MICHAEL LIEDTKE, Associated Press

42 mins ago

FILE – Associated Press reporter Michael Liedtke sits in the back of a Cruise driverless taxi that picked him up in San Francisco’s Mission District, Feb. 15, 2023. The California regulator that approved the expansion of the Cruise robotaxi fleet owned by automaker General Motors is now threatening to fine the driverless service for covering up the severity of an accident that triggered the suspension of its California license. The potential penalty could be in the range of $1.5 million, based on documents filed Friday, Dec. 1, by the California Public Utilities Commission. (AP Photo/Terry Chea, File)

California regulators say a San Francisco robotaxi service owned by General Motors covered up an accident involving one of its driverless cars, raising the specter they may add a fine to the recent the suspension of its California license.

The potential penalty facing GM’s Cruise service could be around $1.5 million, based on documents filed late last week by the California Public Utilities Commission.

The notice orders Cruise to appear at a Feb. 6 evidentiary hearing to determine whether the robotaxi service misled regulators about what happened after one of its driverless cars ran into a pedestrian who had already been struck by another vehicle driven by a human on the evening of Oct. 2 in San Francisco.

The February hearing comes just six months after the Public Utilities Commission authorized Cruise’s robotaxi service to begin charging passengers for around-the-clock rides throughout San Francisco despite strident objections from city officials who warned the driverless cars malfunctioned.

Three weeks after Cruise’s Oct. 2 accident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles effectively shut down robotaxi service by suspending its license to operate in the state.

The suspension was a major blow for Cruise and its corporate parent GM, which absorbed huge losses during the development of the driverless service that was supposed to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2025 as it expanded beyond San Francisco.

After losing nearly $6 billion since the end of 2019, Cruise has shifted into reverse as it scrambles to control the fallout from the Oct. 2 accident that critically injured the run-over pedestrian and led to the recent resignation of CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt.

“Cruise is committed to rebuilding trust with our regulators and will respond in a timely manner” to the Public Utilities Commission, the company said in a Monday statement. The San Francisco-based company has already hired an outside law firm to scrutinize its response to the Oct. 2 accident.

The most serious questions about the incident concern Cruise’s handling of a video showing a robotaxi named “Panini” dragging the pedestrian 20 feet before coming to the stop.

In a Dec. 1 filing recounting how Cruise handled disclosures about the accident, the Public Utilities Commission asserted the company tried to conceal how its robotaxi reacted to the accident for more than two weeks.

Cruise didn’t provide the video footage until Oct. 19, according to the regulatory filing. The cover-up spanned 15 days, according to the PUC, exposing Cruise and GM to potential fines of $100,000 per day, or $1.5 million.

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Marcus Semien might not be in his hometown playing for the Athletics anymore, but the Bay Area always will hold a special place in his heart.

That includes Oakland and the A’s organization.

As the team works toward relocating from the East Bay to Las Vegas, the former A’s shortstop, who now plays with the Texas Rangers, weighed in on the potential move.

“I won’t believe that they’re moving until they’re actually gone,” Semien said Monday before the Rangers-A’s three-game series at the Coliseum. “I’m an East Bay resident, the A’s mean a lot to this community. The A’s are a reason I wanted to play baseball.

“I got to come here and watch Major League Baseball, just hop on BART and sit in left field and watch the best of the best play. Them being in the Bay Area is a reason I’m here.”

Semien played in Oakland from 2015 to 2020, with his best season in 2019 when he hit .285/.369/.522 with 33 home runs and 92 RBIs. That same season, he finished third in AL MVP award voting.

His success continued after leaving the Bay. Semien shined with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2021 before landing in Texas the following season on a seven-year deal. Semien isn’t the only beloved Bay Area baseball tie that the Rangers have.

Former Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who helped lead San Francisco to three World Series titles, came out of his three-year retirement to become the Rangers manager in 2023. Bochy, too, addressed the possible relocation and hopes the City of Oakland won’t stop fighting.

“I hope they keep trying,” he said. “I loved my time that I had here. The exciting games that we played here. I feel for the fans.”

The A’s are far from done in their efforts to move to Sin City. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the paperwork for the official relocation process is underway, but there still are some steps remaining, starting with a 75 percent approval rate from league owners.

Until then, voices around the league will continue to speak on the controversial situation.

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San Francisco officials believe the office-to-home conversion could help the struggling local economy as the city known for its pre-pandemic tech growth is now facing record-high office vacancy rates.

The Planning Department and Office of Economic and Manpower Development have issued a request for information to scout out potential redevelopment sites and assess how viable these projects would be and what is needed to remove any regulatory hurdles.

The move coincides with recent regulations passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to help the city’s economic revival after years of weak leasing activity, lack of sales momentum and office and retail tenant migration.

