Monica Morales, director of the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency, speaks on the issue of citizen participation while Jasmine Najera, CEO of Pajaro Valley Prevention & Student Assistance, left, listens at a news conference presenting the latest County Health Rankings data for Santa Cruz County to be discussed. (Nick Sestanovich – Santa Cruz Sentinel)

WATSONVILLE >> Overall, Santa Cruz County performs well in terms of overall health outcomes, ranking ninth out of 58 California counties on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s 2023 County Health Rankings list, which ranks counties across the country in various areas related to health.

Santa Cruz even saw a slight increase from last year when it finished 11th, but despite this positive result, officials are working hard to address health categories where it doesn’t perform as well. The results of that list were presented by Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency and Pajaro Valley Unified School District at the district’s Family Engagement and Wellness Center on Wednesday, the day the list was released.

Susan Brutchy, president of Applied Survey Research, said 13% of county adults reported being in poor or reasonable health, compared to 12% domestically and 14% stateside. Santa Cruz also outperformed the state and nation on adult obesity rates, access to exercise facilities, teenage birth rates, annual flu shots, and air pollution rates.

On the negative side, 26% of households reported housing problems, be it overcrowded apartments, high costs and a lack of kitchen or plumbing facilities. This matched the percentage reported by the state and was nine percentage points higher than that of the nation.

The district also reported a higher number of poor mental health days and a lower number of mental health providers. This was emphasized in Wednesday’s presentation.

“That’s important because it gives us an opportunity to compare counties across the country in terms of well-being and the look of well-being,” Brutchy said.

Brutschy said the County Health Rankings have placed an emphasis on civic participation in 2023 to measure well-being. Civic participation is measured through voter turnout, advocacy, volunteering, mentoring, and other community activities.

“I think it’s really important because it talks about the role of citizen health and how we all play a role and how it works both ways,” she said. “It makes us feel better, and when we take care of ourselves, our civic participation increases and we have the opportunity to increase the well-being of citizens across the country.”

Santa Cruz County Health Director Monica Morales said she grew up in the county and a lot has changed.

“When I was here, high school ratings were really bad, especially in this part of the county,” she said. “We also had high teenage pregnancy rates. We’ve also struggled with low health insurance premiums, so it’s quite remarkable to be able to look at the data now and see how well we’re doing.”

However, Morales emphasized that there are many areas that need improvement.

“You can see from the rankings that there’s still a big imbalance in power, a big imbalance in access,” she said. “The data still shows, for example, that our Latino children experience the highest rates of poverty, that we still have food insecurity in the country and especially here where we actually produce some of the most delicious fruits and vegetables in the country, and some of our families don’t have once access to them.”

Morales also highlighted a lack of behavioral health services for Indigenous and Spanish-speaking communities.

“I hope that today we continue to highlight for ourselves the resilient community we live in, the powerful collective impact we are a part of, but most importantly, that we continue to challenge institutions to ensure they are responsive to the needs fulfilling our community,” she said.

Morales said the Health Services Agency is working to “shift the conversation, moving from an institution that projects onto our community, to an institution that listens to you, that sits around the table with community-based organizations.”

“We don’t have to solve it,” she said. “We don’t even have to fund it, but we have to sit at the table and listen and actually be part of the solution.”

Pajaro Valley Prevention & Student Assistance (PVPSA) chief officer Jasmine Najera said one problem is not having enough mental health clinicians to provide services to students.

“We face a massive shortage of mental health providers, not just locally but across the state,” she said. “We just don’t have that many people to fill those positions, and more and more clinicians are leaving those positions because they’re burned out themselves.”

Najera said PVPSA is working to provide clinical services such as crisis response, family strengthening and workforce development.

“My mission in this role at PVPSA is to continue to ensure we have a strong workforce to ensure we are putting the right resources in the right places and making sure we reflect the needs of our community,” she said.

PVUSD Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez highlighted what the district has done to address the issues, including opening the Wellness Center on EA Hall Middle School’s campus in December 2021. Since then, it has served more than 14,800 families and has provided a psychiatrist provided on-site and worked with agencies to distribute frozen meals from Martha’s Kitchen and groceries through Second Harvest Food Bank, host a farmers market from FoodWhat and parenting classes from Triple P and Disciplina Positiva.

“I think what I’m most proud of is the fact that we developed this and then we didn’t stop listening,” she said. “We said, ‘Let’s hear what people are actually saying, what their needs are, and change over time.'”

