There’s at least one place in California where even households making six figures can get help paying for child care: San Francisco, the state’s most expensive county when it comes to child care.

As providers across the state await reforms for their financially fraught industry, voters in San Francisco have gone ahead and created their own solution: a commercial tax that now generates $180 million in revenue a year for local child care.

“Why did we go after a revenue source? Because that’s the only way we’re going to get ourselves out of this problem,” said Mary Ignatius, an organizer with Parent Voices, a group that advocates for affordable child care and campaigned for the commercial tax.

Child care — crucial for children’s well-being and necessary for many families to work — has long been a market failure in America.

The real cost of child care

California’s child care aid reaches only a small fraction of the families who need it, and it’s stretching providers to the limit. Education reporter Kristen Taketa examines how the system is falling short, and who pays the price.

The inherently high cost of quality care causes a chain reaction of challenges for both consumers and providers: Parents can’t access child care because it’s too expensive, especially for infants and toddlers. And because quality care costs more than what parents can pay, providers are in constant financial stress and unable to pay their staff much — which in turn limits how many children they can serve.

The San Francisco tax, narrowly approved by voters in 2018, is that rare example in California of a dedicated, permanent funding source intended to solve those problems.

In the first year of its rollout, the measure has paid for 1,000 more children to enroll in subsidized care, increased wages for 2,500 early education teachers and made 10,000 more children eligible for subsidized care on top of the 15,000 who were before.

“I’m hoping that if people see San Francisco can do it, then why not somewhere else?” said retired San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee, the main architect of the tax measure.

In 2018, after months of organizing from local officials, parents and child care workers, San Francisco voters passed the commercial tax with a measure dubbed “Baby Prop C” by a margin of less than one percentage point. A failed legal challenge by taxpayer and business groups delayed its implementation, but last year, funds collected under it began reaching the child care field in July.

As a result, families making up to 110 percent of San Francisco’s area median income — or up to $152,400 a year for a family of four — can now qualify for subsidized child care for their kids under age 4.

A child eats lunch on Pizza Friday at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Those income eligibility rules provide access to far more families than the state’s rules, which only allow subsidized care for families who make up to 85 percent of the state median income — or up to $95,289 annually for a similar family. Because it’s far more expensive to live in San Francisco than in California overall, some families who make even less than what it takes to get by there have not been able to qualify for state-subsidized care.

And unlike the state, which has required many families to chip in an income-based monthly fee toward their subsidized child care, San Francisco plans to charge no fees for city-funded care thanks to Proposition C funding, said Wei-min Wang, a director in the city’s early education department. That’s true even for moderate-income families who are newly eligible, he said.

“Now that we have Baby Prop C money, we don’t have to treat it like a scarce good we have to allocate and ration,” Wang said. “We don’t want high-quality early care and education to be so much a privilege as the right of every child, regardless of your background.”

Eventually, the city’s child care leaders expect to use Prop C to fund subsidized care for families making up to 200 percent of the area median income — as much as $277,100 for a family of four, according to current salary data. But the priority now is serving lower-income families, city officials said.

About half of Prop C revenue goes to expanding access to subsidized child care. But crucially, in an industry where low pay has often thwarted expansion of child care slots, the other half goes to pay raises for child care teachers, who in California are paid on average just $17 an hour. Many in San Francisco were making as little as $18 an hour — far shy of the $31 an hour it takes for a single person to get by there, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator.

Prop C was designed not only to pay early educators a living wage, but to build a salary structure to put them on par with their counterparts in K-12 education, where starting pay is generally significantly higher and teachers are paid better the more higher education they have.

Prop C is working toward a new minimum wage of $28 an hour for early educators serving at least half low-income children by providing them semi-annual stipends or raising their hourly rates. Advocates expect that will not only improve current teachers’ quality of life but also help draw more quality applicants to the field and thus enable providers to serve more children.

Teacher Matthew Sullivan drapes a blanket over a child during nap time at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

It may be too early to judge Prop C’s success.

Still, San Francisco is further along than most of the state in advancing child care reforms. In 1991, San Francisco became what was believed to be the first city in the U.S. to establish a municipal fund exclusively for children’s services, including child care. Since 2004, it has worked toward establishing universal preschool, and since 2013 it has had a city office dedicated to early care and education.

And for more than a decade, the city has paid child care providers who serve low-income kids higher rates than what the state pays its subsidized care providers, knowing that the true cost of providing quality care has typically exceeded what the state pays.

“We now have this dedicated source of early childhood funding that is the first municipal source, where we can really draw from forever,” said Ingrid Mezquita, director of the city’s Department of Early Childhood, of Prop C. “It gives a level of stability that this sector hasn’t had in a very long time, or ever.”

The push for Prop C

Families shell out more for child care in San Francisco than in any other California county.

The vast majority of San Francisco families must pay as much as $2,700 a month — more than $32,000 a year — for full-time infant care, according to a 2021 statewide survey. That’s compared to a statewide average of about $1,600 a month.

Yet California’s income eligibility levels for subsidized care are set so low that many families can’t qualify for help paying for child care, and many families who make enough to get by in California are automatically disqualified from subsidized care because they make too much. In San Francisco, a family of four with two working parents needs to make $167,920 to get by, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, which is more than $72,000 above the state’s income limit for subsidized child care.

Meanwhile, there has not been enough public funding or child care providers in California to accommodate all the children who already do qualify for subsidized care. In San Francisco, more than 2,400 children were on the city’s waiting list for subsidized child care at the time Prop C was being proposed to voters.

There were other reasons to go after a child care tax measure, advocates said. For one thing, child care teachers in city-funded programs were seeing staff turnover rates of 75 percent, according to the early education department, which didn’t bode well for the quality of children’s education.

A child leaps during an outdoor activity next to San Francisco’s Stern Grove at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Prop C was meant to be San Francisco’s answer to those problems.

The measure is largely the brainchild of Yee, the former board of supervisors president and a longtime child care and education advocate who had led one of San Francisco’s two child care referral agencies for 18 years before entering politics. He and fellow Supervisor Jane Kim led the effort to collect more than 9,400 voter signatures to put the initiative on the 2018 ballot.

