The Bay

What happens when the people most invested in trying to make the Bay Area a better place decide to LEAVE entirely? Gabriel Metcalf is the outgoing president of the Bay Area think tank SPUR, and he's moving to take a similar job in Sydney, Australia. Metcalf says the Bay Area is one of the world's centers of wealth creation, but has struggled to meet some of the most basic needs. For instance, housing. Guest: Gabriel Metcalf, outgoing CEO and president of SPUR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In December 2016, Lindsay McCollum and Eddie “Tennessee” Tate were shot and killed in San Francisco’s Mission District. The two were homeless and living together. Lindsay's mother, Carrie McCollum, reached out to a KQED reporter one year after he went searching for answers himself. The case remains unresolved, but Carrie doesn’t want her daughter to be forgotten. Guest: Peter Arcuni, KQED reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mention electric scooters and people usually react with an eye roll. It's associated with the newness of the tech culture of the Bay Area. Some see scooters as a "micro-transit" tool; others simply see them as a nuisance. The city of San Jose thinks it's got the answer to managing them: geofencing. Guest: KQED Silicon Valley Senior Editor Tonya Mosley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oakland is considering closing 24 schools. Most of these schools are likely in East Oakland, where many of the poorest students live. A group of parents is demanding that if Oakland Unified closes their kids' schools that they be given first dibs of any other school in the district. This includes charter schools, which have been part of the reason why some of the district-run schools have experienced a drop in enrollment. Guest: Julia McEvoy, KQED senior editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most landlords in San Jose don't take Section 8 housing vouchers. And housing advocates see the vouchers as a proxy for race, or keeping out people of color. As a possible remedy, the San Jose city council wants to tweak the law to encourage more landlords to take the vouchers. The proposal has some holes, though. Guest: Emily DeRuy, Mercury News reporter covering San Jose Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Veronica Aguilar crossed the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum from El Salvador earlier this year. She's staying with a host family in Pinole while she waits for an immigration court hearing. Today, one family's story of immigration. Guest: Farida Jhabvala Romero, KQED immigration and equity reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s a new one: stacking homes on top of a city bus yard. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency wants to build housing on top of its Potrero bus yard right across the street from KQED studios. Their idea is that the housing would help pay for upgrades to the facility. It's kind of a wild idea. Guest: Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, transportation reporter and columnist for the San Francisco Examiner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We need homes near transit. But the first time state Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a bill, SB 827, that would have required cities to approve dense housing near transit corridors, it died a quick death. This week he announced a new version. The bill, SB 50, includes changes that are supposed to help poorer neighborhoods stay more in tact and force housing into places with more wealth. Guest: Dan Brekke, KQED Transportation Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This isn't supposed to be your traditional tech campus. Google says it wants to build a village inside San Jose that will be open to the public, different from how most tech campuses operate. It's expected to have public parks, restaurants and other amenities. The plan, if approved, could more than double the population of San Jose’s downtown. The city council takes a big step Tuesday with a vote to sell off 21 acres for $220 million. Guest: Tonya Mosley, KQED Silicon Valley Senior Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a $6 million donation he is making to subsidize five years of rent for formerly homeless residents who will move into a renovated apartment building in the Tenderloin next year. Benioff used the occasion to push other wealthy Bay residents to pitch in. Guest: Kevin Fagan, reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle Kevin has done a lot of reporting on homelessness in San Francisco. You can read his coverage as part of the SF Homeless Project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The city of Oakland wasn't pleased when a group of homeless people moved to a vacant lot in East Oakland in October. After the city posted a notice to vacate, the homeless residents went to court to stop the eviction. Now a judge must decide if the group of mostly women can stay on city land. Guest: Sandhya Dirks, KQED reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Harvey Milk and the city of San Francisco gives many people the "permission" they need to fight for gay rights in other places. The Castro became a symbol of this permission and Milk's legacy has since spread across the world. Today, a day before the 40th anniversary of his death, we look at Harvey Milk’s message of hope through the eyes of one man who watched, admired and acted on that message. Guest: Greg Carey, Chief of Patrol for Castro Community on Patrol Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When rain begins to fall on Butte County this week, some will be sleeping on the streets. The Camp Fire displaced tens of thousands of people, many of whom are struggling