San Francisco is seeing more people return to the city after losing tens of thousands of residents since 2020, according to a new estimate from the state of California.

The city's population grew by 4,925 people to 848,019 residents in the 12 months ended June 30, according to a report released Tuesday by the state Department of Finance. Populations also increased in nearby regions, including Silicon Valley, driven by the arrival of international and domestic migrants.

The population increase is welcome news for a city that has seen an exodus of residents and retailers in recent years, plunging San Francisco into a deepening budget crisis. The population decline has been driven by high housing costs and the rise of telecommuting, allowing tech workers to flee an urban center hit hard during the pandemic while earning Silicon Valley salaries.

HD Palmer, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, called the news a “devastating blow” to critics of San Francisco who saw the city entering a so-called doom loop of fleeing residents and declining tax revenues.

International migration has been hampered in recent years by restrictive federal immigration policies, he said, but authorities have begun approving the backlog of H-1B visas that built up during the pandemic, opening the door to skilled foreign workers open for relocation to the Bay Area, Palmer said.

While population gains in the San Francisco Bay Area provided a bright spot in the Golden State, California's total population fell again by 37,203 residents in 2023, marking the fourth consecutive year of losses. The state has seen a net decline of more than 430,000 people since 2020, resulting in the loss of a congressional seat in 2021.

Several factors exacerbated by the pandemic are contributing to the state's population decline, including a higher-than-average mortality rate, a declining birth rate, a decline in international migration and more Californians moving to other states.

Still, the state's population decline slowed in the last fiscal year. And despite four years of declines, California remains the country's most populous state, with about one in eight U.S. residents calling it home.

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Photo by Grant MacHamer

If you’ve ever strolled downtown SF, especially along Market Street, you might have noticed plumes of steam rising from various vents and manholes. It turns out that this mysterious steam comes from a network of pipes that has been heating downtown SF for nearly a century.

Over 180 customers, including SF City Hall, the Moscone Convention Center, and the Golden Gate Theater, utilize steam for space heating, domestic hot water, air conditioning, and other uses.

Two massive boilers, located in SoMA and Lower Nob Hill, send the steam through over 13 miles of underground pipes that form the downtown steam loop. This system is responsible for heating over 37 million square feet of commercial, residential, and government buildings.

The company that runs this steam network, Cordia, services a 2-square-mile area in SF central business district.

Courtesy of Cordia

Both of the steam-generating plants use boilers heated by natural gas. The system’s combined heat and power (CHP) equipment generates 500 kW of electricity, essentially making the plant energy self-sufficient, according to Cordia.

Critics of the system point out that the system produces heat, but also wastes nearly 250,000 gallons of water per day, according to a 2015 story by CBS Bay Area.

Cordia addressed this issue by partnering on a water reclamation project to pump 30 million gallons of groundwater per year from beneath Powell Street Station. The groundwater is purified and used in the boilers, which reduces the amount of City drinking water needed.

Not every drop of water in the steam loop is wasted. Some of Cordia’s 180 customers do use a portion of the wastewater from their steam pipes for landscaping and flushing toilets, which includes SF City Hall.

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Golden Gate Bridge at sunset in San Francisco Li Rui/Xinhua via Getty Images

San Francisco is seeing a trickle of people return to the city after losing tens of thousands of residents since 2020, according to a new estimate released by the state of California. 

The city’s population grew by 4,925 people to 848,019 residents during the 12 months ended on June 30, according to a report released Tuesday by the state Department of Finance. Nearby regions including Silicon Valley also saw boosts in their population, driven by the arrival of international and domestic migrants. 

The population gain is welcome news for a city that has seen an exodus of residents and retail businesses in recent years, plunging San Francisco into a worsening budget crisis. The population loss was driven by high housing costs and the rise of remote work, giving tech workers the ability to flee an urban center hit hard during the pandemic while still collecting Silicon Valley salaries.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance, called the news a “crushing blow” to critics of San Francisco who saw the city entering a so-called doom loop of fleeing residents and sinking tax revenue.

International migration had been hampered in recent years by restrictive federal immigration policy, but officials have begun approving the backlog of H-1B visas that piled up during the pandemic, opening the door for skilled foreign workers to move to the Bay Area, according to Palmer.

While population gains in the San Francisco Bay Area offered a bright spot in the Golden State, California’s overall population declined again in 2023 by 37,203 residents, marking the fourth consecutive year of losses. The state has seen a net drop of more than 430,000 people since 2020, leading to the loss of a congressional seat in 2021. 

Several factors exacerbated by the pandemic are contributing to the state’s population decline, including a higher-than-normal death rate, a falling birth rate, a drop in international migration and more Californians moving to other states.

Still, the state’s population’s rate of decline slowed during the lastest fiscal year. And despite four years of drops, California remains the nation’s most populous state, with roughly 1 in 8 US residents calling it home. 

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GATES, Ore. (Reuters) – Intermittently heavy showers brought some relief to flame-stricken western Oregon on Friday, helping firefighters to further subdue deadly blazes that have ravaged much of the state and choked its air with smoke for the better part of two weeks.

Smoke rises from the Brattain Fire in the Fremont National Forest in Paisley, Oregon, U.S., September 18, 2020. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Oregon was especially hard hit by scores of wind-driven wildfires that erupted all at once across the western United States earlier this month in the midst of catastrophic lightning storms, record-breaking heat and howling winds.

“We lost everything, but we will start all over again,” said Bill Kesselring, 73, pointing to the spot where the log cabin he shared with his wife had stood on the outskirts of Gates, Oregon, a Cascade Mountain village 80 miles south of Portland.

The cabin and a garage housing a beloved antique car Kesselring had just finished restoring were both reduced to charred rubble. Only the fireplace and chimney remained of the home.

“It breaks my heart. You work hard all your life and then get hit with a disaster like this,” he told Reuters.

Unaccustomed to the sheer scope and magnitude of the conflagrations, Oregon’s ill-equipped firefighters initially struggled for days to even keep pace with the blazes, before cooler, moister and less windy weather settled over the region, and reinforcements could arrive.

ANOTHER LIFE LOST IN CALIFORNIA

By Thursday, officials in Oregon, Washington state and California said they were making steady progress suppressing the fires. Brightening the outlook further, much-welcomed rains doused Oregon on Friday, even as the tri-state death toll from the fires rose to 35.

