The constant dust upset him. It also triggered his asthma, which he has had since he was a kid. 

“It’s hard to breathe,” he said. “But I haven’t really been feeling like that for the last month, basically since I got the air purifier.”

Britt was one of 50 low-income tenants to receive free air purifiers through a government-funded pilot program in July and August, the result of efforts by local organizations to cut red tape and make it easier to distribute the devices. Most recipients have respiratory conditions and live in single-room occupancy hotels, commonly called SROs. The initiative aims to ameliorate and help prevent health problems — early results are promising — and if enough people benefit then the government could keep funding the work, putting more devices in the hands of tenants who need them.

For Britt, the purifier is welcome relief in his home at the Clementina Towers, a building run by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation for low-income and disabled seniors. 

“TNDC is pleased that Mr. Britt has been able to take advantage of the air purifier distribution program and that its use has helped ease his asthma,” said Edmund Campos, senior communications manager for the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, in an emailed statement. He added that Britt had never reported excessive dust to the property manager, which Britt confirmed.

Structural causes of bad air

Britt’s portable air purifier cost about $100, which is out of reach for many SRO tenants. A 2021 Brightline Defense survey found that only about 18% of SRO residents could afford one. 

But they might be the San Franciscans who most need the devices. Adults living in SROs face asthma hospitalization rates that are twice the citywide average, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease rates that are three times higher, according to a 2017 Department of Public Health report. 

That’s due in large part to the aging structures they live in. SRO buildings tend to be old, poorly maintained and lack modern heating and air conditioning systems, as well as effective ventilation. When tenants shower, humidity can build up and cause toxic black mold to grow. If unaddressed, the mold penetrates the surrounding wood and becomes a long-term problem.

Airborne pollutants from cat litter, candles and gas stoves can all accumulate indoors. Some tenants smoke methamphetamine and fentanyl in their rooms, and the exhaled, harmful chemicals linger in the air, said Sheyenne White, a community organizer with the Central City SRO Collaborative. 

SRO buildings are concentrated in the Tenderloin and other downtown areas that are dense with vehicles, which give off exhaust. Often, an SRO unit has a single window that opens to the street or is right above a ground-floor restaurant’s kitchen, which can produce smoke from cooking. Tenants face a difficult choice: Keep the window closed and let the indoor air fester, or open it and let other pollutants in. 

In a way, the choice is easier during hotter seasons — though the health consequences remain. SRO tenants throughout the Tenderloin have to open their windows to find relief, and their sills gradually blacken with soot, said Stephen Tennis, another organizer with the collaborative.

“Otherwise they would roast,” Tennis said.

Red tape hampered aid

Tennis and other members of the collaborative, as well as staff at local nonprofit La Voz Latina, are working with environmental justice organization Brightline Defense to carry out the pilot program.

The groups have spent years trying to put air filtration devices in tenants’ hands. At first, the work suffered from bureaucratic hurdles, said Carolina Correa, air quality program manager at Brightline Defense. 

Government funding paid for the purifiers but, to be eligible, recipients needed to attend two video interviews and obtain notes from doctors attesting to their respiratory conditions. Many people were too poor to seek regular medical care, so they didn’t have diagnoses. Others had limited physical mobility or no access to a car, so they couldn’t easily visit their doctors in person.

“It was a major barrier to get the paperwork in order,” said Peter Rauch, a tenant organizer at the collaborative. “It discouraged a lot of people and they didn’t follow through.” 

In 2021, roughly half the residents Brightline Defense helped apply for air purifiers ultimately did not receive one because they couldn’t meet the requirements, Correa said.

Members of the collaborative pushed to cut the red tape. In July 2023, a half-dozen tenant organizers made their case at the headquarters of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the regional government agency responsible for regulating air pollution and the funder of the air purifiers. The organizers persuaded the agency to test what would happen if it loosened requirements. 

For that pilot project, which began in October 2023, the organizers personally scoured the government-subsidized housing community to identify the best potential recipients. In their outreach, they prioritized people who said they had respiratory conditions, even if they lacked documentation. And to make things even easier, organizers had participants fill out just one survey about the purifiers’ impacts on air quality, rather than the two previously required. 

“It just made it much easier to get purifiers to people who need it, and that to me is the most important thing,” Tennis said.

Finding relief

Early surveys show that the purifiers are working. When asked to rate their homes’ air quality on a scale of one to 10, people who rated it “3-4” before receiving the devices are now rating it “8-10,” Rauch said. Residents report that they are coughing less, sleeping better and are less winded when walking up and down stairs, White said. People have noticed less soot in their rooms and that their allergies have subsided, added Correa of Brightline Defense. 

Once all surveys are completed, the results will inform the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s decision on whether to continue funding the pilot program next year. 

The air purifiers are a crucial mitigation tool, but they don’t address the underlying causes of air pollution. To do that, big policy changes are needed, including widespread retrofits of San Francisco buildings, said Jacob Linde, Brightline Defense’s air quality organizer. The renovations, which local groups are trying in multi-unit apartment buildings, would help ventilate SRO buildings while reducing their carbon footprints, he said. 

Back in his SoMa studio, Britt no longer has to wage war against the dust in his apartment. He runs his air purifier 24 hours a day. His asthma symptoms feel milder. He only has to dust once a week now. 

Those small wins are deeply gratifying to Rauch, who wants his neighbors to be able to breathe safely in their homes. 

“Air is as precious as water. It’s what we humans rely on,” Rauch said.

The post Local Groups Cut Red Tape to Give Low-Income Tenants Clean Air appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“They used to be tolerable, but now it’s unbearable,” said Vigil, who lives in the four-unit building with her family and is the landlord, renting two units to tenants. 

Her father bought the Bryant Street house decades ago, and it has no cooling system and little insulation. When a heat wave hits, she and her tenants fight it together. They share ice, folding the cubes into bandanas to make cold compresses, and she makes big batches of iced jamaica to share. When it gets too hot to be inside, they sit in the yard, take a walk or go for a drive because the car has air conditioning. Two years ago, she bought fans for the bedrooms, but they just blew the hot air around.

Soon they may all get relief. Vigil is participating in a pilot project run by environmental justice organization PODER to decarbonize her home, a process that will add a new heating and cooling system and insulation, among other retrofits. The setup should allow Vigil and her tenants to stay inside comfortably.

The renovation, finally underway after years of planning, will test what it takes to make San Francisco’s multi-unit apartment buildings more eco-friendly. Scaled up, the retrofits would shrink the city’s carbon footprint and reduce indoor pollutants, improving the health of residents. But many tenants and their advocates fear that the work could end up displacing renters if landlords hiked rents to recoup retrofit costs and evicted people who couldn’t pay.

“Low-income tenants are in a precarious position, and we don’t want upgrades to lead to ‘reno-victions,’” said Antonio Díaz, PODER’s organizational director. 

PODER is leading the initiative with funding from the San Francisco Department of the Environment. In this early stage of construction, the organization is soliciting contracting bids from local companies owned by women of color. Decarbonizing Vigil’s building will entail installing solar panels, new electric stoves and windows to rein in energy consumption. 

Díaz estimated that construction would begin in a month and a half and last up to six months. A similar pilot project is in motion on Sycamore Street, managed by Emerald Cities Collaborative, a nonprofit that creates green jobs for women and people of color. Each organization received $100,000 from the city, with $50,000 earmarked for the retrofits. 

Fear of ‘reno-victions’

San Francisco has pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, and decarbonizing its buildings will be a key step. In 2022, 44% of the city’s emissions came from buildings, according to the Department of the Environment. 

Low-income renters and people of color disproportionately suffer from indoor air pollution from gas stoves, and stand to benefit from electrification. 

