By Sylvie Sturm

In December 2021, San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed declared a 90-day state of emergency in the Tenderloin, the neighborhood most damaged by the city’s drug crisis. It was a fiery speech in which she vowed to be “less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.” She swore to increase treatment services while also calling for police to crack down on drug dealers and force drug users off the street and into either treatment or incarceration — their choice.

Breed was voicing a frustration that has overtaken San Francisco after more than a decade of living with a rampaging opioid crisis. Opioid-related overdose deaths have been surging since the mid-2010s when fentanyl hit the streets. Between 2015 and 2020, deaths involving fentanyl in San Francisco increased 4,600% to nearly a dozen each week. And it’s having disproportionate consequences on people of color. San Francisco has the highest accidental overdose rate in California among counties with a population greater than 100,000. Deaths among Black residents are more than five times the countywide rate; San Francisco has the third-highest opioid-related county death rate among Latinos. 

It’s been two years since Breed’s speech, and fatal overdoses remain just as rampant. And as deaths keep mounting, so does the interest in a controversial approach that harm reduction advocates have been promoting for over a decade: supervised consumption sites. Also known as overdose prevention centers, these facilities are safe places where people can have their drugs tested for fentanyl and consume under supervision with lifesaving medical care nearby should the need arise. 

Overdose prevention centers have been operating for decades in places like my former hometown of Vancouver, Canada, as well as Australia and some countries in Europe. Across more than 170 working centers, not a single overdose death has been recorded. 

San Francisco advocates who are working to establish such centers say this harm reduction approach is a surefire way to save lives and local elected officials are supportive of the idea. But some locals are still pushing back, arguing that more robust recovery and treatment options are needed, not permissive approaches to drug consumption.

The city opened a temporary center to in early 2022 to help people who use drugs and unhoused residents access supportive services. San Francisco Department of Public Health statistics showed that during its 11 months in operation, the center was visited more than 100,000 times, reversed 300 overdoses, and helped more than 1,000 people get shelter or housing. Nevertheless, the Tenderloin Linkage Center, as it was called, closed a month earlier than planned. 

The site, which was located on a downtown plaza surrounded by theaters, museums and tourist attractions, had quickly turned into an unofficial overdose prevention center. Business owners and residents complained that drug use and drug dealing in the neighborhood increased after the center opened. And while opponents typically argue that overdose prevention centers don’t offer enough avenues to treatment, critics of the Tenderloin center said the city should not have allowed drug use at a site where it also offered connections to treatment services. 

When I visited the site shortly after the center shut down, I met Adriel Cota, a former center client who is unhoused and uses drugs. He talked about all the benefits he got from the center — including daily laundry, meals, shower facilities and accommodations for his dog. But he always believed the Tenderloin center was set up to fail because of its business- and tourist-heavy location.

As overdose fatalities accumulate, there is a crucial need for clarity around the perceived benefits and drawbacks of such facilities. 

In November 2021, New York City announced the opening of the country’s first sanctioned overdose prevention center. And now San Francisco appears poised to follow suit. On Feb. 28, 2023, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved legislation introduced by the mayor to allow nonprofits to operate drug overdose prevention sites with private funding. At least three organizations in San Francisco have indicated a willingness to raise the funds needed to open centers without the city’s financial support. Among them is the Gubbio Project, a charity located in a church that provides unhoused residents with daytime shelter and cots on which to rest. Its director, Lydia Branston, said the site is ready to accommodate an overdose prevention center as soon as the organization settles a contract with the property owner.

As a 2023 California Health Equity Fellow, I will assess the impact of a new San Francisco overdose prevention center on its surrounding neighborhood.

Through my reporting, I will gather data and connect with people whose experiences can help paint a picture of a San Francisco neighborhood before and after the introduction of an overdose prevention center, with a focus on its impact on fatalities, drug-related hospitalizations, and the overall health of the surrounding community and its residents, especially those most harmed by the opioid epidemic.

I hope my reporting will help residents and policymakers in city, county, state and federal governments to make better informed decisions in their fight to ease a rampant opioid crisis.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Supervisors in San Francisco held a heated debate Tuesday over whether to give city police the ability to use potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations, with both sides accusing the other of reckless fearmongering.

