My dad was a handyman — he could fix anything.

As he did projects, he’d put up with his little helper. As I “helped,” I learned. Because Dad was patient, I know how to paint, fix a screen door, and use a variety of tools.

It’s no surprise that I grew up to be a handymom.

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But somehow, for me, it never works quite as well as it did for Dad.

Maybe that’s because Dad’s workshop was well stocked. If he needed a tool, nail or screw, he could find it in some drawer in the garage.

I never have what I need. We don’t have a workshop. I have my own “renovations” toolkit of leftovers, but our tools are scattered. Every project takes a special effort.

Recently, I needed to replace some old vertical blinds in a bedroom.

I had recently installed a blind in my living room, so I began with great confidence. “These are lighter,” I thought. “This will be almost.”

Oh, foolish woman that I am!

The old blinds came down quickly — I noticed they had been installed with concrete screws. Ah! Good idea. I wouldn’t need wall anchors.

But I needed screws. So I took a sample, went to the hardware store and bought a dozen.

“I think I need a new drill bit, just in case,” I said. The helpful fastener expert told me what to buy, so I went to the tool section to get it. As I stood in line, I checked the screws.

oops

The screws had a different pattern from the sample. Apparently, the standard cross has been replaced by a star. I bought a new bit to match.

Back at the crime scene, I was pleased with the ease that I installed the brackets. Then I picked up the blind.

It was a half-inch wider than the window! What? My windows are 48 inches wide. But they aren’t. Turns out this one was closer to 47.5 inches at the top.

Not to be undone, I moved the brackets to the outside. In the process, the drill fell, the bit was bent, and I first installed them upside down.

Once all was righted, the blind went up — and stayed up.

sigh

When it comes to household repairs, my dad was a wizard.

I’m more like the sorcerer’s apprentice, forever righting the wrongs I have done.

Still, I think he’d be proud — I’m so much like him.

He could fix things.

And I’m always in a fix.

The post Handyman classes from Dad | Way of life appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco has one of the highest vaccination rates of any city in the country, but the challenge of the COVID-19 virus is far from over for its most vulnerable residents.

There have been 1,610 confirmed cases of COVID among residents of single occupancy hotels and 39 deaths since the pandemic began, according to DataSF, a public portal for The City. This year has been more deadly in SROs than last year, with eight deaths in 2020 and 31 in 2021 so far.

In addition, at least 963 homeless people have contracted COVID, with the number of cases skyrocketing in July and August 2021, even after the vaccine became available. Seven people died in the process.

While nearly 80% of San Franciscans are fully vaccinated, it has been more difficult to reach the same number among the homeless population. In August, according to the city in the public press, around 39% of the homeless were vaccinated.

Although the Ministry of Health was unable to provide updated estimates, service providers said they had made significant progress in the past few weeks.

“We really got to the people who have a belief system that keeps them from getting the vaccine,” said Kenneth Kim, director of strategic initiatives at Glide, a social justice and service organization in San Francisco. “I can’t say we’re in here, but I think we won through the variety of hesitation.”

As The City looks to life beyond the pandemic, it becomes less difficult to mitigate the acute emergency and more about making sure these communities are protected from a virus that is likely to appear here in the long run.

According to experts, part of this work must also be the further dismantling of barriers to access to health care.

When the vaccine was approved, city authorities acted swiftly to target vulnerable populations, from those living on the streets or other shelter in need, to key workers and low-income earners who don’t have much time, energy, or money to spare , to make an appointment.

The city partnered with service providers, organized pop-up events at animal shelters and camps, and sent roving vaccination teams to neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, Bayview, and the Mission. It brought vaccines to shelters and held briefing sessions with patients in emergency rooms and emergency services.

Such initiatives are designed to make it as easy as possible to get the vaccine for someone who does not have a consistent schedule, stable housing situation, or mental health crisis. You should also work through familiar faces in the community, people who could help alleviate suspicions about outreach programs and build trust in the information provided.

To protect all residents from the likely ups and downs of COVID or its variants in the years to come, it is important to ensure that such interventions become a permanent fixture.

“Much of what we asked for is due to the pandemic,” said Kim. “Let’s try to build on that instead of going back to normal.”

A proactive introduction of vaccinations marked a stark contrast to how the city handled the early days of the virus among the homeless.

Communicable diseases have always been a threat in animal shelters, and COVID has exacerbated that risk. Knowing this, proponents urged officials to move people to remote rooms as soon as the virus emerged. But they saw little movement from city officials until 70 people at San Francisco’s largest animal shelter, Multi-Service Center South, contracted the virus in April 2020.

The city has added 200 beds to its total offer in the last four months – but it seems that accommodation will look different in the future.

That includes maintaining strategies to prevent COVID like social distancing, masking, increased hygiene, and following federal guidelines on bed spacing, according to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. But it could also involve rethinking how facilities are configured, according to proponents.

“That could mean that we use our existing rooms and create private units in these common areas, it could mean that we have private room options,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the advocacy group Coalition on Homelessness.

Kim said this process wouldn’t happen overnight, but providers like Glide can continue to use the pandemic-era vaccination and contact methods that have since proven effective, such as outdoor health centers and mobile centers.

