Author: admin

By Claire Hao : sfchronicle – excerpt

When will San Franciscans be able to know whether their office or apartment buildings are at risk in a major earthquake?

The city does keep a list, published last month by NBC News, of 3,400 buildings believed to be concrete that could be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake.

• Earthquake tracker: Mapping the latest quakes in California and across the world

Concrete buildings could account for 50% of deaths in a 1906-size earthquake in San Francisco, according to a 2010 city-commissioned study. They are one of the most significant kinds of buildings yet to be retrofitted for earthquake safety in San Francisco and are located on nearly every block in downtown, the Tenderloin and Chinatown.

But city officials and structural engineers caution that this list is preliminary and inaccurate — which is why The Chronicle is not publishing it.

A better list will come, according to Brian Strong, director of the city’s Office of Resilience and Capital Planning, only after the Board of Supervisors passes a seismic retrofit ordinance for concrete buildings, which city staff are currently developing and plan to have before the board by the beginning of next year.

“We can’t compel property owners to give us information on their buildings without going to the Board of Supervisors,” Strong said…(more)

By Heather Knight : sfchronicle – excerpt

As San Francisco stares down a state mandate to build 82,000 new housing units within eight years, an 80-something retired architect has a great solution. It’s called Domicity.

Just a few blocks from Ocean Beach, in San Francisco’s sleepy, foggy Outer Sunset neighborhood, sits a little slice of Paris — or as close to it as one can get among the endless rows of single-family homes in varying shades of beige.

At 44th Avenue and Noriega Street sits Gus’s Community Market. Trees, picnic tables and green umbrellas primed for unlikely sunshine line the sidewalks alongside wooden stands brimming with colorful flowers, artichokes and melons.

Above the shop sit three stories of housing, giving the bustling market more customers and the city more desperately needed homes. All in all, the pleasant corner offers a touch of the European flair two supervisors want to see replicated in their districts, swaths of San Francisco that have not shouldered their weight in helping the city address its housing crisis.

Now, Supervisors Myrna Melgar and Joel Engardio — who represent District Seven’s West of Twin Peaks area and District Four’s Sunset neighborhood, respectively — are pushing their sometimes resistant constituents to support far more Gus-style buildings. And they’re teaming up to pass legislation that could help make it a reality…

One sign that west side seniors are coming around to Lew’s idea: George Wooding, a 67-year-old homeowner in District Seven and the president of the Midtown Terrace Home Owners Association, has long opposed plans to build more housing near him, but he’s grudgingly supportive of Lew.

“Times are changing,” Wooding conceded. “He’s way ahead of everybody else. He’s a visionary as opposed to somebody just trying to make money.”…(more)

Since Domicity as introduced to CSFN it appears that a few changes were added to the program. The designs are still a formula that involves mixed use 6 story buildings that may be customized for different purposes, and if memory serves, Lew plans to use lightweight wood products and avoid the need for heavier concrete and steel structures by limiting the buildings to six stories. There is now a nonprofit funding program based on the idea that a lot of senior homeowners want to downsize. Lew may be a visionary but his partners may rub some the wrong way.

by Joe Burn, George Kelly :sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco is set to open a new unified command center to combat open-air drug dealing in the Downtown area, city officials said Friday.

The new center to combat the drug crisis will be named the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center (DMACC), according to the Department of Emergency Management, which will work with San Francisco police and the Department of Public Health to operate the center.

An emergency management department spokesperson confirmed the center would open within the next two weeks at a location on Market Street near Civic Center. The exact location will not be disclosed due to security risks.

The emergency management department says the coordinated effort has been in place since April 17 but will move from a virtual to a physical in-person center, allowing the different agencies, including federal and state partners, to work more closely together to direct resources to disrupt open-air drug markets more effectively.

New data collection strategies will also be implemented to produce monthly reports on outputs and outcomes related to disrupting San Francisco drug markets…(more)

This sounds suspciouly like the request made by Supervisor Peskin. Hope it works regardless of who thought of it.

By Sarah Holtz : sfstandard – excerpt (published 1/4/2023)

I’ve always been a firm believer in harm reduction. The way I see it, legalizing safe consumption sites and giving people access to fentanyl test strips and Narcan (a brand name for the overdose-reversal drug naloxone) will only serve to make our community safer.

On New Year’s Eve, as I prepared to head to a house party where I figured some might use recreational drugs—and thus put themselves at risk of accidentally overdosing on fentanyl—I went out in search of test strips and naloxone. With test strips, I could help people identify if drugs were laced with fentanyl. With Narcan, I might be able to help reverse an inadvertent overdose.

