HIV & AIDS
Activists and healthcare providers gather on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall on March 21 during a die-in rally to demand renewed efforts in the public health fight against HIV.

While SF Fought COVID, HIV Prevention Stalled

06.01.2022
|
By

Over the past several months, health care providers have been warning San Francisco officials that while the city was focused on fighting COVID-19, rates of HIV infection and related illnesses were creeping in the wrong direction.

From the very beginning, and throughout the HIV epidemic, which began in 1981, San Francisco led the way in prevention, care and treatment that came to be recognized around the world.

Community
Singer at benefit concert with Ukrainian flags.

Ukrainians in SF Are Anxious and Angry, and Refugees Need Homes

04.08.2022
|
By

Members of the Ukrainian diaspora in San Francisco are angry, anxious and desperate to connect with loved ones in their ancestral homeland. Meanwhile, a local aid agency is asking for help as refugees begin arriving in the Bay Area. On a sunny weekend afternoon in mid-March, hundreds gathered at the bandshell in Golden Gate Park music concourse for a show called Slava Ukraini — or Glory to Ukraine. It was a fundraiser for the World Central Kitchen, which is helping to feed Ukrainian refugees.

Health
hands holding a vial of naloxone

Harm Reduction Critical to Addressing Overdose Crisis, Local Experts Say

04.07.2022
|
By

The key to addressing San Francisco’s overdose crisis, say community activists and medical experts in the city, is harm reduction. That’s an approach that acknowledges not all drug users will achieve abstinence, and that focuses on keeping them safe and alive if they’re not ready or able to quit. Drug overdoses killed more people in San Francisco than did COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic — 711 deaths in 2020, and 645 in 2021.

Homelessness
A man in a plaid shirt holds a fire extinguisher.

Grassroots Nonprofits and Homeless Communities Create Their Own Fire Prevention Solutions

03.17.2022
|
By

Encampment fires are a fact of life due to the exposed conditions homeless residents live in, but the 77th Avenue Rangers’ camp demonstrates that there’s hope for controlling these incidents without official intervention.

One key to their success has been fire preparedness, including measures like installing smoke alarms and keeping fire extinguishers on hand.

Public Safety
A young Black man stands on a San Francisco sidewalk. Down the sidewalk behind him sit tents and strewn clothing.

SF Fires Linked to Homeless Surged as Pandemic Set In

02.01.2022
|
By

Fires associated with homeless encampments in San Francisco rose by more than two-thirds during the first year of the pandemic, according to a Public Press analysis of the narrative texts from San Francisco Fire Department reports.

Fires are an ever-present fear for people living on the streets, where an errant spark could send flames ripping through a tent or other temporary shelter, sending its contents quickly up in smoke. Unhoused residents who have suffered through this experience report receiving little of the help available to those assisted after fires in buildings.

Homelessness

Photographer Captures Homelessness Crisis in ‘Division Street’

01.06.2022
|
By

In search of a project, photographer Robert Gumpert started wandering around San Francisco. He began talking with and photographing people he encountered who were living on the street and in shelters. The resulting book “Division Street,” named after a street in the city where homeless people have often established encampments, will be released this year.