Police oversight groups are urging the 11-member Board of Supervisors to reject the idea, saying it would lead to further militarization of a police force already too aggressive with poor and minority communities. They said the parameters under which use would be allowed are too vague.

The San Francisco Police Department said it does not have pre-armed robots and has no plans to arm robots with guns. But the department could deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” when lives are at stake, SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement.

“Robots equipped in this manner would only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives,” she said.

The proposed policy does not lay out specifics for how the weapons can and cannot be equipped, leaving open the option to arm them. “Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD,” it says.

The city’s board members are staunch Democrats who favor gun control, reproductive freedoms and civil rights protections, but they are deeply divided on support for law enforcement.

Several supervisors said it shocked them that a city accustomed to protesting the use of military drones would entertain the idea of allowing a robot to possibly kill a person. But others said police were making a reasonable request and were only carving out permission in case of catastrophe.

“Everything that was said in this hearing, I don’t see how a robot being armed with certain weaponry would save lives,” said Shamann Walton, president of the Board of Supervisors.

The vote comes under a new California law that requires police and sheriffs departments to inventory military-grade equipment and seek approval for their use. San Francisco police currently have a dozen functioning ground robots used to assess bombs or provide eyes in low visibility situations, the department says. They were acquired between 2010 and 2017.

The state law was authored last year by San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu while he was an assembly member. It is aimed at giving the public a forum and voice in the acquisition and use of military-grade weapons that have a negative effect on communities, according to the legislation.

San Francisco police did not immediately respond to a question about how the robots were acquired, but a federal program has dispensed grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms, bayonets, armored vehicles and other surplus military equipment to help local law enforcement.

In 2017, then-President Donald Trump signed an order reviving the Pentagon program after his predecessor, Barack Obama, curtailed it in 2015, triggered in part by outrage over the use of military gear during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting death of Michael Brown.

The first time a robot was used to deliver explosives in the U.S. was in 2016, when Dallas police sent in an armed robot that killed a holed-up sniper who had killed five officers in an ambush.

Like many places around the U.S., San Francisco is trying to balance public safety with treasured civilian rights such as privacy and the ability to live free of excessive police oversight. In September, supervisors agreed to a trial run allowing police to access in real time private surveillance camera feeds in certain circumstances.

The San Francisco Public Defender’s office sent a letter Monday to the board saying that granting police “the ability to kill community members remotely” goes against the city’s progressive values. The office would like the board to reinstate language barring police from using robots against any person in an act of force.

On the other side of the San Francisco Bay, the Oakland Police Department has dropped a similar proposal after public backlash.

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When I began my recent reporting project on the drug overdose deaths in San Francisco in October, the ongoing crisis was already being thoroughly covered and documented by other reporters. The devastation was difficult to ignore, and more than 1,300 people have fatally overdosed in San Francisco over the last two years. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin, had saturated the city’s drug supply. But it seemed too easy to blame fentanyl when people in nearby counties were not dying at the same rates. 

“The risk didn’t just magically appear overnight as fentanyl descended on the city,” said Kristen Marshall, a former project manager with the DOPE Project, the largest single-city naloxone distribution program in the country. “It makes the villain of this drug. But the drug didn’t cause it right. The drug didn’t cause the overdose crisis.”

So, what had caused the overdose crisis? A group of mothers had organized to protest what they considered San Francisco’s lenient approach to drug dealing. Some public officials said the city was pushing harm reduction too far while harm reduction advocates worried about the return of a “war on drugs.” Those advocates said the drug overdose epidemic required immediate and long-term solutions to systemic issues like homelessness and racism. I thought data was needed to understand what factors were to blame. 

Within weeks I realized my question was too broad, and I struggled to know what data to ask for. In a group meeting, my reporting advisor said that we need to put in our data requests as soon as possible. The idea was that whatever data I received would turn into a piece. So, I asked for anything that might be helpful, hoping that would lead me somewhere. 

Getting the data 

But even data that seemed like it should be easy to obtain was difficult to get hold of. For example, several people I interviewed mentioned a dramatic decline in heroin overdose deaths from roughly 2000 to 2010. A few sources even sent me a graph made by a city employee describing this drop. But I was told the data did not exist. In other instances, I was told to wait for official city reports to publish or discuss publicly, or the data came with so many caveats that it was unusable. In one instance, I asked for data and the official said they didn’t want to alarm people. 