Before, Yee and other advocates had to keep asking city leaders every year for one or two million or so dollars in the budget for child care. But those incremental, one-time amounts weren’t going to build a better child care system, which would require several reforms, he said.

Those reforms would need to address four areas, he said: giving more families access to subsidized care, expanding facilities to accommodate them, raising teachers’ pay and investing in their professional development to improve quality.

“Prop C is really a game-changer, because it provides the resources to do so many of the things that we wanted to do for our early education system,” Yee said in 2021, after Prop C survived the court challenge. “It gets us to close to universal child care access for everybody, including middle-income families, and it provides living wages for our early care educators.”

The real cost of child care

In this series, education reporter Kristen Taketa examines how California’s system of subsidized child care falls short — and who pays the price.

Before Prop C, commercial landlords in San Francisco generally paid a commercial rent tax rate of 0.3 percent.

Prop C now collects 3.5 percent from the rents of most commercial spaces and 1 percent from rents of warehouse spaces in San Francisco. Landlords paid less than $1 million annually in rental income and rents paid by government, nonprofit, arts and other tenants are exempt. Fifteen percent of the funds collected by Prop C goes to the city’s general fund, and the rest goes to child care.

It makes sense for large businesses to pay a tax for child care, advocates said, considering they possess some of the city’s greatest wealth and benefit from the availability of such care, since their employees need it to do their jobs. “Business is going to invest and support children in San Francisco so workers can go to work,” said Gina Fromer, CEO of the Children’s Council of San Francisco.

That was a key point supporters made during the 2018 campaign, volunteers said. Parents and providers held rallies, distributed flyers and did phone banking daily, targeting the people who would benefit most, said Maria Luz Torre, a Parent Voices organizer: women and low-income families.

“We even rallied at 555 California (Street). Trump is a co-owner of that building,” she said. “We rallied there to show these are the people who are paying for this, and not you.”

Isabel Daniels (left) and Pat Sullivan (right) run through activities with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Two months after Prop C passed, a coalition of landlord, business and taxpayer groups that had opposed the measure sued in an attempt to invalidate it. Those groups — the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Building Owners and Managers Association of California, California Business Properties Association and California Business Roundtable — argued that Prop C actually needed a two-thirds majority to pass because a government official, Yee, had been heavily involved.

“Our issue had nothing to do with where the money was going, but rather that it was an illegal tax,” said Brooke Armour, vice president of the California Business Roundtable, in an email.

But in 2021, a state appeals judge sided with the city, saying that because the measure had been placed on the ballot as a voter initiative — and because Yee’s involvement did not change that — it needed only a simple majority to pass. Later that year, the state supreme court denied the plaintiffs’ request to review their appeal.

San Francisco is lucky, Luz Torre said, in that it has a wealthy tax base to draw from to fund child care. Other counties may have to get more creative, she said.

At least one other California county has also passed a tax to fund child care. In 2020, just across the San Francisco Bay, voters approved a half-percent sales tax in Alameda County to raise child care workers’ wages and offer more subsidized care slots, as well as fund pediatric health care.

That measure, Measure C, has been held up for more than two years by a similar lawsuit. Last July, a trial court judge ruled in the county’s favor. The decision is now being appealed.

Raising wages to raise quality

Prop C is not just about raising pay for teachers, child care leaders said. It’s about professionalizing and improving the quality of a field that has long been underpaid, has often been degraded as babysitting and has lacked greater access to higher education and training.

Teacher Sophia Lam (center) supervises an animal card game with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Many child care providers have faced obstacles to gaining higher education and professional development, such as language barriers and a lack of money and time. Thirteen percent of family child care providers in California speak only a language other than English, according to the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. About half of family child care providers and 20 percent of child care center teachers lack a college degree, according to the UC Berkeley center.

To address this, San Francisco officials have long made their child care funding contingent on providers meeting the city’s quality standards. They plan to use Prop C funds to improve early educators’ access to higher education and training. Some have suggested funding apprenticeships, tuition reimbursement and other programs to build a pipeline of workers that child care, unlike other education fields, has lacked.

The wage increases and stipends that come with Prop C are only available to teachers working for the 416 child care providers and agencies who have met the city’s quality standards and who are willing to serve low-income, subsidized children.

“That’s a foundational requirement for us, because part of the reason why we justify this investment in early childhood education is based on research that shows that high-quality care makes a big difference,” Wang said. “The goal of our department is to get all children to school readiness standards and to make sure that their families are able to have the resources necessary to raise their kids.”

Among those city-required quality standards: Providers must have low adult-to-student ratios, have a certain number of early childhood education college units, and use a developmentally, culturally and linguistically appropriate curriculum approved by the city early childhood department.

To be approved for city child care funding, providers must be visited by independent observers who look for quality interactions between teachers, note areas for improvement and decide whether the program passes a quality test.

Isabel Daniels (bottom) runs through activities with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The city department created a new standardized salary structure for early educators, similar to the kind that school districts make for K-12 teachers. The model rewards higher compensation to teachers who serve more subsidized children and who have more higher education or an early childhood teaching permit.

Stipends range from $8,000 annually for full-time assistant teachers who have few or no early childhood education units and serve fewer than 20 percent subsidized children to as high as $39,100 for family child care owners who serve at least 50 percent subsidized children.

By making the funding available only to providers willing to serve subsidized children and boosting pay for those who serve more of those children, the city means to focus Prop C funding on the highest-need programs first, Wang said.

That could also help incentivize more providers to serve low-income, subsidized children. Historically, providers say they have not had much financial incentive to do so, because the state’s subsidized payment rates have been low.

But as providers and advocates statewide have warned, just adding funding for more children to receive subsidized care doesn’t automatically mean more kids will be served. Child care providers have to expand their staffing and facility capacity to take in those additional kids, too.

So San Francisco is budgeting for $35 million of Prop C to be used for child care facilities projects next fiscal year, Wang said.