“We will still have a lot to do to prepare for modernization due to the pandemic,” he said.

Proponents also hope to expand something like the shelter-in-place hotel program, where the city rented empty rooms to provide temporary shelter to many at risk of homelessness.

Private hotel rooms not only gave people coming from emergency shelters or dangerous road conditions the opportunity to distance themselves socially, but also made it possible for The City to more easily provide services and support to a traditionally hard-to-reach population.

“The people who came into the shelter-in-place hotels saw a tremendous change in their lives, but the people who stayed outside saw a massive decrease in their quality of life,” said Friendenbach.

Since the hotels opened in April 2020, they have accommodated 3,709 people. Only 729 of them have been permanently housed since then. But seven of the 25 hotels that were used for the temporary program were closed last year, and two more are set to close by the end of 2021.

Homelessness and Supportive Housing announced Wednesday that the remaining hotels will be used for the temporary program through September 2022. Around 1,200 people remain in these units and have to be re-housed.

Finally, if there is a silver lining to the pandemic, homelessness advocates and service providers say that the spotlight is on the dangers to people affected by severe poverty and homelessness.

While they are quick to say the task ahead is daunting, they expressed their optimism that public advocacy for change may outlast the headlines of the pandemic.

“We are all reminded that the health of one person affects the health of another person,” said Friedenbach. “It created an urgency on homelessness that wasn’t there before, and it opened many doors to do things differently and better.”

cgraf@sfexaminer.com

COVID-19 Homeless Vaccines

The post Vaccinating San Francisco’s homeless: Classes realized appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, housed in fabric and aluminum enclosures made by Sprung Structures, opened in December 2019 despite objections from neighbors in the affluent section of the city. (Marc Lester / ADN)

SAN FRANCISCO — In a neighborhood of $2 million condos with views of San Francisco Bay, a pair of white aluminum-frame tents offer a refuge for the unhoused.

Two hundred miles east in Reno, a fast-growing high-desert city Anchorage’s size, a massive tented shelter recently opened to house more than 500 of the city’s homeless citizens.

As Anchorage continues searching for solutions to its growing and seemingly intractable homelessness problems, it is far from alone. In recent years, West Coast cities large and small have seen steep increases in the numbers of people living outside. Now, some cities are channeling a surge in pandemic federal aid to bolster their ability to shelter the homeless.

With pressure in Anchorage to decommission a mass shelter at Sullivan Arena by fall, the new administration of Mayor Dave Bronson wants to build a city-owned shelter for the first time. The administration has proposed a large new facility on East Tudor Road to shelter and offer one-stop services and support to hundreds of clients. The project represents a major expansion of the city’s role.

“We do police. We do fire. Guess what?” Bronson told a crowd last month. “Now we do homeless.”

Security staff member Stephen Duadua talks with a guest at the Nevada Cares Campus in Reno on June 23, 2021. (Marc Lester / ADN)

In formulating the plan presented to the Anchorage Assembly last month, city homeless coordinator John Morris and other city leaders have borrowed from the strategies of other cities.

Those cities include Reno, whose newly opened shelter approximates the grand scale of the one envisioned for Anchorage, and San Francisco, which operates smaller shelters with many services and amenities known as “navigation centers.”

As plans take shape here, service providers and homeless people in California and Nevada offer a glimpse into what’s working — and what isn’t — in their cities.

Bronson, a conservative, campaigned on clearing Anchorage streets of what he termed “vagrants” and spoke of jailing homeless people for minor crimes.

When the campaigning ended, his plans took a far different focus: His administration announced a plan to construct a $15 million shelter for up to 450 people in a parking lot on Anchorage Police Department property off Tudor, just east of Elmore Road.

For decades, the shelter system in Anchorage relied on people hoping for an overnight cot lining up at shelters run by faith-based nonprofits in the afternoon or evening, spending the night and then leaving in the morning.

The new shelter would take a radically different approach, one that has been implemented at Sullivan Arena over the past 15 months. The idea is to impose fewer rules to bring more people in, and to keep them involved with lots of on-site services, from laundry to medical detox to assistance securing long-term housing.

“This is a sea change,” Bronson said recently.

Both Reno and San Francisco hold lessons for Anchorage.

The Nevada Cares Campus includes a 46,000-square-foot Sprung Structure to provide shelter to Reno’s homeless people. (Marc Lester / ADN)

San Francisco’s shelter seemed to work well in part because of its small size, and residents say it provides comfort and dignity. But there are still few post-shelter options for permanent housing.

A month after its opening, Reno’s mass campus is still working out kinks and city officials are at odds with activists who say clearing of homeless camps in the city has traumatized an already vulnerable population. While not everyone is willing to stay there, those who do say it’s an improvement from the instability of the streets.

Anchorage homeless coordinator Morris said he visited Reno and found the shelter “very reasonable” but hopes to build something that operates more like one of the smaller San Francisco shelters. He stresses the vision is practical, not political.

“Don’t use the P word,” said Morris, half-joking. “Don’t say the P word.”

The P word is “progressive.”

