Drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area pay more at the gas pump than anywhere else in the country – with a gallon of gas near a record $ 4.84 as the nation remains gripped by an inflationary crisis.

The average price of a gallon of regular fuel in San Francisco on Monday was just a penny below the highest ever recorded average – $ 4.85 – which was hit on Saturday, according to the GasBuddy website.

Last month, the average price of a gallon of fuel in San Francisco was $ 4.64. A year ago, the average price was around $ 3.37.

“Drivers are paying $ 1.50 more per gallon than they were a year ago,” AAA spokesman Doug Shupe told CBS SF.

“That means the person who has a typical midsize sedan with a 14-gallon fuel tank is paying $ 21 more to fill that tank today than they were last year.”

The United States has seen gasoline prices rise sharply in recent months, with analysts saying rising crude oil prices, tighter gas supplies, and increased demand are driving gasoline prices higher.

The consumer price index for October rose 6.2 percent compared to the same month last year – the highest since 1990.

Gas prices rose a whopping 59 percent year-on-year and total energy prices rose 4.8 percent in October 2021 and are up 30 percent year-on-year.

Fuel prices at a Shell gas station in San Francisco, California are displayed on October 21 above

The average price for a gallon of regular fuel in San Francisco was $ 4.84, according to the GasBuddy website. It’s a dime less than the highest average ever recorded – $ 4.85 – hit on Saturday. The above picture is from October 21st

Meanwhile, the average price for a gallon of fuel in California remains nearly $ 1.30 above the national average, according to the American Automobile Association

Across the country, Americans took a little break as the average gallon settled at $ 3.41 – a penny less since last week

Last month, the average price of a gallon of fuel in San Francisco was $ 4.64. A year ago, the average price was about $ 3.37

The price of fuel in California remains well above the national average, according to the AAA

Heavy rains in Northern California have hampered manufacturing capacity to further aggravate the pain at the pump, according to the AAA.

The average price of a gallon of fuel in California remains nearly $ 1.30 above the national average, according to the American Automobile Association.

On Monday, the nationwide average of a gallon of fuel was $ 3.42 per AAA. In California, the average rises to $ 4.68 – the highest in the country.

Hawaii has the second highest gas price at $ 4.34 per gallon. Nevada; Washington; Oregon; Alaska; Utah; Idaho; Arizona; and the District of Columbia round out the top 10.

A year ago, the average price of a gallon of fuel in California was $ 3.18.

In 2008, the price of a gallon of regular fuel in San Francisco would have cost drivers only $ 1.78.

Nationwide, Americans took a little break as the average price of a gallon settled at $ 3.41 – a dime drop since last week.

Since October 30, the national average has declined on nine different days after rising steadily over the past 31 days.

The national average on Monday is 11 centers more than a month ago and $ 1.29 more than a year ago. That is 81 cents more than in 2019.

Production at California’s oil refineries has been disrupted in recent weeks by heavy rains in Northern California. The picture above shows a downpour in Marin City, California on October 24th

US jobless claims are falling to a pandemic low of 267,000 – but there are still 10 million jobs left across the country

Wednesday’s consumer price index report comes as the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell to a new pandemic low of 267,000 last week.

Unemployment claims fell by 4,000 last week, the Labor Department reported Wednesday, and the four-week average of claims, which offset weekly highs and lows, fell nearly 7,300 to 278,000, also a pandemic low.

Applications for unemployment benefits have largely steadily declined since the peak of 900,000 in early January, and are gradually approaching pre-pandemic levels of around 220,000 per week. The entitlements to a stand-in for layoffs have now decreased for six weeks in a row.

For the week ended October 30, 2.2 million Americans were on traditional unemployment benefits.

Yet companies across the country are reporting a labor shortage with 10 million vacancies.

Companies have now passed the cost of downsizing to consumers.

US consumer prices skyrocketed 6.2 percent last year as food, gasoline, automobiles and residential property catapulted inflation to its highest level since 1990.