When other cities responded to my data requests within weeks, I wondered if focusing on San Francisco was the right approach when there’s so much less attention on other places to begin with. 

The San Francisco district attorney’s office and BART police sent me the most comprehensive and compelling data, but I struggled to write a story with only numbers and without individuals impacted. 

The history of harm reduction 

Slowly but surely, I landed on stories on several topics: the history of harm reduction in San Francisco, hotel workers who respond to overdoses regularly, and a new center opened in San Francisco to connect people to drug treatment or housing. 

My data for the history of harm reduction came from digging through reports published by the city since 2017 detailing the rise of overdose deaths. I also reached out to harm reduction groups, including the DOPE Project, who reported 81 overdose reversals in 2006, a figure that rose to 8,985 for 2021. I spoke with a physician who told me, “Nothing is going to reduce death to the extent that getting 10,000 doses of naloxone out there in San Francisco in the early 2000s will ever do.” 

But prescription drug overdose deaths were still high while heroin overdose deaths were declining. The data helped me understand that history and what led to the fentanyl overdose crisis ravaging San Francisco today. 

The Linkage Center 

In the midst of my project, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. As part of the emergency declaration, the city opened a site called the Linkage Center to connect people to basic services like food and showers as well as drug treatment and housing. The city also published weekly reports on overdoses reversed as well as the number of people placed in housing or treatment. I reviewed each report, created a spreadsheet, and plugged in the numbers on referrals to drug treatment, completed linkages for drug treatment, completed linkages for temporary or transitional housing, and completed linkages for permanent supportive housing. In the end, the spreadsheet was boiled down to these two sentences: 

“Between Jan. 31 and March 27, the center had more than 20,100 visits from people seeking everything from drug treatment and housing placement to job and mental health counseling. Fewer than 15 of those visits resulted in ‘completed linkages’ for drug treatment services, in which placements were confirmed.” 

But to me, the data also showed how complicated measuring success is, because so few people were entering treatment programs through the center. Meanwhile, overdoses were being reversed every day, and the people running the site saw the high number of people showing up each day as a success. 

The Whitcomb Hotel 

I started reporting on overdose deaths at the Whitcomb Hotel after one interview where a former director of housing services at Five Keys described overdoses at the site at the start of the pandemic. After requesting data from the city’s medical examiner’s office, I learned at least 18 people fatally overdosed there from April 2020, when it opened, to April 2022. More people appeared to have died at Hotel Whitcomb than any other single, non-hospital site in San Francisco. 

But this also was not the full story; staff described skepticism that the number was accurate because they were reversing overdoses so regularly. I originally saw this as a story about the family members of people who died at the hotel. But in my reporting, I learned that staff at the hotel were also suffering. Some had overdosed, and many were dealing with addiction. 

City pivots as overdoses remain high

Fewer people died of drug overdoses in 2021 than in 2020, but the number of people overdosing and dying in San Francisco every month is still staggeringly high. The emergency declaration declared in the Tenderloin is over, and a state bill could soon clear the way for the city to open a supervised consumption site if passed and signed into law.

Meanwhile, San Francisco has a new district attorney who has pledged to hold serious drug dealers accountable and a serious staffing shortage in its jails. 

I still think data could help tell the story of what direction San Francisco should go in over the next few years, but that data is hard to get or know how to ask for. 

And there are other cities confronting the fentanyl overdose crisis worth turning to next. 

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Three people were arrested while the majority got away after the large-scale theft Saturday night shocked shoppers at the Nordstrom at the Broadway Plaza outdoor mall in Walnut Creek, police said in a statement Sunday.

Two employees were assaulted and one was hit with pepper spray during what police called “clearly a planned event.”

NBC Bay Area reporter Jodi Hernandez tweeted that she saw the thieves rush into the store in the downtown shopping district in the city some 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.

“About 25 cars just blocked the street and rushed into the Walnut Creek Nordstrom making off with goods before getting in cars and speeding away,” Hernandez said on Twitter.

Cellphone video from the scene showed masked people streaming out of the store, carrying bags and boxes, jumping into the cars and fleeing the scene.