Mae Anonuevo is a guest at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center in San Francisco on June 21, 2021. She said she spent more than a decade homeless on San Francisco streets. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Mae Anonuevo sat on a bed neatly stacked with her belongings, her shoes lined up on the floor.

She and her partner had been homeless in San Francisco for more than a decade, she said. They kept their belongings in luggage carts, moving from alley to street corner to alley. It was exhausting.

“There were times that I worked. That was the hardest, being out in the street, working just like you,” said Anonuevo. She’d show up early to work to use the restrooms, always wondering about the belongings she had left somewhere. At the Embarcadero, she can keep the things she cares about — like an arrangement of dried flowers from a friend — with her.

Anonuevo has been living at the Embarcadero SAFE Center, a 200-bed shelter in the upscale waterfront district near Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, since before the pandemic.

The organization that runs the shelters for the city says it strives to give every visitor a “five-star hotel treatment,” said Megan Phalon, site director for the center.

The Embarcadero center isn’t quite that, but it hasn’t brought the blight the neighborhood feared when it opened in 2019. But because of the pandemic, it’s also operating far under capacity.

The Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center is located near condominium towers near the San Francisco Bay waterfront. (Marc Lester / ADN)

San Francisco has one of the most severe homelessness crises on the West Coast, with more than 8,000 unsheltered people in the city at last count. In 2015, grappling with a growing public backlash, former mayor Ed Lee launched “navigation centers” meant to offer a safe, secure shelter for people on the way to permanent housing.

Navigation centers operate differently from a traditional shelter, where people line up outside for a bed and meal in the evening and are expelled from the property during the daytime.

Here, city street outreach teams meet unhoused people, talk with them about their situation and bring handpicked clients to the Embarcadero center — no walk-ins are allowed. Most of those invited are considered “chronically homeless,” meaning they’ve been on the street for many years, said Megan O’Neill, housing manager for Five Keys, the nonprofit that runs the center.

“This is probably not the first shelter that they’ve stayed in,” she said. “The model is really designed to attract people who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in staying in a traditional shelter.”

Many have been kicked out of other housing or shelters, she said.

Meg O’Neill is a housing services director for Five Keys, which operates the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center for the city of San Francisco. “The model is really designed to attract people who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in staying in a traditional shelter, ’ O’Neill said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Locked trailers at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center allow for guests to store their belongings. Guests can also store items beneath their beds and in lockers. (Marc Lester / ADN)

At the site, the vibe is more college dormitory than homeless shelter. Inside corrugated metal fencing around the perimeter, residents eat lunch in an airy space with offices, modern furniture, books and TV.

In the sleeping area, everyone gets a bed with a thick mattress, rather than a cot. Couples can stay together. People are allowed to bring in their accumulated possessions, which can be securely stored in lockers. Additional items are held in locked trailers on site. Pets of all kinds are allowed — pit bulls and Chihuahuas stroll on leashes in a courtyard strung with sparkly lights.

Guests can grab something to eat whenever they want, rather than lining up for a plate at dinnertime. Medical and behavioral health workers visit. Residents can attend dog training classes, join a gardening club or go to bingo.

The shelter is “low-barrier,” so some of the usual things that might get a person kicked out of a traditional shelter, such as bringing in drugs, won’t get you expelled from the SAFE Center.

The idea is to knock down every possible barrier that might keep a homeless person from coming to a shelter and getting help. It’s worth trying something different, said Phalon.

“I think history kind of shows us what we have been doing, across the board, isn’t working.”

Alex Michael spends time with her dogs, Princess Nefertiti and Queen Isabella, in the courtyard of the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center in San Francisco on June 21, 2021. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Alex Michael pushed a stroller with her two dogs, Queen Nefertiti and Princess Isabella, through the garden courtyard. Michael said she’d been in an apartment but domestic violence pushed her back into homelessness. She’d been to three navigation centers.

Michael said she was in recovery from addiction and questioned the wisdom of letting people use drugs while in city housing, with little intervention. Still, she prefers the Embarcadero center over the hotel rooms in the Tenderloin district that she’d also been offered. Those were full of drugs and felt dangerous, she said.

“I try to turn it around and think well, you know, if I can walk through this and stay off stuff then I win,” she said. “So, each day gets a little easier.”

The Embarcadero center runs on the harm reduction philosophy, said O’Neill, the housing director. It’s understood that clients who are addicted may end up using drugs onsite, though it is discouraged. All navigation center sites offer clean needles. Staff carry doses of Narcan nasal spray, which can halt an opioid overdose, on lanyards around their necks.

“In the past month I’ve had four, and one we had to bring back to life, we had to actually bring him back to life, he died on the bathroom floor,” said Clinton Martin, an onsite manager.

Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center staff member Clinton Martin carries naloxone, a drug used for opioid overdose emergencies, on his lanyard on June 21, 2021. The center uses a ’harm reduction ’ model that aims to keep drug users safe rather than turn them away from the center. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Staff at the navigation centers have reversed 150 overdoses this year, O’Neill said.

Harm reduction is one facet Anchorage leaders are not interested in emulating.

“There will not be drug use in this facility,” Morris said. “That’s just not what we’re about. It’s illegal, for one.”

The Embarcadero center debuted to hostile neighbors. But nearly two years in, it hasn’t become what neighbors feared.

