The majority of people who work for the city of San Francisco don’t actually live there, according to data provided by the city.

In fact, 58% of San Francisco’s public workers live outside of the city as of 2022, a slight increase from where it was a decade ago. SF workers commuting into the city most often live in San Mateo County (19%), but that number is also decreasing.

Meanwhile, East Bay counties Alameda and Contra Costa are seeing more San Francisco public workers move into their areas. As of 2022, 14% and 12% of San Francisco city employees live in Alameda and Contra Costa counties – 10% and 15% percent increases since 2013, respectively.

In particular, Stockton is attracting lots more San Francisco city workers these days than it used to, despite the significant commute. Nowadays, 311 city workers reside in San Joaquin county — still only about 1% of all workers, a 46% increase from 191 in 2013.

While the lack of affordable housing is likely one of the main factors driving city workers out of San Francisco, other factors could also be at play, according to Enrique Lopezlira, Director at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

For example, improvements to public transportation — like a BART extension to San Jose — could be making people more comfortable commuting longer distances.

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“It’s hard to definitely say it’s all housing [costs] that’s causing this. Those other areas, if they’re also getting more residents and they start building more amenities, better schools and so forth, that might also cause people to want to live outside the city,” Lopezlira said. Still, Lopezlira thinks that it’s “a bit high” for a city like San Francisco to have six of every 10 municipal employees living out-of-city.

San Francisco’s public safety departments have the highest shares of workers living outside SF In 2022, just 25% of San Francisco Police Department employees lived in the city proper, the lowest share of any department.

SF Police Department spokesperson Adam Lobsinger said some officers choose to live outside of the city to have separation of their work and home lives.

“I live outside of San Francisco … it’s really important for us to have some downtime and get away from work because of the toll that this job can take on you both physically and emotionally,” Lobsinger said.

Only 28% of SF Fire Department employees live in the city. According to Fire Department spokesperson Jonathan Baxter, many workers who do live in town can do so because they inherited homes from their parents, still live with their families or work second jobs.

“Rent is extremely high in San Francisco and most of the firefighters that I’ve spoken to who rent in San Francisco have [two to five] roommates so that they can have a decent living standard, [and be] able to continue to educate themselves to progress in their careers such as going to college and taking trade classes,” Baxter said.

Despite having the highest median income out of all the city’s departments at over $200,000, the San Francisco Fire Department has one of the lowest portions of employees that live in the city.

Many city departments prefer to have their staff live in San Francisco and recruit locally to make that happen. For example, the Fire Department offers youth outreach programs like CITY EMT, a four month program that offers Emergency Medical Technician training to at-risk young adults in San Francisco.

The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development offers affordable housing programs that give preference to people who work in the city, like the San Francisco Affordable Housing Lottery — the city’s system for allocating “Below Market Rate” properties. San Francisco workers have an advantage when applying to this program because every lottery has a “live or work in San Francisco” preference that improves an applicant’s chances at being awarded housing.

Some housing programs are more targeted to specific departments. The First Responders Downpayment Assistance Loan Program helps members of the San Francisco Police Department, Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department buy their first home in San Francisco. The loan covers a downpayment of up to $375,000.

But with already-high median home values ​​rising even higher in recent years, Baxter questions if this is enough support.

“I myself could not afford my driveway at the home that I live in right now if I were to buy my home again and that’s a factor in seeing the rise in the cost of housing that we have here in San Francisco,” he said.

Not all of the city’s departments are seeing the same patterns. Even though Public Library employees have a median income of $102,000 – over $100,000 less than Fire Department’s median income — six out of ten Public Library employees are city residents.

One explanation could be age-related: Public Library employees have a higher median age than most other city departments, according to City Librarian Michael Lambert.

“We have employees who are still in their late 60s and 70s working for us. In the past, we’ve even had 1 employee in their early 80s,” Lambert said. “If our employees are older and stay longer, they have a greater likelihood of having put down roots in their younger years here, and perhaps have had a relatively easier time staying in the city and navigating the housing market.”

Labor Center researcher Lopezlira said his organization is beginning research on why the public sector has seen slow recovery in employment staffing since the pandemic. He said the city’s lack of affordable housing could be one of the causes of the high number of vacancies in government positions.

“We realize that there’s a lot of talk about [public sector] labor shortage in general, but maybe part of the reason for those hiring vacancies is the fact that it’s really expensive to live in the city and county,” he said.