According to the consumer price index, gasoline prices are up a whopping 59 percent year over year, while meat prices are up 24 percent.

Fuel prices also rose by 12.3 percent compared to September 2021 and by 59 percent last year.

Overall, energy prices rose by 4.8 percent in October 2021 and thus by 30 percent compared to the previous year.

They could rise even further, the Department of Energy warned, as temperatures plummet this year.

Food costs rose nearly 1 percent compared to September and 5.4 percent last year, with grain up 4.5 percent, bread up 24 percent, bacon up 20 percent and meat up 24 percent year over year.

Furniture prices rose 12 percent year-on-year, while washing machines rose 15 percent and sporting goods rose 8.7 percent.

Even used cars and trucks rose by 25 percent in just one month and by 26.4 percent over the year.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s retail prices report found the cost of bone-in ribeye beef nearly doubled from $ 8.71 a pound in November 2020 to a staggering $ 16.99 a pound last week.

It found that filet mignon rose from $ 8.42 a pound to $ 10.28 while fillet rose $ 4 a pound and T-bone steaks were also up $ 1 a pound.

And another report from IRI Protein Practice, which examined meat prices throughout October, saw less sharp increases.

Beef sirloin rose 28 percent to $ 11.20 a pound, ribeye rose 41 percent to $ 14.48 a pound and brisket rose 36 percent to $ 4.80 a pound.

As prices rise, consumers seek cheaper cuts; Ribeye sales declined 36 percent in October 2021 from October 2020, while the price rose 40 percent, according to the IRI.

Beef innards, which fell 4 percent to $ 3.59 a pound, were more popular – sales rose 17.7 percent.

The high prices were felt across the country, but according to the Consumer Price Index, St. Louis, Missouri, and cities in Georgia and Arizona were hardest hit.

Prices in St. Louis rose 7.5 percent year over year, while prices in Atlanta, Sandy Springs, and Roswell, Georgia rose a whopping 7.9 percent.

Prices skyrocketed 7.1 percent in Phoenix, Mesa, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

US household debt has now reached a record high.

The Federal Reserve announced Tuesday that total household debt rose $ 286 billion to $ 15.24 trillion in the third quarter of 2021 after weakening for much of the pandemic.

The consumer price index rose 6.2 percent in October 2021 compared to the previous year – the highest level since 1990

The consumer price index shows a price increase in all categories from used cars, laundry, furniture to groceries

Mortgage balances, which make up the largest proportion of household debt, rose $ 230 billion to $ 10.67 trillion at the end of September, reflecting rapidly rising home prices.

Total non-residential balances rose $ 61 billion, including a $ 28 billion increase in auto loan balances as supply chain issues led to huge increases in the price of new and used vehicles.

The Labor Department also reported Tuesday that its producer price index – which measures inflation before it hits consumers – rose 0.6 percent last month from September, driven higher by soaring gasoline prices.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, wholesale inflation rose 0.4 percent in October from September and 6.8 percent year over year.

More than 60 percent of the total increase in producer prices from September to October was caused by a 1.2 percent increase in wholesale prices in contrast to services.

A 6.7 percent increase in wholesale gasoline prices also helped drive up commodity prices.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture retail price report released Friday found meat prices soaring

The price hike is being driven, at least in part, by the revival of the economy following widespread closures related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Many companies struggled to meet unexpectedly strong demand after the pandemic, creating labor, raw materials and goods and affecting traffic in ports and freight yards.

The result has been higher prices, and the supply shortage is expected to persist at least well into 2022.

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Qualitative research has shown that VR interventions are a useful, scalable, and attractive alternative to existing pain management approaches for Medicaid populations, but reimbursement challenges are a major obstacle

LOS ANGELES, Sep 29, 2021 – (BUSINESS WIRE) – AppliedVR, a pioneer driving the next generation of digital medicine, and SOLVE Health Tech, a health justice incubation partner embedded in the University of California, San Francisco Announced today results of a collaborative research project that identifies barriers and facilities for the use of Virtual Reality (VR) for pain management in vulnerable populations such as Medicaid patients.

