Reyna De La Cruz had looked at 15 apartments, at least.

About half of the landlords rejected her. The other half never responded at all.

De La Cruz and three of her kids were living in a camper parked on a corner in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. They’d been there since De La Cruz was laid off from her job at Wingstop in 2020. But their little family needed a real home. De La Cruz kept a wish list: enough bedrooms and bathrooms for her and her kids, a kitchen big enough to cook in regularly and, if she was lucky, a yard.

In May, the San Francisco Housing Authority had issued De La Cruz an emergency housing voucher. These vouchers, part of a $1.1-billion Biden administration effort to rapidly house Americans during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, are supposed to be a golden ticket: a promise that the federal government will pay most of a recipient’s rent for years.

Reyna De La Cruz speaks to a Catholic Charities outreach worker from the doorway of the camper where she lives with her three children in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

But four months after receiving the voucher, De La Cruz and her family were still homeless. The hurdles to finding a home felt insurmountable: she spoke Spanish, not English; few units were available, and if they were, they were too expensive; and landlords didn’t want to accept a voucher, or house someone who was homeless.

Similar problems plague other cities’ efforts to use the new vouchers.

A year and a half after they were handed out, just 56% of the new vouchers have been used across the country. In California, which has one of the worst housing crises in the nation, less than 50% of emergency housing vouchers are in use. And in San Francisco — one of the most expensive housing markets in the country — just 44% of the 906 vouchers the city received have actually housed people.

As The Times has previously reported, other expensive cities, including San Diego, have excelled in placing people into homes with the vouchers.

Despite the efforts of its local housing agency and city government, though, San Francisco has fallen behind. Voucher recipients like De La Cruz find themselves lost in the rental market maze, clutching their golden ticket to a home, but with little guidance on how to reach the prize.

“I sometimes don’t want to keep on going. I want to just give up,” De La Cruz said. “If I had somebody sitting next to me, guiding me, coming with me to the units, calling the managers and landlords” — maybe then, she could put her voucher to use and secure a home for her family.

Efrain Sandoval, a program manager with Catholic Charities SF, visits Reyna De La Cruz at the camper where she lives with her three children in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. He helped her apply for an emergency housing voucher in March.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

To find a home, De La Cruz and other San Franciscans with emergency housing vouchers must navigate not only the city’s tight rental market, but also the thicket of organizations the city has enlisted to help them.

De La Cruz, a soft-spoken 37-year-old who immigrated from Guatemala in 2014, had been living homeless in Bayview for just over a year when Efrain Sandoval, a program manager for Catholic Charities SF, knocked on her door in December 2021.

De La Cruz was struggling. Her hair was often thrown into a low bun, and although her smile was warm, her eyes betrayed stress. The tank that holds the family’s water supply needed to be refilled every three days. The camper was too small to cook properly. Her kids, two in their teens and one in his early twenties, were angry about their situation, and threatened to run off. No one had enough space.

Three months later, Sandoval, the same Catholic Charities SF program manager, showed up at De La Cruz’s door again. His organization, he explained, was among a handful of community-based nonprofits that the city relied on to refer people into the voucher program. The group’s office was just a short walk away.

Sandoval unfolded a table and chair — a makeshift office — on the curb outside De La Cruz’s camper, and walked her through the 29-page voucher application, finishing it that same day.

Cynthia Scott of Catholic Charities, left, visits Tammie Haley, who lives in her van with her husband, to help guide her through the application process for the emergency housing voucher program in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

In May, the San Francisco Housing Authority approved De La Cruz for a voucher. But the agency couldn’t reach her; De La Cruz was behind on her phone bills.

Instead, Sandoval saw De La Cruz’s name on the housing agency’s list of people slated to receive a voucher. He tried calling and texting De La Cruz. Later that day, he walked over to her camper, discovered her phone was out of service, relayed the good news and told her the next steps.

She eagerly attended a briefing at the housing authority and received a packet of information on the process: how much her voucher was worth, a notice that the voucher would expire in 120 days, a checklist for what to look for in a new home, a delineation of her rights, and a list of resources.

The packet also included a new point of contact — a housing navigator at Providence Foundation, another local nonprofit, who would help her find a home. In San Francisco, the organizations that help voucher recipients find homes are separate from the nonprofits that refer people into the program. Catholic Charities SF fulfilled its role in signing De La Cruz up for a voucher, and now Providence Foundation would help her with the housing search.

Hundreds of miles to the south, San Diego uses a different system. About half of the service providers that support that city’s emergency voucher program not only help clients apply for vouchers, but also assist them in their housing search. The San Diego Housing Commission also hired five full-time specialists to help out with housing searches that referring agencies can’t handle. San Diego’s voucher recipients typically deal with fewer entities and are less likely to fall through the cracks.

In San Francisco, De La Cruz was not so lucky. Within weeks of receiving her voucher, she realized she would be on her own in her search for a home. Her point of contact at Providence didn’t speak Spanish, and no one at the agency came knocking on her door or knew exactly where her camper was parked, she said. (The Times called Providence’s number multiple times to ask about De La Cruz’s case; no one answered. A voicemail message was not returned.) She found that calling the other resources listed in her briefing packet was fruitless. Usually, no one picked up. When someone did, she ran into a language barrier.

With more than $4,000 a month in federal funds to help her pay for housing, and her name in the files of at least four city and nonprofit groups, De La Cruz was still left alone to navigate the housing search. So she limited it. She considered only the listings that she could pull up on her phone on Zillow. She mainly toured apartments around Bayview, near where she was parked. And she only talked to landlords who spoke Spanish.

Often, before she could even apply for a unit, landlords would tell De La Cruz that they didn’t work with people who had housing vouchers. (It’s illegal to discriminate against voucher holders, but landlords remain reluctant to accept them.)

If a landlord was willing to accept a voucher, she’d find out that the unit cost more than her voucher would cover.

Voucher recipients typically pay 30% of their income toward rent, and the voucher covers the rest. Most cities use a single number, called a fair market rent rate, to determine the maximum amount a housing voucher is worth. For a three-bedroom voucher in San Francisco, that number is $4,111. Emergency housing vouchers can be used at 120% of the fair market rate, which means De La Cruz’s three-bedroom voucher can be applied to a unit with a rent of up to $4,933 per month. On Apartment List, the average monthly rent for a three-bedroom in San Francisco tops $5,000.

Efrain Sandoval and Cynthia Scott, right, of Catholic Charities visit the encampment of a homeless person they are trying to help find housing for in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

A more nuanced approach might offer advantages. Some jurisdictions across the U.S., including San Diego, use small-area fair market rents, which are calculated by ZIP Code within a city. This means that the amount a voucher can cover varies by neighborhood. In more expensive neighborhoods, vouchers are worth more.

Most of the jurisdictions the federal government has required to use this system — including San Diego — have housed voucher recipients at rates above the national average. Housing agencies elsewhere are allowed to opt in, but many expensive cities, including San Francisco, have not.

