Civic

People who provide services to homeless individuals and families have become essential workers during the pandemic, often doing their jobs in person rather than from home. While they have been considered health workers and thus eligible for a vaccine, some have struggled to get them, even being turned away from the city’s vaccination site at Moscone Center. Mary Kate Bacalao, director of external affairs and policy at Compass Family Services and co-chair of the Homeless Emergency Service Providers Association, talks about how workers in the sector have experienced the process of figuring out their eligibility for a vaccine and receiving one.

The vast majority of staff and residents at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living, one of the largest nursing homes in the region, have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. 94% of staff and 97% of residents have received the vaccine. The facility’s director of nursing and clinical operations, Peggy Cmiel, explains how this was done.

A series of violent crimes against Asian seniors in the Bay Area have sparked concern and calls to action, and a coalition of community groups organized public gatherings in San Francisco and Oakland this weekend to emphasize the need for additional resources and services to advance public safety. Lai Wa Wu, policy and alliance director at the Chinese Progressive Association, and Sara Wan, executive director of Community Youth Center, explain how community based groups have been responding to violence.

Carmen Chu is San Francisco’s new City Administrator, which means she is stepping in to a position with wide-ranging and extensive responsibilities — her office comprises more than 25 departments and programs — at a time when the city is under pressure to address the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, get residents and workers vaccinated, balance the budget and to address a corruption scandal. Mayor London Breed appointed Chu to the post after her predecessor Naomi Kelly resigned following corruption charges against Kelly’s husband, another city department head. Chu, who had been the city’s Assessor-Recorder since 2013, discusses her plans for charting a path forward in difficult times.

George Koster, host of the podcast and radio show “Voices of the Community,” returns to Civic to talk about new research on how the nonprofit sector is faring during the pandemic and share stories from nonprofits leaders he has interviewed about how they’re handling current economic challenges.

State legislation paved the way for public banks in 2019, and now, a local supervisor has authored city legislation that would create a working group to figure out how to create one in San Francisco. Jackie Fielder, co-founder of the SF Public Bank Coalition, has been advancing this model for years and outlines what this local legislation proposes.

Nine California legislators have proposed a slate of reform bills that would try to address some of the biggest obstacles to getting unemployment benefits to those who are eligible for them. Among them is state Assemblyman David Chiu, who says his office has been flooded with calls from desperate unemployed constituents.

At this year’s SF Urban Film Fest, several programs examining homelessness include activities in which participants will be asked to connect with one another. One of the films around which the events are arranged, “Quarantine Diary,” is a self-documentary about life in an RV produced by multimedia journalist Yesica Prado. She and Fay Darmawi, the film festival’s founder and executive director, discuss the events and how participants might gain new perspectives on homelessness.

Last year’s Proposition 22 allowed companies that dispatch app-based workers to continue considering them independent contractors, while adding some limited worker benefits. Veena Dubal, a professor of law at UC Hastings who conducts ethnographic and legal research on the gig economy, relays workers’ experiences and examines how the measure might be laying the groundwork for other industries to shift toward gig work.

Undocumented workers have suffered severe income losses and are shut out of many types of government support. A mutual aid effort called Undocufund has raised and distributed more than $3 million. But thousands of applicants are still on a waitlist. Alejo, a co-director with Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, one of the organizations that run Undocufund, recounts the story of how the collaboration began and what impact the grants can have.

The Mission District, and the city’s Latino population, have been among those hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, so the Latino Task Force has been working to help bring testing and the vaccine to where those most affected live and work. On Monday afternoon, after a new Mission vaccination center opened, Latino Task Force Health Committee Chair Jon Jacobo reflected on the effort.

This episode was updated at 8:15 p.m. on 2/3 to an extended version with the full statement from San Francisco's Covid Command Center.

Read Lauren Hepler and Emily Hoeven's reporting at calmatters.org.