And the city department continues to encourage child care programs that are not enlisted in the city’s quality network to join. The department offers onsite coaching and funding to new members to improve their facilities and take professional development, Wang said.

There have been challenges in rolling out the Prop C funds.

For one thing, child care programs are still seeing under-enrollment, Wang said. That could be due to parents’ anxiety about spreading sickness, be it flu, RSV or COVID-19. Some families choose to stay with their kids at home or have relatives, friends or neighbors watch them, while others take them to private programs. And child care programs are facing growing competition from public schools, as more children enroll in free transitional kindergarten.

Some programs are also still struggling to hire enough staff. But Wang has heard anecdotally for the first time that they are seeing higher interest and better-qualified applicants for jobs after Prop C. “Staffing is always an issue, but with the wage improvements, it’ll hopefully be less of an issue,” he said.

Owner Pat Sullivan (middle) supervises a card game with children at Baby Steps on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The pay increases have already helped Pat Sullivan, a family child care provider of 30 years who owns the Baby Steps Nature School.

Like many family providers who run small child cares out of their own homes, Sullivan had not been able to pay herself from her business. And since providers can’t charge families more than they can afford to pay — which is far less than the true cost of providing quality care — she was barely breaking even.

To get by, many family providers depend on a spouse’s income. Without one, Sullivan has worked two other jobs on nights and weekends, too, teaching at local colleges. She had been working as much as 80 hours a week between all three.

Prop C changed that.

She was recently able to hire one new full-time teacher and two part-time teachers. She can now pay her teachers $28 an hour, she said, when she previously struggled to pay them $20 an hour.

Now Sullivan has some more time to run her business, rather than just teach children. She still works a lot — but “not the same way, not with the desperation I used to work with,” she said. She’s down to 60-hour weeks.

And finally, Sullivan earns an income from her business.

This story was produced as part of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2022 National Fellowship.

The post Can San Francisco’s “child Prop C” tax assist repair youngster care? appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – A Ukrainian mother who fled from Kyiv with her 4-month-old baby was unable to board a flight to San Francisco International Airport because her baby did not have a travel visa and passport.

Olha Korol and her infant son, Severyn Korotniuk, fled after the Russian military invaded. Her husband and father stayed behind in Kyiv.

They took a 20-hour bus ride before reaching Frankfurt, Germany, where they are currently stranded.

Korol and her baby had plane tickets to fly from Germany to San Francisco on March 7 with hopes of reaching family members who live in San Jose, California.

“I went to the Ukrainian consulate in Frankfurt. They put a photo of my baby in my passport. They put stamps showing it’s official and legal. They said it should be enough. He’s an infant, he’s small, he doesn’t have anything. Then we boarded the plane and the (airlines) did not board us because the baby doesn’t have a passport,” Korol told Nexstar’s KRON4.

Baby Severyn Korotniuk (Credit: Olha Korol)

The war has forced more than 2.8 million civilians to flee Ukraine, according to the UN refugee agency. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the conflict.

While stuck in limbo and alone with her baby, Korol worries about her husband and father back in Ukraine.

“When I look out at Germany, I feel guilty that we can breathe. My husband and my father are not able to go out because it’s safer to stay in the shelters,” Korol said.

Korol said she still hears emergency sirens blaring.

“In Kyiv, there were sirens all the time. Even when it’s silent, I still hear it,” Korol said.

Baby Severyn Korotniuk (Credit: Olha Korol)

Air raid sirens were heard across Ukraine Monday as Russian troops refocused their efforts to seize Kyiv.

The fighting is now in the third week. A pregnant woman and her baby were among the dead, after Russia bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol where she was meant to give birth.

The towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel have seen some of the worst conflict during Russia’s stalled attempt to take the capital.

Russian mortars kill mother and her children fleeing Irpin in civilian convoy

Last week, Veronika Didusenko, a former Miss Ukraine, called on the United States to do more to help mothers fleeing Ukraine with children by granting “humanitarian parole.” The status allows otherwise ineligible people to enter the United States “if you have a compelling emergency and there is an urgent humanitarian reason or significant public benefit to allowing you to temporarily enter the United States,” according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Didusenko fled with her 7-year-old son from Kyiv while Russian military bombs fell from the sky.

“On February 24, my 7-year-old son and I were awakened by sirens and explosions. In between raids, we, along with tens of thousands of other families, tried to get out of the city,” Didusenko said.

Miss Ukraine 2018 Veronika Didusenko holds a Ukrainian flag on March 08, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. Didusenko discussed the impact of the Ukrainian war on mothers and children fleeing Ukraine. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi / Getty Images)

Didusenko and her son escaped over Ukraine’s southwestern border. They traveled across Moldova, Romania, and Luxembourg before reaching a friend’s house in Switzerland.

Olha Korol holds her infant son, Severyn Korotniuk, in their home in Kyiv. (Credit: Olha Korol)

Didusenko said she went to a US embassy to obtain a travel visa for her son so they could fly to California together. Her son’s visa application was denied.

Miss Ukraine calls on US to help mothers fleeing war

Like many Ukrainian refugees, Korol said she loves her country and hopes to return after the war is over.

“I had a good life in Kyiv,” Korol said.

Her cousin, Lena Tutko, lives in San Jose and is holding out hope that Korol and Severyn will find a way to California. Tutko started a GoFundMe page to help Korol pay for places to stay in Germany.

“They are stuck in a foreign country, with no resolution in sight. I am desperately trying to help my family in this very difficult situation,” Tutko said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Jodi Raffa has been searching for a roommate for over a year. Her husband passed away five years ago, and compounding her loss was a 75% reduction in her household income.

The 76-year-old lives in a sunny three-bedroom, two-bathroom home overlooking a lake in a 55 and over community in Groveland, Fla. The sunsets from her back porch are “stunning.” However, the homeowners association fees just went up again and inflation has left her “flabbergasted.”

