“I had an apartment, but I still felt like I was on the edge of the abyss,” Bullock said. “I moved away from the only community I had.”

When her daughter's school went on summer vacation, she couldn't afford a babysitter and had no choice but to quit her job, she said. She was soon kicked out of her apartment and found herself living on the streets of San Francisco again.

“They give you the voucher and you're on your own,” Bullock said. “I only went to Napa to be forgotten.”

It took another three years before she found another apartment – ​​this time in San Francisco.

Between 2020 and 2023, at least 596 families and individuals, or 13% of all clients in the program, ended up living on the streets or in shelters again, according to the data. The city's homeless services department does not know what happened to another 738 clients because it did not collect their data.

The rate of clients returning to homelessness improved between 2021 and 2023, falling from 20% to just 8% of all outcomes, as about 63% of the program's clients transitioned into permanent supportive housing last year. However, data from the first four months of 2024 show that the rate of returning to homelessness has increased again to 12%, while transitions to permanent housing have fallen to 58% of all outcomes.

The department said all program participants are offered the opportunity to meet with a case manager weekly for the first 90 days after they move in, and twice a month thereafter. Participants also go through “exit planning” 90 days before their subsidies expire to ensure they do not become homeless again, the department said.

The post San Francisco strikes Black households out greater than some other race appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

New Zealand sailing’s golden boys are on the verge of more global success with Peter Burling and Blair Tuke looking to add a SailGP title to their resume this weekend.

The New Zealand team is gearing up for the final weekend of the season in San Francisco which culminates in the $1.5 million finale on Sunday.

“It’s hugely exciting, this has been a weekend we’ve been gearing up for for 18 months,” Tuke told 1News.

Last season, the New Zealand team finished fifth out of eight GP teams in their debut season but this campaign has been a totally different story with the Kiwis currently second overall on the back of three regatta wins out of 10 sailed.

Teams are hardly allowed to train in the F50s so racing is where the Burling, Tuke and the New Zealanders have been learning.

The Warkworth-built boats have hit nearly 100km/h this season — a mark Tuke an Burling are comfortable with given the similar speeds they’ve experienced with Team New Zealand.

But Burling said there’s actually a point where the boats can be going too fast for their own good.

“We hit this thing called cavitation which is where the water starts to boil off the foils, the pressure gets super low which creates a huge amount of drag,” Burling explained.

“That’s the reason why we hit the wall at about 50 knots.”

The NZ SailGP team. (Source: Photosport)

SailGP is continuing to heat up though with 12 stops scheduled for next season including Auckland next March, filling the gaping America’s Cup hole left by Team New Zealand’s decision to take the Auld Mug to Barcelona.

Burling said organisers were looking at downtown course options for the regatta.

“One of those is between Bayswater and Westhaven — it looks tight but it looks doable and it would create an amazing amphitheatre in there.

“It would be pretty amazing.”

So would a win on Sunday after a season of ups, downs and the odd lightning strike.

The post NZ SailGP group heating up for $1.5m finale race in San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

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An estimated 1.1 million people living in the U.S. report lacking some access to running water in their homes, with nearly three-quarters of them living in cities and suburbs, finds new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on Census Bureau survey data covering 2013 to 2017.

Householders of color in the 50 largest metropolitan areas are 34% more likely to lack what the U.S. Census Bureau calls “complete plumbing” compared with white, non-Hispanic householders, the authors find. The Census Bureau considers a household to have “complete plumbing” if it has running hot and cold water plus a bathtub or shower used only by people living in the dwelling.

Some 39% of households in the largest metro areas are represented by householders of color, but 53% of households in those areas that lack complete plumbing are represented by householders of color, they find.

Overall, the authors estimate 220,300 households and 514,000 people in the nation’s top 50 metro areas lack piped water in their homes — roughly half the number of people in the U.S. without complete plumbing.

“It is hard for many people to imagine that communities in the modern-day U.S. lack such a basic life necessity, but for those of us who work at the crux of infrastructure provision and social and spatial inequality, this story — the story of systemic inequality — is an old story,” lead author Katie Meehan, a senior lecturer in human geography at King’s College London, told Journalist’s Resource by email. “Our analysis shows that the effects of racial capitalism in the housing and water provision sectors are systemic and institutionalized, not random or accidental.”

The authors further find that renters in the top 50 metro areas are 61% more likely to lack complete plumbing compared with residents who own their homes.

According to the PNAS paper, “Geographies of Insecure Water Access and the Housing-Water Nexus in U.S. Cities,” metro areas with the highest percentages of households lacking complete plumbing include: San Francisco; Milwaukee; San Antonio; Cleveland; Los Angeles; New Orleans; New York; Portland, Oregon; Memphis, Tennessee; and Austin, Texas.

Metro areas generally encompass core cities and their surrounding suburbs.

The top five metro areas in terms of the estimated number of people without complete plumbing are New York, with more than 65,000; Los Angeles, with more than 44,000; San Francisco, with more than 27,000; Houston, with more than 20,000; and Miami, with nearly 19,000, according to the paper.

Water access, affordability and safety are three of the primary challenges for U.S. households struggling with water security. On Sept. 4 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put into effect a moratorium on residential evictions because “housing stability helps protect public health because homelessness increases the likelihood of individuals moving into congregate settings, such as homeless shelters, which then puts individuals at higher risk to COVID-19,” the agency wrote in its order.

The American Medical Association agreed in a recent legal brief, explaining that the eviction moratorium is helping renters maintain physical distancing, self-quarantining and hand hygiene. People without a piped connection to water in some areas may still be able access clean water — by purchasing purified water from a store, for example, or retrieving water from other sources, such as a stream.

Water access, affordability and safety are three of the primary challenges for U.S. households struggling with water security.

With the CDC no-eviction order set to end Dec. 31, it’s not just housing at stake for millions of Americans who rent and are already at greater risk of lacking complete plumbing — it’s the ability for people to wash their hands at home during a pandemic. The eviction moratorium applies to people renting apartments and houses, and to mobile home owners who lease the land on which they live.

