A few weeks after the fire assessors’ survey, a team from Habitat will return to Monte Rio and work with Levy to identify necessary improvements like grab bars, ramps and low-threshold showers that will allow her to age at home for years to come. As a final step, the Habitat team will allocate a workday to make the improvements Levy needs, as well as hardening the house – like replacing old windows with tempered glass – and defensible space, like removing a combustible pile of firewood from her porch.

Megan Hennessy, program manager at Habitat Sonoma, sees firsthand how critical these repairs are for elderly residents, especially after three major fires in Sonoma County in the past four years.

“It struck me that older homeowners are very, very, very concerned about what would happen if a fire started,” Hennessy said.

Shawn Connally stands in front of her home in Occidental. (Isaac Ceja/KQED)

According to the US Fire Department, adults over the age of 65 are more than twice as likely to die in a fire compared to the general population. “Rural and semi-rural communities, which are among the oldest in the state of California, tend to be among the most vulnerable,” said Andrew Scharlach, professor of aging at UC Berkeley. Older rural homeowners, especially low-income homeowners, are less able to make fireproof home improvements, move to a lower-risk area before a fire and evacuate if a fire inevitably breaks out, he said.

Shawn Connally, a 56-year-old resident of Occidental in Sonoma County, often worries about fires. She keeps her car in the back so she can evacuate at any time. She has a holdall in her mud room packed with a small souvenir statue from New Zealand, two sets of salt and pepper shakers (chosen from the hundreds she inherited from her grandmother), several family rings and her important paper documents.

Wildfire Services director Andrew Carrillo (left) and Brandon North work together to fire-test a home in Monte Rio. (Isaac Ceja/KQED)

Connally lives on a sprawling lot shaded by towering trees and perched on a steep, winding driveway. She used to tend the overgrown bush on her property herself, but multiple sclerosis has made that impossible.

“If I tried that, it would probably blow my mind for a few days,” she said. That’s why she participates in the Fire Safe Sonoma and Habitat for Humanity programs.

Connally’s hope is that Fire Safe Sonoma and Habitat can rail the steep steps leading to her home and basement and remove the combustible vegetation that has accumulated around her property. The winding driveway also poses a problem as it would be difficult for a fire engine to negotiate the narrow path. Habitat will aim to make her house as resilient as possible so that even if firefighters can’t reach Connally’s house, it still has a good chance of surviving a fire.

No sweat, no expense

Sonoma’s Habitat subsidiary has been building and repairing homes for 35 years and has one of the more robust on-site aging programs in California. Although Habitat affiliates across California facilitate on-site aging, the offerings of these programs vary widely, and many affiliates require beneficiaries to provide “weld capital” in the form of labor or participate in an amortization program. Habitat and Fire Safe Sonoma, on the other hand, can perform this work at no cost to the homeowner.

Andrew Carrillo, director of Wildfire Services, completes a home assessment checklist for the Wildland Fire Assessment Program in Occidental. (Isaac Ceja/KQED)

In 2020–21, the California Legislature allocated $25 million for home hardening and defense and allocated an additional $25 million over the next two fiscal years. The California Office of Emergency Services then selected pilot districts based on a high risk of fire and other criteria, including proportion of the population over the age of 65.

But the program was slow to roll out, and homeowners are still waiting for grants and support. Until government investments in fire safety are realized, local programs must fill the gaps.

As fire investigators dispatched by Fire Safe Sonoma walked around Levy’s home, she recalled her early years in California. At 19, Levy quit her job as a library assistant in her hometown of Philadelphia and came to San Francisco for the 1967 Summer of Love.

A few years later, she was camping near her current home on the Russian River and fell in love with the vastness of the country and the cheap rents. There she began working as an accountant for a child care resource and placement agency in Guerneville.

“Growing up in the city, I always wanted a farm,” Levy said, recalling the chickens she used to raise — until the raccoons devoured them.

Andrew Carrillo points to trees he recommends removing to improve fire safety at Franceen Levy’s home. (Isaac Ceja/KQED)

Levy’s chickens and cheap rent are in the rearview mirror. Now she has new worries – namely fire. Levy knows she has to live with that risk because she never wants to leave her rural surroundings. With her new home modifications, she’s expecting just that.

