San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/news/)
For immigrants and other San Francisco residents who speak little English, accessible and robust interpretation services are essential in order to understand what’s said at public meetings and communicate with officials.
The city claims to have the strongest language-access policies in the nation, and a new proposal is on the way to strengthen them further. But, in practice, those policies leave a communication gap between lawmakers and those affected by their laws, community groups say.
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.
Sea level rise is forcing cities around San Francisco Bay to weigh demand for new housing against the need to protect communities from flooding. Builders say they can solve this dilemma with cutting-edge civil engineering. But no one knows whether their ambitious efforts will be enough to keep newly built waterfront real estate safe in coming decades.
Meanwhile, developers are busy building — and telling the public that they can mitigate this one effect of climate change, despite mounting evidence that it could be a bigger problem than previously believed.
In the last 13 years, the U.S. Department of Interior has actively reviewed applications for acknowledgement of only 18 tribes, even as hundreds remain in line. The Public Press has identified more than 400 tribes seeking federal recognition and is working to confirm that 200 others with publicly listed applications are genuine.
Many have been waiting for decades. The Death Valley TimbiSha Shoshone Band is the only California tribe that has been recognized in the 44 years since the federal acknowledgement process was established.
More than one month after statewide eviction protections expired on June 30, less than 4% of rent relief funds requested by San Francisco households remain unprocessed, with 55% of funds paid out.
Although a statewide eviction moratorium for tenants with pending rent relief applications expired Thursday, some tenants in San Francisco and Los Angeles saw a glimmer of hope as previously voided local protections kicked back in.
Cities and advocates hope the enactment of new protections will help to fill the gap for struggling tenants facing eviction for rent due after June 30.
A California law enacted in 2021 allows domestic violence victims to claim coercive control — a broad range of behaviors including humiliation, surveillance, intimidation, gaslighting and isolation that strips an intimate partner of a sense of autonomy and personhood.
Experts in domestic violence say judicial skepticism of abuse victims, often with misogynistic overtones, has long been widespread in U.S. family court, creating dangerous hurdles to justice. The expanded conception of domestic violence on paper is of limited use if judges continue to cast a skeptical eye on testimony, usually from women, of manipulation within intimate relationships.
Co-published with ProPublica.
Tabitha Davis had just lost twins in childbirth and was facing homelessness. The 23-year-old had slept on friends’ floors for the first seven months of her pregnancy, before being accepted to a temporary housing program for pregnant women. But with the loss of the twins, the housing program she’d applied to live in after giving birth — intended for families — was no longer an option.
A few weeks later, Davis was informed that the score she’d been given based on her answers to San Francisco’s “coordinated entry” questionnaire wasn’t high enough to qualify for permanent supportive housing. It was a devastating blow after an already traumatizing few months.
If you’re a tenant facing a COVID-19 hardship, it can be difficult to understand how you are — and are not — protected from eviction. Here’s what you need to know.
San Rafael-based Roots of Peace remained in the Afghanistan after the Taliban returned to power, working to clear minefields and convert them to productive agricultural land, while also helping Afghan employees who wanted to leave and get their families out of the country.
An overwhelming percentage of San Francisco voters decided to expel three San Francisco Unified School District board commissioners in the city’s first recall vote in nearly 40 years. Preliminary results for the Feb. 15 special election show that more than 70% of voters cast ballots to oust school board President Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.