to do basic things: find shelter, see a doctor, pay the bills. Today, we'll show you how picking up the pieces is about more than finding a new home. Guests: Raquel Maria Dillon and Peter Arcuni, KQED reporters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A small number of people -- spouses of H1B visa holders -- were given the right to work under a special type of visa created under President Obama in 2015. Now President Trump wants to eliminate those spousal visas. How doing so threatens Silicon Valley's competitive edge, Bay Area diversity, and immigrant families. Guest: Rachael Myrow, KQED Silicon Valley reporter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paradise was a city where a lot of people already carried more than their share of trauma from childhood. Now, as many work to piece their lives back together they have the added weight of trauma from the Camp Fire. Our reporter was in Paradise this past summer and tells us about one woman who is now struggling with both kinds of trauma. Guest: Laura Klivans, KQED health reporter Tap here to see pictures of Sabrina and her daughter Aroara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After two fires burned right up to the edge of town in 2008, the town of Paradise made a plan. It divided itself into evacuation zones. It went so far as to hold a mock evacuation during morning rush hour. People knew what they were supposed to do if fire came back. And yet last week's Camp Fire was moving so fast that all the residents fled at once, exit routes clogged, and more people died than in any other fire in state history. Visit KQED.org or SacBee.com to see more wildfire reporting. Guest: Ryan Lillis, Sacramento Bee reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caviar, Postmates, Uber Eats…the Bay Area’s tech family gave us food delivery apps. And there are plenty of gig workers willing to drive us this food. These delivery apps allow us to hole up in our office, work harder, faster and avoid human interaction. At least, that’s what one tech reporter fears. He says it’s not just consumers who are being conditioned by these apps. It’s the restaurants too. Guest: Sam Harnett, KQED Silicon Valley reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People from the Bay Area or those who live here are a proud bunch. But how do you define this magical place? Do you use geography to draw the boundaries? Maybe it’s about sports teams and their fan bases or where BART goes? The hosts of the Bay Curious podcast at KQED explore the many ways we define the Bay Area. Guest: Jessica Placzek, KQED Bay Curious reporter-producer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Resistance. That's been the call of many, including those in the Bay Area who have led the country in resisting President Trump’s attacks on marginalized people and the state’s liberal ideals. We'll hear from those who turned up at the polls, and others who didn't. Guest: Monica Samayoa and Guy Marzorati, KQED reporters See all election results from KQED News. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

School bond measures almost always pass. More money for schools – and by extension, kids – seems like an obvious yes. But less attention is given to how that bond money gets spent and who is on the receiving end. One powerful lobbying group, nicknamed CASH, helps school districts get bonds passed. But critics say the arrangement is short-changing schools – and taxpayers. Guest: Brian Krans, Bay Area-based freelance investigative reporter Read Brian's full story: Cashing in on Education in the East Bay Express. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About 1,000 Google employees walked out of work Thursday and staged a rally on the company's main Mountain View campus. The impetus was a New York Times report published last week about dozens of sexual misconduct allegations and some very large exit packages for accused executives. At the rally, our reporter captured some of what was shared before being asked to leave. Guest: Sam Harnett, KQED Silicon Valley reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gab.ai is like Twitter without any restrictions. Gab is also where a man named Robert Bowers posted comments before allegedly shooting and killing 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Today: what Silicon Valley is doing to prevent hate speech online. Guest: Rachael Myrow, KQED reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you embarrassed to share your salary? Yeah, a lot of us are. Software engineer Jackie Luo makes the case that we can’t improve the pay gap (for women or people of color) in industries like tech without being more transparent. So, she asked men in tech to share their salaries via Twitter. And thousands did. Guest: Jackie Luo, software engineer at Square Read Jackie's full story "I Know the Salaries of Thousands of Tech Employees" on Medium. And you can read her Tweet thread asking men to share salaries here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A big construction site of new housing went up in flames early Tuesday morning, and people immediately suspected arson. Some Oaklanders say it's motivated by anger against gentrification. The five-alarm fire in West Oakland isn't the first time new construction has burned lately. Guest: Raquel Maria Dillon, KQED News reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We don't often hear about priests abusing their adult parishioners. As advocates renew calls for accountability for priests accused of abusing children, we hear the story of a woman in Santa Clara who came to her priest for help overcoming sex addiction. She says he abused her and sent her to an exorcist. Guest: Matthias Gafni, Bay Area News Group investigative