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Mission Residents Meet Proposed Medical Neighbors and Say, ‘Go Somewhere Else’

05.13.2015
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By J.J. Barrow, Mission Local/KQED News Fix
The appropriateness of Sutter Health’s plan to open an affiliate medical center on the corner of 20th and Valencia streets was the subject of a lengthy and at times tense meeting on Monday night. The talk, hosted by the Liberty Hill Neighborhood Association, brought together 25 concerned Mission District residents and three employees of Sutter Health’s Pacific Medical Foundation, which seeks to locate its latest facility on the ground floor of the new V20 condo complex. Neighbors questioned everything from the center’s attractiveness to its size and location. Read the complete story at Mission Local/KQED News Fix.  

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Flood Control 2.0

05.12.2015
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By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, Bay Nature 
It was the kind of January day where you could not see your breath, but the baylands were steaming. Puffs of smoke garlanded the spires of bordering oil refineries. Blue skies, green hills, white windmills and three bridges marked the corner of my eye. With so much to look at, it was hard to focus on the precise place here along the Contra Costa County shoreline east of Martinez where 12-mile-long Walnut Creek empties into Suisun Bay. That day the moon intervened on my behalf — conjuring a king tide that flooded the low wide channel with so much water that the creek mouth emerged in plain sight.

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Berkeley’s Latest Help-the-Homeless Effort: Cash Boxes on Street

05.11.2015
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By Seung Y. Lee, KQED News Fix/Berkeleyside
Members of the Berkeley City Council, the Downtown Berkeley Association and the Berkeley Food and Housing Project gathered by the downtown BART station last Thursday to launch a donation program for the city’s homeless population. The “Positive Change” program will install up to 10 tamper-proof donation boxes around downtown Berkeley in which donors can drop off money to pay for social services geared to help reduce homelessness. Collected by the Downtown Berkeley Association once a week, the donations will go into a bank account from which the Berkeley Food and Housing Project can allocate funds. Read the complete story at  KQED News Fix/Berkeleyside.  

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Sea Level Rise Shapes Future of Bay Area Waterfront Development

05.11.2015
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Sea level rise threatens tens of billions of dollars worth of new waterfront development in the Bay Area — but there may be time to adapt. That was the message at Tuesday’s panel on sea level rise hosted by the San Francisco Public Press at the Impact Hub, a co-working space. Panelists included UC Berkeley professor Kristina Hill, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Climate Program Director David Behar and Public Press reporter Kevin Stark. Stark is one of two lead reporters of the Public Press’ new edition on sea level rise, due to hit newsstands later this month. The front-page investigation, a six-month collaboration of 10 journalists, scientists and cartographers, has so far uncovered dozens of commercial and residential projects planned for areas below 8 feet in elevation.

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Getting Creative on Saving Water: Tips From Experts and Listeners

05.07.2015
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By Amanda Stupi, KQED News Fix
California’s new statewide water restrictions take effect on June 1. Depending on where you live, your water district could be asked to cut urban water use by as much as 36 percent compared with usage in 2013. And with maximum fines now set at $10,000 and the citation process a bit more streamlined, many Californians are going to have to move from merely thinking about conserving water to actually doing it. Some who already let yellow mellow and take “military showers” may be wondering if it is even possible to further reduce their water use. Still others may balk at residential conservation, given how much water agriculture uses.

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S.F. Supervisors Gear Up for Battle Over Mission Housing Construction

05.06.2015
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By Alex Emslie, KQED News Fix
San Francisco Supervisor David Campos is calling for a moratorium of up to two years on market-rate residential construction in the Mission District, a neighborhood that has become ground zero for the city’s housing crisis. Campos represents the Mission, which his office says has lost more than 1,600 low- and moderate-income households since 2000. More than 8,000 Latinos have left the neighborhood over the last decade, community groups say. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 

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Pigeon Palace Fends Off Potential Buyers

05.05.2015
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By Daniel Hirsch, Mission Local
Real estate agents and investors with plans of visiting an open house at a stately Edwardian on Folsom Street were greeted Tuesday afternoon with a somewhat unexpected scene – a motley crew of Mission activists and neighborhood characters holding signs and singing, “If you buy this house, you will have bad karma.” A small brass band played along. The house for sale was the so-called Pigeon Palace, a six-unit building whose current tenants hope to buy the building so they can convert it into permanently affordable housing with help of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. The tenants say this is the wish of their elderly landlord, but the conservator representing her estate contests that claim and has put the house on the open market. Tuesday afternoon, that open market looked a bit dismayed. 
Read the complete story at Mission Local. 

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California Water-Saving Targets Are All Over the Map

05.04.2015
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By Craig Miller, KQED Science/News Fix
This week local water officials and consumers around California will get the final version of new emergency drought rules ordered by Governor Jerry Brown in early April. The statewide water restrictions go into effect on June 1. Local water agencies are racing to get programs in place to cut urban water use anywhere from 8 to 36 percent, depending on how much water their residents have been using on a per-capita basis. Read the complete story at KQED Science/News Fix.