But the retrofit work will also put them at risk, tenant advocates warn, because landlords have a financial incentive to use renovations to push out longtime residents. 

City Hall allows only meager annual rent increases for pre-existing tenants of rent-controlled buildings — in the most recent year, landlords could raise rents up to 3.6% — enabling people with modest incomes to afford living in San Francisco by staying in the same apartments for many years. But landlords can reset apartment rents to the market rate for new tenants, potentially making much more money. 

Advocates point to a recent mass reno-viction — a retrofit that would also evict tenants — in West Los Angeles as an example of how bad things could get in San Francisco. Following a fire that killed one person in their massive apartment building, corporate landlord Douglas Emmett Inc. issued eviction notices in May 2023 to their property’s 577 occupied rent-controlled units, arguing that it would be easier to comply with the city’s mandate to upgrade the sprinkler system if the building were vacant — the Los Angeles government denied the sprinklers were mandated. Renters organized to file wrongful eviction cases, and this June a judge ruled that the nearly 100 tenants still living in the complex could stay. An estimated 480 people had already accepted relocation fees and left. 

Risk of pricing out tenants 

But there are other, subtler ways that retrofits could hurt and possibly displace tenants.

In San Francisco, rent-control landlords can legally hike rents to help them cover the costs of renovations that benefit their tenants and raise the property value — including decarbonization upgrades like replacing windows or improving insulation. 

Landlords regularly bump up rents through these so-called capital improvement pass-throughs, said Lupe Arreola, executive director of Tenants Together, a statewide coalition of tenant-rights groups. 

The risk of retrofit-driven rent increases “is real, because it’s already happening for basic repairs,” she said, even those that should not qualify for pass-throughs. Arreola added that she has also seen landlords illegally use tenants’ safety deposits to pay for such repairs. 

Tenants might move out if the renovations increased their rents beyond what they could afford. 

They might also move out to avoid the commotion of the retrofits, or their landlords could ask them to leave temporarily in exchange for stipends to cover moving and living expenses while away. But stipends seldom make up the difference between rent-control tenants’ low housing costs and those of nearby market-rate units, Arreola said, so those people often leave the neighborhood or the city. 

Renters displaced by renovations have a legal right to return when the work is done. But retrofits can drag on; Arreola said she had seen one project take 10 years. The more time that passes, the less likely tenants will come back, she said. 

Extensive, potentially invasive repairs may be necessary in many of the city’s older buildings, where lower-income residents tend to live, before decarbonization upgrades could begin, Arreola said. A whopping 70% of multi-unit housing was built before 1950, and all rent-controlled housing was built before 1979. 

That’s why “we need to put in safeguards. It’s going to require legislators doubling down,” Arreola said. She would like to see evictions outlawed in buildings during decarbonization upgrades, and for a limited time after the work finished. 

Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, a Los Angeles-based tenant advocacy nonprofit, made policy recommendations in its 2023 report, Decarbonizing California Equitably: Pass-throughs should be banned for retrofits, with minimal annual rent increases regulated by the government for between five and 15 years after construction wraps up. 

San Francisco’s Department of the Environment is aware of the risks that low-income renters face. It is in ongoing conversations with the Rent Board, which enforces the city’s rent-control laws, and community-based organizations in an effort to make sure decarbonization does not drive displacement. 

“We need more education about rental protections,” said Cyndy Comerford, planning director of the Department of the Environment’s Climate and Health Program. She said she does not believe rental protections need to change to mitigate risks to tenants. 

State pares back retrofit funding

Decarbonization is expensive, and for many building owners it’s only doable with government subsidies. 

But in May, Gov. Gavin Newsom slashed funding for the Equitable Building Decarbonization Program, from $922 million to $525 million. The cuts dismayed policy advocates and local officials. 

“It’s going to mean less money going to low-income San Franciscans,” Comerford said. 

State funds can come with strings attached for recipient building owners and protect against renter displacement. California’s Low Income Weatherization Program, which funds energy-efficiency measures and solar installation, mandates that property owners sign contracts promising to keep rents affordable for low-income tenants for at least 10 years following retrofits. The state also provides the subsidies up front — that better encourages retrofits than federal funds, which are often paid as rebates following the work and best serve building owners who already have the money for a retrofit in hand. 

Back on Bryant Street, Vigil said she looks forward to improving the comfort and health of her family and tenants with the coming retrofits. Just as much, she wants the pilot to be useful to the Mission District, providing a template that others can follow to decarbonize. 

“I see this as a small project starting here with me, but then growing out into the community,” Vigil said. “I want to use the resources I have, and this building is one of them.”

The post Green Retrofits Might Displace Tenants — One Landlord’s Pilot Project Aims to Protect Them appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

It might surprise you to learn that Asian artists created little of that art, and the works have seldom told the stories of the local community that has lived there for over a century.

In other words, much of the earlier artwork in Chinatown’s public spaces has ironically left Asian American identities and experiences invisible, said Abby Chen, a curator at the Asian Art Museum. That’s largely because the commissioning process included little, if any, outreach to Asian artists. 

“We were never part of that,” Chen said. “We were never invited to begin with.”

After decades of community advocacy, local groups have increased opportunities for Asian Americans to create public art. And now the city’s Arts Commission and the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco are expanding that effort by building a catalogue of Asian artists, many of whom might otherwise go unseen, to create future works. 

Artists of any experience level can apply online by Sept. 11 to be entered in the Chinatown Artist Registry. Chinese artists who are not fluent in English can email the Chinese Culture Center for help applying.

The initiative is also part of a larger push, begun during the pandemic, to enliven Chinatown through new museums and art spaces, as well as outdoor performances and other events like the night market and the recent Hungry Ghost Festival. Local groups are trying to draw more tourists and citywide residents — especially Asian Americans who might not see themselves represented in typical Chinatown artwork.

“If you’re someone who’s growing up in Chinatown, who has maybe never actually been in Asia or been in China, you would actually [have] a deep sense of alienation or maybe identity crisis,” said Hoi Leung, deputy director of the Chinese Culture Center.

Chinatown has long been a hub for incredible Chinese American artists, including the eminent 20th-century painter Chang Dai-Chien and Tyrus Wong, the artist behind Disney’s “Bambi.” More than 1,000 Asian American artists were active in the neighborhood between 1850 and the 1970s “but we know little of them,” said community historian David Lei.

Often they were unable to break into the professional art scene because they lacked access to typical pathways, Chen said. Many did not attend art schools in this country or have contacts in galleries, and they might have barely spoken English.

Few got commissions to work on public art projects because qualifying processes were “intimidating and complicated,” Chen said. The opportunities were generally publicized in English, so Chinese artists may not have heard about them in the first place and struggled to complete applications within short submission timetables.  

By the time judges sat down to choose artists for projects, “We often felt that it was already too late and there were no artists in the pool who could represent us,” Leung said.

That nearly happened in 2008, when many feared that the commission for the public art project at the Chinatown-Rose Pak Muni station would not go to a community artist. In an unprecedented move, Chen, then working at the Chinese Culture Center, and others at local groups pushed to extend the application period, to buy enough time to find someone with ties to the area. Chen reached out to various artists performing and exhibiting their artworks in the neighborhood and helped them translate their applications. 

The strategy worked, and a significant number of Asian American artists became finalists. The San Francisco Arts Commission selected Yumei Hou, a sculptor and traditional paper-cutting artist who lived in a single-room occupancy hotel in Chinatown. Today, a permanent steel fabrication of Hou’s design is displayed at the station, nodding to the Chinese tradition of celebrating the Lunar New Year by decorating homes with paper cuts.

The successful effort inspired the creation of today’s registry, which will retain artist information like their past works and how to contact them. 