The U.S. Forest Service in California reported that a firefighter had perished on Thursday in a blaze still burning nearly two weeks after it was ignited by pyrotechnics at an outdoor gender-reveal party east of Los Angeles.

Authorities withheld the identify of the fallen firefighter pending notification of family members, and no details of the circumstances were released.

The death in the San Bernardino National Forest became the 26th fire-related fatality in California over the past month. That tally includes two other firefighters – a Forest Service contractor killed in a lightning-sparked fire in the Mendocino National Forest, and a private helicopter pilot whose chopper crashed on a water-dropping mission in Fresno County last month.

Wildfires have claimed at least eight other lives in Oregon and one in Washington state, all civilians.

Flames have blackened a record 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) in California alone since mid-August. Another 1.7 million acres (650,000 hectares) have burned in Oregon and Washington state since Labor Day.

The blazes, described by scientists and officials as unprecedented in scope and ferocity, have largely incinerated several small towns, along with thousands of dwellings.

‘BEAUTY SCAR’

Thousands of evacuees, particularly in Oregon, remained huddled in emergency shelters, mobile trailers and hotel rooms. And Oregon emergency management officials have warned the death toll there could climb as search teams scour the ruins of homes engulfed in flames during chaotic evacuations early in the disaster.

Justin Gaskill, 28, a U.S. Army veteran leading a community watch organization that was also organizing food relief efforts, said residents in the fire-ravaged town of Estacada, Oregon, where he was born and raised, were still in a state of shock but resolved to rebuild.

“I like to say that this event is going to leave our community with a beauty scar,” he said. “We’ve been wounded but so many beautiful opportunities to share and show our strength as a town are coming out of this.”

Thundershowers brought drenching rains to the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains late Thursday and through Friday, helping a force of more than 6,000 firefighters make further headway against 10 major blazes still burning in Oregon.

The heavy rains also prompted flood and landslide warnings in areas where fire has stripped hillsides and canyons of vegetation.

Cooler, more favorable weather in the region since last week has already dispelled some of the smoky, polluted air and tempered the flames, enabling ground teams with axes and bulldozers to take the offensive while also allowing greater use of water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers.

Higher humidity levels were likewise bolstering hopes for subduing blazes in the greater San Francisco Bay area.

“Milder weather is helping the fire fight as crews continue to gain ground on many of the major incidents,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on Friday.

Reporting by Brad Brooks in Gates, Oregon; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman, Maria Caspani and Gabriella Borter; Writing by Will Dunham and Steve Gorman; Editing by Timothy Gardner, David Gregorio, Aurora Ellis and Daniel Wallis

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Club Ebony, a famous Indianola, Miss. blues venue that was part of the Chitlin circuit — a loose network of black-owned clubs and venues in segregated American cities — has hosted hundreds of memorable moments. Bobby Rush, the 89-year-old blues singer, recalled one of his favorites in a recent interview: a scene from BB King’s 2014 homecoming concert.

As King weaved through a lengthy version of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” he noticed that Rush had nodded off. “‘Ladies and gentlemen,'” he began, according to Rush. “‘I have my best friend in the house. i play this music And he’s lying over there sleeping on top of me.’”

The audience giggled, and Rush joined King on stage with his harmonica to cap off his friend’s last performance, ending a tradition of annual concerts that began in 1980. King died a year later.

Club Ebony was more than King’s home club. Upon opening in 1948, it provided Indianola’s black community with a gathering place for dining, dancing, and socializing, and provided generations of blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and soul artists with the enthusiastic crowd they needed to make a living.

King purchased the venue from its third and longest-serving owner, Mary Shepard, in 2008 and donated it to the BB King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. But after his death, it slowly deteriorated due to the effects of time and disuse. The bill of keeping the 6,400-square-foot club in a city of 9,000 people open four nights a week proved too high in the midst of the vast delta.

“The traditional format wasn’t financially viable — times had changed,” said Malika Polk-Lee, the museum’s executive director. The organization turned Club Ebony into an events venue, but when the tourism industry began to reopen after the pandemic-related closures in 2021, museum staff found that the condition of the timber-frame building was poor.

“We found that there was structural damage. The roof and walls deteriorated and water got inside,” she said. “The senior year was tough on the building.”

The museum had no choice but to keep the club closed while it sought support for its rescue, which it secured through public and private funds, including a grant from regional National Endowment for the Arts-affiliated organization South Arts and a City of Indianola, received city tax. Its dormant period ends Thursday, when the venue is scheduled to reopen its historic doors after spending $800,000 on repairs.

Before mainstream America first saw Ike and Tina Turner when they brought the 1960 rave-up “A Fool in Love” to “American Bandstand,” and before Ray Charles’ four Grammys that same year with “Georgia on My Mind.” won — and long before King stunned a crowd of white hippies and sealed his mainstream success at San Francisco’s Fillmore West in 1967 — they were all regulars at Club Ebony.

Indianola entrepreneur Johnny Jones opened it in 1948 when the post-war economy was in full swing. New industries like the Ludlow Textile Mill had brought money to the city, and workers plonked much of their wages in the jukerooms on Church Street, the city’s notorious home of gambling and vice.

But Club Ebony offered a different experience. Jones’ new club was large and designed to house the big bands of the 1940s, including the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra and the Count Basie Orchestra. Revelers in khakis and pinstriped suits could buy bonded whiskey and bootleg corn whiskey, and men and women danced to jump blues and mingled on the ballroom floor.

“There wasn’t much socializing in the houses,” said Sue Evans, who was married to King from 1958 to 1966 and lived in the back of the club after her mother, Ruby Edwards, bought it in 1958. The houses were small, she remarked: “Families were big, so nobody was going to anyone’s house at that time to sit down and be entertained.” The club became a social outlet.”

Venues on the national chitlin circuit have included glittering palaces in major cities like Indianapolis and Houston, and lavish juke restaurants in smaller towns. If a club was not available, promoters rented halls; Some shows took place in private homes. Live performances lasting just one night bolstered the music scene’s ecosystem, while clubs, recording studios and record labels sprung up to capitalize on and fuel the celebrations.

The cycle arose from the need for self-sufficiency. Black musicians, promoters and audiences needed places where they were welcome and could be themselves. Even the musicians in King’s band would travel around with cookware and canned goods if they couldn’t find a restaurant that could serve them.

