San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2016/04/)
By Ericka Cruz Guevarra, KQED News Fix
The hardest thing about being homeless for George Perez was acting like he wasn’t homeless. During the day, Perez would study at school, go to class or clean up in the campus gym. At night, the 39-year-old sophomore at City College of San Francisco was downtown, sleeping at BART stations to keep warm.
Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.
By Laura Wenus, Mission Local
San Francisco Supervisors David Campos and Jane Kim on Tuesday introduced legislation intended to protect tenants in the event of a fire by requiring that landlords keep the city informed of safety standards within their buildings. The legislation would also require that all buildings be outfitted with smoke detectors and loud alarms. It would mandate that landlords file reports with the Department of Building Inspection to keep tenants informed of any reconstruction progress. Read the complete story at Mission Local.
By Stephanie Martin Taylor, KQED News Fix/The California Report
A group of Democratic state lawmakers wants to tackle the California housing crisis by using money from this year’s state budget surplus. Bay Area Assembly Democrats David Chiu of San Francisco and Tony Thurmond of Richmond unveiled the $1.3 billion plan at a news conference in Sacramento on Monday. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix/The California Report.
By Anna Challet, New America Media
In California, “juvenile court schools” – the schools for kids detained in the juvenile justice system – are failing at the job of educating young people in detention, according to a new study. At a time when national attention is locked on education reform, the education system has turned a blind eye to court schools, squandering any opportunity that the restrictive setting might provide. “The broader educational system excludes juvenile court schools from the regular school accountability model, placing them away from the spotlight and outside the crosshairs of general education reform advocacy,” says attorney Maria Ramiu, the managing director of Youth Law Center, the national public interest law firm that produced the report with funding from the the California Wellness Foundation. “Youth in the juvenile court school system are branded as ‘bad kids’ who do not deserve attention. They don’t have a voice and no one speaks for them.”
Read the complete story at New America Media.
Google, Facebook and others are building headquarters along shoreline as scientists paint grimmer picture for coastal development
For the last few years, construction cranes have been a prominent fixture of the Bay Area shoreline, a sign of booming development fueled by the red-hot technology sector. » Read more
By Ted Trautman, Bay Nature
“Everything we’re doing here is illegal, infeasible, and unfundable,” Jeremy Lowe tells me with a rakish grin, as we watch a couple dozen volunteers, including several small children in galoshes, planting grasses in the mud. They’re working on an experimental levee near the bay’s edge in San Lorenzo, just west of Hayward, innocently enough. Lowe soon confesses that he and his colleagues aren’t outlaws after all. But this prototype levee, situated a half-mile from the bay, is so innovative that building it on the shoreline is prohibited, even though it could help mitigate a looming environmental crisis: the rising sea levels brought on by global climate change. Most levees are basically just walls separating water and land.
By Guy Marzorati, KQED News Fix/The California Report
Three bills to increase inspection of tour buses in California, inspired by a high-profile bus crash in San Francisco’s Union Square last November, are advancing in the state Legislature. The Assembly Committee on Transportation approved AB 1677 on Monday, after its author, Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco, removed a portion of the bill that would have allowed local governments to set up their own inspection programs. Those inspections would have supplemented the checks currently carried out by the California Highway Patrol. Read the c0mplete story at KQED News Fix/The California Report.
By Laura Wenus, Mission Local
The Pacific Felt Factory, the Mission’s most recently activated arts space, celebrated its first birthday one Sunday night with a small backyard barbecue. It was a modest celebration for a determined little studio in a city and neighborhood where its larger, weightier cousins are being swallowed whole. “Three or four years ago, you had Guerrero Gallery across the street, Steven Wolf across the street from that, CellSpace was open, and Million Fishes,” said Pacific Felt Factory artist Rodney Ewing. “You could walk around this neighborhood and there was a lot of art, and there was a diverse body of art being made. And now that’s kind of, you know, gone.”
Read the complete story at Mission Local.
By Laura Wenus, Mission Local
As the city rolls out changes — and a red carpet for buses — along Mission Street, negative feedback has flooded the office of Supervisor David Campos and may prompt the transit agency to put the brakes on some of its plans. “Most people working by, living on, and driving down Mission Street will tell you that the new transit-only red carpet lanes are anything but glamorous,” Campos wrote on Facebook, where dozens of residents chimed in with their own frustrations about for the project. Other areas of social media, however, saw an outpouring of support for the new transit lanes — complete with a hashtag, #KeepMissionRed. Read the complete story at Mission Local.
By Ted Goldberg, KQED News Fix
Leaders of several groups representing San Francisco firefighters say that more than a year after a no-confidence vote in Chief Joanne Hayes-White, morale continues to ebb amid concerns over staffing, operational problems and what’s widely described as the chief’s unresponsiveness to rank-and-file concerns. But Hayes-White says she believes the department is on the right track, and all indications are that she still enjoys the support of the city officials who really matter in her case: Mayor Ed Lee and members of the city’s Fire Commission. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.