Even if De La Cruz managed to find a landlord willing to work with vouchers and a unit within her price range, she faced a third hurdle. Rental applications generally request potential tenants to list a current address, and De La Cruz did not have one, tipping landlords off that she was currently homeless. After that, she’d often just never hear back.

“I don’t want to lie on applications, either,” De La Cruz said. “I feel trapped.”

Her struggle to secure a home dragged on for months.

Molly Bodkin holds her 10-month-old son Elijah next to the school bus where their family lives.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

A plant hanging from a rearview mirror adds a domestic touch to a school bus that serves as living quarters for a homeless San Francisco family.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

In San Francisco right now, about 200 people have the new vouchers in hand, are ready to be housed and are still homeless. Nationally, that number is around 30,000 people.

Just steps from De La Cruz’s camper, a family lives on a school bus parked against the curb. Molly Bodkin has had an emergency housing voucher since June, which she hoped could finally house her, her partner, and their two children. But her attempts at securing housing were fruitless — poor credit meant rejection after rejection from landlords. After years of homelessness, the housing search and application process felt too daunting, and, like De La Cruz, she also felt like giving up.

Even success stories came with struggle. South of Bayview, a family of four with an emergency voucher moved into a home in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley in September. The Torres family secured housing after months of denials — also pinned on bad credit — and little guidance through the program from housing support services, said Doria Torres. The family’s saving grace came from a property manager who was touched by their story. Torres was grateful, but nearly gave up on the process as well.

The San Francisco Housing Authority and the city’s Department of Homelessness and Housing point to the city’s tough rental market as a reason for the city’s low voucher utilization numbers: Rent is high, vacancies are low and receiving 906 vouchers at once and efficiently distributing them is a monumental task, they said. Given these hurdles, the city remains proud of its progress with the vouchers, officials said, particularly as local government agencies and nonprofits operated with fewer staff due to the pandemic.

The city’s service providers “are very committed and understand the importance of maintaining communication and engagement with our individuals and families. … Sometimes we lose touch with folks if their phone number changes. That happens pretty often. Our partners are really aware of that possibility, and they gather information about where folks hang out and where they’re staying,” said Alan Guttirez, manager of housing subsidy programs with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “Sometimes there’s just barriers to staying in touch.”

Previously homeless Shayla Anderson and boyfriend Eddie Ordenez kiss before heading to their new home, which Catholic Charities helped them find.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

One morning in August, Sandoval, the Catholic Charities SF program manager who had knocked on De La Cruz’s door the previous winter, noticed that she was still living out of her camper.

De La Cruz told him about her struggles to secure housing even with the voucher. Sandoval said he reached out to contacts at the city on her behalf, and pushed them to reassign De La Cruz to a Spanish-speaking housing navigator in the neighborhood.

Jessica Lopez, De La Cruz’s new housing navigator — also with Catholic Charities — pulled much of the weight of the housing search. She called landlords to verify if they’d be willing to work with a voucher (and reminded them it’s illegal to refuse), explained that costs like the rental deposit would be covered, told the family’s story and assisted De La Cruz with applications.

By a sunny Wednesday in mid-September, Lopez had submitted paperwork for a unit in Bayview. The landlord just needed to decrease the rent by about $80 a month to fit within De La Cruz’s voucher limits. To persuade the landlord to accept the application, the city offered a $1,000 incentive, Lopez said.

On Oct. 15, De La Cruz and her kids finally moved into a new home. It was freshly painted blue, trimmed in off-white, with stairs leading to the entrance, four blocks away from where her camper used to be parked.

It even had a yard.

The post Why San Francisco lags on housing its homeless inhabitants appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

English

People moved away from major cities in droves during the first months of the pandemic, and no large urban area emptied out more than San Francisco. Previous reports documented SF’s population plummet, but a new analysis from The Standard shows that the mass migration out of the city peaked during the summer of 2020 and appears to have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

The Standard examined the latest information available on the city’s population changes and found that in addition to Americans packing their bags to move elsewhere, a severe cut back of immigration from overseas played a crucial role in further suppressing the city’s population rebound. The findings provide a new window into understanding how the city has been reshaped in recent years, and what the future may hold in store for San Francisco.

New Insight from Postal Service Data

The US Postal Service (USPS) publishes information about how many people changed their mailing addresses into and out of every zip code in the country. The Standard compared the total number of permanent change of address notices leaving San Francisco’s zip codes to that of those moving to the city. The difference between those numbers is one means of estimating the net result of migration in and out of the city.

In August 2020, nearly 7,000 more people moved out of the city than moved in, the USPS data shows. July, August and September logged the highest number of departures from SF: Nearly 20,000 people left during those three months alone.

The net change of address out of San Francisco dropped steadily throughout the rest of 2020 and early 2021. In June 2022, the rate of net moves away from the city came in shy of 1,400, a quarter of the rate the city saw in June 2020 .

Of course, the USPS data does not capture everyone who moved into or out of San Francisco in recent years; many people presumably did not submit formal requests to change their address with the Postal Service. But this analysis provides a more precise view of what happened during the first year of the Covid pandemic. The leveling off of changes of addresses seen in 2022 is an indicator that the Covid-era mass migration out of San Francisco is tapering off.

State Population Estimates for 2022

When the US Census published its first estimates of population changes during the pandemic, San Francisco made headlines: The city logged the highest population decrease of any major US city, with a drop of 6%, or nearly 55,000 people, from July 2020 to June 2021. Further analysis showed that young adults aged 20-34 accounted for two-thirds of the people who left the city at that time. These estimates align with the USPS data, which point to the second half of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 as time periods with significant migration out of San Francisco.

The California Department of Finance’s Demographic Research Unit (DRU) is the official source of demographic data for state planning and budgeting. The DRU’s latest estimates show that, indeed, a dramatic 40,000-person contraction in SF’s population took place during the 2020 calendar year. But its data also show that population declines eased throughout 2021. The newest population estimates from January 2022 show that San Francisco’s population dropped by 6,700 during the prior 12 months—far less than the 40,000 decline of 2020.

In the decades before Covid, San Francisco had not seen a population dip since the mid 2000s. In 2006, the city began over a decade of growth, with the rate of increase peaking in 2013, when the population swelled by nearly 15,000 people in a single year.

San Francisco’s growth slowed throughout the 2010s, mirroring trends throughout the Bay Area, as more people chose to relocate to California’s inland counties, said Phuong Nguyen, a demographic researcher with the DRU. San Francisco’s population expanded by less than 2,900 people between January 2019 and January 2020.

And though a new report showed “San Francisco” (actually the combined San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland metro areas) as the market with the most Redfin users shopping for homes in a different city, the real estate company’s historical data shows that the portion of Bay Area home shoppers looking to relocate has stayed relatively steady for years, hovering around 20% to 25%.

While the recent data show a slowing outmigration of people in 2022, it isn’t clear whether that will decelerate the flow of wealth out of the city.