San Francisco has a new poet laureate, city native and child of local organizers Tongo Eisen-Martin. He reflects on national politics in the wake of the summer uprisings against police brutality and racism, the Jan. 6 capitol riot, and the presidential inauguration and talks about the role of poetry in political organizing.

Read Portia Li's work at windnewspaper.com.

Millions of Californians have gotten a push notification on their phones asking them to opt in to get warnings from their phones if they have been in close proximity to someone who later tests positive for the coronavirus, all while keeping everyone involved anonymous. We wanted to know more about how exposure notifications work and exactly how well privacy is protected. Gennie Gebhart with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties nonprofit, explains how the system works and what information is exchanged.

Playing for Keeps will screen virtually Feb. 4-21 at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival.

San Francisco health officials have set an ambitious goal of vaccinating all 900,000 people who live and work in the city by the end of June, and took a step toward that goal Friday by opening a mass vaccination center at City College of San Francisco. The opening followed a hearing called by Supervisor Matt Haney earlier this week to answer outstanding questions about the city’s vaccination plan, where health officials and several representatives of private health care providers presented their plans to the supervisors. The main problem, they said, was not having access to enough supply of the vaccines.

As local mainstays — cafes, bars and restaurants — launch fundraisers to ask neighbors to help them survive indefinitely extended shelter-in-place orders, governments at all levels are offering up various forms of aid. In San Francisco, many of those supportive programs for businesses and workers come through the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Director Joaquín Torres returns to Civic to talk about how the city is trying to help.

If a police officer was found to have used deadly force or inflicted serious injuries on the job, until 2019, disciplinary records about that incident had been kept secret. That changed when SB 1421, authored by state Senator Nancy Skinner, went into effect. In 2020, she moved to expand the legislation to also grant access to records about officers who engaged in biased or discriminatory behavior or used excessive or unreasonable force. Skinner talks about the impacts of the original transparency law and how she intends to improve it.

San Francisco has a vastly different attitude toward Cannabis than it did as recently as the 1990s. That's when Dennis Peron was fighting to get marijuana to HIV and cancer patients. Despite being repeatedly arrested, he helped lead the effort to legalize medical marijuana. A new documentary screening at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival from February 4 to February 21 tells his story.

Every year, organizers with the Anti Police Terror Project mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day with public actions meant to reclaim King’s radical legacy. This year they have adapted those actions to the pandemic and are working in the context of the recent riot at the US capitol. On the morning of Friday, January 15th, activists announced their plans and cited some of King’s stances and ideas that have been erased from common narratives about his work.

In these highlights from a recent reporter roundtable discussion, journalists share their experiences with local government agencies reducing access to records, data and interviews during emergency health orders. Hear from Lydia Chávez, executive editor at Mission Local, Trisha Thadani, a city hall reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, Scott Morris, an investigative reporter, and independent journalist Nuala Bishari.

After a mob of pro-Trump agitators stormed the Capitol last week, forcing a delay in the certification of the electoral vote for president, Twitter was the first social media platform to block Donald Trump from posting, with others soon following suit. Ali Alkhatib, a research fellow at the University of San Francisco’s Center for Applied Data Ethics, examines how platforms moderate content and enforce rules with an eye on the social impacts of those choices.

As of December, when the school district and teachers unions couldn’t come to an agreement about safety measures for reopening, there is no set date for when schools will resume in person in San Francisco. Hayin Kimner, interim director of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco, a parent advocacy group, shares how families are coping with distance learning and what their most urgent questions are in this time of uncertainty.

UPDATE: After this interview was recorded, 48Hills reported that several residents and staff members of the facility where Malik Washington lives in the Tenderloin, which is operated by a for-profit prison contractor, have tested positive for coronavirus. Washington told 48Hills he has been reprimanded and his phone has been confiscated for communicating with a reporter about the outbreak.

