Civic

It's our birthday! On this day last year, Civic aired its first episode. San Francisco Public Press publisher Lila LaHood talks with producer Mel Baker and host Laura Wenus about major changes in the first year, what we've learned, and what we're hoping to focus on next.

In this press conference, city officials advise residents to stay indoors with windows closed as much as possible to avoid unhealthy smoke. If air quality deteriorates to very unhealthy levels, they said, the city will open respite centers with healthier air.

'Unforgetting' launches Sept. 1

The 2020 census is well under way, but a timetable muddled by the coronavirus pandemic coupled with attempts by President Trump to make disruptive changes have set the stage for the spread of misinformation that threatens a complete count. Local community organizations have been working to get correct and timely information to people often labeled “hard to count” to avoid that outcome.

This year the census, a constitutionally mandated count of every person in the country every 10 years, is being conducted primarily online for the first time. While the shift offered convenience to the digitally connected, many communities already considered “hard to count” include people with limited digital tools or literacy that put the digital questionnaire out of reach. With the coronavirus p...

The decennial census is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives. And according to the Project on Government Oversight, California can also expect to receive more than $170 billion in census-guided federal funding over the next ten years. In a July memo, the President sought to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count used to apportion representat...

In this press conference, Mayor London Breed announced that hundreds of millions of dollars have been set aside in San Francisco’s budget for COVID-19 prevention, testing and treatment. Over the next year, the Mayor’s Office has allocated $185 million for health care operations, $183 million for housing and shelter, $62 million for food distribution and $16 million for communications. Hear full au...

The Crescendo gala takes place Monday, August 17 at 7 pm.

A recording of a Public Press Live event featuring a panel discussion on law enforcement agencies’ use of surveillance technology and the San Francisco police department’s access to live feeds of private camera networks in Union Square. Hear from Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher at Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Shelby Perkins and Craig Nelson, graduate students at Stanford Univers...

Nearly 2,500 cases of verbal and physical attacks against Asian Americans were reported between March 19 and July 22 to a tracking project called Stop AAPI Hate. In San Francisco, an Asian American bus driver was assaulted by passengers after an argument over proper mask wearing. A woman reported getting verbally assaulted and a drink thrown at her by a passenger who told her and her brother to "g...

Local governments around the nation are grappling with police reform. One proposal that's been floated is to change the role and thereby the approach of law enforcement officers by giving them responsibilities beyond policing. Sunnyvale’s Department of Public Safety includes fire, medical and police services and all first responders are trained across all three disciplines. Department Chief Phan N...

In contact tracing, health workers identify and reach out to people who have an infectious disease, then try to determine with whom they have been in close contact and to whom they may have transmitted the disease. Then they try to reach those potentially exposed people to try to halt further infections. Dr. Darpun Sachdev, the contact tracing program lead in San Francisco, and Luis Hernandez, a l...

San Francisco’s coronavirus infection rate falls slightly but remains in the red zone, with the city expected to reach 7,000 cases overall in days. Also: SF extends the Great Plates program until September, funding restaurant-prepared delivery meals for some seniors sheltering in place.

When the fallout of the pandemic started to hit Richmond, the affordable housing organization Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services jumped into action, setting up a rapid response fund for families and making its money management and housing education courses virtual. Nikki Beasley, the organization’s executive director, talks about inequities in housing and wealth in the Bay Area, how to think a...

In the reporting series “Driving Home: Surviving the Housing Crisis,” photojournalist Yesica Prado documents life on four wheels in Berkeley and San Francisco. The project, in partnership with CatchLight Local, offers an intimate look at what it really means for home to be a vehicle in the Bay Area, whether it’s an RV with lots of space and utilities or a sedan with neither. Prado, who was and is...

For some of the Bay Area’s Central American residents, there are parallels between the deployment of federal law enforcement to American cities and their own experiences with authoritarian governments in their countries of origin. Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, director at advocacy and social service nonprofit CARECEN SF, talks about how the Bay Area’s Central American diaspora is reacting.

In this press conference, SF officials announce that the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in San Francisco is rising rapidly and the city is facing “a major surge.” Department of Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said, “In April, we experienced a surge of COVID-19 cases, which at its peak, saw 94 San Franciscans in the hospital. That number dropped to just 26 patients six weeks ag...

Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom says what had once been uncommon is now a necessity. “Before COVID, about 5% of working days were spent at home and that was done by about 15% of Americans, with an average of one in every three days. During COVID, 42% of us are now working from home so it's an eight-fold increase.” When the pandemic is over, Bloom predicts that fewer people will work five days a...

In March, Dr. Monica Bhargava, a pulmonary critical care physician at the county hospital in Oakland, predicted on Civic that the novel coronavirus would deeply affect the region’s health care system for many months to come. In recent months, scientists and doctors have learned much more about how the virus spreads and what makes patients vulnerable to serious complications. Bhargava returns to th...

Local organizers in Vallejo have been raising the alarm about police brutality for years. Among them is Club Stride, Incorporated, an organization dedicated to cultivating civic participation in communities of color and empowering youth led by executive director and founder Dr. Rhonda Renfro. Club Stride and its youth organizers like Raven Manigault, a recent Howard University graduate who aspires...

San Francisco Public Press publisher Lila LaHood talks with 48Hills publisher Marke Bieschke and arts editor about his new book "Into the Streets: A Young Person's Visual History of Protests in the United States," which gives background and context for a long legacy of uprising and civil disobedience around the nation. Bieschke also discusses what this history means in light of recent the recent w...

In this press conference, hear Mayor London Breed and Director of Health Dr. Grant Colfax discuss the expansion of coronavirus testing. San Francisco is conducting more than 3,000 coronavirus tests per day, but backlogs are developing at labs and a rising demand is making it more difficult to schedule a test. Testing capacity will be expanded by about 1,400 tests per day in the coming weeks.

Working from home could become the new norm, emptying out San Francisco’s office highrises. Two architects imagine how those buildings could become housing and even farms as part of an eco-friendly post-pandemic downtown.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced legislation that aims to keep landlords from engaging in construction work in ways that disrupt the lives of their tenants who are sheltering in place. Tenant Andrea Carla Michaels says her power and water are frequently shut off without warning and construction work is done without proper dust mitigation. Peskin's proposal would require that landlords provid...

In this press conference, Mayor London Breed said that San Francisco has been added to the statewide watch list of counties due to the rise in infections. As a result, on Monday indoor malls and non-essential offices will be required to close. Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the county's Department of Public Health, said that a health directive would require private hospitals to conduct same day tes...