IRS data shows that nearly $7 billion in income left San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic. The loss accelerated a trend that began in 2016-17, well before Covid. The trend could indicate a disproportionate number of wealthier San Franciscans are moving out of town.

The Impact of Reduced Immigration

While drivers of outmigration, including the city’s dependence on industries with a high potential for remote work and some peoples’ concerns about the high cost of living and crime, have led the conversation, there’s another significant factor contributing to San Francisco’s population loss: Federal policies that reduced immigration to the US

California has a high rate of international migration and many people arrive in San Francisco first before moving on to other California counties or other US states, explains DRU’s Nguyen.

During the pandemic, the federal government curbed immigration visas and immigration into San Francisco plummeted. Net immigration into the city was about 4,700 people between July 2018 and July 2019. That figure barely topped 800 people from July 2020 to July 2021.

San Francisco has seen a net domestic migration out of the city for every year in the past decade, with the exception of 2012, data from the DRU shows. But up until 2019, the number of people immigrating into the city from abroad more than made up for the domestic losses, sustaining the city’s steady growth before the pandemic.

As international arrivals to the city declined, migration out intensified. Net migration out of San Francisco to other US areas topped 17,500 people from July 2020 to July 2021, nearly triple the previous year’s total, the DRU data shows. San Francisco’s pandemic-era population loss aligned with a national trend of people migrating out of major cities during Covid, spurred by the increases in work-from-home and more affordable living expenses outside of urban centers.

The Outlook for San Francisco

The San Francisco Controller’s Office doesn’t have any additional data to shed light on the city’s population changes. Asim Khan, Senior Economist from the Office of Economic Analysis, pointed out that the January 2022 state estimates showing a slowdown in the city’s population decline could signal that outmigration may be leveling off, but it’s too soon to say.

Khan explained in an email that as the housing market equilibrates—meaning that cheaper areas become more expensive and expensive regions become less pricey—the trend in San Francisco’s outmigration may slow down or stabilize.

The city’s Planning Department is optimistic for the long term. Program Manager Joshua Switzky projects that the city will regain the population and jobs lost during the pandemic and will return to net growth. “At this point, none of the adopted long-term (ie 25-30 year) forecasts for regional growth have fundamentally changed as a result of the pandemic,” Switzky wrote in an email.

DRU’s Nguyen hopes that San Francisco will return to the slow and steady growth rates of the pre-pandemic years, adding a caveat: “It all depends on if we have enough international migration in.”

Matt Smith contributed research to this story.

English

The post San Francisco’s Inhabitants Exodus Might Be Over, New Evaluation Finds appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Alex Tourk wants to build 2,000 tiny homes for San Francisco’s homeless population. And he wants your help to get it done.

The political operative turned public relations specialist is teaming up with the citizen volunteer organization RescueSF to get this idea off the ground, The Examiner has learned. The newly formed nonprofit is calling itself MyOwnLockandKey.org. the goal? Increase transitional housing options and get the homeless off the streets.

Tourk, who ran point on Project Homeless Connect for former Mayor Gavin Newsom, knows the landscape and he’s banking that his history of running campaigns and building political coalitions will help move the plan forward.

He’s going to need all that experience and then some, because this idea is going to run into some serious hurdles.

First off, where are you going to put all these tiny homes, also known as modular housing units in the homeless advocacy world? Tourk says he’s identified 50 parcels of land across San Francisco that could house modular housing, owned by The City, state, federal government and private entities, such as religious organizations.

I asked where these parcels were, and he told me they’re spread across San Francisco. And that’s where it’s going to get interesting.

As we all know, people feel strongly about homelessness. They want something done. But they don’t want it done in their backyards. Tourk says he has an answer. That’s where you come in. Over the next 20 months, Tourk and RescueSF plan to “organize a broad citywide coalition of 25,000 San Franciscans to support bringing modular/tiny home transitional supportive housing projects to sites throughout the City.”

Good luck with that. And I mean it. If anyone can pull it off, it’s probably Mr. Tourk. He’s a driven organizer. He could sell the Pope dope. Part of the plan will be to hold 500 house parties across The City, where neighborhood supporters could gather their friends to hear the pitch.

“I could be pollyannaish here, right? There could be people who are like, ‘What are you talking about? … Get them out of my neighborhood,’” said Tourk. “But you know what? I want to inspire people. That’s what true organizing is. It’s like selling a vision and getting people to buy into it. This idea that you’re going to keep dumping people in the tenderloin, in the Bayview, and this is going to somehow solve homelessness, just because it’s out of sight out of mind. If we really want to solve homelessness, we really want to make a dent in it, we all gotta participate, one way or another.”

OK, say you get the neighborhoods to buy in. Who’s going to provide the services needed? You can’t just give somebody a cabin and wish them luck. They’ll need services… and security.

Tourk believes The City is flush with cash (it is) and there are “a bevy of supportive services” available (um, not really). And he’s looking at the controversial nonprofit Urban Alchemy as a possible security solution.

OK. What about all the other nonprofits in town? The homeless industrial complex can be pretty territorial. Everyone wants to keep their piece of the funding under their own roof. On that front, Tourk figured the Coalition on Homelessness and the San Francisco Building Trades and Construction Council would be his biggest opponents. Both groups have traditionally opposed modular construction in favor of permanent housing.

But so far, Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition remains open to the idea and Rudy Gonzalez with the builders union is relatively supportive. Tourk says there are 1,300 union members who could benefit from building the 2,000 units proposed.

Funding may prove the biggest obstacle to MyOwnLockandKey. Tourk originally wanted to create a ballot measure that would make it possible to redirect some Prop. C money. (You know, the initiative that taxes the rich to help the homeless in SF) But that didn’t look politically expedient. Instead, his group wants to put this proposal in front of the Board of Supervisors and let them find the money. This could be Tourk’s Waterloo. Or Hamburger Hill. Many a dream has died in Room 250.

But this past week, the dream took a step toward reality. Not only is the group up and running, but they held a little party to kick things off. Tourk gathered a couple dozen of the biggest names in San Francisco’s homeless advocacy community at Civic Center Plaza to listen to his pitch and take a group photo.

“I picked this spot for a reason. And it really was three of them,” Tourk told the crowd. Turns out, George Moscone campaigned against the scourge of drugs and homelessness in the Plaza back in 1975. In 1988, this was ‘Camp Agnos,’ a homelessness tent encampment. And in 2004, Tourk and Judith Cain launched Project Homeless Connect on the same spot, spurring Tourk to say, “It made me realize that maybe my organizing skills were for something bigger than just electing politicians.”

“About a year ago, I met Mark (Nagel) and Laurie (Brooke), and these guys are doing amazing work at Rescue SF. They’re able to articulate a missing rung on the housing ladder, which is your transitional supportive, modular, tiny home construction. They are officially working with me as a policy arm of this foundation to help make sure we’re doing this appropriately, thoughtfully, with data and analysis. So again, today’s the beginning.”