Adriana Rezal and Harsha Devulapalli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: adriana.rezal@sfchronicle.com

The post Most individuals who work for San Francisco don’t dwell within the metropolis. Right here’s why appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Employees said management declined to voluntarily recognize their membership in the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29 during a tense town hall on Friday. According to workers who spoke with KQED, Kisch told staff that a letter with a list of names was not sufficient to show unionizing was not an “actual, uncoerced decision on the part of each employee listed.”

Even without that recognition, workers will soon move forward with a ballot election.

“Most of us can’t afford to live in the city where we help people find housing,” said Juliana Dunn, who works with kids at Compass Clara House, a transitional housing program. “And we want to have a voice in that. We want to have a seat at the negotiation table. We don’t want to be dismissed.”

In a written statement to KQED, Kisch said that she respected the right of staff to decide whether to bring in a labor organization to represent them in collective bargaining.

“For more than 100 years Compass Family Services has been devoted to serving the homeless families in our community, including new arrivals,” she wrote in the statement. “If a majority of our staff decide that is in their best interest, we will honor that decision.”

Dunn said employees began talking about the need to improve working conditions around the fall of 2021. They were worried at the time that hybrid work options were ending, and staff would need to return to work in person five days a week.

Jobs at Compass can be both fast-paced and high stress, with workers having difficult conversations over the phone, sometimes in multiple languages ​​at once. That can make working in the office uncomfortable, and can place an unnecessary burden on Compass staff already struggling to balance child care on top of the secondary trauma of working with families experiencing homelessness. Staff at Compass are also overwhelmingly people of color.

Dunn said that when staff attempted to share their concerns about equity, workers felt dismissed. They said the work environment became even more uncomfortable because of microaggressions, like glares on the job or suggestions that they were replaceable. After that, workers began researching what union membership could look like.

Compass is not the only city nonprofit to see labor strife recently. Employees at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, another San Francisco transitional housing provider, went on strike over the summer for the first time in history and ratified a contract for higher wages earlier this month. Staff at Hotel Whitcomb, one of the city’s hotels housing vulnerable residents under the state’s Project Roomkey program, have described the mental health toll on the job of regularly responding to drug overdoses.

Melani Gomez is currently a case manager at Compass. She previously was a client for about seven years. She relied on services through SF HOME, a program with Compass that provides rental subsidies and case management. Gomez said she went through about seven case managers during the years she used their services.

“You have to tell your story again and again and again. And sometimes you get tired,” Gomez said, adding that now she understands why so many of her case managers left. “Being a client really helped me grow and be where I am right now. But seeing the other side of that coin, they’re not very supportive of their own families who are working for them.”

Alex Arauz works at Compass’ Central City Access Point, one of the first points of contact for families experiencing homelessness. His official job title is “problem solver.” He said that without Compass, many families would be lost, calling every agency to see where they could receive help.

Before he worked at Compass, he worked at a union shop, Catholic Charities, but was looking for somewhere more progressive that embraced harm-reduction services. When he started in August, he said he heard murmurs of unionizing and workers who were scared.

“I have never experienced a workplace where every single worker was scared of what administration could do. And it shook me,” he said. “To be scared of this agency that said, ‘We’re all a family, we’re all here.’ That’s not something that I want to feel from an agency that says they have my back, and I thought we were all moving towards the same goals.”

The post ‘We Do not Wish to Be Dismissed’: Employees at Compass Household Companies in San Francisco Plan Vote to Unionize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Employees said management declined to voluntarily recognize their membership in the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29 during a tense town hall on Friday. According to workers who spoke with KQED, Kisch told staff that a letter with a list of names was not sufficient to show unionizing was not an “actual, uncoerced decision on the part of each employee listed.”

Even without that recognition, workers will soon move forward with a ballot election.

“Most of us can’t afford to live in the city where we help people find housing,” said Juliana Dunn, who works with kids at Compass Clara House, a transitional housing program. “And we want to have a voice in that. We want to have a seat at the negotiation table. We don’t want to be dismissed.”

In a written statement to KQED, Kisch said that she respected the right of staff to decide whether to bring in a labor organization to represent them in collective bargaining.

“For more than 100 years Compass Family Services has been devoted to serving the homeless families in our community, including new arrivals,” she wrote in the statement. “If a majority of our staff decide that is in their best interest, we will honor that decision.”

Dunn said employees began talking about the need to improve working conditions around the fall of 2021. They were worried at the time that hybrid work options were ending, and staff would need to return to work in person five days a week.