Although some black musicians, as Rush said, “crossed over” to white audiences and had “crossed out” black clubs, artists could make a living in those venues when they weren’t welcome elsewhere. The closure and decay of Club Ebony posed a bigger problem, Evans says: the loss of the black common spaces that once held it together.

“There isn’t a club left in the Delta that could offer music like this,” she said. “So to speak, a large part of our culture goes south; it is no longer there. And this is a continuation of that culture.”

As of December 2021, the museum has raised and invested nearly $1 million in electrical, plumbing, kitchen appliances, furniture, and painting to help bring the club up to date with modern regulations and compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Some elements, such as the sheet metal ceiling panels, are original.

The exterior sports a new pea green livery, color-matched to the historic record at least since it was acquired by Shepard. On a warm afternoon in early May, a team installed information boards inside to give visitors the background story of the club. Museum staff compared their work to old photographs to ensure historical accuracy.

In the 15 years since the museum acquired Club Ebony, music tourism has given Delta towns like Indianola hope for a future, based in part on an interest in their past. In front of the club is a historic marker for the Mississippi Blues Trail, a network established in 2006 of more than 200 sites important to the development of music and its culture.

“It’s important that Black-run clubs are supported,” said Dr. William Ferris, a blues historian and author who spent summers touring the Delta in the 1960s. “Just as black people own their land and farms, it gives business people and families the independence and stability that is very important, and music is a way to achieve that.”

For today’s young black blues musicians, like 24-year-old Christone “Kingfish” Ingram of Clarksdale, Miss., who is widely credited as the heir to the King’s Delta blues crown, historic venues like Club Ebony are still places to celebrate be able to relax away from the pressure of top-class performances at festivals and theatres.

Like King before him, Ingram occasionally frequents his hometown clubs, such as Red’s Lounge in Clarksdale, where he plays three or four sets, often finishing in the wee hours of the morning. Club Ebony, where he performed at the beginning of his career, will certainly be back on his schedule.

“Every time I’ve been there, I’ve always hung out with the OGs of the blues, guys like Mr. Rush and Kenny Neal, and absorbed some history,” Ingram said. “It takes me back to when I started and I feel like it keeps me humble.”

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Photo credit: Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images

With global digital payments revenue expected to reach $14.79 trillion by 2027, payments infrastructure has arguably never been more critical. But at the same time, the technology is becoming more important, and the associated costs and complexities are increasing. A recent survey shows that merchant satisfaction with their payment processors has plummeted, especially when major technical hurdles are encountered.

In search of solutions to these problems, Klas Bäck, Albert Drouart and Dan Blomberg formed Pagos, a payment intelligence infrastructure startup. Comprised of payment experts with Braintree, PayPal and Stripe backgrounds, Pagos transforms disparate digital payment data into actionable insights without requiring customers to switch payment processors.

CEO Bäck and Drouart have held senior leadership positions at Braintree/Venmo and PayPal for the past eight to nine years; Braintree/Venmo was acquired by PayPal in September 2013. For his part, Blomberg has founded seven startups and sold five over the past two decades.

“Payment processing is fundamental to customer relationships, revenue and a company’s bottom line, but managing it well is becoming increasingly complex,” Back told TechCrunch via email. “Most businesses don’t have the tools, data, or knowledge to design or implement an effective payment strategy; Even those who do often leave significant opportunities open. Pagos was founded on the premise that almost all businesses need help to make their payment execution more data-centric.”

Payment infrastructure providers are not exactly a dime a dozen, but there are a growing number of providers chasing the massive market opportunity. Headquartered in San Francisco, Streamline recently raised $4 million for its business-to-business focused payments product suite. Kushki is a much bigger player — the Ecuadorian payments infrastructure startup landed $100 million last year at a $1.5 billion valuation.

So what does Pagos bring to the table? Bäck claims it uniquely enables businesses to stream and store their payment data — including trade and fraud data — in one place. From a single dashboard, clients can visualize the data and track metrics including transaction, payment authorization and risk performance.

The Pagos financial monitoring dashboard. Photo credit: Paid

Pagos offers connections to payment processors like Adyen, Chase, Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, and WorldPay, as well as data collection APIs to allow businesses to stream payment data and custom metadata into the platform.

“Our promotional products bring together an organization’s data and expose APIs to enable developers and business stakeholders within an organization to refine their payment stack to address issues such as churn, risk and cost – ask Pagos for credential recommendations , where and how to send your transactions for maximum upside,” said Bäck. “Pagos is different because we are not trying to offer new sanitary facilities; We want them to make better use of the collection of vendors and partners they have, which might involve changing processes and systems to resolve issues.”

In terms of customers, Bäck says Pagos, whose platform has processed over a billion transaction events, focuses on companies that sell or bill their customers online and companies that serve them, such as fraud providers, payment orchestration platforms, acquirers and payment service providers , software-as-a-service verticals and marketplaces. Current clients include Adobe, Eventbrite, GoFundMe, Peek, and Warner Bros Discover.

“With Pagos, companies can see what’s going on in a batch of payments,” said Bäck. “Use cases include adding new payment partners and payment methods, identifying optimal payment methods and routes, tracking payments and chargeback metrics, and optimizing recurring bills to reduce churn.

Some investors see the value proposition. Pagos today closed a $34 million Series A round led by Arbor Ventures with participation from Infinity Ventures, Underscore VC and Point 72 Ventures. The company’s total revenue is $44 million, which Bäck says will be used to fund new hires in engineering, product development and “accelerating customer implementation.”

“Actually, we weren’t looking for additional capital. However, we were inundated with incoming investor interest and recognized a unique opportunity to grow our client base even faster, especially in today’s volatile economic climate,” said Bäck. “This opportunistic Series A round was significantly oversubscribed.”

As for the future, Bäck says he’s not overly concerned about the challenging macroeconomic climate for startups. He actually claims that the pandemic triggered a rush into e-commerce that, although it has since declined, has had a lasting impact.

According to Bäck, the pandemic has led to a measurable increase in the use of digital payments. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2021 database found that – in low- and middle-income economies excluding China – over 40% of adults who have made payments by card, phone or internet to merchants in-store or online did so for the first time times have done since the beginning of the pandemic.

“The backend financial infrastructure remains critical. Helping companies sell more and reduce their costs is gaining traction now more than ever,” said Bäck. “Over the last 9-12 months, many companies have put a special focus on reducing their operating costs. This is where Pagos is particularly well positioned to help – most companies can even get started without any integration work, making the return on investment extremely fast.”

