Is it possible to create housing in San Francisco that isn’t controversial? Pierce Smith and Ed Taylor discovered a way to quietly meet their housing needs while avoiding the city’s fierce political battles over where and what to build.
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When we’re forced to work and attend school from our kitchen tables, a shaky internet connection at home is as frustrating as driving down a bumpy road. City Hall is supposed to fill potholes. Perhaps it’s time to add fiber infrastructure to the list of essential municipal services. Fiber in every home would benefit everyone and give our local economy a boost in a post-pandemic world.
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The Neighborhood News Network interviews Joel Engardio about what City Hall must do to save small businesses in San Francisco.
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Triangle Park and many more forgotten mini-parks like it throughout our city have a new relevance in the pandemic era. That’s why now is the time to get the Triangle Parks of San Francisco into shape.
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Police departments must implement rigorous training and only hire police officers who will serve everybody at the highest standard. This requires investment. San Francisco's police department has put a lot of work into reforms in recent years and has made much progress. That's why defunding or disbanding SFPD would be reckless. This is the time to remake, reimagine and reinvest in policing that keeps everyone safe.
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A radical change in our attitude toward business is needed if we want local merchants to survive beyond coronavirus — and keep our city from spiraling into irrelevance. Small businesses were going extinct in San Francisco long before the pandemic turned everything upside down. City Hall’s excessive fees, regulations and bureaucracy are to blame.
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Hundreds of San Franciscans signed our petition asking Stonestown Mall to offer its parking lot as a coronavirus testing site. Their voices were heard and we’re continuing the petition to advocate for even more expanded testing.
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We need to ramp up coronavirus testing. We need a safe place to get tested while practicing social distancing. What if we turned the giant — and mostly empty — parking lot at Stonestown Mall into a drive-thru testing site? Sign the petition to make it happen.
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The uglier national politics get, some seek solace in local matters. But what happens when local concerns end up feeling as divisive as the national ones? Two women trying to beautify San Francisco’s West Portal neighborhood offer some inspiration and cautionary tales.
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If presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg can pick a running mate as well as a husband, America will be in good hands. It’s just one of many impressions from my lucky dinner with Pete and Chasten Buttigieg.
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If a defendant is re-arrested awaiting a court appearance, the sheriff needs to know. Yet she often doesn’t because San Francisco lacks a fully interconnected criminal justice database that shares information in real time. After 20 years and tens of millions spent, will City Hall ever get it to work?
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Merchant corridor doctor Vas Kiniris has a prescription for San Francisco’s historic West Portal: Embrace the future. “Millennials run the world now. But the rest of us can still be active participants in contemporary life. We can be perennials — always growing and blooming.”
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Can a Paris streetscape inspire us to create 10,000 new homes for middle-income families? Dom-i-city is a bold idea that solves land creation, financing, affordability and neighborhood quality of life in ways never considered in San Francisco.
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African Americans arrested for being in a Starbucks and the Supreme Court deciding if businesses can deny LGBTQ customers. Today’s news reminds Angelic Williams of The Green Book that helped her grandparents travel safely in Jim Crow America. So she created an app that tells LGBTQ people of color where they’re welcome.
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With all the challenges the world faces today, why do we need a $40 million memorial to World War I? Because today’s great grandchildren are still fighting it. And we still haven’t learned “what is past is prologue.”
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Heroin needles and broken glass from car break-ins litter San Francisco streets. Property crimes and housing prices continue to soar. Perhaps our city should turn its lonely eyes to Assessor Carmen Chu: "Think of me as your neighborhood assessor."
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Riding a tech bus to Silicon Valley has nothing to do with hepatitis B, but there's a good chance some of the passengers have the virus and don't know it. Why? Major risk factors include being millennial and Asian & Pacific Islander (APIs comprise nearly half of tech jobs and a quarter of the population in the Bay Area). Inaction can lead to death by liver cancer. That's why Arcadi Kolchak and Richard So are fighting to save their generation — and yours.
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Sometimes a popcorn machine is not just about the popcorn. Residents at a block party didn’t realize their hot, buttery treat was actually a survival test. It’s how Miraloma Park became one of the safest places to be when disaster strikes San Francisco. How does your neighborhood measure up?
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How did a lifeline for LGBT persecution in the Middle East start on the Google bus to Silicon Valley? Meet Kevin Steen, who wouldn’t let 7,500 miles get in the way of helping his Jordanian friend. “Mohammad’s dad threatened to shoot him,” Kevin said. “It was an honor crime waiting to happen.”
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Iris Bonilla, 20, feels the pressure of being the only Latina in the room — in her college computer classes and at her tech company internship. But don’t call her a unicorn. Hard work, not magic, has gotten her this far. There’s a very real program that academically pushes and supports underserved public school students like Iris to get into and survive college. “Having to represent an entire community is a lot to put on one pair of shoulders,” Iris said. “It’s been nerve-wracking to prove that I can do it. But I think that I have so far.”
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