Reporter Kate Raphael and photographer Isaac Ceja are in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. They covered this story through a grant from the SCAN Foundation.

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Vivian Kargbo thought her daughter’s Boston school district was doing the right thing when officials kept classrooms closed for most students for more than a year.

Kargbo, a caregiver for hospice patients, didn’t want to risk them getting COVID-19. And extending pandemic school closures through the spring of 2021 is what many in her community said was best to keep kids and adults safe.

But her daughter became depressed and stopped doing school work or paying attention to online classes. The former honor-roll student failed nearly all of her eighth grade courses.

“She’s behind,” said Kargbo, whose daughter is now in tenth grade. “It didn’t work at all. Knowing what I know now, I would say they should have put them in school.”

Preliminary test scores around the country confirm what Kargbo witnessed: The longer many students studied remotely, the less they learned. Some educators and parents are questioning decisions in cities from Boston to Chicago to Los Angeles to remain online long after clear evidence emerged that schools weren’t COVID-19 super-spreaders — and months after life-saving adult vaccines became widely available.

There are fears for the futures of students who don’t catch up. They run the risk of never learning to read, long a precursor for dropping out of school. They might never master simple algebra, putting science and tech fields out of reach. The pandemic decline in college attendance could continue to accelerate, crippling the U.S. economy.

In a sign of how inflammatory the debate has become, there’s sharp disagreement among educators, school leaders and parents even about how to label the problems created by online school. “Learning loss” has become a lightning rod. Some fear the term might brand struggling students or cast blame on teachers, and they say it overlooks the need to save lives during a pandemic.

Regardless of what it’s called, the casualties of Zoom school are real.

The scale of the problem and the challenges in addressing it were apparent in Associated Press interviews with nearly 50 school leaders, teachers, parents and health officials, who struggled to agree on a way forward.

Some public health officials and educators warned against second-guessing the school closures for a virus that killed over a million people in the U.S. More than 200,000 children lost at least one parent.

“It is very easy with hindsight to say, ‘Oh, learning loss, we should have opened.’ People forget how many people died,” said Austin Beutner, former superintendent in Los Angeles, where students were online from mid-March 2020 until the start of hybrid instruction in April 2021.

The question isn’t merely academic.

School closures continued last year because of teacher shortages and COVID-19 spread. It’s conceivable another pandemic might emerge — or a different crisis.

But there’s another reason for asking what lessons have been learned: the kids who have fallen behind. Some third graders struggle to sound out words. Some ninth graders have given up on school because they feel so behind they can’t catch up. The future of American children hangs in the balance.

FILE – Chicago charter school teacher Angela McByrd works on her laptop to teach remotely from her home in Chicago, Sept. 24, 2020. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)

Many adults are pushing to move on, to stop talking about the impact of the pandemic — especially learning loss.

“As crazy as this sounds now, I’m afraid people are going to forget about the pandemic,” said Jason Kamras, superintendent in Richmond, Virginia. “People will say, ‘That was two years ago. Get over it.’”

When COVID-19 first reached the U.S., scientists didn’t fully understand how it spread or whether it was harmful to children. American schools, like most around the world, understandably shuttered in March 2020.

That summer, scientists learned kids didn’t face the same risks as adults, but experts couldn’t decide how to operate schools safely — or whether it was even possible.

It was already clear that remote learning was devastating for many young people. But did the risks of social isolation and falling behind outweigh the risks of children, school staff and families catching the virus?

The tradeoffs differed depending on how vulnerable a community felt. Black and Latino people, who historically had less access to health care, remain nearly twice as likely to die of COVID-19 than white people. Parents in those communities often had deep-rooted doubts about whether schools could keep their children safe.

Politics was a factor, too. Districts that reopened in person tended to be in areas that voted for President Donald Trump or had largely white populations.

By winter, studies showed schools weren’t contributing to increased COVID-19 spread in the community. Classes with masked students and distancing could be conducted safely, growing evidence said. President Joe Biden prioritized reopening schools when he took office in January 2021, and once the COVID-19 vaccine was available, some Democratic-leaning districts started to reopen.