Morales said it will take action to improve data in areas where the county is lacking.

“Let’s just start and really focus on the political elements,” she said. “We know this is required to transform the systems.”

Complete data for Santa Cruz County can be found at Countyhealthrankings.org.

The eight counties that ranked higher than Santa Cruz were Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Placer, Napa, Orange, San Francisco, and Ventura.

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Traffic moves on US Highway 101 toward downtown San Francisco on November 27, 2019. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco came last in a nationwide study examining why some American cities are recovering and others are dying.

“With the initial shock of the pandemic, inner cities emptied. Although life has gradually returned to the neighborhood’s malls and trade corridors, the downtown core is no longer a busy hub. This trend has led many to ask: Is this finally the death of downtown?” says the study from the Public Policy Research Center of the Institute of Governmental Studies.

A stroll through downtown San Francisco looks and feels different than it did before the COVID era. Why is it taking so long for people to return to downtown SF? IGS researchers said the city’s tech workers, tech-heavy economy and difficult long commutes were partly to blame.

(Graphic courtesy of the Institute of Governmental Studies)

“In general, jobs with a higher proportion of employment in knowledge-based industries and occupations and/or higher-paid workers are more likely to shift towards remote work. Surveys suggest this shift will be permanent for up to half of the workforce in large and congested cities (e.g. New York) or in cities driven by the tech sector (e.g. San Francisco)” wrote researchers.

Researchers measure downtown vitality using three key indicators:

• vacancies in the office
• Passenger numbers in local public transport
• retail spending

Mobile phone data with user locations offered researchers a way to directly measure inner-city activity patterns.

The analysis included data for 47 months from January 2019 to November 2022 for 62 cities with at least 350,000 residents in the United States and Canada. A recovery quotient (RQ) was calculated from this data for inner cities as well as for entire cities.

Closing of the SF Whole Foods store – just one year after opening

The study found wide disparities in the extent of recovery between cities, with activity ranging from a low of 31% of pre-pandemic levels in San Francisco to a high of 135% in Salt Lake City.

Inner cities, which will continue to struggle to recover, have a disproportionate rate of business closures, reducing demand for inner-city real estate as professional technicians stay away, the study found.

San Francisco Street transforms into the Wild West at 2am

The researchers wrote, “A specific group of inner cities — typically older, denser inner cities that rely on skilled or technical workers and are on large subways — continue to struggle to recover to pre-pandemic levels.”

To survive in the new era of hybrid and remote work, inner cities need to diversify their economic activity and land use, the researchers said. One bright spot noted in the study was the resurgence of leisure and hospitality.

The researchers wrote: “Inner cities also need to be proactive when it comes to redesigning inner cities for people. That could mean creating outdoor spaces with cultural events; rethinking roads for transit, bicycles and pedestrians; relocation of parking spaces to the outskirts of the city center; and to attract diverse demographics to visit.”

Just last week, Mayor London Breed announced her plan to revitalize downtown and reposition San Francisco as the Bay Area’s economic hub. Downtown San Francisco’s roadmap for the future focused on key priorities, including offering a clean and safe environment, fostering a resilient workforce, and attracting new industries.

The Mayor’s Office wrote, “San Francisco’s thriving office economy, prime geographic location, rich history, and world-renowned culinary, cultural, and entertainment offerings drew over a million daily visitors to downtown prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

To position San Francisco for the future, the Mayor’s Office pledged to advance policies that respond to emerging economic trends and challenges, while continuing to invest in the strengths and assets that are the “core pillars of San Francisco’s competitiveness.”

Mayor Breed said, “Though things have changed fundamentally during this pandemic, we also know that San Francisco’s innovative and creative spirit is as strong as ever.”

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Sneezing and wheezing our way through the day is something none of us enjoy doing, and some of us suffer from seasonal allergies more than others. Something called 2022 Allergy Capitals did a study in 100 cities across our country, and Connecticut has 2 in the top 10 worst cities nationwide for seasonal allergies.