With the request, officials hope to not only simplify the redevelopment process for developers and property owners, but also figure out how to focus the city’s efforts to make it a reality. To qualify, the request states that respondents must “either be in control of the site, be in discussions with the property owner about a possible purchase, lease or other investment in the property, or be a design professional or a other authorized representative of a property owner.” or developer.”

City leaders across the country have opened up to the idea of ​​converting one property use to another to adapt to the changes brought about by the pandemic in recent years. As demand for office space in particular has waned, the idea of ​​converting vacant buildings into alternative uses such as housing, research and development space, or even hotel rooms has been mooted in markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and more in Washington, DC

However, the situation in San Francisco is relatively dire compared to other cities in the United States, with the office vacancy rate rising to over 17%, according to CoStar data, compared to about 7% in 2019. In some parts of downtown, the vacancy rate is around almost 30%, and with rental activity largely subdued, there are no signs of a turnaround imminent.

The combination of remote work, record-breaking sublease availability and office vacancy rates, and deteriorating socioeconomic conditions has resulted in a budget deficit of nearly $800 million since the pandemic began. Additionally, office leasing and investment activity is now a small fraction of what it was before 2020, meaning this key source of tax revenue is unlikely to return any time soon.

As city officials debate how to encourage alternative uses for office space, it takes a while for the talk to translate into action. For example, some office buildings are less suited to residential use than others, and such a move away from office buildings can represent a big bet for an owner that remote working will continue to be as common as it is today.

Only a limited number of existing office buildings are really suitable candidates for possible conversions. according to CoStar analysis, and are unlikely to have a major impact on office or apartment building market fundamentals.

Nevertheless, while the city office market Although the demand for housing in the city is still increasing, although it is only a shell of what it used to be.

According to data from CoStar, asking rents average nearly $3,050 per month, making San Francisco the most expensive multi-family market in the United States. By comparison, the city has lost its reputation as the country’s most expensive office market — it was overtaken by Silicon Valley and pushed to second place — and with its tech-heavy workforce boasts the lowest return-to-office metrics of any major market in the nation .

The motion and recently passed legislative package are likely to provide more flexibility in transforming traditional office properties into potential residential or retail properties and are the latest in a series of strategies San Francisco has adopted to reposition the city as it moves ever further from Removed from its original location pre-pandemic focus on the technology industry.

San Francisco officials say it’s worth the effort.

When it comes to the potential for converting office towers into apartments, demolishing buildings for new construction and attracting startups to settle in the city, “we need to re-imagine what downtown can look like,” said Mayor London Breed recently. “We open the door to do more. San Francisco has never had to work hard for tourists, visitors or people who want to shop here, so many restrictions have been imposed on people in certain parts of the city. The policies we implemented have changed that, so you can now convert an office into living space much more easily.”

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Federal regulators have threatened to pull critical funding from San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital after two patients overdosed at the facility last year, a dramatic measure that could force the hospital to shut down.

Officials with San Francisco’s health department, which runs Laguna Honda, said Wednesday that the hospital had fallen out of regulatory compliance, putting its funding from Medicare and Medicaid in jeopardy. Laguna Honda, one of the largest skilled nursing facilities in the country, is run by the city and cares for more than 700 patients, including people with dementia, drug addiction and other complex medical needs, who live on the hospital’s campus.

The hospital has until April 14 to remedy a number of issues identified by state health officials — including the presence of contraband found on Laguna Honda’s campus — in order to stave off a potential financial calamity that could displace hundreds of medically fragile patients.

State officials said they were working with Laguna Honda to bring the hospital into compliance and avoid closure.

“There’s a commitment from (Department of Public Health) and the city to keep Laguna Honda open,” Roland Pickens, director of the San Francisco Health Network, told The Chronicle. “But it would be very difficult financially to remain open without the reimbursement” payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Laguna Honda began a correction plan with the California Department of Public Health in October, after state officials found the hospital “in a state of substandard quality of care,” according to a statement from the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

The finding came after staff at Laguna Honda reported two overdoses at the hospital in July, neither of them fatal. Hospital officials disclosed these incidents to the state, adhering to a self-reporting requirement that Laguna Honda implemented in 2019, after a state investigation turned up evidence of patient abuse.

By documenting the overdoses, Laguna Honda triggered an extended survey by the state, which led to the state’s conclusion in October that the hospital had fallen out of compliance. With the correction plan in place, hospital staff had six months to fix deficiencies and enhance safety measures, including steps to eliminate drug paraphernalia or illicit substances from the campus.

Although Pickens and Laguna Honda CEO Michael Phillips said in an interview that the hospital worked diligently to retrain its staff and remind workers to be on the lookout for banned items, state regulators witnessed violations when they inspected the site. In January, state regulators concluded that one hospital worker was not following protocols. This month, inspectors discovered a patient was smoking in a communal bathroom, while another patient on oxygen had a lighter.