Yet many schools stayed closed well into the spring, including in California, where the state’s powerful teachers unions fought returning to classrooms, citing lack of safety protocols.

In Chicago, after a six-week standoff with the teachers union, the district started bringing students back on a hybrid schedule just before spring 2021. It wasn’t until the fall that students were back in school full time.

Marla Williams initially supported Chicago Public Schools’ decision to instruct students online during the fall of 2020. Williams, a single mother, has asthma, as do her two children. While she was working, she enlisted her father, a retired teacher, to supervise her children’s studies.

Her father would log into his grandson’s classes from his suburban home and try to monitor what was happening. But it didn’t work.

Her son lost motivation and wouldn’t do his assignments. Once he went back on a hybrid schedule in spring 2021, he started doing well again, Williams said.

“I wish we’d been in person earlier,” she said. “Other schools seemed to be doing it successfully.”

Officials were divided in Chicago. The city Department of Public Health advocated reopening schools months earlier, in the fall of 2020. The commissioner, Dr. Allison Arwady, said they felt the risk of missing education was higher than the risk of COVID-19. Others, such as the director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University, advocated for staying remote.

“I think the answer on that has been settled fairly clearly, especially once we had vaccines available,” Arwady said. “I’m concerned about the loss that has occurred.”

FILE – Audra Quisenberry, right, whispers in the ear of her classmate, Logan Bowhay, both 6, as they wait to meet other schoolmates via online Zoom, at Premier Martial Arts, Aug. 24, 2020, in Wildwood, Mo. (Jeff Roberson/AP File)

From March 2020 to June 2021, the average student in Chicago lost 21 weeks of learning in reading and 20 weeks in math, equivalent to missing half a year of school, according to Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, which analyzed data from a widely used test called MAP to estimate learning loss for every U.S. school district.

Nationally, kids whose schools met mostly online in the 2020-2021 school year performed 13 percentage points lower in math and 8 percentage points lower in reading compared with schools meeting mostly in person, according to a 2022 study by Brown University economist Emily Oster.

The setbacks have some grappling with regret.

“I can’t imagine a situation where we would close schools again, unless there’s a virus attacking kids,” said Eric Conti, superintendent for Burlington, Massachusetts, a 3,400-student district outside Boston. His students alternated between online and in-person learning from the fall of 2020 until the next spring. “It’s going to be a very high bar.”

Dallas Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde initially disagreed with the Texas governor’s push to reopen schools in the fall of 2020. “But it was absolutely the right thing to do,” she said.

Some school officials said they lacked the expertise to decide whether it was safe to open schools.

“Schools should never have been placed in a situation where we have choice,” said Tony Wold, former associate superintendent of West Contra Costa Unified School District, east of San Francisco. “With lessons learned, when you have a public health pandemic, there needs to be a single voice.”

Still, many school officials said with hindsight they’d make the same decision to keep schools online well into 2021. Only two superintendents said they’d likely make a different decision if there were another pandemic that was not particularly dangerous to children.

In some communities, demographics and the historic underinvestment in schools loomed large, superintendents said. In the South, Black Americans’ fear of the virus was sometimes coupled with mistrust of schools rooted in segregation. Cities from Atlanta to Nashville to Jackson, Mississippi, shuttered schools — in some cases, for nearly all of the 2020-2021 school year.

In Clayton County, Georgia, home to the state’s highest percentage of Black residents, schools chief Morcease Beasley said he knew closing schools would have a devastating impact, but the fear in his community was overwhelming.

“I knew teachers couldn’t teach if they were that scared, and students couldn’t learn,” he said.

Rhode Island was an outlier among liberal-leaning coastal states when it ordered schools to reopen in person in the fall of 2020. “We can’t do this to our kids,” state education chief Angélica Infante-Green remembers thinking after watching students turn off cameras or log in from under blankets in bed. “This is not OK.”

But in the predominantly Latino and Black Rhode Island community of Central Falls, more than three-quarters of students stayed home to study remotely.