“Eviction is the first phase in a cycle of household insecurity, which we know relates to food insecurity, water insecurity, job insecurity, health insecurity,” says University of Colorado Denver sociologist Esther Sullivan, who wasn’t part of the PNAS paper but has studied mobile home evictions for nearly a decade. “The best thing we can do is not let that cycle start — to invest up front to keep people in their homes.”

The authors of the PNAS paper note that the Census Bureau often undercounts renters, people without homes and people of color, “demographics that are disproportionately plumbing poor.” The Census Bureau has acknowledged that those groups are undercounted. Given census undercounting, the authors explain the actual number of people in the U.S. that lack complete plumbing is likely closer to 2 million — roughly the size of the Kansas City metro area, for comparison.

“There’s percentages and then there’s numbers,” says Manny Teodoro, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied water affordability, but was not part of the PNAS paper and hasn’t reviewed its methodology. “Even if it’s a tiny percentage, a million or two [million] people is a lot of people — and it should be unacceptable to us.”

Meehan and her co-authors focus on urban and suburban households that lack complete plumbing despite being “close to networked supply.” But their research has implications for rural households, too.

The type of structure people live in matters when it comes to access to running water. Mobile homes make up 2.6% of households in the 50 largest metros but represent 5.2% of households that don’t have complete plumbing, according to the PNAS paper. Mobile home households are 89% more likely to lack piped water compared with other types of homes, the authors find. While metro areas are often associated with cities and suburbs, they can include rural areas where mobile homes are more commonly found.

“Within a metropolitan area, there absolutely will be many mobile home parks,” says Sullivan. “It’s useful to think about the top 50 metropolitan areas. That’s big metros, small metros. That’s good because that will capture many, many types of places.”

For example, the Houston metro area, as Sullivan points out, is comprised of nine counties, several of which are rural in part.

Burdensome costs

Even for households that have complete plumbing, the cost of water can be a significant financial drain. Roughly one-third of households in the largest 50 metro areas are “cost-burdened,” meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to the PNAS paper. The authors find almost half of households without complete plumbing are cost-burdened. The median household income across the top 50 metro areas is about $65,000, compared with a median income of about $33,000 for households in those areas that lack complete plumbing, according to the authors.

The cost of water can be a significant financial drain.

In his April 2020 paper, “Water and Sewer Affordability in the United States,” Teodoro estimates that monthly water and sewer bills eat up a substantial portion of low-income families’ disposable income. Households that are among the lowest fifth percentile of income earners use on average 12.4% of their disposable monthly income — equivalent to 10 hours of work at local minimum wages — to pay their water and sewer bills. The estimate is based on a sample of nearly 400 utilities — about three-quarters of them public and one-quarter private — serving populations ranging from 3,300 people to more than 100,000.

“What we’re trying to capture is the tradeoffs customers have to make to pay for their water and sewer bill,” Teodoro says. “The minimum wage metric is nice because it’s immediately intuitive and it provides a sense of the opportunity costs of paying water and sewer bills.”

One big idea Teodoro proposes to address water affordability in the U.S. is to consolidate water utilities. Large water systems tend to deliver higher quality water more efficiently to customers, he says. Teodoro estimates there are 30,000 to 40,000 organizations running some 50,000 water systems across the country. Some municipalities share water delivery responsibilities while others operate their own water organizations.

“To give you a sense of how much complexity that introduces, there are about 1,200 electrical utilities in the U.S. and you’ll hear the electric folks bemoan how complex their governance is,” he says. “We’re talking about an order of magnitude larger for water.”

Teodoro has proposed several other solutions, including regulatory reform and technology upgrades. But consolidation is the first step toward facilitating the rest, he says. There has been some recent progress at the federal level. In an Oct. 13 executive order, President Donald Trump laid out a range of directives aimed at improving water resource management, including the consolidation of federal water-related task forces, working groups and cross-agency initiatives.

“Water at the federal level is managed through several different agencies, which creates a lot of confusion, and sometimes these agencies work at cross purposes,” Teodoro says. “You might have the [Environmental Protection Agency] wanting utilities to consolidate but the [Department of Agriculture] has a rural development program to assist small systems. But that could also be seen as something like life support for systems that maybe ought to be consolidated.”

From unpaid bills to home loss

It’s difficult to assess the number of people in the U.S. who have trouble paying their water bills because “water bills themselves are such a local issue,” says Coty Montag, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who wrote “Lien In: Challenging Municipalities’ Discriminatory Water Practices Under the Fair Housing Act,” published in July 2020 in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

No-eviction orders are helping renters maintain hand hygiene.

The average monthly cost of water for a family of four buying water from one of the 30 largest water systems in the U.S. has increased 64% in the past decade, from $44.39 in 2010 to $72.93 in 2019, according to reporting from Circle of Blue, a nonprofit journalism and research outlet that covers water access and affordability. Those figures are a small snapshot of the water systems in the U.S. and capture systems “which typically display better financial strength, greater economies of scale, and fewer health violations than their smaller counterparts,” writes senior reporter Brett Walton.

When residents cannot pay their water bills, they can face serious repercussions and even lose their homes. An unpaid water bill of just a few hundred dollars can lead to home loss in certain municipalities — even if a homeowner has paid off their mortgage.

Take an unpaid bill of $300 in Cleveland, for example, where there is “no statutory minimum to initiate this process,” Montag says. “You could have a very low unpaid bill and end up in this process.”

If a Cleveland homeowner can’t pay off a $300 bill, the city can place a lien on their property. A lien is a legal claim on an asset, such as real estate. The person or entity owning or “holding” the lien can take over the property if the debt remains unpaid. The lien certificate holder — the City of Cleveland in this example — can sell the lien to another entity, such as a bank. If the debt remains unpaid, the lienholder can initiate foreclosure, eventually leading a homeowner who otherwise legally owns the property into eviction.