On March 22, the state put Laguna Honda in immediate jeopardy for noncompliance with federal regulations and standards, a severe designation that officials lifted five days later after the hospital quickly responded with restrictions on visitors bringing in items and increased safety searches, among other reforms. Laguna Honda officials are contemplating new security infrastructure, such as scanning machines at entrances to screen visitor packages for prohibited materials.

Still, the six-month window is closing for the hospital to substantially finish its corrective plan, while also resolving the problems uncovered at the subsequent site visits.

The looming deadline puts strain on an institution that managed to avert a deadly coronavirus surge in 2020, but is still grappling with the abuse scandal of 2019, which Pickens and Phillips said had no bearing on the current remedial plan. Last year the city agreed to pay $800,000 to settle one of three lawsuits filed by patients alleging they were abused by staff. One of the cases is a class action, involving multiple plaintiffs.

Phillips, the CEO, pointed to the challenges that plague Laguna Honda.

“We care for some of the most vulnerable residents in the city of San Francisco,” he said, many of whom have histories of substance abuse, which may persist as they undergo treatment. Since the hospital is not a locked facility, people can come and go as they please, opening the possibility that they may procure drugs outside and then return to campus, Phillips said.

“Despite our best efforts, illicit substances will eventually find their way onto our campus,” Phillips said. “We’re continuously looking for ways to improve our protocols so that we can find more innovative ways to identify these substances and keep them away from our residents.”

Staff at the hospital struggle to balance patients’ privacy and freedom of movement with the need to sustain a safe environment and take a hard line on illicit substances or materials. Phillips and Pickens said their discussions with regulators have been amicable and collaborative, but that the state is still obliged to follow a process that puts the hospital at risk of shutting down.

“It’s a perfunctory process that was triggered by the October incident,” Pickens said, suggesting that if the state had been quicker to validate all of the hospital’s reforms, “perhaps we wouldn’t be so close to the April 14 deadline.”

Laguna Honda relies on payments from Medi-Cal and Medicaid to fund most of its services, since most patients are low- or extremely-low-income and burdened with complicated medical needs. It was unclear where patients would go if the hospital is unable to stay afloat.

“As you can imagine, there’s a shortage of skilled nursing beds throughout the country,” Pickens said. “California and San Francisco are no exception. It would take quite a while, if it ever came to trying to find new placements for those 700 patients at Laguna.”

He hopes for what he says is a more likely scenario: All agencies collaborate to bring Laguna into compliance by April 14.

In a statement, California Department of Public Health officials said, “Resident and worker safety remains our highest priority, and we continue to coordinate closely with Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, and our local and federal partners to help ensure the facility meets the regulatory requirements to provide safe and appropriate care to all residents and patients,” the statement read.

Phillips contended that, in spite of past missteps, Laguna Honda has done everything it can to earn the public’s trust.

“As you can imagine, there are thousands of interactions with caregivers and patients throughout any given day,” he said. “There are multiple opportunities for bad outcomes. And yet, in the vast majority of cases, there are no bad outcomes. There are just a small handful of these things that happen, and we report them, as we are required to do.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

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The Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, housed in fabric and aluminum enclosures made by Sprung Structures, opened in December 2019 despite objections from neighbors in the affluent section of the city. (Marc Lester / ADN)

SAN FRANCISCO — In a neighborhood of $2 million condos with views of San Francisco Bay, a pair of white aluminum-frame tents offer a refuge for the unhoused.

Two hundred miles east in Reno, a fast-growing, high-desert city Anchorage’s size, a massive tented shelter recently opened to house more than 500 of the city’s homeless citizens.

As Anchorage continues searching for solutions to its growing and seemingly intractable homelessness problems, it is far from alone. In recent years, West Coast cities large and small have seen steep increases in the numbers of people living outside. Now, some cities are channeling a surge in pandemic federal aid to bolster their ability to shelter the homeless.

With pressure in Anchorage to decommission a mass shelter at Sullivan Arena by fall, the new administration of Mayor Dave Bronson wants to build a city-owned shelter for the first time. The administration has proposed a large new facility on East Tudor Road to shelter and offer one-stop services and support to hundreds of clients. The project represents a major expansion of the city’s role.

“We do police. We do fire. Guess what?” Bronson told a crowd last month. “Now we do homeless.”

Security staff member Stephen Duadua talks with a guest at the Nevada Cares Campus in Reno on June 23, 2021. (Marc Lester / ADN)

In formulating the plan presented to the Anchorage Assembly last month, city homeless coordinator John Morris and other city leaders have borrowed from the strategies of other cities.