Artists can apply to be in the Chinatown Artist Registry regardless of where they live or whether they have previous experience creating public art. Applicants must articulate their connection with Chinatown. People can email art@cccsf.us for help applying.

“This is your chance to introduce yourself and your work to the Arts Commission,” Leung said. The Chinese Culture Center is trying to encourage artists to come forward by spreading the word through bilingual media, other Asian American groups and word of mouth.

Members of the Arts Commission and art professionals will place the best applicants in the registry, to choose from when they need artists for public art projects in Chinatown and elsewhere. Three projects are planned at Portsmouth Square, Chinatown Public Health Center and Chinatown Him Mark Lai Branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

The post Asian Americans Have Made Little of Chinatown’s Art. A New Tool Could Change That appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Some providers are cutting back services even as more people queue up for free meals and bags of groceries.

“We’ve seen that line just grow and grow and grow,” said Humberto Pinon, senior health educator and communications coordinator for Curry Senior Center.

The pandemic spurred governments to pour money into nutrition programs that offered free meals and groceries, in large part to protect seniors — they no longer had to risk infection at crowded stores or fully contend with soaring grocery prices. But as emergency measures wound down, the subsidies dwindled, and recent local budget cuts to San Francisco service providers have further threatened food programs.

Nonprofits are scrambling to fill their budget holes and preserve their services in an environment where private funders are also pulling back.

“We’re just left holding the bag, to have to make up the difference through more and more fundraising,” said Winnie Yu, chief programs and compliance officer for Self-Help for the Elderly, which offers free meals and many other services like housing, case management and hospice.

“And it’s not just us. All of the nutrition providers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and nationally have the same challenges,” Yu said.

Deficits in the millions

Local, state and federal funding cuts have forced the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank to significantly reduce services, according to an October press release. The organization faces estimated deficits of $2.1 million for last year and $6.6 million this year, said Keely Hopkins, associate director of marketing and communications.

The bank had expanded its Home-Delivered Groceries program during the pandemic to serve older adults who were more susceptible to the coronavirus, as well as other groups such as pregnant people and families with children who had disabilities. It served 13,000 households weekly at its height, but today that number is down to just under 8,000 households, said Seth Harris, the program’s associate director. By June 2025, the organization is also slated to close multiple food-distribution sites that opened in response to COVID-19, Harris said. The sites serve 18,000 households, Mission Local reported.

Budget cuts from City Hall last year forced local organization Bayview Senior Services to stop providing meals on weekends. This year it faces $500,000 in additional cuts, said Executive Director Cathy Davis, compelling it to stop offering take-out meals, though it will continue to offer home deliveries. Davis said she wishes she could scale up meal deliveries to meet demand, but the organization is “really not financially equipped to do much more unless we can increase our support.”

And the money the city gave the Curry Senior Center this year for one of its food programs, providing free weekly groceries, was about half what it gave last year, said Ruben Chavez, the organization’s deputy director. Facing a growing waitlist, staff have begun giving walk-ups groceries that are registered to people who are unable to pick them up, Pinon said.

‘Like squeezing water from a turnip’

Organizations are receiving less funding from private sources too.

With emergency pandemic measures phased out, the public perception is that nutrition programs are less essential, so organizations are receiving fewer donations from generous individuals, said Jim Oswald, director of marketing and communications at Meals on Wheels San Francisco, which delivers free meals to people with disabilities and adults aged 60 and over.

Self-Help for the Elderly is getting fewer voluntary contributions from the people who receive food through its dine-in and home-delivery programs. Before the pandemic, the nonprofit received 80% of the contributions that it budgeted for, but after the pandemic that fell to “10% on a good day,” Yu said, leading to $1 million in losses for the organization.

“Folks don’t have the capacity to give because everything is so expensive,” Yu said. “It’s like squeezing water from a turnip.”

Food insecurity for older adults — when they don’t have enough to eat and are uncertain how they will get their next meal — is not a “hot topic” for larger funders, Yu added. 

Corporate sponsors have helped fund the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank’s Home-Delivered Groceries program. When the organization lost sponsorship, it was a major factor forcing the bank to scale back the program.

Waning government contributions

In interviews with the San Francisco Public Press, many providers stopped short of criticizing City Hall for its cuts.

“The city’s done the best they can but we also understand they don’t have as much money as they used to,” Davis said.

City Hall is still struggling to financially recover from the pandemic, which created remote-work norms that emptied downtown offices and depressed commercial real estate values and tax revenue. Mayor London Breed signed a $15.9 billion budget on July 27 that closed a projected two-year deficit of nearly $800 million. 

That included shrinking the budget of the Department of Disability and Aging Services, which funds food programs for older adults and people with disabilities, said spokesperson Joe Molica. To maintain services at current levels, plans to expand certain programs were postponed. The department will invest nearly $30.5 million in food programs over the next year.

Food providers and recipients are still reeling from the loss of other public funding as the threat of COVID-19 has receded.

As the novel coronavirus threatened lives and incomes, the federal government increased funds to CalFresh, the state program formerly known as “food stamps,” giving people more money each month to buy groceries. When that emergency funding ended in April 2023, the monthly allotments decreased — for some people, by hundreds of dollars. A spike in food insecurity across the state followed, according to data from the California Association of Food Banks.

The federal government also pumped tens of millions of dollars into food programs serving San Francisco’s older adults and residents with disabilities, but most of that money stopped flowing in 2022. The main funding target had been the Great Plates Delivered program, which brought restaurant meals to homebound seniors and other adults who were especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

Disproportionate impacts of food insecurity

In the coming years, nutrition programs for older adults will only become more needed.

For decades, food insecurity in the United States has been on the rise for households with adults age 65 and older, according to a 2023 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is most common among seniors who live alone, at about 11% of those households, up from about 6% in 2001 — the percentage rose sharply amid the pandemic.

Adults 60 and older are the fastest-growing age group in San Francisco and will comprise over 30% of residents by 2030, according to the California Department of Finance. They can face barriers to obtaining healthy food that other groups might not, often related to their physical and financial limitations.

Mobility issues make cooking and shopping for groceries difficult for people who cannot drive or easily handle heavy bags on public transit.

Many older adults also rely on social security as their sole source of income, and those dollars don’t go as far as they used to. Grocery costs over the past four years have risen 25% even as chain supermarkets raked in enormous profits.

“When you’re living on less than $1,300 a month, you have to make some hard choices of what bills you’re going to pay,” said Oswald, of Meals on Wheels San Francisco. Nearly two-thirds of the people the organization serves live on less than that.

People with disabilities, another growing population in San Francisco, can face similar financial challenges when their sole source of income is disability insurance payments from the government. The average monthly payment is about $1,538.

Food insecurity disproportionately affects people of color. In California, mixed-race adults are the most food-insecure racial group, with 50% possessing that status, followed byAfrican Americans, at about 49%, according to a 2023 report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

People of color also suffer from diet-sensitive diseases at elevated levels. In San Francisco, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are hospitalized for diabetes, hypertension or heart disease at rates nine times higher than the citywide average, according to a 2023 report by the Department of Public Health. African Americans are hospitalized about four times above the average. These are also the city’s racial groups with the shortest life expectancies.

‘We pick up the slack’

On a recent Wednesday morning at the Dr. George W. Davis Senior Center, several older adults stood outside, waiting for the doors to open so they could choose free produce at the organization’s pilot food program, which resembled a farmers’ market. They had lined up early because they were worried they might not get all the items they needed, said LaTonya Young, a case manager for residents living on site. She added that there was enough food for everyone that morning.

The free groceries were “a big help” to Rogelio Balbin, 60, and his wife, who recently immigrated to the United States and were still looking for jobs. Balbin had been coming to the food pantry for three months, he said. The grapes and apples were two of his favorite items.