Jobs at Compass can be both fast-paced and high stress, with workers having difficult conversations over the phone, sometimes in multiple languages ​​at once. That can make working in the office uncomfortable, and can place an unnecessary burden on Compass staff already struggling to balance child care on top of the secondary trauma of working with families experiencing homelessness. Staff at Compass are also overwhelmingly people of color.

Dunn said that when staff attempted to share their concerns about equity, workers felt dismissed. They said the work environment became even more uncomfortable because of microaggressions, like glares on the job or suggestions that they were replaceable. After that, workers began researching what union membership could look like.

Compass is not the only city nonprofit to see labor strife recently. Employees at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, another San Francisco transitional housing provider, went on strike over the summer for the first time in history and ratified a contract for higher wages earlier this month. Staff at Hotel Whitcomb, one of the city’s hotels housing vulnerable residents under the state’s Project Roomkey program, have described the mental health toll on the job of regularly responding to drug overdoses.

Melani Gomez is currently a case manager at Compass. She previously was a client for about seven years. She relied on services through SF HOME, a program with Compass that provides rental subsidies and case management. Gomez said she went through about seven case managers during the years she used their services.

“You have to tell your story again and again and again. And sometimes you get tired,” Gomez said, adding that now she understands why so many of her case managers left. “Being a client really helped me grow and be where I am right now. But seeing the other side of that coin, they’re not very supportive of their own families who are working for them.”

Alex Arauz works at Compass’ Central City Access Point, one of the first points of contact for families experiencing homelessness. His official job title is “problem solver.” He said that without Compass, many families would be lost, calling every agency to see where they could receive help.

Before he worked at Compass, he worked at a union shop, Catholic Charities, but was looking for somewhere more progressive that embraced harm-reduction services. When he started in August, he said he heard murmurs of unionizing and workers who were scared.

“I have never experienced a workplace where every single worker was scared of what administration could do. And it shook me,” he said. “To be scared of this agency that said, ‘We’re all a family, we’re all here.’ That’s not something that I want to feel from an agency that says they have my back, and I thought we were all moving towards the same goals.”

The post ‘We Do not Wish to Be Dismissed’: Employees at Compass Household Companies in San Francisco Plan Vote to Unionize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Efforts to address the dueling mental health and substance abuse crises on California’s streets have ramped up in recent years. The latest and showiest of these efforts is the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court, put forth by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Pitched as an “upstream diversion” to prevent people with severe mental illness from ending up incarcerated or conserved, CARE Courts would work like this: First, any family member, case worker, or first-responder, including police, who believes a person needs intervention for mental health or substance use issues, could make a referral to a civil court. The person in need of care would then receive a clinical evaluation by their county behavioral health system. A public defender and case manager would then be assigned, and a CARE plan would be drafted, which could include a 12-month plan for medication, housing , and behavioral health treatment.

The plan is flashy. It’s well-branded. But dig just a little under the surface, and things don’t look so shiny. For a bill centered around care, it’s remarkably careless. And if San Francisco officials were hoping CARE Courts will sweep in to solve our issues for us, consider that idea dead in the water.

San Francisco has long battled with the ethical quandary of whether it is more humane to force someone who is very ill into involuntary treatment or grant them the freedom to make their own decisions about their life and care. Much of the discussion around CARE Courts centers on this debate. And these are valuable conversations to have.

But it’s doubtful CARE Courts will even get that far.

The most glaring flaw is a lack of funding and key infrastructure. The bill creates an entirely new system that can be used to compel treatment but includes only $65 million to support court expansion. It relies on already oversubscribed county programs to somehow accommodate an influx of new patients in need of court-mandated drug abuse treatment, mental health care and housing.

That a lack of resources is available to accommodate these mandates is obvious. Our existing systems to address the intersection of mental health and substance use issues can hardly operate. People accepted to mental health diversion programs are languishing in the county jail for months waiting for a bed to open. The lead judge of San Francisco’s Adult Drug Court said at a March Board of Supervisors hearing that due to this shortage, his staff has abandoned hope of getting anyone with both diagnoses into a treatment program. And a Damning Board of Supervisors hearing last week discussed five people who have taken more than 1,700 ambulance rides in the past five years, costing the city upward of $4 million. When mental health professionals tried to preserve one person, there was nowhere to put them.

California — and in particular, San Francisco — is already suffering from a severe shortage of behavioral health workers. In interviews with employees from both nonprofit and city health programs, we were told repeatedly that there simply isn’t anyone to hire for a growing number of vacant positions.

