local government agencies reducing access to records, data and interviews during emergency health orders. Hear from Lydia Chávez, executive editor at Mission Local, Trisha Thadani, a city hall reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, Scott Morris, an investigative reporter, and independent journalist Nuala Bishari.
After a mob of pro-Trump agitators stormed the Capitol last week, forcing a delay in the certification of the electoral vote for president, Twitter was the first social media platform to block Donald Trump from posting, with others soon following suit. Ali Alkhatib, a research fellow at the University of San Francisco’s Center for Applied Data Ethics, examines how platforms moderate content and enforce rules with an eye on the social impacts of those choices.
As of December, when the school district and teachers unions couldn’t come to an agreement about safety measures for reopening, there is no set date for when schools will resume in person in San Francisco. Hayin Kimner, interim director of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco, a parent advocacy group, shares how families are coping with distance learning and what their most urgent questions are in this time of uncertainty.
UPDATE: After this interview was recorded, 48Hills reported that several residents and staff members of the facility where Malik Washington lives in the Tenderloin, which is operated by a for-profit prison contractor, have tested positive for coronavirus. Washington told 48Hills he has been reprimanded and his phone has been confiscated for communicating with a reporter about the outbreak.
Months ago, legislators approved several layers of protections to keep renters from being kicked out and potentially made homeless during a pandemic. Now several of these protections are expiring, though there are efforts underway to extend them. Scott Weaver, supervising attorney at the Eviction Defense Collaborative and a volunteer with the San Francisco Tenants Union, lays out which protections are still in place and which are going away — and offers some guidance about how tenants and landlords should handle the impacts of the pandemic on tenants' ability to pay rent.
If you have been in close contact with someone who is diagnosed with COVID-19, you may get a call from a contact tracer, who will want to offer you some guidance about quarantining — including, potentially, connecting you to food or cleaning supply delivery. Paula Heaney, a San Francisco librarian who along with other city employees transitioned to working as a contact tracer, offers a glimpse into how the program works.
Read Scott Morris' story, "She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired" at ProPublica.org
Newsrooms across the country have been in overdrive most of this year, covering a global pandemic, a primary and a presidential election, and protests against systemic racism and police brutality. Contributors with YR Media, a national network of young journalists and artists, have been covering it all with reporting and perspectives that don’t usually get the same space and attention in national or corporate outlets. CEO Kyra Kyles and contributing writer Erianna Jiles, a creative writing student at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota, look back on 2020, what’s happened, and what still needs to happen.
In the Bay Area, hospitals still have some ICU capacity left, but health care practitioners are working hard to care for the influx of COVID-19 patients. The surge is leaving workers stretched thin and patients isolated. At the same time, coronavirus vaccines are being distributed to frontline health workers. Dr. Monica Bhargava, a pulmonary critical care physician working at a county hospital in Oakland, offers a glimpse at a day inside the ICU and what her experience with the vaccine has been like so far.
The FBI arrest of former San Francisco Department of Public Works head Mohammed Nuru on fraud charges in January kicked off a cascade of raids, charges and investigations that have spurred the departure of several other city department heads. We spoke with Retired FBI agent James Wedick, who spent years investigating corruption, explains how the FBI gets involved and how these investigations work.
The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the presidency and vice-presidency left several roles for Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill, and politicians from around the state, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, have weighed in on Newsom’s choice of Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill Harris’ seat in the U.S. Senate. San Francisco State University politics professor Jason McDaniel joins us to analyze Newsom’s choice and reflect on the year in local politics. Newly elected supervisors will join the city’s main legislative body and a corruption probe that has already resulted in the exit of three city department heads continues to unfold while a budget crisis looms.
Vaccines are arriving in California and doses will be administered at nursing homes soon through a government partnership with pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens, whose staffs will deliver vaccines to long term care facilities. Eric Dowdy, chief government affairs officer at Leading Age California, an organization representing mostly nonprofit senior care facilities, said the top priority for those planning the vaccine rollout is combating misinformation that fuels mistrust in the vaccine.
The soon-to-be new owner of the San Francisco Examiner intends to grow the publication’s newsroom and expand its coverage, diversifying the perspectives in San Francisco’s news ecosystem. Clint Reilly, a retired political consultant with a real estate and hospitality business who also owns two local magazines, is purchasing the Examiner and SF Weekly after the two papers were under absentee ownership for years. The company he owns along with his wife Janet, Clint Reilly Communications, will take over in January. Reilly said he intends to hire more reporters and expand the Examiner.
While COVID-19 deaths have the potential for exponential growth due to the nature of a viral pandemic, they are dwarfed by the number of people who have died from drug overdoses in the city this year.
The latest pandemic order shutting down outdoor dining struck a devastating blow to restaurant owners and workers who have tried to adapt.
Read Nuala Bishari's story here.
Listen to our episode about surveillance here.
Find the conversation with Lauren Smiley about surveillance, package theft, and the new neighborhood watch here.
While the pandemic is changing the way people work and socialize and has resulted in economic downturn, acquiring land and building remain expensive, and the Bay Area has long fallen short of its housing goals. Sarah Karlinsky, senior adviser at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a public policy think tank better known as SPUR, has published reports indicating that Bay Area municipalities should be constructing 45,000 units of housing per year. A paradigm shift to considering housing a human right and treating it like infrastructure would help achieve that goal, she said.
Jamille Cabacungan, a nurse who works in an acute care unit at UCSF Medical Center that cares for COVID-19 patients, says while the availability of personal protective equipment like N-95 masks has improved, nurses are feeling overwhelmed and would be better able to provide care with a bigger staff. For patients, she says, the experience of being hospitalized with COVID-19 is one of isolation. Even nurses limit their interactions with these patients to prevent getting infected, performing their tasks quickly.
The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank has roughly doubled the number of people it serves since before the pandemic. For many, says Tina Gonzalez, director of community partnerships for the food bank, what they receive isn’t just supplemental to what they can afford on their own — they depend on it. The high need is likely to persist into the new year, and Gonzalez says the food bank will likely remain in high gear even after case rates have lowered and lockdown restrictions lifted.
In 2005, a group of advocacy groups working on homelessness formed a coalition to collaborate across cities and states and advance national policy. They called it WRAP, the Western Regional Advocacy Project. Its director, Paul Boden, joined “Civic” to look back on 15 years of organizing and ensuring that people experiencing homelessness themselves inform research and policy.
In November, voters in Oakland approved Measure QQ, which gives 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in school board elections. Meanwhile, voters in San Francisco rejected Proposition G, which would have lowered the voting age for municipal elections to 16. Statewide, a measure to allow residents as young as 16 to vote in primaries also failed. Ixchel Arista, a 15-year-old organizer with Oakland Kids First, and Sarah Cheung, a 17-year-old San Francisco Youth Commissioner, said they encountered voters in their phone banking campaigns who doubted young peoples’ ability to make sound decisions — an attitude they described as “adultist.”
Public transportation has been transformed by the coronavirus pandemic. Light rail is shut down, and bus service is concentrated on core lines. While the indefinitely extended shelter-in-place order and restrictions that fluctuate with case rates have resulted in service changes, work on major improvement projects is ongoing. For the system as a whole, low ridership means low fare revenues and serious budget considerations — which could mean layoffs. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Director Jeffrey Tumlin and Julie Kirschbaum, the agency’s Director of Transit, explain how Muni has adapted to the pandemic and some of the changes ahead.
San Francisco’s office of the public defender has a unit dedicated to defending immigrants in court. In most states, they often have no representation because there is no right to counsel in immigration cases. Francisco Ugarte, managing attorney of this unit, talked with “Civic” about how handoffs between agencies work and what happens to someone who is arrested by immigration enforcement in San Francisco, as well as a class action suit the unit helped litigate over COVID-19 outbreaks in detention facilities.
Every odd-numbered San Francisco supervisorial district had an election in November. One race was extremely close and several were targeted by big independent expenditure money. But Joe Eskenazi, managing editor at Mission Local, reports that money was apparently ineffective, failing to propel candidates to victory and failing to dissuade voters from passing new tax measures.
Postal workers nationwide rallied on Tuesday to demand Congress approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service to ensure its continued operation, and reverse workflow changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. In San Francisco, members of the American Postal Workers Union San Francisco Local #2 gathered in the rain in front of the Fox Plaza post office to distribute leaflets, saying the service was still in dire need of congressional aid and could shut down next year without it.
BART ridership was about 13% of pre-pandemic levels in October, which meant a drop in revenue for the system. Despite taking a financial hit, BART immediately responded to the pandemic with new protocols. The system now boasts a filtration system that replaces the air in each car every 70 seconds. Workers are also making infrastructure improvements while ridership is down. Janice Li, who represents BART District 8 on its board of directors, joins "Civic" to discuss what's changed and what the future might look like for BART.
More than 61 percent of San Francisco voters approved Proposition B, a charter amendment to split the Department of Public Works in two and add oversight commissions to both departments as part of an effort to address city corruption and get cleaner streets. Matt Haney, District 6 supervisor and author of the measure, said the new department doesn’t need to be created until 2022, but city legislators can get to work now on building the oversight commission for the existing Department of Public Works.
Despite the pandemic shutting down most in-person gatherings and services, staff and volunteers with the veterans services group Swords to Plowshares are still on the ground. In the streets and in drop-in centers, they’ve continued to offer support with housing, employment, mental health and food for local vets. In addition to some 400 veterans it had already housed permanently, the organization has been able to secure temporary stays in hotel rooms for about 200 people during the pandemic, says executive director Michael Blecker.
Researchers at the Urban Institute have been looking into how effective various responses to homelessness are. In a series of blog posts, they issue a warning against a punitive response to homelessness and recommend other ways to respond to homelessness, especially in the context of the coronavirus pandemic that threatens millions of people’s livelihoods and housing stability. Samantha Batko, a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, said a “housing-first” approach, which prioritizes giving homeless people stable housing before other interventions, is the most effective.