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America conducted the 2022 Allergy Capitals study, The Most Challenging Places to Live with Allergies. They took 100 American cities and looked at several factors, including spring pollen levels, fall pollen levels, over-the-counter medicines and more for the ranking. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, we absolutely love analytics in this building, and here’s another great example of metrics that kind of make life better. We live in an area with a lot of pollen, I get these alerts quite often:

According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Hartford was ranked 7th and New Haven 9th on the list of the most challenging places to live with allergies. From the website:

The top 10 most Difficult living places with seasonal allergies are:

1. Scranton, Pennsylvania
2. Wichita, Kansas
3. McAllen, Texas
4. Richmond, Va
5. San Antonio, Texas
6. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
7. Hartford, Connecticut
8. Buffalo, New York
9. New Haven, Connecticut
10. Albany, New York

The top 10 at least Difficult living places with seasonal allergies are:

91. Fresno, California
92. Phoenix, Ariz
93. Provo, Utah
94. Denver, Colo
95. Sacramento, California
96. Portland, Oregon
97. San Jose, California
98. San Francisco, California
99. Durham, North Carolina
100. Seattle, Washington

sneezing woman

Getty Images

If you are not affected by seasonal allergies then you are in luck and I think you can live anywhere you want without any problems. I’m a Claritan type, must be to be able to breathe properly. Thanks again for hanging out and see you soon.

Interactive map gives you a bird’s-eye view of 1934 Connecticut

10 of the best waterfalls in Connecticut

Positive vibes radiate from the walls of this Torrington cafe

The post New Research Ranks 2 Connecticut Cities Amongst Worst For Allergic reactions appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

December 2, 2022

An aerial view of Oracle Park and the surrounding area prior to the 2022 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament on March 26, 2022 in San Francisco.

Lance King/Getty Images

According to a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, San Francisco is among the 10 most expensive cities in the world.

The report was produced between mid-August and mid-September 2022. It is based on a cost-of-living survey that takes into account hundreds of factors, including the prices of goods and services, utilities, car payments and housing. A key factor behind the skyrocketing cost of living is global inflation, which the EIU has measured at 8.1% year-on-year, the highest the organization has ever recorded in its two decades of digital surveys.

At the top of the list of the most expensive cities are New York and Singapore, which are tied. It’s the first time that New York — which also now has the highest median rents in the United States, ahead of San Francisco and Boston — has won the title without hesitation. Singapore, on the other hand, has been voted the most expensive city in the world eight times in ten years, according to the EIU.

In third place is Tel Aviv, followed by a tie in fourth place between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Switzerland’s Zurich and Geneva are at Nos. 6 and 7, respectively. San Francisco finally comes in at No. 8, four full places below LA and just above Paris (No. 9), and a tie at No. 10 between Sydney and Denmark’s Copenhagen.

Other US cities – including Atlanta; Boston; Charlotte, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego – also saw significant cost-of-living jumps, but not nearly enough to match levels seen in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Alex Shultz is the local editor for SFGATE. You can reach him at alex.shultz@sfgate.com.

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Sneezing and wheezing your way through a day is not something any of us like to do and some of us suffer from seasonal allergies more than others. Something called the 2022 Allergy Capitals conducted a study of 100 of our nation’s cities and Connecticut has 2 in the top 10 of the nation’s worst for seasonal allergies.

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America conducted the 2022 Allergy Capitals study of “The Most Challenging Places To Live With Allergies.” They took 100 American cities and looked at several factors including Spring pollen scores, Fall pollen scores, Over-the-counter medicine use, and more for the rankings. I have said this before and I will say it again, we absolutely love analytics in this building, and here is another excellent example of metrics making life better, sort of. We live in an area with a lot of pollen, I get these alerts quite a bit:

According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Hartford came in number 7 and New Haven at number 9 on the list of the MOST challenging places to live with allergies. From the website:

The top 10 most challenging places to live with seasonal allergies are:

1. Scranton, Pennsylvania
2. Wichita, Kansas
3. McAllen, Texas
4. Richmond, Va
5. San Antonio, Texas
6. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
7. Hartford, Connecticut
8. Buffalo, NY
9. New Haven, Connecticut
10. Albany, New York

The top 10 least challenging places to live with seasonal allergies are:

91. Fresno, California
92. Phoenix, Ariz
93. Provo, Utah
94. Denver, Colo
95. Sacramento, California
96. Portland, Oregon
97. San Jose, California
98. San Francisco, California
99. Durham, North Carolina
100. Seattle, Washington

Woman snowing

Getty Images

If you aren’t affected by seasonal allergies, you are lucky and I guess you can live anywhere you want without a problem at all. I am a Claritan type of guy, have to be to breathe properly. Thanks again for hanging out and see you again really soon.