Wallace Lee, an attorney turned stay-at-home dad who lives nearby, is the spokesperson for a group of concerned neighbors who took the city to court over the location of the navigation center. There were tense public meetings in which Mayor London Breed was shouted down during the debate, and twin fundraising efforts by pro- and anti-Embarcadero navigation center factions.

The place has been relatively quiet lately, which Lee said he attributes to lower numbers during the pandemic and a stable population that has been allowed to stay, without cycling in and out every 30 days.

Wallace Lee was part of a group of Embarcadero residents that sued to prevent construction of the navigation center there. He said he hasn’t seen much evidence that the center’s residents are navigating to permanent housing. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Lee still doesn’t see much evidence that the residents of the navigation center are being navigated to long-term housing.

“One of the things that has bothered us with navigation centers is they’re pretending it’s not a homeless shelter but it really is,” he said.

There’s a lot about San Francisco and the Embarcadero that doesn’t translate neatly to the Bronson administration’s proposal for Anchorage.

A courtyard at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center provides a sitting area and a garden. The center had about 80 guests in June. (Marc Lester / ADN)

For one, San Francisco’s homelessness problem is so much larger in scale — more than 8,000 unsheltered people in the city alone — that no single site, like the one Anchorage plans, could address it. The city also spends a staggering amount of money on its homelessness efforts: $300 million directly each year. San Francisco Mayor Breed recently announced an additional $1 billion in funding over the next two years.

Morris said the Embarcadero center isn’t a perfect match, but it’s done a lot right.

He sees parallels in the Embarcadero neighborhood relationship: The SAFE Center countered not-in-my-backyard resistance by making an effort to be good neighbors and adopting an admissions process that didn’t incentivize camping or gathering along nearby streets, he said. The idea of offering all the help a person might need — from medical appointments to help getting an ID — onsite is also appealing, Morris said.

Part of what has made the Embarcadero work is its small size, said O’Neill, one of the managers. Built for 200, only 80 people have lived there during the pandemic to preserve social distancing requirements.

Could the model work for 450 people?

“That’s a lot of people,” she said.

Anthony Jean III, a guest at Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, said his time homeless on San Francisco streets had been frightening. He said he hoped to be able to move from the center to permanent housing. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Anthony Jean III finished lunch in a quiet, light-filled room at the Embarcadero center.

Jean, soft spoken, was from Florida originally but came to California to attend college, he said. He’d been homeless for years in San Francisco, living a frightening and insecure existence in the Tenderloin district.

“You know, once you’re here in the navigation center for six months or so, you do qualify for permanent housing,” he said. It would be worthwhile to stay if he could get help with housing, he thought.

That may not be realistic.

Phalon, the site director, said San Francisco, which has some of the highest rent and home prices in the country, still lacks options for affordable permanent housing for her clientele. The initial promise of navigation centers was that residents would get into some kind of long-term housing after six months. Years later, there’s still nowhere to go after the shelter for many people, she said.

“It’s not true,” she said. “Six years ago, getting into a navigation center meant you got housing.”

The Nevada CARES Campus, a 46,000-square-foot shelter (curved white structure in lower center), provides shelter for homeless people in Reno and Sparks, combined population of about 350,000. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Reno and its next-door neighbor Sparks have a combined population of about 350,000 people — similar in size to Anchorage.

Once dominated by casinos and the gaming industry, Reno’s economy is changing — a Tesla factory moved in nearby — and property values are skyrocketing, with Bay Area tech exiles choosing the area for its lower density and proximity to outdoor recreation. Amid the boom, homelessness is rising.

“Like a lot of western cities, we’re facing an expanding houseless population,” said Reno city manager Doug Thornley.

When it comes to homelessness, Reno and Anchorage have a lot in common: Even before the pandemic, city trails had been taken over by encampments. An old-style shelter had been deemed dangerous by its own manager and — as with Anchorage’s Brother Francis Shelter — was so overcrowded at the outset of the pandemic it couldn’t continue to operate.

Reno decided to take federal CARES Act money and join forces with Washoe County and the city of Sparks to build a large, centralized homeless shelter campus on land at the edge of a gritty strip of low-slung motels to the east of the neon, casino-filled downtown. The structure cost about $9 million and will cost between $6 million and $7 million to operate annually, according to the city. Private security is one of the biggest operational costs of the shelter, at approximately $750,000 per year, said Monica Cochrane of the city of Reno.

Reno selected Sprung Structures, the same maker of tented structures that built San Francisco’s Embarcadero center and is being considered to construct Anchorage’s shelter. Sprung Structures are made from fabric membranes stretched tightly over an aluminum frame, and can have the same plumbing, electrical, heating and ventilation of traditional buildings. The city council approved funding in November 2020 and the shelter opened in May. The tent itself went up in just 32 days.

The Nevada CARES Campus was built to shelter 600 people in Reno, Nevada. In late June, more than 500 people were staying there.(Marc Lester / ADN)

The structure is huge. Inside double doors, a sea of cots for up to 604 people stretches from tented wall to wall. A high ceiling floods the space with natural light. There are smaller partitioned areas for couples and women. As in San Francisco, dogs are allowed and property can be stored on site.