In her 2019 report “Water/Color: A Study of Race and the Water Affordability Crisis in America’s Cities,” Montag documents legislation in every state that allows municipalities to place property liens for unpaid utility bills, though “not all states actually do this process,” she says.

Some cities have taken steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to ease the utility bill burden for their residents. “We began to suspend water payments to make it easier for people to have money in their pocket,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said during a Nov. 19 briefing hosted by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

Ohio State Sen. Sandra Williams in March 2020 proposed legislation that would ban liens for unpaid water bills. “It’s hard to believe that this could be a condition in Ohio in how we relate to our local governments and services providers,” Ohio State Sen. Tim Schaffer said when Williams proposed the bill, according to reporting from News 5 Cleveland. The legislation remains under consideration in the Ohio Senate’s Ways and Means Committee, which reviews tax policy bills.

The Baltimore General Assembly in March 2019 passed legislation banning property liens over water debt. In December 2019, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed suit against the city of Cleveland, alleging liens there have a discriminatory racial impact, with three times as many water liens placed in majority Black neighborhoods compared with white neighborhoods in certain years, Montag says. The suit is ongoing in U.S. district court in northern Ohio.

“Water affordability has become a really important issue demonstrating systemic racial discrimination,” she says. “Back in the 1960s, my organization litigated a case about Black access to water in sewer systems. We’re seeing these same issues that existed more than 50 years ago still exist today.”

Another city known for issuing liens for unpaid water bills? Flint, Michigan.

‘That’s really disturbing’

Flint attracted national media attention in 2014 and 2015 after the city switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Scientists linked bacteria in the river water to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease and found dangerously high lead levels after corrosive river water ate into old pipes, as Kettering University political scientist Ben Pauli recalls in “The Flint Water Crisis,” published in March 2020 in WIREs Water.

The city started supplying residents with water from the Flint River while a new pipeline to Lake Huron was built. The Flint water treatment plant wasn’t ready for the switch and its staff didn’t know how to properly treat river water, according to Pauli. Residents subsequently suffered hair loss and rashes, and researchers documented elevated levels of lead and other metals in city water.

Nearly every resident of Flint was exposed to lead, according to the CDC. In the years since, journalists have shown how children in Flint exposed to lead suffered health problems and had trouble learning in school.

“Despite Flint’s water quality issues, its water rates rank among the highest in the United States and residents have faced the threat of water shutoffs and property tax liens for nonpayment of water bills,” Pauli writes.

As filmmaker Kwesi Reynolds documents in a 2017 photo essay in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, people in Flint washed their hands using canned water during the height of the crisis.

“Now all of a sudden there’s water distribution centers,” says Reynolds, who was born in Detroit and raised in Flint before moving to Dallas in 2019 for work. “You look at it now, that’s really disturbing. Five years ago in my city, you had to go get bottled water because you could not drink the water from your tap.”

Reynolds’ father, Lawrence Reynolds, a longtime pediatrician in Flint, was a member of the Flint Water Advisory Task Force, which, in 2016, provided recommendations for then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to address the crisis. Since then, the city has replaced more than 9,500 pipes. Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley has said that lead water service lines in the city would be replaced by Nov. 30. The city has completed nearly all of its home inspections, with about 2,500 households remaining as of August.

“You assume the basic amenities will be taken care of,” Reynolds says. “Water, I think, should be something that everybody should have access to. Water is not a civil right — it should be a human right.”

A mural in Flint, Michigan. (Sean Marshall / Flickr / Creative Commons)

For more on water access, affordability and safety check out racial disparities in access to running water: 5 studies to know and lead in drinking water: key facts and reporting tips. Plus, five tips for investigating stories on water access, affordability and safety.

The post Analysis sheds gentle on race and water entry appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

More than a year before the election, the race to represent San Francisco’s Mission District is already heating up. 

Frontrunners are touting early fundraising successes, and the race—which includes several candidates so far—is already getting spicy, with a campaign finance investigation in the mix. 

Progressive activist Jackie Fielder and former tech executive Trevor Chandler released fundraising statements within days of each other last week—both designed to position themselves as frontrunners to represent District 9, which includes the Mission, Bernal Heights and Portola neighborhoods. 

Fielder, who last ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat state Sen. Scott Wiener, currently leads the pack in fundraising with $52,000, as of June 27, and said she qualified for $255,000 in public financing. In a July 1 statement, Chandler boasted donations of $53,649 and $179,315 in expected public financing so far. 

District 9’s incumbent, Hillary Ronen, terms out in 2024 and occupies what has been a reliably progressive-leaning seat since the city reinstated district elections in 2000. 

Hillary Ronen speaks at a meeting in San Francisco on June 10, 2019. | Source: Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Ronen has endorsed Fielder, along with her aide Santiago Lerma—one of five other declared candidates in the race. 

Both Fielder and Chandler have positioned themselves as progressives in the race, though they reflect differing priorities in a district that has been shaken by economic upheaval and other consequences of the pandemic. It’s also undergone demographic changes, including the growth of Asian American and immigrant communities in the fast-growing Portola neighborhood in the southern part of the district. 

Changing Neighborhood

The city’s drug addiction crisis has increased the spread of open-air drug-dealing beyond the Tenderloin and SoMa to the Mission, which is beset by marked increases in homeless encampments, illegal swap meets of stolen goods and street prostitution. 

Chandler, a former policy lead at the public safety app startup Citizen, has carved out a moderate lane on drug and public safety issues, supporting the arrest of drug dealers, closing open-air drug markets, increasing police staffing and expanding conservatorship laws. 

“We’ve built a sophisticated grassroots campaign for the long haul, and we are going to win,” Chandler told The Standard. “There is no denying I am the underdog going up against the City Hall establishment, but there is no place I would rather be.”