Tourk points to existing, similar programs in Los Angeles, Oakland and Mountain View as his North Star. Not surprisingly, there were plenty of cheerleaders for his idea in the crowd at Civic Center Plaza.

“We’re very supportive of his idea,” said Brooke, co-founder of Rescue SF. “Having Alex come on board with his campaign experience and messaging experience, this could really take it to the next level.” She and her co-founder, Nagel pointed to an existing site at 33 Gough as their pilot.

The Examiner’s Sydney Johnson reported on the opening of that location, revealing that the site currently holds 30 cabins, with plans to expand to 70.

“Each unit is carefully and fashionably designed with details such as living plants, bookshelves and artwork, and features a bed, air conditioning, a desk and electricity,” Johnson wrote. “Bathrooms, showers and an eventual computer lab are all part of the development, which will get a wrap-around mural before the opening of all 70 units later this spring.” Generally speaking, residents would live in these cabins for months, rather than years. They’re intended to be a stepping stone rather than a permanent solution.

But the site also only has a temporary lease. The developer wants to build on the site. That’s why movable units are important in this plan, Tourk argues.

“It’s about time that somebody really did something, stepped up and helped,” said Gwendolyn Westbrook, executive director of Mother Brown’s Dining Room, a social service group that runs a safe sleeping site in the Bayview. “Transitional housing is what they need.”

Here, here.

It was a lovely, sunny day in San Francisco. There was a feeling of hope in the air. Many of these people have been fighting on behalf of the homeless for years and years. And they’re not going to quit.

As I walked away from the gathering, I passed the safe sleeping site run by Urban Alchemy near City Hall. Many of the sites appeared empty inside the fence. Across the street, dozens if not hundreds of people milled about in search of a fix.

They seemed a lot more interested in heroin than housing.

Editor’s note: The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic, explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com.

Tiny homes for homeless individuals at 33 Gough St. serves as a prototype for the kind of sites a new non-profit called MyOwnLockandKey.org hopes to build. (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

A group of homeless advocates and non-profit organizers gathered in front of City Hall on Thursday, March 2, 2022, to listen to Alex Tourk’s pitch to launch a transitionary housing non-profit called MyOwnLockandKey.org. Tourk, pictured at the center in a white shirt, chose the spot for symbolic reasons. (Photo by Mitch Tobias)

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San Francisco saw by far the biggest percentage drop in population among major US cities during the first part of the pandemic, underscoring how the city emptied out during a shift to remote work, according to new census data.

The city lost 54,813 people, or 6.3% of its population, from July 2020 to July 2021. One pandemic year erased a decade of tech-fueled population boom: San Francisco’s 815,201 residents as of July 2021 was the lowest since 2010, according to census data.

New York had the second-highest percentage drop, losing 3.5% of residents or over 305,000 people. The country’s most densely populated county, Manhattan, was the hardest-hit New York borough, losing 6.6% of its population.

Other Bay Area cities saw some of the highest percentage of population losses in the country: Daly City dropped 3.2%, and Redwood City was down 3%, while San Mateo, Cupertino and South San Francisco each fell almost 3%.

Boston and Washington, DC, also had population drops of almost 3%, and nine of the 15 most populous US cities saw losses in people.

That included San Jose, the Bay Area’s largest city, which saw its population fall 2.7%, dropping below 1 million people for the first time since 2013. It remained the country’s 10th most populated city with 983,489 people. Austin, Texas, a popular pandemic destination for both California residents and companies, gained only 1,056 people for a total of 964,177 to remain the 11th largest city, though its suburbs boomed.

Experts have said the Bay Area’s high housing costs and remote work policies, particularly for the tech industry, fueled outmigration during the pandemic, as residents sought cheaper homes and more space. Almost all California coastal cities lost population, while the more affordable Central Valley and Inland Empire saw gains.

Census data released in March showed domestic out-migration was the primary factor in San Francisco’s population drop, with 56,000 people moving out.

There are signs that fewer San Franciscans are leaving and some are coming back. Postal service change of address requests fell last summer, and apartment rents are rebounding as companies bring people back to the office. State population estimates, which differ in methodology from the Census Bureau, put San Francisco’s population at 842,754 people at the beginning of 2022, down 0.8% from the previous year.

The 15 fastest growing US cities were concentrated in the west and south regions, including in Arizona, Texas, Florida and Idaho. Two suburbs north of Austin, Georgetown and Leander, Texas, added a combined 13,352 people, each growing more than 10% during the 12-month period. That was the nation’s highest two rates for cities with 50,000 or more people.

Central Texas’ housing construction is outpacing California’s biggest region. Travis County, which includes Austin, added 25,693 housing units, more than the 22,925 in Los Angeles County, which has almost eight times as many people, according to census data.

Overall, the nation’s population grew only 0.1% from July 2020 to July 2021, the slowest pace on record, as births fell, deaths rose and international immigration plunged.

California’s population fell slightly for the second year in a row in 2021, according to state figures.

Roland Li and Susie Neilson are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com, susan.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf, @susieneilson

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San Francisco native John Tellez remembers when he could take BART to the end of the line for just 60 cents, a bygone era when he could more easily afford to live in The City and work as an in-home caregiver for his grandmother in Daly City .

But after his grandmother passed, Tellez had to find new work on top of bearing the loss of a family member. Construction jobs helped him get by, but the rising cost of living ultimately left him homeless for nearly four years.

These days, Tellez is back on his feet and doing what he loves: helping others live safely and comfortably at home. Not only that, but the 57-year-old is heading back to school to take his real-life expertise as an in-home care provider to the next level with training to become a certified nursing assistant.

“I like helping people. You know, it’s like karma. One day I might need help again myself,” said Tellez, who now works with clients in San Francisco’s shelter-in-place hotels, many of whom request working with him due to shared experiences with homelessness.

Tellez is one of five inaugural cohort members for a pilot program between City College of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, and Homebridge, a San Francisco-based, in-home caregiving provider that serves older adults and individuals with complex health and behavioral needs.

On a typical day, Tellez meets with clients such as a stroke survivor living in a Japantown shelter-in-place hotel, where he assists with everything from running errands, to changing bedding, to administering medications and helping the client move safely about.

It’s the same type of work that Tellez did while supporting his grandmother and more recently as a trained in-home caregiver at Homebridge, where he has now worked for two years. But now, those hours are helping him earn a new credential and higher earning potential in his next job, which he hopes will be at a nursing home or hospital.

The program, which is funded by the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the Metta Fund, provides free on-the-job training to in-home supportive service workers at Homebridge and clinical training with UCSF, culminating in a certified nursing assistant certification through City College of San Francisco.

The 15-week fully accredited course started in September. It includes 10 hours of weekly instruction through CCSF plus a clinical practice requirement of 100 hours at UCSF Health.