Those cities include Reno, whose newly opened shelter approximates the grand scale of the one envisioned for Anchorage, and San Francisco, which operates smaller shelters with many services and amenities known as “navigation centers.”

As plans take shape here, service providers and homeless people in California and Nevada offer a glimpse into what’s working — and what isn’t — in their cities.

Bronson, a conservative, campaigned on clearing Anchorage streets of what he termed “vagrants” and spoke of jailing homeless people for minor crimes.

When the campaigning ended, his plans took a far different focus: His administration announced a plan to construct a $15 million shelter for up to 450 people in a parking lot on Anchorage Police Department property off Tudor, just east of Elmore Road.

For decades, the shelter system in Anchorage relied on people hoping for an overnight cot lining up at shelters run by faith-based nonprofits in the afternoon or evening, spending the night and then leaving in the morning.

The new shelter would take a radically different approach, one that has been implemented at Sullivan Arena over the past 15 months. The idea is to impose fewer rules to bring more people in, and to keep them involved with lots of on-site services, from laundry to medical detox to assistance securing long-term housing.

“This is a sea change,” Bronson said recently.

Both Reno and San Francisco hold lessons for Anchorage.

The Nevada Cares Campus includes a 46,000-square-foot Sprung Structure to provide shelter to Reno’s homeless people. (Marc Lester / ADN)

San Francisco’s shelter seemed to work well in part because of its small size, and residents say it provides comfort and dignity. But there are still few post-shelter options for permanent housing.

A month after its opening, Reno’s mass campus is still working out kinks and city officials are at odds with activists who say clearing of homeless camps in the city has traumatized an already vulnerable population. While not everyone is willing to stay there, those who do say it’s an improvement from the instability of the streets.

Anchorage homeless coordinator Morris said he visited Reno and found the shelter “very reasonable” but hopes to build something that operates more like one of the smaller San Francisco shelters. He stresses the vision is practical, not political.

“Don’t use the P word,” said Morris, half-joking. “Don’t say the P word.”

The P word is “progressive.”

Mae Anonuevo is a guest at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center in San Francisco on June 21, 2021. She said she spent more than a decade homeless on San Francisco streets. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Mae Anonuevo sat on a bed neatly stacked with her belongings, her shoes lined up on the floor.

She and her partner had been homeless in San Francisco for more than a decade, she said. They kept their belongings in luggage carts, moving from alley to street corner to alley. It was exhausting.

“There were times that I worked. That was the hardest, being out in the street, working just like you,” said Anonuevo. She’d show up early to work to use the restrooms, always wondering about the belongings she had left somewhere. At the Embarcadero, she can keep the things she cares about — like an arrangement of dried flowers from a friend — with her.

Anonuevo has been living at the Embarcadero SAFE Center, a 200-bed shelter in the upscale waterfront district near Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, since before the pandemic.

The organization that runs the shelters for the city says it strives to give every visitor a “five-star hotel treatment,” said Megan Phalon, site director for the center.

The Embarcadero center isn’t quite that, but it hasn’t brought the blight the neighborhood feared when it opened in 2019. But because of the pandemic, it’s also operating far under capacity.

The Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center is located near condominium towers near the San Francisco Bay waterfront. (Marc Lester / ADN)

San Francisco has one of the most severe homelessness crises on the West Coast, with more than 8,000 unsheltered people in the city at last count. In 2015, grappling with a growing public backlash, former mayor Ed Lee launched “navigation centers” meant to offer a safe, secure shelter for people on the way to permanent housing.

Navigation centers operate differently from a traditional shelter, where people line up outside for a bed and meal in the evening and are expelled from the property during the daytime.

Here, city street outreach teams meet unhoused people, talk with them about their situation and bring handpicked clients to the Embarcadero center — no walk-ins are allowed. Most of those invited are considered “chronically homeless,” meaning they’ve been on the street for many years, said Megan O’Neill, housing manager for Five Keys, the nonprofit that runs the center.

“This is probably not the first shelter that they’ve stayed in,” she said. “The model is really designed to attract people who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in staying in a traditional shelter.”

Many have been kicked out of other housing or shelters, she said.

Meg O’Neill is a housing services director for Five Keys, which operates the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center for the city of San Francisco. “The model is really designed to attract people who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in staying in a traditional shelter, ’ O’Neill said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Locked trailers at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center allow for guests to store their belongings. Guests can also store items beneath their beds and in lockers. (Marc Lester / ADN)

At the site, the vibe is more college dormitory than homeless shelter. Inside corrugated metal fencing around the perimeter, residents eat lunch in an airy space with offices, modern furniture, books and TV.