In October, the US government began implementing an expansion of rapid deportations, in which undocumented immigrants may be removed from the country without a hearing before an immigration judge. While such deportations have been conducted for decades, the new policy expands who might be affected, including undocumented immigrants anywhere in the U.S. who cannot prove they have been in the country for two years or more. Priya Patel, an immigration attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza, said that while she has not seen Bay Area residents affected by the policy, its implementation only serves to exacerbate existing fears of crackdowns among immigrants.
San Francisco voters have approved a crucial bond measure and several tax measures by wide margins and voted in favor of propositions removing a mandatory minimum staffing level for the police department and adding oversight for the sheriff’s department. Votes remain to be tallied, however, and some contests are close, including a measure that would give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in municipal elections. Lila LaHood, publisher of the San Francisco Public Press, and Laura Wenus, host of the radio show and podcast “Civic,” discuss the results and what they mean for the city.
Activist groups have been hosting trainings and developing plans to mobilize residents, elected leaders and businesses to demand the results of the November 3 presidential election be recognized. Demonstrations calling for every vote nationwide to be counted are already planned for Nov. 4 in cities around the Bay Area, including San Francisco and Oakland. The activist network Bay Resistance has been calling on residents to get ready to defend democracy. We talk with Zachary Norris, director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, about what exactly that means and how people can hold government officials to account.
San Francisco has faced many scandals in which public officials abused their power for personal, political or organizational gain. On the November, 2020 ballot, Proposition B has been proposed as a way to limit the scope of alleged corruption in the sprawling Department of Public Works, but what other measures could voters use in the future to keep elected and appointed officials accountable in San Francisco?
The San Francisco Mime Troupe has been performing socially conscious and often very funny productions in Bay Area parks since 1959 but the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to take their plays to the air with a series of ten radio plays. Now that the last episode of the season has aired we wanted to find out how the experiment in going from live to virtual has worked.
During the pandemic, nurses have been given a lot of praise for the vital, frontline work they do, but some nurses working for San Francisco’s Department of Public Health would like to be paid the overtime they have put in.
Proposition 14 asks California voters to approve a $5.5 billion bond to allow the institute to continue to provide grants for stem cell research. Jeff Sheehy has been the lonely voice on the board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where he stands in opposition to the state ballot measure that would fund the organization for years to come.
More information about ensuring voters in care facilities are able to participate in the election are available from Senior and Disability Action.
In September, President Trump issued an executive order characterizing trainings about racism, sexism and white privilege as anti-American propaganda. Federal employees and contractors are now prohibited from engaging in that kind of training. Lauren Aguilar, president and founder of the inclusion and diversity practice at the consulting group Forshay, described the language in the executive order as Orwellian and said the ban ignores evidence that everyone has biases which influence decisions about workplace diversity and inclusion. We talked about what is lost when these trainings are eliminated.
To read and hear more about the measures and candidates on this November's ballot, find our voter guide here.
As dozens of candidates are running for seats on several local boards, we've reached out to them with a question and asked for 90-second audio responses. Hear statements from candidates for the Board of Education, City College Board of Trustees, BART Board, and Board of Supervisors.
Among more than a dozen measures that voters are deciding on this November, several are taxes, including business taxes, a parcel tax, and a sales tax. Many have components meant to reduce inequality or fund much-needed services. We talked with Donnie Charleston, director of public policy and advocacy for E Pluribus Unum, a nonprofit whose mission is to build a more just, equitable, and inclusive South, to get some perspective on the tools local governments have to address income and racial inequities, and some of the tax measures up for voter approval.
Amanda Fried, who directs policy and communications at the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector, explains how Proposition F, the business tax overhaul on the November ballot in San Francisco, would work.
Donohue will be discussing “She Represents” at Litquake on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at 3:30 p.m.
This episode's audio has been updated after an earlier mixup. Sorry about that! - Laura
"The Boys Who Said NO!" will be screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where it will be available online for a nationwide audience Oct. 8–14. It will also be screened at the United Nations Association film festival at 6 p.m. on Oct. 25 for a California audience only.
Proposition I on this november’s ballot would double the transfer tax levied on properties worth $10 million or more. Transfer taxes are charged by the city when a property is sold and are usually paid by the seller. Right now, a 2.75% tax is levied on buildings worth $10 million to $25 million, and a 3% tax is levied on buildings worth more than $25 million. If voters were to approve this proposition, both of these taxes would double. Opponents argue that the tax would be bad for the city’s economy, hurt businesses, and cost construction jobs. Proponents say the tax will affect those who can afford it, and will raise money for important initiatives like partly paying landlords for rents their tenants can’t pay because of the coronavirus pandemic, and funding a social housing pilot program. "Civic" talked with measure’s author, Supervisor Dean Preston, and an opponent, Jay Cheng with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
Proposition L, a tax measure on the November ballot, is intended to give businesses incentive to change their pay structure to bring executive compensation more in line with workers’. Revenue from the measure, if passed, is expected to range from $60 million to $140 million a year. Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and researches Wall Street reform, CEO pay, taxes, labor and international trade and investment, said the proposal would set an example and would target a business practice that contributes to inequality.
In this conversation about the regional sales tax to fund Caltrain, Measure RR, Adina Levin, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Caltrain and co-founder and advocacy director of the nonprofit Seamless Bay Area, explains how Measure RR got on the ballot and what it would enable Caltrain to do.
In this discussion about the regional tax proposal to fund Caltrain, Measure RR, Eric Garris, a San Francisco resident who submitted the official opposition to the measure, lays out his argument against it.
The documentary “The First Angry Man” turns its lens back on the moment when Proposition 13, which dramatically restricted property taxes, was passed and examines the social and political context of the time. The filmmakers, Camille Servan-Schreiber and Jason Andrew Cohn, make the case that Howard Jarvis, the public face of Proposition 13, helped usher in an era of nationwide tax revolt and distrust in government that persists more than 40 years later. The documentary comes ahead of an election in which California voters will consider a ballot measure that would amend Proposition 13 to raise property taxes for some businesses.
Barbara Hale, assistant manager for power with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, responds to some of these concerns raised by Treasure Island resident Barklee Sanders about disruptive power outages, and outlines the various responsibilities for the island's power supply and how those were assigned. Check out our podcast feed for an interview with Barklee Sanders illustrating the impact of the outages on residents and businesses.
Residents on Treasure Island live with frequent and recurring power outages, in part because the infrastructure is quite old. Barklee Sanders, an island resident who has been researching and advocating for improvements to the grid, illustrates the scope of the problem and just how disruptive the outages are to residents. Check our podcast feed for another interview on this topic in which the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission responds to some of these concerns and outlines the various responsibilities for the island's power supply.
At the top of the list of local ballot measures going before voters in November is Proposition A, billed as the “Health and Recovery Bond.” Several initiatives would be funded by this $487.5 million bond, including the development of behavioral health and substance abuse services, expansion of shelters and temporary housing, renovating or developing parks and repairs to infrastructure like roads. Reporter Kristi Coale helps unpack what's in the measure and takes a closer look at one of the projects that could get funding from it.
Proposition K on the November ballot represents an attempt to allow the city to create new low-rent housing units, like public housing but at the municipal level. Unlike other affordable housing being built in the city, these units would be created by the local government, not nonprofits or private developers. The city must obtain voter approval to build such housing because of an article in the California constitution. Laksh Bhasin, co-author of Proposition K, explains the details of the proposal, its scope and how it would be funded.
Tens of thousands of people are facing evacuation orders and threats to their safety as fires continue to blaze across the Western United States. These disastrous fires are one of the effects of climate change that scientists predicted, says climate activist Laura Neish, executive director of 350 Bay Area and 350 Bay Area Action. We discuss how to talk about climate change amid these disasters, and what can be done.
CalMatters reporter Ben Christopher explains what it means for California to have an "almost" all vote-by-mail election and what to expect from ballots, polling places, and vote tallying this November.
With an infusion of $25 billion to help the postal service weather the coronavirus pandemic still in limbo awaiting consideration by the Senate, local mail workers continue to work extended hours under difficult conditions to beat back delays in mail delivery. APWU Local 2 President Cindy Datangel says postal workers are also grappling with absences as coronavirus spreads to and among staff.
Corrections: An earlier version of this podcast misstated the status of Jacob Blake, whom Kenosha, Wis. police officers shot and gravely injured. The podcast was further updated to clarify a reference to police use-of-force data.
Nonprofits in the Bay Area are facing the challenge of carrying out their missions during a pandemic and maintaining their funding so they can continue to serve once the crisis has passed. Reporter George Koster has been chronicling those changes on this new show "Voices of the Community" which premiers on our station KSFP.
When you tune your radio to 102.5 on the FM dial, you might get public radio-style talk programming, or you might hear music from local artists. That's because there are two radio stations on this frequency, KSFP — Civic's radio home — and KXSF, a project of San Francisco Community Radio. San Francisco Public Press Publisher Lila LaHood talked with two KXSF DJs about the station partnership and keeping live community radio going strong during a pandemic.
In response to the disproportionate law enforcement violence against people with mental illness and amid ongoing calls to defund or reform police, activists with the Anti Police-Terror Project on Friday night will launch an initiative in Oakland designed to offer an alternative to calling the police in mental health crises. The initiative, called M.H. First Oakland, will begin operations as a hotline with the number (510) 999-9MH1.
San Francisco Press Conference. Beginning on Sept. 1, many gyms, hair salons and barber shops in San Francisco will be allowed to serve customers if they can find a way to do so outdoors.
Performances as part of ACT’s InterACT at Home initiative will be livestreamed Sept. 4-12 and will be available on demand Sept. 18-25. Details at ACT-sf.org
Uber and Lyft are battling in the California courts and on the November ballot to avoid having their drivers classified as full employees, The companies have threatened to shut down operations in California if they lose. We speak with the Taxi Workers Alliance about how the companies have changed the ride-hailing industry, what happens if Uber and Lyft leave California and the gig work economy.
