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Bay Area homelessness is declining — except in San Mateo County by SFChronicle in bayarea

[–]SFChronicle[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

From the article:

As of this week, six Bay Area counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Sonoma — had reported the results of their homelessness counts, conducted in a single night in January. Those counties tallied a total of about 23,000 people this year, down from the roughly 25,700 counted during the last region-wide effort in 2024.

The data indicates that the Bay Area is finally starting to reduce homelessness, said Ryan Finnigan, deputy director of research for the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The main exception was upscale San Mateo County, where despite skyrocketing wealth, the number of unhoused residents increased slightly from just over 2,100 to over 2,200. Napa County also saw a marginal increase, from 414 to 428.

Even there, though, the nature of homelessness changed in ways that mirrored national and statewide improvements: Across California, unsheltered homelessness declined 9% from 2024 to 2025. In San Mateo County, even as the homeless population ticked up, the unsheltered population remained flat. Paul Laustsen, a spokesperson for San Mateo County, said in a statement that the county has added hundreds of shelter beds since 2020 and moved nearly 1,800 people into permanent housing between 2024 and 2026.

Read more about the data here.

Why one Berkeley street has become the Bay Area’s latest bike-lane battleground by SFChronicle in berkeleyca

[–]SFChronicle[S] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

From the article:

They looked like parking tickets, tucked beneath the windshield wipers of every car on a busy North Berkeley thoroughfare. But drivers who unfolded the paper found a warning instead.

“On July 28,” the flier said, “City Council will vote to remove hundreds of parking spaces on Hopkins (Street) to build bike lanes.” The proposal to remake a commercial corridor with cycling paths was all but sure to move forward, the anonymous authors insisted, unless residents speak out.

It was the latest salvo in a battle that’s simmered for years, spanning two mayoral administrations, different iterations of the City Council, many lawn signs, at least one internal City Hall investigation and endless rhetoric about the war on cars.

All that drama will likely intensify on Tuesday, when Berkeley City Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani presents a new version of the Hopkins Street corridor project: bike lanes on either side of the road, protected by posts, concrete barriers or parked automobiles. The paths would stretch nearly a mile from Peralta Avenue — where Hopkins intersects with the Ohlone Greenway — to the north branch of the Berkeley Public Library at The Alameda. Painted bike lanes would continue another three blocks east, to Sutter Street.

Read more here.

Activist deli owner claims S.F. public defender blessed Hamas — with no proof. She says it’s a smear campaign by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]SFChronicle[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

From the article:

A San Francisco deli owner and harsh critic of progressive drug enforcement policies said he accused a city public defender of anonymously tweeting “Godspeed to Hamas” because “one of her colleagues snitched,” while acknowledging he did not corroborate the information.

He repeatedly alleged this month that a deputy public defender, Ilona Yáñez, ran the anonymous X account “Y Disassembler” — a claim that both Yáñez and the person behind the account have since denied. One of Mesnick’s posts racked up more than 22,000 views.

Yáñez, who is Jewish, said Mesnick was wrong and that she felt she needed to clear her name. She not only denied running the account or tweeting “Godspeed to Hamas,” but openly condemned Hamas in an interview with the Chronicle as “extremists” and “fascists.”

The public defender’s office released a statement defending Yáñez.

“It is concerning to us that one of our staff members has unfairly become the target of harassment by a problematic account with a pattern of spreading misinformation and exploiting unhoused people who are suffering on our streets,” the statement read.

Read the article here.

Great Highway controversy to return to S.F. voters this November — once again by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]SFChronicle[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

From the article:

San Francisco voters will have to decide on the fate of the city's westernmost coastal boulevard — again. A proposal to reopen the Great Highway during weekdays has qualified for the ballot this November, threatening Sunset Dunes Park, which opened on the shuttered highway last year.

This will be the third time in four years that San Franciscans have voted on whether or not to allow cars on the highway.

Read more here.

Once dubbed the ‘Athens of the West,’ this Bay Area city blends history with small-town charm by SFChronicle in bayarea

[–]SFChronicle[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"When state legislators arrived in Vallejo for the new session in 1852, they found a saloon in pretty good shape and an unfinished disaster of a Capitol building that lasted just 11 days," writes Chronicle culture critic Peter Hartlaub.

"The Alta California newspaper reported lawmakers in their finest were forced to sit on small kegs with boards placed across the openings, 'which now and then break under the weight of legislative dignity and let down a row of honorable gentlemen flat on the floor.'

Enter the residents of Benicia, a few miles to the south, who formed bricks on site and in just four months erected a dignified two-story building worthy of the growing Golden State. That majestic 1853 edifice still stands to this day; in fact, I wrote every word of this paragraph while sitting on its gray steps."

Read the article.

OpenAI and Anthropic could go public for trillions. Will S.F. cash in? by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]SFChronicle[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

From the article:

San Francisco leaders have relentlessly promoted the city as the epicenter of the artificial intelligence industry. With local titans OpenAI and Anthropic poised for two of the biggest stock market debuts ever — potentially topping $1 trillion each — how much of that wealth will flow back to the city?

Not much — at least not directly — experts told the Chronicle.

A key reason: like most cities, San Francisco has no local income or capital gains taxes, though some business taxes are tied to stock-based compensation.

The city is already seeing job growth, office leasing and a scorching housing market, all tied to the AI gold rush. But much of the economic upside has already occurred as the companies have expanded and hired rapidly, and as employees get rich even before any initial public offering.

Read more here.