Interactive Map Shows You A Bird’s Eye View of 1934 Connecticut

10 of the Best Waterfalls in Connecticut

Positive Vibes Radiate From The Walls Of This Torrington Cafe

The post New Research Ranks 2 Connecticut Cities Amongst Worst For Allergy symptoms appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Dec 2, 2022

An aerial view of Oracle Park and the surrounding area ahead of the 2022 NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament on March 26, 2022, in San Francisco.

Lance King/Getty Images

San Francisco is one of the 10 most expensive cities in the world, according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The report was conducted between mid-August and mid-September 2022. It’s based on a cost-of-living survey that incorporates hundreds of factors, including price of goods and services, utilities, car payments and housing. A major contributor to the skyrocketing cost of living is worldwide inflation, which the EIU measured at 8.1% year over year, the highest mark the organization has ever recorded in its two decades of digital surveys.

Topping the list of most expensive cities are New York and Singapore, which are tied. It’s the first time New York — which also now has the highest median rent prices in the United States, ahead of both San Francisco and Boston — has been given the unceremonious title. Singapore, meanwhile, has been ranked as the world’s most expensive city eight times in 10 years, according to the EIU.

In third place is Tel Aviv, followed by a fourth-place tie between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Switzerland’s Zurich and Geneva are No. 6 and no. 7, respectively. San Francisco finally comes in at No. 8, four whole spots below LA and just above Paris (No. 9) and a tie for No. 10 between Sydney and Denmark’s Copenhagen.

Other US cities — including Atlanta; Boston; Charlotte, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego — saw significant cost-of-living jumps as well but not nearly enough to reach the same level as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Alex Shultz is the local editor for SFGATE. You can reach him at alex.shultz@sfgate.com.

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In the notoriously expensive Bay Area housing market, things got even more pricey during the pandemic.

Now, four Bay Area cities have landed on the list of metro areas with the biggest gap between list and sale prices.

According to an analysis from Better Mortgage, an online lender and homeownership platform, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and San Rafael have some of the highest average ratios between the list price and the sale price of each home sold. The company looked at Nov 2021 housing data from real estate listings website Redfin, the most recently available figures.

Cities with ratios over 100% represent areas where homes sold for over their list prices. The bigger the number, the greater the gap between the house’s listing and sale prices.

“This isn’t the least bit surprising,” wrote Khadeejah Johnson, head of brokerage for Better Mortgage, in an email. “The Bay Area is home to some of the most competitive housing markets in the country, driven by historically low inventory levels and supply chain issues causing new construction delays and higher costs.”

Johnson said there’s scarcity in the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco and San Jose, where “buyers are competing so fiercely that sales prices are far surpassing listing prices.”

San Francisco came in second on the list, with an average sale-to-list ratio of 108.3% and 70.8% of homes sold over asking price. The median sale price was $1,575 million. The Better Mortgage article explains that the city’s “extremely low housing inventory” stayed tight because when interest rates dropped, “savvy buyers capitalized on the cheaper loans by purchasing real estate in this city.”

San Jose was third on the list, with an average sale-to-list ratio of 107.5%, with 75.8% of homes sold about the list price and a median sale price of $1.4 million. The article explains that a lack of new construction and buyers capitalizing on record low interest rates have led to bidding wars and purchase prices to rise.

Oakland followed very closely behind with an average sale-to-list ratio of 107.3% and 76.7% of homes selling above asking price. The median sale price was unavailable. Better’s article points again to not enough inventory: Oakland’s population grew by 13% in the past decade, but new housing grew by only 5.16%, according to the report.

In eighth place, San Rafael’s average sale-to-list ratio was 104.6%, with 56.4% of homes sold above the asking price and a median home sale price of $1,325 million.

Johnson said the pandemic increased remote and hybrid work models, and low interest rates allowed more people to move out from city centers.

“Not everyone opted to move to Idaho, Colorado, Arizona or Florida,” she said. “Many homebuyers bought in the metro areas surrounding their home markets, such is the case in the Bay Area. The markets there have gotten so competitive over the last couple of years that homebuilders in the Bay Area haven’t been able to keep pace.”

Supply chain issues drove up prices higher, and many home buyers have scrambled to purchase homes while interest rates are still low, Johnson explained, which in turn has driven up the average purchase loan size. And, she said there have been even more second-home buyers on the market, adding to the scarcity.

Just outside the Bay Area, Santa Cruz also landed on the list at number 10, with an average sale-to-list ratio of 103.8%, with 62.5% of homes sold over the asking price, and a median sale price of $1.05 million

Johnson does not think the Bay Area housing market will cool anytime soon.

