San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2020/05/)
Beginning today, San Francisco officials will be enforcing an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily curfew. Mayor London Breed announced the curfew, and said the National Guard was standing by, Saturday night after unrest broke out in the city’s downtown area. » Read more
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. » Read more
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 certain previously restricted businesses will soon be allowed 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. » Read more
While San Francisco city leaders continue to resist long-term homeless encampments, another city 800 miles to the north is taking the opposite approach.
San Francisco has approved temporary encampments to slow the spread of COVID-19. But in Seattle, a half-decade experiment with regulated sites has proved so much more successful at getting people off the streets than other solutions that officials recently voted to expand it fourfold. » Read more
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. They are challenged with figuring out how to keep students safe and make classes engaging whether they are held remotely or in modified classroom settings. » Read more
UPDATE 5/28/2020 9:01 p.m. Adds new details from city officials that substantially change story. Revisions throughout.
Twenty-nine recreational vehicles leased by San Francisco to house homeless residents during the pandemic were never used for their intended purpose, an endeavor that may have cost the city as much as half a million dollars, a city official confirmed. » Read more
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. Pride Board President Carolyn Wysinger said Pride is an international event. » Read more
Instead of celebrating milestones as they prepare to enter what a few months ago was the best job market in half a century, college students throughout the Bay Area are worrying about their futures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the historic wave of unemployment it has unleashed. » Read more
The morning of Nov. 8, 2018, a fire sparked in rural Northern California. It 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. » Read more
When Irma Villega and Manuel Pineda lost their jobs at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, they were unable to pay rent and had to move out of their apartment. They stayed with family members for a month but couldn’t find new jobs or housing. » Read more