Months ago, legislators approved several layers of protections to keep renters from being kicked out and potentially made homeless during a pandemic. Now several of these protections are expiring, though there are efforts underway to extend them. Scott Weaver, supervising attorney at the Eviction Defense Collaborative and a volunteer with the San Francisco Tenants Union, lays out which protections are still in place and which are going away — and offers some guidance about how tenants and landlords should handle the impacts of the pandemic on tenants' ability to pay rent.

If you have been in close contact with someone who is diagnosed with COVID-19, you may get a call from a contact tracer, who will want to offer you some guidance about quarantining — including, potentially, connecting you to food or cleaning supply delivery. Paula Heaney, a San Francisco librarian who along with other city employees transitioned to working as a contact tracer, offers a glimpse into how the program works.

Read Scott Morris' story, "She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired" at ProPublica.org

Newsrooms across the country have been in overdrive most of this year, covering a global pandemic, a primary and a presidential election, and protests against systemic racism and police brutality. Contributors with YR Media, a national network of young journalists and artists, have been covering it all with reporting and perspectives that don’t usually get the same space and attention in national or corporate outlets. CEO Kyra Kyles and contributing writer Erianna Jiles, a creative writing student at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota, look back on 2020, what’s happened, and what still needs to happen.

In the Bay Area, hospitals still have some ICU capacity left, but health care practitioners are working hard to care for the influx of COVID-19 patients. The surge is leaving workers stretched thin and patients isolated. At the same time, coronavirus vaccines are being distributed to frontline health workers. Dr. Monica Bhargava, a pulmonary critical care physician working at a county hospital in Oakland, offers a glimpse at a day inside the ICU and what her experience with the vaccine has been like so far.

The FBI arrest of former San Francisco Department of Public Works head Mohammed Nuru on fraud charges in January kicked off a cascade of raids, charges and investigations that have spurred the departure of several other city department heads. We spoke with Retired FBI agent James Wedick, who spent years investigating corruption, explains how the FBI gets involved and how these investigations work.

The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the presidency and vice-presidency left several roles for Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill, and politicians from around the state, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, have weighed in on Newsom’s choice of Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill Harris’ seat in the U.S. Senate. San Francisco State University politics professor Jason McDaniel joins us to analyze Newsom’s choice and reflect on the year in local politics. Newly elected supervisors will join the city’s main legislative body and a corruption probe that has already resulted in the exit of three city department heads continues to unfold while a budget crisis looms.

Vaccines are arriving in California and doses will be administered at nursing homes soon through a government partnership with pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens, whose staffs will deliver vaccines to long term care facilities. Eric Dowdy, chief government affairs officer at Leading Age California, an organization representing mostly nonprofit senior care facilities, said the top priority for those planning the vaccine rollout is combating misinformation that fuels mistrust in the vaccine.

The soon-to-be new owner of the San Francisco Examiner intends to grow the publication’s newsroom and expand its coverage, diversifying the perspectives in San Francisco’s news ecosystem. Clint Reilly, a retired political consultant with a real estate and hospitality business who also owns two local magazines, is purchasing the Examiner and SF Weekly after the two papers were under absentee ownership for years. The company he owns along with his wife Janet, Clint Reilly Communications, will take over in January. Reilly said he intends to hire more reporters and expand the Examiner.

While COVID-19 deaths have the potential for exponential growth due to the nature of a viral pandemic, they are dwarfed by the number of people who have died from drug overdoses in the city this year.

The latest pandemic order shutting down outdoor dining struck a devastating blow to restaurant owners and workers who have tried to adapt.

Read Nuala Bishari's story here.Listen to our episode about surveillance here.Find the conversation with Lauren Smiley about surveillance, package theft, and the new neighborhood watch here.

While the pandemic is changing the way people work and socialize and has resulted in economic downturn, acquiring land and building remain expensive, and the Bay Area has long fallen short of its housing goals. Sarah Karlinsky, senior adviser at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a public policy think tank better known as SPUR, has published reports indicating that Bay Area municipalities should be constructing 45,000 units of housing per year. A paradigm shift to considering housing a human right and treating it like infrastructure would help achieve that goal, she said.