Brett Barrette, the manager of a nearby PF Chang’s restaurant, began locking doors at his establishment while watching the chaos unfold.

“We probably saw 50 to 80 people in ski masks, crowbars, a bunch of weapons,” Barrette told ABC 7 News.

The Walnut Creek Police Department said a firearm was recovered from one of the three arrested suspects.

Nordstrom employees began calling 911 around 9 p.m. as thieves entered the store and began stealing merchandise, police said.

“Walnut Creek Police investigators are in the process of reviewing surveillance footage to attempt to identify other suspects responsible for this brazen act,” the department said in Sunday’s statement.

Nordstrom was open as usual on Sunday.

The incident came a day after several high-end stores in San Francisco’s Union Square were broken into by a large group of people who smashed windows, stole merchandise, and then ran to waiting cars, police said.

Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Yves Saint Laurent, Burberry, and Dolce & Gabbana were all targeted Friday night, Fox 2 News reported.

San Francisco Police Officer Robert Rueca said in a statement posted on social media that officers responded to reports of possible looting and vandalism at Union Square stores Friday night and arrested several people.

Stores in Union Square, a posh shopping district popular with tourists, have been targeted for years by well-organized thieves who at times have rammed vehicles into storefronts to break glass doors and windows and enter the buildings during non-business hours.

In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that allows prosecutors to charge those who work with others to steal merchandise.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s district attorney said Wednesday he is suing three California companies that make and distribute “ghost guns,” the untraceable, build-it-yourself weaponry that accounted for nearly half the firearms recovered in gun killings in the city last year.

District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced the lawsuit at a news conference, alongside advocates of tougher gun laws.

The suit names Blackhawk Manufacturing Group, GS Performance and MDX Corp., three companies that are not based in San Francisco but are responsible for producing a large share of the firearms found in the city and elsewhere in the state, Boudin said.

“Guns are flooding our streets. Enough is enough,” Boudin said. “It is not enough to wait until after someone has been shot and killed by a firearm. We must get to the root of the problem.”

Boudin’s lawsuit comes amid mounting criticism over his response to rising crime rates and a wave of anti-Asian violence in the city, which has been routinely video-recorded and spread virally. Critics say the city’s most powerful law enforcement officer is intolerably lenient, particularly toward those responsible for rampant theft, drug abuse and street crimes.

Critics say Boudin, a progressive who ran on police reform, has repeatedly declined to file charges in cases where the perpetrators went on to commit more serious crimes. Supporters praise him for following through on his criminal justice reform promises.

Like the pandemic, the furor shows no sign of abating. One attempt to recall Boudin fell short last week when organizers failed to collect enough signatures, but the other attempt lives on with a deadline for signatures in October. If voters ultimately oust Boudin, Mayor London Breed, whose politics are more moderate, will choose a replacement.

The lawsuit, filed jointly with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, alleges that the companies violated state laws that require them to apply for serial numbers and that they misled consumers into believing the weapons were legal. It seeks a court order that would bar the companies from shipping their products in California and also seeks monetary penalties.

Messages left with all three companies seeking comment were not immediately returned Wednesday.

Police in San Francisco and other cities across the country have seen an explosion in the numbers of ghost guns seized over the past year.

In San Francisco, police seized 164 ghost guns in 2020, a 2,600% increase from the six confiscated in 2016.

In 2020, California accounted for 65% of all ghost guns seized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a statement from Boudin’s office said.

Earlier this month, two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies badly wounded in an ambush shooting last year sued a Nevada company, Polymer80 Inc., for making the parts for a ghost gun used in the attack.

The companies named in the San Francisco lawsuit tout on their websites how little time it takes to build their guns and that no background checks are needed, said Hannah Shearer, litigation director at Giffords Law Center, which is co-counsel in the case.

“They’ve made it possible for anyone in the state to buy all the parts needed to build a firearm, no questions asked and get it shipped in a convenient package with instructions, like an Ikea piece of furniture,” said Shearer.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s iconic cable cars were rolling and ringing their bells on the city’s hills again Monday after being sidelined for 16 months by the pandemic.

At Powell and Market, one of the cable car’s stops, a line of people snaked around waiting to ride a car to Ghirardelli Square or Fisherman’s Wharf.

