Civic

Some nonessential businesses will be able to resume limited operations starting May 18 if the rate of coronavirus-related hospitalizations in San Francisco does not increase in the next week, Mayor London Breed said Monday. “The curve is indeed flat,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the city’s Department of Public Health, referring to the hospitalization rate in the last month. Hear this and ot...

Under shelter-in-place orders, the Public Press staff has been producing the local current affairs program “Civic” from home, conducting interviews remotely and managing a radio station at a distance. The team has also turned its focus almost exclusively to covering the local effects of the coronavirus pandemic through in-depth interviews, complete press briefing coverage and San Francisco specifi...

A Mission District coronavirus testing initiative has shown stark disparities in who has been getting sick — 95% of those who tested positive in this initiative identified as Hispanic or Latinx. Among all those tested, less than 2% tested positive. Among people who worked in the testing area, that figure was 6.1%. Dr. Carina Marquez, assistant professor of medicine at UCSF and an infectious diseas...

In late April, a coalition of medical, community and government organizations called Unidos En Salud tested nearly 3,000 people in one Mission District census tract for the new coronavirus. Among those testing positive, 95% identified as Hispanic or Latinx, though they made up only 44% of those tested. Jon Jacobo with the Latino Task Force on Covid-19 and the UCSF Study Committee says the dispropo...

In response to an increase in tent encampments in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, city officials will target 13 blocks with outreach, services, cleaning and enforcement. People living in some encampments will be asked to relocate to permitted sites, and the city will open one such site with 50 spaces on Fulton Street between Larkin and Hyde streets. Hear this and other updates from the most re...

Last Friday, two homeless women, Couper Orona and Jess Gonzalez, briefly occupied a long-vacant home in the Castro before police removed them. They are part of Reclaim SF, an organization inspired by Moms4Housing, a group of mothers who took over a vacant house in Oakland last year to protest real estate speculation. Quiver Watts, an organizer with Reclaim SF and editor of the Street Sheet, outlin...

The anti-Asian racist rhetoric around the coronavirus pandemic is part of a long history of anti-Asian racism in America. Author and activist Helen Zia warns that the surge of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is likely to worsen as shelter-in-place orders are relaxed, and says as racism is used to sow division, we should come together.

As part of the effort to expand testing to all San Franciscans the city is offering free coronavirus testing to all essential workers, even those without symptoms. Mayor London Breed expressed concern over crowds at Dolores Park. Officials also reiterated that assistance for the homeless is being prioritized for those who were homeless in San Francisco before the pandemic, claiming others have arr...

Updated 5/5 to reflect Board of Supervisors vote.

Gina Baleria, assistant professor of communication and media studies at Sonoma State University and host of News In Context, guest hosts this discussion about the future of news media with Martin Reynolds, co-executive director of the Maynard Institute, and Michael Stoll, executive director of the San Francisco Public Press. Reynolds says the traditional business model for news fails to support th...

Among the most exposed and often vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic are people who don’t have a place of shelter. Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, a nonprofit that offers a variety of services from employment guidance to emergency shelter, said the city seems to be waiting for people to get sick before intervening. Like other service providers, when he and others at Hospita...

As San Francisco officials worked to expand housing options for the homeless, city leaders warned that anyone from outside San Francisco seeking a hotel room or other shelter would be turned away to preserve resources for those who were homeless within city limits before the pandemic hit. “The hotel rooms that we are providing are for people who were homeless in San Francisco before this crisis,”...

Many sex workers are barred from accessing protections and resources meant to help workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic — federal small business loans, for example, specifically excludes those whose work is “of a prurient sexual nature” from eligibility. Organizations like St. James Infirmary, a peer-run health and safety clinic for sex workers, are mobilizing harm-reduction efforts. Staff...

The Bay Area is the third largest economy for film and entertainment in the U.S. after New York and Los Angeles, and is home to more documentary filmmakers per capita than any other region. With film festivals canceled or postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, independent filmmakers are being forced to rethink how to launch and promote their work. Filmmakers Marc Smolowitz, Rodrigo Reyes, Ann...

The shelter-in-place order keeping Bay Area residents in their homes except for essential activities will be extended through the month of May, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday. Dr. Grant Colfax, the city’s health director, said health officials are also looking for a sustained decline in the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 before the shelter-in-place order can be lift...

Farmers markets are able to reconfigure stalls and have the advantage of often being open-air, but some are also adapting to social distancing health orders by increasing access to fresh produce for low-income customers. Markets across the nation are changing their layouts and shopping procedures, while farmers, vendors and advocacy groups grapple with decreased foot traffic and at times inconsist...

San Franciscans may be required to shelter-in-place well beyond May 3, the expiration date of the city’s current public health order. In a brief aside during Friday’s Department of Emergency Management press conference, Mayor London Breed said that her administration could make an announcement about extending the order as early as next week. Hear this and other updates from the press briefing here...

A group of Stanford-affiliated volunteers has set out to develop a tool to make accessing financial support, whether public or private, easier. The project, called Healthier Finance, is part of Stanford’s COVID-19 Reponse Innovation Lab, in which volunteers from a broad range of disciplines including medicine, business and media hope to collaborate to create technology and systems that are needed...

City officials on Wednesday announced expanded access to coronavirus testing. Tests will now be available to essential workers who must leave their homes to work and anyone who has symptoms, regardless of ability to pay. A doctor's note is not needed to schedule a test, and neither is insurance, though those who have it will be asked to provide their insurance information when they schedule the te...

The St. Anthony Foundation of San Francisco has paid some $400,000 of its own money, and expects to pay $250,000 a month going forward, for equipment, staff and service changes necessary to meet the needs of the community during the coronavirus pandemic, its director José Ramirez, estimates. That includes an increase in staff time, stays in hotel rooms for residents of its winter shelter over age...

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation last week that obligates the city to procure 8,250 hotel rooms by April 26. As of April 20, 2,209 were under contract. Activists around the state organized demonstrations last week, showing up outside hotels and unfurling banners, calling on their city leaders to take over hotels and immediately house the homeless in them. While S...

San Francisco’s Mission District has the highest number of COVID-19 infections, based on new data released on the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Data Tracker map. Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the Department of Public Health, called the results “sobering, but not surprising.” He said many residents living in the hardest hit neighborhoods have long suffered from numerous forms of inequ...

Read more about the mask rule here .

With millions filing for unemployment benefits across the state, a projected unemployment rate of more than 18% and whole industries out of business, the state is facing dire needs and stark inequalities. Donnie Maclurcan, executive director of the Post Growth Institute and an affiliate professor of economics at Southern Oregon University, says the economy was already fragile, but that there may b...

San Francisco is training a corps of city workers to trace the contacts of people who may have been exposed to someone suffering from COVID-19. City officials also announced the opening of a new drive-through testing center in the city’s South of Market District for those who may have been exposed to SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The city is still limiting testing to front-line worke...