“I live on a very strict budget and am not able to indulge in any extras at all,” said Raffa, who worked in administrative jobs before she and her late husband retired in 2010. Raffa now views that move as a “hasty decision” in light of her financial circumstances. “I am a worrier and a planner so logic suggested getting a roommate.”

When she takes out ads specifying women over 55, she gets responses mostly from men in their 60s or adults in their 20s, 30s, or 40s. Raffa hopes for an easier way to find and vet potential sharers of her home. “I’m very frustrated,” she said.

Like so many boomers, Raffa wants to continue to live in her house and find a job working remotely, either in data entry or editing. Faced with escalating home prices and rents in tight housing markets, as well as careers or earnings curtailed by age or the pandemic, some boomers are looking to share their homes. Enter the boommates.

“With the boomers aging, you see higher and higher numbers in shared housing,” said Rodney Harrell, vice president of family, home and community at AARP, pointing out that boomers are more open than previous generations to trying alternative solutions to the traditional aging trajectory.

In a 1987 interview with NPR, the late Betty White noted that the four women who lived together in “The Golden Girls” did so for social reasons rather than financial necessity. “All that I think we have accomplished is to show that there is an alternative lifestyle,” White told “Fresh Air” about the success of the show. “If you notice, ‘The Golden Girls’ are not together for economic reasons. They’re together for sociological reasons. It fights the loneliness.”

Four decades later, the idea of ​​housemates late into adulthood is experiencing a revival, but with financial factors front and center. As boomers live longer and retire without the financial safety net of employer-sponsored pensions, covering the rising costs of food, housing and insurance become major considerations. Linda Hoffman, founder of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, which runs a home sharing program, noted an increasing amount of applications as finances become more of a stressor.

“When we started the home sharing program in 1981, relieving feelings of isolation and loneliness was the primary need,” Hoffman said. “Now, an affordable place to live is the number one need. Hosts need help in meeting their housing expenses.” Even for housemates who entered into the arrangement for social reasons, the extra money has become more important as their financial picture changed with the pandemic.

Debbi Campbell, 70, a retired copywriter, met Loretta Halter, a retired manager from the Kroger grocery chain, in 2018 at a Czech cultural event in New York City. Campbell was grieving the loss of her live-in boyfriend of almost 20 years to cancer. Halter had moved to New York City from Appling, Ga., several years earlier. She had used the NYFSC home sharing program earlier to find affordable apartment but was unhappy in her situation, which is when she decided to become housemates with Campbell.

The two went through the NYFSC program to handle the background checks, vetting and administrative details before Halter moved into Campbell’s rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. Before the pandemic, the two lived somewhat separate lives. Campbell lived mostly in the bedroom and Halter lived mostly in the living room. But when the city shut down they developed a strong friendship.

“First, we started with the crossword and the jigsaw puzzles, and the TV, and it turned out well,” Campbell said. The ease of the later-in-life roommate-as-friend experience surprised her. “I mean, I’m one of those people who’s spent a good time of my life in therapy, mostly complaining about people I knew.”

After initially being furloughed from her job as a long-term temp at the Department of Education in March 2020, Campbell retired in October 2020, at 68, more than a year earlier than she expected. She also opted to take Social Security benefits at that time, instead of waiting until 70 as she had planned.

“I had not been desperate over money, but having a pandemic come, suddenly you have company where you wouldn’t have. And suddenly there is extra money for you from home sharing, which I wouldn’t have had. It was just a bonanza. I feel like the luckiest person of the pandemic,” she said.

While the dozen home sharers interviewed for this story insisted their parents would have found the idea outlandish, having housemates later in life seems to be finding more acceptance. In 2021, 70% of adults over 50 reported being open to sharing their home with a family member who was not a spouse, 51% said they would be willing to share with a friend, and 6% would share a home with a stranger, according to a survey from AARP. Of those who reported they would not share their home at all, 23% said they would change their mind if they needed extra income.

“The majority of people considering home sharing with a friend or family member tells me that there’s an opportunity there for more people to take advantage of that excess housing stock that we already have within our own homes, and that perhaps meet your needs, and those of a friend or neighbor,” Harrell said. “Or maybe companionship that may help with costs, such as caregiving. There’s just so much advantage there. And we’re just not necessarily taking advantage of it. It’s nowhere near its potential.”

The growing interest in home sharing, especially for those boomers who are house-rich and cash-poor in expensive housing markets, is being cultivated by nonprofit and commercial programs as well as municipalities. Since 2015, New York, Seattle, Denver, Tucson, northern California and the metro Washington area all have or are launching programs.

“From what we’ve seen, attitudes are loosening toward home sharing,” Riley Gibson, president of Denver-based home sharing service Silvernest, which pairs older adults with housemates. The service is particularly active in tighter housing markets such as San Francisco, Phoenix, Tampa, Miami and Los Angeles. Silvernest recently partnered with Montgomery County in Maryland to start a pilot program and plans to launch in a few more cities later this year.

Renters and homeowners can fill out profiles on the site, which supports services including lease templates, insurance and background checks. A similar service, Boston-based Nesterly, matches older adults with younger ones to promote intergenerational home shares. Senior Homeshares, another service, has enrolled nearly 70,000 members across the country since its inception in 2015.

Even before the pandemic, demographics were shifting toward nonfamily households. In 1960, 85% of households were composed of families, according to the Population Reference Bureau. By 2017, that figure had fallen to 65% of households.

As Americans continue to age, Harrell and others expect growing demand for more housing options. “As a society, we’ve been building and thinking about younger families and building housing and communities for younger people,” he said.

“But that need has been shifting as community leaders, builders and designers” are “starting to think more and more about what happens to us as we age. And covid has given momentum to those conversations,” Harrell said.

For Kim Bolding, 61, home sharing enabled her to stay in the five-bedroom Colorado Springs home where she had raised her biological, adopted and foster children after being diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy in 2012.

Bolding, a former social worker, was able to keep working from home until 2017. But after she was forced to go on Social Security disability, the payments weren’t enough to keep up with her housing costs. “I did not want to have to go into just affiliate-type living. I wanted to keep my home,” she said.

