San Francisco’s Supervisorial Districts Will Be Redrawn

Redistricting, the process by which electoral districts are drawn, will happen locally as well as at the state and federal levels. San Francisco will use census and resident input to redraw its supervisorial districts, a process that begins this year and will likely carry on into 2022. Alison Goh, president of the League of Women Voters of San Francisco, explained to “Civic” how the process will work and outlined the transparency and outreach the League wants to see from the city.

Mary and Willie Ratcliff.

San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper Becomes a Cooperative

The end of 2020 saw several local publications change hands, with real estate and hospitality magnate Clint Reilly acquiring the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly and Street Media acquiring the Marina Times. The San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper is undergoing its own transition, but rather than simply changing hands it is going to a cooperative ownership model.

Advocates Fire Back at ‘Ineffective’ Drug Dealer Injunctions

Nearly four dozen groups announced Wednesday their opposition to San Francisco’s efforts to combat rampant drug dealing in the Tenderloin by using injunctions to increase penalties for dealers.

On Wednesday morning, a coalition of 45 organizations, including the public defender’s office, homeless advocates, immigration rights groups, drug policy organizations and youth-based nonprofits, held a press conference to express their opposition to the strategy. In a Dec. 3 letter to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, they said the injunctions are “draconian and wasteful,” and do little to address concerns around drug dealing and overdoses.

Mission District residents on multiple streets have indicated an interest in meetings with police by putting post-it notes in their windows.

Neighborhood Anti-Crime Surveillance Effort Prompts Privacy, Equity Concerns

On several streets in the Mission, you can spot sticky notes in the windows of some homes. They’re blank, but they’re sending a message: The residents would like to signal their interest in participating in a neighborhood effort to address crime, trash and visible homelessness in the neighborhood. Nuala Bishari reported on the initiative for the San Francisco Public Press. She talked with “Civic” about what she found and how she learned it.

Some Mission District residents have been encouraged to put post-it notes in their windows to signify their interest in joining neighborhood meetings with police.

Police Pushing Amazon Surveillance Cameras for Mission District Residents

A new collaboration between residents and the San Francisco Police Department to address crime and homelessness may result in an increase in surveillance cameras — specifically, Amazon’s controversial Ring products.

The collaborations have emerged after residents reached out to Mission Station for assistance in managing tents, drug use and trash on their streets.

An aerial rendering shows the proposed BUILD development at 700 Innes in Bayview-Hunters Point, with the city's proposed park at 900 Innes at bottom right.

Is This the Bayview’s Big Park Moment?

The Bayview has the city’s attention – for better or for worse, depending on whom you ask. If voters approve a $487 million open-space bond measure in November, it will help fund a park at 900 Innes Ave., the first waterfront land the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks has ever owned. Yet, despite efforts to include the local community in the planning and the benefits, many are skeptical.

People congregate on the sidewalk to chat and sell found goods outside the Tenderloin Museum on Leavenworth and Eddy streets in late June.

What Crowding Looks Like During a Pandemic: Dismal Days in the Tenderloin

In a pandemic that mandates physical distancing, survival in the poverty-suffused Tenderloin is endangered by relentlessly overcrowded conditions, a dearth of open public spaces and limited mobility. Neighborhood residents suffer the city’s second-highest rate of COVID-19 infections — eclipsed only by the Bayview — and five times that of neighboring Nob Hill.

View of downtown San Francisco from Treasure Island.

Treasure Island Organizer Fights to Make Residents Heard

When the shelter-in-place order went into effect in San Francisco to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Treasure Island was going into a different kind of isolation than the rest of San Francisco. The island has extremely limited public transit service, just one grocery store, no public school and experiences frequent blackouts.

Coronavirus testing in the Mission District on April 27, 2020. Barbara Ries / UCSF

Testing in Mission Shows Virus Hits Workers, Latinos at High Levels

A Mission District coronavirus testing initiative has shown stark disparities in who has been getting sick — 95% of those who tested positive in this initiative identified as Hispanic or Latinx. Most earned less than $50,000 a year. But evidence of this disparity had been mounting even prior to the testing, when doctors in San Francisco hospitals saw that the majority of the coronavirus patients who needed to be hospitalized were also Latino.

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Mission Coronavirus Tests Reveal Longstanding Inequities

In late April, a coalition of medical, community and government organizations called Unidos en Salud tested nearly 3,000 people in one Mission District census tract for the new coronavirus. Sixty-two of them tested positive, slightly more than 2% of those tested. Among those testing positive, 95% identified as Hispanic or Latinx, though they made up only 44% of those tested.