In the sleeping area, everyone gets a bed with a thick mattress, rather than a cot. Couples can stay together. People are allowed to bring in their accumulated possessions, which can be securely stored in lockers. Additional items are held in locked trailers on site. Pets of all kinds are allowed — pit bulls and Chihuahuas stroll on leashes in a courtyard strung with sparkly lights.

Guests can grab something to eat whenever they want, rather than lining up for a plate at dinnertime. Medical and behavioral health workers visit. Residents can attend dog training classes, join a gardening club or go to bingo.

The shelter is “low-barrier,” so some of the usual things that might get a person kicked out of a traditional shelter, such as bringing in drugs, won’t get you expelled from the SAFE Center.

The idea is to knock down every possible barrier that might keep a homeless person from coming to a shelter and getting help. It’s worth trying something different, said Phalon.

“I think history kind of shows us what we have been doing, across the board, isn’t working.”

Alex Michael spends time with her dogs, Princess Nefertiti and Queen Isabella, in the courtyard of the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center in San Francisco on June 21, 2021. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Alex Michael pushed a stroller with her two dogs, Princess Nefertiti and Queen Isabella, through the garden courtyard. Michael said she’d been in an apartment but domestic violence pushed her back into homelessness. She’d been to three navigation centers.

Michael said she was in recovery from addiction and questioned the wisdom of letting people use drugs while in city housing, with little intervention. Still, she prefers the Embarcadero center over the hotel rooms in the Tenderloin district that she’d also been offered. Those were full of drugs and felt dangerous, she said.

“I try to turn it around and think well, you know, if I can walk through this and stay off stuff then I win,” she said. “So, each day gets a little easier.”

The Embarcadero center runs on the harm reduction philosophy, said O’Neill, the housing director. It’s understood that clients who are addicted may end up using drugs onsite, though it is discouraged. All navigation center sites offer clean needles. Staff carry doses of Narcan nasal spray, which can halt an opioid overdose, on lanyards around their necks.

“In the past month I’ve had four, and one we had to bring back to life, we had to actually bring him back to life, he died on the bathroom floor,” said Clinton Martin, an onsite manager.

Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center staff member Clinton Martin carries naloxone, a drug used for opioid overdose emergencies, on his lanyard on June 21, 2021. The center uses a ’harm reduction ’ model that aims to keep drug users safe rather than turn them away from the center. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Staff at the navigation centers have reversed 150 overdoses this year, O’Neill said.

Harm reduction is one facet Anchorage leaders are not interested in emulating.

“There will not be drug use in this facility,” Morris said. “That’s just not what we’re about. It’s illegal, for one.”

The Embarcadero center debuted to hostile neighbors. But nearly two years in, it hasn’t become what neighbors feared.

Wallace Lee, an attorney turned stay-at-home dad who lives nearby, is the spokesperson for a group of concerned neighbors who took the city to court over the location of the navigation center. There were tense public meetings in which Mayor London Breed was shouted down during the debate, and twin fundraising efforts by pro- and anti-Embarcadero navigation center factions.

The place has been relatively quiet lately, which Lee said he attributes to lower numbers during the pandemic and a stable population that has been allowed to stay, without cycling in and out every 30 days.

Wallace Lee was part of a group of Embarcadero residents that sued to prevent construction of the navigation center there. He said he hasn’t seen much evidence that the center’s residents are navigating to permanent housing. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Lee still doesn’t see much evidence that the residents of the navigation center are being navigated to long-term housing.

“One of the things that has bothered us with navigation centers is they’re pretending it’s not a homeless shelter but it really is,” he said.

There’s a lot about San Francisco and the Embarcadero that doesn’t translate neatly to the Bronson administration’s proposal for Anchorage.

A courtyard at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center provides a sitting area and a garden. The center had about 80 guests in June. (Marc Lester / ADN)

For one, San Francisco’s homelessness problem is so much larger in scale — more than 8,000 unsheltered people in the city alone — that no single site, like the one Anchorage plans, could address it. The city also spends a staggering amount of money on its homelessness efforts: $300 million directly each year. San Francisco Mayor Breed recently announced an additional $1 billion in funding over the next two years.

Morris said the Embarcadero center isn’t a perfect match, but it’s done a lot right.

He sees parallels in the Embarcadero neighborhood relationship: The SAFE Center countered not-in-my-backyard resistance by making an effort to be good neighbors and adopting an admissions process that didn’t incentivize camping or gathering along nearby streets, he said. The idea of offering all the help a person might need — from medical appointments to help getting an ID — onsite is also appealing, Morris said.

Part of what has made the Embarcadero work is its small size, said O’Neill, one of the managers. Built for 200, only 80 people have lived there during the pandemic to preserve social distancing requirements.

Could the model work for 450 people?

“That’s a lot of people,” she said.