To address parent distrust, officials tracked COVID-19 cases among school-aged Central Falls residents. They met with families to show them the kids catching the virus were in remote learning — and they weren’t learning as much as students in school. It worked.

Among teachers, there’s some dispute about online learning’s impact on children. But many fear some students will be scarred for years.

“Should we have reopened earlier? Absolutely,” said California teacher Sarah Curry. She initially favored school closings in her rural Central Valley district, but grew frustrated with the duration of distance learning. She taught pre-kindergarten and found it impossible to maintain attention spans online.

One of her biggest regrets: that teachers who wanted to return to classrooms had little choice in the matter.

But the nation’s 3 million public school teachers are far from a monolith. Many lost loved ones to COVID-19, battled mental health challenges of their own or feared catching the virus.

Jessica Cross, who taught ninth grade math on Chicago’s west side at Phoenix Military Academy, feels her school reopened too soon.

“I didn’t feel entirely safe,” she said. Mask rules were good in theory, but not all students wore them properly. She said safety should come before academics.

“Ultimately, I still feel that remote learning was really the only thing to do,” Cross said.

A representative from the American Federation of Teachers declined in an interview to address whether the union regrets the positions teachers took against reopening schools.

“If we start to play the blame game,” said Fedrick Ingram, AFT’s secretary-treasurer, “we get into the political fray of trying to determine if teachers did a good job or not. And I don’t think that’s fair.”

Regrets or no, experts agree: America’s kids need more from adults if they’re going to be made whole.

The country needs “ideally, a reinvention of public education as we know it,” Los Angeles Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. Students need more days in school and smaller classes.

Short of extending the school year, experts say intensive tutoring is the most efficient way to help students catch up. Saturday school or doubling up on math or reading during a regular school day would also help.

Too few school districts have made those investments, Harvard economist Tom Kane said. Summer school is insufficient, Kane says — it’s voluntary, and many parents don’t sign up.

Adding school time for students is politically impossible in many cities. In Los Angeles, the teachers union filed a complaint after the district scheduled four optional school days for students to recoup learning. The school board in Richmond rejected a move to an all-year school calendar.

There are exceptions: Atlanta extended the school day 30 minutes for three years. Hopewell Schools in Virginia moved to year-round schooling last year.

Even the federal government’s record education spending isn’t enough for the scope of kids’ academic setbacks, according to the American Educational Research Association. Researchers there estimate it will cost $700 billion to offset learning loss for America’s schoolchildren – more than three times the $190 billion allocated to schools.

“We need something on the scale of the Marshall Plan for education,” said Kamras, the Richmond superintendent. “Anything short of that and we’re going to see this blip in outcomes become permanent for a generation of children — and that would be criminal.”

___

Gecker reported from San Francisco. Collin Binkley in Washington, D.C., Sharon Lurye in New Orleans, Arleigh Rodgers in Indianapolis, Claire Savage in Chicago and Brooke Schultz in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

___

Rodgers, Savage and Schultz are corps members for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

___

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – A new permanent supportive housing for young adults is open in San Francisco’s Mission District. It’s located at the Eula Hotel, where a community organization will also provide on-site social services to help tenants get back on their feet.

The doors at the Eula Hotel on 16th Street are officially open and are now home to 25 young adults aged 18-24 transitioning out of homelessness.

San Jose encampment cleanup creates new problems

“The building will have on-site staff, professional property management from Dolores Street Community Services and on-site social services provided by Larkin Street Youth Services,” said a Casa Esperanza representative.

Casa Esperanza is the program behind this new permanent supportive housing, and it’s part of a multi-year plan to prevent youth homelessness, especially in hard-hit communities.

“Black and brown communities are disproportionately represented among people experiencing homelessness as a result of social, political and economic inequities that create pathways to homelessness,” said a Casa Esperanza representative.

In the last year, San Francisco acquired other buildings, like the Mission Inn, for youth housing. Mayor London Breed says this work has created 400 new housing and shelter placements over the last two years.

“We have seen, in this city, a reduction in youth homelessness by 16%,” Breed said.

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Mayor Breed aims to reduce youth homelessness in the city by 50 percent. The city, with the help of private partnerships, is also expanding rental and employment assistance for young adults.