Over the next year, Pagos plans to “greatly expand” the remote software, product, sales and account management teams within its 41-strong workforce, says Bäck.

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San Francisco’s office market has always been the brightest star in the Bay Area. Led by powerful tech and startup companies, rents have historically been high, and leasing remained strong. But the city’s prestige was upended after the pandemic hit. The metro has faced serious challenges in occupancy and leasing as workers switched to remote work and moved to lower-cost areas. Concerns around safety and quality of life in the city added to those troubles, prompting some companies to look elsewhere for space or commit to permanent remote work. The major shift is drawing attention to nearby Silicon Valley hub San Jose, which has been experiencing significant growth in office leasing, development, and population.

San Jose has also been known for its tech campuses and R&D (research and development) facilities, but for those looking for nightlife, culture, and anything else that city life has to offer, it’s hard to beat the atmosphere of San Francisco. But San Francisco’s much-publicized struggles with crime, affordability, and homelessness have reportedly led to residents leaving in droves, resulting in the nation’s highest office vacancy rates. So with so many leaving San Francisco, will San Jose’s development boom be enough to draw more tenants?

tech town

As the largest city in Silicon Valley, San Jose has a long history as a home to tech campuses. Companies like Netflix, Paypal, and Adobe all have major outposts in the town. But workers typically didn’t live in the decidedly more suburban area, with many commuting from San Francisco. Some tech firms tried making it even easier for their employees to get to campus, launching private shuttle buses to ferry them back and forth from San Francisco.

In 2011, looking to create more jobs, the city of San Jose adopted an ambitious plan, Envision San Jose 2040. The plan sets a roadmap for ramping up development and adding more density, housing, mixed-use developments, and walkability. Every year, the plan gets revisited and tweaked based on what else needs addressing. Building more housing, including affordable housing, is now a big part of that plan. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo set a goal in 2017 to have 25,000 new housing units in the pipeline by 2023. But the city still has a ways to go to meet that goal because, as of last summer, the city had only completed 3,348 housing units .

Recent data from Colliers shows that San Jose’s office sector is performing much better than San Francisco’s. Office vacancy in San Jose, according to the brokerage firm, is in the range of 9 to 10 percent, as opposed to San Francisco, which has a vacancy rate of around 20 percent and is twice as high as buildings in Santa Clara County and the Peninsula. Further showing its strength, a recent report named San Jose as the top metro area where Millennials want to move. At one luxury condo development in downtown San Jose, there is currently a 4,000-person waitlist for units at the forthcoming tower.

New developments in San Jose include Google’s 80-acre mixed-use project, which is anticipated to break ground by next year. Once built, the project will be the biggest development in San Jose’s history. Included in the campus will be 4,000 housing units, 1,000 of which will be designated affordable. Google has said that it expects up to 25,000 employees will work in the office. Facebook and Apple are also set to expand their footprint in Silicon Valley.

Last month, Caltrain announced new details for its plan to build a 1.2 million-square-foot mixed-use development next to the Diridon train station, where Google’s 80-acre campus is rising. The plans include two Class A office towers and ground-floor retail. That project could break ground by early 2024. One of the country’s largest office landlords, Boston Properties, is even restarting a development it had paused after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. That project, a pair of 16-story, interconnected office towers with more than 2 million square feet of office and retail, which was first proposed in 2018. “You don’t see, other than our San Jose project, us announcing major office developments at the moment,” said Douglas Linde, president of Boston Properties .

Future plans

Robert Sammons, a senior director of research at Cushman & Wakefield, lives in San Francisco and takes the MUNI to the brokerage firm’s office in the Financial District. He said he’s seen things change in the city, especially in the struggling downtown business district., while other neighborhoods have bounced back from pandemic-related struggles more quickly, as more hybrid and remote workers spend time in their neighborhoods and help boost local retail businesses .

“In some cases, neighborhoods are doing better than they were pre-pandemic,” he said. A bright spot for the city has been a major uptick in tourism lately, something Sammons called “palpable,” which has also helped boost retail performance around Union Square, an area that had been experiencing a lot of turnover. But are workers back in the CBD? Not really. “The numbers are ticking higher, but they’re nowhere near where they were,” Sammons said. Salesforce, the city’s largest private employer, has cut down its office footprint three times since the start of the pandemic.

Like many other cities, the office market in San Francisco is experiencing a flight to quality. Class A buildings with the most popular amenities are experiencing the highest occupancy rates by far. “Tenants are flooding into top-quality buildings,” said Sammons. Among “Tier 1” buildings in the city, which Cushman & Wakefield classifies as the best of the best, overall vacancy is 4.2 percent. Meanwhile, the overall average vacancy rate in the city is around 21 percent. Sammons said buildings within the city’s central business district are performing better in general, while buildings further from the city center that may have been popular pre-pandemic are struggling to lease up. “Tenants want safety, security, convenience—any buildings that check those boxes,” he said.

So see

San Francisco has gotten plenty of criticism lately, and not just from political rivals taking aim at city leaders. Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam, who leads the largest industrial real estate firm in the country, was robbed last month while returning to his home in an upscale area of ​​San Francisco. In an interview after the incident, he called San Francisco “probably the most dysfunctional city in America.” Around the same time, tech executive Drew Oetting, president of the venture capital firm 8VC, which relocated to Austin, Texas from San Francisco, reportedly called San Francisco “the worst-run city in the United States,” during a conference.

Though the city is undoubtedly struggling with office occupancy and quality of life issues, officials have also been trying to revitalize the city and bring back pre-pandemic foot traffic to downtown areas. The Downtown San Francisco Partnership has launched the Public Realm Action Plan, a set of initiatives concocted by urban designers. The plan details how the city can use public and private spaces within a 43-block radius, bring back pedestrians, and restore character to the area that has been missing since the pandemic hit.

What really separates the two cities’ office markets are the physical and the not-so-physical: San Francisco is about software while San Jose and Silicon Valley are about hardware, said Sammons. The difference underscores why San Francisco’s office market has struggled more than San Jose’s. A massive amount of San Jose’s office market is dedicated to R&D space, where workers must be physically present to work on products—working from home isn’t an option. Meanwhile, 95 percent of commercial space in San Francisco is office space, much of which was occupied by startups and Silicon Valley companies that opened offices there over the last decade to appear workers who lived in the city and didn’t want to commute to Silicon Valley every day, according to Sammons. “Historically, the software market, that segment is the least desirable of coming back to the office,” he said.