Anthony Jean III, a guest at Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, said his time homeless on San Francisco streets had been frightening. He said he hoped to be able to move from the center to permanent housing. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Anthony Jean III finished lunch in a quiet, light-filled room at the Embarcadero center.

Jean, soft spoken, was from Florida originally but came to California to attend college, he said. He’d been homeless for years in San Francisco, living a frightening and insecure existence in the Tenderloin district.

“You know, once you’re here in the navigation center for six months or so, you do qualify for permanent housing,” he said. It would be worthwhile to stay if he could get help with housing, he thought.

That may not be realistic.

Phalon, the site director, said San Francisco, which has some of the highest rent and home prices in the country, still lacks options for affordable permanent housing for her clientele. The initial promise of navigation centers was that residents would get into some kind of long-term housing after six months. Years later, there’s still nowhere to go after the shelter for many people, she said.

“It’s not true,” she said. “Six years ago, getting into a navigation center meant you got housing.”

The Nevada CARES Campus, a 46,000-square-foot shelter (curved white structure in lower center), provides shelter for homeless people in Reno and Sparks, combined population of about 350,000. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Reno and its next-door neighbor Sparks have a combined population of about 350,000 people — similar in size to Anchorage.

Once dominated by casinos and the gaming industry, Reno’s economy is changing — a Tesla factory moved in nearby — and property values are skyrocketing, with Bay Area tech exiles choosing the area for its lower density and proximity to outdoor recreation. Amid the boom, homelessness is rising.

“Like a lot of western cities, we’re facing an expanding houseless population,” said Reno city manager Doug Thornley.

When it comes to homelessness, Reno and Anchorage have a lot in common: Even before the pandemic, city trails had been taken over by encampments. An old-style shelter had been deemed dangerous by its own manager and — as with Anchorage’s Brother Francis Shelter — was so overcrowded at the outset of the pandemic it couldn’t continue to operate.

Reno decided to take federal CARES Act money and join forces with Washoe County and the city of Sparks to build a large, centralized homeless shelter campus on land at the edge of a gritty strip of low-slung motels to the east of the neon, casino-filled downtown. The structure cost about $9 million and will cost between $6 million and $7 million to operate annually, according to the city. Private security is one of the biggest operational costs of the shelter, at approximately $750,000 per year, said Monica Cochrane of the city of Reno.

Reno selected Sprung Structures, the same maker of tented structures that built San Francisco’s Embarcadero center and is being considered to construct Anchorage’s shelter. Sprung Structures are made from fabric membranes stretched tightly over an aluminum frame, and can have the same plumbing, electrical, heating and ventilation of traditional buildings. The city council approved funding in November 2020 and the shelter opened in May. The tent itself went up in just 32 days.

The Nevada CARES Campus was built to shelter 600 people in Reno, Nevada. In late June, more than 500 people were staying there.(Marc Lester / ADN)

The structure is huge. Inside double doors, a sea of cots for up to 604 people stretches from tented wall to wall. A high ceiling floods the space with natural light. There are smaller partitioned areas for couples and women. As in San Francisco, dogs are allowed and property can be stored on site.

With hundreds of people staying at the CARES Campus, experiences vary. But on a recent afternoon, several guests said the giant shelter had provided a respite from encampment life.

Linda Sandoval said she lived by the river or in her car for more than three years. “Oh my God,” she recalled thinking as she walked into the shelter for the first time, “it’s a roof over my head, but look at how big it is.”

Sandoval said the center could use more staff to prevent theft and fights, but she appreciates that she can stay with her husband, Daniel, dog Jack, and work with case managers, she said.

Alberto Richard said the look of the Sprung Structure reminds him of an “alien abduction crisis center.” But he said he’d gotten help enrolling in community college and securing housing. He thought he could move in a few days.

Danny Dyer said he landed by the railroad tracks because he couldn’t afford Reno rent.

“There was thieves out there all the time,” he said. “You had to worry about getting robbed. You had to worry about getting beat up.”

Danny Dyer’s dogs jump on him at the Nevada CARES Campus in Reno on June 23, 2021. Dyer said he had been staying by the train tracks in Reno, where he worried about getting robbed and beat up, he said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Jesse Kramer writes phone numbers and other information in his notebook at the Nevada CARES Campus. ’I’m just trying to get my life together. I know there’s resources, ’ he said of the facility. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Linda Sandoval holds her dog, Jack, at the Nevada CARES Campus in Reno on June 23, 2021. Sandoval said she had been homeless for three and a half years camping by a river or in her car. She appreciates the shelter, she said. ’Nobody likes to live filthy, even if you’re homeless, ’ she said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Anchorage’s proposal mirrors Reno’s in key ways: Anchorage wants to build a Sprung Structures campus for about 450 people, as Reno has. It needs to do it fast, as Reno did. It will be a welcome-all-comers walk-in shelter, a big difference from San Francisco’s controlled-entry approach.

