Community
A woman with dark shoulder length hair, and wearing a purple pullover and glasses, sits at a small table reviewing a small stack of documents.

Volunteers Race to Preserve Culturally Significant Records in Chinatown

01.12.2024
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A volunteer group led by community historian David Lei and University of California, Berkeley lecturer Anna Eng is working on a week-long project to scan boxes of documents — memos, letters, photos and other archived items.

The scanning project is a collaborative effort between historians striving to increase access to alternative historical sources and community organizations wanting the history to be restored and told.

Homelessness
People stand and sit under and around a white shade structure. There is a table stacked with pizza boxes and other snacks, with three large bundles of bottled water underneath.

Berkeley Says It Was Aggressive in Homeless Encampment Sweeps, Promises Reforms

08.02.2023
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Berkeley is accelerating plans to more humanely deal with homelessness in the wake of a San Francisco Public Press report on a chaotic encampment raid in October, and city staffers say they will start collaborating with unhoused people and homeless advocates when planning to clean or clear large encampments.

Several city departments are changing procedures in response to complaints from those living in encampments and their advocates, and from residential and commercial neighbors.

Social Justice
A woman with a long black ponytail reaches up to straighten the frame of one of many black and white photographs displayed in a closely spaced array on a wall in an art gallery.

SF Reparations Plan Nears Submission, but Funding Not Yet Secure

05.26.2023
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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.

Public Safety
A young Black man stands on a San Francisco sidewalk. Down the sidewalk behind him sit tents and strewn clothing.

SF Fires Linked to Homeless Surged as Pandemic Set In

02.01.2022
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Fires associated with homeless encampments in San Francisco rose by more than two-thirds during the first year of the pandemic, according to a Public Press analysis of the narrative texts from San Francisco Fire Department reports.

Fires are an ever-present fear for people living on the streets, where an errant spark could send flames ripping through a tent or other temporary shelter, sending its contents quickly up in smoke. Unhoused residents who have suffered through this experience report receiving little of the help available to those assisted after fires in buildings.

Social Services
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Chinatown Center Carries on Legacy of Refuge, Service

12.30.2021
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In the late 1800s, Chinese women and girls were arriving by the boatload in San Francisco, and often forced into sex work and indentured servitude while officials turned a blind eye, or even enabled the practice. A group of women began to rescue them through what came to be known as the Cameron House.  

Community
The San Francisco city attorney's office is fighting in court for the right to ban alleged drug dealers from 50 square blocks, or 21 acres, of the Tenderloin neighborhood.

ACLU Spars With City Attorney’s Office Over Tenderloin Injunctions

10.27.2021
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The nation’s largest public interest law firm is battling the San Francisco city attorney’s office over its plan to block 28 alleged drug dealers from setting foot in a 50-block area of the Tenderloin. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed a response to the City Attorney’s appeal of a May 2021 ruling that blocked the proposed injunctions. It’s the latest legal step in what’s becoming a drawn-out fight over drug dealing and the rights of people to move freely through San Francisco, and it could have far-reaching implications.