“Our cable cars are part of what makes San Francisco a world-class destination, and their return is just the latest sign that our city is bouncing back,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

Breed said it will be free to ride the cable cars in August and asked people to be patient because the service won’t follow a regular schedule until September when the historic trolleys will resume full service in all three lines and start charging a riding fee.

Frank Miller, of San Antonio, said he and six members of his family arrived in San Francisco last week and have already visited some of the city’s top landmarks. They rode a ferry to Angel Island and visited Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf but Miller said riding the cable cars was a highlight for him.

“I grew up watching ‘Full House’ so, everybody knows the cable cars. We definitely want to ride the trolley cars through the city,” said Miller, 40, who was waiting with his family to ride from Powell Street and Market to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Before the pandemic, 25 million tourists visited San Francisco annually, with many of them riding the cable cars that are as synonymous with the city as Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge.

About 17,000 riders a day packed onto the cable cars daily before they were parked in March 2020 as the city locked down and sheltered in place. It was the longest shutdown since the 1980s, when the system was fully reconstructed, according to the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco city workers will be required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus when a vaccine receives full federal approval.

The policy covering 35,000 municipal workers may be the first by any city or county in the U.S. Employees who refuse to get vaccinated and don’t get an exemption could be fired, according to the policy posted to the city government’s website Wednesday.

The three COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the U.S. are being dispensed under emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.

They are expected to receive full approval in several months. San Francisco city employees will then have 10 weeks to get their shots.

San Francisco, a compact city of nearly 900,000 residents, has had some of the strictest pandemic-related restrictions in the country. The city was among the first in the nation to order a lockdown last year and its vaccination rates are some of the highest in the nation. At least 80% of residents are partially vaccinated and 70% of those 12 and older are fully vaccinated, according to Mayor London Breed.

The vaccination policy for city employees covers a wide range of jobs but it does not include teachers, who are school district employees.

“It’s really a decision for the health and safety of our employees and our public that we serve,” Carol Isen, San Francisco director of human resources, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s about protecting the city as an employer from what we deem to be unacceptable risk.”

Starting Monday, employees will have 30 days to report to the city their current vaccination status, including showing proof of vaccination by uploading a photo of their vaccination card or the QR code generated by the state’s digital verification system, Isen said.

Isen did not return a message from The Associated Press seeking comment Thursday.

Under California law, employers can require their staff to get vaccinated as long as that requirement doesn’t interfere with the employees’ rights, said Leonard H. Sansanowicz, a Los Angeles employment attorney.

“You’ve got this inherent tension between an employee’s right to privacy, and right to freedom over their bodies, and the employers need for safety in the workplace,” Sansanowicz said.

The Department of Fair Employment and Housing issued guidelines in March that set forth the rationale for employers to mandate staff get vaccinated and that included requiring employers to accommodate those city workers who won’t get a vaccine due to religious beliefs or medical reasons, he said.

Los Angeles County, which employs about 110,000 people, is not currently considering mandating employees get a vaccine, said Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

“That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be some places where there may be a need earlier on to in fact think about increasing vaccination coverage,” she said.

Ferrer said some high-risk settings in the county, including hospitals and nursing homes, are already requiring their employees to be vaccinated.

In San Francisco, about 55% of city employees have said they are at least partially vaccinated, according to the Department of Human Resources. About 5% of employees have said they are not vaccinated. The vaccination status of the remaining 40% is not known.

SEIU 1021, the union that represents city employees, called on the city to have an “inclusive and collaborative approach” when enforcing the new policy.

“There are numerous cultural, religious, and health status factors that must be considered as we implement vaccination policies,” said SEIU 1021 San Francisco Regional Vice President Theresa Rutherford. “We can not force the front-line essential workers who have put themselves out there and risked their lives during the pandemic in a position to be worried about providing for their families or having their jobs or livelihood threatened.”

The city is the second-largest employer in San Francisco after the University of California, San Francisco. Earlier this month, the University of California reversed course said it will require all students, staff and faculty to be vaccinated against the coronavirus this fall.

UC has more than 280,000 students and 227,000 faculty and staff, and expects to return to mostly in-person instruction at its 10 campuses starting in August.

Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, told the Chronicle protecting the workforce was especially important with the highly infectious delta variant gaining traction across the United States.