Treasure Island resident and organizer Hope Williams has worked for years to get resources for the island. When the pandemic hit, she kicked her efforts into even higher gear. Hear why she’s still working to get residents heard:
Californians were hit with power shut-offs last weekend and were told to conserve energy by minimizing use as power needs could exceed availability. But some energy experts, including former CPUC president Loretta Lynch, are doubtful that unusually high demand led to the shutdowns, alleging mismanagement on the part of the state’s energy grid operator. A spokesperson for the Independent System Operator wrote in a statement that the operator sought every available megawatt of energy to cover demand and reserves.
Uber and Lyft were expected to shut down service at 11:59 p.m. tonight as a court ruling forcing them to reclassify drivers as employees was set to go into effect. With just hours to spare, an appeals court judge granted the companies a reprieve. We talked with two rideshare drivers who have been organizing for employee status.
It's our birthday! On this day last year, Civic aired its first episode. San Francisco Public Press publisher Lila LaHood talks with producer Mel Baker and host Laura Wenus about major changes in the first year, what we've learned, and what we're hoping to focus on next.
In this press conference, city officials advise residents to stay indoors with windows closed as much as possible to avoid unhealthy smoke. If air quality deteriorates to very unhealthy levels, they said, the city will open respite centers with healthier air.
The 2020 census is well under way, but a timetable muddled by the coronavirus pandemic coupled with attempts by President Trump to make disruptive changes have set the stage for the spread of misinformation that threatens a complete count. Local community organizations have been working to get correct and timely information to people often labeled “hard to count” to avoid that outcome.
This year the census, a constitutionally mandated count of every person in the country every 10 years, is being conducted primarily online for the first time. While the shift offered convenience to the digitally connected, many communities already considered “hard to count” include people with limited digital tools or literacy that put the digital questionnaire out of reach. With the coronavirus pandemic and confusing federal directives, the in-person enumeration most likely to document them has been delayed and cut short.
The decennial census is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives. And according to the Project on Government Oversight, California can also expect to receive more than $170 billion in census-guided federal funding over the next ten years. In a July memo, the President sought to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count used to apportion representatives. In this first episode in a series on the 2020 Census, we hear from advocates about why past encounters with well-meaning government agents have already made some homeless, poor, undocumented and otherwise marginalized people skeptical that being counted will actually benefit them.
In this press conference, Mayor London Breed announced that hundreds of millions of dollars have been set aside in San Francisco’s budget for COVID-19 prevention, testing and treatment. Over the next year, the Mayor’s Office has allocated $185 million for health care operations, $183 million for housing and shelter, $62 million for food distribution and $16 million for communications. Hear full audio from the announcement here.
A recording of a Public Press Live event featuring a panel discussion on law enforcement agencies’ use of surveillance technology and the San Francisco police department’s access to live feeds of private camera networks in Union Square. Hear from Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher at Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Shelby Perkins and Craig Nelson, graduate students at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute researching local law enforcement agencies' surveillance capabilities.
Nearly 2,500 cases of verbal and physical attacks against Asian Americans were reported between March 19 and July 22 to a tracking project called Stop AAPI Hate. In San Francisco, an Asian American bus driver was assaulted by passengers after an argument over proper mask wearing. A woman reported getting verbally assaulted and a drink thrown at her by a passenger who told her and her brother to "go back to their country." Another man reported being shoved on the stairs, trampled and kicked in the head. Dr. Russell Jeung, chair and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, is calling on local, state and federal governments to address these racist attacks.
Local governments around the nation are grappling with police reform. One proposal that's been floated is to change the role and thereby the approach of law enforcement officers by giving them responsibilities beyond policing. Sunnyvale’s Department of Public Safety includes fire, medical and police services and all first responders are trained across all three disciplines. Department Chief Phan Ngo said the different roles mean officers see themselves as caretakers, building their reputation as public servants with residents.
In contact tracing, health workers identify and reach out to people who have an infectious disease, then try to determine with whom they have been in close contact and to whom they may have transmitted the disease. Then they try to reach those potentially exposed people to try to halt further infections. Dr. Darpun Sachdev, the contact tracing program lead in San Francisco, and Luis Hernandez, a local case investigator, talk about how contact tracing works, who is doing the job and what the latest contact tracing data reflect.
San Francisco’s coronavirus infection rate falls slightly but remains in the red zone, with the city expected to reach 7,000 cases overall in days. Also: SF extends the Great Plates program until September, funding restaurant-prepared delivery meals for some seniors sheltering in place.
When the fallout of the pandemic started to hit Richmond, the affordable housing organization Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services jumped into action, setting up a rapid response fund for families and making its money management and housing education courses virtual. Nikki Beasley, the organization’s executive director, talks about inequities in housing and wealth in the Bay Area, how to think about financial and housing stability in a time of uncertainty and how crucial homeownership can be to that stability across generations.
In the reporting series “Driving Home: Surviving the Housing Crisis,” photojournalist Yesica Prado documents life on four wheels in Berkeley and San Francisco. The project, in partnership with CatchLight Local, offers an intimate look at what it really means for home to be a vehicle in the Bay Area, whether it’s an RV with lots of space and utilities or a sedan with neither. Prado, who was and is part of one of the vehicle dweller communities she documented, says vehicle living comes with the daily task of avoiding parking or law enforcement and securing access to basic needs like hygiene, food and water.
For some of the Bay Area’s Central American residents, there are parallels between the deployment of federal law enforcement to American cities and their own experiences with authoritarian governments in their countries of origin. Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, director at advocacy and social service nonprofit CARECEN SF, talks about how the Bay Area’s Central American diaspora is reacting.
In this press conference, SF officials announce that the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in San Francisco is rising rapidly and the city is facing “a major surge.” Department of Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said, “In April, we experienced a surge of COVID-19 cases, which at its peak, saw 94 San Franciscans in the hospital. That number dropped to just 26 patients six weeks ago. Today, it's 107.” Listen to the full announcement here.
Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom says what had once been uncommon is now a necessity. “Before COVID, about 5% of working days were spent at home and that was done by about 15% of Americans, with an average of one in every three days. During COVID, 42% of us are now working from home so it's an eight-fold increase.” When the pandemic is over, Bloom predicts that fewer people will work five days a week in a central office.
In March, Dr. Monica Bhargava, a pulmonary critical care physician at the county hospital in Oakland, predicted on Civic that the novel coronavirus would deeply affect the region’s health care system for many months to come. In recent months, scientists and doctors have learned much more about how the virus spreads and what makes patients vulnerable to serious complications. Bhargava returns to the program to follow up on her earlier observations and discuss how the conversations doctors, patients and whole communities are having about managing the coronavirus pandemic have changed.
Local organizers in Vallejo have been raising the alarm about police brutality for years. Among them is Club Stride, Incorporated, an organization dedicated to cultivating civic participation in communities of color and empowering youth led by executive director and founder Dr. Rhonda Renfro. Club Stride and its youth organizers like Raven Manigault, a recent Howard University graduate who aspires to become a judge, have long been confronting structural inequalities, including police violence.
San Francisco Public Press publisher Lila LaHood talks with 48Hills publisher Marke Bieschke and arts editor about his new book "Into the Streets: A Young Person's Visual History of Protests in the United States," which gives background and context for a long legacy of uprising and civil disobedience around the nation. Bieschke also discusses what this history means in light of recent the recent wave of protests against police brutality.
In this press conference, hear Mayor London Breed and Director of Health Dr. Grant Colfax discuss the expansion of coronavirus testing. San Francisco is conducting more than 3,000 coronavirus tests per day, but backlogs are developing at labs and a rising demand is making it more difficult to schedule a test. Testing capacity will be expanded by about 1,400 tests per day in the coming weeks.
Working from home could become the new norm, emptying out San Francisco’s office highrises. Two architects imagine how those buildings could become housing and even farms as part of an eco-friendly post-pandemic downtown.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced legislation that aims to keep landlords from engaging in construction work in ways that disrupt the lives of their tenants who are sheltering in place. Tenant Andrea Carla Michaels says her power and water are frequently shut off without warning and construction work is done without proper dust mitigation. Peskin's proposal would require that landlords provide alternative electrical and water supplies if the construction they’re doing results in either being shut off.
In this press conference, Mayor London Breed said that San Francisco has been added to the statewide watch list of counties due to the rise in infections. As a result, on Monday indoor malls and non-essential offices will be required to close. Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the county's Department of Public Health, said that a health directive would require private hospitals to conduct same day testing for residents showing coronavirus symptoms and for health care workers in high exposure environments.
As workers head back to their jobs, they are navigating the new workplace safety reality of operating in a global pandemic. Labor organizers say the protections against catching the novel coronavirus on the job are insufficient at many workplaces, and lack enforcement. They allege that California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, is critically short-staffed. A spokesperson for Cal/OSHA said in an email the staff shortage doesn’t keep the agency from meeting its mandate.
In this press conference, Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's director of public health, says San Francisco cases of COVID-19 are surging. Colfax said the rate of hospitalization could rise ten-fold by the fall if current trends continue. Gatherings of friends and families appear to be fueling the rise in cases, he said. Listen to his full remarks here.
The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected people of color throughout the Bay Area. At a panel organized by the coalition of health departments known as BARHII, Black community leaders from fields ranging from public education to community development to transportation said those most affected have not been given a seat at the table when it comes to determining the region’s pandemic response. In these excerpts from their remarks, they discuss initiatives they have set in motion to support their communities during the pandemic and what they would like to see done next.
This story was reported by Rebecca Bowe, an experienced print and radio journalist who is currently employed full time in communications for a national environmental organization and reported this piece on a freelance basis. Her organization’s work is unrelated to the shipyard. Find her on Twitter at Twitter.com/ByRebeccaBowe.
From automated license plate readers to drones to devices designed to identify gunshots, law enforcement agencies use a variety of tools to gather data. Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher with the digital privacy nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Stanford students Craig Nelson and Shelby Perkins discuss which law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area use which technologies, and whether and how they are complying with a state law that requires them to publish their standards, policies, procedures and training materials online.