Virtual Reality offers an immersive experience that can improve the lives of people with chronic pain. Users follow a science-based immersive VR programming curriculum to relieve their chronic pain and help them learn pain management skills in the real world.

Overall, the AppliedVR and UCSF study found that providers treating underserved populations can incorporate VR as a scalable, low-risk alternative to managing chronic pain, with potential for high patient satisfaction and engagement.

The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, included interviews with current VR users and non-users from academic, community, and safety net health systems (n = 15) using AppliedVR’s clinically proven VR platform.

The research also provided critical insights into the issues the healthcare industry needs to address to bring the latest digital medicines like VR into the hands of less well-served and diverse patient populations. Many technology implementation challenges are more pronounced in underserved health systems.

“There is a tremendous unmet need in the US to bring evidence-based digital therapeutics to the wider population, and virtual reality for pain management is of great interest to frontline pain therapists and a leadership role in health safety nets,” said Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH, UCSF Professor of Medicine and Co-Founder of SOLVE Health Tech. “But it will take cross-industry collaboration to overcome the hurdles that stand in the way of wider adoption, including payers commitments to more reimbursements and customized content tailored to the needs of different populations.”

The story goes on

In UCSF-AppliedVR research, both users and non-users have identified the lack of reimbursement from VR as one of the biggest challenges for adoption. Current users cited positive patient feedback, but safety net stakeholders indicated that existing VR content may need to be more relevant or engaging to a more diverse patient population.

Additionally, all respondents cited the challenge of integrating and maintaining VR with current pain management workflows in a range of clinical settings, but this adoption challenge is particularly acute due to resource and staffing constraints in safety net environments.

The UCSF and AppliedVR study is one of the first to assess how providers caring for vulnerable populations, such as Medicaid benefit recipients, could incorporate VR into pain management approaches. For the future, Dr. Sarkar to test the usability of VR for patients who are often underrepresented in clinical trials

“Our goal is to make VR the standard in pain management for everyone, and research like this is critical to understanding how we can create more user-friendly, affordable, and fair treatment programs,” said Josh Sackman, president and co-founder of AppliedVR. “The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the health inequalities that have existed in our country for years, so digital medicine shouldn’t be the latest innovation falling into the same trap. What use are billions of investment funds flowing into digital health? what if very little of it reaches the people who need it most? “

As an evidence-based provider of VR in healthcare, AppliedVR is committed to building broader evidence showing that VR can reduce chronic pain as well as lower healthcare costs. The company recently received the breakthrough device designation from the FDA for its EaseVRx solution. It conducts several studies with payers to determine reimbursement.

About AppliedVR

AppliedVR is pioneering the next generation of digital medicines to deliver safe and effective virtual reality therapeutics (VRx) that address unmet needs and improve clinical outcomes for patients with serious health problems. Its evidence-based, non-invasive treatments immerse and engage patients for measurable clinical outcomes. As the most widely adopted and most thoroughly researched VR therapeutic platform, AppliedVR is the first to make VR therapeutics widely available in clinical care and has examined more than 60,000 patients in more than 200 hospitals. AppliedVR has established world-class research and trade partnerships and continues to build infrastructure to accelerate the mass adoption of VRx. To learn more about AppliedVR, Inc. visit https://appliedvr.io/.

About UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is entirely focused on health sciences and is dedicated to advancing health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes UCSF Health, which includes three world-class hospitals, as well as subsidiaries across the Bay Area. Find out more at https://www.ucsf.edu or take a look at our fact sheet.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210929005247/en/

contacts

Sam Moore
press@appliedvr.io

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

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

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

links to other pieces in the Guns and Lies series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It feels like we’re losing groundSonya Mitchell

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

More than a data point

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impact of the pandemic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘An endless cycle’

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

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

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

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

This was a public health and safety system failureTashante McCoy

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

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

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

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

‘No one knows this pain but us’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Downtown San Francisco feels like a grave.