reporter Read the full story here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Twitter fight between two of San Francisco's biggest, and wealthiest, tech leaders says a lot about the city's problem with homelessness. Proposition C calls for taxing the city's most profitable companies to double the $300 million already spent on homelessness. You might be surprised by who supports and opposes it. Guest: Guy Marzorati, KQED politics and government reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Carlos and Tommie Smith both won medals in the same track event at the 1968 Olympic games in Mexico City. On the medal stand, both raised clenched fists in a salute to Black power. The backlash that followed cost them the rest of their running careers and years of difficulty outside of sports. Fifty years later, the prevailing attitude toward their protest has changed, and the movement lives on with other athlete activists like Colin Kaepernick. Guest: Rachael Myrow, KQED Silicon Valley arts reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Power is important. Both the kind that lets us switch on the lights and the kind that gives people the ability to make decisions for us. Tens of thousands of Northern California residents lost power over the weekend after PG&E cut electricity for safety reasons. That comes one year after fires tore through the Northern California and PG&E was blamed -- in part for NOT cutting power. We discuss what's changed in the last year. Guest: Marisa Lagos, KQED politics and government reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oakland sure has a lot of vacant properties, despite being in the middle of a housing crisis. In November, voters will decide whether the city should tax owners of those properties to help raise millions of dollars for homeless services. But how Measure W defines what 'vacant' means isn’t exactly clear. Guest: Farida Jhabvala Romero, KQED race and equity reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New homes are popping up in Santa Rosa one year after the Northern California fires. Some are rebuilding in the exact same spots. Others are worried about losing everything again when the next fire comes, including firefighters who live there. They know more than anyone about these risks, so what would a firefighter who lost their home do? Guest: Lauren Sommer, KQED science reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kayla Swaim's home was destroyed a year ago in the Tubbs Fire. She lost everything, including her sense of safety. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you ever wish you had a coupon that would give you a discount on what you pay for your house? Proposition 13 is kind of like that. Now Proposition 5 would give homeowners over the age of 55, and a few others, the ability to take their lower property tax rates with them to a new house. It's effectively an extension of Proposition 13. But who pays for that discount? Californians will vote on the measure this November. We at The Bay along with KQED’s Bay Curious podcast explain Proposition 5. Guest: Scott Shafer, senior editor of KQED's California politics and government desk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most people run from a fire. Some journalists go toward it. Two reporters at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, winner of a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the North Bay fires, did just that. The Bay host Devin Katayama interviewed those reporters at the live show The Fire Tapes, a joint event with Snap Judgment. Guest: Julie Johnson and Martin Espinoza, Santa Rosa Press Democrat reporters and Pulitzer Prize winners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First there was one crack. Then two. Now San Francisco's new $2.2 billion Salesforce Transit Center could be shut down for weeks. In an earlier episode, we covered the opening of the transit center (called by some the Grand Central Station of the West). Today, an update on the damage then the original episode about what people hope the transit hub can be. Guests: Chloe Veltman, KQED News reporter, and Dan Brekke, KQED transportation editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Airbnb, caramel macchiatos and luxury dining. Yosemite is starting to feel more and more like the Bay Area. There are more visitors, more traffic, and now a Starbucks. Today, we'll introduce you to Yosemiteland, a podcast from Capital Public Radio that shows us how the national park serving millions of visitors each year is trying to adapt to a changing world. Guest: Ezra David Romero, host of Yosemiteland Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christine Blasey Ford’s and Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony riveted Americans to their screens on Thursday. People gathered in Oakland, Palo Alto, San Francisco and elsewhere to watch the historic Supreme Court nomination hearing. Some of whom were so compelled by what they heard and saw that they told their own stories of sexual assault at protests and rallies across the Bay Area. Guest: Monica Samayoa, KQED News reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a police killing, it can be hard to get a clear picture of what exactly happened. Like the case of Mario Woods, who was shot and killed by San Francisco police in 2015. Nearly three years later, as the civil case is being prepared for trial, we're getting new information in court filings -- including new testimony from the man Woods stabbed a couple hours before he was shot and a new video of the shooting taken from a different perspective. Guest: Alex Emslie, KQED criminal justice reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you use Uber or Lyft in San Francisco, you're no doubt