A pedestrian passes the Victoria Theatre, located on the corner of 16th and Capp streets in the Mission District in San Francisco, pictured on June 30, 2023. | Source: Isaac Ceja/The Standard

Fielder says she is currently in outreach mode, organizing community meetings throughout the district: “My goal is a hundred meetings, from the Mission to the Portola, to build a community-driven platform,” she told The Standard in a phone call. 

Fielder is also running on her record of advocacy for progressive causes, ranging from environmental policies to public banking; she is currently vice chair of the Local Agency Formation Commission, a local body created by state law that has been used to expand municipal services into domains such as power utilities. 

As part of that advocacy, she organized the Daybreak Political Action Committee in 2021 to support like-minded candidates and advocate for progressive policies. 

GET THE INSIDE SCOOP: Power Play is The Standard’s insider email newsletter covering City Hall and politics. Sign up here.

The PAC is described by the San Francisco Independent Journal, a website run by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America that raised concerns over its writers’ use of pseudonyms, as a way to “grow the movement built by her State Senate campaign.”

Steven Buss, head of the moderate political group GrowSF, alleged in a 2021 complaint to the state Fair Political Practices Commission that Fielder ran the PAC “as her controlled committee and a vehicle for her as she contemplates another run for office,” violating state rules by acting as the committee’s principal officer without required disclosure. 

Asked to comment on the allegations, Fielder said there was no follow-through from the state commission and that “they seemed to be satisfied with our initial response to the complaint.” Fielder confirmed that the Daybreak PAC was shut down earlier this year when she decided to run for supervisor. 

A spokesperson with the commission confirms that the Daybreak PAC investigation remains open. 

Crowded Race

Other declared candidates in the District 9 race include veteran HIV activist and open-government gadfly Michael Petrelis, Julian Bermudez and Rafael Gutierrez. 

“I am running for the District 9 supervisorial seat to participate in debates, raising important concerns regarding government transparency and accountability, and listening to the hopes and fears of voters and residents,” Petrelis told The Standard in an email. 

Bermudez, a Mission native, wrote in an email that after returning home from an Army enlistment, he found a city “with fewer people, vacant spaces, an extremely open drug market, and more homeless.” 

Rafael Gutierrez, who also grew up in the area, is a security guard who The Standard interviewed in 2021 about retail theft. 

Roberto Hernandez, a local organizer who runs the neighborhood’s Carnaval celebration, has also indicated he plans to run.

The post Race to Symbolize San Francisco’s Mission District Heating Up appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

In a collection of relatively sleepy locales, including the Outer Mission, Ingleside and Excelsior neighborhoods, next year’s race for supervisor is already taking shape, with two markedly different candidates already declared and the possibility of more hopefuls waiting in the wings.

With District 11 incumbent Ahsha Safaí running for mayor, more attention than ever before could be focused on the district, which some say gets the short end of the stick when it comes to city resources. The two declared candidates, Ernest “EJ” Jones and Roger Marenco, have distinct vibes, with the former leaning more toward a new establishment approach and the latter—who rails against “drug addicts” and “looting”—cultivating a more insurgent populist approach. 

The boundaries of the district today are roughly the same as the one that in 1977 elected arch-conservative supervisor Dan White, a former policeman and firefighter who ran as a “defender of the home, the family and religious life against homosexuals, pot smokers and cynics,” according to the New York Times. A year later, White would murder Castro Supervisor Harvey Milk, along with then-Mayor George Moscone.

That event sometimes still looms over District 11, which maintains the atmosphere of old, working-class San Francisco alongside the contributions of newer immigrant communities. 

While District 11 reliably elected progressive supervisors in more recent years, with the election of Ahsha Safaí in 2016, it moved more toward the center, but with labor support. 

Here’s a look at the two candidates who are running—with the caveat that it is still early days.

The Heir Apparent

Ernest “EJ” Jones stands for a portrait on Byxbee Street in Ingleside in San Francisco on Wednesday. Jones has declared for next year’s District 11 Supervisor race. | Source: Jeremy Chen/The Standard

Ernest “EJ” Jones is about as “Native San Franciscan” as you can get—born at St. Luke’s Hospital in Ingleside and raised in the Outer Mission, he went to St. Ignatius prep school and got his master’s in public administration at the University of San Francisco. 

“I’ve lived in the district my entire life,” Jones told The Standard. “I’m invested. I’m rooted here. I don’t plan on leaving.” 

Endorsed by incumbent Safaí, Jones looks to continue a pragmatic “labor moderate” approach to government, with an emphasis on consensus.

He started his career assisting the director of equity at the San Francisco Unified School District, moving on to the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, where he shepherded tenants of Alemany Apartments public housing through the remodeling of its units via a federal program. 

“I understand how important it is to have 100% affordable housing. But I also realize that there’s a need for other types of housing, and I’m supportive of projects that make sense,” Jones said, adding that he’s “very cognizant” of the city’s goal of adding over 80,000 new homes in eight years.

Jones told The Standard that business challenges, public safety and affordability are all key issues in District 11, as mirrored in other districts. 

But what differentiates the district from the rest of the city is how it’s often on the short end of investment, Jones said. For instance, one of two libraries in the district is the city’s smallest. 

“There’s a plan for one of the largest neighborhood libraries currently in place for Orizaba Avenue at Brotherhood Way,” Jones said. “It’s just been kind of a slow, slow roll. Having that library is really important. It would show that there’s investment into our neighborhood.” 

Most recently, the candidate was a legislative aide for Safaí. “He spent two years in my office learning what it takes to be a supervisor,” Safaí told The Standard. ”He’s ready for the job [on] day one and has my full confidence.” 

The Maverick 

Roger Marenco poses for a portrait on Don Chee Way and Steuart Street in San Francisco on Tuesday. Marenco has declared for next year’s District 11 supervisor race. | Source: Isaac Ceja/The Standard

Roger Marenco has been involved in the city’s politics since he was 19 years old and his family was facing eviction from their Mission District apartment. He got involved with People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Justice (PODER), a Latino advocacy group, and the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, organizing against gentrification in the Mission during the first dot-com gold rush. 