“Given that the delta variant is here and likely to increase in terms of its prevalence across the city, we need to do everything we can to protect our city workforce and the public we serve, especially as the city reopens,” Colfax said.

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For homeowners who have built up equity, you might have considered tapping that equity to renovate your space in order to match your current needs, or pay down other debts that you’re facing. But taking on more debt or adding another payment to your monthly bills might not be the best solution for your situation.

If this speaks to you, another option to consider is co-investing. With a co-investment, a homeowner can receive a lump sum of cash in exchange for a share in their home’s change in value over time. This offers homeowners an alternative to traditional equity-tapping options that can mean taking on more debt, interest or monthly payments.

For example, a home equity loan can come with added fees, and the homeowner must pay back the original sum plus interest. With a co-investment, there are no monthly payments, no interest and no added debt.

Unison, a San Francisco-based real estate company, is a leader in this growing field. Unison offers homeowners a cash payment of up to 17.5 percent of their home’s current market value. Then, when the homeowner sells the house or 30 years pass, the owner pays Unison an amount equal to the initial co-investment, plus (or minus) a percentage of the home’s change in value.

Homeowners can use the cash for anything, but Unison recommends something of long-term value: with homeowners’ changing needs due to the pandemic, some options might be paying for kids’ college tuition or medical expenses, or a home renovation such as a home office, gym, or accessory dwelling unit for any new (or returning) household members. Further, for any remodeling work that improves the home’s value, with a co-investment, the homeowner gets to keep the gains as well as the equity built from prompt mortgage payments.

For those interested in a co-investment, Unison looks for partners who are generally good homeowners: They keep the home as their primary residence; stay current on payments for mortgages, property tax, and homeowners’ insurance; keep the home well-maintained to retain and increase value; and keep Unison informed of issues, such as remodeling plans, emergencies or plans to sell the home.

To find out how Unison can help you get the most out of homeownership, visit unison.com.

NewsUSA | Contributed

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I never thought, for one second in my life, eating hot pot could count as someone’s wish that could not be fulfilled. It’s one of the easiest of Chinese foods — all you need is a pot, a portable stove, and whatever you want to cook in that pot. 

Yongyu Situ lived in an SRO (single-room occupancy) hotel room in San Francisco with her family of four for the past five years. As I got to know her, she told me several times that she and her husband Fang wanted to have hot pot so badly for the past year — but they did not dare.

The family of three generations lives in a 100-square-foot room, which is only big enough for one bunk bed. Grandma Zhen sleeps in the upper bunk, Situ and her son Xiao Lin in the lower bunk. Fang could only sleep on the floor, surrounded by furniture, kitchenware, clothing, and debris. His bed needs to be put away during the day to give the family space to eat, work, rest and entertain if they have company.

My 2020 National Fellowship project (translated here in English) looked at how Chinese residents living in cramped SRO housing in San Francisco’s Chinatown are faring during the pandemic.

SROs were initially created as transitional housing. But due to soaring housing prices in San Francisco and the affordable housing crisis, SROs are used as permanent residences for many families. In the past, those who lived in SROs could move to other places after saving for a few years; now it’s just not possible with the cost of rent in the city.

The Situ family has to share a bathroom and kitchen with about 30 other residents on the same floor. For the past year of COVID-19 and shelter-at-home, Situ worried every day about the family’s health and safety. “My mom cooks for the family when there’s no one in the kitchen. Because it’s not possible to keep 6-feet distance in the kitchen,” Situ said. 

When I look at the crowded 100-square-foot room stuffed with closets, shelves, tables, and a bunk bed, the life of an SRO family during the pandemic has never been so real to me. Xiao Lin, Situ’s 7-year-old son, was playing with his Legos at a small table when I first visited them. Grandma Zhen was sitting at the dinner table looking at her cellphone. 

I now understand why Situ and her family cannot have hot pot: the space in the room was not big enough to have the family sitting around a dinner table. Outside their window is a wall, the family cannot see the sky from inside, and the window has long been blocked by a large wardrobe. Without a window or a vent, it’s not safe nor comfortable for the family to cook hot pot inside their single room.

During this past year, hot pot became Situ’s obsession and impossible dream. “My husband really wants to eat hot pot,” she said. “It will be so good if our family has a place to hot pot, but we don’t have that space. I don’t dare to do it without ventilation either.”