Across the bay, it’s not much better. A civil grand jury report on Alameda County’s behavioral health found understaffing on crisis phone lines, and incarceration used in place of psychiatric treatment.

When asked about the lack of funding attached to this bill, Newsom’s senior counselor Jason Elliott said that, “The whole thing only succeeds if we massively expand the behavioral health clinical network.” He noted that since Newsom took office in 2020, $4.5 billion has been allocated for this purpose across the state. “I have a hard time with the argument that we haven’t invested enough sufficiently to be able to do CARE Court,” he said.

But the results have been slow to appear: In the past two years, San Francisco has added only 180 new psychiatric treatment beds. It currently has none to spare. And CARE Courts would be implemented next year.

With this lack of attention to resources, it’s almost certain that CARE Court will fall flat. If San Francisco, a city with a $14 billion annual budget, can’t find a single bed for someone racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in ambulance rides, how will smaller, less wealthy, counties fare with these new requirements?

This, of course, begs the question: If people could already access health resources, why would they even need a court order?

Until we provide more housing and treatment beds, train, hire and fund behavioral health workers, and improve access to care for people at every step of their journey to recovery, we may never find out.

Correction: An earlier version of this column misstated the amount the state had allocated for behavioral health.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.

The post Don’t depend on Newsom’s CARE Courts to avoid wasting San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

After Florida passed its cruel and oppressive “Don’t Say Gay” law, more than a dozen states nationwide proposed or discussed plans to propose their own copycat bills. These bills would bar educators from discussing issues of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, despite (or because of) those being things the Republicans backing this legislation clearly don’t understand in the slightest.

Now Louisiana legislators have introduced their own version of the bill and it’s possibly the worst, strictest version yet. Proponents of Florida’s bill claim that it only applies to children through third grade but the language in it and its copycats is deliberately vague enough to scare educators into avoiding these subjects altogether.

In Louisiana, though, the bill explicitly prohibits teachers and other school officials and staff from talking about anything related to sexual orientation and gender identity through grade eight, and bans those educators from discussing anything related to their own sexual orientation and gender identity through grade 12 .

This means, without any equivocation, that teachers and other school employees are being told they must stay in the closet, no matter what grade they teach. They cannot bring a same-sex partner to a school event. They cannot transition while working in education in the state. This is a ban on living openly as an LGBTQIA+ person for educators and school officials in the state of Louisiana.

It’s also not just about the adults in these situations. It will prohibit any student from finding an adult ally with whom they might be able to discuss their own journeys with these issues. And as NPR wrote earlier this year describing the concerns of one Florida teacher, “Teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity isn’t part of the first–grade curriculum … But talking about families is part of her curriculum, and some of her students may have two moms or two dads.”

“It makes me wonder,” that teacher told the outlet. “When I talk about families in my classroom, am I going to be violating this law because the children were having discussions about what their family looks like?”

The bill was killed, so why isn’t it dead?

Louisiana’s bill was killed in committee by a 7-4 vote. But state representatives used a reportedly unprecedented maneuver to discharge it from the Education Committee and bring it for a full House vote anyway.

Louisiana’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill is back alive. By a vote of 55-39, the House voted to discharge it from the House Education Committee, where it failed. The House will later need to schedule a meeting to hear it. #lalege

— Blake Paterson (@BlakePater) May 10, 2022

SarahJane Guidry, the Executive Director of Forum for Equality, said in a statement to Louisiana Trans Advocates: “Anti-LGBTQ+ politicians are pulling out all the stops in their attempt to censor and control students and teachers. It’s absurd that politicians are resorting to this kind of behavior. Moving this bill forward at the expense of LGBTQ+ students’ well-being is a shameful political trick. It’s time for our elected officials to hold this bill once and for all and return their focus to the real issues facing families in our state, like quality health care and economic programs.”

(Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyonehate speech, and trolling.—

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

The post Louisiana’s ‘Do not Say Homosexual/Trans’ Invoice Transferring Ahead appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

They come in search of square footage, quick commutes, pellet grills and swimming pools, leaving behind their lives in the big city for Bakersfield, “a California they can afford,” as a recent New York Times headline put it. But as newcomers drive housing prices to historic highs, Bakersfield is increasingly becoming a California those of us who already live here can no longer afford.

Our median household income is woefully low, yet the median home price keeps rising. The rental market is tight, with rents soaring way out of reach of most everyone I know, including my niece, a college lecturer, and her high school teacher husband.

