For four months last year, Jessica Hassen-Whitson, 45, was a prisoner in her home, a permanent supportive housing unit in a hotel on Turk Street in San Francisco assigned by the city’s homelessness department. The elevator and doorways were too narrow for her plus-size wheelchair and she couldn’t get over the unit’s front steps. Her partner, Jason Davis, 33, had broken his leg and could no longer carry her. 

During that time, she left the apartment only twice, for doctor’s appointments. Since she couldn’t step into the bathtub, she took sponge baths. As the weeks dragged on, Hassen-Whitson grew increasingly depressed. 

“It was a nightmare,” she said. “I was ready to have a nervous breakdown.” 

Hassen-Whitson needed a wheelchair-accessible unit. Instead, she twice got housing that was unusable for her, despite having a doctor’s letter on file and qualifying as a high priority candidate for support. 

She is one of many homeless San Francisco residents who can’t get the services they need — and are entitled to — because of breakdowns in the city’s system for allotting housing and other support services. 

Known as Coordinated Entry, the adult system was ushered in five years ago with a bold promise: to streamline the pathway to housing for those suffering the most on the street, and to tailor services to their needs. The program, which has served more than 49,000 unhoused people, has largely failed to deliver. 

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Rather than accelerate the process, it has added bureaucracy and reduced visibility, say homeless service providers, who described the program as a black box. Unhoused residents bear the consequences. Many find the process confusing and stressful. Others face long waits that, in extreme cases, last years. Limited housing stock and a disorganized database make bad housing matches commonplace. People involved with the system have known about these problems for years, but they remain unsolved. Most unhoused people who go through the system stay homeless. 

“Has it accomplished what it was supposed to? I would say resoundingly no,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “It did the opposite.” 

On average, it takes a homeless San Franciscan about 330 days to move into housing from the day the person applies, according to data from this fiscal year in the city’s homeless records system, provided to the Chronicle by a nonprofit service provider that contracts with the city. A spokesperson for the city’s Homelessness and Supportive Housing department said the agency calculates wait time as the period between being put on a wait-list and housing placement, which this fiscal year has averaged 154 days. 

Coordinated entry is mandated by the federal government, which provided the city’s homelessness agency more than $53 million in federal funds last fiscal year. However, San Francisco designs its own system within federal parameters. 

Some homeless service workers tempered their criticism with acknowledgement that the system is still young and that reforms are in the works. The city’s homelessness department has assembled a redesign working group that includes nonprofit homeless service workers, including system critics interviewed for this story. Still, they worry the problem is urgent and solutions are not coming fast enough. 

More than a half dozen others who spoke with the Chronicle requested anonymity because they feared endangering their organization’s working relationship with the city. 

Case workers say the new system, which uses an algorithm to calculate housing eligibility, is more complicated and impenetrable than the old one, where a referral was a matter of a phone call between people plugged into the ecosystem. 

Housing someone requires consideration of their needs, the providers say. Someone who uses a wheelchair will need a building with an elevator, for instance. But often, they don’t get one. 

Jessica Hassen-Whitson and her partner, Jason Davis, have fought to get housing that meets their basic needs through the city’s coordinated entry system. 

Courtesy of Jessica Hassen-Whitson

For Hassen-Whitson, it has happened repeatedly. She resisted moving into the Gotham Hotel apartment that couldn’t accommodate her wheelchair, but she said her housing navigator at the city-contracted nonprofit Episcopal Community Services pressured her to accept it. The shelter-in-place hotel she lived in was closing and there wasn’t other housing available. It was that unit, or a group shelter, she recalled the case worker telling her. 

According to city policy, coordinated entry applicants are entitled to three housing offers, but Hassen-Whitson only got one. She didn’t want to go to a shelter and she had received assurances that the city would relocate her to suitable housing, so she took it. 

“We don’t have enough resources for everybody, which is really heartbreaking,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “With something as basic as housing, we should be able to say to people who are homeless, ‘We may not have the resources you need right now, but we will have that for you, and we will be working with you on your housing plan all along on the way.’ And it hasn’t been like that in the past.” 

Episcopal Community Services declined to comment, citing client confidentiality. 

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Prior to coordinated entry, case workers drew on their nuanced knowledge of clients’ needs to match them with available units. Now two teams at the city’s homelessness department — coordinated entry and housing — handle that work without input from the case workers. The change was supposed to remove case workers’ personal opinions from the equation and distribute housing more equitably, according to the agency. 

But too often the department offers homeless applicants housing options that don’t meet their needs and more community input would in fact make for better matches, said a longtime service provider, who spoke anonymously out of fear of reprisal. 

Technology shortcomings worsen the problem. The city’s data system that keeps information about homeless people can’t pull health information from enough administrative systems. That means homelessness department workers can’t always see crucial information such as the need for a private bathroom due to sexual assault trauma or the need for wheelchair access that could help them allocate services. 

The city is aware of its data mismanagement, but it said sometimes a poor match is the only one available. 

“Mismatches happen, which is why we’re taking the time to really get the right people in the room to discuss how to have an inclusive system,” said McSpadden. “There’s an ebb and flow to this whole system and that’s what we have to work with.” 

Jessica Hassen-Whitson still does not live in an apartment where she can bathe herself without assistance because the bathtub is not wheelchair-accessible.

Courtesy of Jessica Hassen-Whitson

San Francisco is building a new records system, modeled off a pandemic pilot, to integrate cross-departmental health information. The upgrades will draw from state dollars and may launch in about a year, according to the city’s homelessness agency. The effort is part of a broader push to integrate the city’s many disparate databases. 

Improvements in technology and data systems are helpful, but they only work in conjunction with reducing documentation requirements, increases in affordable housing stock, incentives for landlord participation, and policy improvements, according to Gabi Remz, Assistant Director of Research and Writing at the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab. 

For now,  Hassen-Whitson has settled for getting most of her needs met. Last December, she finally moved to a newly-constructed apartment in Mission Bay. After going months without an update on her transfer date, she got a text message from her case worker the night of Dec. 29 notifying her the move would happen Dec. 31, according to a complaint she filed with the city. When she arrived at the new building, no one was aware she needed a wheelchair accessible unit and told her there were none left. 

Hassen-Whitson took an available unit anyway. It was comfortable enough. The doorways and elevators were wide enough for her wheelchair. She was also tired of fighting. She and Davis settled in, covering the fridge with anime stickers and hanging gothic decorations on the walls.

To this day, she still doesn’t live in an apartment where she can bathe herself. 

Reach Audrey Brown: audrey.brown@sfchronicle.com

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• In this essay, Lisa Grotts describes leaving San Francisco after loving it for years.
• The crime and disorder she saw made it difficult to live there and makes it difficult to visit now.
• She never imagined leaving town, but she has no regrets about the move.

This essay is based on a conversation with Lisa Mirza Grotts, 60, a former San Francisco resident who now lives in Healdsburg, California. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to San Francisco in 1984. My husband and I loved our town for many years, but in November 2021 we sold our home and moved 70 miles away to Healdsburg, California.

I never thought I would leave the city, but for us it’s a simpler lifestyle. We can spread; We grow our own vegetables.

Nor do we have to worry about the problems developing in the city: thefts, tent cities for the homeless and drugs on the streets.

San Francisco has changed a lot

Lisa Mirza Grotts said she never expected to leave San Francisco. Courtesy of Lisa Grotts

San Francisco has been going downhill for years, even before COVID-19. But in recent years lawlessness and disorder seem to have taken over. It has become a city where anything is possible – but not in a carefree way.

Chain pharmacies in San Francisco have closed because they are losing money. A Whole Foods on a main street just closed. Nordstrom and Williams-Sonoma also just pulled out.

A big problem was Proposition 47, a 2014 law that recategorized nonviolent crimes and raised the threshold for shoplifting.

I worked in San Francisco politics for many years, including for a city manager and as protocol director for former Mayor Willie Brown. So not only was I based there, but I was there to see how things work.

The clutter made it difficult to live there – and makes it difficult to travel there now

The city feels broken because it seems like there are no consequences for anything.

I recently walked into a large clothing store and saw a couple walking around wearing down coats stuffed with clothes. As they left, all the security bells and whistles blew, and I said to the guard, “You just let them walk free?” He said, “I hate this town.”

A tent city in San Francisco in the former Grotts neighborhood. Courtesy of Lisa Grotts

Before we moved away, my husband and I walked into a safeway one night and saw two guys with switchblades. In the park across from our house, someone died of a drug overdose. In Union Square, San Francisco’s shopper’s paradise, some stores give out brown paper bags to cover grocery bags to prevent robbery. I stopped wearing my engagement ring openly.

We finally decided that we couldn’t do it anymore. I can think of 20 other families who also left the Bay Area.

I never thought I’d ever leave town, but I’m comfortable in my new world

Healdsburg is a small town of about 11,000 in wine country. It’s very trademark. We don’t have to worry about our cars being broken into. I don’t miss that, nor the traffic.

I now work as an etiquette expert and can zoom in with my clients from anywhere. My husband works as a general manager and either meets his customers virtually or travels to them.

Now that I’m not a San Francisco taxpayer, I don’t have to complain about what’s going on. I can come into town to meet friends or go to dinner and we’re back home in Healdsburg to catch the 10pm news.

I’m enjoying my former city a lot more now – because I can return home.

Have you recently left San Francisco? Or do you have a moving story to tell? Email Lauryn Haas at lhaas@insider.com.

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The post I Left San Francisco As a result of It Feels Damaged and Disorderly appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Hoover Institution member and conservative author Shelby Steele became a victim of the San Francisco crime crisis when his car was broken into and burgled on Wednesday.

The burglary happened around 11 a.m. on Hyde Street and Lombard Street in the Russian Hill neighborhood. Steele’s son Eli said on Twitter that they walked just 10 minutes from the vehicle before it was broken into.

Pictures posted by Eli show his father gazing solemnly at the broken windows of their rental car. Eli estimated that they lost between $25,000 and $30,000 worth of equipment, not counting damage to the vehicle. The couple had been filming a documentary about San Francisco at the time.

Eli also claimed he was hung up on twice by 911 when reporting the crime.

San Francisco’s crime problem runs deeper than the city’s Rose statistic, says an expert

Eli estimated that they lost between $25,000 and $30,000 worth of equipment, not counting the damage to the car.

“The SF police are doing nothing,” Eli wrote on Twitter. “It’s so bad my friend is calling gang members for help.”

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

When Eli arrived at the police station, he reportedly encountered more auto theft victims. He said he saw suspects checking cars in front of the train station until onlookers chased them away.

“We yelled at them. They pointed a gun at my friend,” Eli wrote on Twitter. “He is now submitting his report. Not a single police officer showed up.”

“People ask where that is. Up on famous Lombard Street,” Eli added. “One of the wealthiest neighborhoods in SF and America. I worked in dangerous neighborhoods for years and nothing like it.”

Twitter CTO Elon Musk responded to Steele’s tweet, telling him that Twitter employees in San Francisco were facing similar crimes.

ONLY 17% OF TRANSIT DRIVERS IN SAN FRANCISCO FEEL SAFE ON BOARD DURING THE CRIME CRISIS, 73% WANT MORE POLICE: SURVEY

“Many Twitter employees are feeling unsafe coming into downtown SF for work and their car windows have been smashed,” Musk wrote. “Also, they got so little reaction from the police that they hardly bother to report crimes because nothing happens.”

The story goes on

San Francisco Republican Party leader John Dennis told Fox News Digital he was “sad but not surprised” by the situation.

“The Steeles interviewed me in my yard for almost two hours yesterday for an upcoming documentary,” Dennis explained. “Sometime after I left my home, thieves showed the Steeles what San Francisco is about these days — victimizing decent, hard-working people.”

Pictures posted by Eli show his father looking solemnly at the damaged windows of their rental car.

“San Francisco is run by incompetents. Shelby and Eli Steele learned that straight away. It hurts to say that about the place I love to live in.” [in]but stay away from San Francisco until crime is curbed,” the statement continued.

The San Francisco Police Department told Fox News Digital they are currently investigating the crime.

“Officials have documented this incident,” said a spokesman. “No arrests were made. This is an active and ongoing investigation.”

The post Creator Shelby Steele’s automobile damaged into in San Francisco, $30K price of digital camera gear stolen appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Anthony Womack says he reeled with emotion after his ice cream shop in Bayview was broken into twice that same morning.

Womack told The Standard that he woke up on Friday morning and was told by a clerk that the What’s The Scoop store had been searched and all stock had been confiscated. Also, when the clerk arrived at around 10:45 am to open at 11:00 am, she found that the cash register and point-of-sale terminal were missing

Reviewing the store’s security footage confirmed Womack’s worst fears and more.

“Unfortunately, it happened twice on the same day, between 3am and 3:40am. The burglars were here about 40 minutes and just loaded up their car, lots of stuff,” he said. “Since the first group broke in and left the door unlocked, the second group marched right in and took what they wanted because no one was there yet.”

The black-owned, music-inspired ice cream parlor opened in November 2022.

Womack estimates his losses at around $12,000 to $13,000, excluding the loss of revenue from the weekend shutdown. It plans to reopen Tuesday after the cleanup.

Anthony Womack, owner of What’s The Scoop ice cream shop, poses in front of the store. | Camille Cohen/The Standard

“The part that kind of hurts the most [is the] POS system and our register, because there was about $500 in the register. The first group took the cash drawer where all the money was.

The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication. As of June 4 this year, residents reported 178 burglaries to police in Bayview, according to the ministry. That’s a nearly 30% drop from the same period in 2022, when police documented 251 burglaries.

“Scoop ice cream with your hands”

Surveillance video: still of a woman scooping ice cream with her hands after allegedly breaking into the store in June 2023. | Image courtesy

The suspect, who arrived at 10 a.m., may have taken over $2,000 worth of equipment but wasn’t done yet.

“Then she treated herself to some ice cream, too,” Womack said. “That’s the part that really hurt us because she was scooping ice cream with her hands. I’m really proud of the cleanliness of our store and the integrity of our ice cream.”

Womack was forced to discard about 24 gallons of ice that may have been contaminated from the unsanitary hand scooping.

“Some of these were really brand new and full, and some were halfway through,” Womack said. “It was just thousands of dollars wasted right there. I’ve replenished our supplies and things like that, but by and large that’s how I spent the weekend.”

Security still image shows an alleged burglary at What’s the Scoop ice cream parlor in Bayview in early June 2023. | Image courtesy

A Bayview native, Womack grew up near the store’s Third Street and Armstrong Avenues and believes the burglaries were a personal attack.

“Who would do such a thing?” he asked. “I think it’s a personal attack because everyone who comes here knows me. I grew up around here.”

Womack even wondered if he should keep the store open at all or move to another location.

“Every day, I take it day by day and I take a few nice moments throughout the day,” he said. “But there are a lot of bad moments that I feel outweigh the good ones.”

Ice Cream Social

Anthony Womack (center), owner of What’s The Scoop ice cream shop, cuts the ribbon at the grand opening at 5668 Third St. in Bayview on November 17, 2022. | Camille Cohen/The Standard

Womack has dealt with petty crime at his shop before – albeit in a gentle way, by asking two boys who tried to steal tips from his jar to return them before fulfilling their order.

“I tried to use it as a lesson for him,” he said. “I grew up here. I feel like this is my community. I want to do it right the best I can.”

To that end, Womack is hosting an ice cream social to welcome the community back indoors and invites other business members to visit and promote their own ventures.

Stop by Saturday from 12pm to 7pm for treats like milkshakes, root beer floats, banana splits and freshly baked cookies, plus assorted flavors for just $2 a scoop.

What’s the scoop?

5668 Third St.

whatsthescoop415.com

The post San Francisco Ice Cream Store Damaged Into Twice in a Single Day appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

JOSH DUBOW, Associated Press

3 months ago

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo (center) is tackled by Miami Dolphins linebacker Jerome Baker (left) and linebacker Jaelan Phillips (15) during the first half of an NFL football game in Santa Clara, Calif. Sunday, December 4, 2022. dismissed (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — The San Francisco 49ers on Sunday lost quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to a season-ending left foot injury, dealing a major blow to one of the NFL’s top teams.

Garoppolo was injured in the opening drive of a 33-17 win over the Miami Dolphins and will undergo surgery that will sideline him for the remainder of the season.

“It’s pretty devastating. We know what Jimmy went through, how hard he worked at it,” said coach Kyle Shanahan after the game. “It was a really cool game, just being a team and all the things that happened during the game and just being able to overcome some things. So it’s a special win. But definitely mixed feelings when I heard from Jimmy.”

The first-place 49ers (8-4) have won five straight games to establish themselves as one of the top contenders in the NFC, but now have to go the rest of the way with untested rookie Brock Purdy after becoming starters Trey Lance lost in one season. End of ankle injury in week 2.

This is the third time Garoppolo has had an injury-related season since joining the 49ers mid-season in 2017. He went down in the third game of the 2018 season with a season-ending knee injury and missed eight games in 2020 with ankle injuries.

In Garoppolo’s two healthy seasons, the Niners went to the Super Bowl in 2019 and the NFC title game in 2021.

But his story led to the Niners trading three first-round picks to draw Lance third overall in 2021. Garoppolo kept his job last year but was expected to continue this season before an off-season shoulder surgery destroyed his trade market.

He ended up returning to San Francisco on a reduced contract to support Lance, but regained his role as a starter when Lance was injured. He played the best football of his career.

“It’s brutal,” said running back Christian McCaffrey. “I haven’t been here long, but I can’t say enough good things about him. I’ve been in that position before where you play and get excited and it all ends for the year. It hurts.”

Now the Niners will look to go the rest of the way with Purdy, who came to the league as Mr. Irrelevant after being made the final draft pick but now has the most important job on one of the league’s top teams .

The former Iowa State star had thrown just nine passes on cleanup duty in a Week 7 loss to Kansas City before quarterbacks coach Brian Griese told him he would be in the spotlight on Sunday.

“I feel like it was a little bit like that, the whole butterfly feeling of ‘man, let’s go in, let’s do this,'” Purdy said. “It wasn’t like I was out there shaking like, ‘Oh shoot, what am I supposed to do? What is my reading?’ None of them. Every week I pretend to be the starter. I prepare like I’m the starter. My name was called. Coach Griese said let’s roll.”

Purdy threw a touchdown pass and another to McCaffrey to Kyle Juszczyk on his first drive to cap a well-executed two-minute practice late at halftime.

He finished 25 for 37 for 210 yards with two TDs and an interception against an aggressive Miami defense that tried to throw him off balance with blitzes.

“Brock played a lot of football and you can tell,” said Juszczyk. “The way he’s playing the position, there’s a certain smartness about him. He understands. He has faith in him. I thought he did a really good job in the huddle today, just gaining everyone’s respect and getting the games in and out and delivering some confident passes out there. I think we can definitely still do something with Brock.”

Purdy joins a team composed of one of the league’s best defenses, led by Nick Bosa, who had three sacks on Sunday, and a strong group of playmakers led by McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk.

Purdy passed his first test, but it only gets tougher from here.

“We obviously have to clean up a few things, but just throw him into the heat of the moment with how much[Blitzen]this team has done,” Shanahan said. “I thought he did a damn good job and protected the ball well.”

___

AP NFL Coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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English

Building small homes in San Francisco comes with a huge price tag. And it’s not easy to get a straight answer from city officials as to why they cost so much.

Last week, a proposal to build 70 to 80 tiny homes in a gated Walgreens lot in the Mission was scrutinized by the San Francisco Chronicle as the project met strong opposition from neighbors.

In many ways, that’s to be expected: NIMBYs are a determined bunch, and Capp Street residents are already grappling with prostitution-related issues.

But it was the bill — the project is estimated to cost $7.4 million, or nearly $100,000 per unit — that made many question whether the city can be taken seriously in addressing two of its most pressing crises: homelessness and housing.

The parking lot behind 1979 Mission St., seen February 21, 2023, could serve as the site for 70 tiny homes. | Morgan Ellis/The Standard

The Standard submitted public record requests for detailed cost breakdowns of the Tiny House project — and the level of detail in the city’s responses ranged from napkin math to nonexistent.

The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) provided a three-page PowerPoint presentation interspersed with a mandatory cover page and a back page reading “Questions? Thanks” was something like context.

The estimate shows the difference between two proposed scenarios, the more expensive of which would require the demolition of a $1 million building to expand parking space for an additional 10 small homes. Meanwhile, the brief bullet points include a note stating that the calculations were based on a 70-unit small-house community at 33 Gough Street.

Compared to the Gough site, the projected cost per unit for the Mission project was 20% higher as the Department of Public Works increases labor, design, engineering and project maintenance costs, according to HSH.

Emily Cohen, a spokeswoman for HSH, said the whopping $7.4 million price tag was due to a “very robust program model that includes 24/7 staffing, case management, housing health, meals and security.”

She noted that the estimated cost “is a rough estimate and we anticipate the actual cost will be lower once Public Works has tendered the works.”

However, the PowerPoint presentation, with HSH Director Shireen McSpadden’s name on the cover, says the exact opposite: “We recently received an estimate from Public Works that puts the cost of capital even higher and includes several contingencies,” the document states .

A cost breakdown of a tiny home project in Mission provides few details. | Screenshot of a Department of Homelessness and Supported Housing budget

Pinning down the differing narratives between city offices proved impossible.

The Department of Public Works (DPW), which would oversee the actual work to build the Tiny House site, refused to provide its itemized cost breakdowns, citing an exemption from the state’s public records.

Rachel Gordon, a spokeswoman for DPW, said agency lawyers have ruled that releasing details could put companies at a competitive disadvantage if they don’t read the story before making bids. (Note: Thank you for reading the standard.)

DPW doesn’t typically get media inquiries for itemized cost breakdowns for projects, Gordon said, so even trying to find an estimated cost document was a unique exercise for the agency. She added that the Gough Street project had significant donations to cover costs, which is why these new homes cost only about $50,000 each — almost half the price of the Mission Street project.

Elizabeth Funk, executive director of DignityMoves, a nonprofit organization that helped oversee the Gough Street project and specializes in providing personal housing at a lower cost, confirmed that donations kept this project significantly lower than the city could afford internally.

Gensler donated approximately $640,000 towards the architectural design, while furniture, legal counsel and the general contractor’s fee were mostly volunteer, according to a detailed budget.

“Gensler won’t be working for the city for free, but they will be working for a nonprofit organization,” Funk said.

Bill Kelley of California Sheds prepares a home in a new community of portable sheds for homeless residents below the MacArthur Maze in Oakland July 3, 2019. | Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

The overall project in Gough came in at just over $2.3 million, while a 35-unit tiny home site in Santa Barbara cost $1.85 million thanks to donated equipment, furnishings and project management fees, the authorities said DignityMoves budget documents.

“I think this model has a lot of potential to be widely replicated,” said Funk. “Nonprofit organizations can be much more flexible.”

If the calculations are correct on all sides, it would seem that San Francisco has essentially quashed with bureaucracy, and all of that bureaucracy is just a nod to San Francisco’s inability to make progress on housing and homelessness.

A 25-unit project was built in San Jose for $1.4 million, and Oakland created inexpensive pallet shelters for 71 people, but not all tiny home projects can be judged “apples for apples,” Funk said. Build quality, access to plumbing and electrical, and additional services may vary by tiny home project. DignityMoves houses are designed to last 20 years.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents the mission and did not respond to a request for comment on the story, lamented to the Chronicle that she supports the Tiny Houses project, but the backlash from apartment buildings and the high price have given her pause.

She expressed a sense of resignation that such a small project will not alleviate the city’s staggering homelessness crisis, when one obvious solution to a hyper-local crisis in Mission would be to prioritize homeless people currently living on the streets around the project.

Ronen added that she was tired of being the city’s “sacrificial lamb” in the fight for progress.

And so the tyranny of the San Francisco bureaucracy claims another victim.

English

The post Constructing Tiny Properties a Gigantic Job in Damaged San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Metro Atlanta residents are dealing with water pipes freezing and bursting.

The issue is impacting everyone, from homes to high-rises.

Many plumbing companies are working non-stop, responding to situation after situation.

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“These exterior walls are the ones that’s going to get the coldest. So as you can see right here, you got a busted pipe,” Adrian Gonzalez with Roto-Rooter told Channel 2 Action News’ Larry Spruill.

This is just one of the situations that Gonzalez said his crews have been dealing with.

“As you can see, the ceiling just collapsed,” said Gonzalez.

The recent sub-freezing temperatures have been causing a lot of issues around the metro area when it comes to pipes.

“Oh my gosh, I would say Friday night is when everything started to kick off. Saturday and especially, yesterday on Christmas, it’s been crazy busy,” Gonzalez said.

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Channel 2 has reported on broken pipes across the metro Atlanta area over the last couple of days, from Fairburn to Downtown Atlanta, where many apartments and businesses flooded.

“We’ve had busted pipes, everywhere. I’ve been doing this for about 20 years, I’ve been working here in Atlanta for 12 years and I’ve never seen it like this before,” Gonzalez said.

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Gonzalez said there are ways you can prevent this from happening.

“One of the most common ways, and it’s really simple, is if you leave your faucets dripping overnight, so that you can have some water constantly flowing through the pipes,” Gonzalez said. “They also sell these covers that you put on the outside spigots to protect the spigots from freezing up.”

IN OTHER NEWS:

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For more than 50 years, shards of colorful glass, preserved in 25 carefully labeled envelopes, had been stored in an old Italian shoe box under Fred McDonald’s bed. The broken bits, taken from bombed and bullet-riddled churches throughout Europe during World War II, represented more than just shattered dreams and lives. To McDonald, a Seattle native who died in San Francisco in 2002, they were tangible links that fused history to the present, as well as the future.

Now that glass is the showpiece of an exhibit at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. “Remembered Light” includes the works of 13 artists who used those fragments, along with McDonald’s memories, to fashion new stained glass windows, sculptures and 3D pieces.

At the end of its run — the exhibit will be open Wednesday-Sunday through Nov. 20 — the works are destined for a more permanent installation in the Presidio Chapel.

Armelle Le Roux, a celebrated stained glass artist who has worked with teams restoring stained glass at San Francisco City Hall and managed prominent projects for Grace Cathedral and for New York City’s St. Thomas Church, learned of the hidden gems through an acquaintance and was the first artist to realize the potential of McDonald’s treasure trove.

She met with McDonald to discuss ways to bring the glass back into the light.

“At the time,” Le Roux says, “we talked about creating some sort of memorial piece. But because the glass had been saved as separate pieces, each with a name and history, everything had meaning, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

Le Roux began creating two stained glass pieces that incorporated two sets of shards, working them into designs based on their provenance and McDonald’s recollections. Eventually, she brought in other artists to create additional pieces.

Ariana Makau, an Oakland-based glass artist and conservator and founder of Nzilani Glass, says she was immediately struck by the project.

“It intrigued me on multiple levels,” Makau says. “It was like traveling through space and time, the way each piece of glass had been documented. That he had the foresight to do that appealed to me as a conservator.”

McDonald, an Episcopal minister, traveled to Germany in the early 1930s and witnessed the rise of Adolph Hitler, a man he first admired but came to despise. When was broke out, McDonald enlisted as a chaplain in the US Army, assigned first to San Francisco’s Fort Mason and later to the 12th Army, under the command of the legendary Gen. Omar Bradley. He soon found himself following the advancing troops through England, France, Belgium and, finally, Germany.

McDonald was tasked, says his great-nephew, San Francisco restaurateur Bruce McDonald, with finding suitable churches to hold services for all the non-Catholic soldiers. His travels included several places he’d visited during peace time, where he began picking up the broken remnants of stained glass windows.

“He was quite a packrat throughout his life,” Bruce says. “He collected menus from restaurants around the world. He loved to save things and always said that sometimes, it’s a small thing that brings back a memory.

As McDonald gathered the shards, he tucked them in envelopes and mailed them home to his mother. By war’s end, he had mailed 25 envelopes and collected more than just glass. He had documented the coordinates and the city where each piece was found and his observations of what remained after the battles. About one, he wrote:

“On or about Oct. 23rd, I entered the first German city to fall to our forces, the imperial but now roofless city of Aachen, a good thousand years old. A very new Church of the Holy Ghost on the outskirts had been the scene of a firefight and a wrecked tram stood by the forlorn and empty church. Down by the Cathedral, I saw an aged woman lugging two suitcases as she crawled over stone piles. Where was she going with her pitiful burden?”

“This church, obliterated during the Battle of Britain in August 1940, was a favorite of high church Episcopalians from the Pacific Northwest. In 1933, I had worshiped there many times, a special wrench to find this favorite ‘Fortress of the Faith’ gone.”

“I had just arrived in Normandy. There was an apple orchard where our Army headquarters was tented. In the evening, I walked into the flattened town spread out around a badly bombed church. A ghostly silence covered the deserted area except for the shoveling noise of a lone man trying to uncover his house. He saw me and glared. I represented the war, which had brought ruin to his house and home.

“I picked up some of the church glass and moved on.”

The shards might have remained hidden, their stories lost to time, if not for a chance meeting. McDonald, who continued to travel the world for many years after the war, had finally settled in San Francisco, a city he admired for its boldness and verve. After serving a congregation at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, he had eased into retirement when one day he struck up a far-reaching conversation with a fellow resident at his retirement home. The topic turned to stained glass, and McDonald mentioned his unique collection. The woman knew of Le Roux’s work and reached out to her.

The Remembered Light works were completed in 2007 and put on display, first in the Presidio, before eventually making it to New Orleans’ World War II Museum, where COVID held them captive for a year. Finding a place to exhibit was sometimes difficult, Bruce McDonald says, because some museums shy away from religious exhibitions. But Remembered Light is not about religion, he says. It’s about one man’s journey through war. McDonald wants people to learn and see the connections between war and peace, as the exhibit returns home to San Francisco.

“Fred was a very articulate and educated worldly person,” Le Roux says. “At the end, I want people to have a sense of humanity, not just of religion and war. I want them to think about the impact of destruction. I’m sure people will feel the sorrow, but I want them to also feel hope.”

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For more than 50 years, shards of colorful glass, preserved in 25 carefully labeled envelopes, had been stored in an old Italian shoe box under Fred McDonald’s bed.

The broken bits, taken from bombed and bullet-riddled churches throughout Europe during World War II, represented more than just shattered dreams and lives. To McDonald, a Seattle native who died in San Francisco in 2002, they were tangible links that fused history to the present, as well as the future.

Now that glass is the showpiece of an exhibit coming to the Bay Area on Aug. 27 at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. “Remembered Light” includes the works of 13 artists who used those fragments, along with McDonald’s memories, to fashion new stained glass windows, sculptures and 3-D pieces. At the end of its run — the exhibit will be open Wednesday-Sunday through Nov. 20 — the works are destined for a more permanent installation in the Presidio Chapel.

Armelle Le Roux, a celebrated stained glass artist who has worked with teams restoring stained glass at San Francisco City Hall and managed prominent projects for Grace Cathedral and for New York City’s St. Thomas Church, learned of the hidden gems through an acquaintance and was the first artist to realize the potential of McDonald’s treasure trove.

She met with McDonald to discuss ways to bring the glass back into the light.

“At the time,” Le Roux says, “we talked about creating some sort of memorial piece. But because the glass had been saved as separate pieces, each with a name and history, everything had meaning, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

A display from “Remembered Light” is illuminated at an exhibit in the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco, California, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022. Artist Daniel Ziegler made this piece of art from the window shards of churches bombed in World War II collected by Fred McDonald, then a chaplain in the US Army. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Le Roux began creating two stained glass pieces that incorporated two sets of shards, working them into designs based on their provenance and McDonald’s recollections. Eventually, she brought in other artists to create additional pieces.