With hundreds of people staying at the CARES Campus, experiences vary. But on a recent afternoon, several guests said the giant shelter had provided a respite from encampment life.

Linda Sandoval said she lived by the river or in her car for more than three years. “Oh my God,” she recalled thinking as she walked into the shelter for the first time, “it’s a roof over my head, but look at how big it is.”

Sandoval said the center could use more staff to prevent theft and fights, but she appreciates that she can stay with her husband, Daniel, dog Jack, and work with case managers, she said.

Alberto Richard said the look of the Sprung Structure reminds him of an “alien abduction crisis center.” But he said he’d gotten help enrolling in community college and securing housing. He thought he could move in a few days.

Danny Dyer said he landed by the railroad tracks because he couldn’t afford Reno rent.

“There was thieves out there all the time,” he said. “You had to worry about getting robbed. You had to worry about getting beat up.”

Danny Dyer’s dogs jump on him at the Nevada CARES Campus in Reno on June 23, 2021. Dyer said he had been staying by the train tracks in Reno, where he worried about getting robbed and beat up, he said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Jesse Kramer writes phone numbers and other information in his notebook at the Nevada CARES Campus. ’I’m just trying to get my life together. I know there’s resources, ’ he said of the facility. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Linda Sandoval holds her dog, Jack, at the Nevada CARES Campus in Reno on June 23, 2021. Sandoval said she had been homeless for three and a half years camping by a river or in her car. She appreciates the shelter, she said. ’Nobody likes to live filthy, even if you’re homeless, ’ she said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Anchorage’s proposal mirrors Reno’s in key ways: Anchorage wants to build a Sprung Structures campus for about 450 people, as Reno has. It needs to do it fast, as Reno did. It will be a welcome-all-comers walk-in shelter, a big difference from San Francisco’s controlled-entry approach.

Still, Morris is emphatic that Anchorage is not trying to recreate the CARES Campus.

“That’s not what we’re looking for,” he said. “This is an opportunity to, yes, accomplish shelter, but also to help people while they’re there.”

Reno has an official count of 780 unhoused people, but providers say the true number is likely closer to 1,000 to 1,500 unsheltered people, similar to Anchorage.

The city also has some of the same issues with homelessness: Before the shelter went up, the Truckee River trail, a prized greenbelt along a river that bisects the city, had become rife with lawless encampments. One, under the Wells Bridge, stretched for blocks, spilling onto land near the railroad tracks.

“That is a thing folks in Reno had made their feelings known about,” said Thornley, the city manager.

Until the city provided enough beds to shelter homeless people, it could not clear camps under a U.S. 9th Circuit court decision that held unsheltered people cannot be punished for sleeping outside in the absence of an alternative. The ruling has shaped policies across the West, including in Anchorage where in 2019 the city began tracking shelter bed availability and halting camp abatement when no beds are available.

In the weeks since the new shelter opened, Reno has resumed “sweeping” camps.

Local activists have protested, saying the new shelter isn’t right for everyone and tearing down camps is cruel.

“This facility isn’t ready, there’s no laundry here,” said Ilya Arbatman, a Reno activist. “I mean there’s a million things that aren’t here — it’s not ready for 500 people.”

A small homeless encampment sits outside the Nevada CARES Campus entrance on June 23, 2021. Some members of Reno’s homeless community said they aren’t interested in staying inside the facility. The city cleared several large encampments in Reno once the Cares Campus opened in May. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Just outside the fence of the CARES Campus, a block-long encampment of tents and shopping carts has developed. The people inside don’t want to go to the shelter, each with a unique reason. But they want to be close to the showers and meals on offer. The campers had been notified they’d be cleared from the sidewalk in days, Arbatman said.

In May, Morris of Anchorage visited the 46,000-square-foot Reno CARES Campus. He said the shelter was “very reasonable” but verged on “warehousing people.”

“We walked in, I walked through the building, I walked back out and said, ‘There’s been a mistake. This isn’t what we want to do,’ ” Morris said.

Matthew Tittor holds his artwork near the Wells Avenue Bridge over the Truckee River on June 23, 2021. The area was the site of a large homeless encampment before it was cleared by the city. Tittor, who camped nearby, said he had no interest in staying at the Nevada CARES Campus. (Marc Lester / ADN)

James McKinney stays in a new sanctioned tent camping facility a few blocks from the Nevada CARES Campus on June 24, 2021. ’I’m a very private person, and I just couldn’t do it, ’ McKinney said of staying at the large facility. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Not everyone will come to the CARES Campus.

At the Wells Bridge, one of the largest pre-shelter encampments had long since been dismantled. In its place, there are burn scars in the scrub around the railroad tracks, syringe caps and ground squirrels.

A few people still wander down to the Truckee River. Matthew Tittor walked up, carrying a painting of a street-racing scene. He knew about the shelter but couldn’t imagine staying inside, “bed to bed to bed to bed,” he said.

The city wants to offer something for people like Tittor, an invitation to help that doesn’t count on someone being willing to sleep in a room full of other people.

At a site a block or two from the Reno shelter, an organization called Karma Box has set up a row of basic tents. There’s security at the entrance, bathrooms and a shaded area for eating.

