San Francisco Bay Area (Calif)

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares132 Views

    Newsom Asks Cities to Ban Homeless Encampments, Escalating Crackdown

    by

    “There are no more excuses,” the California governor said in pushing for municipalities to address one of the most visible byproducts of homelessness.Gov. Gavin Newsom escalated California’s push to eradicate homeless encampments on Monday, calling on hundreds of cities, towns and counties to effectively ban tent camps on sidewalks, bike paths, parklands and other types of public property.Mr. Newsom’s administration has raised and spent tens of billions of dollars on programs to bring homeless people into housing and to emphasize treatment. But his move on Monday marks a tougher approach to one of the more visible aspects of the homelessness crisis. The governor has created a template for a local ordinance that municipalities can adopt to outlaw encampments and clear existing ones.California is home to about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population, a visible byproduct of the temperate climate and the state’s brutal housing crisis. Last year, a record 187,000 people were homeless in the state, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Two-thirds were living unsheltered in tents, cars or outdoors.Mr. Newsom cannot force cities to pass his model ban, but its issuance coincides with the release of more than $3 billion in state-controlled housing funds that local officials can use to put his template in place. And though it’s not a mandate, the call to outlaw encampments statewide by one of the best-known Democrats in the country suggests a shift in the party’s approach to homelessness. Once a combative champion of liberal policies and a vocal Trump administration critic, Mr. Newsom has been stress-testing his party’s positions, to the point of elevating the ideas of Trump supporters on his podcast. The liberal approach to encampments has traditionally emphasized government-funded housing and treatment, and frowned on what some call criminalizing homelessness.The model ordinance Mr. Newsom wants local officials to adopt does not specify criminal penalties, but outlawing homeless encampments on public property makes them a crime by definition. Cities would decide on their own how tough the penalties should be, including arrests or citations to those who violate the ban. The template’s state-issued guidance says that no one “should face criminal punishment for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares145 Views

      in Elections

      BART Trains Shut Down Systemwide in San Francisco Bay Area

      by

      Bay Area Rapid Transit, the main commuter rail system for the region, was forced to close for the Friday morning commute.The primary transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area was forced to shut down all trains on Friday morning because of a computer problem, sending commuters scrambling to find alternatives with little notice. Bay Area Rapid Transit, which transports more than 170,000 passengers on weekdays throughout much of the region, said service had been suspended because of a “computer networking” problem. Riders were searching for alternatives, from car pools to local bus services and ferries. It was not immediately clear what had caused the networking problem or when service was expected to continue. Shortly after 7 a.m., traffic was thick at the freeway to the Bay Bridge, which connects Oakland and other East Bay communities to San Francisco.Chris Filippi, a spokesman for BART, said in a statement that the computer issues were affecting all 50 stations within the system. The last time BART faced a similar shutdown, Mr. Filippi said, the issue took several hours to resolve.Other transit systems appeared to be operating without major issues on Friday. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni bus and rail services, said that it was helping BART riders at certain stations. The San Francisco Bay Ferry said that it was using larger ferries wherever possible to help transport more people. This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Elon Musk Is Focused on DOGE. What About Tesla?

      by

      Mr. Musk, one of President Trump’s main advisers, has not outlined a plan to reverse falling sales at the electric car company of which he is chief executive.Elon Musk’s role as President Trump’s cost-cutting czar and his immersion in right-wing politics appears to be diverting his attention from Tesla at a perilous moment for the electric car company.Tesla’s car sales fell 1 percent last year even as the global market for electric vehicles grew 25 percent. Mr. Musk has not addressed that underperformance, and he has offered no concrete plan to revive sales. He has also provided no details about a more affordable model Tesla says it will start producing this year. In the past, Mr. Musk spent months or years promoting vehicles before they appeared in showrooms.And he has spent much of his time since the election in Washington and at Mr. Trump’s home in Florida — far from Austin, Texas, where Tesla has its corporate headquarters and a factory, or the San Francisco Bay Area, where it has a factory and engineering offices.In the past decade or so, Tesla went from a struggling start-up to upending the global auto industry. The company sold millions of electric cars and generated huge profits, forcing established automakers to invest billions of dollars to catch up. Tesla’s success has been reflected in its soaring stock price, which helped make Mr. Musk the world’s richest person.But now, he seems to have lost interest in the grinding business of developing, producing and selling cars, investors and analysts say. That could have serious ramifications for his company and the auto industry, which employs millions of people worldwide.Even before he joined the Trump administration as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk’s running multiple companies had led investors and corporate governance experts to wonder whether he was spread too thin. Besides Tesla, Mr. Musk controls and runs SpaceX, whose rockets carry astronauts and satellites for NASA and others; X, the social media site; and xAI, which is developing artificial intelligence. And he wants to colonize Mars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Targets Agency Overseeing the Presidio, a Cherished San Francisco Park