Still, Morris is emphatic that Anchorage is not trying to recreate the CARES Campus.

“That’s not what we’re looking for,” he said. “This is an opportunity to, yes, accomplish shelter, but also to help people while they’re there.”

Reno has an official count of 780 unhoused people, but providers say the true number is likely closer to 1,000 to 1,500 unsheltered people, similar to Anchorage.

The city also has some of the same issues with homelessness: Before the shelter went up, the Truckee River trail, a prized greenbelt along a river that bisects the city, had become rife with lawless encampments. One, under the Wells Bridge, stretched for blocks, spilling onto land near the railroad tracks.

“That is a thing folks in Reno had made their feelings known about,” said Thornley, the city manager.

Until the city provided enough beds to shelter homeless people, it could not clear camps under a U.S. 9th Circuit court decision that held unsheltered people cannot be punished for sleeping outside in the absence of an alternative. The ruling has shaped policies across the West, including in Anchorage where in 2019 the city began tracking shelter bed availability and halting camp abatement when no beds are available.

In the weeks since the new shelter opened, Reno has resumed “sweeping” camps.

Local activists have protested, saying the new shelter isn’t right for everyone and tearing down camps is cruel.

“This facility isn’t ready, there’s no laundry here,” said Ilya Arbatman, a Reno activist. “I mean there’s a million things that aren’t here — it’s not ready for 500 people.”

A small homeless encampment sits outside the Nevada CARES Campus entrance on June 23, 2021. Some members of Reno’s homeless community said they aren’t interested in staying inside the facility. The city cleared several large encampments in Reno once the Cares Campus opened in May. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Just outside the fence of the CARES Campus, a block-long encampment of tents and shopping carts has developed. The people inside don’t want to go to the shelter, each with a unique reason. But they want to be close to the showers and meals on offer. The campers had been notified they’d be cleared from the sidewalk in days, Arbatman said.

In May, Morris of Anchorage visited the 46,000-square-foot Reno CARES Campus. He said the shelter was “very reasonable” but verged on “warehousing people.”

“We walked in, I walked through the building, I walked back out and said, ‘There’s been a mistake. This isn’t what we want to do,’ ” Morris said.

Matthew Tittor holds his artwork near the Wells Avenue Bridge over the Truckee River on June 23, 2021. The area was the site of a large homeless encampment before it was cleared by the city. Tittor, who camped nearby, said he had no interest in staying at the Nevada CARES Campus. (Marc Lester / ADN)

James McKinney stays in a new sanctioned tent camping facility a few blocks from the Nevada CARES Campus on June 24, 2021. ’I’m a very private person, and I just couldn’t do it, ’ McKinney said of staying at the large facility. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Not everyone will come to the CARES Campus.

At the Wells Bridge, one of the largest pre-shelter encampments had long since been dismantled. In its place, there are burn scars in the scrub around the railroad tracks, syringe caps and ground squirrels.

A few people still wander down to the Truckee River. Matthew Tittor walked up, carrying a painting of a street-racing scene. He knew about the shelter but couldn’t imagine staying inside, “bed to bed to bed to bed,” he said.

The city wants to offer something for people like Tittor, an invitation to help that doesn’t count on someone being willing to sleep in a room full of other people.

At a site a block or two from the Reno shelter, an organization called Karma Box has set up a row of basic tents. There’s security at the entrance, bathrooms and a shaded area for eating.

Courtney Govan walks to his tent at a new sanctioned tent camping site a few blocks from the Nevada CARES Campus on June 24, 2021. He said he prefers it to the large shelter. ’I get my own privacy. I can shut my door, ’ he said. (Marc Lester / ADN)

The safe-camping site aims to get people who aren’t willing to use the shelter to accept some kind of help, in a place safer and more constant than the streets, said Karma Box executive director Grant Denton. Denton is a former meth and heroin addict who spent years homeless in Las Vegas.

Courtney Govan counts himself among the first residents of the sanctioned camping site. Drug addiction has kept him from being the father he’d like to be, he said. He has turned to petty crime to get by, and has made enemies on the streets. The sanctioned camping site tents are in the hot sun, but they allow him some distance from the pressures waiting elsewhere in Reno. He says his friendship with Denton feels like one of the only things he’s got going in his favor.

Back at the CARES Campus, Pat Cashell is thinking about what’s next for the shelter. The facility needs more case managers, a medical clinic and onsite laundry, among other amenities. Cashell, the shelter manager for Volunteers of America, wants it to work.

Pat Cashell spent ten years on the street in Reno. Now he oversees the Nevada CARES Campus for Volunteers of America. It provides shelter to more than 500 homeless people. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Once he was homeless and addicted in Reno, too — while his father was the mayor. His family never gave up on him, he said. When he decided to finally get help, his dad summoned him to his office. He arrived to find his father had called a press conference to announce his son was finally getting help for his addiction, Cashell says.

