San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/author/noah-arroyo/page/2/)
Noah Arroyo is a local enterprise and accountability journalist based in San Francisco.
A new audit found that few retrofitted buildings have a suspected gas line hazard that caused an uproar earlier this year. But it’s not all good news. Hundreds of buildings overshot the retrofit program’s deadline for seismic work.
Residents of San Francisco’s Treasure Island suffered half a dozen power outages in the three months after electrical upgrades were completed this July. That’s just the latest episode in what’s been an ongoing problem for the island.
Renters throughout San Francisco could gain power to lessen COVID-19 financial hardships and improve conditions in their buildings with political-organizing tools that have a history of success in subsidized housing.
Starting in November, many San Francisco tenants may have to defend themselves in small claims court if their landlords sue to obtain unpaid rent due since March 2020.
Thousands of San Franciscans who borrowed money to pay rent during the pandemic are stuck with that debt, making them worse off than those who let the bills lapse.
Federal relief funds cover only unpaid housing expenses. That leaves tenants vulnerable if they made good-faith efforts to pay those costs by taking on thousands of dollars of debt to credit card companies, payday lenders, relatives or friends — especially if they later seek different housing.
Thursday marked the end of the statewide moratorium on evictions for unpaid rents due to COVID-19-related hardships, and by Friday landlords could begin the process to remove tenants.
But the head of tenant legal defense in San Francisco wants renters to hear one message loud and clear: “You’re still protected.”
Low vaccination rates in several pockets of the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood could help explain persistently high cases of COVID-19 in San Francisco’s southeast, recently released data indicates.
San Francisco neighborhoods the federal government targeted with racist lending practices face the greatest health threats from pollution, a recent state study found. The California Environmental Protection Agency analyzed the latest pollution data in historically redlined neighborhoods, where people of color were denied mortgage loans under federal policies, in the report finalized in August.
Environmental activists are about to launch an air-monitoring project to track pollution linked to high rates of asthma and other health conditions in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. The results could play an important role in demonstrating the environmental harm residents suffer.
San Francisco residents can now learn how to avoid eviction by sending a text message to a special phone number.
That service is part of an outreach campaign launched Friday by the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition, a group of tenant-rights organizations. The goal: to teach people their rights and help them apply for rent assistance during the two months left before a statewide moratorium on evictions for unpaid rents expires.
