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Studies Prompt San Francisco Action for Seniors on Safer Hotels

04.15.2014
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By Tom Carter, Central City Extra/New America Media
Seniors and those with disabilities are the most vulnerable people in this city’s poorest neighborhood. But at a time when San Francisco’s corporate technology boom is boosting the fortunes of the city’s Mid-Market Street area, impoverished residents of that district’s adjacent Central City neighborhoods – the Tenderloin and South of Market – are hanging on economically by their fingernails. 
In the last five years, two studies have attempted to determine the needs of San Francisco residents living in single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotels, the first and often the last refuge very poor people call home. And one of the reports, released by a consortium of community groups in 2010, is gradually pushing the city to enact changes for the safety and health of SRO residents. The first study, published in 2009, focused on SRO senior living in the city’s downtown Tenderloin district, and paints a portrait of loneliness, poverty, fear of outsiders wandering in, mental and physical illnesses, addictions and bad diet. 
Read the complete story at New America Media. 

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Cosco Busan Spill’s Toxic Effects: Scientists Report Link Between Oil and Fish Heart Health

04.14.2014
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By Elizabeth Devitt, Bay Nature
When the Cosco Busan spilled oil into the S.F. Bay in 2007, the toxic toll on wildlife came as no surprise. More than 6,000 birds died after the spill, with grebes, cormorants, and murres among the hardest hit. Within two years, the herring population collapsed, too. The cause of death for the oil-coated birds seemed obvious. But the way the fish died was not as clear.

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Interview With Bevan Dufty on Combating Homelessness

04.10.2014
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By Holly Kernan, KALW Crosscurrents
On any given night in the United States, there are more than 600,000 people who are homeless. In San Francisco, the government estimates that there are about 6,400 people living on the street or in shelters. The numbers have increased only slightly over the past few years, but with the lack of housing in the city, many are wondering what the county is doing to help. Bevan Dufty works with the mayor’s office as the Director of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement, or HOPE. 
Listen to the complete interview at KALW Crosscurrents.

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Coming Right Up — Showers to Go

04.09.2014
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By Mary Rees, KALW Crosscurrents
There are roughly 6,400 homeless people in San Francisco. According to Laura Guzman, Director of the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, one of the biggest challenges they face is finding public restrooms.
“I remember when we opened, the conversation was all about poop on the street,” said Guzman. “We used to talk about ‘poop and needles,’ we call it. But it’s critical that the community understands – if there is no bathroom access, people are going to poop on the streets.”
Nowadays, the conversation is not about just keeping the sidewalks clean, but how to provide more showers for those without homes. Now one of the cleanest forms of transportation is about to hit the streets.

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Living Shorelines: Recruiting Oysters for Habitat Restoration and Climate Adaptation

04.08.2014
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By Sean Greene, Bay Nature
When the first live eastern oysters came to the Bay Area by train in the late 1800s, Victorian-era foodies lined up to buy them by the box at four dollars for 200. Capitalizing on San Franciscans and their love of trendy food, would-be oyster farmers followed, hoping to raise their imported shellfish in the Bay. But life proved difficult for the farmers and their oysters. For the preferred eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), summers in the Bay Area were too hot and dry, stingrays too hungry, and one particular “parasite” far too fast-growing for the bivalve to take hold, as the naturalist Charles Townsend wrote in 1893. “It is possible that I have not attached sufficient importance to the evil of overcrowding,” Townsend declared, by this “remarkably fertile” competitor.

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Growing Up Muslim in the Bay Area

04.07.2014
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By Peter Schurmann, New America Media
There are a quarter-million Muslims living in the Bay Area, and nearly half of them are under the age of 35. Many describe an intense personal and spiritual struggle as they look to reconcile their faith with the mainstream of American society. These young Muslims are the face of American Islam in the 21st century, and yet their stories are rarely heard. “I prayed five times a day, fasted on occasion and went on Hajj [pilgrimage],” said Omar Raza, who is 16 and a student at Averroes High School in Fremont, the Bay Area’s first Islamic high school. The son of Pakistani immigrants, Raza did these things “because my parents told me to.

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Bay Area Bike Share May Expand to Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville

04.03.2014
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By Bryan Goebel, KQED News Fix
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is considering the expansion of the Bay Area Bike Share program to Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville. The commission will vote on funding for the additional locations at its meeting next Wednesday. Commision staff have also recommended that additional locations be analyzed for further expansion. The East Bay was not included in the bike share pilot that launched with 700 bikes last August in San Francisco and the Peninsula. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 

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S.F. ‘HACKtivation’ Matches Tech Talent With Nonprofit Groups

04.02.2014
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By Josh Wolf, Shareable
While the tech community continues to be demonized across San Francisco, nearly 100 mostly tech workers acted as angels last weekend by donating their expertise to a dozen nonprofit organizations that help the homeless. In a format similar to a hackathon, where small teams form to develop software programs overnight, ReAllocate’s HACKtivation for the Homeless paired nonprofit organizations with volunteers to address technical challenges that would otherwise be out of reach for the cash-strapped organizations. “Not everybody is being included in how fast things are changing and the benefits of those changes,” said ReAllocate’s Executive Director Kyle Stewart, who cofounded the event with community organizer Ilana Lipsett. “There are opportunities for technology to help inside these established organizations.”
Read the complete story at Shareable. 
 

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Ahead of S.F. Supervisors Hearing, One More Google Bus Dust-Up

04.01.2014
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By KQED News Staff and Wires, KQED News Fix
Google played a lot of April Fools’ Day jokes Tuesday, but this was not one of them. Protesters decked out in colorful outfits, some walking on stilts, handed out fake “Gmuni” passes as they blocked a Google commuter bus in the city’s Mission District Tuesday morning.  The action was just the latest in a string of protests against the shuttle service, which to some has become the No. 1 symbol of gentrification in an increasingly unaffordable San Francisco. The protest came ahead of a San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing Tuesday afternoon on a pilot program to charge private shuttle buses for using public bus stops.