I figured it’d be an easy errand. I was wrong…

I knew that local nonprofit FentCheck has an online map of sites that distribute free test strips…

The irony of striking out at the pharmacy and the hospital, only to find the potentially life-saving resource I was looking for at a neighborhood bar, left me with more questions than answers…

So I called up Alison Heller, co-founder of FentCheck. Driven by a desire to confront the FentCheck crisis, Heller attended EMT school before starting FentCheck. She told me that when she started her organization, fentanyl test strips were considered drug paraphernalia. She and her co-founder Dean Shold worked hard with lawmakers to help declassify them. …(more)

Good to know that there is a simple test and where it is available. More information on the tests may be avoid the need for so much Narcan. Detailed information on what to look for should be distributed more widely.

By Garrett Leahy : sfstandard – excerpt

The hours you get charged to park on San Francisco city streets were set to be changed this summer for the first time since 1947. But San Francisco supervisors passed a resolution last week urging the agency to delay the idea pending an “independent economic impact report.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency wants to extend meter hours from 6 to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and add Sunday metering hours in select parts of the city where parking charges previously did not exist.

The transit agency claims the plan will “expand parking availability and benefit all those who live, shop, worship and work in San Francisco.”

However, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said it seemed likely the agency would agree to postpone the changes until the city’s controller can do a study at some point in September. …(more)

By Adam Shanks : sfexaminer – excerpt

People take cover on a rainy morning in the U.N. Plaza a day after the Tenderloin Center closed last December. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will question Mayor London Breed at the plaza during its next meeting…

Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors will discuss The City’s response to the opioid crisis at its epicenter.

Maybe.

In an unorthodox meeting organized by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, Breed is set to field questions Tuesday at United Nations Plaza on how The City is coordinating public safety resources in response to an alarming rise in drug overdose deaths.

The agenda for Tuesday’s regular Board of Supervisors meeting calls for a “special off-site meeting,” beginning at 2 p.m., at United Nations (U.N.) Plaza on McAllister Street. After Breed addresses Supervisors, the meeting will be recessed and supervisors will reconvene in City Hall for their usual session…(more)

By Ethan Kassel : sfstandard – excerpt

Expensive parking, smaller beer that’s hardly “cheaper” than the full-size options and seemingly unsafe public transit have all been cited as factors that have kept San Francisco Giants fans away from Oracle Park.

Fans on Reddit responded to an analysis The Standard recently did of this year’s slumping attendance, explaining their reasoning for staying home instead of going out to the ballpark—and they didn’t hold back.

“Cheaper beer? You mean smaller beer,” Reddit user LJSearles commented.

The 14-ounce domestic options, available at select Doggie Diner stands for $9 each, are cheaper than the full-size options on a per-ounce basis, but it’s far from a bargain, fans said. Other fans blamed a particularly wet spring for low attendance, while some said missing out signing big-name stars such as Aaron Judge hurt attendance numbers…

Parking Woes…

Sparse parking availability was also noted by numerous fans, with many lamenting having to pay $40 or more for a spot. However, much of the parking around the stadium is operated by third parties, as SF Giants Transportation Director Joshua Karlin-Resnick noted…(more)

By Tessa McLean : sfexaminer – excerpt

Even on a rainy San Francisco day, light floods the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows lining the walls of the Warfield Building. Exposed brick borders the windows, giving the office space a decidedly hip feel, one that echoes the urban loft vibe that was once so trendy in major cities. Market Street bustles below, but the street noise is minimal, and from the high floors, the views stretch out to Bernal Hill and beyond.

These office conference rooms could someday be someone’s bedroom, if local developer Group I can get past the city’s Byzantine permitting process and execute an incredibly rare office-to-residential conversion project, which many have billed as one of the only reasonable solutions to the city’s perpetual housing crisis. As downtown San Francisco continues to struggle to revitalize itself post-pandemic, transforming office buildings into housing has been talked about as something of a golden ticket. Not only would it help to make a dent in the city’s woefully inadequate housing supply, but it could also rejuvenate a district that desperately needs a boost, especially as more businesses continue to close…(more)

By Shanti Singh and Roisin Isner : 48hils – excerpt

SF won’t begin to meet its housing goals unless Breed commits the funding.

In the coming weeks, Mayor London Breed will present a $14 billion budget proposal that will shape the direction of affordable housing in San Francisco for years to come. This budget will choose to either invest voter-approved funding to expand the supply of affordable housing, or to scatter and spend that funding for uses not intended by the voters.

In 2020, a clear majority of San Francisco’s voters approved Proposition I, which increased taxes on the transfer of real estate worth more than $10 million. The official ballot arguments in favor of the measure explicitly stated that the new revenue should be dedicated to expanding affordable housing. Since then, Proposition I has generated more than a quarter of a billion dollars in new revenue for the City of San Francisco, and the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance to commit Proposition I revenue to affordable housing upon its passage.

Proposition I became a model for Los Angeles’ Measure ULA, which also increased taxes on large property sales and was approved by voters last year. Following its passage, Mayor Karen Bass immediately committed Measure ULA revenue towards an ambitious and innovative plan for housing preservation and production. Yet it remains unclear whether Breed will follow our sister city’s lead…(more)