In-home health services are a vital cog in San Francisco’s health care network that helps keep extremely low-income residents in their own homes, providing both a sense of independence and keeping the hospital and emergency room beds open for patients with other immediate needs.

But the training initiative comes at a time when San Francisco is facing a serious shortage of in-home service providers coupled with an aging population, creating the perfect storm for unmet hospital bed demands and rising homelessness.

“If you can’t survive well at home, you could lose your housing,” said Mark Burns, executive director of Homebridge. “You can’t keep the place clean and can get evicted. You could have too many emergency health experiences, end up in the ER more, and can’t help yourself at home. So you could end up in a nursing home, but there are not even enough beds.”

Older adults make up the fastest growing age group in San Francisco. By 2030, The City’s Human Services Agency estimates 30% of the population will be 60 and older.

There are currently about 25,000 people who receive in-home care and 23,000 caregivers, according to the San Francisco Human Services Agency. Demand for in-home care recipients has grown by about 5% annually over the last two years, a trend that’s expected to continue unless workforce patterns shift.

“There’s a huge need and a huge gap. As you can imagine, it’s a really tough job,” said Kelly Dearman, executive director, of disability and aging services for SF Human Services Agency. “It’s not just about recruiting anyone, but we need people who speak various languages ​​and can meet a variety of needs.”

In-home care is a cottage industry relative to other medical practices. In many cases, these caregivers are family members who are paid to take care of a relative full-time.

Clients who can’t afford to manage their own services, or don’t have a family member who can support them, can find in-home caregivers through San Francisco’s in-home supportive services caregiver registry or through Homebridge. (To ask questions or to apply for in-home supportive care services, San Francisco residents can call (415) 355-6700 or find out more here.)

Veronica Diaz-Gracida and John Tellez, pictured at Homebridge, are taking classes to become certified nurses. (Kevin N. Hume/The Examiner) Homebridge is a San Francisco-based, in-home caregiving provider serving older adults and people with complex health and behavioral needs. (Kevin N Hume/The Examiner)

But in-home support services typically pay minimum wage salaries, making it harder for caregivers to live in San Francisco and work a physically and emotionally demanding job.

Across the city, 65% of in-home service providers are women and 34% are men, according to the Human Services Agency. Black and Latinx women make up a large majority of in-home caregivers in San Francisco and beyond.

“People who work in that industry are predominantly immigrants and women of color, people who are often taken advantage of for working long hours with low pay,” said Burns. “Our goal is to move them to a place like Laguna Honda where starting (salary) is closer to $25-$26, and (they can) experience more growth in pay scale there.”

Veronica Diaz-Gracida, another program participant, has been working as an in-home caregiver for the last four years. She decided to do the program once she saw a chance to move up in the medical field, an opportunity she hadn’t considered when fees and regular work responsibilities were in the way.

“I don’t want to worry about whether or not I can pay my rent, or how I can take care of my kids and work at a job that’s a good fit for me,” said Diaz-Gracida, 32, who lives in the Mission.

Throughout the pandemic, home and community-based care workers have been first responders to older adults and people with disabilities living at home in isolation. By offering more opportunities for advancement within the field and training to move on to other medical professions, Burns and Dearman believe more people will be interested in taking on these jobs.

“This is how we get people in the door,” said Dearman.

Diaz-Gracida has goals beyond a bigger paycheck in mind. She hopes her children will see her studying and discover opportunities they could pursue, too.

“I tell my kids, ‘Every day, I had to learn new things,'” Diaz-Gracida said, adding that she plans to show them the campus once she starts her clinical training at UCSF. “I want to show them that if you want something, you have to work for it.”

sjohnson@sfexaminer.com

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF/AP) — Mayor London Breed believes San Francisco is ‘moving in the right direction’ in reducing homelessness after a one-night count found a drop in the number of people living on the streets.

The survey found San Francisco’s homeless population has dipped slightly in 2022. The Feb. 23 count found 7,754 people living in shelters, vehicles or outdoors, down from 8,035 in 2019 but still more than the nearly 6,900 reported in 2017.

“We have a lot of work to do, but this shows that we are moving in the right direction,” Breed said. “The investments we have made and will continue to make, as well as our improvements in strategy around outreach and connecting people to resources are all working together to help get more people off the street.”

Breed credited an increase in shelter beds and transitional housing for the improving numbers.

“Our homelessness crisis can feel insurmountable, but this new data shows we’re starting to make progress — that investing in housing and other supports actually matters,” said State Senator Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco. “To be clear, much work remains — the level of homelessness in San Francisco is unacceptable — but this is a start.”

While San Francisco has seen a drop, the preliminary numbers for Sonoma County count found an increase of 5 percent overall with a total of 2,893 individuals experiencing a form of homelessness.

Alameda County, which includes the cities of Oakland and Berkeley, reported a 22% increase since 2019 for a total of nearly 9,800 people but says the uptick could have been much higher. Officials said much of the increase was driven by a nearly 40% rise in people living in vehicles, including cars and RVs.

The six other Bay Area counties were expected to also release their one-night count numbers on Monday.

Housing advocates say the point-in-time count mandated by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is certainly an undercount, but critical to measuring homelessness across the country. San Francisco and other Bay Area counties were permitted to skip the count last year due to the pandemic. This year’s count was conducted in late February.

The San Francisco Bay Area “staved off a catastrophic increase in homelessness” over the last three years, said regional housing advocacy group All Home in a statement released Monday.

“Bay Area governments and nonprofits played deep defense on homelessness during the pandemic and we have more or less held the line — but now we need to go on offense and end the suffering on our streets,” said Tomiquia Moss, the nonprofit group’s founder and CEO .

gov. Gavin Newsom has made solving homelessness a priority of his administration, and launched projects to provide money to cities and counties to convert motels and other commercial properties to house people.

Last year, the Legislature approved his plan for $12 billion for new housing and treatment beds for the homeless and this year Newsom has proposed an additional $2 billion, largely for people who are both homeless and in need of help for severe mental health diagnoses.

The post One-night rely reveals dip in San Francisco’s homeless inhabitants appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Alex Tourk wants to build 2,000 tiny homes for San Francisco’s homeless population. And he wants your help to get it done.

The political operative turned public relations specialist is teaming up with the citizen volunteer organization RescueSF to get this idea off the ground, The Examiner has learned. The newly formed nonprofit is calling itself MyOwnLockandKey.org. the goal? Increase transitional housing options and get the homeless off the streets.

Tourk, who ran point on Project Homeless Connect for former Mayor Gavin Newsom, knows the landscape and he’s banking that his history of running campaigns and building political coalitions will help move the plan forward.

He’s going to need all that experience and then some, because this idea is going to run into some serious hurdles.

First off, where are you going to put all these tiny homes, also known as modular housing units in the homeless advocacy world? Tourk says he’s identified 50 parcels of land across San Francisco that could house modular housing, owned by The City, state, federal government and private entities, such as religious organizations.