In this special broadcast to bring you the complete remarks of city officials on the latest coronavirus developments in San Francisco, city officials announced that outdoor bars and indoor restaurants will not be able to reopen on July 13. No new goal date has been set. Coronavirus cases are still rising and certain key health indicators are now at concerning levels, the city's health director said. However, reopening progress thus far is not being reversed.
San Francisco’s Emergency Operations Center Thursday urged residents to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday weekend at home to slow the spread of the Coronavirus. As of June 29, there were 67 COVID-19 patients in city hospitals, including 18 transferred in from hot spots in Imperial and Fresno counties and San Quentin Prison in Marin County. Hear full audio from this press conference with city leaders here.
San Francisco public officials warned that people should avoid gatherings to celebrate July 4, as infection rates and hospitalizations linked to the COVID-19 pandemic have surged over the past week. Hear the full audio of the announcements made by Dr. Tomás Aragón, San Francisco Health Officer, and Joaquín Torres, the director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, here.
Joaquín Torres, director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, gives an overview of local programs meant to support struggling businesses and workers and how many have received aid. The need, among workers and businesses, exceeds what the city can immediately offer — all of the money in the city’s Give2SF fund, which is supplied by donations, is spoken for. Many city programs have reached their fund capacities, but others are still rolling out and will accept applications soon.
Drivers for Uber and Lyft staged a car caravan and rally outside Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's home last week to protest their classification as contractors despite a California law, AB5, which the state says defines such drivers as employees. The drivers, affiliated with groups including Gig Workers Rising and We Drive Progress, were also there to call on Uber to withdraw support for a ballot measure backed by Uber, Lyft and DoorDash that would add some protections but exempt drivers for these services from AB5’s requirements.
San Francisco officials have halted plans to reopen hair salons, nail salons, museums, zoos and outdoor bars as planned on Monday. They cited a spike in the number of new coronavirus cases that have moved the threat level from yellow to orange. Hear this and other updates from this press conference with Director of Public Health Dr. Grant Colfax.
In this perspective piece, producer Mel Baker recounts some of his memories of the movement that resulted in the creation of the AIDS quilt, which has now returned to the Bay Area. He says the callous eight-minute-long killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis Police officer in the midst of a pandemic, which has been the catalyst for a worldwide demand for police accountability and long denied racial justice, seems to have a certain rhyme with the callous disregard for an epidemic that was initially killing despised minorities and spurred the LGBTQ community and its allies to action.
The United States Postal Service is running out of money — the agency requested $75 billion in emergency funding in April, saying it would be out of money by September. Legislators had planned to give the postal service $25 billion in the CARES Act. But the Trump administration blocked the funding. Local members of the American Postal Workers Union staged a car caravan Tuesday to raise awareness of the impending financial calamity for the agency. They said they hoped to remind supporters to call on their Senators to allocate $25 billion in a new stimulus package to the Postal Service. They also rejected the notion that the agency should be reshaped to turn a profit, and emphasized the role of the service in the November elections, in which Californians will vote by mail.
Thousands have been protesting police brutality and racism in cities across the world, since a Minneapolis officer killed George Floyd in late May. Last Friday, marches and other demonstrations were planned throughout the day in San Francisco and around the Bay Area to mark Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the ending of slavery in the U.S. San Francisco Public Press reporter Brian Howey talked with demonstrators about how they were reflecting on the day and their feelings about the sustained momentum of these recent protests.
As San Francisco marks the 50th Anniversary of the first LGBTQ rights march, the program “Out in the Bay” is returning to the air on KSFP, a radio station created by the San Francisco Public Press. “Out in the Bay” returns after a four-year hiatus. Mel Baker, producer and contributor for “Civic,” spoke with “Out in the Bay” founding producer and host Eric Jansen and producer Truc Nguyen about the show and the parallels between the LGBTQ rights movement and the broader fight for civil rights.
As San Francisco improves its ability to mitigate the spread and treat the effects of the novel coronavirus, the city is also grappling with the fallout of its economic shutdown. Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the city’s Department of Public Health, said at a virtual press conference on Tuesday that the city has rapidly expanded its testing and contact tracing capacity and improved its supplies of personal protective equipment. Listen to the full press conference audio here.
Hi listeners — we just wanted to let you know why you won't be seeing many new episodes this week. But keep an eye out for one special interview with the producers of Out in the Bay!
A few days after a new city-approved tent encampment, known as a “safe sleeping village,” opened at Everett Middle School, "Civic" talked with District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman and some people at nearby encampments to get their perspectives on the site, which will be in operation for just six weeks.
The uprising sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has turned a national spotlight on the idea of defunding police, and locally, Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Shamann Walton have announced they are developing a proposal for something in that vein. “Civic” spoke with people demonstrating about whether the idea of defunding the police department appealed to them, how drastically they would reduce funding, and what they would like to see money reinvested in.
Omorede “Rico” Hamilton, a street violence intervention program coordinator and community organizer, has been addressing crowds of hundreds at recent protests against police brutality and racism at San Francisco’s City Hall. In this interview, Hamilton expands on some of his remarks made at one demonstration and makes a case for addressing some of the damage done by racism with reparations.
Read Lydia's story here. The full Board of Supervisors is slated to vote on whether or not to reject the appointees Tuesday, June 9. The meeting begins at 2 p.m. and this is item 13.
This is part of a series of shows that collect perspectives from demonstrators. Listen to a previous episode here.
After George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis, protestors have been taking to the streets to demand justice and end police violence against black people and other people of color. We collected some demonstrators' thoughts on what moved them to participate. This is part of a series that includes voices from protests early in the week. Hear more perspectives soon.
San Francisco remains under an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew in the wake of a nationwide civil uprising over the death of George Floyd, an African-American man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. During a Monday morning press conference, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he is cautioning Mayor London Breed not to end the curfew too soon. Hear the press briefing with this and other updates here and read a summary at sfpublicpress.org
Muni is running only a core system of buses with no rail lines in service. But around 100,000 people still ride every day. Cat Carter, interim executive director of the San Francisco Transit Riders, hasn’t been on Muni in months, but she and others in the organization have kept busy, distributing masks and thinking about the future of Muni as budget cuts and the return of traffic congestion loom.
The San Francisco Unified School District has announced that fall classes will begin on Aug. 17, and administrators are in the process of planning how campuses will function as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. We heard directly from students about what life has been like for them under the shelter-in-place order. Abigail Ault, a junior at Lincoln High School, and La’Jaya Smith, a senior at Life Learning Academy, joined us on a Public Press Live webinar to share their experiences with distance learning.
The shelter-in-place order that has directed San Francisco residents to stay home except to conduct essential business will be in effect indefinitely, though with significant modifications to allow certain previously restricted businesses to re-open. Meanwhile, the city’s mask order will be expanded, now requiring everyone to cover their noses and mouths within 30 feet of another person. Hear these and other updates in this audio from today's coronavirus press conference.
Every year, San Francisco Pride events bring hundreds of thousands of people to the city during the last week of June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in New York City, which kicked-off the modern LGBTQ movement. This year was expected to be larger than ever, marking the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s first march, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced its abrupt cancellation on April 14, 2020. Pride Board President Carolyn Wysinger abd Executive Director Fred Lopez discuss the event's transformation.
The Camp Fire grew to disastrous proportions faster than some fire experts thought possible, and ultimately destroyed the town of Paradise and devastated several nearby communities. At least 85 people were killed, and tens of thousands were displaced. In the new book “Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy,” two journalists with the Guardian US, Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, tell the stories of those who were affected, from the early hours before the fire took hold to the months of uncertainty in the aftermath. But while the ferocity of this fire came as a shock, it’s unlikely to be California’s last such megafire.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: City departments told to cut budgets, transportation agency braces for gridlock, some hygiene stations found to be missing essentials. Coming up: Transit directors to meet, library will conduct summer learning online, collect COVID-19 time capsule materials, and library materials are not due until August 1.
The coronavirus pandemic has cost millions their jobs, and that means many tenants haven’t been able to pay rent, landlords have had trouble making mortgage payments and other bills are also stacking up. Sarah “Fred” Sherburn-Zimmer, director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, and Katrina Logan, director of the economic advancement program at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, discuss the potential effects. Debt can be sold to collections agencies, and even keep renters from accessing affordable housing, they said.
Some two weeks after a universal coronavirus testing mandate for nursing facilities was announced, 40% of the city’s nursing patients and staff have been tested, according to San Francisco health director Dr. Grant Colfax. Hear this and other updates from today's press briefing on the city's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: CA faces deep budget cuts, shelter-in-place restrictions on retail ease slightly, needs for rental assistance exceed available funds, drive-through food bank opens. Coming up: Planning Commission to weigh plans for The Hub, Muni slightly increases service again.
Youth aged 16 and 17 could gain the right to vote in municipal elections if existing voters approve a charter amendment in November. City supervisors have introduced that amendment, and if it continues to see widespread support from the board, the measure will go to the ballot. This will be San Francisco’s second time voting on such an expansion of voting rights — a similar 2016 measure failed with just shy of 48% support. Nationally, only a few municipalities have extended voting rights to youth, but in other countries where youth can vote, their turnout rates tend to be higher. San Francisco Youth Commissioners Sarah Cheung and Rocky Versace gave participation as one reason they have worked to extend voting rights to young people.
Mayor London Breed announced Wednesday that up to 95% of retail businesses should be able to reopen for limited curbside service starting on Monday, May 18th. Many warehouses and factories should also be able to resume operations. Hear this and other coronavirus update from today's city press briefing.
How to best support the thousands of people who are homeless in San Francisco, and prevent the spread of the new coronavirus among them, during this pandemic has been a point of contention for months. San Francisco Public Press reporter Brian Howey has been covering everything from a scuttled initiative to test everyone in the shelter system to how the city would use RVs it had secured for people without housing to self-isolate.
Some nonessential businesses will be able to resume limited operations starting May 18 if the rate of coronavirus-related hospitalizations in San Francisco does not increase in the next week, Mayor London Breed said Monday. “The curve is indeed flat,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the city’s Department of Public Health, referring to the hospitalization rate in the last month. Hear this and other updates from the latest city press conference on San Francisco's coronavirus response.