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The urgent need for more supportive housing in San Francisco is only a fraction of the challenge the city faces in helping unoccupied residents find shelter.

Preventing eviction and re-entry into homelessness is an entirely different obstacle.

The issue is increasingly preoccupying those tasked with reducing homelessness in San Francisco as the local population ages. Now The City is expanding a small pilot program called Collaborative Caregiver Support Teams that aims to accommodate formerly homeless adults.

“One of the biggest challenges facing providers of permanent supportive housing is habitability,” said Kelly Dearman, executive director of the Department of Disability and Aging Services. “We see a growing need to support displaced and formerly homeless San Francisco residents who are grappling with issues that put their homes at risk.”

The pilot started in November at Minna Lee, a one-bedroom building and permanent residential property in the South of Market neighborhood. Starting this month, it will become an additional permanent residential location and a third is planned for January with the goal of reaching 1,000 customers.

The idea behind the new program is to connect older, formerly homeless adults who are at risk of losing their home faster with carers who can help with everyday needs and help maintain clean living space, which is often a reason for Eviction is when individuals are fighting units to maintain themselves.

Currently, approximately 30% of the city’s approximately 8,000 residents in permanent care accommodation are receiving home support services, according to the San Francisco Human Services Agency.

The pilot is still in its infancy, but is already having an impact on residents like James Lucas, 57, who used to be homeless and now lives at Minna Lee.

James was threatened with eviction when the care team answered. He was initially skeptical of the help he might get, but agreed to sign up for the program and told the Examiner he was relieved to have help cleaning his unit so he could pass the inspection. Now, Lucas’s care team members meet with him regularly to keep his unit clean.

Enrolling in the services offered by the city’s Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department (HSH) and the Human Services Agency (SFHSA) is entirely voluntary. But that can be an incredibly difficult decision for people who have made it far on their own or have had negative experiences with health and social services.

James Lucas, a resident of The Minna Lee, has been threatened with eviction and has received help through the nursing program to keep his unit clean. (Craig Lee / The Examiner)

Lucas has seen some of the best and worst parts of San Francisco since moving to The City in 1978, and he remembers the tumultuous year that former supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were both murdered. But his vision has started to fade lately, making even small daily tasks more difficult.

“It makes it easier for me to just function, you know?” Lucas said of his previous experience with the program. “Somebody calls me and says, ‘Look, you know you have an appointment.’ I know it’s my job, it’s my responsibility. When people do that and help you, it inspires you to do the right thing first. “

More than just a roof

At the beginning of the pandemic, San Francisco opened 25 “Shelter in Place” or SIP hotels for the homeless. When it quickly became clear that some guests needed more care, The City responded by providing support services to residents of SIP hotels at home.

The success of providing these home care services in the SIP hotels was a driver for the new program that is now starting in Minna Lee, say the organizers.

“This partnership has been very successful in providing additional services to the people needed for stabilization. This is one of the lessons of the SIP hotel program that HSH is looking to bring to its larger housing portfolio, ”said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing in San Francisco.

As San Francisco officials advance a controversial plan to relocate all SIP hotel guests to permanent accommodation, care teams seek to alleviate the difficulties and trauma that can come with re-admitting and moving.

Dorm room at Minna Lee. According to the San Francisco Human Services Agency, approximately 30% of The City’s approximately 8,000 residents in permanent care accommodation receive home support services. (Craig Lee / The Examiner)

So far, nearly 1,346 people are still living in the shelters, according to San Francisco data, and 2,380 have been relocated to permanent supportive shelters.

Those who work at the SIP hotels and supportive shelters hope the program provides a safer experience for those in the midst of San Francisco’s political debates on homelessness.

“Compared to my other cases, I know who to turn to when a customer needs help much faster,” says Jatzel Martinez, home support caregiver at Minna Lee.

From an organizational perspective, the team approach has given caregivers the simple but powerful tool of having a coordinated place to turn to when needs arise or change, Martinez said.

In many cases, residential solutions still come too little and too late. A recent pilot project in Santa Clara to provide permanent housing support found “extremely high mortality rates” even in those who were successfully housed. Out of 423 participants, including some who were not housed, around 70 died.