I asked where these parcels were, and he told me they’re spread across San Francisco. And that’s where it’s going to get interesting.

As we all know, people feel strongly about homelessness. They want something done. But they don’t want it done in their backyards. Tourk says he has an answer. That’s where you come in. Over the next 20 months, Tourk and RescueSF plan to “organize a broad citywide coalition of 25,000 San Franciscans to support bringing modular/tiny home transitional supportive housing projects to sites throughout the City.”

Good luck with that. And I mean it. If anyone can pull it off, it’s probably Mr. Tourk. He’s a driven organizer. He could sell the Pope dope. Part of the plan will be to hold 500 house parties across The City, where neighborhood supporters could gather their friends to hear the pitch.

“I could be pollyannaish here, right? There could be people who are like, ‘What are you talking about? … Get them out of my neighborhood,’” said Tourk. “But you know what? I want to inspire people. That’s what true organizing is. It’s like selling a vision and getting people to buy into it. This idea that you’re going to keep dumping people in the tenderloin, in the Bayview, and this is going to somehow solve homelessness, just because it’s out of sight out of mind. If we really want to solve homelessness, we really want to make a dent in it, we all gotta participate, one way or another.”

OK, say you get the neighborhoods to buy in. Who’s going to provide the services needed? You can’t just give somebody a cabin and wish them luck. They’ll need services… and security.

Tourk believes The City is flush with cash (it is) and there are “a bevy of supportive services” available (um, not really). And he’s looking at the controversial nonprofit Urban Alchemy as a possible security solution.

OK. What about all the other nonprofits in town? The homeless industrial complex can be pretty territorial. Everyone wants to keep their piece of the funding under their own roof. On that front, Tourk figured the Coalition on Homelessness and the San Francisco Building Trades and Construction Council would be his biggest opponents. Both groups have traditionally opposed modular construction in favor of permanent housing.

But so far, Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition remains open to the idea and Rudy Gonzalez with the builders union is relatively supportive. Tourk says there are 1,300 union members who could benefit from building the 2,000 units proposed.

Funding may prove the biggest obstacle to MyOwnLockandKey. Tourk originally wanted to create a ballot measure that would make it possible to redirect some Prop. C money. (You know, the initiative that taxes the rich to help the homeless in SF) But that didn’t look politically expedient. Instead, his group wants to put this proposal in front of the Board of Supervisors and let them find the money. This could be Tourk’s Waterloo. Or Hamburger Hill. Many a dream has died in Room 250.

But this past week, the dream took a step toward reality. Not only is the group up and running, but they held a little party to kick things off. Tourk gathered a couple dozen of the biggest names in San Francisco’s homeless advocacy community at Civic Center Plaza to listen to his pitch and take a group photo.

“I picked this spot for a reason. And it really was three of them,” Tourk told the crowd. Turns out, George Moscone campaigned against the scourge of drugs and homelessness in the Plaza back in 1975. In 1988, this was ‘Camp Agnos,’ a homelessness tent encampment. And in 2004, Tourk and Judith Cain launched Project Homeless Connect on the same spot, spurring Tourk to say, “It made me realize that maybe my organizing skills were for something bigger than just electing politicians.”

“About a year ago, I met Mark (Nagel) and Laurie (Brooke), and these guys are doing amazing work at Rescue SF. They’re able to articulate a missing rung on the housing ladder, which is your transitional supportive, modular, tiny home construction. They are officially working with me as a policy arm of this foundation to help make sure we’re doing this appropriately, thoughtfully, with data and analysis. So again, today’s the beginning.”

Tourk points to existing, similar programs in Los Angeles, Oakland and Mountain View as his North Star. Not surprisingly, there were plenty of cheerleaders for his idea in the crowd at Civic Center Plaza.

“We’re very supportive of his idea,” said Brooke, co-founder of Rescue SF. “Having Alex come on board with his campaign experience and messaging experience, this could really take it to the next level.” She and her co-founder, Nagel pointed to an existing site at 33 Gough as their pilot.

The Examiner’s Sydney Johnson reported on the opening of that location, revealing that the site currently holds 30 cabins, with plans to expand to 70.

“Each unit is carefully and fashionably designed with details such as living plants, bookshelves and artwork, and features a bed, air conditioning, a desk and electricity,” Johnson wrote. “Bathrooms, showers and an eventual computer lab are all part of the development, which will get a wrap-around mural before the opening of all 70 units later this spring.” Generally speaking, residents would live in these cabins for months, rather than years. They’re intended to be a stepping stone rather than a permanent solution.

But the site also only has a temporary lease. The developer wants to build on the site. That’s why movable units are important in this plan, Tourk argues.

“It’s about time that somebody really did something, stepped up and helped,” said Gwendolyn Westbrook, executive director of Mother Brown’s Dining Room, a social service group that runs a safe sleeping site in the Bayview. “Transitional housing is what they need.”

Here, here.

It was a lovely, sunny day in San Francisco. There was a feeling of hope in the air. Many of these people have been fighting on behalf of the homeless for years and years. And they’re not going to quit.

As I walked away from the gathering, I passed the safe sleeping site run by Urban Alchemy near City Hall. Many of the sites appeared empty inside the fence. Across the street, dozens if not hundreds of people milled about in search of a fix.

They seemed a lot more interested in heroin than housing.

Editor’s note: The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic, explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com.

Tiny homes for homeless individuals at 33 Gough St. serves as a prototype for the kind of sites a new non-profit called MyOwnLockandKey.org hopes to build. (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

A group of homeless advocates and non-profit organizers gathered in front of City Hall on Thursday, March 2, 2022, to listen to Alex Tourk’s pitch to launch a transitionary housing non-profit called MyOwnLockandKey.org. Tourk, pictured at the center in a white shirt, chose the spot for symbolic reasons. (Photo by Mitch Tobias)

The post EXCLUSIVE: 2,000 tiny houses proposed for San Francisco’s homeless inhabitants appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Alex Tourk wants to build 2,000 tiny homes for San Francisco’s homeless population. And he wants your help to get it done.

The political operative turned public relations specialist is teaming up with the citizen volunteer organization RescueSF to get this idea off the ground, The Examiner has learned. The newly formed nonprofit is calling itself MyOwnLockandKey.org. the goal? Increase transitional housing options and get the homeless off the streets.

Tourk, who ran point on Project Homeless Connect for former Mayor Gavin Newsom, knows the landscape and he’s banking that his history of running campaigns and building political coalitions will help move the plan forward.

He’s going to need all that experience and then some, because this idea is going to run into some serious hurdles.

First off, where are you going to put all these tiny homes, also known as modular housing units in the homeless advocacy world? Tourk says he’s identified 50 parcels of land across San Francisco that could house modular housing, owned by The City, state, federal government and private entities, such as religious organizations.

I asked where these parcels were, and he told me they’re spread across San Francisco. And that’s where it’s going to get interesting.