First, a longtime neighbor moved downstairs, where he could have his own bathroom. With the help of Denver-based nonprofit Sunshine Home Share Colorado, Bolding found two more housemates. Since then, she has mostly lived with three other housemates at a time: two men on one floor sharing a bathroom and a woman on her floor. “It’s allowing me to be able to maintain my own individuality. I can say what I want when I set my own needs and rules,” she said.

All of the housemates are on disability, but collectively able to live independently. Bolding is able to host her adult children when they visit, but they don’t feel obligated to move in with her to manage her illness. Instead, she is building a new community with her housemates, holding regular dinners together.

“We run it like a family and we have space for others,” Bolding said. Having housemates is “a great alternative to being stuck in some place where you don’t have a lot of choices: who your neighbors are, who you interact with, or you lose a lot of autonomy and that’s part of the problem with aging, ” she added.

Bolding has already had several housemates who have moved out because of a change in their fortunes. Two have received government-subsidized housing, one has gotten married and another inherited a house and cars from an uncle who recently passed away. She thinks of her house as a harbinger of good luck and said she has received many calls asking for information or guidance on doing something similar.

“It’s becoming more and more popular, especially for my age group for people in similar situations. We need each other. We get blessed and they get blessed,” Bolding said.

The post Child boomers are transferring in collectively to economize | Life-style appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Jodi Raffa has been searching for a roommate for over a year. Her husband passed away five years ago, and compounding her loss was a 75% reduction in her household income.

The 76-year-old lives in a sunny three-bedroom, two-bathroom home overlooking a lake in a 55 and over community in Groveland, Fla. The sunsets from her back porch are “stunning.” However, the homeowners association fees just went up again and inflation has left her “flabbergasted.”

“I live on a very strict budget and am not able to indulge in any extras at all,” said Raffa, who worked in administrative jobs before she and her late husband retired in 2010. Raffa now views that move as a “hasty decision” in light of her financial circumstances. “I am a worrier and a planner so logic suggested getting a roommate.”

– ADVERTISEMENT –

When she takes out ads specifying women over 55, she gets responses mostly from men in their 60s or adults in their 20s, 30s, or 40s. Raffa hopes for an easier way to find and vet potential sharers of her home. “I’m very frustrated,” she said.

Like so many boomers, Raffa wants to continue to live in her house and find a job working remotely, either in data entry or editing. Faced with escalating home prices and rents in tight housing markets, as well as careers or earnings curtailed by age or the pandemic, some boomers are looking to share their homes. Enter the boommates.

“With the boomers aging, you see higher and higher numbers in shared housing,” said Rodney Harrell, vice president of family, home and community at AARP, pointing out that boomers are more open than previous generations to trying alternative solutions to the traditional aging trajectory.

In a 1987 interview with NPR, the late Betty White noted that the four women who lived together in “The Golden Girls” did so for social reasons rather than financial necessity. “All that I think we have accomplished is to show that there is an alternative lifestyle,” White told “Fresh Air” about the success of the show. “If you notice, ‘The Golden Girls’ are not together for economic reasons. They’re together for sociological reasons. It fights the loneliness.”

Four decades later, the idea of ​​housemates late into adulthood is experiencing a revival, but with financial factors front and center. As boomers live longer and retire without the financial safety net of employer-sponsored pensions, covering the rising costs of food, housing and insurance become major considerations. Linda Hoffman, founder of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, which runs a home sharing program, noted an increasing amount of applications as finances become more of a stressor.

“When we started the home sharing program in 1981, relieving feelings of isolation and loneliness was the primary need,” Hoffman said. “Now, an affordable place to live is the number one need. Hosts need help in meeting their housing expenses.” Even for housemates who entered into the arrangement for social reasons, the extra money has become more important as their financial picture changed with the pandemic.

Debbi Campbell, 70, a retired copywriter, met Loretta Halter, a retired manager from the Kroger grocery chain, in 2018 at a Czech cultural event in New York City. Campbell was grieving the loss of her live-in boyfriend of almost 20 years to cancer. Halter had moved to New York City from Appling, Ga., several years earlier. She had used the NYFSC home sharing program earlier to find affordable apartment but was unhappy in her situation, which is when she decided to become housemates with Campbell.

The two went through the NYFSC program to handle the background checks, vetting and administrative details before Halter moved into Campbell’s rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. Before the pandemic, the two lived somewhat separate lives. Campbell lived mostly in the bedroom and Halter lived mostly in the living room. But when the city shut down they developed a strong friendship.

“First, we started with the crossword and the jigsaw puzzles, and the TV, and it turned out well,” Campbell said. The ease of the later-in-life roommate-as-friend experience surprised her. “I mean, I’m one of those people who’s spent a good time of my life in therapy, mostly complaining about people I knew.”

After initially being furloughed from her job as a long-term temp at the Department of Education in March 2020, Campbell retired in October 2020, at 68, more than a year earlier than she expected. She also opted to take Social Security benefits at that time, instead of waiting until 70 as she had planned.

“I had not been desperate over money, but having a pandemic come, suddenly you have company where you wouldn’t have. And suddenly there is extra money for you from home sharing, which I wouldn’t have had. It was just a bonanza. I feel like the luckiest person of the pandemic,” she said.

While the dozen home sharers interviewed for this story insisted their parents would have found the idea outlandish, having housemates later in life seems to be finding more acceptance. In 2021, 70% of adults over 50 reported being open to sharing their home with a family member who was not a spouse, 51% said they would be willing to share with a friend, and 6% would share a home with a stranger, according to a survey from AARP. Of those who reported they would not share their home at all, 23% said they would change their mind if they needed extra income.

“The majority of people considering home sharing with a friend or family member tells me that there’s an opportunity there for more people to take advantage of that excess housing stock that we already have within our own homes, and that perhaps meet your needs, and those of a friend or neighbor,” Harrell said. “Or maybe companionship that may help with costs, such as caregiving. There’s just so much advantage there. And we’re just not necessarily taking advantage of it. It’s nowhere near its potential.”