Residents like Ron Brannock, who moved to Minna Lee after living at Hotel Witcomb on Market and 8th Street, one of the SIP hotels, have witnessed the brutal realities firsthand. Emergency shelters and other temporary housing are not lacking in problems, he said. Days and nights can be noisy, sometimes there is fighting on the sidewalk, and the overall habitability in some SROs can be terrible.

For example, a group of 21 tenants of the Granada Hotel, an SRO in the Tenderloin, is now suing the property’s owner and property manager for abuse of the elderly, eviction among others.

But Brannock believes that things can be done better.

“This is a great place. Every Monday they make a pantry. And every other week they make hygiene kits. I came here with nothing and now I have a flat screen TV, a saucepan, and a refrigerator, all because of them, ”Brannock said. “I can have peace of mind knowing that I won’t wake up in the rain or that you aren’t sleeping outside somewhere.”

sjohnson@sfexaminer.com

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When designer Noz Nozawa was hired five years ago by a couple with two young children – and a new baby – to upgrade a few rooms in their 100-year-old, three-story home in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond, she had no idea how long the relationship would last.

“In the beginning, in 2016 – around the holidays – they hired me to redecorate different parts of their new home,” recalls Nozawa. “It was very early in my design career and they had never worked with an interior designer before.” The initial scope of work included refurbishing a formal living room that served as a “glorified storage space filled with boxes and nutcrackers” and converting the dining room into a versatile, inviting hangout.

Colin Price

The project wasn’t complicated, but it laid the foundation for something all designers hope for: regular customers. “It was a bigger home than the one they moved out of [phase one] The budget was pretty modest, ”she explains. “It made more sense for them to invest in nicer pieces and bigger construction once the kids were a little older, so they planned to do design work and renovations within a few years.”

Nozawa’s commitment to the small design job has paid off. “We kept in touch and I would repeat small rooms as the kids got older,” she says. “Then in 2019 we started the process of the major renovation that involved a lot of structural work – opening up all of the walls in the main living area, moving walls up, and relocating a bathroom to create a really fantastic kid’s bathroom. ”

Colin Price

For the San Francisco-based designer, there were two main challenges. The first was to make sure the work she was going to do was in line with her previous redesign. “Her tastes had changed a bit, so it was important that any new things we did relate to what we’d done before,” she explains. Second, tearing down walls in the family’s main living space would require considerable thought. “We needed these four quadrants of a large square – the dining room, the kitchen, the media room, and the formal living room – to feel cohesive.”

After completing the project earlier this year, the designer finds she has a little more time to spare – that is, until the client’s daughter turns a teenager and asks for a complete bedroom renovation. Before that happens, let’s take a look at this stylish, family-friendly makeover.

Formal living room

Colin Price

This colorful and comfortable space was once home to unpacked boxes and tons of Christmas decorations and is now used for the entertainment of friends and family. Colour: Middlebury, Benjamin Moore. Carpet: Surya archive. Tufted ottoman: Custom. Stool: Blu Dot. Chandelier: Arteriors.

Media room and living room

Colin Price

By tearing down walls in this main living room, a light-flooded open floor plan was created that allows the family to interact with each other or find quiet spaces for themselves. In the media room: Section: West Elm. Carpet: Flower. Coffee table: Accommodation Catering. Side tables: CB2. Lighting: Arteriors. In the living room: Carpet: Anthropology. Accent chairs: Four hands. Love place: Items. Coffee table: Customers own.

dining room

Colin Price

A custom made ping pong dining table gives this family a competitive edge when it comes to mealtime. To further connect the individual rooms of this new open concept floor plan, Nozawa used a range of blue and brown accents. Carpet: Carpets USA. Table tennis dining table: Venture shuffleboard. Vintage dining chairs: Midcentury furniture. Leather armchair: Him. Chandelier: Lights.com.

kitchen

Colin Price

With its updated mid-century aesthetic, this blue and white kitchen is one of the family’s favorite spots. Backsplash: Fireclay tiles. Pendant: Arteriors. Faucets: Brizo. Sink: White. Shaker cabinets: Custom. Hardware: Rejuvenation.

