San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2023/page/4/)
Mental health experts based in the San Francisco Bay Area are exploring the ensuing physical, mental and emotional effects of climate change, particularly on the lives of older adults.
The San Francisco Public Library offers a wealth of resources about the history of Black San Franciscans and the struggle for reparations. Check out our compiled list, which includes library recommendations and other resources we have relied on for our reparations reporting.
One year after emergency repairs were supposed to be completed at Plaza East, 39 units are still waiting on fixes. Meanwhile, in late May, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development gave the complex a failing score of 40 out of 100 following physical inspection.
It has been seven months since Maya Laing and her brother Sebastian, who were 15 and 11 at the time, were violently taken from their grandmother’s Santa Cruz home by court order.
Judge Rebecca Connelly, who oversaw their custody case, rejected the siblings’ claims that their mother abused them, and last October she ordered them into reunification training to repair their fractured relationship with their mother.
A friend of Maya’s recorded and posted to social media a video of the siblings resisting while transport agents from Assisted Intervention physically overpowered them in October. That was the last time Maya and Sebastian’s father, his family and the children’s friends had any knowledge of their condition — until now.
Sylvie Sturm appeared on KALW’s “Your Call” with host Rose Aguilar for last week’s Media Roundtable to talk about her reporting on San Francisco’s opioid crisis and recent rise in deaths, what the city and nonprofits are doing to address it, and how initiatives might be funded.
After 2½ years of meetings, community discussions, historical deep dives and policy generation, a panel tasked with proposing how San Francisco might atone for decades of discrimination against Black residents is ready to ask the city to step up and support equity rhetoric with action.
San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee is aiming to submit its final recommendations to the city by June 30, according to Brittni Chicuata, director of economic rights at the city’s Human Rights Commission. In the meantime, the city’s annual budget process is in full swing, which may affect funding and the timeline for whatever reparations policies the board decides to pursue.
Last week’s deployment of the National Guard and California Highway Patrol onto San Francisco’s streets to crack down on drugs comes amid intense public pressure to address open air drug use and sales.
But the emphasis on law enforcement for addressing the city’s drug crisis has distressed public defense attorneys and harm reduction advocates who fear the move may worsen the rate of fatal overdoses.
The state agency responsible for ensuring Uber and Lyft rides are safe failed to consistently track the number of accidents, assaults and drunk driving complaints that occur on them, according to a new study by San Francisco traffic planners.
The California Public Utilities Commission did not even consistently collect the most basic industry information, such as ride requests and miles driven, the report from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority shows.
California’s Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday night unanimously endorsed a bill that would require what children’s advocates describe as crucial reforms to ensure children are safe amid contentious custody proceedings.
San Francisco’s chief medical examiner delivered grim statistics last week about a recent increase in deaths related to drug use. In the first three months of the year, 200 people died of accidental overdose. That’s up significantly from the first quarter last year, with 142 deaths.
These tragedies were disproportionately suffered by marginalized groups. The biggest increase in deaths occurred among those who lacked housing. People listed as having “no fixed address” accounted for 61 overdose deaths in the first quarter, up from 26 during the same period in 2022. Black residents accounted for 33% of fatal overdoses in the first quarter this year, despite representing only 5% of the city’s population.
Addiction experts say the recent increase in overdose deaths could be linked to the closure of the Tenderloin Linkage Center, a temporary facility that operated in United Nations Plaza from January to December 2022 to help drug users and people without housing access supportive services.