The growing interest in home sharing, especially for those boomers who are house-rich and cash-poor in expensive housing markets, is being cultivated by nonprofit and commercial programs as well as municipalities. Since 2015, New York, Seattle, Denver, Tucson, northern California and the metro Washington area all have or are launching programs.

“From what we’ve seen, attitudes are loosening toward home sharing,” Riley Gibson, president of Denver-based home sharing service Silvernest, which pairs older adults with housemates. The service is particularly active in tighter housing markets such as San Francisco, Phoenix, Tampa, Miami and Los Angeles. Silvernest recently partnered with Montgomery County in Maryland to start a pilot program and plans to launch in a few more cities later this year.

Renters and homeowners can fill out profiles on the site, which supports services including lease templates, insurance and background checks. A similar service, Boston-based Nesterly, matches older adults with younger ones to promote intergenerational home shares. Senior Homeshares, another service, has enrolled nearly 70,000 members across the country since its inception in 2015.

Even before the pandemic, demographics were shifting toward nonfamily households. In 1960, 85% of households were composed of families, according to the Population Reference Bureau. By 2017, that figure had fallen to 65% of households.

As Americans continue to age, Harrell and others expect growing demand for more housing options. “As a society, we’ve been building and thinking about younger families and building housing and communities for younger people,” he said.

“But that need has been shifting as community leaders, builders and designers” are “starting to think more and more about what happens to us as we age. And covid has given momentum to those conversations,” Harrell said.

For Kim Bolding, 61, home sharing enabled her to stay in the five-bedroom Colorado Springs home where she had raised her biological, adopted and foster children after being diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy in 2012.

Bolding, a former social worker, was able to keep working from home until 2017. But after she was forced to go on Social Security disability, the payments weren’t enough to keep up with her housing costs. “I did not want to have to go into just affiliate-type living. I wanted to keep my home,” she said.

First, a longtime neighbor moved downstairs, where he could have his own bathroom. With the help of Denver-based nonprofit Sunshine Home Share Colorado, Bolding found two more housemates. Since then, she has mostly lived with three other housemates at a time: two men on one floor sharing a bathroom and a woman on her floor. “It’s allowing me to be able to maintain my own individuality. I can say what I want when I set my own needs and rules,” she said.

All of the housemates are on disability, but collectively able to live independently. Bolding is able to host her adult children when they visit, but they don’t feel obligated to move in with her to manage her illness. Instead, she is building a new community with her housemates, holding regular dinners together.

“We run it like a family and we have space for others,” Bolding said. Having housemates is “a great alternative to being stuck in some place where you don’t have a lot of choices: who your neighbors are, who you interact with, or you lose a lot of autonomy and that’s part of the problem with aging, ” she added.

Bolding has already had several housemates who have moved out because of a change in their fortunes. Two have received government-subsidized housing, one has gotten married and another inherited a house and cars from an uncle who recently passed away. She thinks of her house as a harbinger of good luck and said she has received many calls asking for information or guidance on doing something similar.

“It’s becoming more and more popular, especially for my age group for people in similar situations. We need each other. We get blessed and they get blessed,” Bolding said.

The post The brand new Golden Women: Child boomers are shifting in collectively to save cash appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

“I live on a very strict budget and am not able to indulge in any extras at all,” said Raffa, who worked in administrative jobs before she and her late husband retired in 2010. Raffa now views that move as a “hasty decision” in light of her financial circumstances. “I am a worrier and a planner, so logic suggested getting a roommate.”

Story continues below advertisement

When she takes out ads specifying women over 55, she gets responses mostly from men in their 60s or adults in their 20s, 30s or 40s. Raffa hopes for an easier way to find and vet potential sharers of her home. “I’m very frustrated,” she said.

Like so many boomers, Raffa wants to continue to live in her house and find a job working remotely, either in data entry or editing. Faced with escalating home prices and rents in tight housing markets, as well as careers or earnings curtailed by age or the pandemic, some boomers are looking to share their homes. Enter the boommates.

“With the boomers aging, you see higher and higher numbers in shared housing,” said Rodney Harrell, vice president of family, home and community at AARP, pointing out that boomers are more open than previous generations to trying alternative solutions to the traditional aging trajectory.

Story continues below advertisement

In a 1987 interview with NPR, the late Betty White noted that the four women who lived together in “The Golden Girls” did so for social reasons rather than financial necessity. “All that I think we have accomplished is to show that there is an alternative lifestyle,” White told “Fresh Air” about the success of the show. “If you notice, ‘The Golden Girls’ are not together for economic reasons. They’re together for sociological reasons. It fights the loneliness.”

Four decades later, the idea of ​​housemates late into adulthood is experiencing a revival, but with financial factors front and center. As boomers live longer and retire without the financial safety net of employer-sponsored pensions, covering the rising costs of food, housing and insurance become major considerations. Linda Hoffman, president and CEO of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, which runs a home-sharing program, noted an increasing number of applications as finances become more of a stressor.

“When we started the home-sharing program in 1981, relieving feelings of isolation and loneliness was the primary need,” Hoffman said. “Now, an affordable place to live is the number one need. Hosts need help in meeting their housing expenses.” Even for housemates who entered into the arrangement for social reasons, the extra money has become more important as their financial picture changed with the pandemic.

Debbi Campbell, 70, a retired copywriter, met Loretta Halter, a retired manager from the Kroger grocery chain, in 2018 at a Czech cultural event in New York City. Campbell was mourning the loss of her live-in boyfriend of almost 20 years to cancer. Halter had moved to New York City from Appling, Ga., several years earlier. She had used the NYFSC home-sharing program earlier to find an affordable apartment but was unhappy in her situation, which is when she decided to become housemates with Campbell.

The two went through the NYFSC program to handle the background checks, vetting and administrative details before Halter moved into Campbell’s rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. Before the pandemic, the two lived somewhat separate lives. Campbell lived mostly in the bedroom and Halter lived mostly in the living room. But when the city shut down, they developed a strong friendship.