Courtney Govan walks to his tent at a new sanctioned tent camping site a few blocks from the Nevada CARES Campus on June 24, 2021. He said he prefers it to the large shelter. ’I get my own privacy. I can shut my door, ’ he said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

The safe-camping site aims to get people who aren’t willing to use the shelter to accept some kind of help, in a place safer and more constant than the streets, said Karma Box executive director Grant Denton. Denton is a former meth and heroin addict who spent years homeless in Las Vegas.

Courtney Govan counts himself among the first residents of the sanctioned camping site. Drug addiction has kept him from being the father he’d like to be, he said. He has turned to petty crime to get by, and has made enemies on the streets. The sanctioned camping site tents are in the hot sun, but they allow him some distance from the pressures waiting elsewhere in Reno. He says his friendship with Denton feels like one of the only things he’s got going in his favor.

Back at the CARES Campus, Pat Cashell is thinking about what’s next for the shelter. The facility needs more case managers, a medical clinic and onsite laundry, among other amenities. Cashell, the shelter manager for Volunteers of America, wants it to work.

Pat Cashell spent ten years on the street in Reno. Now he oversees the Nevada CARES Campus for Volunteers of America. It provides shelter to more than 500 homeless people. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Once he was homeless and addicted in Reno, too — while his father was the mayor. His family never gave up on him, he said. When he decided to finally get help, his dad summoned him to his office. He arrived to find his father had called a press conference to announce his son was finally getting help for his addiction, Cashell says.

Former Mayor Bob Cashell died last year, just before the pandemic changed the world and forced Reno to confront its homelessness problems. Pat Cashell doesn’t want to let his dad’s legacy down.

“This will be a place of change,” he said.

The post As Anchorage debates opening a mass homeless shelter, potential classes come from Reno and San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Garrett Sohnly and Sumiko Saulson were masked and vaxxed at AIDSWalk San Francisco’s breakfast viewing party on May 16.

Writing while Black: Summer 2021

by Sumiko Saulson

The pandemic forced a lot of us onto virtual connectivity platforms like Zoom. Employers and event organizers were forced to take the time to teach these applications to participants. 

For African Americans and the African Diaspora, that meant that a lot of us were on these platforms for the first time. Elders from our community found themselves using programs with a video conferencing capacity such as Zoom, Google Hangouts and Discord for the first time. Facebook added a group video conferencing feature to try to keep up with the trend. 

Back in January, I was awarded a Diversity Grant by the Horror Writers Association. On May 21, I was on a panel discussion with the other Diversity Grant winners. The other award winners include Jacqueline Dyre (they/them), editor and publisher of Novel Noctule; Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (he/him), a Nigerian speculative fiction writer; Nicole Givens Kurtz (she/her), an African American author, editor and educator; Tejaswi Priyadarshi (he/him), author of “Psychopath, The Cannibal, The Lover,” India’s first splatterpunk novel; and Gabino Iglesias (he/him), a writer, editor, professor and book critic.

• Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant award recipient Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (he/him), a Nigerian speculative fiction writer.
• Nicole Givens Kurtz, author and editor at Mocha Memoirs Press, was one of the 2020 Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant award recipients.

The panel was presented on Librarian’s Day at StokerCon 2021. We didn’t use any of the platforms I have grown familiar with over the past year, but something called Hop In, which is specifically for professional, large scale events.

Like many conventions, StokerCon is online for the second year in a row. However, things are starting to open up in California, and we should be seeing outdoor events and small indoor events this summer. Hybrid events, partially online and partially in person, are something else you can expect to see. 

Events are slowly opening up, but most are still partially or entirely online, and outdoor events are opening up before indoor ones, smaller before large. Large scale indoor events like conventions are unlikely to resurface until fall at the earliest.

Black conventions and conferences online

Due to the Digital Divide, not all Black conventions, conferences and community centers were able to make the transition online. However, there were several large and impressive African Diaspora events that were able to do so. 

Oakland’s own AfroComicCon produced the larger fall 2020 event online and a supplemental smaller event in winter 2020. Because Zoom offers the option of uploading conference calls directly to YouTube, the convention has managed to create a wealth of online content in a very short time over the past year. 

AfroComicCon Presents: “Black Creators Reclaiming Art Space to Create.”

In addition to AfroComicCon, they produced the AFCC International Film Festival, directed by Nsenga Burton, online last October. The 2019 AFCC winners are on the organization’s website, while the 2020 films are available on YouTube. AfroComicCon produces a podcast online, which you can also access through their website at AfroComicCon.org.

Since AfroComicCon is an October event, it is possible that by the time it rolls around in 2021, we will be having in person conventions again. The impressive showing by AfroComicCon in 2020 makes one hope that the organization will continue to produce its amazing online content once the event and others like it start to take place in person. 

The State of Black Science Fiction maintains a beautiful website with a lot of quality content, as well as its very active Facebook group. Their online offerings include the Genesis Science Fiction Radio and some great content on YouTube. Genesis Science Fiction Magazine is available in print.

