Coronavirus
A recent study from Bruce Conklin (left), Melanie Ott (center), and Todd McDevitt (right) points to potential long-term consequences for COVID-19 patients.

While We Wait: COVID-19 Research Beyond Vaccines

10.27.2020
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Scientists in San Francisco have made significant discoveries in recent months about the impacts of COVID-19 as well as prevention and treatment of the disease. For one thing, they’ve discovered how SARS-CoV-2 — scientific shorthand for the coronavirus that’s causing the pandemic — slashes through muscle fibers in the heart. In another advance, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have developed a nasal spray with the potential to prevent infected people from developing full-blown cases of the disease. One major driver of the advances has been an unprecedented level of collaboration.

Homelessness
This Navigation Center in the Mission, opened in March 2015, was one of the first to serve San Francisco's homeless population. In early 2019, development began on a plan to turn the site into 157 affordable-housing units.

Surge in S.F. Homelessness Funding Could Be a Game Changer

09.23.2020
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San Francisco will soon spend previously unthinkable sums on the fight against homelessness. The massive influx of cash — nearly $600 million over the next year collected thanks to a voter initiative, combined with hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditures by the homelessness department — could be a game changer.

Homelessness
TechCrunch rented this event space on Market Street to stage its annual Disrupt conference.

TechCrunch Breaks With Event Company Over Homeless Sweep

09.17.2020
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An unsanctioned sweep of a homeless encampment in central San Francisco has cost the event company Non Plus Ultra a big customer. The company rousted eight people in the middle of the night on Sept. 10, and – while city officials have largely remained silent – the action didn’t sit well with TechCrunch, which is renting Non Plus Ultra’s SVN West event space at Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue.

News
Jeff Kositsky, at left, talks to Rescue Captain Michael Mason at Golden Gate Ave. and Leavenworth St., where homeless outreach staff placed 24 people in hotels June 17. Brian Howey / San Francisco Public Press

Behind the Tent Flap: Voices From the Streets of the Tenderloin

06.18.2020
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City workers have moved more than 140 homeless Tenderloin residents into hotel rooms and city-sanctioned tent encampments over the last eight days in response to a legal settlement between San Francisco and the University of California Hastings College of the Law. The agreement requires the city to remove the majority of homeless tents from the neighborhood by late July, with the goal of eventually reducing the tents, which numbered 415 on June 5, according to a city count, to zero. That tent count doesn’t include the more than 20 tents at a city-sanctioned encampment at 180 Jones Street. The plan specifies no timeline for reaching a tent count of zero. As of Thursday afternoon, the homeless outreach team, fire department, public works and police had placed between 149 and 174 people in hotels, said Jeff Kositsky, manager of the Healthy Streets Operations Center, the multi-agency homelessness task force spearheading the operation.

Health
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Toxins Measured in Bodies Raise Stakes for Hunters Point Shipyard Cleanup

05.19.2020
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Researchers are hoping to learn whether and how the health of people who live and work near the old Hunters Point Shipyard, which was used as a toxic and radioactive waste dump, may have been affected by toxic materials. Journalist Chris Roberts reported for the Public Press that nearly all participants in a recent community health biomonitoring survey had elevated levels of toxic heavy metals that are “contaminants of concern” at the shipyard.

News
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Sunshine Board May Return to Keeping an Eye on City Hall

05.19.2020
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One of the key panels maintaining local government accountability will ­­­­­soon get back to work after being sidelined for months if the head of the Board of Supervisors gets his way. The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force has not met since Mayor London Breed suspended most public meetings in mid-March, but board President Norman Yee aims to change that.