However, there have been major office deals in “the city” lately, most notably with Google Cloud’s 300,000-square-foot lease in SoMa, where the company will take over payment processing company Stripe’s former headquarters. Late last year, Chime took 200,000 square feet in the heart of the city at 101 California St. “I think it will be successful in that they’re expanding rapid transit there, and BART is coming into San Jose over the next couple years, ” said Sammons of development in San Jose. “But they’re very different markets. San Jose is absolutely much more of a suburban market and San Francisco is San Francisco.”

San Francisco’s office market, while certainly challenged, does have bright spots—especially in the top tier segment of buildings. Tourism has come back, which is giving a much-needed boost to retail, and the city is taking steps to bring back pedestrians to once vibrant areas. If the city can address some of its issues, it could come back in a big way and restore its status as one of the most desired office markets in the country, but it may take some time. In the meantime, the plethora of new office and housing development in nearby San Jose and city officials’ ambitious plan to transform the city could be a model for other cities in the Bay area and around the country.

The post As San Francisco’s Workplace Market Struggles, San Jose’s Profile Rises appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco’s office market has always been the brightest star in the Bay Area. Led by powerful tech and startup companies, rents have historically been high, and leasing remained strong. But the city’s prestige was upended after the pandemic hit. The metro has faced serious challenges in occupancy and leasing as workers switched to remote work and moved to lower-cost areas. Concerns around safety and quality of life in the city added to those troubles, prompting some companies to look elsewhere for space or commit to permanent remote work. The major shift is drawing attention to nearby Silicon Valley hub San Jose, which has been experiencing significant growth in office leasing, development, and population.

San Jose has also been known for its tech campuses and R&D (research and development) facilities, but for those looking for nightlife, culture, and anything else that city life has to offer, it’s hard to beat the atmosphere of San Francisco. But San Francisco’s much-publicized struggles with crime, affordability, and homelessness have reportedly led to residents leaving in droves, resulting in the nation’s highest office vacancy rates. So with so many leaving San Francisco, will San Jose’s development boom be enough to draw more tenants?

tech town

As the largest city in Silicon Valley, San Jose has a long history as a home to tech campuses. Companies like Netflix, Paypal, and Adobe all have major outposts in the town. But workers typically didn’t live in the decidedly more suburban area, with many commuting from San Francisco. Some tech firms tried making it even easier for their employees to get to campus, launching private shuttle buses to ferry them back and forth from San Francisco.

In 2011, looking to create more jobs, the city of San Jose adopted an ambitious plan, Envision San Jose 2040. The plan sets a roadmap for ramping up development and adding more density, housing, mixed-use developments, and walkability. Every year, the plan gets revisited and tweaked based on what else needs addressing. Building more housing, including affordable housing, is now a big part of that plan. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo set a goal in 2017 to have 25,000 new housing units in the pipeline by 2023. But the city still has a ways to go to meet that goal because, as of last summer, the city had only completed 3,348 housing units .

Recent data from Colliers shows that San Jose’s office sector is performing much better than San Francisco’s. Office vacancy in San Jose, according to the brokerage firm, is in the range of 9 to 10 percent, as opposed to San Francisco, which has a vacancy rate of around 20 percent and is twice as high as buildings in Santa Clara County and the Peninsula. Further showing its strength, a recent report named San Jose as the top metro area where Millennials want to move. At one luxury condo development in downtown San Jose, there is currently a 4,000-person waitlist for units at the forthcoming tower.

New developments in San Jose include Google’s 80-acre mixed-use project, which is anticipated to break ground by next year. Once built, the project will be the biggest development in San Jose’s history. Included in the campus will be 4,000 housing units, 1,000 of which will be designated affordable. Google has said that it expects up to 25,000 employees will work in the office. Facebook and Apple are also set to expand their footprint in Silicon Valley.

Last month, Caltrain announced new details for its plan to build a 1.2 million-square-foot mixed-use development next to the Diridon train station, where Google’s 80-acre campus is rising. The plans include two Class A office towers and ground-floor retail. That project could break ground by early 2024. One of the country’s largest office landlords, Boston Properties, is even restarting a development it had paused after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. That project, a pair of 16-story, interconnected office towers with more than 2 million square feet of office and retail, which was first proposed in 2018. “You don’t see, other than our San Jose project, us announcing major office developments at the moment,” said Douglas Linde, president of Boston Properties .

Future plans

Robert Sammons, a senior director of research at Cushman & Wakefield, lives in San Francisco and takes the MUNI to the brokerage firm’s office in the Financial District. He said he’s seen things change in the city, especially in the struggling downtown business district., while other neighborhoods have bounced back from pandemic-related struggles more quickly, as more hybrid and remote workers spend time in their neighborhoods and help boost local retail businesses .

“In some cases, neighborhoods are doing better than they were pre-pandemic,” he said. A bright spot for the city has been a major uptick in tourism lately, something Sammons called “palpable,” which has also helped boost retail performance around Union Square, an area that had been experiencing a lot of turnover. But are workers back in the CBD? Not really. “The numbers are ticking higher, but they’re nowhere near where they were,” Sammons said. Salesforce, the city’s largest private employer, has cut down its office footprint three times since the start of the pandemic.

Like many other cities, the office market in San Francisco is experiencing a flight to quality. Class A buildings with the most popular amenities are experiencing the highest occupancy rates by far. “Tenants are flooding into top-quality buildings,” said Sammons. Among “Tier 1” buildings in the city, which Cushman & Wakefield classifies as the best of the best, overall vacancy is 4.2 percent. Meanwhile, the overall average vacancy rate in the city is around 21 percent. Sammons said buildings within the city’s central business district are performing better in general, while buildings further from the city center that may have been popular pre-pandemic are struggling to lease up. “Tenants want safety, security, convenience—any buildings that check those boxes,” he said.

So see

San Francisco has gotten plenty of criticism lately, and not just from political rivals taking aim at city leaders. Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam, who leads the largest industrial real estate firm in the country, was robbed last month while returning to his home in an upscale area of ​​San Francisco. In an interview after the incident, he called San Francisco “probably the most dysfunctional city in America.” Around the same time, tech executive Drew Oetting, president of the venture capital firm 8VC, which relocated to Austin, Texas from San Francisco, reportedly called San Francisco “the worst-run city in the United States,” during a conference.

