News
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Lawsuit Alleges Mistreatment of California Minors With Mental Health Problems

08.14.2013
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By Susan Ferriss, Center for Public Integrity
Minors with mental health problems and other disabilities are held in “unconscionable conditions” of 23-hour solitary confinement and deliberately cut off from education and other rehabilitation at a San Francisco Bay Area juvenile hall, alleges a lawsuit filed in federal court in Northern California. The class-action suit against Contra Costa County probation and county school officials accuses them of locking young wards in small cells for days at a time in response to behavior stemming from the children’s own disabilities — including bipolar disorder — and then illegally depriving them of education as part of a three-tier system of isolation. The two most severe tiers of isolation imposed on wards are called “risk” and “max,” requiring 23-hour confinement in cells, when “youth with disabilities are outright denied both general and special education entirely,” according to the suit. The first tier, called “program,” results in up to 22½ hours of solitary confinement, during which, the suit says, the county’s policies illegally permit probation (officials) to withhold education as a punishment or for no reason at all.”
Read the complete story at New America Media
 

News
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Drones: The Next Wave in Photography

08.13.2013
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By Asha DuMonthier, New America Media
While drones have played an increasingly prominent role in America’s military and surveillance operations – at home and abroad – lesser known is the growing use of this new technology in civilian life. Some of these applications are far less sinister than one might expect. For Jason Lam, owner of San Francisco’s first personal drone shop, the aerial crafts could just be the latest and most exciting wave in the field of digital photography. Walk down 6th Street in San Francisco, an area long blighted but fast becoming a hub of tech entrepreneurialism, and you could easily miss AeriCam. The modest exterior houses an array of remotely-operated vehicles that, as the name suggests, promise a bird’s eye view for photographers.

News
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Communities of Color Hit by Perfect Storm of Housing Problems

08.12.2013
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By Anna Challet, New America Media
Despite soaring home prices in the Bay Area, many homeowners in communities of color are dealing with a perfect storm of housing ills. “The Bay Area has strong pockets of homeownership by people of color – in Oakland, in Richmond, in the Bayview,” said Gloria Bruce, Deputy Director of East Bay Housing Organizations. But due to the number of foreclosures in recent years, she said, “there are fewer homeowners than there used to be, and the homes are less likely to be controlled by people who live in the community.”
In 2011, the Center for Responsible Lending reported that homeowners of color nationwide, particularly Latinos and African Americans, were about twice as likely to lose their home to foreclosure as their white counterparts – owing in part to the fact that these homeowners were more likely to have been targeted for subprime loans. Today, of the 6.9 million California homeowners who have a mortgage, over 2 million of them are underwater, according to foreclosure database Property Radar, meaning they owe more on their home than it is actually worth on the open market. Many of the hardest-hit areas in terms of home devaluation are in communities of color.

Community
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Alumni, Veterans Struggle to Preserve City College of San Francisco (Video)

08.12.2013
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Students, faculty and alumni at City College of San Francisco are grappling with the school’s loss of accreditation and its struggle to retrieve its status before it expires in the summer of 2014.
More than 85,000 students consider City College a vital source not only for university-bound traditional students, but also for older and mid-career residents seeking job skills, people with degrees who want educational enrichment and 1,100 veterans looking to transition from the military to civilian careers. » Read more

News
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A ‘Bridge’ to Careers in Science for Minorities, Low-Income in Jeopardy

08.08.2013
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By Vickie Cheng, New America Media
Elsa Eder stands in her lab coat, preparing to inject genes from one cell into another. Biotechnology isn’t something the 40-year-old former journalist ever expected to be studying, but when she lost her job with a local media outlet at the height of the Great Recession she was suddenly forced to make a dramatic career change. She eventually came across City College of San Francisco’s Bridge to Biotech program, which works to expand access for the city’s low-income and minority residents to this rapidly growing sector. With no background in science, Eder credits the program’s counselors for helping her get past her own reservations about being qualified. 
CCSF’s Bridge to Biotech program began 10 years ago, one of the first such programs in the country. It aims to give people like Eder a chance to break into one of the Bay Area’s – and the nation’s – fastest growing industries. There are more than 250,000 California residents employed in the biotech field.

News
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Thanks to Visitacion Valley Home, Low-Income HIV/AIDS Patients Can Live in S.F.

08.07.2013
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By Megan Quintana, KALW Crosscurrents
Living with HIV or AIDS can be hard. Even with advances in treatment, symptoms can be hard to manage, and medication is expensive. If you live in San Francisco, it’s even harder – because the cost of living is so high. The median price for a one-bedroom apartment in the city is almost $2,800 – already out of reach for many low-income people, and even harder for people whose medical costs get higher as their diseases advance. The cost of medication  for an HIV patient can reach nearly $30,000 per year.

News
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Oakland Advocates Seek to Help Sexually Exploited Children

08.06.2013
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By Stephanie Martin, KQED
As many as 325,000 U.S. children are at risk for being sexually exploited, according to one of the more reliable assessments. The FBI’s sting operation against child prostitution announced Monday included numerous sites in the Bay Area; 12 children across multiple counties were rescued. Many children’s advocates consider Oakland, in particular, a hub for child prostitution. One reason experts cite Oakland is its relatively large number of group homes for a city of its size. Pimps know kids at group homes are vulnerable, and there are currently 16 such licensed facilities in the city.

Climate Change
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Many Residents in the Dark About California Carbon Cap-and-Trade, Survey Finds

08.06.2013
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UPDATE 8/7/13: Read New America Media’s coverage of the survey: With an Eye on the Future, Ethnic Californians Embrace Environmentalism
A majority of California residents have never heard about the state’s landmark cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions from industry, a survey from the Public Policy Institute of California shows. » Read more

News
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S.F. Works to End Child Sex Trafficking

08.05.2013
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By Isabel Angell, KQED News Fix
Last week, the FBI rescued 105 children from sex-trafficking rings across the country, including 12 in San Francisco, the most of any city. The bureau says San Francisco is one of the major hubs of child trafficking in the United States. On Friday, at a conference put on by the San Francisco Coalition Against Human Trafficking, nearly 200 people gathered to brainstorm about how to change that. Minouche Kandel, a policy director at the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women, said she hoped concrete recommendations would emerge on how to help victims and prevent trafficking. Kandel said most children trafficked in the United States are American citizens, with 60 percent having resided in foster care before being exploited by traffickers.