Under shelter-in-place orders, the Public Press staff has been producing the local current affairs program “Civic” from home, conducting interviews remotely and managing a radio station at a distance. The team has also turned its focus almost exclusively to covering the local effects of the coronavirus pandemic through in-depth interviews, complete press briefing coverage and San Francisco specific newscasts. In this excerpt from a live webinar, “Civic” producer and KSFP program director Mel Baker and “Civic” host and KSFP operations manager Laura Wenus discuss the changes to the show during the shelter-in-place order and their plans for its future.
A Mission District coronavirus testing initiative has shown stark disparities in who has been getting sick — 95% of those who tested positive in this initiative identified as Hispanic or Latinx. Among all those tested, less than 2% tested positive. Among people who worked in the testing area, that figure was 6.1%. Dr. Carina Marquez, assistant professor of medicine at UCSF and an infectious disease doctor at San Francisco’s general hospital, said not only do the tests show a disparity in who is getting sick, but that the virus is still spreading in the community even as many residents have been staying home for weeks.
In late April, a coalition of medical, community and government organizations called Unidos En Salud tested nearly 3,000 people in one Mission District census tract for the new coronavirus. Among those testing positive, 95% identified as Hispanic or Latinx, though they made up only 44% of those tested. Jon Jacobo with the Latino Task Force on Covid-19 and the UCSF Study Committee says the disproportionate impact on Latinos is the result of longstanding inequities in the city and around the nation.
In response to an increase in tent encampments in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, city officials will target 13 blocks with outreach, services, cleaning and enforcement. People living in some encampments will be asked to relocate to permitted sites, and the city will open one such site with 50 spaces on Fulton Street between Larkin and Hyde streets. Hear this and other updates from the most recent city press briefing.
Last Friday, two homeless women, Couper Orona and Jess Gonzalez, briefly occupied a long-vacant home in the Castro before police removed them. They are part of Reclaim SF, an organization inspired by Moms4Housing, a group of mothers who took over a vacant house in Oakland last year to protest real estate speculation. Quiver Watts, an organizer with Reclaim SF and editor of the Street Sheet, outlines how and why activists arranged for the takeover of the 19th Street house.
The anti-Asian racist rhetoric around the coronavirus pandemic is part of a long history of anti-Asian racism in America. Author and activist Helen Zia warns that the surge of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is likely to worsen as shelter-in-place orders are relaxed, and says as racism is used to sow division, we should come together.
As part of the effort to expand testing to all San Franciscans the city is offering free coronavirus testing to all essential workers, even those without symptoms. Mayor London Breed expressed concern over crowds at Dolores Park. Officials also reiterated that assistance for the homeless is being prioritized for those who were homeless in San Francisco before the pandemic, claiming others have arrived from out of town to seek services. Hear this and other updates from today's press conference.
Gina Baleria, assistant professor of communication and media studies at Sonoma State University and host of News In Context, guest hosts this discussion about the future of news media with Martin Reynolds, co-executive director of the Maynard Institute, and Michael Stoll, executive director of the San Francisco Public Press. Reynolds says the traditional business model for news fails to support the local journalism people count on.
Among the most exposed and often vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic are people who don’t have a place of shelter. Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, a nonprofit that offers a variety of services from employment guidance to emergency shelter, said the city seems to be waiting for people to get sick before intervening. Like other service providers, when he and others at Hospitality House have seen a need in the community not being met, they stepped in — for example, by moving most of the residents of the organization’s emergency shelter to hotels. When the crisis eventually subsides, he said the city will need to address leaving homeless people always “last in line” for housing, testing and care.
As San Francisco officials worked to expand housing options for the homeless, city leaders warned that anyone from outside San Francisco seeking a hotel room or other shelter would be turned away to preserve resources for those who were homeless within city limits before the pandemic hit. “The hotel rooms that we are providing are for people who were homeless in San Francisco before this crisis,” Mayor London Breed said Wednesday. “No one from other cities should be coming to San Francisco expecting to be prioritized over the people who are here.” Hear this and other updates from city officials in this press briefing from April 29.
Many sex workers are barred from accessing protections and resources meant to help workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic — federal small business loans, for example, specifically excludes those whose work is “of a prurient sexual nature” from eligibility. Organizations like St. James Infirmary, a peer-run health and safety clinic for sex workers, are mobilizing harm-reduction efforts. Staff with the clinic are also distributing groceries, masks, and other hygiene supplies, and redoubling their efforts to help find housing for sex workers who need it, said Celestina Pearl, outreach manager for the clinic.
The Bay Area is the third largest economy for film and entertainment in the U.S. after New York and Los Angeles, and is home to more documentary filmmakers per capita than any other region. With film festivals canceled or postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, independent filmmakers are being forced to rethink how to launch and promote their work. Filmmakers Marc Smolowitz, Rodrigo Reyes, Anne Flatte and Leo Herrera discuss their current projects and how they’ve been affected by the public health crisis.
The shelter-in-place order keeping Bay Area residents in their homes except for essential activities will be extended through the month of May, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday. Dr. Grant Colfax, the city’s health director, said health officials are also looking for a sustained decline in the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 before the shelter-in-place order can be lifted. Breed also announced that two major thoroughfares through city parks, John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park and John F. Shelley Drive in McLaren Park, would close to car traffic to enable pedestrians and cyclists to maintain social distancing while they exercise. The mayor also described the idea of housing thousands of homeless people in hotel rooms — the ordinance allocates 7,000 rooms specifically for homeless people — as unrealistic. Hear this and other updates from today's press briefing.
Farmers markets are able to reconfigure stalls and have the advantage of often being open-air, but some are also adapting to social distancing health orders by increasing access to fresh produce for low-income customers. Markets across the nation are changing their layouts and shopping procedures, while farmers, vendors and advocacy groups grapple with decreased foot traffic and at times inconsistent government guidance. CUESA's Christine Farren and Kelly Verel from Project for Public Spaces discuss how markets are reshaping themselves during the crisis.
San Franciscans may be required to shelter-in-place well beyond May 3, the expiration date of the city’s current public health order. In a brief aside during Friday’s Department of Emergency Management press conference, Mayor London Breed said that her administration could make an announcement about extending the order as early as next week. Hear this and other updates from the press briefing here.
A group of Stanford-affiliated volunteers has set out to develop a tool to make accessing financial support, whether public or private, easier. The project, called Healthier Finance, is part of Stanford’s COVID-19 Reponse Innovation Lab, in which volunteers from a broad range of disciplines including medicine, business and media hope to collaborate to create technology and systems that are needed during the pandemic.
City officials on Wednesday announced expanded access to coronavirus testing. Tests will now be available to essential workers who must leave their homes to work and anyone who has symptoms, regardless of ability to pay. A doctor's note is not needed to schedule a test, and neither is insurance, though those who have it will be asked to provide their insurance information when they schedule the test. Listen to this and other updates here.
The St. Anthony Foundation of San Francisco has paid some $400,000 of its own money, and expects to pay $250,000 a month going forward, for equipment, staff and service changes necessary to meet the needs of the community during the coronavirus pandemic, its director José Ramirez, estimates. That includes an increase in staff time, stays in hotel rooms for residents of its winter shelter over age 50, the rental of hand-washing stations for those living on the street and packaging for meals which must now be taken to go rather than eaten in a communal indoor space. Ramirez explains how the nonprofit is responding to increased needs in its community.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation last week that obligates the city to procure 8,250 hotel rooms by April 26. As of April 20, 2,209 were under contract. Activists around the state organized demonstrations last week, showing up outside hotels and unfurling banners, calling on their city leaders to take over hotels and immediately house the homeless in them. While San Francisco department heads and the mayor had laid out plans to procure 7,000 hotel rooms, they had been adamant that these must be allocated to first responders and the most vulnerable homeless.
San Francisco’s Mission District has the highest number of COVID-19 infections, based on new data released on the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Data Tracker map. Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the Department of Public Health, called the results “sobering, but not surprising.” He said many residents living in the hardest hit neighborhoods have long suffered from numerous forms of inequality, which have made them more vulnerable to the coronavirus. Hear this and other updates from today's city press conference here.
With millions filing for unemployment benefits across the state, a projected unemployment rate of more than 18% and whole industries out of business, the state is facing dire needs and stark inequalities. Donnie Maclurcan, executive director of the Post Growth Institute and an affiliate professor of economics at Southern Oregon University, says the economy was already fragile, but that there may be an opportunity now to advance campaigns for equity.
San Francisco is training a corps of city workers to trace the contacts of people who may have been exposed to someone suffering from COVID-19. City officials also announced the opening of a new drive-through testing center in the city’s South of Market District for those who may have been exposed to SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The city is still limiting testing to front-line workers and those who meet the medical criteria for needing a test. Listen to the full press conference audio here.
Some 80% of calls the fire department responds to are medical emergencies. Emergency medical workers with the San Francisco Fire Department, with help from dispatchers, are implementing distancing where possible on calls, including by asking callers to meet first responders outside, said SFFD Public Information Officer Lt. Jonathan Baxter. First responders are also wearing protective equipment and taking extra decontamination measures.
City officials explained their efforts to place homeless people in hotel rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic at a press conference April 13. Mayor London Breed explained the multiple challenges to quickly placing vulnerable unhoused people in hotel rooms — an especially pressing goal after a COVID-19 outbreak at a homeless shelter last week. By Sunday, the city had placed approximately 750 homeless people in hotel rooms throughout San Francisco. Hear the full press conference audio here.
In this recording of a live webinar organized by the Public Press, two leaders of the Elder Abuse Prevention Program at the Institute on Aging and San Francisco’s district attorney describe how authorities handle reports of scams and fraud, and answer listener questions about preventing web-based and phone scams.
The MSC South homeless shelter is being turned into a medical facility for COVID-19 patients after 68 of its residents and 2 staff members tested positive for the coronavirus, San Francisco officials announced Friday. Around 100 residents were at the shelter, down from its usual capacity of 340, when residents and staff were tested. Those who did not test positive have been moved into hotels, said Mayor London Breed. Hear this and other updates officials offered on Friday.