The new CDC guidelines and what they mean to you

On May 13, 2021, the CDC announced that people who were fully vaccinated would not be required to wear masksexcept in certain situations, such as in medical offices and on public transportation. Fully vaccinated people are also allowed to opt out of COVID-19 testing following a known exposure unless they are residents or employees of a correctional facility, detention facility or homeless shelter. However, people are required to obey local tribal, city, county and state ordinances about masks. 

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, asserted that the CDC grossly mishandled the announcement. It caused a ripple effect where a bunch of major chain stores like Walmart announced that vaccinated customers would no longer have to wear masks, followed by quickly issued clarification announcements to inform customers that they would still need to follow local ordinances.

A handstamp or wrist band could be used to make the vaccinated easy to identify.

The reasons for caution should be obvious. Although small, indoor events can ask people to show their vaccination cards at the door, there is no way to tell vaccinated people from the unvaccinated once they are inside. In a large supermarket, or a big convention center, concert center or night club, everyone would have to be on an honor system. It would be very easy for unvaccinated people to walk around without masks. 

Perhaps a handstamp or wrist band could be used to make the vaccinated easy to identify. Even if so, approaching unmasked people to demand proof of vaccination is potentially a nightmare for staff. Black and Brown folks are overrepresented in front line work as store and mall security, nightclub security and in other positions and would likely to have to face off with angry, unmasked antivaxxers. 

In the state of California, the fully vaccinated will not be allowed to unmask until the state opens up again on June 15. As of this writing, just over a third of the population is vaccinated. We have not yet achieved herd immunity, but things are starting to open up a little bit.

My first face to face event in over a year

On May 16, 2021, three days after the CDC announcement, I was emboldened to attend my first indoor group event since shelter-in-place was enacted over a year ago on March 17, 2020. It was for the charity event AIDSWalk San Francisco. 

Usually, thousands of people gather together in Golden Gate Park for AIDSWalk San Francisco. This has not been possible since 2019. This year, people were encouraged to walk separately in their safe household bubbles or small clusters. But I got an invitation-only gathering of about 65 people, for the group leaders for AIDSWalk San Francisco. 

I am one of the leaders of the San Francisco Goth Team No. 5015; I volunteered to be co-captain three years ago. The position is really sort of an assistant captain position, because Steph Tember has been running the show for years and does a great job of it. But I am proud to be co-captain. 

Black and African American people account for a higher proportion of new HIV diagnoses and people with HIV, compared to other races and ethnicities.

This year, we are one of the top ranked teams, at No. 22. We raised more than $4,500. Although the event is over, we are still raising money until June 11, and you can sponsor me as a walker here: https://sf.aidswalk.net/sumikoska . 

The fight against HIV is a fight for the Black community, as we are disproportionately affected by it. A list of the non-profits who benefit from AIDSWalk San Francisco this year is on their website here: https://sf.aidswalk.net/Static/whobenefits.

“Black and African American people account for a higher proportion of new HIV diagnoses and people with HIV, compared to other races and ethnicities. In 2018, Black and African American people accounted for 13 percent of the US population but 42 percent (16,002) of the 37,968 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and dependent areas,” states the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

I showed up with my friend Garrett. The staff was really excited to see us, as they processed us in. Like everyone else in California, they’d been stuck at home under stay-at-home orders for a year or more. They had asked us to bring our vaccination cards with us if we were vaccinated. For the first time since things started easing up, I showed my vaccination card to get admission into an event. I had already scanned my card and sent it in to another event for admission, but that one hasn’t occurred yet. Garrett didn’t have his, so he underwent a 10-minute instant testing process. 

They handed us free cloth masks with the 2021 AIDSWalk slogan and hashtag on them, #WalkItOut. Everything about it was a sign of the times. There were hand sanitizers everywhere. As we walked in, all of the people and the staff wore masks. We went inside and got a delicious breakfast which included eggs, turkey sausage, bacon, tiny baked potatoes, chocolate mini croissants, and fruit and yogurt parfaits. They served champagne, mimosas, coffee, tea and more. 

Pose actor Billy Porter, who recently came out as HIV positive, was one the celebrity hosts for AIDSWalk San Francisco 2021.

We settled in to watch the show, with celebrity performances by Billy Porter, Rita Moreno, Tony Goldwyn, Rosie Perez, George Takei and Alex Newell. Billy Porter is one of the stars of Pose, a show that entertains while it educates about New York City’s African American and Latino LGBTQ dance ballroom scene of the 1980s and 1990s, during the height of the HIV pandemic.

The show gets into how it affected Black gay men and transwomen. It also has greatly affected Black intravenous drug users. Porter’s character on the show, Pray Tell, is HIV positive. Recently, the 51-year-old actor revealed that he is also HIV positive. Although outcomes for HIV positive people are much better than in the ‘80s, the fight continues.

A fan favorite and regular reader on the Erotic Storytelling Hour is Ivy Limieux, writer and kink educator.

Between musical performances was a review of 2020. It talked about fighting the HIV pandemic during this new pandemic, the novel coronavirus. They talked about new prejudices that emerged because of the new pandemic. George Takei gave a heartfelt speech about losing people to the AIDS pandemic in the ‘80s and ‘90s, before the cocktail, and how scary it was. Then he went on to talk about the hate crimes Asian Americans and Asians globally have faced because they have been wrongly blamed for the pandemic. Finally, people spoke on George Floyd, and the other racial violence of 2020 and the marches against it.