As we all know, people feel strongly about homelessness. They want something done. But they don’t want it done in their backyards. Tourk says he has an answer. That’s where you come in. Over the next 20 months, Tourk and RescueSF plan to “organize a broad citywide coalition of 25,000 San Franciscans to support bringing modular/tiny home transitional supportive housing projects to sites throughout the City.”

Good luck with that. And I mean it. If anyone can pull it off, it’s probably Mr. Tourk. He’s a driven organizer. He could sell the Pope dope. Part of the plan will be to hold 500 house parties across The City, where neighborhood supporters could gather their friends to hear the pitch.

“I could be pollyannaish here, right? There could be people who are like, ‘What are you talking about? … Get them out of my neighborhood,’” said Tourk. “But you know what? I want to inspire people. That’s what true organizing is. It’s like selling a vision and getting people to buy into it. This idea that you’re going to keep dumping people in the tenderloin, in the Bayview, and this is going to somehow solve homelessness, just because it’s out of sight out of mind. If we really want to solve homelessness, we really want to make a dent in it, we all gotta participate, one way or another.”

OK, say you get the neighborhoods to buy in. Who’s going to provide the services needed? You can’t just give somebody a cabin and wish them luck. They’ll need services… and security.

Tourk believes The City is flush with cash (it is) and there are “a bevy of supportive services” available (um, not really). And he’s looking at the controversial nonprofit Urban Alchemy as a possible security solution.

OK. What about all the other nonprofits in town? The homeless industrial complex can be pretty territorial. Everyone wants to keep their piece of the funding under their own roof. On that front, Tourk figured the Coalition on Homelessness and the San Francisco Building Trades and Construction Council would be his biggest opponents. Both groups have traditionally opposed modular construction in favor of permanent housing.

But so far, Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition remains open to the idea and Rudy Gonzalez with the builders union is relatively supportive. Tourk says there are 1,300 union members who could benefit from building the 2,000 units proposed.

Funding may prove the biggest obstacle to MyOwnLockandKey. Tourk originally wanted to create a ballot measure that would make it possible to redirect some Prop. C money. (You know, the initiative that taxes the rich to help the homeless in SF) But that didn’t look politically expedient. Instead, his group wants to put this proposal in front of the Board of Supervisors and let them find the money. This could be Tourk’s Waterloo. Or Hamburger Hill. Many a dream has died in Room 250.

But this past week, the dream took a step toward reality. Not only is the group up and running, but they held a little party to kick things off. Tourk gathered a couple dozen of the biggest names in San Francisco’s homeless advocacy community at Civic Center Plaza to listen to his pitch and take a group photo.

“I picked this spot for a reason. And it really was three of them,” Tourk told the crowd. Turns out, George Moscone campaigned against the scourge of drugs and homelessness in the Plaza back in 1975. In 1988, this was ‘Camp Agnos,’ a homelessness tent encampment. And in 2004, Tourk and Judith Cain launched Project Homeless Connect on the same spot, spurring Tourk to say, “It made me realize that maybe my organizing skills were for something bigger than just electing politicians.”

“About a year ago, I met Mark (Nagel) and Laurie (Brooke), and these guys are doing amazing work at Rescue SF. They’re able to articulate a missing rung on the housing ladder, which is your transitional supportive, modular, tiny home construction. They are officially working with me as a policy arm of this foundation to help make sure we’re doing this appropriately, thoughtfully, with data and analysis. So again, today’s the beginning.”

Tourk points to existing, similar programs in Los Angeles, Oakland and Mountain View as his North Star. Not surprisingly, there were plenty of cheerleaders for his idea in the crowd at Civic Center Plaza.

“We’re very supportive of his idea,” said Brooke, co-founder of Rescue SF. “Having Alex come on board with his campaign experience and messaging experience, this could really take it to the next level.” She and her co-founder, Nagel pointed to an existing site at 33 Gough as their pilot.

The Examiner’s Sydney Johnson reported on the opening of that location, revealing that the site currently holds 30 cabins, with plans to expand to 70.

“Each unit is carefully and fashionably designed with details such as living plants, bookshelves and artwork, and features a bed, air conditioning, a desk and electricity,” Johnson wrote. “Bathrooms, showers and an eventual computer lab are all part of the development, which will get a wrap-around mural before the opening of all 70 units later this spring.” Generally speaking, residents would live in these cabins for months, rather than years. They’re intended to be a stepping stone rather than a permanent solution.

But the site also only has a temporary lease. The developer wants to build on the site. That’s why movable units are important in this plan, Tourk argues.

“It’s about time that somebody really did something, stepped up and helped,” said Gwendolyn Westbrook, executive director of Mother Brown’s Dining Room, a social service group that runs a safe sleeping site in the Bayview. “Transitional housing is what they need.”

Here, here.

It was a lovely, sunny day in San Francisco. There was a feeling of hope in the air. Many of these people have been fighting on behalf of the homeless for years and years. And they’re not going to quit.

As I walked away from the gathering, I passed the safe sleeping site run by Urban Alchemy near City Hall. Many of the sites appeared empty inside the fence. Across the street, dozens if not hundreds of people milled about in search of a fix.

They seemed a lot more interested in heroin than housing.

Editor’s note: The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic, explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com.

Tiny homes for homeless individuals at 33 Gough St. serves as a prototype for the kind of sites a new non-profit called MyOwnLockandKey.org hopes to build. (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

A group of homeless advocates and non-profit organizers gathered in front of City Hall on Thursday, March 2, 2022, to listen to Alex Tourk’s pitch to launch a transitionary housing non-profit called MyOwnLockandKey.org. Tourk, pictured at the center in a white shirt, chose the spot for symbolic reasons. (Photo by Mitch Tobias)

The post EXCLUSIVE: 2,000 tiny houses proposed for San Francisco’s homeless inhabitants appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Los Angeles and San Francisco saw sizable declines in population during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, new census data show, underscoring how California’s housing crisis and other demographic forces are reshaping two of its largest cities.

In terms of total numbers, Los Angeles County lost about 160,000 residents — more than any other county in the nation, the data show. But LA County has about 10 million people, so the per capita loss was slightly more than 1% compared with 6.7% in San Francisco and 6.9% in New York.

“We are in this new demographic era for California of very slow or maybe even negative growth,” said Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California. “And it does have implications for everything in our state — from how we live our lives to which schools are getting closed down to how much capacity we might need for transportation networks, and eventually to housing.”

The data, published Thursday by the US Census Bureau, show California as a whole saw a net loss of nearly 262,000 residents between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021, with the lion’s share of the losses coming from Los Angeles County: 159,621 people. The second-largest countywide loss in the nation was New York, which declined by about 111,000 residents.

The findings paint a picture of a state in flux, with factors such as soaring home prices, dwindling birth rates, and more work-from-home options contributing to a population on the move.