San Francisco firefighters are still on duty, working shifts at the firehouse, responding to calls and conducting fire safety inspections. As part of an ongoing series of conversations with front-line workers, Civic spoke with local firefighter Adam Wood. He says that, among other things, firefighters are wearing protective equipment where possible, cleaning common areas and equipment three times a day and bracing for a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Now more than 850 members strong, the Sunset Neighborhood Help Group is made entirely of volunteers and was sparked by just one person’s post offering to pick up groceries for those unable to leave their homes. In this recording of a live webinar organized by the Public Press, full-time artist and Sunset resident Bianca Nandzik, her husband Stefan and former printing industry worker Frank Plughoff share their experience building a mutual aid society from the ground up.
Some San Francisco bookstores carry a colorful magazine that looks like the New Yorker of the west coast. This is the San Franciscan, a volunteer passion project. Amanda Legge and Erica Messner are two women living in San Francisco and working full time in non-media jobs who started the magazine purely for fun. Messner says part of the inspiration for the magazine came from a desire to reflect the creativity the two saw around them.
City officials said Wednesday that the city would be leasing some 7,000 hotel rooms to house those who may have COVID-19 and cannot isolate themselves, and some vulnerable homeless people, and also announced new mental health support programs for frontline workers and city employees. Listen to the full press conference audio here for these and other updates.
As the SFMTA makes drastic cuts to service to prevent further spread of the coronavirus, drivers are afraid of being infected and are asking for masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and wipes. Five cases have been confirmed among Muni workers. Roger Marenco, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 250-A, which represents Muni bus drivers and some other transit workers, said the city has not been able to keep the number of passengers on buses low enough to ensure social distancing.
San Francisco leaders announced at a press conference Monday, April 6, that changes would be made to the emergency shelter at Moscone Center West after 19 people there were found to have had contact with two former residents of another shelter who have contracted the coronavirus. Listen to the full press conference, including updates about testing, hospital capacity, and coronavirus data, here.
As of Monday, April 6 three people in San Francisco’s shelter system had tested positive for coronavirus. Chris Herring, a sociologist and doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, is among those who have been calling for homeless people to be moved into hotel rooms. Herring has studied homelessness and its governance for the past decade, and says the coronavirus crisis has interacted with and exacerbated the public health problem of homelessness.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: With extended shelter-in-place, officials also recommend wearing face coverings in public. Mayor London Breed lays out who will be placed in empty hotel rooms. SFPD begins to issue citations for noncompliance with shelter-in-place order. City College gets interim chancellor. Coming up: New CCSF chancellor to hold virtual town hall.
As the third week of sheltering in place came to a close in San Francisco, city officials said efforts to move homeless people into hotel rooms would be focused on the most vulnerable, and asked for trust and compliance as the city manages the coronavirus pandemic. Listen to the full briefing audio from 4/03 here.
In mid-March, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued what he called an eviction moratorium. But many tenant advocates say the term is misleading, because it postpones evictions rather than prevents them. Some landlords, too, are wondering how they’ll make ends meet, and to what extent the state will step in to help them if tenants just can’t pay. Advocates for both groups say landlords and tenants should start open communication to negotiate an approach that works for both sides to keep everyone in place.
A request for comment from UCSF was not returned by broadcast time, but we will update this story with their responses if they become available.
At this 4/01 press briefing, the mayor called again for compliance with the now-extended shelter-in-place order and responded to continued calls from advocates to house homeless people in hotels. Listen to the full briefing audio here.
Asked for comment on some of Ramos’ statements, Lyft referred to its coronavirus pandemic updates website and sent a written statement, which you can read here.
S.F. officials offer an update on the shelter-in-place order, which is being extended to May 1, and on the COVID-19 outbreak at Laguna Honda hospital. Listen to the full briefing audio here.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Officials express alarm at San Franciscans not sheltering in place; Governor suspends evictions for two months; CCSF chancellor resigns; public transit reduces operations. Coming up: Three new coronavirus testing sites are expected to open this week.
Hear the full audio from a virtual press conference San Francisco officials held on March 27. Announcements include the closure of parking lots at some public parks to prevent crowds, that the public lab's testing capacity is expected to increase to 450 tests a day, and a warning from SFPD Chief Bill Scott that police may soon begin enforcing the shelter-in-place order.
Bay Area biotech companies are using their resources to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Warner Green is a senior biologist and clinician with Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. He and his colleagues are using techniques developed in AIDS research to understand the life cycle of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and how existing drugs that have already been tested could be used to treat patients.
Grocery stores have been deemed essential during the pandemic, and their employees are stationed on the front lines. One San Jose grocery store worker has died of COVID-19, said Jim Araby, strategic campaigns director at United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5. The union, which represents some 30,000 workers at Bay Area stores such as Safeway, Walgreens, CVS pharmacy and even some cannabis dispensaries, recently reached a deal with several retailers to ensure employee and shopper safety and an hourly wage boost for those working during the crisis.
One person has now died of COVID-19 in San Francisco and as of Wednesday the city had confirmed 172 cases. At a virtual press conference Wednesday, city officials urged San Franciscans to stay home and warned that the crisis has not yet reached its peak. Director of Public Health Dr. Grant Colfax said he expects a surge in cases hitting in less than two weeks that will necessitate 5,000 additional hospital beds and at least 1,500 ventilators. Hear the full press conference audio on this special edition of Civic.
Potential donors may review eligibility requirements to give blood on the Red Cross website or by calling the eligibility hotline: 1-866-236-3276. Appointments to give blood can also be made online (donors should try again later if there are no slots available immediately) or by calling 1-800-RED-CROSS.
At a virtual press conference live streamed from San Francisco’s coronavirus emergency operations center at Moscone Center, city officials offered updates on their work to enact social distancing protocols, source hotel rooms for people who need to be isolated and deliver personal protective equipment to healthcare workers. Listen to the full press conference audio here.
Millions of households have received an invitation in the mail to complete the survey, and nationwide more than 20 percent of residents have done so. But there are many groups of people who won’t be counted this way. Some do not receive mail, some have no fixed address, or live in group settings. The Census staff who will be going into the field to count those communities are also practicing social distancing, so these counts have been delayed. Pamela Michael, a media specialist with the Census Bureau, lays out how the timelines have changed to protect the health of both enumerators and people who will be counted in person.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Mayor emphasizes importance of shelter-in-place; City works to find shelter for the unhoused during coronavirus pandemic; BART reduces hours. Coming up: City continues to encourage remote participation in meetings rather than in-person, and many meetings are canceled; Board of Supervisors plans to meet and will vote on a motion concurring in the actions taken by the Mayor to meet the ongoing local emergency declared under coronavirus outbreak.
Trust in institutions, business and government is critical during times of crisis and never more so than during a worldwide pandemic that brings with it panic buying and stock market collapse. Donald Palmer, professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, describes how dissonant messages from public leaders have further eroded trust in government. Palmer’s areas of research include the causes, processes and consequences of wrongdoing in and by organizations and the role of power and politics in corporate decision making.
Press conference audio: San Francisco’s Emergency Operations Center, a multi-department response to the coronavirus pandemic, has been expanded and moved to Moscone Convention Center. On Thursday morning, city officials gave a press conference about responding to COVID-19 and reviewed the stipulations of the current shelter-in-place order.
During the coronavirus pandemic, health care providers are facing shortages of the supplies and equipment they need to treat patients safely and effectively, while protecting their own health. Eric Talbert is the western regional director for MedShare, which collects and redistributes surplus medical supplies. He says MedShare is helping to get essential medical supplies and equipment to the places they’re needed most in the battle against COVID-19.
With the Bay Area under a shelter-in-place order because of the coronavirus pandemic, people are being asked to stay home. But for those without housing, that is difficult. San Francisco is implementing measures like installing public hand-washing stations and instructing people who are living on the streets to limit themselves to one person per tent. But certain plans are still unclear, and the situation is becoming increasingly urgent. Brian Howey has been covering the intersection of homelessness and the coronavirus pandemic for the Public Press. When he visited several hand-washing stations in the past few days, he found broken or missing equipment and supplies, and confusion about what the city’s policies will be and what resources are available.
Details of the order, including frequently asked questions, are available on the San Francisco Department of Public Health website
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: CPUC eliminates footnote that keeps ride-hailing safety data secret; SFUSD schools close for three weeks; non-essential gatherings of more than 100 banned. Coming up: City encourages remote civic engagement rather than in-person; Board of Supervisors plans special meeting on coronavirus response.
The California Public Utilities Commission, the body that regulates ride-hailing, has unanimously voted to reverse a policy that allowed safety reports filed by Uber and Lyft to be kept hidden from the public. The commission receives these reports, but due to an obscure footnote inserted into its rules in 2013, does not release them to the public or to local government agencies. Seth Rosenfeld, whose reporting brought this policy into the spotlight, explains what the vote does and doesn't mean for data transparency.
Nurses around the country gathered outside hospitals today, criticizing how the CDC and individual hospitals are handling the outbreak. The California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee and National Nurses United issued a statement calling the CDC’s guidelines “weakened” and called employer responses “ineffective.” “Civic” spoke with one registered nurse at UCSF, outside the Parnassus campus, who said nurses felt left out of the conversation about responding to COVID-19.
Students at San Francisco State University are grappling with conflicting directions about student housing during the coronavirus outbreak. Students who live in dormitories received an email last night instructing them to leave campus housing due to the coronavirus outbreak. This morning, the school followed up with an email saying students would not be forced to leave their dorms, but left the decision up to students and asked anyone who chooses to stay in campus housing to notify the school by March 12.
"Waging Change" will have its San Francisco Bay Area premiere at the Castro Theatre on Sunday March 22 at 1 p.m. and will also screen in Oakland at the New Parkway Theater on Tuesday, April 7 at 7 p.m.