Streets that are once overcrowded are deserted and only the sound of car traffic moves the air. Muni buses and BART trains run almost empty. The shop windows are boarded up or empty, from the 172-year-old Tadich Grill to the mussels of trendy juice shops and fitness clubs. Almost all offices have been closed for 11 months with no return date set. The crackling of the last few days made the mood even more gloomy.

The pain could continue beyond the pandemic.

The prospect of workers’ return soon – after elevators on site, after vaccines have been introduced, after schools reopened – has diminished and unnecessary workers remain banned from offices. Remote work, made necessary by the health crisis, is becoming an ongoing policy for many of the city’s largest employers. Once the burgeoning capital of technology, downtown San Francisco may never return to its hectic, busy state.

Salesforce, the city’s largest private employer, is the latest company to confirm that most of its 10,000 local workers will stay home for one or more days in the week following the pandemic. The company said it remains committed to the city.

“San Francisco is and will remain an integral part of our business strategy,” said Salesforce. “And when it’s safe, we look forward to opening our doors again.”

Google, another large office tenant with locations along the Embarcadero, is testing a flexible work schedule where most employees stay home twice a week after the offices reopen. Facebook, which occupies two Transbay towers near Salesforce, said it is not reducing its property holdings in the Bay Area, but rather giving employees more flexibility to work remotely.

Twitter, Dropbox and Levi’s are trying to give up some of their office space as workers stay at home – in many cases indefinitely, not just during the pandemic. Companies rely on remote or flexible work for many reasons, but the boss is competing for employees who care about cutting their commuting and housing costs.

Royal Exchange in downtown San Francisco is closed.

Roland Li / The Chronicle

Randi Weitzman, executive director of technology workforce services at recruiting firm Robert Half, said remote working is here to stay.

Not only have companies recognized that employees can be more productive and not micromanaged, they can also recruit from a larger pool. Providing flexibility is also key to attracting talent, and if it isn’t done, businesses are put at a disadvantage, she said.

“Trust was built. The technology is there to support this, ”she said.

“You don’t have to sit on the Autobahn for three hours or on BART for an hour and a half. You can do more work, ”she said.

It’s not clear how widespread home work will be after the pandemic. Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist, said the city’s current estimate is 25% remote work in all post-pandemic businesses, or the average employee who stays home a little more than a day a week. That estimate seems low when compared to the big tech companies’ flexibility plans, but not every employer is going to be as aggressively long-term remote working as they are willing to accept.

Any downsizing will have seismic effects on the local economy. Citywide sales taxes, a measure of corporate health, declined 43% year over year in the second quarter of 2020. The largest declines were in the city center, with losses of over 70% and restaurants and hotels hardest hit by the declines.

Pedestrian traffic is sparse in downtown San Francisco.

Roland Li / The Chronicle

A slew of downtown retailers are closing stores including H&M, Uniqlo, Gap, and Marshalls, which will continue to weigh on tax revenues and cut jobs. The timeframe for the return of tourism and business travel, the city’s largest economic engine, is unknown. A sprawling symbol of the epicenter of worldliness and the city’s technical convention, the Moscone Center hasn’t hosted an event other than contingency planning meetings and mass vaccinations in nearly a year.

In rare positive news, city officials reported a budget surplus of $ 125 million for the current fiscal year after improvements in property taxes and federal refunds. However, the long-term outlook remains bleak with a deficit of $ 653.2 million in fiscal years 2021-2023.

More than 600,000 people used public transport to get to work every day before the pandemic broke out. The need for more public transport in the face of booming jobs and the population was undeniable.

Now remote working has sparked a financial crisis in BART, Muni and Caltrain and messed up that assumption. The transit agencies have all seen a sharp drop in downtown driver numbers.