“Home builders are trying to catch up on a backlog of homes that won’t come close to meeting demand,” she said. “All the while, interest rates will continue to rise over the next couple of years, but homebuyers in the Bay Area will happily pay cash or the higher mortgage payments each month if it means landing the dream home they’ve been waiting years for.

In other words, demand will outstrip supply for the foreseeable future, she explained.

So what should prospective home buyers do in this wildly competitive market? Johnson said it really depends on a person’s financial situation. If someone is able to make a bigger offer to compete against other bids, then paying well over asking price might be the best course of action.

“You never want to try and time the market, so waiting on the sidelines isn’t always the best option either,” she said.

If paying over asking isn’t an option, Johnson recommends “making concessions in your search if you’re really determined to buy sooner than later.” She also said to be flexible with the size and location of a home if you plan to stay for fewer than five to seven years. And if you’re looking for the long-term, “make a higher offer if you can afford to or use a cash offer program.”

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KellieHwang

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According to the Cubs, Sunday’s game marked the seventh time Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo have hit consecutive home runs, the fourth most frequent duo in franchise history. They hit consecutive home runs in the first inning of the 5-1 win over Arizona. Maybe for the last time with the Cubs? That remains to be seen, but the MLB trading deadline comes on Friday and both players will become free agents after the season.

Leading the Cubs’ back-to-back home runs are Sammy Sosa and Mark Grace (nine times), Billy Williams and Ron Santo (eight), and Ernie Banks and Santo (eight).

Rizzo’s home run was his first at Wrigley Field since June 11, but he added another in the first inning on Monday, with Bryant scoring ahead of him.

On their way into the action on Monday, the Cubs were ninth in the majors with 126 home runs. San Francisco leads with 151.

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The US is in the midst of a record-breaking boom in property values ​​and a massive supply shortage. However, according to a recently released Zillow report, the Bay Area has been somewhat cushioned from these effects.

The report found that the San Francisco metropolitan area – which includes Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Marin counties – saw property values ​​increase 7.4% year over year in April 2021. In the metropolitan area of ​​San Jose, which includes Santa Clara and San Benito counties, property values ​​rose 5.9%.

By comparison, property values ​​in the United States rose 11.6% overall over the past year. And in some regions, including Phoenix and Austin, Texas, property values ​​rose more than 20%.

Metropolitan SF and San Jose are actually at the bottom of all major metropolitan areas in terms of home appreciation, noted Jeff Tucker, a senior economist at Zillow.

But, he said, these trends look very different at the county level.

“The big insight I see here is that the most expensive parts of the bay and the urban parts of the bay have the slowest growth rates,” Tucker said.

There are a number of reasons for this, but a more important one is that people are leaving San Francisco for other parts of the Bay Area and California, reducing demand compared to previous years.

These former San Franciscans and San Joseans are contributing to price increases in the “cheaper” Bay Area counties within the San Francisco metropolitan area, such as Alameda and Contra Costa, where property values ​​rose 14% and 14.3%, respectively this year even more than the US average. In contrast, home values ​​in San Francisco are down 2.8%.

No county in these metropolitan areas comes close to what most Americans would call “affordable.” Average home values ​​in San Jose are as high as $ 1.36 million, while the San Francisco metropolitan area home values ​​hit an all-time high of $ 1.23 million. (Here, too, the SF metropolitan area includes these relatively cheaper counties such as Alameda and Contra Costa.)

The offerings could also have influenced the differences between the Bay Area and the rest of the country. While the national housing stock declined 30.3% year-over-year as of April this year, both the San Francisco metropolitan areas and San Jose saw their home stocks increase year-over-year – stocks rose 32% in the SF metropolitan area and around 37% in San José.

Part of the reason the bay has seen such a dramatic increase in supply is because of its strict response to the pandemic: the area’s housing market essentially closed last April, usually the best time for home sales. This shutdown caused the housing stock to deflate for the past April, making the April supply spike particularly large.

The Bay Area housing market hiatus in April 2020 likely had a particularly strong effect because the region initially had so little housing, Tucker said: “In San Francisco, inventories are notoriously low; It’s just not a market that has a large liquid pool of houses that are traded and available. “

Still, potential homebuyers should take courage from the inventory increase – it reflects a real trend towards balance between buyers and sellers in the bay, according to Tucker.

“The pandemic and remote working have opened up opportunities for more people,” he said. “Maybe you can keep this job in the Bay Area without having to live in the Bay Area.”

Susie Neilson is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: susie.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson

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