Voters approved a measure in 2018 that guaranteed legal counsel to every tenant facing eviction in San Francisco. But six months after Proposition F was supposed to have been fully implemented, a third of tenants facing eviction have had access to only partial representation. In a hearing before the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee, legal aid attorneys, tenant advocates and city staff testified that tenant right to counsel is an effective protection from eviction but needs more funding, and more attorneys, to cover everyone.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: City offers text alerts for coronavirus updates, homelessness department head shifts to new role, state criticizes police reform progress. Coming up: Mayor to address the Board of Supervisors on corruption, SFMTA open house, Planning Commission to learn about city's housing affordability strategy.
Coalition on Homelessness executive director Jennifer Friedenbach gives her perspective on the announcement that the city will be shifting away from a complaint-based response to homelessness. City data show that that in 2019, when the complaint-based system was in place, nearly everyone who stayed in a city shelter or navigation center returned to the streets after their stay.
San Francisco is working to improve bus service and adapt infrastructure to encourage cycling and walking, but is also grappling with managing ride-hailing, parking, and congestion. Jason Henderson, a professor of geography and environment at San Francisco State University, studies the struggles for better street infrastructure across cities and says San Francisco and the region should do more to promote the decarbonization of transportation.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Coronavirus emergency declared, City Attorney issues more subpoenas, car-free Market examined, state plans for sea level rise. Coming up: Board of Supervisors to weigh another navigation center lease, and a resolution to end a contract with street furniture company JC Decaux.
Assembly member Phil Ting represents District 19, having been elected to that seat in 2012. He previously served as San Francisco’s assessor-recorder. He's recently worked on legislation advancing electric cars, addressing plastic waste, reforming how criminal records are cleared and improving housing protections and production to help curb homelessness.
In January, the San Francisco Public Press published an investigation showing just how much we don’t know about the safety record of the ride-hailing industry. The Public Press recently hosted an event at which journalist Seth Rosenfeld offered the latest developments in the story. Former California Public Utilities Commission President Loretta Lynch and Glen Smith with the First Amendment Coalition offered insights into how the agency, which regulates Uber and Lyft, operates and the broader implications of the secrecy revealed in Rosenfeld’s story.
John McDonnell is a business and tax attorney running to challenge State Assemblyman Phil Ting for the seat for District 19. He outlines his perspectives on education, housing, criminal justice reform, and how taxation and inequality intersect.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: School district warns of staff cuts, transparency ballot measure upheld, Mayor seeks congestion pricing. Coming up: Valencia Street Bikeway open house, Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission may vote on youth navigation center, and a hearing on police staffing.
David Chiu, the state assembly member representing California’s District 17, discusses his recent legislative work, including his rent increase cap policy, a proposal to audit California’s spending on homelessness and a bill that would take steps toward making connections across Bay Area transit lines seamless.
Even on main commercial corridors in the city, long-empty storefronts have raised concerns about blight from merchants, customers and politicians. In response, Supervisor Aaron Peskin drafted a vacancy tax measure that now appears on the March ballot as Proposition D. Lee Hepner, a legislative aide to Peskin, explains how the proposed tax is designed to motivate landlords to rent properties, how it could stabilize existing small businesses, and how the city will know if it’s working.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: Subpoenas issued emerge in corruption investigation and Mayor reveals gift from arrested department head, judge rules to make Apple pay employees for time spent in security searches, and a new planning director is appointed. Coming up: Youth Commission will discuss youth engagement with government and a letter to DHS about a deportation, and a megaproject seeks approvals from Planning Commission.
In the final episode in our series of interviews with the candidates running for state senate to represent District 11, current State Senator Scott Wiener discusses his legislative record in areas ranging from housing policy to conservatorship to criminal justice reform.
Editor’s Note: “Civic” reached out to several opponents of Proposition E, but nobody was available for an interview by broadcast time. Read more at sfpublicpress.org.
A California proposition on the March ballot would issue $15 billion in state bonds for facilities construction at public schools. John Fensterwald, a staff writer at EdSource, explains how districts will be prioritized for funding, and addresses confusion that has arisen over the measure’s number designation and implications for property taxes.
If you are a registered democrat living in San Francisco, your ballot for the March election is likely to be long because there are more than 50 candidates running to fill 24 seats on the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC), the governing body of the local Democratic Party. Jason McDaniel, associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University, helps explain the committee’s structure, history and role in city politics.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: More details emerge in corruption arrest, sobering center planned for the Tenderloin, and the POA votes on leadership. Coming up: Supervisors to consider property purchase and tenant buyout law, and a 100-unit building proposed for California and Polk is expected to go before the Planning Commission.
San Francisco has rent control – rents can only go up by a certain percentage a year in buildings constructed before 1979 – but there are some costs that landlords can pass on to tenants. Tenants, in turn, may apply for an exemption by showing that the cost creates a financial hardship for them. A report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office indicates that the pass-throughs individually may not seem like they amount to much, but they can add up to substantial rent increases, up to 13% in some cases.
Decades of explicitly and implicitly racist policies have left the Bay Area not just unaffordable, but deeply segregated, according to panelists at a gathering of regional government administrators, nonprofit staff and community advocates. They convened recently at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Building to talk about the future of fair housing in California and how governments and community advocates could implement new laws to undo the wrongs of the past.
As part of Civic’s series of interviews with candidates for the state Senate seat currently held by Scott Wiener, Jackie Fielder details her platform and shares insight into her background. Fielder is an indigenous organizer who co-founded the San Francisco Public Bank coalition. She calls for increased taxation of corporations and billionaires to build and preserve affordable housing, universal rent control, and single-payer healthcare.
As part of Civic’s series of interviews with candidates for the state Senate seat currently held by Scott Wiener, Erin Smith tells her story and lays out where she stands on policy issues. She calls for reforms of policies like Proposition 47, a state ballot measure passed by voters in 2014 that reduced six nonviolent felonies including drug possession to misdemeanors, and AB 5, the “gig worker” law that makes it harder for companies to label workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: FBI arrests a top city employee, City College gets a funding boost, and the CA governor demands changes at PG&E. Coming up: Workshops to determine the future of public transit, supervisors to weigh naming part of City Hall after Buck Delventhal, and a proposed resolution to return a deported asylum seeker.
The FBI this week arrested Mohammed Nuru, now on administrative leave from his position as director of the Department of Public Works, on corruption charges and other charges relating to failing to keep the investigation secret. Joe Eskenazi, managing editor and a columnist at Mission Local, explains why Nuru’s alleged behavior likely isn't the sole focus of this investigation – and how this same behavior is part of a pattern in San Francisco.
The San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance has joined several legislators in calling for the California Public Utilities Commission to allow at least some public access to ride-hailing safety data, which are kept hidden. Safety data about taxis is available to the public through records requests. Mark Gruberg, a taxi driver and a member of the Taxi Workers Alliance’s executive board, explains how this disparity affects taxi workers and why the alliance is calling for action.
In some countries, legal representation in civil cases is a right. Not so in the U.S., which means low-income people facing a civil legal proceeding may not be able to afford an attorney. One organization looking to change that is Open Door Legal. With the help of a million-dollar city grant, the nonprofit has just cut the ribbon on two new locations in the Excelsior and Western Addition. Director Adrian Tirtanadi lays out the organization's history and vision.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. This week: San Francisco all but ends cash bail, mental health advocates deliver a letter to the Department of Public Health, Supervisors will vote on banning gas in new buildings, and Muni service changes and car-free Market Street will take effect this week.
When foster youth age out of the foster care system, they can find themselves in difficult housing and financial situations. Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese explains the reasoning behind his proposal for a pilot program in which the county would give each youth transitioning out of foster care $1,000 a month.
Brian Howey reported on the complications of assessing homelessness by counting tents for the San Francisco Public Press and explains what the numbers do and don’t show. Yesica Prado, a multimedia journalist and a Catchlight fellow for the Public Press, is producing photo essays for the Public Press that document the experiences of vehicle dwellers in San Francisco and Berkeley, and shares how city policies affect those who shelter in their cars or RVs.
The city of Redding, California, made headlines late last year when its then-mayor proposed legislation to force people to enter a shelter facility and only allow them to leave on certain conditions, like sobriety. Independent journalist Evelyn Nieves has covered homelessness extensively and has been reporting in depth on Redding’s response to homelessness, and how it parallels trends around the region and the state.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. This week: Changes in the District Attorney's office, a city supervisor announces her retirement and a candidate announces a run to replace her, and advocates plan an anti-war protest.
For years, advocates in San Francisco have pushed for the city to create its own bank, to divest from enterprises like oil pipelines and for-profit prisons, or to fund urgent needs, like affordable housing development. Jackie Fielder, co-founder of the SF Public Bank Coalition, lays out the details of how such a bank would be formed and what steps are being taken toward creating one.
The federal government has tightened requirements that adults without disabilities and without dependent children must work at least 20 hours a week to access food stamps, a change expected to go into effect in April. California and 13 other states have filed suit against the Trump administration to block the rule. Dr. Hilary Seligman, associate professor of medicine at UCSF and director of the university’s National Clinician Scholars Program explains how food stamps influence public health and what the impending policy shift, along with other proposed changes, might mean for food-insecure households in San Francisco and the Bay Area.
Nearly half a million people in San Francisco say they visit their local library branch every month — for books, sure, but the library offers homework help, career coaching, access to film streaming and even immigration advice. Michael Lambert, San Francisco’s City Librarian, gives an overview of what the library does, from offering services to organizing book clubs to hosting events like the seven-hour marathon Night of Ideas.
Donna Farvard, national organizing director for the National Iranian American Council, shares what communities in the Bay Area were experiencing and talking about during a period of rapidly escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iranian governments.
In her one-woman show "Mimi's Suitcase," actress Ana Bayat draws on her own experience returning to post-revolutionary Iran after growing up in Spain to explore involuntary displacement, immigration, and a search for identity that is uniquely her own but also universally relatable. It's a coming-of-age story in which Bayat plays 27 roles, in four different languages, with just a suitcase, a trenchcoat and two scarves.