There were signs of life in the financial district on Thursday. A party was held at the Perbacco Italian restaurant for al fresco dining. A couple of people stood outside Fog City News to buy Valentine’s Day chocolate, a lifeline for the 20-year-old newspaper kiosk on Market Street.

Revenue is about half the pre-pandemic level, a slight improvement from the spring, said Adam Smith, owner of Fog City. “There has been some recovery. I don’t think it will go back. I think it will go on, ”he said. “I am optimistic.”

He was able to survive with nationwide shipping orders and some business from downtown residents who were more daring to venture after canceling orders for nationwide local accommodations.

“A pandemic is forcing small businesses to get creative and improvise,” he said. However, the staff was halved to two employees.

Shoppers wait in front of the Fog City News in downtown San Francisco.

Roland Li / The Chronicle

Smith believes many workers will want to return when it is safe, attracted by the urban vibrancy that will continue. “There’s also a growing number of people who say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to work from home entirely. I would like to come back to the offices every now and then, ”he said.

Salesforce does not offer its employees free meals in company cafeterias. Hence, fewer employees coming downtown after the towers reopen could hit restaurants and cafes so much harder.

“Salesforce’s office ecosystem is really important to small businesses,” said Lauren Crabbe, owner and CEO of Andytown Coffee Roasters. A café that opened in early 2019 at 181 Fremont, rented by Facebook, overlooks Salesforce Park. The Salesforce Tower is just a short walk away. But the cafe closed in March while Andytown’s two locations on Outer Sunset stayed open.

Crabbe remains optimistic and is committed to reopening this location.

“It obviously worries me a little. Maybe the offices never come back, ”she said. But she added, “People won’t want to work from home forever. For every person thriving from home work, 10 more pull their hair out and yell at their kids. “

Crabbe misses the energy of her Fremont cafe and said her staff do too.

“I miss being near tall buildings. The hustle and bustle of the people walking around you, ”she said. “I hope when everything opens up we can all get back together.”

Community groups hope to attract both tourists and locals to eat, drink and shop to offset a decline in workers following the end of the pandemic.

“Activating public spaces when it is safe and promoting the city center as a destination for visitors, residents and businesses are a priority for the organization,” said John Bozeman, executive director of the Downtown Community Benefit District, which promotes and provides security for the neighborhood – and cleaning services.

Founded in 2019, the group plans events that could include street fairs.

Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, said the qualities that made the Bay Area a desirable place to stay will endure: strong higher education, a talented workforce, and ample venture capital. Despite all the havoc in small businesses and low-income jobs, the stock market is near record highs and the largest tech companies are seeing profits rise. All of these factors will help the region recover, even if some workers stay away, he said.

Facebook, Google and Amazon continue to invest billions in planned expansions in the Bay Area.

“I think the underlying economic reasons why this used to be a dynamic economic region are still there,” he said. “This is a good place to come up with new ideas and new products.”

The pre-pandemic challenges in the region remain. High taxes and housing costs are acceptable for some businesses, but these expenses should be offset by well-managed public spaces. In San Francisco, some crimes like break-ins has increased during the pandemic.

“I think these are crucial considerations if you are not trying to compete at the expense,” said Moretti. “We should be much better at doing these things.”

Venga Empanadas co-owner Pablo Romano was scheduled to open a new location in the Salesforce Transit Center in March 2018 but was delayed after two cracked steel girders were discovered and later repaired. Its opening in March 2020 was stopped by the pandemic.

“It’s a blessing in disguise. If we had opened then it would have been a bigger mess, ”he said. Despite the challenges, he hopes to open by the summer.

“The city has recovered from fires, earthquakes and all sorts of things. I don’t think it will turn into a ghost town at some point, ”he said.

The San Francisco Chronicle staff, Tara Duggan and Mallory Moench, contributed to this report.

Roland Li is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf

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