Many San Franciscans have heard about the hardships faced by these residents. But few outside the community have visited those SRO buildings and talked with those who lived there for years. 

“Why do they have to stay in there? Why not moving to a cheaper state?” Those are the kinds of questions frequently asked by my readers and friends. Many of the residents in San Francisco Chinatown SROs rely on community services, language services, and job opportunities. It’s not easy for anyone, whether wealthy or poor, to leave their comfort zone and risk the uncertainty of moving elsewhere. For the poor, it’s much harder. 

Many San Franciscans have heard about the hardships faced by these residents. But few outside the community have visited those SRO buildings and talked with those who lived there for years. 

It was heartbreaking to learn that young Xiao Lin has been stuck in the room for a whole year. When he had to attend online classes, he could see that his classmates have couches, study rooms, study desks, and their own bedrooms. He would want that as well, but he sort of understands the family’s plight.

It was near the holiday season when I talked with Situ, when all the children were expecting gifts. Situ said, “Living in a place like this, my son dares not make requests.” She knew that her Xiao Lin wanted a room of his own, but the 7-year-old has learned to turn his desire into hopes for the future, when he moves into a bigger home. 

Situ told me that Xiao Lin would often ask if he can buy some toys when they went out in the past. Situ used to tell Xiao Lin their home was not big enough, and Xiao Lin would say, “Then I will buy it when I have a bigger place.”

“All that I can say to him was tomorrow will be better,” Situ said sadly. 

She is a family-oriented person and enjoys the time with her family. “If it were not for living in this place, this year could be a gift for my family to stay together. We don’t have that very often,” said Situ. “But the room is too small. Living here every day, it’s embarrassing to even change your clothes. It has caused a lot of problems. Sometimes I felt that there might be some mental issues.”

“I did not expect that I’ll live in this place when I came from China,” Situ said. 

For a long time, the deepest desire of most SRO residents has been to move out, and a year of sheltering at home has made such wishes and needs even more urgent. “SRO families need exits into affordable family housing. This is more true now than ever,” Malcolm Yeung, executive director of Chinatown Community Development Center, told me. “The city isn’t prioritizing this and it’s a disservice to our community.”

It was heartbreaking to learn that young Xiao Lin has been stuck in the room for a whole year. When he had to attend online classes, he could see that his classmates have couches, study rooms, study desks, and their own bedrooms.

Talking with the SRO residents was not easy, especially when they know you are going to publish a story. I visited several buildings and talked with many other residents before I connected with Situ. Some of the residents were reluctant to talk about their hardships and some did not understand what was going on outside. After a few months of talking to different people from the community, Amy Dai, a family coordinator of the SRO Families United Collaborative, connected me with Situ. 

Before I went to talk with Situ, I talked with mentor Margie Freivogel and community engagement expert Ashley Alvarado about possible interview questions and ice-breakers. I found it useful to ask questions that seem unrelated to story at hand. The question “What do you think we/the city/you can do better if we were going back to the start of the pandemic?” tended to get a more detailed response than: “What do you need the city/community to do?”

The hot pot detail in the story touched many people’s hearts after I published it because that’s something we all share in Chinese culture. Everyone in the community understands how common a hot pot should be; they realized the lives of SRO residents were even harder than they could imagine.

The second time I went to Situ’s room, the family seems more relaxed. Grandma Zhen was singing a song when I arrived. A song called “The Shepherd of Keketuohai” was her favorite, and she sang it again to me. The melody was sad but she had a smile on her face the whole time. It was emblematic of how she has dealt with her harder-than-imagined life this whole time, her optimism intact.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — America’s founding fathers got a reprieve Tuesday in San Francisco, when the city’s scandal-plagued school board formally suspended a plan to rename 44 schools as part of a racial reckoning that critics said went too far.

The city’s Board of Education, which convened on Zoom, voted unanimously to reverse its much-criticized decision to strip the names of a third of San Francisco’s public schools, which it said honored figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices. Among them were schools named for presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, writer Robert Louis Stevenson and Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere. A school named for longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein was on the list as well.

Tuesday’s 6-0 decision means that the school board is rescinding its vote from January and will revisit the matter after all students have returned full time to in-person learning. It sets no specific timetable.