Powder room

Nozawa worked with decorator Caroline Lizarraga to create a custom template set for the walls of this room. “It’s a minimalist, toned-down urban building with San Francisco attractions including AT&T Park, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Transamerica Pyramid.” Sink: Charcoal burner. Water tap: Fly. Wainscot tile: Fireclay tiles. Shaker vanity: Custom. Pendant: Cedar & moss. Hardware: Rejuvenation.

Boys bedroom

Colin Price

It’s twice as much fun for two young brothers in this spacious and inspiring bedroom. Background: Rebel walls. Beds: Ceramic barn children. Dresser, Nightstands, and Bedside lamp: Crate & barrel. Carpet: Robust. Pendleton woven cushions: CB2. Roman shades: The shadow shop.

Children’s bathroom

Colin Price

Colin Price

By moving an existing bathroom upstairs, the homeowner’s three children were able to create more breathing space to prepare for school and prepare for bed. Shaker vanity: Custom. Hardware: Rejuvenation. Floor: Fireclay tiles. Shower walls and Tub tile: Ann Sacks. Tub: Charcoal burner. Wall lamps: West Elm. Mirror: Children’s modern.

Middlebury Brown

Benjamin Moore
benjaminmoore.com

$ 8.84

Zanadoo large chandelier

arteriorshome.com

$ 3,795.00

Andes 3-piece chaise sectional

16-light chrome Sputnik chandelier

chrome
light.com

$ 129.99

Blue Moroccan carpet indoors and outdoors

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Garima Vyas always wanted to live in a big city. She thought of New York, long the destination for 20-year-olds, but was well aware of the cost and complicated subway lines.

So Vyas chose another metropolis that is increasingly becoming the next best option for young people – Houston.

Vyas, 34, a technician, has lived in Houston since 2013. “I knew I didn’t like New York so this was the next best thing,” said Vyas. “There are a lot of things you want to try when you are younger – you want to try new things. Houston gives you that whether it’s food, people, or dating. And it’s cheap to live in. “

The choices made by Vyas and other members of the millennial generation about where to live have changed the country’s political geography over the past decade. You’ve left New York and California and settled in places where TV sitcoms are less likely with around 20 city dwellers, including Denver, Houston, and Orlando, Florida. Attracted by jobs and overlooked by cultural conveniences, they have helped add new craft breweries, condominiums, and liberal voters to these again-conservative places.

The US Census Bureau is expected to formally account for this change next week by disclosing the number of population shifts in the once-a-decade reassignment of Congressional seats. The sun belt is expected to receive seating at the expense of the states in the north.

In most projections, Texas gets three seats, Florida two, and Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon one each. Seats in Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and California are expected to be lost.

The moves have reshuffled politics. Once solidly conservative places like Texas have seen ever larger islands of liberalism in their cities, fueled by the migration of younger adults who are democratic. Since 2010, the 20- to 34-year-old population has grown 24% in San Antonio, 22% in Austin, and 19% in Houston. This comes from an Associated Press analysis of the American Community Survey data. In the November elections, two states that have grown rapidly in their largest cities – Arizona and Georgia – turned the Democrats upside down in the presidential contest.

Even if the population increase in Arizona over the past decade is one of the fastest growing states, with 7.1 million inhabitants, especially in the Phoenix area shown here, the increase was not enough to give the state a 10th congressional seat announced by Congress enter Census Bureau Monday April 26, 2021. (AP Photo / Ross D. Franklin)

These demographic winners are almost all in the sun belt, but climate isn’t the only thing they have in common.

“These places are growing not just because they’re warmer, but because that’s where the jobs are and the young people are moving there,” said Ryan Wiechelt, professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

There are other drivers of population growth, such as overseas immigration and births. But as foreign immigration subsided over the decade, and then collapsed during the pandemic, internal relocations have become an increasingly large factor in the country’s reorganization, say demographers.

Places with jobs have long attracted transplants, but that shift was different because house prices in previous employment clusters – such as Boston, New York, and Silicon Valley – rose so much that the cost of living became an increasingly important factor in relocations. said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for Redfin.