“This loss that both California is experiencing and Los Angeles County is experiencing are kind of the perfect storm from a demographic perspective, and all the components that lead to population change are all trending in a downward direction for both the state and Los Angeles,” Johnson said.

Nearly all of the state’s population loss was driven by domestic migration, data show, meaning most people who are leaving are choosing to go — often seeking more affordable housing and job opportunities, or moving with family.

Jena Lords said she and her husband discussed leaving Bakersfield for several years because they were unhappy with the direction the state was going. They decamped to Idaho last year.

“The top reason was 2nd Amendment rights,” said Lords, 39. “There’s also the high cost of living, tax fees, regulations.”

Lords and her husband both had stints in the firearms industry, she said. To them, it felt as though “the governor didn’t want us to be able to defend ourselves.”

The pandemic provided a rare opportunity for the pair to move — Lords had been working remotely as a department coordinator at Cal State Bakersfield and her husband quit his job in November 2020. Last spring, she accepted a position as an administrative assistant at Idaho State University .

She and her husband lived in their recreational vehicle for 10 months before closing escrow on a $140,000 home sitting on half an acre of land in Pocatello, about an hour south of Idaho Falls, two months ago.

“The hardest thing was leaving our friends and family — and the beach, of course,” Lords said. “It’s amazing, the difference in culture. It’s a real small-town feel.”

California overall lost about 367,000 people like the Lords to domestic migration — a number higher than the net loss, which includes gains from births and other sources. Los Angeles lost about 180,000 to domestic migration

The census numbers underscore population losses the state has faced in recent years. The state lost a seat in Congress for the first time in history due to sluggish population growth.

The Bay Area, where skyrocketing housing costs have long been a major problem, was hit particularly hard. San Francisco lost about 54,000 residents and Santa Clara County — home to Silicon Valley — 45,000 people.

But more affordable parts of Southern California, such as Riverside and San Bernardino counties, saw growth during this period, including people coming from other areas. Riverside saw the third-highest population gain in the nation with about 36,000 new residents, following only Maricopa County, Ariz., and Collin County, Texas, according to the data.

California was also among the minority to see a “natural increase” in the population, or more births than deaths during that one-year period, the data show. More than 73% of US counties experienced natural decrease in 2021.

Yet natural increase is also slowing both nationally and within California. The state reported 91,996 more births than deaths from July 2020 to 2021, according to the census data, but that number was about 262,000 in 2015.

And while the state saw a net gain in international migration — about 14,300 people moved to California from abroad — the number is also significantly lower than what it was in recent years. About ten years ago, Los Angeles County received close to 50,000 people through international immigration. This year, the county reported only about 4,000.

“All those factors are operating together now in ways that we’ve never seen before,” said Johnson, the demographer. “We’ve had periods with large domestic out-migration, but not at the same time that we saw this big decline in foreign immigration and a slowdown in natural increase. So when you add all those things together, that adds up to population losses both for the state and for Los Angeles that are very, very unusual demographically.”

Although the COVID-19 pandemic probably played a role in less immigration, the number of international migrants has been steadily declining for several years, said Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA.

“It’s a combination of those things, but certainly it was happening before the pandemic,” Ong said. “In some ways, it’s part of what we see historically in terms of immigrants — that they do settle and cluster in a few areas and cities, but over time they move away. And when they move away, they sponsor new relatives coming in further away from the original core.”

A shrinking population can have a negative effect on the local economy and can mean fewer skilled workers, Ong said.

For some, the decision to leave California grew out of mounting frustration and a desire for change.

“I started seeing the homeless population increasing and nothing being done about it,” said former Southern California resident Alfredo Malatesta, who immigrated to LA from Peru as a child. “It was starting to remind me of where I left many years before.”

He and his wife, Erin, moved from Santa Clarita to Tennessee in 2017, and have taken a shine to rural life outside Nashville.

“You feel like everyone is out to screw you in a way in a city like Los Angeles. And for the amount I pay to live here, the taxes, the infrastructure falling apart … everything is just like constantly like you’re getting screwed,” Malatesta, 43, said.

After sitting down and mapping out the future, the couple decided they wanted some distance from the “fatigue” they felt in LA — and a new adventure with a simpler life.

“I kept telling myself that my wife and I can’t live here happily, and the system is counterproductive and not efficient. It’s harder and harder to run a business when these stresses are pressing down on you,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like Los Angeles has an identity anymore.”

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SAN FRANCISCO, December 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Roam Robotics, the company leading the expansion of human mobility with wearable robotics, announced today that the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS) along with the Northern California Institute for Research and Education (NCIRE) has begun enrolling patients to study the impact of Ascend, a first-of-its-kind smart brace, on the veteran population.

Ascend by Roam Robotics is a smart knee brace designed to relieve knee pain and intuitively support everyday mobility. A previous clinical study of participants with knee osteoarthritis showed an average pain reduction of 46 percent and 67 percent functional improvement when using the device. Ascend is the first wearable robotic device that proves useful in everyday life for people with knee joint pain who want to regain their independence and lead a more active lifestyle. Ascend is also registered with the FDA as a Class I medical device.

“I look forward to evaluating the Roam Robotics Ascend Motorized Knee Brace in veterans with knee osteoarthritis who experience significant knee pain during activities of daily living,” said Dr. Alfred Guo, Chief of Orthopedic Surgery, San Francisco VA Health Care System “Veterans are more likely than the general population to suffer from musculoskeletal conditions such as knee arthritis. The Ascend Brace has the potential to significantly improve pain, stability and function.”

Ascend offers an opioid-free and non-surgical solution for pain relief and increased stability while performing common movements such as walking, kneeling, standing, sitting, and stair climbing. “Roam’s technology has a proven track record of benefiting a wide range of patients suffering from knee pain, weak quadriceps or instability,” said Sujit dike, Vice President at Roam Robotics. “We are very excited about this partnership with the San Francisco VA. It further validates the potential impact of Roam’s technology in addressing an enormous and growing challenge facing the veteran population.”

“Roam is focused on a massively underserved market. More than 20 percent of the world’s population is limited by the mobility of their bodies, and as medical advances help people live longer, that number is only going to increase,” he said Tim Schnell, CEO and Founder of Roam. “Our approach to wearable robotics works seamlessly with the human body to help people live healthier, happier, and more active lives, unhindered by physical limitations.”

About Roaming Robotics

Roam Robotics is dedicated to helping millions of people push their current physical limits and expand their skills to do the activities they love. Roam was developed by Dr. Tim Schnell 2013 with the dream of creating lightweight, low-cost, wearable robotic devices that are easy to integrate into everyday life. Roam’s proprietary technology creates an unmatched power-to-weight ratio, leverages scalable manufacturing techniques, and leverages innovative wearable robotics technology to improve and push the boundaries of human mobility.

For more information about Ascend, visit: www.ascend.health
For more information about Roam Robotics, visit: www.roamrobotics.com

Follow Roam Robotics on LinkedIn and Twitter.

SOURCE Roam Robotics

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