That said, Kern County has been a magnet for seekers and dreamers for generations. For 30 years, they came in droves to Bakersfield by car, by bus, by freight and by foot, mostly from Oklahoma and Arkansas. They were poor, weary and didn’t have a plan so much as a compass direction: Head west. But like my dad always said, they were the ones with gumption — the ones who wanted something better. My grandpa was one of them.

William O. Self left Arkansas in the 1940s for California and the booming war production in Bay Area shipyards. Eventually, he sent for his wife and six children, who boarded a train with their meager belongings and a hamper of fried chicken, which Grandma traded for milk from a soldier so she could feed the baby.

After the war, the family drifted down the state and landed in Bakersfield. Here, in the heartland of California, they found families they recognized. There was plenty of cotton to pick, potatoes to fry and that distinctive “Howdy, y’all” drawl that sounded like home.

That’s how my family got here, but it wasn’t so different for the legions of Mexican and Filipino farm workers, Basque shepherds, Chinese rail workers and others who, like my grandparents, came in search of one thing: opportunity.

Our economy has always been tied to the earth — the fertile fields that feed the nation and the richest oilfields in California. If you are willing to put your back into it, there is work here; there always has been. And there is hope or, in the words of Central Valley writer Gerald Haslam, if not hope, “the hope of hope.”

And the transplants keep coming, still looking for opportunity. The recent wave of them from Los Angeles and San Francisco often say they are looking to escape the high cost of life in a major city — the too-small apartments, the homes priced out of reach, the long commutes.

Reports on the Bakersfield of today often follow a familiar formula: An outsider comes to town to get a look at one of the most affordable cities in California. They note the basics: the country music, the conservative politics, the oil, the agriculture, the dirty air.

And then they find the transplants. Not those like the family of a Cal State Bakersfield student I recently wrote about in a campus publication — who come here from Mexico and live in a garage for a year until they can find a one-bedroom apartment for a family of seven. They interview new residents giddy over their McMansions and lush lawns.

But the audiences for these stories live outside the city limits, usually outside the Central Valley. There’s often a faint — not that faint, actually — air of condescension threaded throughout.

“Like, who moves to Bakersfield?” That was a recent quote in the New York Times from a lawyer who did just that, leaving the Bay Area for a townhome in the city’s newly fashionable downtown.

No hard feelings. We attract them with our affordability but win them over with our odd contradiction of small-town charm and big-city aspirations. They act as though they’ve discovered a secret, and we let them think they have.

Yet there’s more to Bakersfield, and those of us who have loved/loathed it for generations wrestle with the challenges every day.

We’re one of the poorest cities in California. One in five Bakersfield residents lives in poverty, and the annual median household income of $63,000 is well below the state’s $75,000. The median home price is about 20% higher than it was a year ago — it is hovering around $350,000, a steal in much of California but out of reach for so many families who live here.

The twin pillars of our economy for more than 100 years — oil and agriculture — are undergoing unprecedented upheaval, putting jobs on the line.

Our rates of educational attainment are among the lowest in the state. A recent survey by Wallet Hub called Bakersfield “one of the least educated cities in America,” ranking us 147 out of 150.

And we can’t pin any of that on the newcomers.

In fact, for Bakersfield to once again be the California that all of its residents can afford, we will need all the help we can get.

We have already begun working toward that goal, drawing upon the wisdom and experience of the old guard and the fresh perspectives of an emerging group of civic boosters, many of whom are newcomers.

The agenda is ambitious: better jobs, economic diversity, cleaner air, more high school diplomas and college degrees, greater investment in our downtown and on and on.

In Bakersfield, we are used to working for what we want, and if the past is any indication, we are ready to live up to that ethic.

So welcome, new neighbors.

Now get to work.

Jennifer Self is the public information officer at California State University, Bakersfield. She has lived in Bakersfield her entire life.

The post Op-Ed: Shifting to Bakersfield? Do not decide earlier than you get right here appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

“This city blows,” one of the women huffs out. “Big time.”

“I mean, whatever, I’m not above living in a former crack house, you know?”

“Dude, I’ve been saying for months, let’s just move to East LA This city’s dead.”

A second later, a young Black man clad in red flannel and a beanie interrupts them, telling them, “You don’t get to hate San Francisco … You don’t get to hate it unless you love it.” They haven’t earned the right to hate this place — they just got here, he explains, summing up the message at the center of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.” This Muni dweller is Jimmie Fails, a local in a bustling and indifferent San Francisco that is quickly slipping from his grasp.