      by

      President Trump moved to drastically shrink the Presidio Trust, the federal agency that oversees the Presidio of San Francisco, a national park at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and one of the city’s most cherished public spaces, in an executive order issued Wednesday evening.The order, which calls for “dramatically” reducing the size of the federal government, said the Presidio Trust was an “unnecessary governmental entity.” The order also targeted three other agencies — the Inter-American Foundation, the United States African Development Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace — by requiring them to reduce their work and personnel “to the minimum presence and function required by law.”The Presidio Trust was established by Congress in 1996 to help oversee the Presidio, a 1,500-acre former military base that today includes hiking trails, museums, schools, campgrounds, restaurants, a golf course and a hotel, according to its website. The National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, a nonprofit group, also help to oversee the park.The trust is led by a board of directors — six of whom are appointed by the president — and employs a staff of ecologists, building stewards, utility workers, tech professionals and others.It wasn’t immediately clear what effect the executive order would have on the park. The Presidio Trust did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday.Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump’s, played a central role in the creation of the trust, and the park is in her district. Ms. Pelosi’s office told The San Francisco Standard that it was reviewing the order.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Strong Storm in San Francisco Brings a Tornado Warning

      by

      Less than two weeks after a tsunami warning, residents were jolted awake before 6 a.m. to consider a new potential disaster scenario.Powerful storms swept through parts of Northern California on Saturday, knocking down trees, causing widespread power outages and prompting weather officials to issue what they said was the first-ever tornado warning for San Francisco.The warning blared from cellphones around 5:45 a.m., jolting residents across the city from their sleep and into the sudden realization that many had long prepared themselves for what to do in the case of a sudden earthquake, but not a tornado.And it came less than two weeks after a similar alert echoed across the Bay Area warning of a different kind of disaster scenario: an impending tsunami that forecasters worried could strike along a vast stretch of the Northern California coast.That warning had been spurred by an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean and briefly caused a panic as people sought to get to higher ground. The warning was canceled a little more than an hour after it was issued.The tornado warning on Saturday, which was in effect for about 30 minutes, was urgent: “Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room,” it read in part.“That is the first time that we’ve issued a tornado warning for San Francisco,” said Crystal Oudit, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Bay Area. She said the service had done so after seeing conditions that tend to favor tornadoes as the storm approached the city.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Tsunami Warning in San Francisco ‘Felt Like a Science Fiction Movie’

      by

      With his surfboard tucked under his arm, Alex Felton was about to walk a couple of blocks to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach on Thursday morning when his cellphone blared. “TSUNAMI WARNING!” an alert screamed. “You are in danger.”A lifelong surfer, Mr. Felton, 31, has ridden 10-foot waves at Ocean Beach many times. He considered jumping into the ocean anyway, he acknowledged later. But texts from friends convinced him to follow the alert’s directions and move away from the coast, not toward it.Which friends were worried that he might make a bad decision? “All of them,” he said with a grin.Bay Area residents rode a metaphorical wave together on Thursday, after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake off the California coast shook the ground for hundreds of miles and prompted the National Weather Service to issue a tsunami warning for coastal counties in Northern California and southern Oregon.First, blaring phone alerts scared the wits out of people across the region, their hearts pounding as they wondered what sort of disaster-movie-type scenario was about to occur. Then they calmed down and even laughed as the alert was called off about an hour later.“It was a lot to take in, in the moment,” said Johnny Williams, who owns a bookstore in Berkeley. “It felt like a science fiction movie.”Alex Felton, right, working the afternoon shift at Aqua Surf Shop in San Francisco. His planned morning surf session was interrupted by a tsunami warning. Loren Elliott for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      London Breed Concedes San Francisco Mayor Race to Daniel Lurie

      by

      London Breed, San Francisco’s first Black woman mayor who steered the city through the pandemic but also saw its quality of life sink, conceded her re-election race on Thursday.Ms. Breed said in a news conference at City Hall that she had called Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who has never held elected office, to congratulate him on his win.“Being mayor of San Francisco has been the greatest honor of my lifetime,” she told journalists in a meeting room off her office. “I’m beyond grateful to our residents for the opportunity to serve the city that raised me.”The Associated Press had not yet called the race, though local news outlets did. Ms. Breed said she thought it would take “a miracle” to change the outcome at this point.Mr. Lurie will take office in January, and Ms. Breed vowed she would work to ensure a smooth transition. Both Mr. Lurie and Ms. Breed are Democrats and San Francisco natives who grew up mere miles from each other, he in luxury and she in poverty.Mr. Lurie, the founder of an anti-poverty nonprofit, said in an email that he would speak Friday morning. “I’m deeply grateful to my incredible family, campaign team and every San Franciscan who voted for accountability, service and change,” he wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      San Franciscans Are ‘Fighting for Their Lives’ Over One Great Highway

      by

      Forget the mayor’s race. Forget ballot measures about crime and schools. For many San Franciscans, short of the presidency, the most important contest on Tuesday will determine the future of one short road.It is not just any road. It is a quintessential California stretch — so magnificent, it is named the Great Highway — that hugs the city’s westernmost edge, offering sweeping views of pelicans swooping over the Pacific Ocean and of surfers tackling its mighty waves.Proposition K on the San Francisco ballot would permanently close the flat, two-mile stretch of pavement to cars. The measure would turn it over to cyclists, pedestrians, roller skaters and dogs, charting a path, backers promise, to create the city’s next great park. Think the High Line or Hudson River Yards in New York City, they say.But in San Francisco, where small ideas regularly lead to huge fights, the squabbles over the road’s fate have become louder than sea gulls at a beach picnic.“It feels like people on all sides are fighting for their lives,” said Marjan Philhour, who is running for the city’s board of supervisors to represent the Richmond District, the neighborhood just north of Golden Gate Park.Proposition K on the city ballot would permanently close a section of the highway to cars.The two-mile stretch would be turned over to cyclists, walkers, roller skaters and dogs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More