helping to kill the taxi cab industry. But the city didn't help either when it started charging $250,000 for taxi medallions as the ride service companies were getting started. Here's a story about a man who died waiting for a fare and the family that's still paying off his medallion debt. Guest: Sam Harnett, Silicon Valley reporter at KQED Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parents hate it, for sure. But more than that, the schools selection process has created even more segregated student bodies. The goal was the exact opposite. And now there’s a proposal to get off the so-called "lottery" and try something new. Guest: Katrina Schwartz, reporter for KQED's MindShift education blog and podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First came electric scooters. Then came policies to regulate them. The Oakland City Council passed new rules Monday with an eye on equity, requiring that scooters be made accessible in areas of the city that need more transit options and that people with lower incomes be given a discounted rate. Guest: Ali Tadayon, Bay Area News Group reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Silicon Valley got its start with a man who was regarded as a genius and won a Nobel prize. But William Shockley was also a racist and eugenicist who promoted sterilizations of black Americans. A new monument in Mountain View celebrates Shockley's work, but ignores his racist past. Guest: Sam Harnett, KQED Silicon Valley reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your car says a lot about you. It can tell people how much money you have. It can say, "I care about the environment." And while we know that the adoption of electric cars is key to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, most consumers still aren't buying them yet. But the Bay Area's better than most. Guest: Lauren Sommer, KQED science reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine attending a yoga class and finding yourself in a situation where your instructor has violated your personal space by sexually abusing you. Today, we'll hear about KQED's on-going #MeToo series, where women say they've been sexually abused by their yoga instructors. Advisory: Some accounts of sexual abuse in this story contain explicit details and strong language that some may find upsetting or objectionable. Guest: Miranda Leitsinger, reporter and KQED engagement producer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer Iris Kuo knows what it feels like to forget her wallet and still walk out of a fancy department store with a bag full of merchandise: It feels white. Experts predict that some ethnically Asian and Latino people are going through a sociological process of "whitening." Kuo talks about how this hurts many Asian Americans and how transferring white privilege ignores the core issue itself: the very existence of white supremacy in our value system. Guest: Iris Kuo, author of "The Whitening of Asian Americans" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We can't freakin' believe it! The Bay has produced 100 episodes that represent the moment in time the Bay Area's going through. Today, Devin, Erika and Vinnee (The Bay team) talk about some of their favorite episode moments of the last six months. Guest: Devin Katayama, Erika Aguilar and Vinnee Tong, The Bay producers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fentanyl is partly to blame for a rise in *drug* overdose deaths, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control report. Officials say the synthetic and undetectable opioid Fentanyl is being mixed into all types of drugs from heroin to cocaine and more. A KQED journalist talks about how, aside from policy solutions, the stigma around certain drugs can be the biggest barrier to recovery for addicts. Guest: John Sepulvado, co-host of The California Report Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trump may have been the catalyst for some California women seeking political office, but their campaigns are driven by local issues. The KQED special series The Long Run is about women who are running for office this November. Today, we’ll hear about why some Bay Area candidates decided to get involved and how they’re being treated on the campaign trail. Guest: Katie Orr, KQED politics and government reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We know San Francisco cherishes its pristine water source, which comes from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir located in Yosemite. The Bay recently told you about how the city has something in common with more conservative parts of the state over their water rights. Today, KQED's Bay Curious podcast digs further into Hetch Hetchy and brings us on the journey water takes from the reservoir all the way back to the Bay Area. The Bay will be back with all new episodes on Sept. 3. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A teacher visit at home can be intimating - for everyone. Today on The Bay, we're featuring the latest episode of KQED's education podcast MindShift, which launched its third season this week. The show is tackling the intangible elements of academic success: emotional safety, trust and relationships. Guest: Katrina Schwartz, co-host of KQED's MindShift podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

LuPaulette Taylor has worked for decades at McClymonds High School in West Oakland. McClymonds is a school where only around 15 percent of teachers stay on for a third year. So what keeps Taylor around? This week The Bay is taking off to go over listener feedback. Today’s episode is brought to you with help from KQED’s Qed Up podcast and education reporter Vanessa Rancaño. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices