The more than 400 residents displaced by floods from a Hines-owned apartment tower in San Francisco won’t be at home for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah or Christmas.

The Houston-based developer told tenants they couldn’t return this year to their apartments at 33 Tehama Street in South of Market, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The residents were forced to evacuate the 35-story luxury tower after two summer floods last year sent more than 20,000 gallons of water cascading through the building. 

Hines has worked 17 months to repair the damage caused by a water main failure atop the 403-unit highrise. 

The firm first told residents they could return to their homes a year ago. It then informed them they could reoccupy the building in the latter half of this year.  Now their homecoming has been pushed into next year.

Hines said the city will make a final inspection of the building’s restoration in December. It would then have “more clarity about the return process.”

“We appreciate your ongoing patience,” Hines told residents in an email. “Please know that we are making every effort to provide as much certainty as possible around schedules and return timing.

“We are focused on preparing for your return and we look forward to welcoming you home.”

Permits issued by the city Department of Building Inspection last year suggest the cost of repairs to common areas and 93 water-damaged apartments is more than $7 million. 

It’s not known how many residents plan to return. Tenants were initially upset about Hines’ dispatches during and after the floods. Last fall, residents filed a second lawsuit, alleging unfair business practices. 

The initial lawsuit alleged chronic mismanagement and deception on the part of Hines. Tenants said building managers knew the building had plumbing problems and failed to fix them. They sued for negligence, tenants’ rights and violations of health and safety codes.

Both suits seek unspecified damages caused by bursting water pipes on the 35th floor in June and August of last year, flooding hallways and apartments on multiple floors below.

With little time to grab pets or belongings, tenants were sent scrambling to nearby hotels. The building was red-tagged by city officials and renters haven’t returned since.

A Hines representative denied all of the allegations in both legal complaints, saying the company has “worked tirelessly to repair the building.”

Hines said residents will have 45 days to return once their apartments become available for occupancy.

In the next few weeks, the firm will work on “needed upgrades and necessary repairs to the entrance, lobby area, amenity floors and other restoration tasks,” the developer said. 

“We are optimistic the inspections will run smoothly and on schedule as the last step in getting you back into your home,” Hines said in its email to residents.

Hines, a global real estate powerhouse, and Atlanta-based Investco, developed 33 Tehama in 2018. The green glass tower, scored with balconies on either side, was designed by Miami-based Arquitectonica, with Lendlease Group serving as the general contractor.

— Dana Bartholomew

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News

From Joshua Rhett Miller

June 21, 2023 | 6:20 p.m

With crime rising and fewer shoppers on the city’s once bustling streets, major retailers are leaving their broken hearts in downtown San Francisco.

At least 22 big-name businesses have closed or announced plans to flee the Union Square area of ​​San Francisco since January 2022, including trendy retailers like Anthropologie, Banana Republic and Crate & Barrel, as well as the investment firm that owns two of the city’s largest hotels.

According to the San Francisco Standard, 47% of businesses in the area have closed since 2019.

Before Covid, around 203 retailers operated in and around Union Square; By May only 107 were left.

The commercial chaos is set to continue in the coming weeks, with brands including AT&T, Nordstrom, Coco Republic and Old Navy set to close more stores as early as July 1st.

The biggest casualty — the Westfield San Francisco Center — came last week when the mall’s operator cited “challenging” downtown conditions, including falling sales and occupancy rates, as the reason for the threatened churn.

In the past 18 months, 22 major retailers and hoteliers have fled downtown San Francisco. San Francisco commercial real estate woes are worsening as Westfield pulls out of its iconic Union Square mall, where sales have plummeted 35% since 2019.Getty Images

Westfield suspended payments on its $558 million loan for the 1.2 million-square-foot Market Street retail center and began transferring control this month, first reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The mall exit is the latest in a series of setbacks in the shopping district, where Nordstrom will close two stores this summer — an anchor in the mall and a Nordstrom Rack across the street — cutting nearly 400 jobs.

San Francisco’s only Crate & Barrel at 55 Stockton Street in Union Square closed in March 2022. It was subsequently replaced by a Coco Republic store, which is closing next month.David G McIntyre

Nordstrom officials made the announcements last month, blaming the “deteriorating situation” in San Francisco.

Westfield’s parent company, Paris-based Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, said the closures demonstrated the “unsafe conditions for customers, retailers and employees” in the city center.

According to a May poll sponsored by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, about 77% of San Francisco residents believe the city is on the wrong track, and only 30% said they felt safe downtown at night.

Both Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack are packing up their deals.David G McIntyre

Elsewhere in the area, the owner of two of the city’s largest hotels — the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the 1,024-unit Parc 55 — announced plans last week to stop making mortgage payments.

Park Hotels & Resorts CEO Thomas Baltimore predicted a “dull and protracted” recovery in San Francisco and revealed plans to remove the hotels from its portfolio amid record office vacancies – 44.7% of pre-pandemic levels The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday — and public safety concerns.

The Cinemark Century San Francisco, the Westfield Mall theater, closed after the final showing of “Transformers: Rise of the Beast” on June 15. According to an email from the company, the closure came as part of a “wide review of local business conditions,” SFGATE reported.

Some seasoned analysts believe the city’s ongoing commercial chaos may be just beginning.

Ken Woods, founder and chairman of Asset Preservation Advisors, said his team of municipal bond managers is backing out of San Francisco.

“We see, to some degree, an emperor without clothes,” Woods told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

A Whole Foods location closed in April after just 14 months of operations.Getty Images

The grocery store was closed after syringes and hoses were found in the bathroom, the San Francisco Standard reported.David G McIntyre

And the city struggles with several downtown “open-air” drug markets, including in the Tenderloin neighborhood.

The group Mothers Against Drug Addiction & Deaths put up a giant billboard in Union Square last year that read, “Famous around the world for our brains, our beauty and now dirt cheap fentanyl.”

The rise in fatal drug overdoses in the city is now reaching a record 800 deaths, the San Francisco Standard reported Tuesday.

Westfield has suspended loan payments for its San Francisco Center mall.David G McIntyre

Police data shows that overall crime near the San Francisco Center mall increased slightly in 2023 compared to the previous year. Reported serious crime in the tenderloin increased by 1.4%, while theft increased by 5.6%.

Downtown Saks Off 5th has implemented a one-in-one-out system to better patrol for thieves, according to the Daily Mail, while a Folsom Street Target location has been keeping rows and rows of merchandise under wraps.

“Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Death” put up this billboard in Union Square.@ABCLiz/Twitter

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the mall’s exit — where dozens of retailers including Godiva Chocolatier, Clarks, Kay Jewelers, Hugo Boss and Tiffany & Co. have already packed up — came as no surprise. The parent company announced plans last year to sell all of its malls in the United States.

Shops at the mall remain open as law enforcement officers, in coordination with Westfield security personnel, patrol the facility.

Parc 55 is one of two luxury Hilton properties to leave the area.David G McIntyre

A Whole Foods market in downtown San Francisco abruptly closed in April after being open for little more than a year. Widespread drug use and rising crime near the 6,000-square-foot store in the city’s mid-market area prompted the closure after syringes and pipes were found in the bathroom, the San Francisco Standard reported.

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Technology

From Ariel Silver

February 21, 2023 | 12:54 p.m

New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, DC do not receive five-star ratings from Yelp employees.

The high-tax and crime havens of employees at the Business Review app have been abandoned in droves in favor of locations in Florida and Texas after the shift to remote work during the pandemic, according to an internal study.

Between 2019 and 2022, about 70% of workers who had lived near the company’s San Francisco headquarters fled the Bay Area, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg, more than two in three Yelpers who lived in New York City before the pandemic have left the Big Apple, while the same percentage of employees have relocated from Chicago and Washington, DC.

Yelp’s internal review found that the proportion of employees living in both Florida and Texas has quadrupled.

“Many of the employees we spoke to have relocated from previous office locations to areas with a lower cost of living, with some individuals buying their first homes or enjoying a slower pace of life,” Carmen Whitney Orr, Yelp’s chief people officer, told Bloomberg News .

Yelp, which employs 4,400 people nationwide, was one of several tech companies that allowed its employees to work entirely from home when the pandemic began in spring 2020.

A staggering 67% of Yelp employees who called New York City before the pandemic left, according to the company.Edmund J Coppa

Last June, Yelp closed its offices in New York, Chicago and Washington, DC due to low traffic. During an average week, office occupancy rates in these cities were less than 2%, according to Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman.

Migration trends among Yelp employees corroborate national data showing mass exodus from New York, California, Illinois and Connecticut.

Sun Belt states that offer year-round warm weather and relatively affordable living costs, such as Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Texas and the Carolinas, have been the beneficiaries.

The population explosion in sunbelt states has fueled a post-pandemic boom that has enabled a faster economic recovery from the depths of COVID lockdowns.

In the past year alone, more than 64,500 former New York State residents moved to Florida — more than any other year in history, according to Florida State Government statistics.

Last year’s record-breaking pace of migration surpassed the previous mark of 61,728 New Yorkers moving to the Sunshine State in 2021, according to the data.

Earlier this month, billionaire real estate developer Stephen Ross, whose business interests in the Big Apple include the Hudson Yards project, told Bloomberg News that he predicts the migration trend from New York to Florida will continue.

“People are looking from the Northeast and are moving for jobs — not retirement — and companies are looking for offices,” Ross said.

According to the company, the number of Florida residents working for Yelp has quadrupled. The picture above shows Miami.Getty Images

“There are tax issues, and there are security issues.”

Ross added, “There’s just the ease of life.”

Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire who runs Citadel, announced last year that his company would be moving its headquarters from Chicago to Miami.

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The morning began like most in the Saleh family’s tiny studio six floors above Turk and Hyde streets in the Tenderloin. The four children rose from their mats on the floor as their parents emerged from the closet where they shared a small mattress.

Abu Bakr Saleh, the father and sole earner in the family of refugees who fled the war in Yemen, rushed to begin a 16-hour double shift at a grocery store and a KFC. His wife, Sumaya Albadani, began an isolating day of cooking, cleaning and waiting for the others to return.

The kids — Ahmed, 16, Asma, 15, Raghad, 12, and 10-year-old Maya — rode a rickety elevator downstairs, down to one of the city’s most distressed blocks, before fanning out to their four schools.

But on Sept. 29, 2021, Raghad didn’t reach hers.

Raghad Saleh, 11, poses for a portrait on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M James/The Chronicle 2021

The sixth-grader at Francisco Middle School in North Beach — who had suffered a major trauma the year before, when an immigration fiasco forced her family to leave her with strangers in Egypt — lingered on the 400 block of Larkin Street while Ahmed ran into a shop to do an errand.

Just then, a woman in a wheelchair approached, yelling incoherently and spouting Islamophobic statements about the girl’s hijab, according to the girl and police. Raghad, still learning English, only caught portions of the diatribe, but heard three words very clearly: “Are you scared?”

“After that, she came close to me, and she hit me,” the girl told me a few months later. “She punched me in the head. I felt dizzy after that. I couldn’t believe it.”

Ahmed witnessed the attack and rushed to help. A security guard called 911. Police responded and arrested the woman on suspicion of committing assault, child endangerment and a hate crime. After getting checked out by paramedics, Raghad spent the day at home.

She hasn’t been the same since, her family said. She spends long hours playing games on her phone or watching YouTube videos. She’s listless. She cries more. She’s still fearful, saying she’s seen the suspect several times since the attack despite a protective order to stay away.

The attack was shocking, but only to a degree, in a neighborhood with one of the city’s highest assault rates. And it would ripple outward: In November, the episode would become one focus of a letter that Tenderloin families delivered to Mayor London Breed, pleading for help.

(From left to right): In this undated family photo Asma Saleh and Raghad Saleh pose for a photo in Yemen. Raghad was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year in the Tenderloin on her walk to school.

Courtesy Abu Bakr Saleh

“We are immigrants and refugees. We are children and mothers and fathers,” began the letter, penned by staff at the Tenderloin Community Benefit District and signed by 400 neighbors. “We are the Tenderloin, and you have failed us.”

The Salehs had one wish: to escape their $2,050-a-month studio for a bigger apartment in a safer neighborhood. More broadly, they sought the American dream in a city that proclaims itself a refuge.

But while San Francisco officials furiously debated what to do about a crisis of homelessness, addiction and mental illness in the Tenderloin, no one talked much about reducing harm to the many families stuck in one of the last semi-affordable stretches of the city.

In many respects, the Saleh family was living a dream life in Yemen. Abu Bakr, now 38, supported his family as an accountant for the finance ministry. Their six-bedroom home in Ibb, a city in western Yemen, was surrounded by lush gardens.

But the country’s war that began in 2014, when Houthi rebels took control of the northern part of Yemen, brought devastation. A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States entered the fight, and it has dragged on since. The United Nations estimates 377,000 people have been killed, 70% of them young children. Millions more, including the Salehs, have been displaced.

Abu Bakr made it to San Francisco in 2016 to join his parents, who were already living in Mission Bay. He planned to get settled and then send for his wife and four children, who had fled to Egypt. Finally, on March 1, 2020, the family received visas to travel to the United States — all but Raghad. To this day, it’s not clear why.

Raghad Saleh’s father, Abu Bakr Saleh, stocks soft drinks during his shift at Saabis Groceries, a corner market in Bayview Hunterspoint, on Wednesday, January 26, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh, who’s originally from Yemen, usually works six days a week, sometimes seven, and rarely sees his family. “I’m happy I bring my family here. I’m lucky because I stay with my kids. But I work too hard because (it’s) expensive here,” Sales said. “It’s too expensive here and I can’t save money and I stay in a bad location also. I work 85 hours a week. If I want to take a vacation, I can’t buy rent. No money. It’s too much. I work too hard.” Saleh’s 11-year-old daughter, Raghad, was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was recently attacked by a stranger on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

As they waited, they faced a deadline — the July 1 expiration date of the visas — and a pandemic obstacle: The Trump administration suspended visa services at all U.S. embassies and consulates in March 2020 and, in June, banned most immigration to the U.S. through the end of the year.

So Sumaya and her other children made the excruciating decision to fly to San Francisco while they still could, depositing Raghad with a Yemeni family in Cairo they barely knew.

“All the time in the airplane,” Sumaya recalled, “I was crying because I left my daughter.”

The Saleh family became one of 23 plaintiffs challenging Trump’s immigration restrictions in court. The Chronicle told their story on July 29, 2020, and the next month, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo granted Raghad — who’d been stranded for six weeks — a visa.

But their new life was far from what they had envisioned.

“Thank you, my God, to bring my family here,” Abu Bakr said. “I’m happy I’m here because it’s too much problem in Yemen. No salary, no power, no water, no food. It’s war. But I work too hard because it’s expensive here, you know? I can’t save money, and I stay in a bad location also.”

Raghad Saleh (center) pulls off her mask and smiles at her family moments after she arrived at San Francisco International from Egypt. Raghad had been separated from the family due to a visa issue.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Walking a few blocks with Raghad one day last December, from a Muni stop to her home, I saw what her dad meant. We strolled past a strip club with the sign “Where the Wild Girls Are.” Past people slumped unconscious in bus shelters. Past a woman screaming gibberish. Past a woman doing drugs on the sidewalk, her face bloodied. Past piles of trash and feces.

“This neighborhood is so scary,” Raghad said, moving quickly and nervously adjusting her hijab.

At night, the family doesn’t leave their studio. Still, they have trouble sleeping with the sounds of gunshots, fights and sirens.

“We don’t go to the window in case the gun comes,” said Maya, holding her fingers in the shape of a pistol.

Sumaya, speaking Arabic through an interpreter, said she was shocked when her picture of America didn’t match the reality of her new home. “From the pictures, I thought it would be really clean and now, when I walk up the street, it’s really, really painful to see all these things,” she said.

“If you walk a little bit far away from here,” Sumaya added, “You can say, ‘Yes, this is the United States I know.’”

Raghad Saleh, 11, left, crosses the street with close friends Maison, 12, center, and Hager, 12, as they head home after attending classes at Francisco Middle School on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2021

More than two months after Raghad was attacked, her mother brought her and her brother to a mid-December meeting with Breed in the city’s main library to discuss conditions in the Tenderloin. The mayor barred journalists, but according to an audience member’s recording, she told the families she was frustrated by the neighborhood’s “horrible conditions.”

“You’re dealing with the concern of whether you might get robbed or hit over the head or attacked or spit on,” Breed told them.

People in the audience said the city was looking the other way as drug dealers created misery. And that cops just drove past rather than walking the beat. Several shared stories about their businesses being robbed, strangers attacking them, hate crimes proliferating and being forced to huddle with children at playgrounds as men brandished guns outside the gates.

Breed promised big changes. She would deploy more officers to the Tenderloin like she had in Union Square after the looting of Louis Vuitton and other luxury stores weeks before.

After the meeting, Raghad said she was upset she didn’t get to share her story of being attacked before the mayor abruptly left. “There are a lot of people who are struggling in this area and facing the same problem I did,” she said.

But the family was encouraged. The mayor had promised help.

Raghad Saleh, 11, right, holds the hand of her close friend Maison, 12, left, as they ride the bus following classes at Francisco Middle School on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2021

Four days later, Breed assembled the news media at City Hall to announce a state of emergency in the Tenderloin meant to end “all the bulls— that has destroyed our city.” She said residents would see far more police and that they’d crack down on drug dealing, gun violence and the resale of stolen goods.

But that pledge of a Union Square-like police presence in the Tenderloin never materialized. More officers came months later — Breed said the delay owed to understaffing and the omicron virus — and only during the day.

Drug dealing continued unabated, signaling that purveyors of fancy handbags were more important to the city than low-income families like the Salehs who were left to deal with the fallout.

The family occasionally witnessed overdoses from their window. After Maya started talking about seeing “dizzy” people “laying on the floor,” it became clear she meant people passed out on the sidewalks after using drugs.

“Everybody is scared here,” Maya said. “If I walk with myself, my brain says, ‘Maya, don’t be scared.’ Everything will be OK.”

Raghad Saleh, 11, right, eats a meal with her mother, Sumaya Saleh, 39, and her sister, Maya Saleh, 10, in their Tenderloin apartment on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M James/The Chronicle

Though Raghad’s visa crisis was unique, her family’s path from Yemen to the Tenderloin was not.

Jehan Hakim, chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee, a group calling on the United States to cease military involvement in Yemen, said her father moved her family here in the mid-1970s in pursuit of better education and more opportunities.

Word of mouth brought more families from Yemen, and eventually hundreds settled in two low-income buildings on Turk and Jones streets. Today, there are two mosques in the neighborhood and a community group that provides immigration help, but almost no other services specifically for Yemeni immigrants, Hakim said.

“We don’t have anything with wrap-around social services that’s focusing on supporting Arab people coming from other countries,” she said.

Aseel Fara, a 22-year-old outreach coordinator at the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, said the Saleh family’s story sounded like his own. When his family left Yemen, they packed into a studio apartment on the same block as the Salehs, lured by the cheapest possible rent in the city.

“We’re limited to areas such as the Tenderloin,” Fara said, “which are neglected by the city and neglected by society.”

There’s no good data on how many Yemeni people live in the Tenderloin — Arab people are supposed to mark themselves as white in the U.S. census — but Hakim guesses as many as 2,500 live in the neighborhood now.

Raghad Saleh, 11, listens to instructions from her music teacher Flora Wong as she sits by her piano during class at Francisco Middle School on Friday, January 7, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Even the richest families from Yemen are poor in San Francisco, Fara said, because any money they’ve saved buys so little here, and their education and work experience back home counts for next to nothing. Men from Yemen who settle in the Tenderloin often work as janitors or grocery store clerks, he said, and the women often stay home alone during the school day.

Moving from a conservative Muslim country to the anything-goes Tenderloin can be shocking, Fara said. And it can be frightening for women to walk the streets in hijabs, which sometimes draw stares and bigoted remarks.

But despite the hardships, Fara is glad his family moved to San Francisco.

“I don’t want to take away from what America has provided us,” he said. “The opportunities are endless.”

And indeed, the Saleh children have their dreams.

Ahmed, who goes to Galileo High, told me he wants to study computer science and work as a web developer. Asma, in a program at SF International High designed for recent immigrants, hopes to be an interpreter and plans to tackle Spanish after perfecting her English. Maya, a bright-eyed girl who attends Tenderloin Community Elementary, imagines becoming a doctor.

Raghad, rarely as animated as her siblings, said she isn’t sure what her future will bring. She acknowledged she still feels depressed. She went to the counseling office at school once, but said the social worker wasn’t there, and she never tried again.

“Sometimes I dream my house from Yemen is here in the USA,” Raghad said, explaining this would be the best of both worlds.

Raghad Saleh’s sister, Maya Saleh, 10, converses with Urban Alchemy ambassador Aaron Trujillo as she returns home from school, at Turk and Hyde, in the Tenderloin on Friday, February 11, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Raghad Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

About six weeks after Breed declared her Tenderloin emergency, the Salehs told me they felt their block was a little safer and cleaner, partly thanks to ambassadors from Urban Alchemy, the nonprofit group hired by San Francisco to calm the city’s troubled core.

The blocks to the north seemed worse, so they often walked south instead — to the fields and playgrounds in Civic Center Plaza.

“Sometimes I feel sad,” Abu Bakr said, sitting on a bench during a rare day off as his daughters played. “I worry too much. I can’t save more. I can’t see my children.”

Ahmed, sitting at his father’s feet, said he’d told one of the mayor’s staff members at the library meeting about Raghad’s attack — and the family’s wish to leave the Tenderloin — but that no help had come through.

After I started asking questions, the Mayor’s Office and District Attorney’s Office pledged housing and mental health assistance for the Salehs. But eight months after the attack, none has materialized.

Finding publicly funded therapists taking new clients has proved difficult due to pandemic-fueled waiting lists, and finding an Arabic-speaking therapist is nearly impossible, explained Kasie Lee, chief of the D.A.’s Victim Services Division. The office was able to locate an Arabic-speaking therapist in private practice and is trying to secure money to pay for sessions, but Raghad still hasn’t talked to a professional about her trauma.

Obtaining a new apartment is also difficult. Lee explained that relocation assistance from the District Attorney’s Office and a state victim’s compensation fund would typically help the family cover a security deposit and first month’s rent. The problem is finding a larger, safer apartment the family can afford, long-term, on its own. The family can apply for affordable housing programs, but the wait lists are notoriously long.

Raghad Saleh, 11, right, hugs her sister Asma Saleh, 14, as they hang out at Civic Center Plaza on Saturday, January 29, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Raghad Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was recently attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Moving out of the city proved daunting since the family had no car and no job lined up elsewhere and couldn’t easily scrape together moving expenses.

Nothing much has happened in the case of Raghad’s alleged attacker. District Attorney Chesa Boudin charged Tinesha Scott, 48, with felony child endangerment and felony assault with a hate crime enhancement.

Boudin’s spokesperson, Rachel Marshall, said the office filed a motion to detain Scott, but a Superior Court judge denied it. The courts issued a criminal protective order, but Raghad said she has seen Scott several times since the encounter — including beneath her studio window. She said she was terrified when Scott waved at her.

“Next time,” Raghad said, “she could be holding a knife.”

Phoenix Streets, a public defender representing Scott, said his client had experienced a mental health crisis that September morning and received care at a hospital. Eight months after the attack, Scott has not received long-term treatment, which Streets blamed on “the underfunding of our mental health care system.”

And so, all these months later, everybody involved remains in pretty much the same position: The Saleh family stuck in a tiny studio on a ragged block. Raghad anxious and scared. Scott’s mental illness unaddressed. The city of San Francisco seemingly no closer to helping the families of the Tenderloin — which is no longer in a state of emergency, at least officially.

But there is one big change: Sumaya is expecting her fifth baby — a boy — in September. He’s one more reason to find a bigger apartment. One more reason to strive for a better life. One more reason to dream.

(From left to right): Maya Saleh, 10, Abu Saleh, 37, Asma Saleh, 15, Raghad Saleh, 12, and Ahmed Saleh, 16, pose for a portrait in their small studio Tenderloin apartment on Sunday, April 3, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Raghad Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf

The post A lady fled her war-torn homeland, however discovered extra trauma in San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The morning began like most in the Saleh family’s tiny studio six floors above Turk and Hyde streets in the Tenderloin. The four children rose from their mats on the floor as their parents emerged from the closet where they shared a small mattress.

Abu Bakr Saleh, the father and sole earner in the family of refugees who fled the war in Yemen, rushed to begin a 16-hour double shift at a grocery store and a KFC. His wife, Sumaya Albadani, began an isolating day of cooking, cleaning and waiting for the others to return.

The kids — Ahmed, 16, Asma, 15, Raghad, 12, and 10-year-old Maya — rode a rickety elevator downstairs, down to one of the city’s most distressed blocks, before fanning out to their four schools.

But on Sept. 29, 2021, Raghad didn’t reach hers.

The sixth-grader at Francisco Middle School in North Beach — who had suffered a major trauma the year before, when an immigration fiasco forced her family to leave her with strangers in Egypt — lingered on the 400 block of Larkin Street while Ahmed ran into a shop to do an errand.

Just then, a woman in a wheelchair approached, yelling incoherently and spouting Islamophobic statements about the girl’s hijab, according to the girl and police. Raghad, still learning English, only caught portions of the diatribe, but heard three words very clearly: “Are you scared?”

Raghad Saleh, 11, poses for a portrait on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M James/The Chronicle 2021

“After that, she came close to me, and she hit me,” the girl told me a few months later. “She punched me in the head. I felt dizzy after that. I couldn’t believe it.”

Ahmed witnessed the attack and rushed to help. A security guard called 911. Police responded and arrested the woman on suspicion of committing assault, child endangerment and a hate crime. After getting checked out by paramedics, Raghad spent the day at home.

She hasn’t been the same since, her family said. She spends long hours playing games on her phone or watching YouTube videos. She’s listless. She cries more. She’s still fearful, saying she’s seen the suspect several times since the attack despite a protective order to stay away.

The attack was shocking, but only to a degree, in a neighborhood with one of the city’s highest assault rates. And it would ripple outward: In November, the episode would become one focus of a letter that Tenderloin families delivered to Mayor London Breed, pleading for help.

(From left to right): In this undated family photo Asma Saleh and Raghad Saleh pose for a photo in Yemen. Raghad was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year in the Tenderloin on her walk to school.

Photo Courtesy Abu Bakr Saleh/The Chronicle

“We are immigrants and refugees. We are children and mothers and fathers,” began the letter, penned by staff at the Tenderloin Community Benefit District and signed by 400 neighbors. “We are the Tenderloin, and you have failed us.”

The Salehs had one wish: to escape their $2,050-a-month studio for a bigger apartment in a safer neighborhood. More broadly, they sought the American dream in a city that proclaims itself a refuge.

But while San Francisco officials furiously debated what to do about a crisis of homelessness, addiction and mental illness in the Tenderloin, no one talked much about reducing harm to the many families stuck in one of the last semi-affordable stretches of the city.

In many respects, the Saleh family was living a dream life in Yemen. Abu Bakr, now 38, supported his family as an accountant for the finance ministry. Their six-bedroom home in Ibb, a city in western Yemen, was surrounded by lush gardens.

But the country’s war that began in 2014, when Houthi rebels took control of the northern part of Yemen, brought devastation. A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States entered the fight, and it has dragged on since. The United Nations estimates 377,000 people have been killed, 70% of them young children. Millions more, including the Salehs, have been displaced.

Abu Bakr made it to San Francisco in 2016 to join his parents, who were already living in Mission Bay. He planned to get settled and then send for his wife and four children, who had fled to Egypt. Finally, on March 1, 2020, the family received visas to travel to the United States — all but Raghad. To this day, it’s not clear why.

Raghad Saleh’s father, Abu Bakr Saleh, stocks soft drinks during his shift at Saabis Groceries, a corner market in Bayview Hunterspoint, on Wednesday, January 26, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh, who’s originally from Yemen, usually works six days a week, sometimes seven, and rarely sees his family. “I’m happy I bring my family here. I’m lucky because I stay with my kids. But I work too hard because (it’s) expensive here,” Sales said. “It’s too expensive here and I can’t save money and I stay in a bad location also. I work 85 hours a week. If I want to take a vacation, I can’t buy rent. No money. It’s too much. I work too hard.” Saleh’s 11-year-old daughter, Raghad, was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was recently attacked by a stranger on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

As they waited, they faced a deadline — the July 1 expiration date of the visas — and a pandemic obstacle: The Trump administration suspended visa services at all U.S. embassies and consulates in March 2020 and, in June, banned most immigration to the U.S. through the end of the year.

So Sumaya and her other children made the excruciating decision to fly to San Francisco while they still could, depositing Raghad with a Yemeni family in Cairo they barely knew.

“All the time in the airplane,” Sumaya recalled, “I was crying because I left my daughter.”

The Saleh family became one of 23 plaintiffs challenging Trump’s immigration restrictions in court. The Chronicle told their story on July 29, 2020, and the next month, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo granted Raghad — who’d been stranded for six weeks — a visa.

But their new life was far from what they had envisioned.

“Thank you, my God, to bring my family here,” Abu Bakr said. “I’m happy I’m here because it’s too much problem in Yemen. No salary, no power, no water, no food. It’s war. But I work too hard because it’s expensive here, you know? I can’t save money, and I stay in a bad location also.”

Raghad Saleh (center) pulls off her mask and smiles at her family moments after she arrived at San Francisco International from Egypt. Raghad had been separated from the family due to a visa issue.

Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle 2020

Walking a few blocks with Raghad one day last December, from a Muni stop to her home, I saw what her dad meant. We strolled past a strip club with the sign “Where the Wild Girls Are.” Past people slumped unconscious in bus shelters. Past a woman screaming gibberish. Past a woman doing drugs on the sidewalk, her face bloodied. Past piles of trash and feces.

“This neighborhood is so scary,” Raghad said, moving quickly and nervously adjusting her hijab.

At night, the family doesn’t leave their studio. Still, they have trouble sleeping with the sounds of gunshots, fights and sirens.

“We don’t go to the window in case the gun comes,” said Maya, holding her fingers in the shape of a pistol.

Sumaya, speaking Arabic through an interpreter, said she was shocked when her picture of America didn’t match the reality of her new home. “From the pictures, I thought it would be really clean and now, when I walk up the street, it’s really, really painful to see all these things,” she said.

“If you walk a little bit far away from here,” Sumaya added, “You can say, ‘Yes, this is the United States I know.’”

Raghad Saleh, 11, left, crosses the street with close friends Maison, 12, center, and Hager, 12, as they head home after attending classes at Francisco Middle School on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2021

More than two months after Raghad was attacked, her mother brought her and her brother to a mid-December meeting with Breed in the city’s main library to discuss conditions in the Tenderloin. The mayor barred journalists, but according to an audience member’s recording, she told the families she was frustrated by the neighborhood’s “horrible conditions.”

“You’re dealing with the concern of whether you might get robbed or hit over the head or attacked or spit on,” Breed told them.

People in the audience said the city was looking the other way as drug dealers created misery. And that cops just drove past rather than walking the beat. Several shared stories about their businesses being robbed, strangers attacking them, hate crimes proliferating and being forced to huddle with children at playgrounds as men brandished guns outside the gates.

Breed promised big changes. She would deploy more officers to the Tenderloin like she had in Union Square after the looting of Louis Vuitton and other luxury stores weeks before.

After the meeting, Raghad said she was upset she didn’t get to share her story of being attacked before the mayor abruptly left. “There are a lot of people who are struggling in this area and facing the same problem I did,” she said.

But the family was encouraged. The mayor had promised help.

Raghad Saleh, 11, right, holds the hand of her close friend Maison, 12, left, as they ride the bus following classes at Francisco Middle School on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2021

Four days later, Breed assembled the news media at City Hall to announce a state of emergency in the Tenderloin meant to end “all the bulls— that has destroyed our city.” She said residents would see far more police and that they’d crack down on drug dealing, gun violence and the resale of stolen goods.

But that pledge of a Union Square-like police presence in the Tenderloin never materialized. More officers came months later — Breed said the delay owed to understaffing and the omicron virus — and only during the day.

Drug dealing continued unabated, signaling that purveyors of fancy handbags were more important to the city than low-income families like the Salehs who were left to deal with the fallout.

The family occasionally witnessed overdoses from their window. After Maya started talking about seeing “dizzy” people “laying on the floor,” it became clear she meant people passed out on the sidewalks after using drugs.

“Everybody is scared here,” Maya said. “If I walk with myself, my brain says, ‘Maya, don’t be scared.’ Everything will be OK.”

Raghad Saleh, 11, right, eats a meal with her mother, Sumaya Saleh, 39, and her sister, Maya Saleh, 10, in their Tenderloin apartment on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M James/

Though Raghad’s visa crisis was unique, her family’s path from Yemen to the Tenderloin was not.

Jehan Hakim, chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee, a group calling on the United States to cease military involvement in Yemen, said her father moved her family here in the mid-1970s in pursuit of better education and more opportunities.

Word of mouth brought more families from Yemen, and eventually hundreds settled in two low-income buildings on Turk and Jones streets. Today, there are two mosques in the neighborhood and a community group that provides immigration help, but almost no other services specifically for Yemeni immigrants, Hakim said.

“We don’t have anything with wrap-around social services that’s focusing on supporting Arab people coming from other countries,” she said.

Aseel Fara, a 22-year-old outreach coordinator at the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, said the Saleh family’s story sounded like his own. When his family left Yemen, they packed into a studio apartment on the same block as the Salehs, lured by the cheapest possible rent in the city.

“We’re limited to areas such as the Tenderloin,” Fara said, “which are neglected by the city and neglected by society.”

There’s no good data on how many Yemeni people live in the Tenderloin — Arab people are supposed to mark themselves as white in the U.S. census — but Hakim guesses as many as 2,500 live in the neighborhood now.

Raghad Saleh, 11, listens to instructions from her music teacher Flora Wong as she sits by her piano during class at Francisco Middle School on Friday, January 7, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Even the richest families from Yemen are poor in San Francisco, Fara said, because any money they’ve saved buys so little here, and their education and work experience back home counts for next to nothing. Men from Yemen who settle in the Tenderloin often work as janitors or grocery store clerks, he said, and the women often stay home alone during the school day.

Moving from a conservative Muslim country to the anything-goes Tenderloin can be shocking, Fara said. And it can be frightening for women to walk the streets in hijabs, which sometimes draw stares and bigoted remarks.

But despite the hardships, Fara is glad his family moved to San Francisco.

“I don’t want to take away from what America has provided us,” he said. “The opportunities are endless.”

And indeed, the Saleh children have their dreams.

Ahmed, who goes to Galileo High, told me he wants to study computer science and work as a web developer. Asma, in a program at SF International High designed for recent immigrants, hopes to be an interpreter and plans to tackle Spanish after perfecting her English. Maya, a bright-eyed girl who attends Tenderloin Community Elementary, imagines becoming a doctor.

Raghad, rarely as animated as her siblings, said she isn’t sure what her future will bring. She acknowledged she still feels depressed. She went to the counseling office at school once, but said the social worker wasn’t there, and she never tried again.

“Sometimes I dream my house from Yemen is here in the USA,” Raghad said, explaining this would be the best of both worlds.

Raghad Saleh’s sister, Maya Saleh, 10, converses with Urban Alchemy ambassador Aaron Trujillo as she returns home from school, at Turk and Hyde, in the Tenderloin on Friday, February 11, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Raghad Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

About six weeks after Breed declared her Tenderloin emergency, the Salehs told me they felt their block was a little safer and cleaner, partly thanks to ambassadors from Urban Alchemy, the nonprofit group hired by San Francisco to calm the city’s troubled core.

The blocks to the north seemed worse, so they often walked south instead — to the fields and playgrounds in Civic Center Plaza.

“Sometimes I feel sad,” Abu Bakr said, sitting on a bench during a rare day off as his daughters played. “I worry too much. I can’t save more. I can’t see my children.”

Ahmed, sitting at his father’s feet, said he’d told one of the mayor’s staff members at the library meeting about Raghad’s attack — and the family’s wish to leave the Tenderloin — but that no help had come through.

After I started asking questions, the Mayor’s Office and District Attorney’s Office pledged housing and mental health assistance for the Salehs. But eight months after the attack, none has materialized.

Finding publicly funded therapists taking new clients has proved difficult due to pandemic-fueled waiting lists, and finding an Arabic-speaking therapist is nearly impossible, explained Kasie Lee, chief of the D.A.’s Victim Services Division. The office was able to locate an Arabic-speaking therapist in private practice and is trying to secure money to pay for sessions, but Raghad still hasn’t talked to a professional about her trauma.

Obtaining a new apartment is also difficult. Lee explained that relocation assistance from the District Attorney’s Office and a state victim’s compensation fund would typically help the family cover a security deposit and first month’s rent. The problem is finding a larger, safer apartment the family can afford, long-term, on its own. The family can apply for affordable housing programs, but the wait lists are notoriously long.

Raghad Saleh, 11, right, hugs her sister Asma Saleh, 14, as they hang out at Civic Center Plaza on Saturday, January 29, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Raghad Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was recently attacked by a stranger several weeks ago on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Moving out of the city proved daunting since the family had no car and no job lined up elsewhere and couldn’t easily scrape together moving expenses.

Nothing much has happened in the case of Raghad’s alleged attacker. District Attorney Chesa Boudin charged Tinesha Scott, 48, with felony child endangerment and felony assault with a hate crime enhancement.

Boudin’s spokesperson, Rachel Marshall, said the office filed a motion to detain Scott, but a Superior Court judge denied it. The courts issued a criminal protective order, but Raghad said she has seen Scott several times since the encounter — including beneath her studio window. She said she was terrified when Scott waved at her.

“Next time,” Raghad said, “she could be holding a knife.”

Phoenix Streets, a public defender representing Scott, said his client had experienced a mental health crisis that September morning and received care at a hospital. Eight months after the attack, Scott has not received long-term treatment, which Streets blamed on “the underfunding of our mental health care system.”

And so, all these months later, everybody involved remains in pretty much the same position: The Saleh family stuck in a tiny studio on a ragged block. Raghad anxious and scared. Scott’s mental illness unaddressed. The city of San Francisco seemingly no closer to helping the families of the Tenderloin — which is no longer in a state of emergency, at least officially.

But there is one big change: Sumaya is expecting her fifth baby — a boy — in September. He’s one more reason to find a bigger apartment. One more reason to strive for a better life. One more reason to dream.

(From left to right): Maya Saleh, 10, Abu Saleh, 37, Asma Saleh, 15, Raghad Saleh, 12, and Ahmed Saleh, 16, pose for a portrait in their small studio Tenderloin apartment on Sunday, April 3, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. Raghad Saleh was stuck in Egypt in 2020 when her family moved to San Francisco from Yemen due to Visa problems. She was attacked by a stranger last year on her walk to school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf

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SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – San Francisco residents moved large numbers of Sacramento homes to the city during the pandemic.

According to a migration analysis by commercial real estate company CBRE, moves from San Francisco County to Sacramento County increased by 70% in 2020.

The April 2021 report said that of the 30 largest subway areas in the US, Sacramento actually moved the most people in 2020, compared with a loss of 3.2 per 1,000 residents in 2019.

Behind the mask: The designer from San Francisco creates face coverings for celebrities

“Dense coastal cities have lost favor due to their high cost of incremental indoor space and the lack of adjoining outdoor space,” the report said after smaller home assignments made smaller spaces feel a little cramped.

Researchers also pay tribute to the great migration to the Bay Area’s “digital workers” who have the freedom to work remotely.

From major cities like Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and DC; According to researchers, San Francisco saw the biggest increase in 2020 move-in rates from 2019.

The post San Francisco residents fled to Sacramento in large numbers throughout pandemic: report appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Residents fled New York City and San Francisco following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but cell phone data shows they didn’t go too far.

A new study shows that many of the residents who have moved from Manhattan and the City by the Bay have changed their address to the outskirts or neighboring suburbs, which are within a 100-mile radius.

Almost two in five – or 37 percent – of those who moved out of Manhattan settled in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Long Island and Westchester.

According to a study by analyst Placer.ai, only 2 percent of Manhattan residents migrated to Miami-Dade County, Florida, while roughly the same percentage moved to Palm Beach County.

The study analyzed cell phone data from the 12 months leading up to January 2021.

The largest percentage – 14 percent – of former Manhattans withdrew to Suffolk County, where many are believed to have second homes in the Hamptons and nearby hamlets along the south coast of eastern Long Island.

A new study shows that many of Manhattan residents who have moved have changed their address to the outskirts or neighboring suburbs

Similar trends have been observed in San Francisco. According to the study, many who left the city stayed in the Bay Area. One in ten Franciscans moved across the bay to San Mateo County, while slightly fewer – 9.2 percent – moved to Alameda County

A U-Haul moving truck can be seen in this 2016 file photo up in San Francisco. New York and San Francisco were two of several major cities that experienced negative net migration between January 2020 and January 2021

Another 15 percent moved together to Nassau County, Queens, Brooklyn, and The Bronx.

Fairfield, Connecticut; Westchester County, New York; and Monmouth County, New Jersey, made up 7.4 percent of Manhattanites transplanted.

Similar trends have been observed in San Francisco.

According to the study, many who left the city stayed in the Bay Area. One in ten Franciscans moved across the bay to San Mateo County, while slightly fewer – 9.2 percent – moved to Alameda County.

The third most popular destination for those leaving San Francisco was Contra Costa County, home of Berkeley.

The study also found that New York, California, and Massachusetts were among the states that experienced the highest negative migration between January 2020 and January 2021. Meanwhile, low-population states like Montana, Idaho, Delaware, and Hawaii saw population growth over the same period

Around 6.3 percent of San Francisco residents moved south to Los Angeles, while 5.2 percent stayed a little closer to home and settled in Santa Clara County.

Overall, around 15 percent moved to various locations including Sacramento, Orange County, San Diego, Sonoma County, and Marin Counties.

“The clear finding is that even large communities with high rates of migration outside of the state have lost a large percentage of their residents to nearby inland and neighboring out-of-state counties,” concluded the authors of the Placer.ai study.

“While cities lose population in the short term, they don’t necessarily lose their center of gravity.

“This information can have a significant impact on local office and retail sales decisions.”

The study also found that New York, California, and Massachusetts were among the states that saw the highest negative migration between January 2020 and January 2021.

New York State had negative net migration of 1.8 percent, while California’s net negative migration was 1.1 percent.

Massachusetts net negative migration was 1.4 percent.

In cities, San Francisco had the largest negative net migration (2.4 percent), followed by Los Angeles (1.9 percent), Boston (1.7 percent), New York (1.2 percent) and Chicago (0.7 Percent).

In sparsely populated states such as Montana, Idaho, Delaware, and Hawaii, there was population growth over the same period.

Idaho’s population grew nearly 4 percent, while Montana saw positive net migration of 3.7 percent.

In cities, San Francisco had the largest negative net migration (2.4 percent), followed by Los Angeles (1.9 percent), Boston (1.7 percent), New York (1.2 percent) and Chicago (0.7 Percent).

The cities with the highest positive net migration in 2020 include Tampa (1.5 percent), Charleston (1.5 percent), Austin (1.3 percent), Phoenix (1.3 percent) and Las Vegas (0.8 Percent).

Despite the grim news, recent developments such as the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine and falling infection rates offer hope.

In the past few days, New York City has shown signs that the coronavirus pandemic has been brought back to life a year later. Tourism slowly increased and more pedestrians frequented Times Square.

Although activity in the city is still well below pre-pandemic levels, tourism officials say visitor traffic is increasing in yet another sign of New York bouncing back.

The Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit group that oversees the area, told the Wall Street Journal last week that 115,000 people a day recently passed through the iconic area.

On March 12th, people gather in Times Square for a performance. Recently, around 115,000 people a day have been walking through the cult area, a 15% increase over the winter numbers

People wear face masks as they walk the Mall in Central Park amid the coronavirus pandemic in New York City on March 11, 2021

Mobility data from Apple shows that pedestrian activity in New York City is 35 percent below the pre-pandemic baseline

That’s a 15 percent increase over daily traffic in Times Square since September – but less than a third of the 365,000 daily visitors the tourist Mecca saw before the pandemic.

Hotel occupancy in the city hit 47 percent for the week ended March 13, according to STR, a data firm that tracks the hospitality industry. This is the highest weekly value since June last year.

That’s a 38 percent increase in January, but well below the city’s hotel occupancy rate of 87 percent for the same week in 2019.

Tourism is a major engine of the New York economy, and in 2019 the city had a record 66.6 million visitors, according to NYC & Company, the city’s tourism bureau.

Last year the number fell to 22.3 million, but the agency estimates it will climb to 36.4 million this year.

Mobility data from Apple shows that pedestrian activity in New York City is 35 percent below baseline before the pandemic, up from 80 percent below baseline a year ago.

The data shows that driving activity is roughly in line with baseline, while transit activity remains 48 percent below baseline.

Transit data from the MTA shows that NYC’s daily subway count is still more than 60 percent lower than last year as New Yorkers eschew public transportation in favor of other modes of transportation or working from home.

This is a caveat on Big Apple’s relief as New York State plans to end a two-week quarantine mandate for overseas visitors on April 1st.

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