Ariana Makau, an Oakland-based glass artist and conservator and founder of Nzilani Glass, says she was immediately struck by the project.

“It intrigued me on multiple levels,” Makau says. “It was like traveling through space and time, the way each piece of glass had been documented. That he had the foresight to do that appealed to me as a conservator.”

McDonald, an Episcopal minister, traveled to Germany in the early 1930s and witnessed the rise of Adolph Hitler, a man he first admired but came to despise. When was broke out, McDonald enlisted as a chaplain in the US Army, assigned first to San Francisco’s Fort Mason and later to the 12th Army, under the command of the legendary Gen. Omar Bradley. He soon found himself following the advancing troops through England, France, Belgium and, finally, Germany.

McDonald was tasked, says his great-nephew, San Francisco restaurateur Bruce McDonald, with finding suitable churches to hold services for all the non-Catholic soldiers. His travels included several places he’d visited during peace time, where he began picking up the broken remnants of stained glass windows.

SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 25: A panel from “Remembered Light” hangs at aa gallery in the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco, California, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022. The stained glass exhibit is made from the window shards of churches bombed in World War II. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

“He was quite a packrat throughout his life,” Bruce says. “He collected menus from restaurants around the world. He loved to save things and always said that sometimes, it’s a small thing that brings back a memory.

As McDonald gathered the shards, he tucked them in envelopes and mailed them home to his mother. By war’s end, he had mailed 25 envelopes and collected more than just glass. He had documented the coordinates and the city where each piece was found and his observations of what remained after the battles. About one, he wrote:

“On or about Oct. 23rd, I entered the first German city to fall to our forces, the imperial but now roofless city of Aachen, a good thousand years old. A very new Church of the Holy Ghost on the outskirts had been the scene of a firefight and a wrecked tram stood by the forlorn and empty church. Down by the Cathedral, I saw an aged woman lugging two suitcases as she crawled over stone piles. Where was she going with her pitiful burden?”

About another, he wrote:

“This church, obliterated during the Battle of Britain in August 1940, was a favorite of high church Episcopalians from the Pacific Northwest. In 1933, I had worshiped there many times, a special wrench to find this favorite ‘Fortress of the Faith’ gone.”

US Army chaplain Fred McDonald, pictured here during WW II, collected fragments of glass from bombed and bullet-riddled churches throughout Europe. Now the glass is the showpiece of an exhibit coming to the Bay Area on Aug. 27, at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. “Remembered Light” includes the works of 13 artists who used those fragments and McDonald’s memories to fashion new stained glass windows, sculptures, and 3-D pieces. (Photo courtesy Interfaith Center at the Presidio)

And about another:

“I had just arrived in Normandy. There was an apple orchard where our Army headquarters was tented. In the evening, I walked into the flattened town spread out around a badly bombed church. A ghostly silence covered the deserted area except for the shoveling noise of a lone man trying to uncover his house. He saw me and glared. I represented the war, which had brought ruin to his house and home.

“I picked up some of the church glass and moved on.”

The shards might have remained hidden, their stories lost to time, if not for a chance meeting. McDonald, who continued to travel the world for many years after the war, had finally settled in San Francisco, a city he admired for its boldness and verve. After serving a congregation at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, he had eased into retirement when one day he struck up a far-reaching conversation with a fellow resident at his retirement home. The topic turned to stained glass, and McDonald mentioned his unique collection. The woman knew of Le Roux’s work and reached out to her.

The Remembered Light works were completed in 2007 and put on display, first in the Presidio, before eventually making it to New Orleans’ World War II Museum, where COVID held it captive for a year. Finding a place to exhibit was sometimes difficult, Bruce McDonald says, because some museums shy away from religious exhibitions. But Remembered Light is not about religion, he says. It’s about one man’s journey through war. McDonald wants people to learn and see the connections between war and peace, as the exhibit returns home to San Francisco.

“Fred was a very articulate and educated worldly person,” Le Roux says. “At the end, I want people to have a sense of humanity, not just of religion and war. I want them to think about the impact of destruction. I’m sure people will feel the sorrow, but I want them to also feel hope.”

Stained glass artist Armelle Le Roux installs “Remembered Light,” a stained glass art exhibit made from the window shards of churches bombed in World War II collected by Fred McDonald, then a chaplain in the US Army. LeRoux worked to finish the installation, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022, in preparation for its opening at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 25: Armelle Le Roux installs “Remembered Light,” a stained glass art exhibit made from the window shards of churches bombed in World War II collected by Fred McDonald, then a chaplain in the US Army. LeRoux worked on finishing the installation on Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022, in preparation for its opening at the War Memorial Veterans Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

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