Though the city is undoubtedly struggling with office occupancy and quality of life issues, officials have also been trying to revitalize the city and bring back pre-pandemic foot traffic to downtown areas. The Downtown San Francisco Partnership has launched the Public Realm Action Plan, a set of initiatives concocted by urban designers. The plan details how the city can use public and private spaces within a 43-block radius, bring back pedestrians, and restore character to the area that has been missing since the pandemic hit.

What really separates the two cities’ office markets are the physical and the not-so-physical: San Francisco is about software while San Jose and Silicon Valley are about hardware, said Sammons. The difference underscores why San Francisco’s office market has struggled more than San Jose’s. A massive amount of San Jose’s office market is dedicated to R&D space, where workers must be physically present to work on products—working from home isn’t an option. Meanwhile, 95 percent of commercial space in San Francisco is office space, much of which was occupied by startups and Silicon Valley companies that opened offices there over the last decade to appear workers who lived in the city and didn’t want to commute to Silicon Valley every day, according to Sammons. “Historically, the software market, that segment is the least desirable of coming back to the office,” he said.

However, there have been major office deals in “the city” lately, most notably with Google Cloud’s 300,000-square-foot lease in SoMa, where the company will take over payment processing company Stripe’s former headquarters. Late last year, Chime took 200,000 square feet in the heart of the city at 101 California St. “I think it will be successful in that they’re expanding rapid transit there, and BART is coming into San Jose over the next couple years, ” said Sammons of development in San Jose. “But they’re very different markets. San Jose is absolutely much more of a suburban market and San Francisco is San Francisco.”

San Francisco’s office market, while certainly challenged, does have bright spots—especially in the top tier segment of buildings. Tourism has come back, which is giving a much-needed boost to retail, and the city is taking steps to bring back pedestrians to once vibrant areas. If the city can address some of its issues, it could come back in a big way and restore its status as one of the most desired office markets in the country, but it may take some time. In the meantime, the plethora of new office and housing development in nearby San Jose and city officials’ ambitious plan to transform the city could be a model for other cities in the Bay area and around the country.

The post As San Francisco’s Workplace Market Struggles, San Jose’s Profile Rises appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The death toll from a massive fire that swept through the mountain communities of Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties has risen to 10, and 16 people remain missing, fire officials said Thursday evening.

The North Complex fire mushroomed in size this week, scorching a total of more than 252,000 acres and forcing some 20,000 residents in Plumas, Butte and Yuba counties from their homes. Officials said the bodies of seven more people were found Thursday as they searched through hamlets where the fire burned.

A hand crew was overrun by flames in the fire’s West Zone in Butte County, which had become extremely unpredictable due to erratic weather changes. The crew was able to escape, but two firefighters suffered minor injuries.

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Lance Georgeson of Mammoth Lakes paddleboards on Tenaya Lake on Sept. 13 in Yosemite National Park. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Thick smoke from multiple forest fires shrouds iconic El Capitan, right, and the walls of Yosemite Valley. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Benjamin Lewis takes a photo for a group of San Diego firefighters in Yosemite. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A deer grazes in Cook’s Meadow as thick smoke shrouds the iconic landmarks of Yosemite Valley. 

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

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Thick smoke shrouds iconic Half Dome towering over Yosemite Valley in a view from Sentinel Bridge over the Merced River on Sept. 13. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Thick smoke shrouds Tenaya Lake on Sept. 13 in Yosemite National Park. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A Cal Fire truck passes a burned-out vehicle on Stringtown Road on Friday in Oroville, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Propane gas burns Friday at the ruins of a home on Zink Road in the Berry Creek area of Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Melted goggles lie on the ground next to the burned-out truck on Stringtown Road. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A crew from Trinity River Conservation Camp, a prison facility, does mop-up work on Stringtown Road on Friday, the day after a flare-up in the area. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Scorched cars in Brush Creek, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter battles the Creek fire as it threatens homes in Madera County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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Flames from the Bear fire in Oroville, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A horse in a field in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Frank Martinez, left, and Rick Wolfe with their nine dogs in Oroville, Calif. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A fox pauses amid burned brush in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A statue is singed in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Lake Oroville in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighters work to save a home in Butte County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A burned truck in Butte County. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter battles the Creek fire in Madera County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A plume rises from the Bear fire as it burns along Lake Oroville in Butte County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A table stands outside the destroyed Cressman’s General Store in Fresno County. 

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

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A vehicle streaks by as Fresno County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeffery Shipman stands along California 168, with the Creek fire in the background on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The Laguna Hotshots Crew out of the Cleveland National Forest battles the Creek fire as it approaches the Southern California Edison Big Creek Hydroelectric Plant on Sept. 6 in Big Creek, Calif. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Members of the Laguna Hotshots Crew walk down Huntington Lake Road to battle the Creek fire on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A member of the Laguna Hotshots Crew is silhouetted against a background of flames. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The Creek fire burns along Huntington Lake Road on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A vehicle streaks along California 168 as the Creek fire creeps closer to Shaver Lake, Calif., on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A member of the Laguna Hotshots Crew battles the Creek fire on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter conducts a back-burn operation along California 168 as the Creek fire approaches the Shaver Lake Marina. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighter Ricardo Gomez sets a back burn amid the Creek fire near Shaver Lake Marina on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter works on the back-burn operation near Shaver Lake Marina. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A duck swims in Shaver Lake as the Creek fire approaches on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighter Ricardo Gomez battles the Creek fire with a back burn. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The sky glows orange around Shaver Lake on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter conducts a back-burn operation amid the Creek fire near Shaver Lake on Sept. 6. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Flames leap into the sky as fire engulfs trees near Shaver Lake. 

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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The Creek fire approaches the Shaver Lake Marina on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighter Ricardo Gomez sets a back burn amid the Creek fire near Shaver Lake Marina on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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A man stands on a dock at the Shaver Lake Marina as the Creek fire approaches on Sept. 6.  

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

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Flames consume dry brush around Santa Barbara firefighters as they set a backfire along Oro Quincy Highway in the aftermath of the Bear fire in Oroville. 

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

The North Complex was one of the fires that exploded in size this week as record-high temperatures and strong winds beset the state. Flames raced through the northern Sierra Nevada foothills before dawn Wednesday — catching crews and residents off-guard as they leaped southwest toward towns in Butte County, including the community of Paradise, which was largely destroyed by the 2018 Camp fire.