Story continues below advertisement

“First, we started with the crossword and the jigsaw puzzles, and the TV, and it turned out well,” Campbell said. The ease of the later-in-life roommate-as-friend experience surprised her. “I mean, I’m one of those people who’s spent a good time of my life in therapy, mostly complaining about people I knew.”

After initially being furloughed from her job as a long-term temp at the Department of Education in March 2020, Campbell retired in October 2020, at 68, more than a year earlier than she expected. She also opted to take Social Security benefits at that time, instead of waiting until 70 as she had planned.

“I had not been desperate over money, but having a pandemic come, suddenly you have company where you wouldn’t have. And suddenly there is extra money for you from home sharing, which I wouldn’t have had. It was just a bonanza. I feel like the luckiest person of the pandemic,” she said.

While the dozen home sharers interviewed for this article insisted their parents would have found the idea outlandish, having housemates later in life seems to be finding more acceptance. In 2021, 70 percent of adults over 50 reported being open to sharing their home with a family member who was not a spouse, 51 percent said they would be willing to share with a friend and 6 percent would share a home with a stranger, according to a survey from AARP. Of those who reported they would not share their home at all, 23 percent said they would change their mind if they needed extra income.

Story continues below advertisement

“The majority of people considering home sharing with a friend or family member tells me that there’s an opportunity there for more people to take advantage of that excess housing stock that we already have within our own homes, and that perhaps meet your needs, and those of a friend or neighbor,” Harrell said. “Or maybe companionship that may help with costs, such as caregiving. There’s just so much advantage there. And we’re just not necessarily taking advantage of it. It’s nowhere near its potential.”

The growing interest in home sharing, especially for those boomers who are house-rich and cash-poor in expensive housing markets, is being cultivated by nonprofit and commercial programs as well as municipalities. Since 2015, New York, Seattle, Denver, Tucson, Northern California and the metro Washington area all have established or are launching programs.

“From what we’ve seen, attitudes are loosening toward home sharing,” Riley Gibson, president of Denver-based home sharing service Silvernest, which pairs older adults with housemates. The service is particularly active in tighter housing markets such as San Francisco, Phoenix, Tampa, Miami and Los Angeles. Silvernest recently partnered with Montgomery County in Maryland to start a pilot program and plans to launch in a few more cities later this year.

Renters and homeowners can fill out profiles on the site, which supports services including lease templates, insurance and background checks. A similar service, Boston-based Nesterly, matches older adults with younger ones to promote intergenerational home shares. Senior Homeshares, another service, has enrolled nearly 70,000 members across the country since its inception in 2015.

Story continues below advertisement

Even before the pandemic, demographics were shifting toward nonfamily households. In 1960, 85 percent of households were composed of families, according to the Population Reference Bureau. By 2017, that figure had fallen to 65 percent of households.

As Americans continue to age, Harrell and others expect growing demand for more housing options. “As a society, we’ve been building and thinking about younger families and building housing and communities for younger people,” he said.

“But that need has been shifting as community leaders, builders and designers” are “starting to think more and more about what happens to us as we age. And covid has given momentum to those conversations,” Harrell said.

Story continues below advertisement

For Kim Bolding, 61, home sharing enabled her to stay in the five-bedroom Colorado Springs home where she had raised her biological, adopted and foster children after being diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy in 2012.

Bolding, a former social worker, was able to keep working from home until 2017. But after she was forced to go on Social Security disability, the payments weren’t enough to keep up with her housing costs. “I did not want to have to go into just affiliate-type living. I wanted to keep my home,” she said.

First, a longtime neighbor moved downstairs, where he could have his own bathroom. With the help of Denver-based nonprofit Sunshine Home Share Colorado, Bolding found two more housemates. Since then, she has mostly lived with three other housemates at a time: two men on one floor sharing a bathroom and a woman on her floor. “It’s allowing me to be able to maintain my own individuality. I can say what I want when I set my own needs and rules,” she said.

Story continues below advertisement

All of the housemates are on disability, but collectively able to live independently. Bolding is able to host her adult children when they visit, but they don’t feel obligated to move in with her to manage her illness. Instead, she is building a new community with her housemates, holding regular dinners together.

“We run it like a family and we have space for others,” Bolding said. Having housemates is “a great alternative to being stuck in some place where you don’t have a lot of choices: who your neighbors are, who you interact with, or you lose a lot of autonomy and that’s part of the problem with aging, ” she added.

Bolding has already had several housemates who have moved out because of a change in their fortunes. Two have received government-subsidized housing, one has gotten married and another inherited a house and cars from an uncle who recently passed away. She thinks of her house as a harbinger of good luck and said she has received many calls asking for information or guidance on doing something similar.

“It’s becoming more and more popular, especially for my age group for people in similar situations. We need each other. We get blessed and they get blessed,” Bolding said.

The post Child boomers are shifting in collectively to economize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A San Francisco man was charged Monday with murder for killing a 7-month-old boy who was in his care.

Joseph Williams was charged with the murder and assault of a fatal child, according to a statement from the San Francisco District Attorney.

Williams had babysat the child, identified only as Baby S., on April 20, authorities said.

He took the boy to a hospital later that day.

The baby died of traumatic head injuries caused by blunt force, prosecutors said. No details were given.

The boy wasn’t related to Williams, prosecutors said.

Williams had two previous domestic violence arrests against a friend who was not the mother of the boy who had died.

However, no charges were brought after the woman told police that she had started the fighting – once after breaking into his home – and refused to bring charges, according to the prosecutor’s office.

That would have made it impossible to prove the cases beyond doubt, the office said.

“We believe the available facts of these two cases supported the decision not to bring charges, but that is not enough,” the DA office said in the statement. “In the face of this tragedy, we will review all policies related to domestic violence charges, including talking to our law enforcement partners, to ensure we are all using best practices to obtain admissible evidence and assist the victims.”

The post San Francisco man charged with killing child in his care appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A San Francisco man was charged Monday with murder for killing a 7-month-old boy who was in his care.