“How did I start organizing? I don’t know,” Marenco told The Standard. “I just started speaking to people, telling them what was going on, that we had to fight, that we had to organize and that we should not lay down and have this happen to us in our neighborhood.”

He then interned with progressive Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who was renowned for his advocacy of LGBTQ+ rights and economic justice, for two years. 

Now, Marenco is a working Muni operator for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, a job where he’s seen the worst of San Francisco’s street crime, homelessness and drug abuse problems. His views on what to do about those problems might raise a few eyebrows with progressives. 

“My son had a pair of new Cocomelon shoes on. We’re walking outside the front door, and he steps on a pile of shit. Brand new shoes. Hadn’t even worn them for 30 minutes. And I said, ‘You know what? This is bullshit, literally bullshit,’” Marenco told The Standard about one incident that inspired his run. “I just cleaned up yesterday, and now my boy walks out, and the first step that he takes on the sidewalk is a pile of shit. And I said, ‘You know what? I am done with this.’”

Marenco was the controversial president of the Muni operators’ union for four years. He says he had to fight tooth and nail with a hidebound old guard who worked to block his leadership multiple times, despite being elected in a 3-to-1 vote and getting new contract wins for union members. 

Marenco was barred from running for reelection last year by the union’s executive board after being accused of using “racially derogatory language” against board members—a charge he denies. 

“Out of the five times that I’ve been suspended (by the union board), I overturned all of my suspensions when I appealed them, so much so to the point at which the International Union in Washington, D.C., had to come in and kick everybody out of office for an entire year,” he said.

Marenco’s experience fighting evictions in the dot-com era Mission clearly shaped his view of San Francisco’s housing problems. 

“We need housing for a person that does not make $200,000 a year, that makes a teacher’s salary, a bus driver’s salary or a janitor or the people that clean the hotels or cook; these are the types of people for which we need to build housing for,” Marenco told The Standard. “These are the people that have families, not a single 23-year-old who works for Facebook.”

Marenco also wants the city to do more for care workers and other “miscellaneous employees” who don’t get the same level of benefits as more visible categories. 

Some of Marenco’s other views, however, will differentiate him from most progressives, particularly on the highly visible issues involving crime, drug abuse and street conditions. 

“I am sick and tired of seeing the homelessness, the drug addicts, the looting, the stealing, the assaults that are occurring on a daily basis,” Marenco said. “It’s been migrating down towards District 11, and unless we put a stop to it, it’s going to continue.”

“I think that if somebody takes a dump in front of your house, that should be illegal. But certain politicians in City Hall don’t see it that way,” he added. “I am not a defund-the-police person because when I need help, the first number that I’m dialing is 911.”

Neither candidate has reported any fundraising activity, unlike the early race for donations currently going on in nearby District 9. Both say they are still in outreach mode, talking with neighbors and neighborhood groups. 

John Avalos—Safaí’s progressive predecessor who challenged him in 2020—told The Standard that he won’t be running this time. 

Another oft-mentioned candidate, Chris Corgas, a deputy director of the city’s economic development agency who recently worked with Safaí to bring a Community Benefit District to the Excelsior, told The Standard he’s “flattered by the interest, but I’m keeping my options open.” 

Barring bigger players jumping in later, voters already have two distinct choices for District 11’s future.

The post Subsequent 12 months’s Race for Sleepy San Francisco District 11 Is Heating Up Quick appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

“It has its value to be underestimated,” he said.

FromKelsey Walsh

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum announced Wednesday that he is running for the 2024 presidential election, making him the twelfth Republican candidate on the list.

Burgum, a former software CEO who was elected in 2016, announced his announcement with a video released Monday. He will make it official during his speech in Fargo on Wednesday morning.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum speaks at the start of his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination Wednesday, June 7, 2023 in Fargo, North Dakota

(AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Burgum’s teaser video, titled “Change,” shows him tracing his biographical roots: “I started a shoeshine business, worked the grain elevator and chimney sweep for college, and then got my MBA from Stanford. I ignored those who said so. “North Dakota was too small, too cold, and too remote to build a world-class software company.”

A native of Arthur, North Dakota, Burgum founded Great Plains Software in 1983 and was eventually acquired by Microsoft in 2001. Burgum remained active in the company until 2007.

“I’m literally betting the farm is helping grow a small startup into a billion-dollar company with customers in 132 countries,” he said in his teaser video, describing himself as “a new leader for a self.” changing economy”.

Copyright © 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures.

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Rescuers in a remote area of ​​the Atlantic Ocean fought against time on Tuesday to locate five people assigned to document the wreck of the Titanic.

Authorities reported Sunday night that the carbon fiber ship was overdue and launched an international rescue operation in waters about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. On board were a pilot, the famous British adventurer Hamish Harding, two members of a legendary Pakistani entrepreneurial family and a Titanic expert.

The submersible, named Titan, had 96 hours of oxygen when it set sail around 6 a.m. Sunday, according to David Concannon, a consultant with OceanGate Expeditions who oversaw the mission.

This means that oxygen supplies could run out by Thursday morning.

CBS News journalist David Pogue, who traveled to Titanic aboard Titanic last year, said the craft uses two systems of communication: text messages sent to a surface ship and security pings sent out every 15 minutes to indicate that the U-Boot da is still working.

Both systems stopped about an hour and 45 minutes after Titan submerged.

“There are only two things that could mean. Either they lost all power or the ship suffered a hull rupture and immediately imploded. Both are frighteningly hopeless,” Pogue told CBC on Tuesday.

The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that fall down, and an inflatable balloon. A system is designed to work even when everyone on board is unconscious, Pogue said.

Experts said rescuers face major challenges.

Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles typically have a drop weight, which is “a mass that they can release in an emergency to buoy them to the surface”.

