San Francisco County has the highest COVID-19 case rate of any other county in California with a seven-day average of 13 cases per 100,000 residents, state data showed on Tuesday. By comparison, Los Angeles is reporting 5 cases per 100,000 residents. And San Francisco isn’t the only Bay Area spot sitting at the top of the list. All counties in the region except Solano have among the highest rates in the state.

But multiple experts say this news isn’t alarming, and does not warrant any policy changes. Despite the region’s ranking, cases are extremely low compared to what they were amid the winter surge when the city’s seven-day average soared above 250 cases per 100,000 at the peak.

“No I’m not concerned,” said Dr. George Rutherford, director of UCSF’s Prevention and Public Health Group. “I don’t think it’s any reason to go back to putting the brakes on and our masks back on. We have lots of hospital capacity.”

“I am not too concerned as our hospitals remain eerily quiet — only 2 patients with COVID hospitalized today at the main UCSF Health hospital on Parnassus, compared to close to a 100 in this hospital on January 25,” UCSF infectious diseases expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong wrote in an email.

“I don’t anticipate any lockdowns, and I am not even sure any restrictions will be re-implemented as long as our hospitals remain protected.” Chin Hong continued. “There may be disruptions in the community in the workplace and schools as people need to be taken out to isolate for at least 5 days if infected. Is it interesting that countries like the UK, Denmark and South Africa have removed the mandate for a compulsory Isolation when infected and this softens the potential disruptions to life in this way.”

While San Francisco’s case rate may not be concerning, you may still be wondering why it’s higher than other places. UCSF’s Dr. Monica Gandhi believes a primary reason is the city’s robust testing apparatus.

“We do a lot of testing in San Francisco with mass community testing sites established via a collaboration between UCSF and the San Francisco Department of Public Health,” Gandhi said. “This allows us to detect slight increases in cases better than other counties in the setting of BA.2 (now 72% of strains in the US) and with increased movement of the population.”

Rutherford agreed that testing is playing into the city’s higher rate and added that the city is a medical hub and people are coming to the city for care that requires testing. “Theoretically, positive tests should be reported back to the county of residence, but that might not always be happening,” he said.

The highly transmissible BA.2 variant — that’s spreading at a time when more people are traveling and society is reopening — is another likely factor, said Chin-Hong.

“A combination of spring break travel, visitors from lots of other parts of the country and world (Asia, Europe), reopening and the resumption of large indoor events like sports and concerts,” Chin-Hong wrote in an email. “This is all fueled by BA.2, which is more transmissible in a city that is compact. There may be more susceptible people to infection in San Francisco and the Bay Area (compared to other parts of the state) who haven’t gotten Breakthrough infection with BA.1 and whose immunity to infection has waned. Strategies that have been used in the past to avoid infection may not work quite as well with COVID.”

Could the Bay Area be at the start of a BA.2-driven surge?

The experts that SFGATE talked to all said they don’t expect cases to skyrocket.

“There’s going to be some sort of a sawtooth pattern and it’s not surprising that things are going to be up and down,” said Rutherford. “We’ll see some clusters and bumps from BA2, but I think the overall pattern is it’s going to broaden the base of that curve as it comes down.”

Chin-Hong emphasized that the region has high vaccination rates and this combined with immunity people infected with COVID gained during the original omicron surge “will provide enough immunity ammunition to protect people from getting seriously ill and so protect our hospital resources so we can continue to take care of the spectrum of non-COVID illnesses without interruption.”

The post Why specialists are ‘not involved’ San Francisco Bay Space’s COVID charge is highest in California appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

DUBLIN (KPIX 5) – As interest rates creep up, many thought it would mean some potential home buyers would back off. So far, that doesn’t seem to be the case in the Bay Area’s red-hot market.

March was another record month for California and Bay Area real estate. The median single-family home price in California, in March, was $849,080, according to the California Association of Realtors.

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Here were the median sale prices for single-family homes in the nine Bay Area counties:
• Alameda: $1,430,000
• Con Costa: $965,900
• Marine: $1,737,500
• Napa: $998,000
• San Francisco: $2,060,000
• San Mateo: $2,280,000
• Santa Clara: $1,950,000
• Sonoma: $833,750
• Solano: $604,000

“The headlines are screaming historically high sales prices. The finer print is, people still want to buy homes,” said David Stark, with the Bay East Association of Realtors. “If you look at how long a home was on the market, it’s at historically low levels, which tells us that buyers are not only willing to pay those prices, but they’re willing to pay those prices quickly.”

Mortgage interest rates are rising. However, that phenomenon doesn’t seem to have had an effect on the market yet, according to John Levine, the VP & Chief Economist of the California Association of Realtors.

“Even as rates have really, surged over the course of the last eight weeks or so, we haven’t seen that affect buyer demand for several reasons,” Levine told KPIX 5. “But the bottom line is, we still have ultimately too many buyers and not enough homes to put them in, that’s keeping the market relatively strong.”

In March, for the first time in about two years, the inventory of available homes did not shrink, according to the latest figures.

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“It is significant that we actually have more for the first time in a very long time. We still have a long way to go to get back toward something that looks normal,” Levine said. “But, I think for those buyers in particular who really do want to move forward with those transactions and get in while the gettin’ was good as it were with rates, that’s good news in the sense that they might have a few more options moving forward.”

Bay East President and Realtor Sheila Cunha tells KPIX 5 while the market is still “crazy,” it’s not quite as crazy as it was a few months ago.

“We’re not seeing quite as many offers right now as we did four or five months ago,” she said.

Cunha believes the rising interest rates will ultimately lead to some potential homebuyers backing off, but doesn’t think that’ll happen until the summertime.

“I think it’s coming. I think as the Fed continue to raise the interest rates you’ll see buyers not being able to afford what they once could,” she said.

As for the inventory, she thinks that will slowly start to increase as well.

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“Spring is usually our busiest season,” she said. “I think we’ll start seeing more homes coming on the market.”

The post Regardless of Rising Curiosity Charges, Bay Space’s Sizzling Housing Market But To Cool Off – CBS San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

kali9 / iStock.com

While rents declined in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have spiked by an unprecedented 17.1% nationally over the last year, according to Apartment List. At the same time, the only generation to record an increase in renting activity in the past year (up by 21%, per RentCafe) is Gen Z — a generation which is playing a big role in a seeming urban revival.

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Rent growth continued to increase in March, with Apartment List’s national index up by 0.8%. So far this year, rents are growing more slowly than they did in 2021 — however, rental prices continue to rise at a faster pace than pre-pandemic. In addition, over the first three months of 2022, rents have increased by a total of 1.8%. In March, rents increased in 93 of the nation’s 100 largest cities, with “Sun Belt markets in Florida and Arizona continuing to see some of the nation’s fastest growth,” per Apartment List.

The Miami metro has seen the nation’s fastest rent increase over the past six months, up 8%, and also ranks No. 1 for year-over-year rent growth, producing a 30% increase. Over the past six months New Orleans rents went up 8%, Orlando rents rose 6%, Tucson rents increased by 5% and Salt Lake City rents hiked by 5%.

In terms of supply, Apartment List notes there is a gradual easing of the tight market conditions that have characterized the rental market over the past year.

In the midst of these rising prices, one generation seems to be less affected than others. A RentCafe report finds that Gen Z represents more than a quarter of lease applications nationwide, mostly centered in large urban hubs that promise job opportunities. Gen Z residents may bring new life into cities once considered in decline due to the pandemic.

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In 2021, Gen Z rental hotspots included San Francisco, which saw a 101% increase in new apartment renters of this generation, per RentCafe.

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San Francisco’s popularity was echoed by Jersey City, New Jersey (with a 95% Gen Z increase over the past year), and Manhattan, New York, at a 65% increase. Rounding out the top 10 cities attracting Gen Z renters are Philadelphia, Boston, Arlington, San Jose, Seattle, and Minneapolis.

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About the Author

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a full-time financial journalist and has written for several publications, including Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, Bloomberg and Business Insider. She also worked as a vice president/senior content writer for major NYC-based financial companies, including New York Life and MSCI. Yaël is now freelancing and most recently, she co-authored the book “Blockchain for Medical Research: Accelerating Trust in Healthcare,” with Dr. Sean Manion. (CRC Press, April 2020) She holds two master’s degrees, including one in Journalism from New York University and one in Russian Studies from Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, France.

The post Regardless of Rents Spiking, Gen Z Transferring to Main City Areas Like San Francisco, Manhattan appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A clearer picture of post-pandemic life, one that Bay Area health officials increasingly have hinted at since the omicron wave began slowing a couple of weeks ago, is starting to take shape.

Formal public health restrictions like indoor mask requirements and vaccine verification to get into certain indoor spaces will likely ease. Universal contact tracing will be pared back to focus on the highest-risk settings only.

In public remarks Tuesday, local health officials started to spell out some details on what to expect in the coming weeks once omicron infections subside. Omicron now is on the descent, though still at high case levels that are falling more slowly than they rose. Across the Bay Area and state, case rates and test positivity are steadily dropping, and hospitalizations are starting to follow. As of Monday, new daily cases in the nine Bay Area counties fell to a seven-day average of 132 per 100,000 people — half of what it was two weeks ago. It’s too soon to tell what death rates will do because of the lag between new cases and deaths.

“It’s more like getting closer and closer to the new normal, versus closing the book on COVID,” Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss told the county’s supervisors on Tuesday. “In terms of the things that have been most disruptive to people’s daily lives, those will continue to fall away, hopefully not to return.”

If the omicron downward trajectory holds — and the latest figures Tuesday showed the trend continuing — the region can expect emergency pandemic measures to transition to an endemic response. That means a cautious loosening of official restrictions such as easing vaccination requirements in some settings and — much like San Francisco did Tuesday in dropping indoor mask mandates for vaccinated and boosted stable groups in gyms and offices — beginning to pull back rules on face coverings.

Contra Costa County, for instance, is looking into its health order that requires people to be fully vaccinated to enter restaurants, acting health officer Dr. Ori Tzvieli said Tuesday at a Board of Supervisors meeting.

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If Contra Costa ends up easing that requirement, it could be similar to what San Francisco is doing. As of Tuesday, the city is allowing unvaccinated people who have a medical or religious exemption to dine indoors as long as they show a negative antigen test result from within the last day or PCR test from the previous two days. Previously, San Francisco required all indoor diners to be fully vaccinated with no option to “test out” of the requirement.

Bay Area counties soon will probably have to decide whether, and under what circumstances, to lift local indoor mask mandates. California officials are expected to drop the statewide indoor mask mandate Feb. 15, Tzvieli said, and Bay Area counties will likely take a county-by-county approach on whether to follow suit locally.

Prior to the omicron wave, Bay Area counties weighed specific criteria for such mask action — if eight weeks or more had passed after vaccines became available to kids 5 to 11, or if a county had reached and remained in the CDC’s “moderate” tier for Transmission and had low and stable hospitalizations. Going forward, the focus will be more on hospital capacity, Tzvieli said.

“Over the next two weeks we’re going to be looking at numbers closely; we’re going to figure out the best way to align our own masking order with the state,” he said. “The most important driver for us right now is less the case numbers and more how the health care systems are doing. We want to make sure everyone in the community, when they go to the hospital, is able to seek high-quality care.”

Counties that have more hospital capacity to withstand a potential bump in cases that might follow lifting of restrictions may be more comfortable easing masking than those with less hospital capacity, he said.

“I expect there to be some diversity,” he said. “I suspect most will lift within a month of the state but I’m not sure exactly when. I think it’ll be very county by county.”

Tuesday’s discussions followed Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody’s statements a day earlier that Santa Clara County’s public health department plans to scale back its role in vaccination and testing, ceding those services to people’s regular health care providers. This would mark a return to pre-pandemic expectations, since providers have traditionally handled those services for most residents

Moss, of Alameda County, emphasized that with case rates and hospitalizations still high, it’s too soon to start paring back many restrictions. But with talk of the post-omicron state “in the air,” he wanted to open the discussion.

Despite prospects for dropping mask requirements, residents should still consider ways to protect themselves and the community, he said, echoing recent emphasis from other health officials on the need to rely on people’s individual choices to stay safe, and less on government restrictions.

“Individuals, families and institutions will all need to manage ongoing COVID risk and make the choices that are best for them,” Moss said. “Even if (masks are) not required, they’re going to be a good thing for people to use, particularly if they’re really sick, for the foreseeable future.”

Chronicle staff writer Erin Allday contributed to this report.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho

The post Early alerts on shifting towards Bay Space’s post-pandemic life appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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San Francisco is lagging behind other major metropolitan areas in the economic recovery from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest report from the Office of the City Controller.

Office workers are returning to their desks in other cities, but it remains unclear how many actually live, work and spend in San Francisco.

While Austin, Texas has an office visit rate of up to 60%, Greater San Francisco is stuck at around 30%, according to the report.

Tourists also seem reluctant to book trips to San Francisco.

With the arrival of the corona virus in 2020, almost all airports came to a standstill. Air travel has since picked up slowly across the country, but some cities have grown faster than others.

In October, the airports in Phoenix and Denver had almost returned to pre-pandemic passenger numbers for domestic travel, according to the report from the City Controller’s office. Seattle and Los Angeles had reached about 80%. In contrast, San Francisco only reached 60% of its pre-pandemic passengers on routes within the United States.

If you look at hotels, the story is similar.

Before the pandemic, San Francisco typically had around 80% of its hotel rooms occupied. In December only about 40% of the rooms were occupied. That’s actually less than the pandemic-era peak of 50% in late July. At this point, vaccines were widespread and the threat from Delta or other variants had not yet fully emerged.

Travelers collect their luggage on December 30th at the Palace Hotel’s valet parking line. Hotel occupancy is around 40% in December, up from a peak of 50% in the pandemic era at the end of July 2021. (Craig Lee / Der Prüfer)

As a side perk: the average hotel room in San Francisco prior to the pandemic was over $ 300 a night, but visitors could snap up a booking for around $ 175 around the Thanksgiving holiday.

The report found that other major cities are recovering both their rates and occupancy rates much faster. Phoenix and San Diego are making roughly as much per hotel room per night as they did before the pandemic.

All in all, these numbers suggest that downtown San Francisco businesses continue to struggle without guaranteed demand from tourists and commuters.

It is possible that many of the people who stayed have just shifted their spending from downtown to their local trade corridors. While the Controllers report leaves out the spending patterns by neighborhood, it suggests that San Francisco residents have not returned to the same level of economic activity as they did before the pandemic within the city limits.

One of the best proxies for this concept is the time people spend outside of their home. When people are out and about in their neighborhood, they spend money in local shops, use public transport, and generally participate productively in civic life. If they stay indoors, much of this economic activity will be lost or instead diverted to online retailers, many of whom are not on-site.

Compared to January 2020, San Francisco residents still spend 15% less, while that number is closer to 5% nationwide. Importantly, however, the San Franciscans reduced their absence from home by nearly 40% in March 2020, while the state average fell closer to 25%. In other words, San Francisco residents have been more cautious about accommodation from the start.

The median monthly rental price for an apartment in San Francisco prior to the pandemic was around $ 2,750. It hit its lowest price of $ 2,000 in January 2021, but began to grow steadily through the first half of the year. This progress has stalled; The average monthly asking rent for an apartment was $ 2,250 in November, according to the report.

Small businesses remain constrained. Local traders’ confidence that a recovery is inevitable remains below the national average and new store openings have stagnated.

More than 220 stores – classified as Retail and Commerce, Neighborhood Services, or Restaurants and Bars – opened in San Francisco in January 2019. By comparison, that number dropped to around 130 in November 2021.

If you look at the speeds on the motorway, the City Controller’s report comes to the conclusion that more people are driving. Decreasing vehicle speeds indicate more traffic jams on the roads. The latest numbers from November show an average speed that is below the pre-COVID average.

Traffic jams on Highway 101 near downtown San Francisco in August. The latest data shows a decrease in vehicle speeds along the highways in and out of the city, with average speeds below pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

However, this may not indicate that more people are on the move, but that they have shifted their mobility from local public transport to private transport. The number of people exiting BART trains at Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell and Civic Centers has seen weak growth in recent months, hitting just over 20% of the pre-pandemic passenger numbers, according to the report.

Most of the data in the report comes from before the advent of the Omicron variant, which arrives inconveniently in the middle of another Christmas season. The recent surge has already resulted in changes to public health protocols, including temporary mask returns and the urging of many companies to require full empowerment of customers.

Omicron is also impacting major events, including the cancellation of the San Francisco fireworks display, changing the advice of public health professionals on attending major events, and staffing shortages in companies already struggling to survive.

cgraf@sfexaminer.com

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Welcome to Year in Eater 2021, Eater’s annual tradition of celebrating the last 12 months with the help of some of the Bay Area’s best food writers. From now until the end of the year, Eater SF will be asking questions daily about the Bay Area dining scene with answers from those who know it best.

The closure of the flagship Le Marais bakery in the marina because of their lousy landlord really pissed me off – they put so much into this space. At least Michelle Polzine closed the 20th Century Cafe on her terms, but her suicide note was a heartbreaking comment on what it means to be in the restaurant industry and how it eats you up. – Marcia Gagliardi, founder / editor of tablehopper.com

It was bittersweet getting the news when star pastry chef Michelle Polzine announced that she would be closing the 20th Century Cafe this spring. This Russian honey cake was truly one of the San Francisco cake icons, now often imitated but never made so well, and the rare vintage-style cafe is very much missed. – Becky Duffett, assistant editor, Eater SF

They’re all equally sad, aren’t they? But I miss having a drink and a view of Cliff House. I know technically it closed at the end of 2020, and something new is coming next year, but that was the real emptiness for me in 2021. – Omar Mamoon, Writer, Esquire

As a former resident of Ireland (a semester abroad in Cork, but still), de Veres Irish Pub was the best American imitation I had seen since returning to the States, with its dark wooden bar flown in from the Emerald Isle, Great Shepherd’s Pie and bartenders who knew how to properly pour a Guinness. The Davis location was the hub for trivia, pre-Thanksgiving meetings, and adults wanting an adult drink in a college town. Every football fan in town knew they should go to the pub in downtown Sacramento for 6 a.m. Premier League or La Liga games when the US men’s team scored a last-minute winning goal at the 2010 World Cup the collective roar could be heard a block away. But pubs weren’t built for pandemics, and brothers Henry and Simon de Vere White pulled the plug on both concepts in early October. – Benjy Egel, Food and Beverage Reporter, The Sacramento Bee

Oliveto in Rockridge. Although the Kleins were ready to retire and continue their thriving Community Grains business, it felt like the end of an era for this storied corner of College Avenue. – Jessica Yadegaran, food and dining writer, The Mercury News and East Bay Times

Best O./Yelp

Halu, a tiny, adorable yakitori restaurant covered in Beatles paraphernalia, never reopened after it first closed from COVID. I went on hoping to see it revived, but this fall it was closed for good. Looks like his replacement will serve yakitori too, so I’m hopeful! – Esther Mobley, senior wine critic, San Francisco Chronicle

The Jiangnan cuisine at Outer Richmond is the one I will really miss. – Luke Tsai, food editor, KQED

I always find it heartbreaking to hear when a restaurant closes. As a food reporter, it is never easy to hear the stories of all the hard work that goes into starting and running a business only to face the difficult decision of permanently closing it. You really feel for them. – Susana Guerrero, reporter, SFGATE

The buffet place in Oakland Chinatown called Buffet Fortuna was closed at some point during the pandemic. It was a regular meeting point for my family. Buffets are fun, and I remember going to birthday parties and loading crab legs. Buffet Fortuna had a bit of everything: sushi, dim sum, stew. I miss going there. – Momo Chang, freelance food writer and co-director of Oakland Voice

The closure of Homestead in Oakland hit me in the pit of my stomach; It’s a restaurant that I ate at many years ago with a family friend who is friends with the owners. The details are fuzzy, but I know the food was wonderful because it was when I imagined moving to California. Lots of life would stand in my way, but Homestead helped me fall in love with the Bay Area again through the food and so looked forward to partying in this cozy dining room again. – Lauren Saria, Editor, Eater SF

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The post San Francisco-Bay Space’s Largest Restaurant Closings of 2021 appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

LinkedIn reports show an increasing number of workers are moving to the Dallas area from major hubs on the west coast.

Dallas – California’s two largest subways are the most supportive of the Dallas / Fort Worth employees.

According to a LinkedIn survey, North Texas has the most workers from Los Angeles in the past 12 months, followed by New York City and Chicago.

The City of Angels has been the largest source of origin for workers migrating to Dallas / Fort Worth for some time, and is located from the Empire State’s largest hub earlier this year. For every 10,000 DFW-based LinkedIn members, LinkedIn estimates that five moved from Los Angeles in the past year.

Related: Tesla’s move to Texas causes a violent reaction in the Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area ranked fourth last month. The region wasn’t in the top 10 before the pandemic, according to a February 2020 report, Los Angeles was fourth at the time.

That number is yet another sign that the number of businesses and workers moving to Texas from locations like California and New York is increasing. Cost and tax cuts for companies and their employers have helped drive change.

Charles Schwab Corporation, a financial services company, CBRE, a commercial real estate company, and DZS, a technology product provider to the telecommunications industry, are one of the companies that have moved their headquarters out of the California metropolitan area.

Similar: Average salary in Dallas compared to other US cities

Migration “instances” of LinkedIn reports occur when you change the location of a profile on a business networking site.

The other Texas regions make up only a handful of the top 10 regions where workers go to Dallas Fort Worth. The Brian College Station, Rubock, Houston, and Waco area all saw significant worker emigration to northern Texas.

Austin is the number one destination for those who have moved away from North Texas in the past few years. Several cities in Colorado follow.

Los Angeles, San Francisco in areas losing workers to Dallas Fort Worth

Source link Los Angeles, San Francisco in areas losing workers to Dallas Fort Worth

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Teresa Bryce Bazemore

Teresa Bryce Bazemore, CEO of FHLBank San Francisco, is one of the Bay Area’s most influential business women

Teresa Bryce Bazemore, CEO of FHLBank San Francisco, is one of the Bay Area’s most influential business women

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (FHLBank San Francisco) congratulates President and CEO Teresa Bryce Bazemore on her recognition as one of the most influential women in the Bay Area economy for 2021 by the San Francisco Business Times. Bazemore and the other honorees will be celebrated at a virtual event today.

The annual list recognizes the leadership and accomplishments of women in a wide cross-section of industries, and Bazemore has wasted no time driving change in her industry since joining FHLBank San Francisco last March. “I want to thank the San Francisco Business Times for this recognition,” said Bazemore. “And to extend my congratulations to all of the amazing, inspiring women on the Influential Women list in 2021. I feel honored to be in such a company. “

Bazemore is a pioneer in the financial industry and a seasoned executive with over 25 years of leadership experience building and running mortgage insurance and service companies. Bazemore was appointed to her role at FHLBank San Francisco, effective March 15, and has been a driving force in responding to the economic impact of the pandemic and the differences it highlighted. With a passion for creating wealth for all, Bazemore is focused on leveraging the bank’s existing affordable housing, first home buyers and economic development grant programs, as well as brand new initiatives to serve in the communities of the bank and its member financial institutions.

“I am thrilled to come to work every day and work with my team to empower our members to best serve their customers and communities,” said Bazemore. “With the economic shocks and upheavals of the pandemic behind us, the bank’s business operations and community support initiatives need to be even more resilient to fulfill our mission to make all of our communities more equitable and resilient.”

The story goes on

To that end, Bazemore followed the recently announced collaboration between FHLBank San Francisco and the Urban Institute that focused on the home ownership gap between black and white. The two-year, $ 1.5 million research and product development initiative called Racial Equity Accelerator for Homeownership aims to address some of the most persistent challenges in closing racial home ownership and wealth accumulation challenges. She is also committed to helping the bank play a bigger role in supporting infrastructure projects that improve the quality of life for residents in its Arizona, California and Nevada offices.

Bazemore has paved the way for women in the financial services industry throughout her career and serves as an important role model for emerging generations. She draws on her wealth of experience in the home finance industry to find workable solutions to complex and ongoing challenges facing the bank’s member lenders and the customers and communities they serve. Prior to her appointment to FHLBank San Francisco, she rose to the position of President of Radian Guaranty. Prior to joining Radian, she served as general counsel and in executive positions at Nexstar Financial Corporation and in the mortgage banking business of Bank of America. As a former member of the Board of Directors of FHLBank Pittsburgh, Bazemore currently serves on the boards of First Industrial Realty Trust, Inc. and T. Rowe Price Funds. Her career roles have included serving on the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Economic Advisory Board, Fannie Mae National Advisory Board, and the Federal Reserve Consumer Advisory Board.

Via the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco

The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco is a member-operated cooperative that helps local lenders in Arizona, California, and Nevada build strong communities, create opportunities, and change lives for the better. The tools and resources that we make available to our member financial institutions – commercial banks, credit unions, industrial credit companies, savings institutions, insurance companies and financial institutions for community development – promote home ownership, expand access to high-quality housing, establish or support small businesses and revitalize entire neighborhoods. Together with our members and other partners, we make the communities we serve more vibrant and resilient.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d88ba855-3269-488d-bbab-73ef8e546e2a.

CONTACT: Media contact: Mary Long, longm@fhlbsf.com, (415) 572-6717

The post FHLBank San Francisco CEO Teresa Bryce Bazemore Named Certainly one of Bay Space’s Most Influential Lady in Enterprise by San Francisco Enterprise Instances appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

On the night of 3 September 2020, Sonya Mitchell got a call as she was leaving work. Her 23-year-old son, Daimon “Dada” Ferguson, had been shot in a drive-by outside his older sister’s home.

In the months before, Mitchell, 56, had been watching reports of shootings in her hometown of Vallejo, in the San Francisco Bay Area, with increasing concern. There was the shooting at a birthday party on 9 June that killed two women and injured a 10-year-old. Three separate shootings had rocked the city on 20 August, including a double homicide that left a 25-year-old man and his 24-year-old girlfriend dead in a car with their infant son.

Mitchell rushed to the house, expecting a crime scene, police cars and ambulances. Instead she found a group of bystanders, the car the shooters had crashed into the garage of a nearby house, and a man carrying her bleeding son. “What the fuck is going on? Where are the first responders?” Mitchell thought.

links to other pieces in the Guns and Lies series

Mitchell drove her son to the ambulance entrance of Sutter Solano medical center, but wasn’t let in because he didn’t arrive in an ambulance. She headed to the front of the hospital next, banging on the locked sliding doors.

“He couldn’t even talk at this point, and when I saw the blood I started banging my purse on the door and tried to break the glass,” Mitchell recalled. She pleaded with hospital security officers to help her son, who was bleeding on the pavement. Eventually a security guard came out with a wheelchair to take Ferguson inside. An hour later, a doctor told Mitchell that her son had died. She passed out.

Daimon Ferguson, Sonya Mitchell’s son, was one of 456 people violently killed across the greater San Francisco Bay Area last year. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Marissa Leshnov for The Guardian

Daimon Ferguson was one of 456 people violently killed across the greater San Francisco Bay Area last year, according to data reported to California’s department of justice.

Like other major cities in the US, the area witnessed a surge in gun violence during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Homicides across the 12 counties that make up the greater region rose 25% in 2020, compared with the previous year, a new Guardian analysis of census data and state homicide data shows. That’s 114 more homicides than the year before.

A detailed analysis shows that homicide rates across the region increased in nine out of 12 counties, but that the rise did not affect all cities and residents equally.

• The surge was most pronounced in cities that have historically borne the majority of the region’s gun violence, with Vallejo, Oakland and Stockton seeing the biggest rises.

• The increase hardly touched the Bay Area’s more affluent, suburban areas, where homicide rates barely increased.

• The overwhelming majority of victims were Black and Latino, with Black residents dying in homicides more than any other racial group.

• And the surge came after the region witnessed more than a decade of steady declines in gun homicide rates, a decrease that lasted right up until the onset of the pandemic.

Change in homicide rates in Bay area counties from 2015-2019 to 2020.

Most of the homicides were committed with guns, used not in mass casualty events that make the nightly national news, but in daily shootings on the region’s blocks, streets and in its parks.

Mitchell says that her son was a lifelong mama’s boy who she loved spoiling. He had played football throughout his childhood and adolescence and despite the stereotypes that follow young Black men who are murdered in their communities, her son had love for everyone around him, she said.

It feels like we’re losing groundSonya Mitchell

“It feels like we’re losing ground,” she said about the rise in shootings in her community. After several more peaceful years, Vallejo families are once again carrying an outsized burden of gun violence in the region. “We’re losing lives daily from Covid and murders and everything else that’s going on.”

More than a data point

The Guardian analyzed three years of homicide data reported by police and sheriff’s departments to the state of California, numbers that do not include police killings or deaths the state classifies as “negligent homicides”.

The analysis shows that most impacted by the surge in homicides in 2020 were three cities that have historically been hit hard by gun violence.

In Oakland, homicides rose from 78 in 2019 to 102 in 2020, the highest single-year increase in the region. The data shows Stockton, where the Bay Area borders the Central Valley, saw 55 homicides in 2020, compared to 35 in 2019. Vallejo, where Sonya Mitchell lives, recorded 27 homicides in 2020, compared to 12 the year before.

Across counties, differences were stark. Alameda county, where Oakland is located, saw 46 more homicides in 2020 than 2019. In Solano county, where Vallejo is, there were 19 more homicides in 2020 than 2019. Stockton’s San Joaquin county counted 32 more people killed than in the year before.

But the surge hardly touched two of the most affluent counties in the Bay Area. Napa and Marin counties recorded just one homicide apiece.

Map comparing the percentage increase in the number of homicides in the Bay Area in 2020 with the 2015 to 2019 average

Racial disparities in the burden posed by gun violence were stark. The overwhelming majority of homicide victims in the region in 2020 were Black and Latino, with 194 Black victims among the 450 killed and 150 Latino. Of the 345 Black and Latino victims, 293 were male. Their ages ranged from 1, all the way to 94.

That means that the Bay Area’s Black residents are still more at risk of succumbing to gun violence than members of any other racial group. Black residents make up just 5% of the region’s population, according to 2020 census data, but more than a third of its homicide victims.

The racial discrepancies were apparent even in the region’s safest counties. San Mateo county, home to the millionaire-machine of Silicon Valley, saw homicides go up in 2020, but the rise was not equally distributed. The county of 770,000 people recorded 16 homicides. Just one victim was white, despite most of the county’s residents being white.

Santa Clara county, where Google is based, reported 52 homicides among almost two million residents. At least 32 of the victims, or more than half, were Latino, though Latinos make up 25% of the county’s population.

One of the last victims in the Bay Area in 2020 was 19-year-old André Robinson Jr.André was the 99th homicide victim in Oakland that year, but his mother LaTanya wants him to be remembered as more than a data point. “André was a brother, a son, an uncle and friend to many. He was strong, honest, independent and dependable. He was more than just number 99.”

LaTanya affectionately refers to André Jr as her “Big Sun”, and a dog-loving prankster who was always able to lift her spirits. “He was a special kid and God blessed me with him.”

LaTanya and André Robinson wear necklaces in memory of their son André Robinson Jr, who was shot and killed on 8 November. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Marissa Leshnov for The Guardian

On the morning of 8 November, André’s girlfriend called LaTanya in hysterics. “André just got shot!” the teen cried into the phone.

LaTanya and her husband rushed to the Oakland home where André had brought his girlfriend breakfast and was shot in the back. LaTanya and her husband, André Robinson Sr, rushed to the home and pulled up at the same time as the ambulance.

The communities that were hit worst were the communities that were underserved in the first placeTashante McCoy

LaTanya’s husband briefly saw the couple’s son before he was carried into the ambulance and driven to Oakland’s Highland hospital. As André Jr was being pulled out of the ambulance, LaTanya told her son that she loved him and that she needed him to stay strong and fight. Less than an hour later, when LaTanya and André Sr learned their son had died, it felt like someone “ripped her heart out through the bottom of her stomach”.

Impact of the pandemic

The rise in gun violence in the Bay Area mirrored trends seen across the US. Nationwide, homicides leapt by nearly 30% from 2019 to 2020, according to FBI crime data released in September. About 77% of the killings involved guns and increases were found in every region in the US. California recorded 2,202 homicides, compared to 1,679 the year before – a 31% increase, according to the Guardian’s analysis of state homicide data.

The full dynamics behind the surge in shootings are still unclear, though researchers, violence prevention practitioners and law enforcement have all offered elements, including economic distress, the breakdown of social pillars in the community, and slowdowns in the courts.

Bar graph comparing firearm-related homicides to all other homicides in California, as well as in specific counties: Alameda, San Joaquin, Solano, Contra Costa and San Mateo

California was the first state in the nation to impose shelter-in-place protocols and one of the first to close schools to curb the spread of Covid-19. The fallout from record unemployment to student’s struggles to succeed under remote learning was almost immediately felt by majority Black and Latino communities. Achievement gaps widened as Black and Latino students fell off district radars, giving young people ample time without the supervision and structure that schools provide. Black and Latino people are also simultaneously overrepresented in fields such as food service where job losses were steep and essential sectors such as healthcare and grocery stores where infections and workplace stress were high.

The pandemic further exacerbated issues such as unemployment and housing insecurity that drive gun violence among lower-income Black and Latino residents, factors that added layers of stress onto already fragile communities. Meanwhile, the death of George Floyd reignited anger over police brutality and police killings, further eroding trust in law enforcement in some communities.

Chart compares Bay Area homicide rates by race and compares the 2015-2019 average to 2020

“There’s a lot we’re still teasing apart about how gun violence was impacted by the pandemic. But we do know higher rates of poverty, unemployment, police contact, and housing and food insecurity were there before [Covid-19],” said Dr Shani Buggs, a researcher with the Violence Prevention Research program at UC Davis who analyzes grassroots violence interruption. “Then the pandemic severed contacts to social safety nets as these health and social consequences of systemic racism worsened.”

“The communities that were hit worst were the communities that were underserved in the first place,” said Tashante McCoy, a violence prevention and victim advocate in Stockton.

McCoy had formed her own collective for mothers who’d lost their children to gun violence after her cousin was murdered in 2012. Over the years, it grew from seven people meeting for a somber Mother’s Day dinner in 2014 to an organization that came together for paint parties, wine tasting events and meditation sessions that attracted dozens.

The group was one of several gun violence prevention and victim support organizations launching in Stockton around that time. In fact, in the years before the pandemic, the Bay Area had become an incubator for innovative prevention programs.

The programs operated on city streets, in community centers, in urgent care units and public school campuses, often with little to no involvement from law enforcement, and over the past decade they’ve gained acknowledgement from experts and officials in playing an important role in driving homicide numbers to decade-lows.

In Richmond and Stockton, prevention workers with Advance Peace, many of them formerly incarcerated people, worked with the small population of the city that was most at-risk of being shot or shooting someone else and provided mentorship, work opportunities, and stipends. In Oakland, staff with Youth Alive! were showing up at the hospital bedsides of young people suffering from gunshot wounds, offering them resources to change their lives and exit the cycle of violence.

A 2019 Guardian analysis of homicide data in the Bay Area from 2007-2017, found that while homicides and gun violence remained persistent issues, homicides had gone down by 30% across the 12 counties of the region. Black residents, who had historically been overrepresented among homicide victims, experienced the most dramatic drop.

André Robinson Sr shows a tattoo on his arm in memory of his late son André Robinson Jr. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Marissa Leshnov for The Guardian

The decrease held in the years leading up to the pandemic. A fresh analysis of homicide data shows that the decline continued in 2018, when the region recorded 309 homicides, and in 2019, when it recorded 336. That increase from 2018 to 2019 pales in comparison to the almost 114 more homicides that would happen in the region in 2020.

“A lot was born in that time,” McCoy said about 2018 and 2019. “There was the inception of a lot of programs, and some of that contributed for sure to a downward trend in gun violence.”

You used to be able to go into the community and mediate. Covid messed with what we were able to doParis Davis

“Everything was down, from shootings to robberies,” recalled Paris Davis, the manager of Youth Alive!’s youth intervention program, who joined the organization after being shot in the stomach in 2017. “That time showed that our approach was working.”

The pandemic presented unprecedented challenges for the organizations’ models. As workplaces, schools, and community centers where violence interrupters were sure to find their program participants emptied, they were forced to switch to virtual meetings and regular phone calls. Many took on additional roles, delivering food, masks and hand sanitizer to homes.

“It had a hard impact professionally. You used to be able to go into the community and mediate. Covid messed with what we were able to do,” said Davis. “We had to start supporting clients virtually. But sometimes it wasn’t best for a client when they needed to see someone in person.”

Stockton’s McCoy said interventionists were still showing up and providing for victims as best as they could. “There’s an unspoken part of being a violence interventionist in a time like this: we can’t not come in there and hug people.” But in doing so, they were sometimes putting their lives on the line.

‘An endless cycle’

The increase in shootings have led to fresh fears about a “violent crime wave”, anxieties that were readily amplified by right-leaning groups and conservative media.

But even with the pandemic surge, homicides across the Bay Area have not reached the highs of the late 1990s and mid-2000s. And many neighborhoods have been minimally impacted.

Still, police unions and tough-on-crime officials, too, have pointed at the rise to argue that efforts to shift away funding from law enforcement agencies was misguided. Others have held it up as an argument for officials to look outside of law enforcement, and scale up community-driven solutions that tackle the root causes of violence.

Responding to the surge, Joe Biden encouraged states and localities to use $350bn from the federal Covid relief package to hire more police. But he also earmarked $5bn in his infrastructure bill proposal to bolster and sustain community-based gun violence prevention, the most high-profile recognition of the importance of such programs in combating gun violence deaths.

This was a public health and safety system failureTashante McCoy

“I’m just as sad about this increase as I have been the years before, even when there were just over 70 murders,” said Antoine Towers, chair of Oakland’s Violence Prevention Coalition. “It just shows the endless cycle hasn’t been addressed yet. Those same conflicts were going on before the pandemic.”

Towers had been sounding the alarm about how generational differences and unaddressed trauma among those most impacted by violence, especially youth, was fueling gun violence in Oakland in the years before the pandemic hit. And even when the city was being celebrated for managing to drive down homicide rates, he knew that people were still struggling under the weight of social inequality and long term trauma.

Towers’ organization still isn’t funded through the city but with local schools reopening, he’s being called on by teachers to mediate tense, potentially fatal, conflicts between students. “I get calls from schools, and community members. And I’ll tell them, ‘I’m on my way.’”

McCoy, the Stockton activist, has continued pushing officials and decision makers to prioritize addressing the roots of violence. “This was a public health and safety system failure,” she said. “If we’re ever gonna create safety, you can’t do that without addressing the core needs of the community,” she said. “There’s a lack of investment in these communities and our system fails to fund essential services that are held by people who understand the dynamics of these areas.

‘No one knows this pain but us’

Data from major cities across the US suggests that homicides have continued to rise in 2021, though the increases were smaller than in 2020. .

Since her son’s death, Sonya Mitchell has grown close with other grieving mothers. “The death of my son doesn’t affect just me, it affects so many other Black women who I’ve seen suffer; mothers who are my friends and we all buried our sons in 2020. We have to be there for each other because no one knows this pain but us”.

Sonya Mitchell holds a necklace containing a portrait of ‘DaDa’ Ferguson. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Marissa Leshnov for The Guardian

Her son’s last hours continue to haunt her. “I wish I could have sat on that curb with him, I didn’t know he was gonna die,” she said. “My son deserved to die hearing his mom telling him she loved him. Instead, he died hearing his mom scream for help. I should have never had to beat on a window and scream, ‘Let me in!’”

Sutter Health said in a statement it disagreed with Mitchell’s characterization of events. “Sutter Health extends our deepest sympathies to the family and loved ones of Mr Ferguson,” Sutter Health said. “Our care teams strive to deliver the highest levels of quality care possible.”

I have better days, but never good days. I just lost a piece of meLaTanya Robinson

Mitchell believes that the high blood pressure and other ailments she’s suffered from since her son’s death will eventually kill her. But she says she doesn’t mind that outcome, if it means she can see her son in heaven.

“I already know where my health is going and I’m not scared,” Mitchell said. “I wanna stay here for my daughters and grandkids, but my heart’s too broken. I used to have hella life, but I just don’t anymore.”

In December 2020, three months after Daimon Ferguson was killed outside of his sister’s home, Vallejo police arrested one man and two women in connection with the slaying.

LaTanya Robinson says she hasn’t had a good day since her son was slain. She’s been trying to move out of Oakland and has become more protective of her 13-year old son. She admits that she rarely lets him out of the house, except to football practice.

LaTanya Robinson reveals a tattoo in memory of her late son André Robinson Jr. Photograph: Marissa Leshnov/Marissa Leshnov for The Guardian

The entire family is receiving counseling and Robinson and her husband try to speak about their son and her family’s quest for justice at local rallies. The family is organizing a march in Oakland in November to commemorate André’s death. They still don’t know who killed him.

“I have better days, but never good days. I just lost a piece of me so I’m trying to get back to being me,” Robinson said. “I’ve been trying to speak at rallies and find a way to deal with it. I know my son’s death is gonna bring something positive and I’m gonna get justice one day.”

• The analysis of California homicide data looks at the year of each incident that caused the death, which can differ from when the victim died or when it was reported to the FBI. In addition, the analysis estimates city-by-city data by looking at the police jurisdiction that reported the homicide

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