We watched all of this on monitors. People had on masks except while eating or posing for photos. This kind of hybrid event, where smaller groups of people gather to watch things on monitors, is likely to be seen a lot over this summer as things gradually open up. 

If a lot of people thwart the honor system and unmasked non-vaccinated people show up all over the place, we could experience a setback. Not everyone will be able to afford instant testing like this event did. 

Outdoor events are coming back this summer

One thing we are starting to see is more outdoor events. I have been invited to two outdoor picnics by groups that usually meet indoors this month. Both of these groups have not met in over a year. One of the groups specifically asked people who are not vaccinated to stay at home; both groups insisted on mask wearing. One pointed out that the latest CDC guidelines allow for up to 75 people to gather outdoors and masked at this time. Neither group expects to have more than 35 attendees.

Hand-painted wooden paddles depicting kinky people of color can be used decoratively or for actual spanking by kinky folks.

I am going to be vending in person for the first time since February 2020. It is going to be at SOMA Second Sundays in San Francisco on June 12. I am an art vendor at this kinky art show and will be selling hand-painted wooden paddles depicting kinky people of color. They can be used decoratively or for actual spanking by kinky folks. They are not safe for work. If you do kinky art or crafts, you can also apply to vend here: https://sfleatherdistrict.org/show/.

I work for the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District in South of Market, who are putting on the event. My job there is hosting the Erotic Storytelling Hour. We have had a very diverse line up of readers, including African American authors and poets, including Jewelle Gomez, Rawiyah Tariq, Ivy Limieux, Valjeanne Jeffers, Dicey Grenor, Penelope Flynn, Quinton Veal, Steven Hayes and Wrath James White. If you are 18 or over, you can check out their spicy offerings on video on our website. 

Penelope Flynn’s steaming hot vampire sexcapades help ignite episodes of the Erotic Storytelling Hour.

If you write erotic poetry, fiction or autobiographical accounts – with the names changed to protect the guilty – you can earn $20 for a novice writer and $40 if your resume supports being a feature. The reading length is four to six minutes for regular readers and 10 minutes for a feature.

San Francisco residents and people who work or play in San Francisco get preference, then San Francisco Bay Area residents. People from outside the Bay Area may also apply. We prefer kinky erotica, and we are very committed to culturally diverse and queer representation. More information about that here: https://sfleatherdistrict.org/storytelling/.

Bestselling author Sumiko Saulson writes award-winning multicultural sci-fi, fantasy, horror and Afrosurrealism. Winner of the 2017 Afrosurrealist Writer’s Award, 2016 HWA Scholarship from Hell, and 2016 BCC Voice Reframing the Other Award, (he)r monthly series Writing While Black follows the struggles of Black writers in the literary arts and other segments of arts and entertainment. (S)he is gender non-binary. Support (he)r on Patreon and follow (he)r on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Transferring out of the digital world, the Digital Divide and classes from the pandemic appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Posted: Mar 8, 2021 / 2:35 PM CST
/. Updated March 8, 2021 / 5:42 PM CST

WACO, Texas – The winter weather in February in Texas gives Texas State
The students at the Technical University for Plumbing and Piping Technology have a lot to think about.

“There’s a lot of money going into plumbing right now,” said Austin-born Jack Guerrero
Graduation is scheduled for December with a certificate in plumbing and pipe installation technology. “A
Lots of things broke that I can fix now. “

Not only did Guerrero have a winter health problem, he and his too
The family had to heat water in a fireplace as they suffered a loss of electricity and heat in their fireplace
for several days at home.

Guerrero, who plans to work in Austin after graduating, recommends that people keep theirs
Faucets drip to reduce the chance of water pipes freezing.

Jimmy Maldonado from Gatesville is also scheduled to graduate in plumbing and pipefitting
Technology certificate in December. He said people should think about covering their windows
and doors to prevent cold air from entering. He also recommends using outside tap covers
to provide wind and frost protection.

Chris Porter, an instructor in the TSTC plumbing and piping technology program, said the
The winter weather should show students how to find their own solutions to problems. He
The students in the program learn the correct way of working that they can benefit from
You are making progress in your career.

Porter said he wants students to watch out for weather reports and know when to camp
their work carts with supplies as soon as they work after graduation. He said the students need it
Be prepared for burst pipes and not always have access to the correct equipment.

Porter said the winter weather had one positive aspect: it drew attention to the installation
Profession when people realized how valuable the workers are. He said consumer and
Business owners should be aware of who they are hiring for repairs and social media not
the place to look for plumbing recommendations. Porter said people could go to the state of Texas
Board of Plumbing Examiners website for finding professional information for plumbers.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has forecast a need of more than 511,000 plumbers.
Pipe fitters and steam fitters by 2029. The agency attributes this to the maintenance of existing sanitary installations
Systems, along with the construction of new homes and buildings.

For more information about the Texas State Technical College, visit tstc.edu.

Source: Texas State Technical College

The post Current winter climate gives TSTC plumbing college students with real-life classes | KWKT appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.