The renaming debacle was one of several self-inflicted controversies the San Francisco school board faced during the pandemic, along with numerous lawsuits and public ridicule.

Parents, students and elected officials blasted the board for some of its targets — and its timing. The decision in late January came while all of San Francisco’s public classrooms were closed because of coronavirus restrictions. They still are. Mayor London Breed, among others, called it “offensive and completely unacceptable” for the board to focus on changing school names rather than getting children back into classrooms.

Some of the city’s youngest students are expected to begin returning to in-person instruction this month after more than a year of distance learning because of the pandemic. There is no timetable for middle and high school students to return.

The renaming effort also was criticized for historical inaccuracies and shoddy research that included consulting Wikipedia rather than historians.

A renaming advisory committee wrongly accused Paul Revere of seeking to colonize the Penobscot people. It also confused the name of Alamo Elementary School with the Texas battle rather than the Spanish word for poplar tree.

“While we’re at it, what about renaming San Francisco,” columnist and city scribe Carl Nolte wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle after the vote, noting that the city was named by missionaries for a Roman Catholic saint. “Clearly that fits the guidelines for a new name.”

Feinstein Elementary made the list because when she was mayor in 1984, a decision was made to replace a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a longstanding display outside City Hall. When the flag was pulled down a second time, it was not replaced.

“It feels like truth won this time,” Seeyew Mo, head of Families for San Francisco, said about Tuesday’s vote. His group opposed the renaming process and brought attention to the flawed research.

“I’m glad they’ve come to their senses — after lawsuits, and public pressure,” said Mo, who also objected to the board’s “top-down process” in which a small group made the decision without the wider school community. “A lot of people agree with the idea of revisiting names, but they just disagree with how it was done.”

The renaming process was led by a committee created in 2018 to study the names of district schools amid a national reckoning on racial injustice that followed deadly clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Schools and institutions nationwide are evaluating whether to change names as the country reevaluates its heroes.

The committee in San Francisco determined that any figures who “engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” should not have schools named for them.

The result prompted an outcry in California that the net was cast too wide, and mockery on social media and right-wing news sites which decried political correctness gone awry.

Board president Gabriela Lopez said in February that the process would be paused until all children were back in school. Lopez acknowledged in a statement that mistakes were made in the selection of schools and said that when the board returns to the issue, it will engage historians for a “more deliberative process.”

Since the renaming vote, the board has faced multiple lawsuits. The city of San Francisco took the dramatic step of suing the school district and the board to pressure both to reopen classrooms more quickly. Another was filed in March by San Francisco attorney Paul Scott, whose children attend public schools, alleging the school board’s renaming decision violated California’s open meeting law and did not involve the community.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman issued a ruling calling on the board to do what the lawsuit requests — rescind the vote and dissolve the renaming advisory committee — or show by April 16 why it shouldn’t be compelled to do so.

The resolution voted on Tuesday did not address the criticism but denounced the lawsuit, saying it “wishes to avoid the distraction and wasteful expenditure of public funds in frivolous litigation.”

Tuesday’s meeting was also the first since the board voted last week to remove one of its members, Alison Collins, from her role as vice president and other titles over tweets about Asian Americans dating to 2016.

In the tweets, Collins said Asian Americans use “white supremacist” thinking to get ahead. She has resisted calls to step down and last week sued the school district and five of her six colleagues, accusing them of violating her free speech rights. She is seeking $87 million in damages.

Historian Harold Holzer called the school board’s first stab at renaming an “over correction.” Holzer disagrees with deleting Abraham Lincoln’s name from a high school, which the San Francisco committee said was due to the treatment of Native Americans during his administration.

“I know people want to be inspired and want not to be worshipping false idols,” said Holzer, a Lincoln Scholar and director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House of Public Policy Institute. “But, honestly, to me there is still no better example of the American story at it’s highest level of idealism than Abraham Lincoln.”

In the midst of the Civil War in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the Confederacy, among other achievements that included rising out of poverty to become president, fighting for equal opportunity and saving the country from splitting up.

“If Lincoln doesn’t win, we’re in big trouble,” said Holzer. “The achievements so far outweigh the mistakes. I think he deserves adulation.”

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