“If there had been a power outage and/or communications failure, that would have happened and the submersible would then be floating on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.

Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull, in which case the prognosis is not good, he said.

“If it’s sunk to the sea floor and can’t get back up on its own, the options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible may still be intact, once it’s beyond the continental shelf there are very few vessels capable of going that deep, let alone divers.”

Even if they could go that deep, he doubts rescuers could get stuck on the sub.

As of Tuesday morning, an area totaling 10,000 square miles had been searched, the US Coast Guard tweeted.

Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, which is supporting Titan, was to continue conducting surface searches with the help of a Canadian Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, the Coast Guard said on Twitter. Two US Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft also performed overflights.

The Canadian military dropped sonar buoys to listen for Titan’s sounds.

Concannon, who said he should have been present at the dive but was unable to be, said officials are also working to get a remote-controlled vehicle to the site as soon as possible, which can dive to a depth of 6 kilometers.

Archaeologists and marine biologists take part in OceanGate’s expeditions to the Titanic wreck. The company also brings paid employees, known as “mission specialists.” They take turns operating the sonar equipment and doing other tasks in the submersible.

The Coast Guard said on Monday that the Titan had one pilot and four “mission specialists” on board. However, OceanGate’s website suggests that the fifth person may be a so-called “content expert” guiding paying customers.

Authorities have yet to officially identify those on board, although some names have been confirmed, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who the company says served as a member of the crew.

Rush told The Associated Press in June 2021 that the Titan’s technology is “very cutting edge” and was developed with the help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers.

“This is the only submersible — crewed submersible — that’s made of carbon fiber and titanium,” Rush said, calling it the “largest carbon fiber structure we know of,” with 5 inches of thick carbon fiber and 3.25 inches of titanium.

Harding, who lives in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, was one of the mission specialists, according to Action Aviation, a company of which Harding is chairman.

Harding is a billionaire adventurer who holds three Guinness World Records, including the longest full-sea depth record in a manned ship. In March 2021, he and marine researcher Victor Vescovo descended to the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench. In June 2022, he flew into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

According to a family statement, the Pakistani national Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were also on board. The Dawoods belong to one of the most prominent families in Pakistan. Her eponymous company invests nationwide in agriculture, industry and the healthcare sector.

Shahzada Dawood is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California-based SETI Institute, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.

French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet was also on board, according to David Gallo, a senior adviser on strategic initiatives and special projects at RMS Titanic. Gallo identified Nargeolet, a friend who has led several expeditions to Titanic, during an interview with CNN on Tuesday.

Greg Stone, a longtime California-based oceanographer and friend of Rush’s, called the lost submarine “a fundamentally new submarine design” that shows promise for future research. Unlike its predecessors, the Titan was not spherical in shape.

“Stockton was a risk taker. He was smart…he had a vision. He wanted to push things forward,” Stone said.

The expedition was OceanGate’s third annual voyage to document the disintegration of the Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of the approximately 2,200 passengers and crew. Since the wreck was discovered in 1985, it has slowly fallen victim to metal-eating bacteria.

OceanGate’s website listed the “mission support fee” for the 2023 Expedition as $250,000 per person.

Recalling his own voyage aboard Titan, Pogue said the ship was turned around in search of Titanic.

“There is no GPS underwater, so the surface vessel is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages,” Pogue said in a segment aired on CBS Sunday Morning. “But on this dive, communication kind of broke down. The sub never found the wreck.”

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London, Rob Gillies in Toronto, Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad.

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Plaintiff Owen Diaz had refused a $15 million payout from Tesla, arguing that it was not punitive enough.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Witnesses on Tuesday painted a picture of Tesla’s Fremont, California factory as a place where racist language and harassment flowed freely and supervisors did little to nothing about it.

Plaintiff Owen Diaz, a black man who was then an elevator driver at the 5.5-million-square-foot factory, sued Tesla in 2017, alleging that he had been subjected to racial abuse and harassment, including derogatory racist drawings of black people with bones in their hair and exaggerated features bore marks.

A jury awarded Diaz $137 million in damages in 2021, with nearly $7 million earmarked for emotional distress and the rest as punitive damages, but U.S. District Judge William Orrick III reduced the award to $15 million dollars while continuing to affirm the jury’s findings.

Tesla had pushed to limit the damage to $600,000. However, Diaz eventually turned down the award, saying it was not punitive enough. This week’s trial is expected to identify new damage.

Witnesses called to the stand Tuesday included three former supervisors: Tamotsu Kawasaki, Michael Wheeler and Wayne Jackson. Although none of them were present during the incidents leading up to Diaz’s lawsuit, they all played a role in the subsequent investigation and knew Diaz.

Kawasaki, who recommended Diaz for the position of elevator operator moving materials from one floor to the next, was on hand when Diaz and another employee, Judy Timbreza, got into an altercation in one of the elevators. Though he didn’t see the conflict between the two, Kawasaki said he got there just in time to find them “face to face” and separate them. Afterwards, witnesses Kawasaki said they heard Timbreza call Diaz a racial slur.

Defense attorneys Alex Spiro – who led the defense in February’s Tesla securities trial – and colleague Asher Griffin took a combative stance on the witnesses. Kawasaki – now a plumber in nearby Daly City – seemed defensive and kept trying to deepen his answers, despite Spiro struggling to ask yes-or-no questions. Spiro lashed out at Kawasaki’s use of the term “racial in nature” to describe racist terms used by the former boss in an email to his boss reporting on the incident.

Kawasaki, who said he is married to a black woman and has black children, said he does not feel comfortable using the slur and said it was unprofessional to include it in a work-related email. Spiro in a smart gray suit and Kawasaki in a tight t-shirt and work pants got on each other’s nerves.

It didn’t get much better as the morning wore on. Both Wheeler and Jackson seemed short-tempered towards Spiro and Griffin, and Orrick had to smooth things over on more than one occasion. At one point, a visibly upset Jackson felt compelled to explain to Griffin during his cross-examination why it was demeaning for a black man like him to hear the N-word so casually dabbled at work. Griffin then noted that he is also black and had a black father.