The program is funded through June 2025, and it’s unclear whether it will continue beyond that. As other organizations pare back or shutter their own food programs, it’s likely that this line will fill with more people like Balbin.

For now, “we pick up that slack,” said Young, who takes joy in her work.

“What motivates me every day,” Young said, “is the seniors and seeing their stories. Some come from being homeless but still use the vegetables, and we provide hot meals as well. It’s a wonderful thing to see what we’re doing.”

The post Budget Cuts Threaten SF Food Programs for Seniors and Adults With Disabilities appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

一位三藩市的民選官員正面臨越來越多來自選民及當地團體的批評。主因是他支持一項投票提案，永久禁止車輛通行海洋公路（Great Highway，又稱海旁公路，大公路），並將其改造為海濱公園。

代表日落區的第四區市參事殷嘉立（Joel Engardio）聯合其他四位民選官員共同提出這項提案。這一舉措令許多居民措手不及。他們表示，殷嘉立在提出這項提案之前應該先諮詢民眾的意見，而現在這項提案已經引起了社區的分歧。民眾的不滿令更多人去促使市參事們修改提案，或將此提案從 11 月的投票中撤回。

有些人發誓下次有機會，不會投票給殷嘉立。

「我不再認為他是我的市參事了，」住在海洋公路附近的Patricia Arack說道。Arack領導著Concerned Residents of the Sunset這一團體，該團體於2020年成立，反對當時實行的關閉道路的措施。她在該區上次選舉中支持殷嘉立，只因她寄希望於殷嘉立會維持道路的現狀 —— 目前，這條公路在工作日允許車輛通行，而週末禁止車輛通行，以便人們可以在這裡步行和騎自行車。

三藩市公共新聞報（San Francisco Public Press）就他是否曾提前告知他的選民與當地社區與政治組織他有打算提交議案這一事，對殷嘉立進行提問。

殷嘉立沒有直接回答本報的問題。而相對的，他說「自去年以來，我在各種市民大會或團體的聚會中曾多次在被問到此路時，都有泛泛地提過海洋公路的未來」。他補充，「我有談過關於打造一個海濱公園的願景。」

「我應該更好地向選民解釋將此議題納入公投這件事，這會給予反對建公園的人一個用選票反對的機會，」他接著說。

但根據本報對殷嘉立所在選區的選民和社區團體的走訪，他會將此議題放進11月公投的意圖，並未傳達到他所代表的選區裡。

許多住在城市西邊的市民說他們擔心，在未能了解此事對當地的影響的情況，譬如更多車流分流到居民區以及19街和日落大道（Sunset Boulevard），遍佈全市的選民們會通過這一提案。

提案缺乏公眾外展

目前，兩個主要由華人成員組成的組織已經站出來公開反對此提案：三藩市華裔民主黨協進會（Chinese American Democratic Club）於上週投票反對，同時在社交媒體X中表明立場；而舊金山日落區商戶聯會，即是舊金山華埠商戶聯會（Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco）的日落區分會則在六月公開反對，他們的總部隨即在7月1日投票反對。

來自這兩個組織的代表都表示殷嘉立並沒有在公開支持此提案之前咨詢他們的意見。華裔民主黨協進會的主席招霞對此表示憤怒。

長城五金店的老闆周紹鋆（Albert Chow）是代表當地商家同市民的社區組織 People of Parkside Sunset（POPS）的主席。他亦對殷嘉立未能征求他的意見表示沮喪和困惑。

許多在殷嘉立所在選區內的市民亦有同樣感受。

「他沒有同他選區裡大量反對此事的人講過一句話，」Arack在就此議題談到，「他就徑直去做了。」

同Arack一樣，王运（Wendy Wong）在上次市參事選舉中投票給了殷嘉立，但她說她計劃下次現任市參事面臨挑戰時，她將會把選票投給別人。

「通常情況下，他會同社群接觸，傾聽社群的想法，但是這次他並沒有做到，」王运在提到這次的投票提案時說道。

朱偉（Selena Chu）亦曾是殷嘉立的支持者。她說當地的華人群體為選出「合適的人選」付出了巨大的努力，她們曾經認為這個人選會是殷嘉立 —— 但現在他們發現殷嘉立並沒有聽取他們的意見。

海洋公路事件導致「鄰里對立」

據三藩市康樂及公園部門（San Francisco Recreation and Park Department）稱，自疫情期間它被關閉以來，這條高速公路一直是一個受歡迎的公園目的地。從2020 年4 月開始，已有數以百萬計的遊客參觀此處，每場重大活動平均下來吸引了超過十萬人。支持永久關閉此路車輛通行的人表示，這一變化將提升行人過街的安全。它還可以為行動不便，被海岸風沙滋擾的人，特別是老年人或坐輪椅的人，在海岸線沿岸創建一條替代道路。

在他六月份發表的一篇博客文章中，殷嘉立阐述了将海洋公路改造成公园所带来的潜在经济和其他利益，以及在車道轉為公園後，如何改變车辆交通以適應新的模式。

「疫情期間的兩年來，這個公園已經過了考驗，」一名在離海洋公路不遠開藝術館的藝術家Anne Marguerite Herbst說道，「這讓我們知道它是可以成功的，同時我們也知道有多少人從城市的各個地區過來這邊使用海灘，使用公園，騎自行車，等等。我們如同活在夢境裡一樣。」

她曾在最近的第四區市參事選舉中投票給了當時在任市參事馬兆明。但她說，當殷嘉立今年與其他市參事共同發起關閉此高速公路的投票提案時，她來了個「360 度」大轉彎，她現在計劃投票給他。

Herbst是其中一名對這件事的某一方充滿熱誠的人，然而這兩方中經常發生爭執。

「這件事闡釋了很大的分歧，」前租戶權益倡議者Alyse Ceirante說道。她同樣住在離海洋公路距離幾個街區的地方有38年之久。她是開放海旁公路（Open the Great Highway）組織的一員，一個反對該高速被關閉的組織。「這造成了鄰里間的對立。」

在收到她稱之為「辱罵性」的回帖後，Ceirante不再使用在鄰里間使用的社交媒體Nextdoor發帖了。

同樣住在日落區的局面Stephen Gorski表示，在接受了CBS新聞的採訪，表示了他反對的立場後，他收到了一通帶有威脅性質的電話。

民眾現在正在「為此事爭執不休，」周紹鋆說。他稱這個提案對社群的安寧是「具有危險性的。」

在周紹鋆上週組織的一個社區活動中，殷嘉立與People of Parkside Sunset（POPS）成員坐下來，傾聽了他們對此提案的不同意見。

當晚，周紹鋆就此事與殷嘉立對峙。

周紹鋆問他，過去這幾年，「我們討論多各種各樣，讓日落區變得更好的事情。為什麼偏偏在這件事上，你要向我們隱瞞呢？」

「我很抱歉我們沒有提前通知你，」殷嘉立答到，「但多年來這件事一直是社區的熱門話題。」他向周紹鋆以及他人說，通過將其列入公投，他想讓選民能決定這條公路的未來。否則， 殷嘉立補充，市參事會很有可能在目前道路多樣使用的模式結束之後，立法關閉這條道路。

群眾施壓撤回提案

市參事們在6月18日將此投票提案上交，當天亦是在能以收集市參事們簽名的方式提交投票提案的最後期限。周紹鋆提到，這讓西區的居民幾乎沒有時間組織和制定一個與其競爭的提案。

這就是為什麼他試圖說服殷嘉立改變他發起的提案，或將其從 11 月的投票中撤回。修改或撤銷提案的截止日期分別為7月26日和7月30日。

來自Concerned Residents of the Sunset組織的Arack也在促使市參事取消該提案。在她本周三於Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon裡發表的一封致編輯的信中，她呼籲保留此公路的多樣使用模式。

「現在是時候去將這項有缺陷的提案從11月公投的選票中撤回了，」她說，「同時計劃一個能包容所有利益相關者的訴求的折中方案。

如需聯繫本文作者吳哲，請發郵箱至zhe@sfpublicpress.org。

編輯註：2024 年 7 月 17 日，本文更新了有關海洋公路混合使用模式中，它作為公園時的影響的相關信息，以及將其完全改造成公園的潛在好處。 7 月 18 日，本文再次進行了更新，加入了市參事殷嘉立 6 月發表的博客文章，進一步解釋了這項更新迭代將如何進行。

The post 三藩民選官員遭反對，因其提案關閉海洋公路 appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

A San Francisco lawmaker is facing increasing criticism from his constituents and some local groups for supporting a ballot measure to permanently close the Great Highway to car traffic and turn it into a park. 