Former Mayor Bob Cashell died last year, just before the pandemic changed the world and forced Reno to confront its homelessness problems. Pat Cashell doesn’t want to let his dad’s legacy down.

“This will be a place of change,” he said.

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Fierce Diablo winds are expected to hit Northern California this week, creating an increased risk of fire in the burn-torn region and prompting Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to prepare for potential blackouts in parts of 43 counties, warned utilities.

In part of the Sierra Nevada, which extends to the south of the Santa Cruz Mountains, power outages could occur from Wednesday, according to PG&E.

Two dangerous wind events are expected this week – the first one begins on Wednesday afternoon or evening and extends through Thursday morning and the second develops on Thursday evening and runs through Friday morning, forecasters said.

On Monday morning, the National Weather Service released a fire weather watch for late Tuesday through Friday morning, predicting that the strongest gusts of the first wind event would occur overnight from Wednesday through Thursday. The greatest threat is in the mountains of northeastern counties Napa and Sonoma, where the destructive glass fire is still raging, according to the weather service.

“Any fires that start are likely to spread quickly due to a combination of dry fuel, windy northerly winds, and low humidity,” the forecasters said.

In anticipation of the winds, PG&E announced that the power supply could be cut from Wednesday to Friday for parts of the following counties: Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Humboldt, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity, Alpine, Amador, Calaveras El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sierra, and Yuba.

Parts of 24 other counties – Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Benito, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Trinity, Yolo, Fresno, Inyo , Kern, Madera, Mariposa, Tulare and Tuolumne – could experience shutdowns for a shorter period of time, utility officials said.

The shutdowns are unlikely to affect entire counties, PG&E said, noting widespread outages in the Bay Area are unlikely.

The agency says the areas most likely to shutdown are the foothills of the northern sierra; the middle and higher peaks of the Sierra, generally north of Yosemite; the northern Bay Area Mountains near Mt. St. Helena; small bags in the East Bay Area near Mt. Diablo; the Oakland Hills east of Piedmont; the elevated terrain east of Milpitas around the Calaveras Reservoir; and parts of the Santa Cruz and Big Sur mountains.

The utility has agreed to pay $ 25.5 billion to settle claims for damages in a previous series of fatal fires stemming from its equipment and for the involuntary manslaughter in Northern California in 2018, the deadliest corporate crime in US history, known to be guilty of 84 involuntary manslaughter.

The company has vowed to revamp its operations and focus more on security to avoid starting another catastrophic fire. But it is now being examined for its possible involvement in the deadly Zogg Fire. California investigators consider the company’s equipment to be a possible cause of the fire that killed four people and burned more than 56,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection included some of the utility’s equipment in its investigation, PG&E said in a report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The utility filed a preliminary report of the incident with state regulators, stating in a statement that it was working with investigators. Cal Fire has not yet determined the cause of the fire.

Temperatures across the state are expected to rise throughout the week, with parts of the Central Valley nearing record highs, according to the National Weather Service. Dry winds are expected to sweep the Sacramento Valley at speeds of up to 30 mph as of Monday.

“A warming and drying trend will happen this week as high pressure builds up across the state,” PG&E officials said in a statement in which gusts in the mountains of the North Bay Area and Northern Sierra are at or over 50 miles / h were estimated.

Northern California was burned by historic forest fires that year, with 4 million acres burned. The August Complex, the largest fire in the state’s history, is still burning in the Mendocino National Forest on Monday morning, according to Cal Fire.

Parts of the region are already exposed to an increased fire risk with above-average temperatures and windy conditions. Air quality warnings remain in effect throughout the San Joaquin Valley and central California due to forest fires, according to the National Weather Service Forecasting Center in Hanford.

National Weather Service meteorologist David King said the winds built up in the northeast and blew offshore, leaving warm temperatures and dried fuel. The winds are expected to be strongest at high elevations in the North Bay Mountains, East Bay Hills, and Santa Cruz Mountains, King said.

“We’ll still see winds making it into the valleys, but it won’t be very strong or excessive,” he said. “If you have strong winds, you are very concerned about the tall fire. That will really stay in the higher elevations now. “

Temperatures in the Los Angeles area are expected to hit sultry highs again this week, with areas in the San Fernando Valley approaching 100 degrees. The beaches will float in the 80s, said weather service meteorologist Mike Wofford. A heat warning for a large part of the region is expected to come into force on Tuesday at 11 a.m. and, according to the weather service, will continue until Friday 5 p.m.

“It’ll just be hot and dry, not our usual morning low clouds and fog,” said Wofford.

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