Investigator Amy Oppenheimer of the Berkeley-based Oppenheimer Investigations Group, a law firm that provides workplace investigations, mediation and dispute resolution, addressed numerous failures by Tesla management to curb racist language and harassment at the plant and to investigate incidents, when they performed.

Oppenheimer pointed to several instances where Tesla management failed to investigate what happened to Diaz, noting that the actual investigation was neither thorough nor documented, and that no results had been obtained. While the automaker certainly had policies on how to handle such matters, it hadn’t trained its employees on how to handle it.

She also told the jury: “The message has to come from above. Because if the person at the top doesn’t respond, the whole organization follows what they see and not what they’re told.”

The process is expected to last until Friday. Plaintiff Diaz is scheduled to take the witness stand on Wednesday.

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Kevin Mullin, a former mayor of South San Francisco-turned-state assemblyman, won his bid to represent much of San Mateo County in the House of Representatives, beating Supervisor David Canepa for the seat vacated by Jackie Speier.

“It is an honor and a privilege, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to represent the region,” said Assembly Speaker Tem Kevin Mullin on election night while celebrating at the Joseph A. Fernekes Recreation Building in South San Francisco .

Mullin won 57% of the vote with 48,740 ballots cast for him on election night, making him the successor to US Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, in California’s 15th District. The borough was redrawn to replace the 14th ward and encompasses the eastern peninsula from Redwood City to South San Francisco plus Daly City.

Meanwhile, Canepa, a lifelong resident of Daly City who was elected to the board of directors in 2016 after serving on the Daly City Council, received 36,740 votes, or 43%, according to semi-official results Tuesday at 11:00 p.m. in the San Mateo County Bureau elections .

On the campaign trail, Mullin and Canepa, both Democrats, endorsed similar platforms by voicing support for universal health coverage, the Green New Deal, student loan debt relief and other progressive policy positions.

But Mullin rallied important support early on, including from Speier, a South San Francisco compatriot and Mullin’s political mentor, US Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco; Governor Gavin Newsom; and maintainers Dave Pine, Carole Groom and Warren Slocum.

Those endorsements, particularly Speier’s, coupled with his career as a representative for the region, contributed to his success, Mullin said. Looking ahead, Mullin said he has eyes on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, two bodies dealing with issues relevant to Silicon Valley’s tech industry, while he is preparing for a potential Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

“It’s been a long road in public service,” Mullin said, noting that his first political job was with Speier. “Having their mentorship and long-term connection has just been invaluable. She’s a daughter from South San Francisco, so there’s a long history of public service in this community.”

Mullin was elected to the Assembly in 2012 and has been Speaker of the Protem since 2014. Prior to that, he served on the South San Francisco City Council for five years. A native of South San Francisco, he is the son of the late Gene Mullin, a former Mayor and Member of Parliament of South San Francisco.

Canepa cashed in early when the results were released. In a statement, he shared his appreciation for his team and supporters and wished Mullin well in Congress.

“Running for Congress has been the most exciting year of my life and I am so proud of my team. We fought hard and never gave up. Congratulations to Kevin Mullin, we wish him the best of luck and look forward to working with him on the most pressing issues facing our nation,” Canepa said in a statement on the race.

Eshoo won her re-election campaign to represent California’s newly delineated 16th District, which covers the peninsular coast from Pescadero to Pacifica as well as Palo Alto, Saratoga and part of San Jose, by 74,000 votes, or 58.6%. Eshoo beat fellow Democrat and current Saratoga councilor Rishi Kumar, who received 52,183 votes, or 41.4%. Kumar faced Eshoo for the first time in 2020 when he received 36% of the vote.

State Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, beat Republican Tim Dec, a Mountain View small business owner, to retake his seat as representative of the state’s 23rd District. Berman received 63,566 votes, or 72.4%, on election night, while Dec received 24,055 votes, or 27.5%.

San Mateo Councilor Diane Papan will replace Mullin as Member of Parliament in the state’s 21st Circuit after receiving 41,568 votes, or 73.9%. Papan ran against Redwood City Mayor Giselle Hale early in the campaign, but Hale announced her retirement from the race after spearheading the toll taken on her and her family. Hale still received 14,669 votes, or 26.1%.

All results correspond to the semi-official results for Tuesday, November 8th, which included votes received in the mail through Friday, November 4th and all ballots received at polling centers. Subsequent results will include votes received after Saturday, November 5th. Wednesday 16th November, Thursday 17th November, Friday 18th November, Monday 21st November and Wednesday 23rd November. The results will be confirmed on December 8th.

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I hate the Russian. We get one in every season of every iteration around the globe, and I don’t think I have ever enjoyed one of the songs, laughed at one of the jokes, or really been bowled over by any of the performances. It often seems like this franchise has a set rotation of stock challenges, some good (Snatch Game) and some that are more tired than Michelle Visage (the Rusical, make a dress out of something weird, improv, girl group). For me, the best part of every episode is when we get to see the girls walk down the runway in killer looks that they have preplanned. That’s why the ball challenge (three looks in one night!) is always my favorite. What we haven’t had in seasons is a new, exciting, iconic challenge that not only will challenge the queens in a way they can’t prepare for but also will excite the audience. Without that, we have what seems like a game show that is stuck on autopilot.

This episode starts with another iconic and beloved challenge, the reading challenge. Ru says, “The British Library is open,” and I worry which poor country will be colonized and looted to fill it up this time. Each of the queens gets up, puts on a ridiculous pair of glasses, and pokes loving fun at all of her companions. This time, the ladies seem to go a little light on one another and don’t hit the punch lines as well as in the past. The only snaps go to Pixie, who says, “Baby? No thanks, I’m pro choice.” Who doesn’t love an abortion joke? Pixie, of course, is the winner.