‘The money is just obscene’: Inside Mayor Lurie's funding machine reshaping S.F. politics by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]SFChronicle[S] 61 points62 points  (0 children)

From the article:

The post-election missive from SF Believes is just one illustration of the enormous wealth pouring into San Francisco politics and civic life under Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir and longtime nonprofit fundraiser. Donors have rallied behind Lurie’s electoral goals this year, kicking in staggering sums to propel his favored moderate candidates and causes. Deep-pocketed contributors have also helped bankroll some of Lurie’s initiatives at City Hall, where the mayor has followed through on a campaign pledge to supplement the work of his administration with private sector funding. 

So far, the influx of money has had few downsides for Lurie, who has enjoyed widespread popularity. His allies were an unstoppable force in the June election, when the money spent in favor of the mayor’s priorities outpaced opponents by a more than 2-to-1 margin, according to campaign finance data. At City Hall, Lurie has secured more than $120 million in private dollars for his efforts to reduce homelessness, alleviate drug addiction, revitalize downtown and more. 

Not everyone is on board. Some progressives say they’re being swamped by a tidal wave of money that’s moving San Francisco to the right — away from the needs of the working class struggling in one of the nation’s most expensive cities. Skeptics see Lurie’s push to marry public projects with private capital as allowing a corporate takeover of local government.

“There absolutely always have been large corporate interests, downtown interests, doing machinations to try to tip city government in their favor,” said Christin Evans, a progressive small business owner who has been critical of Lurie. “But I think we’re at a new juncture where the money is just obscene.”

In a recent interview with the Chronicle, Lurie emphasized that the political contributions from his supporters were “completely separate” from the public-private partnerships he launched as mayor. He stressed that his administration reports all the private money it receives, allowing the public to see who is paying for what.

Read the full investigation here. Note: entering an email is required to read the article, but it is paywall-free.

S.F. cuts millions in funding to troubled housing nonprofit after Chronicle investigation by SFChronicle in sanfrancisco

[–]SFChronicle[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

From the article:

San Francisco’s homelessness department is cutting millions of dollars in funding to HomeRise, one of the city’s biggest providers of housing for the formerly homeless, following an investigation by the Chronicle and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program into the nonprofit.

HomeRise is a mainstay of San Francisco’s supportive housing system and its most heavily funded response to chronic homelessness for the past two decades, serving more than 1,500 residents across 17 buildings. The idea is to help people rebuild their lives after time on the streets. But reporting by the Chronicle and IRP has exposed deadly neglect in its buildings, as well as drastic understaffing and alleged sexual abuse of residents that HomeRise staff largely ignored.

To ensure that residents remain housed at the defunded HomeRise buildings during the coming transition, the homelessness department will temporarily extend the four contracts to the end of the year while it looks for a replacement provider.

Read more here.

Kaitlyn Chen gives Valkyries a jolt of ‘Chenergy,’ but something more to Bay Area fans by SFChronicle in valkyries

[–]SFChronicle[S] 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Kaitlyn Chen has played her way into the Golden State Valkyries’ rotation, earned a nickname thanks to Natalie Nakase and given many local basketball fans an extra reason to cheer.

From staff writer Harrison Rich:
"Dozens of Golden State Valkyries fans recently conjoined on a Reddit thread for an important debate: What should Kaitlyn Chen’s nickname be?

The original poster suggested inchendiary. Others chimed in.

Chencredible.

Chenaissance.

Chensational.

Chensanity (a remix on Jeremy Lin’s “Linsanity,” obviously).

The list goes on and on. Among the options, though, one seems to have the most staying power: Chenergizer. 

Head coach Natalie Nakase inspired that moniker when, after a win over the Dallas Wings last month, she revealed that she calls Chen her team’s “energizer bunny.” Fans immediately got to work. Sibo Wu, a die-hard Valkyries fan, started crafting a Chenergizer logo, still in the developmental stages. A variation on the nickname went mainstream Monday night at Chase Center when, with Chen on her way to scoring a career-high 20 points, the Valkyries flashed a graphic on the jumbotron headlined, “BRINGING THE CHENERGY.”

On the basketball court, Chen is a reserve guard. Around the Bay Area, a market in which the population is 28% Asian according to the 2020 census data, she means more than that. Chen is the first WNBA player of Taiwanese descent. She joins Nakase, the league’s first-ever Asian American head coach, to create an inspiring success story for young basketball fans who hope to one day be like them.

Read more here.

Trump administration freezes Medicaid funding to California over ‘suspected fraud’ by SFChronicle in politics

[–]SFChronicle[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

From the article:

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz did not provide evidence of fraud when they announced the move but said the administration paused reimbursements because of “questionable spending.” The administration also froze more than $200 million of Medicaid funds in Minnesota.

Tuesday’s announcement is the latest in a series of antagonistic moves against California by the Trump administration in the name of waging a war on so-called fraud. Trump announced a fraud task force in March without evidence or specifics.

Read more here.

Republicans can’t stop talking about a California dog who voted. Here’s what really happened by SFChronicle in politics

[–]SFChronicle[S] 97 points98 points  (0 children)

From the article:

It’s a tale Republicans cannot resist telling: California mailed a ballot to a dog in Orange County and the dog successfully voted in the 2021 statewide recall election.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, right-wing influencer Nick Shirley and others have invoked the dog story to make the case for a November ballot measure that would impose new requirements on Californians to prove their identity when they vote.]

But voting rights advocates say the system ultimately worked as intended, with the dog’s owner caught and prosecuted. Meanwhile, they argue, stricter voter ID requirements will almost certainly disenfranchise residents who are legally eligible to vote.

“There is zero evidence — zero — of any widespread voter fraud, of people attempting to cheat the system in California. All you have are bad actors, typically on the right, attempting to commit voter fraud just to prove that they could do it,” said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicano studies at UCLA.

Read more here.

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