San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2015/02/)
Here are two maps that offer some perspective on San Francisco’s housing crisis.
The first shows how much the supply of housing grew in each section of the city.
The South of Market, or SoMa, neighborhood nearly doubled in size between 2000 and 2013, based on data from the Planning Department’s annual Housing Inventories. » Read more
By Liza Veale, KALW Crosscurrents
Beginning next fall, all San Francisco public schools will offer a class called Ethnic Studies. It is a look at American history and culture from the perspective of people who are not white. It is also a chance to break down race in the classroom and deal with tough concepts, like unconscious racism and structural inequality. It is a timely move, and one San Francisco School Board Director Emily Murase thinks can help solve what she calls a “crisis in race relations.” Murase said she is “very proud to be part of a community to find the antidote to that crisis to be. .
By Marisa Lagos, KQED News Fix/The California Report
The leader of the state Assembly is unveiling an ambitious affordable housing proposal, one that could pump more than $600 million a year into development at the local level. Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) was joined Wednesday afternoon by a wide range of prominent Democrats in Los Angeles, including state Treasurer John Chiang and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, to announce her plan. At its center: A proposal to institute a new transfer fee on real estate transactions, one Atkins’ staff characterizes as small; and expanding legislation proposed by Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) to increase the tax credit that real estate developers can claim when they build affordable housing. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix/The California Report.
The businesses destroyed by a large Mission Street fire in late January could get help from an online fund launched this weekend by the Mission Economic Development Agency.
Gabriel Medina, the organization’s policy manager, spoke alongside City Hall staff to a crowd of about 70 who gathered Friday in the U.S. » Read more
By Viji Sundaram, New America Media
Between his full-time job as a paid caregiver and being a parent, Sonny Villar has little time for anything else, especially because of the hours he spends commuting to and from work by bus. “It’s very, very tiring,” the Filipino native said. Now, Villar is going online late at night and cramming for the California driver’s license test, scheduled for March 5, so he can get behind the wheel of a car, something he has been wanting to do since he arrived in the United States in 2003. Read the complete story at New America Media.
By Bryan Goebel, KQED News Fix
For the first time in a decade, San Francisco transportation officials have a road map to improve late-night and early-morning travel for the tens of thousands of graveyard shift workers and night owls who currently have limited transportation options unless they drive. In a 27-page report, city officials, nightlife advocates, labor union representatives and others recommend developing plans to make overnight local and transbay bus service more frequent, reliable and safe. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.
Two years ago, San Francisco officials started identifying all apartment buildings in the city with a specific, earthquake-vulnerable design flaw.
Their latest count shows about 5,000 need seismic strengthening.
Owners of all multi-unit residential buildings were required to have the buildings professionally inspected by last September under the city’s mandatory retrofit program if they appeared to possess a “soft story,” a weak first floor that can collapse beneath the rest of the building during an earthquake. » Read more
By Julie Small/The California Report/State of Health
Medi-Cal — the public health insurance program for low-income Californians — is growing faster under federal health care reform than the state expected. Twelve million residents — nearly a third of the state’s population — now rely on Medi-Cal, and that’s increased pressure to find more doctors willing and able to treat patients for what has historically been low reimbursement rates. At the LifeLong Clinic in West Berkeley, most of the patients waiting to see a doctor are on Medi-Cal. Among them, 26-year-old Amanda Hopkins says she enrolled half a year ago when the state expanded the benefits program. Read the complete story at The California Report/State of Health
By Jen Chien/KALW Crosscurrents
Mary Bartholomew is a senior citizen. A couple years ago, she did not know much about computers or how to use the Internet. One day, she found herself in a bit of a pickle. “I was trying to find somebody that had asked me years ago for some pictures. Very special pictures,” says Bartholomew.
By Dan Brekke, KQED News Fix
California has been a famously diverse place ever since its doors swung open to the world at the beginning of the Gold Rush. In addition to the flood of Americans from the Eastern states, crowds flocked here from China, Hawaii, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, England, Germany, France and Italy. Among other places. Notwithstanding the fact that California — white California, anyway — has not always been so happy about that diversity, the state’s population continues to be what historian Sucheng Chan has termed “a truly variegated mosaic.”
Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.