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After Decades Away, Western Pond Turtles Come Home to Mountain Lake

07.28.2015
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By Lauren McNulty, Bay Nature
It had been a long time since Mountain Lake was the kind of place where a western pond turtle could live happily. For decades, the Presidio’s natural freshwater lake suffered environmental insults: runoff from Highway 1, sediment pollution, invasive species, voracious released goldfish. Mountain Lake had been “a cesspool since the ’70s and ’80s,” says Jonathan Young, a wildlife ecologist with the Presidio Trust. “It was a soupy, green, algae-scummy sort of lake.”
Not anymore. On Saturday, a few dozen people sat on a grassy slope overlooking the green, reflective surface of the almost completely restored lake, and waited for one of the final pieces: the return of the native turtles.

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Mission District to Get First Affordable Housing Project in 10 Years

07.27.2015
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By Bryan Goebel, KQED News Fix
San Francisco city officials have chosen two developers to build the first affordable housing complex in the Mission District in 10 years. What is now the city’s homeless Navigation Center at 1950 Mission St. is slated to become 165 units of rental housing for low-income and homeless families on city-owned land that will be leased to the developers. The site is a former school that sat vacant for years. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 

Back Issues

Issue 17: Summer 2015

07.27.2015
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The Bay Area’s waterfront building frenzy includes at least $21B in housing and commercial construction in low-lying areas that climate scientists say could flood by the end of the century. View Online

View Online » Read more

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How Group of Dim Sum Makers Won $4 Million in Back Pay

07.23.2015
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By Vinnee Tong, KQED News/The California Report
Yank Sing’s location in a shiny downtown San Francisco high-rise, its dramatic ceiling-to-floor water fountain and its crisp white tablecloths set it apart from other Chinese restaurants. That’s one reason the announcement last fall seemed so jarring to patrons and the public: Hourly workers at Yank Sing were longtime victims of wage theft. Read the complete story at KQED News/The California Report

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Housing + Artists: S.F. Resident Talks Mission History

07.22.2015
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By Joe Rivano Barros, Mission Local
Looking back on decades-long struggles for housing, longtime Mission resident Tony Levine has been through the neighborhood’s earlier existential crises. We are walking and talking on a Tuesday morning because Levine is interested in a wedge of a block Mission Local chronicled for “Good Morning Mission,” an inexplicably residential block of 11 homes at the end of Twenty-Second Street and surrounded by the brick-red San Francisco General Hospital and the dull (and loud) Highway 101. Levine imagines the block’s survival was a hard-earned battle. 
Read the complete story at Mission Local. 

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What’s Next for 13 Acres of Brand-New Parkland in S.F. Presidio?

07.21.2015
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By Melanie Hess, Bay Nature 
San Francisco’s Presidio has undergone major landscape changes in the last few centuries, from dunes and scrub to military base to today’s mix of forests and wildlife, family picnics and community events. It has also, of course, been home to a major highway, the Doyle Drive connector leading to the Golden Gate Bridge, an interruption in the park’s natural life that artificially separates the waterfront from the greater Presidio parklands. A few years ago, though, the Presidio Trust, in partnership with the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy and the National Parks Conservancy, decided to sink that road into a tunnel and fill in on top of it, removing the highway presence in the park and creating 13 acres of new land. And that just left the question: What to do with the new space? Read the complete story at Bay Nature. 

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S.F. Police Plan Crackdown on Bicyclists on Popular Routes

07.20.2015
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By Bryan Goebel, KQED News Fix
The captain of the San Francisco Police Department’s Park Station is planning a crackdown on bike riders who roll through stop signs on some of the city’s most popular bike routes, saying “protection of life” is his highest priority. But bike advocates say police should focus traffic enforcement on the greatest threat to lives: dangerous behavior by drivers. The comments by Capt. John Sanford were made at a community meeting last week, according to Hoodline. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 

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S.F. Fire Department Disputes Investigative ‘Backlog’

07.16.2015
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By Dan Brekke and Ted Goldberg, KQED News Fix
San Francisco Fire Department officials are disputing the characterization of 300 or so open fire investigations as a “backlog,” with the department spokeswoman saying most of the inquiries are, in fact, complete. KQED News first reported on the open cases, which stretch back about four years, on June 23. That story quoted Daniel De Cossio, the department’s interim fire marshal, as expressing concern about the large number of open cases. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.

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Mission Moratorium Will Go on November Ballot

07.15.2015
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By Emma Neiman, Mission Local
The Mission District Housing Moratorium, which calls for an 18-month-long pause on the development of luxury housing in the Mission, received enough signatures to be put on the ballot in November, the San Francisco Department of Elections confirmed on Tuesday. The petition, which received 15,006 signatures by the July 6 filing deadline after weeks of canvasing, was written by tenants’ rights lawyer Scott Weaver. It calls for the creation of a “Neighborhood Stabilization Plan by 2017, with the goal to preserve and develop affordable housing in the Mission,” according to a press release from the Mission Economic Development Agency on Wednesday. 
Read the complete story at Mission Local. 

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Growing Labor Movement Shakes Up Silicon Valley

07.14.2015
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By Beth Willon, KQED News Fix
In East San Jose’s Mayfair Neighborhood, a young Cesar Chavez first started mobilizing farmworkers to get them better wages and working conditions. The area was then known as Sal Si Puedes, meaning “get out if you can.”
It was the 1950s, and Chavez often drove a bus to the fields in Santa Clara County and brought back the fruit pickers to Mayfair’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Church to talk about labor organizing and voting. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.