“The Last Black Man in San Francisco” centers on fails’ desperate efforts to hold on to the Victorian house his grandfather built in the heart of the city, and to find belonging in a community that is rapidly changing in the face of an unclear future.

The film is Joe Talbot’s directorial debut, for which he picked up the Best Director prize at Sundance 2019. It is a thoughtful, tender glimpse into gentrification, the affordable housing crisis and toxic masculinity. Whether you are from the city like myself, or have experienced the effects of these issues in your own hometown, this film is universal in its meditations on the human desire for belonging and what defines a home.

As a child, Jimmie lived in the house with his father, who inherited it from his own father, who supposedly built the house with his own two hands. After his father lost their home, it stood abandoned until a couple moved into it. Although he has not lived in the house for years, Jimmie, often with his best friend Mont (Jonathan Majors) at his side, trespasses on the property to make repairs and help with its upkeep. Even after the older couple living there mocks his devotion and throws them off the property, Jimmie refuses to let go of the house. However, when a family dispute forces the couple to vacate the house, he enlists Mont to reclaim his old home, refilling it with his own furniture and memories.

The film is semi-autobiographical, loosely inspired by Fails’ own life and his friendship with Talbot, the film’s director. Both are lifelong San Franciscans, and clearly care about the story they’re telling, imbuing their characters with their own lived experiences, with their love, frustration and resentment of the city. The realism of this film is palpable. The two main actors were virtually unknown faces at the time of its release, allowing the audience to truly envision them as their characters.

Although “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” is, in essence, a love story between a man and a house, the relationship between Jimmie and Mont is indelible to the film. The two are inseparable, their brotherly friendship loving and gentle. It’s not typical in film to see men cry so openly in front of each other, and yet these two do so without shame. Their touching brotherhood works with Emile Mosseri’s poetic, heart-aching score and Adam Newport-Berra’s cinematography to create an atmosphere that is warm and welcoming, like an old classic.

while it’s obvious that Fails’ real life story is special and worth telling, Talbot’s inclination toward sparse, sleek storytelling inhibits the film’s ability to tell that story in full depth. Jimmie or Mont will often hint at some idea to the viewer, giving them a vague glimpse into their perspectives or relationship. However, the film’s overly minimalist script will cut them off. This film lets us learn little about the characters beyond what is essential to moving the plot forward. Its long lapses of silence — which are stylistically moving, yet lack the dynamic quality of dialogue — cause it to drag.

The film tends to hide behind its ethereal cinematography and dreamy score, shying away from exposing the rough, gritty edges of its subject. In doing so, it engages quite passively with how Jimmie’s Blackness shapes his struggles for belonging and for ownership of his family home. I wish that it leaned harder into its depiction of gentrification, and did so on a wider scale (using the side characters, for example) rather than solely through personal storytelling centered around Jimmie and the house.

“The Last Black Man in San Francisco” is a love letter to San Francisco, a city “plagued with idealism,” as explained by former mayor Willie Brown in a recent interview with The New York Times. It’s heart-achingly clear that Jimmie is a victim of this same idealism. He has held onto this one hope for so long. Even though deep down he knows that it’s an illusion, that it’s unlikely he will ever be able to reclaim his grandfather’s home, his struggle forces us to ask whether believing in something that isn’t real is better than believing in nothing at all.

Hannah Eliot SC ’24 is from San Francisco, California. She likes to surf and is learning (trying) to play the guitar.

Related

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – A one-way street in San Francisco has neighbors who live in constant fear and fear for their safety. According to the latest city data, Willow Street between Van Ness and Polk currently has the highest density of tents in San Francisco.

“It’s pretty nerve-wracking throughout,” said local resident Amber Lutsko. “This just seems like a safe place for chop shops and drug trafficking.”

CONTINUE READING: Suspect wanted for sexual assault on blind woman in Cupertino

Local residents say they are afraid to drive down Willow Street and most would not dare to walk through it day and night. They say the problem has exploded exponentially since COVID.

“The trash is a major health problem, rats …” added Lutsko.

It’s all a few feet from the Artani, which is located at 818 Van Ness Avenue, where units have sold for more than $ 1 million.

When asked what the most egregious part of the street was:

“Probably the threats of violence, the threats of violence against us, other residents of the building,” said Lutsko.