District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who represents the Sunset District, caught many residents off guard when he co-sponsored the proposition. They said he should have consulted them before backing the measure, which has caused divisions in the community. Some people have urged the supervisors to change or withdraw it from the November ballot.

And some vowed to vote against Engardio at the next opportunity.

“I don’t consider him my supervisor anymore,” said Patricia Arack, who lives near the Great Highway and leads the group Concerned Residents of the Sunset, founded in 2020 in objection to the artery’s closure at the time. She supported Engardio in the district’s previous election, expecting that he would maintain the status quo — the thoroughfare hosts cars during the week and closes to cars on weekends so that people can walk and bike along it.

The Great Highway’s hybrid use is slated to cease at the end of 2025. The ballot measure, which Engardio sponsored alongside four other supervisors and Mayor London Breed, would discontinue the hybrid use ahead of schedule. 

The San Francisco Public Press asked Engardio if he ever told his constituents and his district’s various community and political groups about his intent to co-sponsor the ballot measure.

He did not directly answer that question. Instead, he had “generally talked about the future of the Great Highway when asked about it at various town hall meetings or other group settings since last year,” he said. “I’ve talked about the vision for an oceanside park.”

“I should have done a better job explaining to constituents that putting this on the ballot gives people who oppose the park a chance to vote against it,” he added. 

But messages about his intent to put his name on the ballot measure did not reach many in the neighborhoods he represents, based on the Public Press’ interviews with those people and groups in recent weeks. 

Many westside residents said they were concerned that citywide voters would approve the measure without understanding the local impacts that they feared it would have, like worsening traffic in residential areas and on 19th Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.

Lack of public outreach 

So far, two prominent organizations with predominantly Chinese American members have come out against the ballot measure: The Chinese American Democratic Club voted to oppose it last week, and announced their position Tuesday on social media platform X; and the Sunset branch of the Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco opposed it in June, with the full association following suit July 1.  

Representatives from both groups said Engardio had not consulted them in the lead-up to publicly supporting the measure, with the Democratic Club’s leader, Josephine Zhao, expressing anger about it. 

Albert Chow, owner of Great Wall Hardware and president of People of Parkside Sunset, a neighborhood group with merchant and resident members, also said he was frustrated and bewildered that Engardio did not consult him.

Many of the supervisor’s constituents had similar feelings. 

“He did not say one word to a very significant number of people in his own district who are against it,” Arack said, referring to the ballot measure. “He just did it.”

Like Arack, Wendy Wong voted for Engardio in the last election but said she now plans to vote for someone else next time around if the incumbent has competition. 

“Usually, he will reach out to the community and want to hear from the community, but then he did not do that part” when it came to the ballot measure, Wong said. 

Selena Chu, who used to support the supervisor, said the local Chinese community went the extra mile by campaigning to get the “right person in office,” and Engardio seemed like that person — but now it appears that he is not listening to them.

Great Highway issue ‘pitting neighbor against neighbor’

The highway has been a popular destination as a park since its closure during the pandemic, with millions of visitors since April 2020 and major events that have each drawn an average of more than 10,000 people, according to the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. Proponents of the permanent closure say it would increase safety for pedestrians. And it would create an alternative path along the coastline for people with limited mobility who might struggle with sand, like seniors or those in wheelchairs.

In a June blog post, Engardio explained the potential economic and other benefits of transforming the Great Highway into a park, and how vehicle traffic might shift to accommodate it.

“For two years, the park was tested during COVID,” said Anne Marguerite Herbst, who runs an art gallery near the Great Highway. “This is how we know what a success it is, and how many people from other areas of the city came out to use the beach, to use the park, to ride their bikes, whatever. We’ve lived this dream.” 

She had voted for then-incumbent Gordon Mar in the most recent election for District 4 supervisor. But when Engardio co-sponsored the ballot measure this year to close the highway, she made a “360 degree” turn, she said, and now plans to vote for him.

She is one of the many passionate people on either side of the issue, who are often at odds.

“This has been so divisive,” said Alyse Ceirante, a former tenant advocate who has lived blocks away from the Great Highway for 38 years. She is a member of Open the Great Highway, a group that opposes the street’s closure. “This is pitting neighbor against neighbor.” 

Ceirante stopped posting about the issue on neighborhood social media platform Nextdoor after users sent her responses that she called “abusive.”

Sunset resident Stephen Gorski received a threatening call after voicing his opposition to the measure in an interview on CBS news, he said. 

People are “really at each other’s throat on this issue,” Chow said. He called it “dangerous” to the community’s harmony. 

At a neighborhood event that Chow hosted last week, Engardio sat down with People of Parkside Sunset members and heard their opinions, which were mixed, on the ballot measure. 

That night, Chow confronted Engardio. 

Chow told him that, in the past, “We talked about all kinds of things to make Sunset better. Why was this the one thing that you just hid it from us?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you a heads up,” Engardio replied, “but it’s been a topic front and center for years.” He explained to Chow and others that by putting it on the ballot, he wanted to give voters control over the Great Highway’s future. Otherwise, supervisors would probably legislate its closure after its hybrid-use mandate expired, he said.

Pressure to withdraw measure

The supervisors put the measure on the ballot on June 18, their last possible day to do so. That left westside residents little time to organize and create a competing measure, Chow said.

That’s why he is trying to persuade Engardio to alter the measure he co-sponsored or remove it from the November ballot. The deadlines to amend or withdraw it are July 26 and July 30, respectively. 

Arack, of Concerned Residents of the Sunset, is also pushing for the measure’s removal. In a Letter to the Editor, published Wednesday in the Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon, she called for retaining the Great Highway’s hybrid use.

“Now is the time to withdraw this flawed initiative from the ballot,” she said, “and plan for the inclusion of all stakeholders in a decision that is a compromise.”

Editor’s note: On July 17, 2024, this story was updated with information about the popularity of the Great Highway’s hybrid use as a park, as well as potential benefits if it were fully converted to a park. On July 18, it was updated with a reference to Supervisor Joel Engardio’s June blog post further explaining how that conversion could work.

Also, this article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.

The post SF Lawmaker Faces Growing Backlash for Supporting Great Highway Closure appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The Homeless Outreach Team’s years-long staffing woes and decisions to redirect outreach workers to special projects have left them less time for their core mission: building trust with unhoused people and helping them get case managers, social services, temporary shelter and permanent housing.

In perhaps its highest-profile special project, the team worked to prepare the downtown area for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November by removing visible evidence of homelessness. This meant prioritizing unhoused people in that zone for the city’s scarce shelter beds. The summit was widely considered an opportunity for Mayor London Breed to redeem San Francisco’s image after years of bad press. Breed is running this year to keep her seat.

The mayoral race is heating up, with candidates sparring over homelessness and making it a key issue in their campaigns. It is a critical issue to San Franciscans, surveys show. Nearly 40% of residents said homelessness was the city’s worst problem, and over 70% said it was among the top three problems, a 2022 survey by the San Francisco Chronicle found. It was also a top issue for more than half of respondents to a February poll by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

The Homeless Outreach Team’s field work volume has dropped precipitously from its zenith during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the work entailed many brief interactions to help people weather the citywide shelter-in-place order.

Some service providers and homelessness advocates said they approved of one of the team’s special projects, the Street to Home program, which has placed 58 people in housing.

Even targeting high-priority areas, like downtown during the summit, wasn’t necessarily bad if it included offers of shelter, said Christin Evans, a member of the city’s Homeless Oversight Commission.

But it “needs to be done also in a way that the people with the highest needs are getting the resources that they do need, as opposed to moving them along,” Evans said.  

And when scarce resources are used for political reasons, it can damage trust-building between the team and unhoused people, providers and advocates said.

The Homeless Outreach Team could end up doing even less field work if officials follow through with plans to reduce its budget by $3.5 million over the next two years. The cuts might land on its neighborhood-based teams, further reducing or eliminating outreach outside the city’s downtown core, said Emily Cohen, deputy director of communications and legislative affairs at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, said it would be a bad idea to cut outreach, especially in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson. The court ruled that cities may enforce bans against sleeping or camping in public spaces, even if no shelter is available, and issue fines — causing many to worry that governments will prioritize policing over providing housing or services.

“The Grants Pass ruling clearly opens the doors to outright criminalization without any pretense of offering support,” Wilson said. “It’s even more imperative, even more vital, that we invest in outreach and connection and getting people connected to needed resources.”

The San Francisco Public Press asked the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing who, at City Hall, had decided to shift the team’s work priorities.

“HSH, in partnership with other city departments is responsible for deciding priorities and determining special projects,” spokesperson Deborah Bouck wrote in an email.

Waning outreach and possible political motives

The Homeless Outreach Team’s interactions with unhoused people peaked shortly after the pandemic touched down in San Francisco, when Mayor Breed issued a citywide shelter-in-place order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Engagements numbered 14,664 in April 2020 and have been trending down ever since. They fell to their lowest level this April, the most recent month for which the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing provided data, with only 1,808 encounters.

The rate of engagement soared during the pandemic because many interactions were brief, with the team on the streets talking to as many people as possible, distributing masks, educating on basic public health and helping people move into hotel rooms repurposed as homeless shelters.

In recent months, time-intensive special projects have meant less time for other outreach work, reducing the team’s overall interactions with unhoused people.

The team met its contractually required 35,000 engagements last year. Data for 2024 shows that the team’s engagements were about 7,900 through the end of April, the most recent month for which data was provided. If the downward trend continues, the team will likely miss this year’s target.

But the workers have many targets, said Bouck, of the homelessness department — not just those related to outreach. “There are 23 service objectives that HOT is evaluated on, and encounters is one of them,” she said, referring to the Homeless Outreach Team.

In its new prioritized work, the team placed 58 people in housing through the Street to Home program from its inception in June 2023 through this March, during which only one person left the housing, The Frisc reported. The program takes people directly from the streets into permanent supportive housing, where they generally can access case managers and social services. Service providers and homelessness department staff said Street to Home has helped some people who have struggled for years to come indoors.

For the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, aka APEC, about a dozen team members targeted their field work in zones where event activities would take place: near City Hall, the Moscone Center, the Asian Art Museum and the Embarcadero.

That month, the team continued general outreach throughout the city. But some of its other work, sending staffers out in response to phone calls from the public requesting help, stopped almost entirely. Those dispatches numbered 65 in October, then eight the following month, rising again after the summit concluded. In the team’s work notes about how it responded to phone calls, staffers wrote, “Due to APEC assignments not able to dispatch.”

Critics were troubled that the team’s other work might be affected by political motives.

“It just seems like a ridiculous diversion of effort and kind of classic,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, referring to the Homeless Outreach Team’s work at the November summit. She called it the latest “example of HOT being politically diverted into other jobs instead of focusing on their existing clients.”

For example, she said, the team has often shifted its work toward areas of the city where there were upticks in complaints, to the detriment of unhoused people elsewhere who had already been promised resources. Friedenbach said the Homeless Outreach Team “has a lot of really strong staff” but that when it changes priorities before following through on earlier commitments, it can end up “disintegrating trust with folks.”

When the team is not dispatched or cannot find those who call for assistance — which occurs in most cases — callers are left to fend for themselves or find help elsewhere.

As the Homeless Outreach Team’s engagements have generally declined, encampment clearings, also called sweeps, have increased. Outreach team members help with clearings by offering shelter and other resources to the encampment dwellers whom city personnel displace.

Breed has been a vocal proponent of clearings, saying it’s not healthy or safe to camp on the streets. She submitted an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief in support of clearings to the Supreme Court as it deliberated the Grants Pass case.

Unhoused people, their advocates and service providers have long criticized clearings for reducing the visibility of poverty instead of addressing its root causes, and for further destabilizing people experiencing homelessness.

Looming budget cuts and staffing woes

Cohen said past staffing troubles had contributed to the Homeless Outreach Team’s decreasing field work.

Turnover has been high, according to a 2023 city audit. Heluna Health, the nonprofit hired to run the team, has struggled to keep the team at least 90% staffed at all times, as required by its city contract.

The situation improved by this summer. The team was 95% staffed as of July 2, Bouck said.

But looming budget cuts, which Breed has proposed and the Board of Supervisors may approve this month, could slash the team’s ranks, Cohen acknowledged. That would put social services further out of reach for San Francisco’s less visible unhoused people, in particular, those who tend to steer clear of downtown, such as seniors and families living in vehicles.

One of the outreach team’s roles is to help people navigate the city’s complex services system, said Lydia Bransten, executive director of the Gubbio Project, which gives food, medical assistance and places to rest to people experiencing homelessness. If the team’s budget was cut, she wondered, then what would the plan be for providing that type of hand-holding? Police don’t have the time to do it, she said.

Unhoused people “with chaotic behaviors are the ones who need the most help, and it takes skill” to help them, Bransten said.

‘Outreach from what, to what?’

Several service providers said thinning outreach was just one of many structural problems with the city’s homelessness response system.

One of the bigger problems, they said, was that the city doesn’t have adequate services and housing to offer people in the first place.

Amber, an unhoused woman who declined to give her last name, recalled positive experiences with a Homeless Outreach Team member when she was pregnant five years ago, but said that today the team doesn’t have “too much shit to offer us.” She said she was told last week that she wasn’t eligible for single-room-occupancy housing because of her dog.

Vinny Vizgaudis and Max, who didn’t provide a last name, also described difficulties accessing housing that met their needs.

Max said he has been cycling through prison and probation since he was a teenager, because of substance use. He and his girlfriend were trying to get into shelter but he said the outreach team recently told him that there were no available spaces for couples.

Vizgaudis said he could not stay in a congregate shelter due to his post-traumatic stress disorder, but that when he tried to work with the team to find other options, none were available.

“They told me that I have to get lucky, that I have to basically win a lottery,” he said. “They have to have a room open on the day that they come to service my area and maybe I might get it.”

Because of past negative experiences, he doesn’t interact with them much, he said.

In the meantime, Vizgaudis and Max are shuffled from place to place as city workers conduct clearings.

Wilson, of Hospitality House, said the Homeless Outreach Team is the most responsive of the city’s field teams. But “what we need is something on the end of outreach,” he said.

“Outreach from what, to what? That’s the unanswered question,” Wilson said. “We don’t have the resources available for the people who need them, and even for the people who are trying to get them.”

Madison Alvarado reported this story while participating in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 Data Fellowship, which provided training, mentoring and funding to support this project.

The post Homeless Outreach Declines With Street Team’s Shifting Priorities, Staffing Woes appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

一個代表日落區數十名商戶的團體公開反對三藩市海洋公路（Great Highway）禁車提案。該提案將讓選民決定是否禁止車輛通行海洋公路，並將其改造為海濱公園。

該商戶團體表示，關閉海洋公路会對城市西邊的商戶造成損害。

舊金山華埠商戶聯會的主席邵旗謙（Ed Siu）代表該聯會的日落區支部表示：「我們會全力反對這項提案。」該支部於去年成立，代表日落區 45 間商户。

該團體可能是第一個正式反對此提案的組織。上個月，市長布里德（London Breed）與五名市參事將該投票提案提交到 11 月的公投裡。如果選民通過該提案，它將永久禁止車輛通行Lincoln Way與Sloat大道之間的海洋公路。目前，這條大道在周末禁止車輛通行，以便人們可以步行或騎自行車通過。

邵旗謙說，在工作日期間，海洋公路對當地商業至關重要，因為它是司機出入日落區與列治文區的捷徑。永久關閉這段路可能會阻緩交通，並損害這兩地商業的人流。邵旗謙提到，更長的通行時間也會讓送貨公司有理由推遲運送貨物。他們可能要等到街道不再擁堵時再運送貨物，導致商家在營運時間期間庫存不足。

邵旗謙表示，有其他兩條主要幹道可以作為海洋公路的替代路線，分別是日落大道（Sunset Boulevard）和19街。

「但是，如果有一天需要關閉其中一條路進行維修，怎麼辦？」他說，這種情況下，司機沒有辦法選擇其他路線，可能會導致更嚴重的延誤。

海洋公路的多樣用途 —— 即在工作日供私家車通行，在週末供行人通行 —— 是一項實驗性計畫，該計劃原定將持續到 2025 年底。屆時，市參事會將決定這條公路的長期命運。

代表日落區的第 4 區市參事殷嘉立（Joel Engardio）表示，在多種用途之間來回切換是「不可持續的。」這是因為「在每週一早上都必須重新恢復為道路的情況下，只存在於週末的公園很難建立持久的公園基礎設施，」他說。

殷嘉立提到，市參事會的大多數成員都對有意向禁止車輛在這條公路通行。他推測，在不久的將來，擁有否決權的市參事會多數成員可能會推動關閉這條道路。

作為將該投票提案列入今年公投的市參事之一，殷嘉立並沒有直接回應邵旗謙的批評。相反，他提到，該提案會將決定如何使用海洋公路權利交還居民決定，而非民選官員。

他說：「提案會給予反對關閉海洋公路的人一個機會去聯合起來並反對它。」

這提案不會影響海洋公路延伸段（Great Highway Extension），該長約一英里的路段位於Sloat大道和天際線大道（Skyline Boulevard）之間，連接三藩市和帝利市（Daly City）。市參事會已於 5 月投票決定關閉該延伸段，作為其保護沿海地段免受海平面上升侵蝕計畫的一部分。

代表列治文區的第 1 區參事陳詩敏（Connie Chan）反對該提議。她在一份聲明中表示，海洋公路是「西區重要的南北連接點」。她表示，市府應將一半的車道留給汽車通行，另一半則改為休閒空間。

殷嘉立表示，陳詩敏的提議不能讓司機和公園遊客都滿意，也不划算。他說，在這種情況下，市政府「仍將承擔維護可供汽車通行的道路產生的所有費用，而此道路的實用性卻大大降低。」

但在Taraval街做生意的長城五金老闆周紹鋆（Albert Chow）則認為陳詩敏的提議聽起來不錯。

周紹鋆說，提案中若沒有這個選項，「我將被迫投反對票」。他補充說，一些將此提案列入選票的市參事似乎對日落區的情況知之甚少。周紹鋆同時也是當地幫助促進小型企業發展的社區組織 People of Parkside Sunset（POPS）的主席，該組織的成員對此提案的有不同的看法。

彭子茵（Dorothy Pang）是一名在日落區Parkside執業的兒科牙醫， 她曾居住在海洋灘（Ocean Beach）附近。她認為，這條公路目前的使用模式就已經足夠好了。她喜歡將其用作一個美麗的海濱公園，但她也表示，許多司機需要使用該公路來往返城市之間。

「為什麼我們不能共享這個空間呢？為什麼我們要如此極端地只容納一方的存在呢？」彭子茵問。 

如需聯繫本文作者吳哲，請發郵箱至zhe@sfpublicpress.org。

The post 商戶們反對將海洋公路改建公園的提案 appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

A group representing dozens of merchants in the Sunset District is objecting to a ballot measure that would close San Francisco’s Great Highway to cars and transform it into a park. 

The closure would hurt businesses on the west side of the city, the group said. 

“We will strongly oppose the proposition,” said Ed Siu, chairman of the Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco, speaking on behalf of its Sunset branch, which formed last year and represents 45 businesses. 

The group may be the first to come out officially against the proposition, which Mayor London Breed and five city supervisors last week approved to be put on the November ballot. If passed by voters, it would permanently remove car traffic from the Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard. Currently, the thoroughfare closes to car traffic during weekends so that people can walk and bike its length.

The Great Highway is vital for local commerce during the week, Siu said, because it is the quickest route for drivers traveling between the Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods. A permanent closure could slow travel, discouraging commuters and harming foot traffic to businesses in both areas. The longer travel time could also give merchandise-delivery companies a reason to delay transporting goods to stores until hours when street congestion was lighter, leaving store inventories sparse until after customers had left, Siu said.

Siu acknowledged that two major arteries, Sunset Boulevard and 19th Avenue, serve as alternatives to the Great Highway. 

“But what if one day one of those routes needs to close down for maintenance?” he said. That would leave drivers without options, possibly causing worse delays. 

The Great Highway’s hybrid use — for vehicles during the week, and for pedestrians on weekends — is part of a pilot program that will be in effect through the end of 2025. At that time, supervisors would be able to decide the highway’s long-term fate.

Switching back and forth between uses is “unsustainable,” said District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who represents the Sunset District. That’s because “it’s difficult to create lasting park infrastructure when the weekend park has to convert back to a road every Monday morning,” he said.

A majority of the Board of Supervisors is already interested in closing the street to cars, Engardio said. He speculated that in the future, a veto-proof majority of the board might push for closure. 

One of the supervisors to put the measure on this year’s ballot, Engardio did not respond directly to Siu’s criticisms. Instead, he said that the ballot measure empowered residents, rather than supervisors, to decide how to use the highway. 

“A ballot measure gives people opposed to the closure a chance to organize and defeat it,” he said. 

The measure would not affect the Great Highway extension, a nearly one-mile stretch between Sloat and Skyline boulevards that connects San Francisco with Daly City. The Board of Supervisors voted in May to close the extension as part of a plan to protect coastal properties from erosion due to sea level rise. 

District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, who represents the Richmond District, opposes the proposition, saying in a statement that the Great Highway is “a vital North-South connector for the Westside.” She said that the city should leave half its traffic lanes to cars and convert the other half to recreational space.

Engardio said that Chan’s suggestion would not satisfy both drivers and park goers, and it would be an inefficient use of money. The city would “still have all the expense of maintaining the road for cars, while the road has far less utility,” he said.

But Chan’s proposal sounds good to Albert Chow, owner of Great Wall Hardware, on Taraval Street, and president of the People of Parkside Sunset, a neighborhood group that helps promote small businesses. 

Without that option on the table, “I will be forced to vote no” on the measure, Chow said, adding that some of the supervisors who put it on the ballot seem to know little about the dynamics of the Sunset District. Opinions on the measure are mixed among members of Chow’s group.

Dorothy Pang, a pediatric dentist with a practice in the Parkside neighborhood and a former resident of the Ocean Beach area, said the highway is fine as it is. She enjoys using it as a beautiful outdoor park, but said she recognized that many drivers need to use it to commute in and out of the city. 

“Why can’t we share the space? Why do we have to go so extreme to make it all inclusive for one thing or another?” Pang said.

This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.

The post Merchants Oppose Ballot Measure to Turn Great Highway Into Park appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

You walk into the meeting and, at the entrance, use your phone to scan a code displayed on a placard. It warps you to a website where you select your language — suppose that’s Brazilian Portuguese — and presto! A live transcription of the meeting, now in Portuguese, begins flowing on your screen. You can keep reading the translated dialogue or plug in your headphones so a robotic voice can read it to you.

San Jose, Millbrae and other cities are experimenting with this artificial intelligence-powered software to make local government more accessible through real-time translation. Napa County, the most recent to try it out, launched the service this week.

“I don’t think we can afford not to do it, given the needs of our population,” said Millbrae Mayor Anders Fung, the first Asian American immigrant to hold that office. About one in five Millbrae residents is not proficient in English, according to U.S. Census data.

“We need to serve the people in a way they could understand,” Fung said.

The technology has the potential to bridge communication gaps in San Francisco, where nearly 147,000 residents are estimated to be less than proficient in English. Members of the public can struggle to access city-provided human interpreters, who verbally translate what’s said during public meetings. But officials say they have no plan to introduce this service, out of concerns about its accuracy and cultural competency. Local community groups share those concerns, but also say they are interested in the technology’s potential to make public meetings more accessible.

Neither human nor machine is flawless. Staff from those local groups said that city-provided interpreters are not always culturally competent or accurate. And the San Francisco Public Press’ test of AI-translation software revealed numerous shortcomings — like translating “budget” into “butter” when the speaker pronounced it poorly — though overall the product worked.

Tech company Wordly, based in Los Altos, launched its AI-powered translation service in 2019 and initially marketed it to industry conferences and companies doing global business. But the company quickly found one of its fastest-growing uses in local governments, including in the Bay Area, said Dave Deasy, chief marketing manager. The product can translate 58 languages, including Arabic, Italian, Russian and Japanese.

Companies offering similar AI-powered real-time translation products for meetings and events include Interprefy, based in Switzerland, and KUDO, in New York. Both launched their products more recently than Wordly, which appears to lead in adoption by local governments.

Helping officials talk with each other, residents

Before embracing Wordly, Millbrae provided interpreters at public meetings to people who requested them in advance — San Francisco has a similar policy. But officials realized a year ago that they needed the AI-based tool, Mayor Fung said, when an attendee made a public comment in Mandarin. Fung, who was not mayor at the time, said he was the only councilmember who understood the attendee because no one had booked a Chinese-to-English interpreter.

By using Wordly, Millbrae residents can skip that step.

“The beauty of our product is that it’s on demand and you don’t have to plan ahead,” Deasy said.

In the city of Sunnyvale, the newly formed Human Relations Commission uses Wordly, enabling monolingual Spanish- and English-speaking commissioners to deliberate more easily and quickly.

“This creates a much smoother dialogue than using live interpreters,” city spokesperson Jennifer Garnett said.

San Jose began using Wordly for its city council and committee meetings in April. A month after launch, City Clerk Toni J. Taber said public feedback was positive and the city planned to extend its use to other departments, according to news publication Government Technology.

In Modesto, officials made initial plans during the COVID-19 pandemic to offer Spanish subtitle service, but adopted Wordly in 2022 instead in hopes that it would help engage communities that spoke other languages.

Wordly says on its website that it is less expensive than human interpretation, in part because it translates dozens of languages; providing that service by conventional means would require hiring several people. Reports from some cities support this. San Jose budgeted $400,000 per year for eight interpreters. After the city adopted Wordly, the annual cost fell to $82,000, the San José Spotlight reported. In Gilroy, a two-hour meeting used to require two interpreters and cost at least $500, but using Wordly has dropped that cost to $300.

Wordly offers various subscription plans, with the hourly price of translation ranging from roughly $100 to $300.

Accuracy problems common with AI

The Public Press conducted a 15-minute trial of Wordly, using it to listen to a Cantonese version of a Modesto City Council meeting about the city budget. Overall, the product achieved its goal of accurately reflecting the discussion about this complex topic, including when exchanges were dense with numbers.

But initial translation accuracy was low, with words out of context and incorrectly sequenced in a manner more akin to English than Chinese. As a speaker kept talking, Wordly overwrote its prior output with a more accurate translation. For example, in a discussion about the city’s budget, Wordly translated someone’s statement about cars as a reference to “marine” vehicles, like boats, before quickly correcting itself.

Translations were often too literal. When a councilmember said, “So moved” — a procedural declaration about a government’s item of business — Wordly mistranslated it as “所以感动” which means “so (emotionally) touching.” When a speaker presented financial projections and referred to a square visual element in a table of figures, Wordly sometimes called the element a physical box.

Wordly lets users click on translated sentences to read them in the original language. That could help some people piece together a speaker’s meaning during or after a public meeting.

When users have Wordly speak the translated text, the audio stops if the phone’s screen turns off. That could vex less tech-savvy people whose screens automatically time out.

SF government, community skeptical

San Francisco officials said they were open to using AI but did not have plans to adopt Wordly or a similar tool.

“We believe that there’s no better interpreter and translator than the human, who can capture the essence and cultural nuances in language better than any type of machine translation,” said Jorge Rivas, executive director of the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, which oversees implementation of the city’s language policy.

Staff at various community groups told the Public Press they were interested in technology that would make public meetings more accessible in more languages, but they expressed general concern about AI products. Some declined to comment on the record about Wordly because they had not tried it.

Sandy Jiang, a community organizer at the Chinatown Community Development Center, said she worried about Wordly’s accuracy and usability, especially for seniors who struggle with smartphones. She often helps residents by interpreting their comments into English during public meetings.

High-quality translation and interpretation require more than word-for-word replacement, and benefit from cultural competence, Jiang said. In Cantonese, for example, the name for Grant Avenue isn’t a direct translation, which would be 格蘭特大道. Instead, the Chinese community knows it as 都板街, which translates to Dupont Street, its name before the 1906 earthquake. And while “Chinatown” is generally translated as 唐人街, San Francisco locals better recognize it as 華埠, which means “Chinese wharf.”

Here, Wordly might actually have an edge over some human interpreters. Its translations can incorporate local terms for people, places or organizations that a client city specifies, Deasy said, as well as block profanity and other unwanted language. Jiang and other sources said they had witnessed city-provided interpreters use local terminology that was not culturally competent.

And while Wordly would not be able to clarify a speaker’s meaning with them in real time, some human interpreters also fail to provide that service. Members of the public have frequently felt misrepresented during public comment, said Vanessa Bohm, director of family wellness and health promotion programs at the Central American Resource Center, a nonprofit serving the Bay Area Latino community.

Bohm also expressed concern that AI tools could reduce demand for good interpreters and leave them with less work.

Bohm and Jiang both said that a service like Wordly could be a backup when human interpretation was unavailable, but that top-shelf interpretation should always be the priority.

“Interpretation means for the person to understand what you are talking about,” Jiang said. “The important part of providing interpretation is not just having a service, [it] is actually having the service that works.”

The post As Bay Area Cities Adopt Real-Time AI Translation for Public Meetings, SF Abstains appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.