Author Archives: Public Press staff

By Alison Hawkes, Bay Nature  As you might imagine, life out on Southeast Farallon Island is pretty rustic for the half dozen or so research scientists who live out there. “We only shower every four days. There’s a schedule,” said Russ Bradley, the Farallon program manager and a senior scientist at Point Blue Conservation Science. […]

By Jon Brooks, KQED News Fix In the past two weeks, a lot has happened on the increasingly volatile ride-service front. The California Public Utilities Commission will revisit the issue of insurance coverage for drivers who use their cars to carry paying passengers through companies like Lyft and UberX. As a result, these two firms […]

By Charlie Mintz, KALW Crosscurrents There is a plan circulating in San Francisco to make using crack cocaine safer: give away free crack pipes. It might sound farfetched, but it is supported by science. Many cities offer  health services that target people who use drugs. For example, there are methadone clinics and substance abuse recovery […]

By Alison Hawkes, Bay Nature  Drift gillnets are a fairly ineffective method for capturing swordfish and thresher shark. The nets are suspended like underwater curtains, a mile long and more than 600 feet wide, and anything that swims into them can get entangled. In the deep sea waters off the California coast, that has meant […]

By Bryan Goebel, KQED News Fix  Many tenants facing eviction often fight a losing battle because they can rarely afford attorneys, and there is a scarcity of city funding available to the network of nonprofits offering legal assistance, according to tenants rights activists. At City Hall Wednesday, activists were joined by the city’s public defender […]

By Jon Brooks and Lisa Pickoff-White, KQED News Fix San Francisco is considering regulating home rental vacation services like Airbnb in hopes of reducing illegal short-term rentals. Supervisor David Chiu proposes to let residents rent their dwellings for a period shorter than 30 days, currently illegal for owners and tenants alike. But those who want […]

By Tom Carter, Central City Extra/New America Media Seniors and those with disabilities are the most vulnerable people in this city’s poorest neighborhood. But at a time when San Francisco’s corporate technology boom is boosting the fortunes of the city’s Mid-Market Street area, impoverished residents of that district’s adjacent Central City neighborhoods – the Tenderloin […]

By Elizabeth Devitt, Bay Nature When the Cosco Busan spilled oil into the S.F. Bay in 2007, the toxic toll on wildlife came as no surprise. More than 6,000 birds died after the spill, with grebes, cormorants, and murres among the hardest hit. Within two years, the herring population collapsed, too. The cause of death […]

By Holly Kernan, KALW Crosscurrents On any given night in the United States, there are more than 600,000 people who are homeless. In San Francisco, the government estimates that there are about 6,400 people living on the street or in shelters. The numbers have increased only slightly over the past few years, but with the […]

By Mary Rees, KALW Crosscurrents There are roughly 6,400 homeless people in San Francisco. According to Laura Guzman, Director of the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, one of the biggest challenges they face is finding public restrooms. “I remember when we opened, the conversation was all about poop on the street,” said Guzman. “We used to […]