“I’ve seen people fight physically and I was gone once and a man approached my car yelling profanity and threatening me, which was really scary,” said a resident named Shannon, who refused on privacy concerns. to give her last name.

“There was a guy who passed out in front of our door all day with a needle hanging from his arm. And our children had to walk past it, ”added Lutsko.

Artani residents say they encounter unwanted activity as soon as they leave the garage. You are forced to turn right on Willow Street.

They shared photos of a man they say urinates and throws feces regularly. The smell permeates the entire garage. Another photo shows a man trying to break into her garage using a bottle to keep it from closing. Others are caught damaging their property – even entering and stealing packages.

CONTINUE READING: ‘The worst I’ve seen;’ Oakland residents shocked motorists after toddler was killed in I-880 skirmish

“I can’t really agree with the fact that this criminal activity is allowed to happen, I’ve called the police myself several times,” said Shannon, who said SFPD didn’t show up when they called.

It wasn’t until October 5th that the city came and swept the street completely – seen in a photo of a local resident. But the next day the tents and the rubbish had returned.

“The police do not come when we call 911 because we are actively threatened by someone brandishing a club or knife, they do not come,” said Lutsko.

The San Francisco Police Department directed the KPIX request to the Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC), which coordinates the city’s response to quality of life issues.

KPIX made several inquiries to the mayor’s office and we were sent to the Emergency Management Department (DEM). It sent the following statement:

San Francisco continues to focus on providing services and resources to our unoccupied residents while ensuring that public roads are safe and healthy for all. The social workers, clinicians, medical professionals, police officers, field workers, and street cleaning teams who do this difficult work have helped many people struggling with crises on the street.

From June 2020 to October 2021, city teams met 5,621 people and successfully accommodated 2,535 in hotels, shelters and safe sleeping places. Currently, more than 2,000 people who are staying in hotels during the pandemic are on their way to long-term supportive housing.

For those who are not housed, including the 2,318 unwilling to accept services, the teams will continue to provide services and promote placement in an alternative shelter. In the same period of time, we have also reduced the large warehouses by 90%.

On Willow Street, city teams were pulling out stocks on 24 different days this year. Their efforts put 161 people in inpatient treatments, navigation centers, safe sleeping places, hospitals, or shelters.

The teams also solved hazards, obstacles and debris on the road.

The resolution included the removal of 377 tents that were either empty or abandoned, or their owners accepted alternative accommodation. Willow Street warehouse resolutions have been suspended for 10 days due to COVID response tests and vaccination efforts for people affected by homelessness in the area, which concluded Thursday.

People should call city officials whenever they see someone in a crisis or unsafe condition on the street. Call 3-1-1, visit 311sf.org, or use the SF 311 mobile app to report trash, debris, or human or animal waste. Call Emergency Services at (415) 553-0123 to report camps blocking the sidewalk or illegal activity not required for an emergency.

Finally, in the event of fire, medical emergencies, and when someone is in crisis and there is no imminent danger to themselves or others, people should call 9-1-1. Dispatchers can dispatch the San Francisco Street Crisis Response team if necessary.

Still, according to a local business owner, the crisis has driven customers away.

“We feel absolutely unsafe here because we have had really bad experiences with COVID,” said Barish Halifeoglu. “Whenever I work, I lock the doors because I want to protect the customers.”

Supervisor Matt Haney’s office held a town hall on October 18 with residents and members of SFPD and HSOC. He recently promised a deep twice-monthly clean on Willow Street. Haney said he was unavailable for an interview and failed to respond to KPIX requests for comment.

Local residents want more police patrols. Artani residents said they have now formed a task force that meets every two weeks to discuss ways to remedy this worsening situation.

They’re also discussing working with the city to fence off the garage, add cameras on Willow Street, and make it a one-way street.

MORE NEWS: Fire burn insurance office in downtown Lafayette

“This is a wonderful place and I don’t want to be afraid to live here,” said Shannon.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter Sunday to warn Austin not to become too “a San Francisco copycat”.

Tesla will move its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas.

Elon Musk announces that Tesla is moving its headquarters from California to Austin, Texas

“Austin should be his city, not a copycat of San Francisco,” Musk tweeted in response to a Fox News article about the Austin election.

Austin should be his city, not a copycat in San Francisco

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2021

Proposal A, on the ballot, would include increasing the Austin police force to at least two officers per 1,000, doubling the number of annual training for officers, increasing the recruitment of minorities through regulations, and requiring 35% of the officers shift through the municipal police issued.