Steve Kaufmann, a spokesman for the fire’s response team, said 2,000 structures have been destroyed or damaged, though that number may increase after crews further assess the area Friday.

So much smoke enveloped the region that it shaded the fire from the sun, reducing temperatures and increasing the humidity Thursday, according to an incident meteorologist. Though the smoke impedes firefighters’ aircraft response, it has helped with the firefight slightly. As of Thursday evening, the North Complex fire is 23% contained.

The incident is now the 10th-largest wildfire in state history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Wildfires have burned more than 3.1 million acres statewide this year — the largest amount on record. At least 19 people have died and thousands of structures have been destroyed.

Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said dangerously dry conditions led “to explosive fires that have really just skyrocketed us past the 3-million mark for the first time in our recorded history.”

“Unfortunately, with several more months of fire season to go, this number could continue to increase,” he said Thursday.

The Dolan fire, which ignited Aug. 18 north of Limekiln State Park in Monterey County, has also seen extreme growth this week. Officials said the combination of high temperatures, dry fuels and wind combined to more than triple the size of the fire, to more than 111,000 acres.

The fire also has spread to the Army’s Ft. Hunter Liggett, though that property has not been forced to evacuate, officials said.

Near the Oregon border, the Slater fire has grown to 120,000 acres since it ignited Monday in the Klamath National Forest. The fire is threatening the communities of O’Brien, Takilma, Cave Junction and Gasquet, and destroyed 150 structures in Happy Camp.

Embers fly across a roadway as the Bear fire burns in Oroville.

(Noah Berger/Associated Press)

While the mid-August lightning siege set California on the path toward a historic and horrifyingly active fire season, a second salvo of summer infernos has since pushed the toll to more devastating heights.

The unprecedented firestorm prompted the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday to temporarily close all national forests in California.

Many officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have said the effects of climate change have helped set the stage for this year’s prolific fire season.

“I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers,” he said Tuesday.

“You may not believe it intellectually,” he added. “But your own eyes, your own experiences, tell a different story.”

So far this year, almost 7,700 fires have ignited statewide, according to Berlant.

“This year has already been a very destructive fire season, and it is nowhere close to being over,” he said Wednesday.

Six of the state’s 20 largest wildfires have started in the past month or so, according to Cal Fire. That includes the August Complex, which has burned an all-time record 471,185 acres in a remote area in and around Tehama County.

The smoldering remains of a structure along Auberry Road, where the Creek fire tore through and jumped Highway 168 in Fresno County.

(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

That complex — which started Aug. 17 as a cluster of 37 distinct fires in the Mendocino National Forest — was 24% contained as of Thursday. The most recent acreage figure pushed it well past the 2018 Mendocino Complex fire, which burned more than 459,000 acres.

Crews have almost completely hemmed in the SCU Lightning and LNU Lightning complexes, which rank as the third- and fourth-largest wildfires in state history, at 396,624 and 363,220 acres, respectively.

The SCU complex — which began as a collection of about 20 blazes in Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties — is now 98% contained. Containment is at 95% for the LNU complex, which has charred parts of Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Solano, Yolo and Colusa counties.

Joining those complexes on the distressing leaderboard is the Elkhorn fire, which is burning in the Mendocino, Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers national forests. It has scorched 255,309 acres — the ninth-largest burn zone — and was 27% contained as of Thursday.

Firefighters conduct a back burn operation along Highway 68 during the Creek fire as it approaches the Shaver Lake Marina.

(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

The massive Creek fire, which has chewed through more than 175,000 acres, destroyed an estimated 360 structures and prompted widespread evacuations in the Sierra foothills northeast of Fresno, is currently the 17th-largest in state history.

The fire caused an explosion in China Peak Mountain Resort, igniting a bunker of explosives that were used for avalanche mitigation, Fresno sheriff’s officials said. There was some damage to the resort, but no one was injured.

As is the case for the North Complex fire, the layer of smoke over the Creek fire has helped improve weather conditions. Milder winds and temperatures allowed firefighters to make progress for the first time, increasing the fire’s containment to 6%.

“We’re really trying to start gaining containment on this fire,” said Chris Vestal, a spokesman for the Creek fire response. “A lot of what we want to do is make sure everything that is standing stays standing.”

Firefighters also made progress with the fast-growing Bobcat fire, which doubled in size in one day to nearly 24,000 acres. The fire burning in the San Gabriel Mountains is now 6% contained, according to an incident report. The fire’s growth was largely in the northeast direction Thursday, sparing foothill residential communities.

The Transamerica Pyramid and Salesforce Tower in San Francisco are shrouded by wildfire smoke.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press )

Six areas remain under an evacuation warning: Duarte, Bradbury, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, Pasadena and Altadena.

Near Yucaipa, the El Dorado fire had burned almost 14,000 acres and was 31% contained as of Thursday morning. Though there’s no current threat to communities in Big Bear Valley, Cal Fire officials issued an advisory asking visitors to postpone visits to the area in case evacuations are ordered.

In San Diego County near the Mexican border, the Valley fire grew to 17,665 acres and was 35% contained, according to Cal Fire. Officials were reporting 15% containment for the 1,300-acre Willow fire, which sparked north of Smartsville in Yuba County on Wednesday. That fire has destroyed 30 structures, according to Cal Fire, while 700 others are considered threatened.

A firefighter watches flames ignite a tree as fire continues to spread at the Bear fire in Oroville.

(Josh Edelson / AFP )

The hope is that weather conditions will “improve across the state today, with most areas experiencing seasonal temperatures and dry conditions,” according to Cal Fire.

“Northern California should expect average temperatures through the weekend, with a possible cooling trend next week,” officials wrote in a statewide situation update Thursday. “In Southern California, temperatures will be at or slightly above normal.”

That would be a boon to firefighters, who have had to contend with a pair of scorching heat waves in the past few weeks. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said that last month was “the warmest August on record in California.”

With fires raging throughout the West Coast, the skies over California have taken an apocalyptic turn — choking the air with ash and smoke in some regions, while snuffing out sunlight in others. Rarely have so many Californians breathed such unhealthy air.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is warning that smoke and ash are likely to hit much of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties Thursday due to the two major fires locally and smoke flowing in from Northern California blazes.

