An aerial black and white photo displays an empty dirty lot surrounded by chain link fences. Two cars are parked next to the sidewalk in front of the lot. Behind the cars, a group of three people stand around a small table.

Without Dropping Cash Reparations Idea, SF Investigates New Housing Reforms

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors will review and discuss dozens of policy recommendations beyond a proposed $5 million payment to each qualifying Black resident — the option that captured national media attention and inspired a handwringing frenzy — when it meets March 14 to discuss the city’s draft Reparations Plan.

Its proposals are non-binding, with the committee noting in the plan that “it will be up to the community to create the momentum to ultimately get these recommendations officially codified into San Francisco law.”

In this split image, the left side shows a black and white photo of Victorian Era buildings with neon signs installed in the mid-20th century advertising a jazz club, restaurant and other businesses. On the right side is a color photo showing a modern beige bank building with a flat facade and a blue awning.

Housing Program to Redress Urban Renewal Could Get Boost From SF Reparations Plan

Urban renewal was a publicly and privately funded effort across the U.S. wherein local governments acquired land in areas deemed “blighted” — often using a racially biased lens — through eminent domain, forcibly displacing residents and demolishing existing buildings with promises to rebuild. In San Francisco, urban renewal targeted Black cultural centers and neighborhoods, uprooting thousands of families and destroying lively, well-established communities.

Now, San Francisco is giving renewed attention to a program that aims to bring displaced residents and their descendants back to the city as the Board of Supervisors prepares to review a draft Reparations Plan to address historic harms against Black San Franciscans at a meeting March 14.

Half Dome was originally called “Tis-sa-ack,” meaning “Cleft Rock” in the language of the Ahwahnechee People, one of the seven tribes that lived in Yosemite. John Muir referred to the iconic monolith by its native name and Half Dome interchangeably. The mountain is prominently visible from Highway 120, a road leading up to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

John Muir, Racial Politics and the Restoration of Indigenous Lands in Yosemite

John Muir has been honored extensively, with his name on many sites and institutions, including 28 schools, a college, a number of mountains, several trails, a glacier, a forest, a beach, a medical center, a highway and Muir Woods National Monument, one of the most visited destinations in the Bay Area. But in the time since the Sierra Club issued a nuanced statement in 2020 acknowledging some racist language in his early writings, some have come to believe that Muir’s legacy should be diminished, despite his contributions to the preservation of wilderness and later writings praising native tribes. 

Derrick Soo stands by old industrial circuits in Oakland’s Cannery Lofts, the site of his great-grandfather Lew Hing’s first cannery. By the time Lew died in 1934, he had been forced to liquidate most of his business holdings, leaving him stripped of the wealth he spent his whole life earning. Soo said he believes that had it not been for the racist policies and actions against his family, their legacy would look much different today.

Tax Cuts and Eroding Worker Protections Made Wealth Gap More Extreme

When we examine the massive wealth gap between the rich and poor in this country, what stands out most is how differently it affects the country’s white and Black populations.

According to data from the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the typical Black family has $24,000 in wealth. That is less than 13% of the $190,000 in wealth held by the typical white family.

Two beds sit on either side of a window at a navigation center for transgender homeless people.

SF Launches First Navigation Center to Serve Homeless Transgender People

On March 9, the city’s first navigation center to specifically serve transgender and gender-nonconforming people opens in SoMa.

It will fill a gap in homeless services that has excluded a highly vulnerable population. Transgender people are 17 times more likely to experience homelessness than the average person, and 70% of those who have stayed in shelters report having experienced harassment, according to a study conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Demonstrators link arms in front of the International Hotel at Kearny and Jackson Streets in San Francisco on Aug. 4, 1977.

In Remembering Traumatic Eviction, Community Seeks Inspiration

The International Hotel on the corner of Jackson and Kearny in San Francisco is the second of its name. The original was a residential hotel, with small rooms affordable to low-income workers. On Aug. 4, 1977, more than 100 residents were evicted all at once, despite thousands of protesters outside.