If approved, Prop A is expected to cost between $ 271.5 million and $ 598.8 million over the next five years.

To learn more about the Austin special elections, KRON4’s sister broadcaster KXAN has compiled a list of everything that is on the ballot.

Musk previously hinted at what sparked the decision to move Tesla’s headquarters out of the Bay Area in the first place.

He tweeted “Exactly” in response to a Tesla blog post titled “Tesla Relocated Its Headquarters to Texas After Making an Express Offer from the California Congregational Woman.”

What made Elon Musk move the Tesla headquarters to Texas

The blog correlates that Tesla left the state around the time California MP Lorena S. Gonzalez tweeted “F ** k” Elon Musk in May 2020.

“California heavily subsidized a company that has always disregarded the safety and wellbeing of workers, participated in union busting and harassed officials. I probably could have expressed my frustration less aggressively. Of course, nobody would have cared if I had tweeted that, ”wrote Gonzalez on Twitter.

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A reflection for the fourth Sunday of Lent

Readings: 2 Chronicles 36: 14-16, 19-23 Ephesians 2: 4-10 John 3: 14-21

What is the Talmud? Pyotr, a Russian soldier, asks whether Jewish partisans are fighting in Primo Levis, if not now, when against Nazis. (1982): “Is It Your Book of the Gospels?”

How do you explain this collection of Jewish ceremonial laws and legends to an outsider? Instead of offering an explanation, a Jew named Pavel draws the man into an experience of the Talmud.

I can use an example to explain what the Talmud is. Now be careful. Two chimney sweeps fall down a chimney; one shows up covered with soot, the other shows up completely clean. Now I ask you: which of the two is going to wash up? Pyotr suspected a trap and looked around as if seeking help. Then he gathered his courage and replied: “The filthy one goes to wash himself.” “Wrong,” said Pavel. “The one who is dirty sees the face of the other man who is clean and believes that he too is clean. The one who is clean, on the other hand, sees the soot on the other man’s face, believes it is dirty, and goes to wash himself. Do you understand? “Yes I understand. It’s well thought out. “” But wait; The example is not ready yet. Now I’m going to ask you a second question. These two chimney sweeps fall into the same chimney a second time, and again one is dirty and the other is not. Which of them is going to wash? “” I told you I understood. The clean chimney sweep washes himself. “Wrong,” said Pavel mercilessly. “When washing after his first fall, the clean man saw that the water in the basin did not get dirty, while the dirty man understood the reason the clean man went to wash himself. So this time the dirty chimney sweep is washing himself. “

If you think you have it, you don’t. In fact, you don’t have him until he has you!

Undetectability is something that Levi’s Talmud shares with the Gospel of John. Both engage us by unsettling us first. If the Gospel of John had a subtitle it could read, “If you think you have it, don’t do it.”

The fourth evangelist completes a creative arc that begins with Saint Mark and distinguishes the Gospels from all other literatures. These scriptures are not stories; they are not biographies; They are not a collection of the teaching of Christ. Yes, they can be read as all of these things, but they exist to reproduce in preaching and reception the actual experience of the first disciples: everything changes when we meet Christ. If you think you have it, you don’t. In fact, you don’t have him until he has you!

In John’s Gospel, Jesus often speaks about everyday things: bread, birth, water, light, and the temple. He and his dialogue partner often use the same words, but they each speak of realities that couldn’t be more different. We listen to someone think they understand, understand the Lord. But, of course, we recognize that this is not the case.

Saint John wants us to meet Christ and not hear a lesson.

In this week’s reading, “a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews” (Jn 3: 1) comes at night to meet the light that has come into the world. He comes at night because he is still walking in the shade. And like everyone else whose eyes are used to the darkness, the brilliance of the light initially blinds them.

But if we think we understand where Nicodemus, or the woman at the well, or the man born blind, went wrong, we have gone wrong. We think we have it, but we don’t. Not if we are not confused and insecure at the same time. Remember, John wants us to meet Christ and not hear a lesson.

The Gospels exist as tinder for the Spirit. If the Holy Ghost does not step into the story and confuse you, all you have done is hear the story. You did not meet the Lord who lives in and through history. The Gospels have no desire to record Christ. They exist so that we can receive Christ. If you understand them, if you are not confused and upset, and are wondering how you are going to rearrange your world in response, then you have never really heard them, never heard the Holy Spirit speak them. If you think you have it, you don’t. In fact, you don’t have it until it has you!

Further spiritual considerations:

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