In the second part of our conversation with journalist Seth Rosenfeld about his investigation for the San Francisco Public Press about the hidden incident record of the ride-hailing industry, we learn how complaints about a dangerous driver were handled, and how ride-hailing is impacting traffic safety.
When investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld couldn’t find published data on Lyft and Uber’s safety records in California, he set out to find that information for himself. His new Public Press investigation is the result of months of reporting to uncover at least an outline of safety data the public isn’t allowed to see.
After revealing that a former Police Officers Association president and former consultant in 2018 threatened to publish a city supervisor's husband's disciplinary record as a police officer, journalist Joe Eskenazi unpacks why the story matters in local politics.
Barbara Hale from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission explains why San Francisco was exploring public power long before PG&E's bankruptcy, and how other cities and counties around Northern California are proposing that they could better serve residents.
When Chloe Jackman-Buitrago was pregnant with her son Alonzo, she got word that the building she’d lived in for nine years, 369 3rd Avenue, was for sale. As more details emerged, there was a possibility she might be having a baby and getting evicted at the same time. Instead, the tenants of this building in the Richmond organized to preserve their homes as affordable through acquisition by a nonprofit, the Mission Economic Development Agency.
The San Francisco Police Department held a town hall meeting to share preliminary information about an incident in which two officers shot and injured Jamaica Hampton. Videos were shown that captured his confrontation with police officers on Dec. 7, which ended with Hampton in life-threatening condition and an officer seriously injured. Hampton's friends and family praised his character, and community members voiced their outrage.
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to take up – and will thereby let stand – a ruling that if there aren’t enough shelter beds or housing for homeless people, governments can’t cite them for sleeping or camping in public. Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, offers perspective on what the ruling means and how cities have long "criminalized" homelessness.
After police shot and injured 24-year-old Jamaica Hampton, reporters for Mission Local were able to review video of the incident which shows he was not shot while allegedly assaulting an officer. In fact, the reporting indicates, he was attempting to escape. Reporter Julian Mark discusses what new information has come to light.
San Francisco's Outdoor Public Warning System is shutting down for upgrades for up to two years. You probably know it as the siren that sounded every Tuesday at noon. Francis Zamora from the Department of Emergency Management gives some insight into the weekly tests and why they won't be happening for a while.
In the second part of our story with journalist Julia Flynn Siler about her book "The White Devil's Daughters," we travel to the Cameron House, where women and girls rescued from forced prostitution were brought around the turn of the 20th century, and which serves as a community center today. (Part 2 of 2)
Two artists whose work will appear at this year's FRESH, an experimental dance, music and performance festival, talk about fostering healing from trauma like domestic violence and sex trafficking through artistic expression. Co-curator José Navarrete and exchange artist Regina Y. Evans also discuss their interpretations of the festival's theme, "tender."
In San Francisco's superheated market, displacement pressures are intense and affordable housing is in high demand. The San Francisco Community Land Trust pioneered a method of keeping people in housing they can afford: Buying small multi-unit buildings and turning them into cooperatives. Bruce Wolfe, president of the land trust's board, explains how the method works and how it has evolved.
In late November, students and instructors at City College of San Francisco learned that nearly 300 classes had been slashed from the Spring roster, resulting in more than 100 part-time instructors at City College being laid off or losing their health benefits. San Francisco Examiner reporter Laura Waxmann covers education and offers insight into the events leading up to, and the impacts of, the cuts.
In November of 1969, a group of indigenous activists sailed to Alcatraz and began an occupation that lasted some 19 months, drawing attention to the repression of indigenous rights and sparking a movement. In the early hours of Thanksgiving Day, indigenous communities gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the occupation.
Filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Leilani Farha discuss Gertten's documentary "Push," which looks into the practices and impacts of investment firm ownership of housing around the world.
In the Mission District, officials and neighborhood leaders recently announced that a portion of the Mission Language and Vocational School's building, which the school had previously rented and sold to make ends meet, has been bought back by MLVS and neighborhood allies. We look into the history of the school, the dispute, and the sale.
Uzuri Pease-Greene is the Executive Director of C.A.R.E., Community Awareness Resources Entity, which helps promote safety for public housing residents. She is also a former candidate for District 10 supervisor who has experienced homelessness and addiction. In her many roles, she works as an activist and a spokesperson for the under-served. We talked about getting out of homelessness, running for office, and creating stress-free environments in public housing.
The nation is losing newspapers. Local journalists are rallying for better pay from hedge-fund controlled media companies. And some papers are going not-for-profit. Professor Dan Kennedy explains how the funding model of a newspaper can change its incentives and its ability to sustain good reporting.
Journalists for three Bay Area papers are in contract negotiations and organized a rally on Tuesday, Nov. 19 to call attention to the practices of an company that owns newspapers around the country, including several Bay Area papers. It's a New York-based hedge fund that has a reputation for taking over papers and gutting them to increase profits.
For every one older adult, there were once five people under the age of 15. Now the ratio is almost one to one. In response to this demographic shift, Governor Gavin Newsom has called for a master plan on aging to ensure elders have the care and support they need to age with dignity. Jeannee Parker Martin, CEO of Leading Age California, has long pushed for such a plan, and shares some insight into what its priorities could be.
Two of the producers of the audio series "Uncuffed," from Solano and San Quentin state prisons, share how they became journalists, what it's like to make radio inside prison walls, and how the series offers incarcerated men an opportunity to express themselves.
You can read the story, "The Porch Pirate of Potrero Hill Can’t Believe It Came to This," in The Atlantic.
Now that city leaders have agreed on a compromise policy to revamp San Francisco's mental health system, we talk with Mark Salazar, executive director of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, about what services are available today, and what comes next.
Now that definitive results are in, we recap the results of the local election with independent reporter Nuala Sawyer Bishari
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. This week: Election results are in and victories claimed. Also, city bodies are set to consider a number of large mixed-use developments.
Mission Local reporter Julian Mark discusses his reporting on a white paper that offers revelations about the work SFPD officers did as part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force with the FBI.
With preliminary results in, we discuss takeaways from votes so far in the close races and ballot measure contests with USF professor of Politics James Taylor.
In 2004, state voters approved a $3 billion bond to fund stem cell research. Another, bigger ask, for $5.5 billion, is coming in 2020. Its backers say the most promising research might just fade away if it isn't funded again. What came out of the first bond, and what's being promised to voters this time around?
In "The Role of Art in a Period of Political Turmoil," at Spark Arts, artists are exhibiting work intended to catalyze civil conversations about a political climate that has been anything but. They’re also responding directly to Donald Trump’s attacks on the press. Proceeds from art sales will go to the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit newsroom and Civic’s parent organization.
Dance Mission Theater's Artistic Director Krissy Keefer and Managing Director Stella Adelman look back on 20 years of calling out injustice through dance in a changing political and environmental landscape, and persevering in a gentrifying city.
At a candidate debate hosted by the San Francisco Public Press and Mission Local and moderated by Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi, the four candidates for District Attorney lay out their policy stances.
Voter are deciding on six measures this November. In this episode, hear summaries of the propositions, plus extended commentary on some issues from San Francisco Examiner reporter Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez and San Francisco State University associate professor of political science Jason McDaniel. See the full nonpartisan election guide at sfpublicpress.org/election2019.
On the anniversary of the devastating Loma Prieta quake, we hear from the USGS about the threat posed by the Hayward Fault, get an assessment from the Building Inspection Department of how the city's soft-story buildings would fare with major shaking, learn how neighbors can mobilize in a disaster with NERT, and bring dispatches from the unveiling of a statewide earthquake early warning system. Photo by J.K. Nakata // USGS
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. This week: A car-free Market Street passes muster, PG&E rejects the city's offer on its power grid, and upcoming hearings on police reform and a proposed 193-unit housing development.
In these highlights from our conversations with incumbent Vallie Brown and challenger Dean Preston, you'll hear a lot about housing affordability. You can find full interviews with the candidates, as well as our interview with candidate Ryan Lam, at sfpublicpress.org/civic. We expect to be publishing an interview with candidate Nomvula O'Meara in the near future.
District 5 Supervisor candidate Ryan Lam, the youngest candidate in the race, on how he envisions better tenant protections might work, concerns about business taxes, and what could help address traffic deaths in the district.
District 5 Supervisor candidate and tenant advocate Dean Preston lays out his priorities for addressing housing affordability in San Francisco and looks back on his work as the founder of Tenants Together
District 5 Supervisor Vallie Brown, the incumbent running in November, talks about her work as a public servant, her vision for housing policy, and growing up living intermittently out of a van.
As the San Francisco Public Press’ celebrates 10 years of producing local investigative journalism, we peek inside to see what makes it tick. Reporter Kevin Stark unpacks his two projects on how sea level rise will affect coastal real estate development that continues to this day. Reporter Jeremy Adam Smith explains his investigations into segregation and funding inequality among San Francisco’s public schools. And the organization’s executive director and publisher tell how it all began.
On this edition of Civic: What San Francisco needs to consider to adapt to sea level rise, how citizen lobbyists are hoping to address climate change with a bipartisan federal carbon dividend, plus plans to reduce emissions from trucking and housing.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. This week: Youth strike for the climate, health workers shut down a commission meeting, the library ends fees and upcoming proposals regarding housing, the fire code, and hotel conversions.
On this edition of Civic: We hear how the Transit Riders are marking Transit Week in the city, and get reactions to a potential BART panhandling and busking ban.
In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. This week: State-level housing legislation passes the Senate, San Francisco transit setbacks, and what's coming up in terms of weekend events and at the next Board of Supervisors meeting.
On this edition of Civic, we look into the proposal for a $600 million dollar housing bond that will go before San Francisco voters in November. It's the largest bond the city has ever considered. What could the city build with $600 million? How would it get built?
A conversation with USF's Rachel Brahinsky about the history of Redevelopment in San Francisco
An extended version of our interview with Sam Moss, director of the Mission Housing Development Corporation, about the $600 million housing bond proposed on the November ballot.
An extended version of our interview with Kate Hartley, who at the time the interview was recorded was the director of the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development in San Francisco, about a $600 million housing bond voters will weigh in November.