That means she gets the task of assigning the roles. I love that they chose the shadiest queen to dole out the parts because the process nearly always leads to bickering. Putting the nastiest queen in charge almost ensures it. But pixie is a little too, well, polite and basically lets all the girls select their own roles. Even when Cheddar and Dakota face off over the role of Rochelle, a slutty cockroach, the rest of the crew votes and gives it to Cheddar based on the quality of her French accent.

This leaves Pixie with the lead role of Lairy Poppins, Mary Poppins’s demonic twin sister who wants to get the kids drunk on bin juice. (For the Americans in the room, a “bin” is a trash can, and the juice is what leaks out of it, a very specific substance we don’t entirely have a name for in America, but anyone who has ever taken out the trash at a restaurant job knows exactly what it is and what it smells like. Pixie’s only problem is that, when learning her role, she realizes, like Michelle wriggling into Carson Kressley’s Skimms, it’s not really a good fit. Pixie goes to Danny and asks if she’s willing to switch roles and give Pixie the part of the chimney sweep. This seems to be setting up a friendship between the two but also an ongoing rivalry. Did Pixie shoot herself in the foot by taking the worse part, or even worse, did she shoot herself in the foot by giving Danny the bigger part and once again being outshone by her?

We go through the usual paces of the Russian. The girls learn to sing with Michelle Visage and then learn how to dance with Giovanni Pernice from Strictly Come Dancing. (Or Dancing With the Stars if you only speak America.) Gio is giving us Dance: 10; Hot Daddy Who Can Move His Hips Like Shakira Twerking in an Earthquake: 3 million. Danny says he hopes the Strictly Curse (a tabloid phenomenon where stars on the show cheat on their spouses with their dance partners) carries over to Drag Race. “I don’t know if Giovanni is a chubby chaser, but if he is, I’m running,” Danny says, a line a million times funnier than anything in the Russian.

Throughout this process, it’s hard to tell who’s in trouble. Cheddar can’t dance, and neither can Danny. Baby can’t sing, and Dakota, well, she can’t do either because all she can do is be the most gorgeous thing you ever saw in your life.

We get to the final performance and, uh, I’ve forgotten almost everything that happened, and I was taking notes so I could write this here recap. I loved that Pixie paints her mouth on crooked as the Cockney chimney sweep, but that’s the only memorable thing about her performance. Baby does well in a patter song as a rich mother. Dakota and Peppa are serviceable as bratty kids, but Peppa is way better than Dakota, who is channeling Meryl Streep’s wax figure at Madame Tussauds. JB (the queen formerly known as Jonbers) does a ridiculous (in a good way) pigeon prostitute or something. Not to kink-shame, but not my fetish. Cheddar is a sexy cockroach and, once again, not my fetish.

The one standout is Danny Beard. She comes out as the acid-tipped Lairy Poppins with an even thicker accent than usual and just gives us Beetlejuice fractured insanity and it is absolutely amazing. When everyone takes the runway, Danny wows yet again. The category is West End Wonders (the West End is England’s Broadway), and he comes out as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors and it is one of the best things we’ve ever seen on this stage. It looks like an actual Broadway (okay, maybe a little Off Broadway) costume complete with a plant puppet on the head. Of course, she wins, for the second week in a row. She may be this year’s Lawrence Chaney, just destined to take the trophy back to the north. (“Queen of the North!” they chant, like it’s Game of Thrones.)

I was a little confused about the judging in this episode. Pixie Polite, as an amazing Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray complete with a full-costume reveal, had a great runway, but I thought she got lost in the mix during the Rusical. The judges, however, loved her. As for Baby, who was repping for the pop musical & Juliet, I thought she was far stronger performing than they gave her credit for. The same goes for Le Fil, who I thought gave the Mary Poppins character some priggy peaks and slutty valleys. The judges thought she wasn’t that great but loved her King & I robes, complete with bedazzled abs, which were worth their own crown.

I agreed with the judges when it came to JB, who was finally in the top, but I hated how Michelle thought her outfit was poorly constructed. In an ode to Singin’ in the Rain (which is a movie musical, but let us not quibble), she had a high-end slicker with poofy cages underneath. I loved it. Dakota, naturally, was on the bottom, and she gave us Funny Girl realness. This, once again, is my problem with Dakota, who is the most beautiful queen of the season. She’s giving us something a little too close to the original; there’s no interpretation or exaggeration to turn it into drag. What we have instead is just a pretty girl. With no subversion, it’s just a good costume, not drag.

The final lip sync is between Baby and Dakota. They are evenly matched doing “No Way” from the musical Six, though it seems Baby may have an edge until Dakota leaves the stage when the singer says she’s leaving, and then pops right back around the corner. It made Ru laugh, and the key to winning this competition is always to make Ru laugh.

I was on the edge of the sofa waiting to see who would get kicked off and then Baby pipes up and self-eliminates. The whole episode Baby talks about her struggles with her mental health in the competition and how it’s giving her anxiety. She always thought she would be so good at this, and the fact that she’s struggling is giving her a sort of cognitive dissonance. I’m all for taking care of one’s mental health, but why do it after the lip sync? Why not do it on stage? If this was really about mental health, why not do it in the middle of the week? When Adore Delano needed to leave for her mental health, she didn’t wait until she was a loser on the runway; she just packed her bags and went home. BenDeLaCreme self-eliminated when she had the power to eliminate someone else — when she was on top. This is altogether different.

Instead, baby waited, and we’ll never know if she was actually going to be sent home. This spares her from the torture of being eliminated but will never let Dakota know if she won or not. Is she here because she bested Baby, or is she here because Baby quit? So, Baby says, if she had stayed, it would have been over for everyone. But would she have stayed? What Ru about to give her walking papers? This seems like a way for a very fractured ego to take a little bit of control back from the process, a way for her to say, “I was never eliminated.” Sorry baby, I don’t think that’s fair. And I still hate the Russian.

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