Joseph Williams was charged with the murder and assault of a fatal child, according to a statement from the San Francisco District Attorney.

Williams had babysat the child, identified only as Baby S., on April 20, authorities said.

He took the boy to a hospital later that day.

The baby died of traumatic head injuries caused by blunt force, prosecutors said. No details were given.

The boy wasn’t related to Williams, prosecutors said.

Williams had two previous domestic violence arrests against a friend who was not the mother of the boy who had died.

However, no charges were brought after the woman told police that she had started the fighting – once after breaking into his home – and refused to bring charges, according to the prosecutor’s office.

That would have made it impossible to prove the cases beyond doubt, the office said.

“We believe the available facts of these two cases supported the decision not to bring charges, but that is not enough,” the DA office said in the statement. “In the face of this tragedy, we will review all policies related to domestic violence charges, including talking to our law enforcement partners, to ensure we are all using best practices to obtain admissible evidence and assist the victims.”

The post San Francisco man charged with killing child in his care appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Below is a list of the best and leading baby supplies stores in San Francisco. To help you find the best baby supply stores near you in San Diego, we’ve compiled our own list based on this review score list.

San Francisco’s Best Baby Goods Stores:

The top rated Baby Supplies Store in San Francisco are:

• Sprout San Francisco – shows organic and natural baby products for the safety of the little ones
• Aldea Home and Baby – specializes in household goods and furniture for babies and toddlers
• Natural resources – offers first-class products for mothers and babies
• MUDPIE – has an inventory of high quality baby and care products
• Dottie Doolittle – offers high quality clothing and cuddly toys for babies and children

Sprout San Francisco

Sprout San Francisco shows organic and natural baby products for the safety of the little ones. Your products are guaranteed to be toxin-free. The staff thoroughly evaluates the products before displaying them. Their inventory also includes supplies for babies and toddlers. Some of the products are toys, clothing, and personal care products. They also gave them furniture and basic health care needs. They also have care products for nursing mothers. Your staff help customers find the safest products for their children. They are approachable and respectful.

Products:

Baby articles, toys, clothing, feeding supplies

Place:

Address: 1828 Union St, San Francisco, CA 94123
Telephone: (415) -359-9205
Website: sproutsanfrancisco.com

Reviews:

What an amazing experience this Sprout San Francisco! You were very helpful in choosing our kindergarten. The prices were amazing too, thanks for the great customer service. “- Sandra Higgins

Aldea house and baby

Aldea Home and Baby specializes in housewares and furniture for babies and toddlers. The store opened to the public in 2005. Since then, they have been bringing quality products to local residents. In addition, they show sustainable goods from local markets. The owner personally curates his selection. They have eco-friendly kids room parts and fun toys for the whole family. In addition, its inventor includes clothing, bathroom and accessories for children. Furniture includes cots, seating, and changing rooms. They also have large cots and high chairs available. In addition, they offer a large selection of toys from log books, dolls and ride-ons.

Products:

Baby goods store, furniture

Place:

Address: 890 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Telephone: (415) -865-9807
Website: aldeahome.com

Reviews:

“I had a great experience in the store and they have it all! I really felt my business was valued and I look forward to going back when it is time to redecorate my other children’s rooms! “- Paula Kelly

Natural resources

Natural Resources offers first-class products for mothers and babies. They have full supplies to take care of the little ones. In addition, they make sure that their displays are safe and durable. Your products combine design and functionality in one. They also have staff on hand to help customers find the best products for them. In addition, their inventory includes prenatal products, baby carriers and care products. The prenatal products range from abdominal braces to pregnancy teas. They also have durable and safe baby carriers made from a variety of materials.

Products:

Baby supply store

Place:

Address: 1051 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Telephone: (415) -550-2611
Website: naturalresources-sf.com

Reviews:

“Incredible resource for moms, partners, babies and their families – from pregnancy to delivery to postpartum and beyond. Thank you for the pandemic support group in this COVID era. During these times it was extremely helpful to manage pregnancy. “- Christie Sullivan Pellegrino

MUD CAKE

MUDPIE has an inventory of high quality baby and care products. Their inventory includes clothes for babies, girls, and boys. The clothes have beautiful designs for children. There are colorful shirts, pants, skirts and shorts to choose from. They also have shoes and accessories on display. The accessories are safe for children. Their shoes provide comfort for the little ones’ feet. Plus, they have cute toys that fill their shelves. The toys help develop the children’s movements and skills. There are also books and art supplies.

Products:

Baby supply store

Place:

Address: 2185 Fillmore St, San Francisco, CA 94115
Telephone: (415) -771-9262
Website: mudpie-sf.com

Reviews:

“Beautiful customer service, unique and beautiful selection of very high quality clothing and cute accessories! Ideal place to find a treasure or a heavenly gift! “- Christine Murray

Dottie Doolittle

Dottie Doolittle offers high quality clothing and cuddly toys for babies and children. They also create personalized accessories. In addition, their employees greet customers happily. You help customers politely. The store has been in the community for more than 45 years. They wear different designers under the store. They also have a selection of dresses for special occasions and weddings. They also have blacks and blazers for boys. Their inventory for babies includes cotton t-shirts, summer dresses, sleepsies, and overalls. The clothing offers the highest level of comfort. In addition, the materials used for the clothing are child-friendly.

Products:

Baby supply store

Place:

Address: 3680 Sacramento St, San Francisco, CA 94118
Phone: ((800) -372-2062
Website: dottiedoolittle.com

Reviews:

“The chicest children’s clothing store there is. Not to mention, they have served the church for decades. They always have the freshest styles, great sales with deep discounts, fun toys. Great customer service. Also good for gifts. “- Asher McInerney

Jeanie Burford is a reporter for Kev’s Best. After graduating from UCLA, Amy interned at a local radio station and worked as a beat reporter and producer. Jeanie has also worked as a columnist for The Brookings Register. Amy covers business and community events for Kev’s Best.

The post 5 Greatest Child Provides Shops in San Francisco 🥇 appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.