“Since the last real estate crisis, young millennials have had to move to places with really strong job markets,” Fairweather said. “Now, during the pandemic, I think that’s changing – you don’t have to move to San Francisco if you want a job in engineering.”

Many young people still move to traditional destinations like New York and California for careers, experts say. You are now just leaving them relatively quickly and have a wider range of alternative job centers to choose from. “Every year these places attract a lot of young people, but they lose more,” said William Frey, demographer at Brookings Institute, of traditional seaside magnets, joking that his hometown of Washington, DC, “rents” young people.

Instead, places with cheaper housing, growing economies, and recreational facilities have become popular. Colorado was the third most popular place for young adults to move to since 2015. According to Frey’s analysis of early census data, more than 20,000 new young adults were recruited from other countries each year. The state has seen a boom in the past decade as its libertarian lifestyle, outdoor attractions, and growing knowledge-based economy have attracted young people from across the country.

As a result, the Denver skyline is regularly littered with construction cranes. Apartment complexes are created from parking spaces. Because when these tenants have children and want to buy houses, waves of new subdivisions arise in the shadow of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

With most graduate transplants relocated to Denver and the satellite communities, Colorado has grown from a solid Republican state to a competitive swing state to a solid democratic state. It’s a pattern that some policy experts expect could be repeated in other states that import loads of young people, even traditionally conservative Texas.

In this April 23, 2021 photo taken, Sydney Kramer, a graduate student at the University of Colorado, poses for a photo on campus in Boulder, Colorado. Kramer is typical of many newcomers to Colorado. The 23-year-old moved to the university town of Boulder in January to begin studying atmospheric and ocean sciences. She could have stayed in Miami, a natural place for someone who interests her and where she completed her undergraduate degree. But Kramer was depressed by Florida’s anti-science turnaround under the control of the republican state. (AP Photo / David Zalubowski)

Sydney Kramer is typical of many newcomers to Colorado. The 23-year-old moved to the university town of Boulder in January to begin studying atmospheric and ocean sciences. She could have stayed in Miami, a natural place for someone who interests her and where she completed her undergraduate degree. But Kramer was depressed by Florida’s anti-science turnaround under the control of the republican state.

“The government and politics haven’t necessarily caught up there yet,” Kramer said of Florida, noting that state regulations prohibited the use of the term “climate change” in some of the previous governor’s official documents. “Everyone here has a high level of education and is really informed about climate change.”

“This,” she said of Boulder, with its abundance of environmental and forecasting organizations, “is just a great place for my industry.”

The New Jersey native, who didn’t want to grapple with the high rents in New York City, was impressed with the excitement of her new neighbors talking about hiking, camping, and skiing, and the combination of outdoor activities and urban amenities the area has to offer . “It’s a really wonderful place for anything you can get for the cost of living,” she said.

Riccardi reported from Denver and Schneider from Orlando, Florida.

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According to the city’s biennial survey of the homeless, 1,091 18- to 24-year-olds were homeless in San Francisco every night in 2019. That’s nearly 14% of the city’s total homeless population.

Of the young people who were homeless, around 83% spent their nights outdoors, in tents, cars or mobile homes.

While 15% of the population in San Francisco are Latinx, the survey shows that 27% of homeless youth identify as such. Similarly, 24% of all homeless youth were found to be black, although black residents make up less than 6% of the city’s total population.

The survey also found that nearly half of all homeless youth were identified as LGBTQ.

The new navigation center “prioritizes improving outcomes for the city’s most vulnerable youth,” Abigail Stewart-Kahn, interim director of the San Francisco Department of Homeless and Supportive Housing, said in a statement.

The new navigation center will open for up to 43 young adults from next week.

The 3rd Street Youth Center & Clinic will manage the new navigation center, provide health services, and help with access to public benefits, mentoring, paid professional training, and housing assistance. The non-profit success centers also help guests complete or continue their training and find and keep employment.

Both are black-run organizations.

“It’s just different,” said Joi Jackson-Morgan, executive director of 3rd Street Youth. “We hope that we can give these services a cultural aspect that will help people of color, and especially blacks, to get on the right track.”

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