Jamille Cabacungan, a nurse who works in an acute care unit at UCSF Medical Center that cares for COVID-19 patients, says while the availability of personal protective equipment like N-95 masks has improved, nurses are feeling overwhelmed and would be better able to provide care with a bigger staff. For patients, she says, the experience of being hospitalized with COVID-19 is one of isolation. Even nurses limit their interactions with these patients to prevent getting infected, performing their tasks quickly.

The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank has roughly doubled the number of people it serves since before the pandemic. For many, says Tina Gonzalez, director of community partnerships for the food bank, what they receive isn’t just supplemental to what they can afford on their own — they depend on it. The high need is likely to persist into the new year, and Gonzalez says the food bank will likely remain in high gear even after case rates have lowered and lockdown restrictions lifted.

In 2005, a group of advocacy groups working on homelessness formed a coalition to collaborate across cities and states and advance national policy. They called it WRAP, the Western Regional Advocacy Project. Its director, Paul Boden, joined “Civic” to look back on 15 years of organizing and ensuring that people experiencing homelessness themselves inform research and policy.

In November, voters in Oakland approved Measure QQ, which gives 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in school board elections. Meanwhile, voters in San Francisco rejected Proposition G, which would have lowered the voting age for municipal elections to 16. Statewide, a measure to allow residents as young as 16 to vote in primaries also failed. Ixchel Arista, a 15-year-old organizer with Oakland Kids First, and Sarah Cheung, a 17-year-old San Francisco Youth Commissioner, said they encountered voters in their phone banking campaigns who doubted young peoples’ ability to make sound decisions — an attitude they described as “adultist.”

Public transportation has been transformed by the coronavirus pandemic. Light rail is shut down, and bus service is concentrated on core lines. While the indefinitely extended shelter-in-place order and restrictions that fluctuate with case rates have resulted in service changes, work on major improvement projects is ongoing. For the system as a whole, low ridership means low fare revenues and serious budget considerations — which could mean layoffs. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Director Jeffrey Tumlin and Julie Kirschbaum, the agency’s Director of Transit, explain how Muni has adapted to the pandemic and some of the changes ahead.

San Francisco’s office of the public defender has a unit dedicated to defending immigrants in court. In most states, they often have no representation because there is no right to counsel in immigration cases. Francisco Ugarte, managing attorney of this unit, talked with “Civic” about how handoffs between agencies work and what happens to someone who is arrested by immigration enforcement in San Francisco, as well as a class action suit the unit helped litigate over COVID-19 outbreaks in detention facilities.

Every odd-numbered San Francisco supervisorial district had an election in November. One race was extremely close and several were targeted by big independent expenditure money. But Joe Eskenazi, managing editor at Mission Local, reports that money was apparently ineffective, failing to propel candidates to victory and failing to dissuade voters from passing new tax measures.

Read Kristi's reporting here.

Read the full series "Driving Home: Surviving the Housing Crisis" here.

Postal workers nationwide rallied on Tuesday to demand Congress approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service to ensure its continued operation, and reverse workflow changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. In San Francisco, members of the American Postal Workers Union San Francisco Local #2 gathered in the rain in front of the Fox Plaza post office to distribute leaflets, saying the service was still in dire need of congressional aid and could shut down next year without it.

BART ridership was about 13% of pre-pandemic levels in October, which meant a drop in revenue for the system. Despite taking a financial hit, BART immediately responded to the pandemic with new protocols. The system now boasts a filtration system that replaces the air in each car every 70 seconds. Workers are also making infrastructure improvements while ridership is down. Janice Li, who represents BART District 8 on its board of directors, joins "Civic" to discuss what's changed and what the future might look like for BART.