Civic

The daily work commute nearly disappeared in March of 2020 as the Bay Area went into pandemic lockdown, and while travel on public transit continues to lag this Summer, many Bay Area residents are getting behind the wheel to get to and from their jobs. We talk to a CalTrans spokesperson about current traffic patterns and with a radio traffic reporter about what he has seen on the roads during the...

The pandemic and related precautions affected millions of restaurant workers around the country — unemployment in the restaurant industry shot up to more than 40% nationwide in April 2020, and to 60% in the Bay Area, according to the State of Restaurant Workers report from the advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. Zoe Caras, national research associate for the organization, expla...

The city of Mountain View is prohibiting oversize vehicle parking on streets that are 40 feet wide or, which more than 80 percent of the city’s streets are. While the ordinance is described as a traffic safety measure, according to local reporting, the ban primarily affects homeless people living in vehicles. Last week, a group of civil rights organizations filed suit against the city over that or...

Some of the people most at risk for infection with the delta variant of the coronavirus are those who have not gotten vaccinated. Outreach workers with Code Tenderloin head into the streets with vaccines to inoculate people right where they are and to build trust with those still reluctant to receive the vaccine.

The majority of San Francisco residents have gotten vaccinated against the coronavirus. But a lack of trust in the healthcare system or trouble making an appointment or going to a vaccination site may still pose barriers for some, especially people experiencing homelessness. Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician and researcher who directs the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, is part of a...

The delta variant has arrived in the Bay Area. Though San Francisco's case numbers seem to be rising, most residents are vaccinated here. But people under age 12 aren’t eligible yet, which raises the question of what to do in schools. San Francisco will require all students to wear masks indoors, but not outdoors, while at school. Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco’s Health Officer, returns to Civic...

Bruce Wheeler was diagnosed with COVID-19 last spring, but never fully recovered, suffering a variety of symptoms of what has become known as "long COVID." He's not alone — according to a UC Davis overview of a handful of recent studies, more than one in four COVID-19 patients develop symptoms lasting for months, even if they had mild cases. Bruce and Dr. Brian Block, who has helped treat him and...

Read the full report here .

Research has shown links between residential racial segregation and a plethora of health concerns, from asthma to obesity. Segregation can also be a factor in wealth — household incomes and home values in white neighborhoods are nearly twice as high as those in segregated communities of color. These are some of the key points laid out in a new report from the Othering and Belonging Institute at th...

As some California cities move away from gas in new buildings to address climate change, and after recent news that gas lines in some San Francisco buildings have been encased in concrete during seismic retrofits, we explore the hazardous tradeoffs of burning fossil fuels in buildings. Sasan Saadat, a research and policy analyst with Earthjustice, gives an overview of the pollution created by gas...

California's eviction moratorium protecting tenants who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic was set to expire at the end of June. Legislators extended it, but the state law supersedes local pandemic eviction protections, and prevents city legislators from adding new ones through March of next year. Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative,...

San Francisco and California have formed advisory committees to formulate a plan for reparations for African Americans, to study and work to make right the harms done by slavery, segregation and systemic racism. Rev. Amos Brown, senior pastor at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco and president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP is on both committees and discusses California’s legacy of ra...

As companies mull bringing staff who have been working from home back into the office, mechanical engineer Steve Taylor's consulting firm has been fielding questions about making offices as safe as they were pre-pandemic through upgrades to HVAC systems. That's not possible, he says — but if workers wear masks, existing systems that meet ventilation standards we already have should be enough to br...

In recent years, the mills and foundries that receive recyclables from Recology have stopped accepting material with more than one percent impurities, so the sorting facility at Pier 96 must work at a very high standard. On a tour of the sorting center, we learn what happens when things that don't belong in the recycling end up there, and what to do about things that are difficult to recycle, like...

As Vice President Kamala Harris visited the US-Mexico border on Friday to tour a detention facility and meet with people who have made the journey to the United States, we talked with San Francisco resident Soledad Castillo, who left Honduras at age 14. She is one of the narrators in a Voice of Witness oral history collection called “Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Centra...

California's remaining restrictions pertain to mega-events, unvaccinated people, healthcare facilities, and settings serving children, and the guidelines say little about social distancing. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatrics – infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University, and Dr. Lee Riley, professor of infectious diseases at the School of Public Health...

With the state emerging from a pandemic that prompted emergency action and investment to bring people living on the street indoors, and after recent pledges from state and local officials to invest into solutions to homelessness, local nonprofit leaders discuss what long-lasting solutions might look like. In these highlights from a recent panel discussion hosted by the nonprofit At the Crossroads,...

Local and state officials have been announcing their intentions to invest billions into addressing homelessness, and two reports laying out strategies to bring the majority of unsheltered people in the region indoors have made headlines in recent months. Tomiquia Moss, founder and CEO of AllHome, describes the need for more investment across different interventions to reduce the pressure to priori...

Editor's note 6/30/21: The original audio for this episode was uploaded in error. We have replaced it with the correct file. Apologies for the confusion. Hear more of The Finch Files here .

Alcatraz Island is once again drawing tourists from around the world. Visitors arriving on the island will see signage proclaiming “Indian Land!” as it would have appeared 50 years ago. A reminder that beyond the stories of prison escapes “The Rock” was the place that lit the spark for the native American rights movement in North America. We talked with the daughter of one of those occupiers about...

More than 20 years ago, a filmmaker documented the lives of a group of people in San Francisco exploring gender and what it means to be transgender, to create a film called "Gendernauts." Now Monika Treut has directed and written a new film, “Genderation,” in which she follows up with these same protagonists to see how shifting social scenes, political climate and individual circumstances of their...

Hummingbird Farm provides organic food as well as medicinal plants, and serves as a community and education hub in particular for young people. Tere Almaguer, an environmental justice organizer with PODER, which operates the farm, talked with “Civic” about how the drought has already had an impact, and how the group has adapted to years of inconsistent rainfall.

“No Straight Lines” screens at the Frameline film festival, digitally Jun 17–27 and in-person at the Castro Theater on Sunday, June 27.

Freedom of information advocates and journalists have criticized a number of instances in which law enforcement officers arrested, detained, or even injured reporters at work covering protests in California. In response, state Senator Mike McGuire authored SB 98, which aims to codify journalists’ right to access demonstrations. As the proposal makes its way through the legislature, David Snyder, e...

Members of San Francisco's Street Crisis Response Team show up to situations when someone is experiencing a mental health or substance-related crisis, as an alternative to police response, which can escalate such situations. Dr. Angelica Almeida with the Department of Public Health, Chief Simon Pang from the fire department, clinician Shari Lachin and peer counselor Miguel Levya talk about how the...