The air district’s smoke advisory said that most of the Southern California region will be affected by smoke, with the highest readings of fine-particle pollution, tiny lung-damaging particles known as PM2.5, in areas closest to the Bobcat and El Dorado fires.

Smoke blowing in from Northern California “may also contribute to widespread elevated PM2.5 concentrations,” the air district said, but due to shifting winds, the smoke impacts “will be highly variable in both space and time.”

The air district said to expect “noticeable smoke and ash impacts” in southwest Los Angeles County, Orange County and southwest Riverside County.

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Brooks Hubbard with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers takes photos from the historic North Broadway Bridge over the Los Angeles River Tuesday morning as smoke and ash from the Bobcat fire cloak the area. 

(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

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Elijah Simpson practices shooting hoops against a backdrop of smokey skies from the Bobcat Fire at Angel’s Gate Park in the San Pedro on September 16, 2020.  

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

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A helicopter fights the Bobcat fire burning dangerously close to Mt. Wilson Observatory. 

(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

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An aerial view of Dodger Stadium and the downtown Los Angeles skyline at sunset is obscured by smoke, ash and smog on Sept. 14. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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Visitors check their photos at Griffith Observatory with a smoky view of the Hollywood sign behind them. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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Two people get ready to surf as a hazy red sun sets off Hermosa Beach. 

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Smoke from the Bobcat fire burning in the Angeles National Forest blankets the Southland. 

(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

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An airplane flies through smoky skies in downtown Los Angeles. 

(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)

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A smoky haze envelopes Santa Monica Beach.  

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Beachgoers walk along the shoreline in Laguna Beach beneath a hazy sky. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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A crow on a cypress tree in Garden Grove is silhouetted by a sun obscured by ash from Southland wildfires. 

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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The sky is gray over the Santa Monica Pier as a family plays in the breakwater.  

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

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A man walks his dog past the historic lifeguard tower in Laguna Beach as the sun is obscured by smoke from wildfires. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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An upbeat message on the South Coast Cinemas marquee in Laguna Beach is dimmed by the smoky air. 

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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Surfers near the Manhattan Beach Pier under a smoky sunset. 

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Gray skies over the Santa Monica Pier.  

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

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A hazy sun is seen behind the Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove. 

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Despite the unhealthful air quality, Fabian Ortez of Riverside enjoys an afternoon of fishing off the pier in Seal Beach. 

(Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times)

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The Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove. 

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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A bicyclist travels along the 1st Street Bridge as smoke hovers east of downtown Los Angeles. 

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

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Haze from the Bobcat fire looms over Azusa as it burns in Angeles National Forest. 

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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The Los Angeles skyline is shrouded in smoke from the Bobcat fire as seen from the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. 

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Haze from the Bobcat fire looms over Kare Park in Irwindale. 

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The bad air is being generated by fires raging in California, Oregon and Washington that are lofting smoke into the air in a massive plume that is blanketing the entire West Coast and extends far out into the Pacific.

But in Southern California much of that smoke has remained aloft. At the ground level, air quality remained in the “good” to “moderate” range Thursday morning across most of the region, except for areas near the Bobcat fire in the Angeles National Forest north of Azusa and Glendora, and the El Dorado fire in the San Bernardino Mountains near Yucaipa, where readings showed air quality in the “unhealthy” range.

Air quality has been significantly worse in Northern California, where raging fires this week have choked the air with smoke and ash and snuffed out the sunlight, casting a gloomy, orange pall over San Francisco and other areas. Air monitoring data Thursday morning showed unhealthy pollution levels in most of San Francisco and in other parts of the Bay Area.

Times staff writers Anita Chabria, Matthew Ormseth and Joe Mozingo contributed to this report.

The post Dying toll rises as California wildfires proceed to burn appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

© Bruce Damonte
La Fénix at 1950 offers 157 homes, including 40 units for formerly homeless families, in the Mission District of San Francisco.

New affordable housing for families has emerged in the Mission District of San Francisco.

La Fénix was founded in 1950 by the non-profit BRIDGE Housing and Mission Housing Development Corp. developed and converted a former site of the San Francisco Unified School District into 157 apartments and community ground floor space.

In the face of a housing crisis in the Bay Area at all income levels – especially for extremely low-income households – development in this vibrant Latin-born neighborhood offers the affordable housing needed, including 40 units for formerly homeless families.

San Francisco has seen a technology boom in the past decade, which has contributed to higher housing costs and gentrification, according to Smitha Seshadri, executive vice president of BRIDGE Housing.

“The Mission District became one of those places where rents became unaffordable for many working families and they were evicted,” she says. “And to see that we have some family homeless shelters in this building is going to be really impressive.”

La Fénix was completed in November 1950 and includes 155 units affordable for households earning between 45% and 60% of the region’s median income (AMI); two units are reserved for property management. The 40 units reserved for formerly homeless families account for less than 30% of the AMI, with the city providing grants through its local operating subsidy program.

“The most important thing is that we have 155 families,” says Sam Moss, General Manager of Mission Housing. “But it’s always very important to show that it’s not just about the people who live there, but really about the whole neighborhood.”

Moss says the ground floor will be activated for the community, with an art gallery and free studios for low-income artists, a youth-run bike repair shop, and space to run head start and early head start programs.

The crowning glory of the building, Seshadri adds, is the rooftop garden with open spaces, play equipment, and city skyline views that families can enjoy. The roof is also open to the public.

“We built the roof of a 10,000 square meter meeting room for church groups in the mission,” says Moss.

The non-profit developers were selected as part of a municipal tender to convert the vacant lot of the former Phoenix Continuation High School and a parking lot into affordable housing. The urban infill development is adjacent to the transit so no parking was required, which helped it with competitive funding from the state’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program – part of the state’s cap-and-trade auction program – Emissions of carbon emissions managed by – performing well by the Strategic Growth Council and implemented by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

Other funding partners for the $ 100 million development include Wells Fargo, a low-income investor and construction lender, California Community Reinvestment Corp. as permanent lender, the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, BNY Mellon, the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.

Swinerton Builders acted as general contractor, with David Baker Architects and Cervantes Design Associates as architects. On-site support services are provided by Mission Housing and Lutheran Social Services.

“Families have to take a deep breath – not just win the lottery to get a unit,” says Moss. “With Mission Housing as the landlord, you know that you are safe and will not be evicted.”

The post Combined-Use Growth Rises in San Francisco’s Mission District| Housing Finance Journal appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.