housing

California community organizations say the state isn’t doing enough to protect homeless residents from COVID-19.

San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston has proposed legislation to expand the city’s pandemic-related eviction ban.

In Fremont, an industrial road near Tesla has become home to a large number of people living in RVs. In February, the city ordered them to leave and began placing boulders in their place. We followed one resident as she struggled with her next move.

Lynn Shipman and her boyfriend live in their RV along Kato Road in Fremont. When I meet her, she immediately invites me in.

Inside, the RV looks like a miniature botanical garden.

Walter Parenteau and his housemates run an all-volunteer soup kitchen in San Francisco’s Mission District. Their goal is to provide hospitality for anyone who walks through the door, but how are they dealing with the changes that the coronavirus brings? 

For those who have lost their income because of COVID-19, today may be an especially hard day. It’s April 1, and for many, rent is due. Bay Area governments have passed emergency protections for tenants, but critics say they’re not enough.

America is in a health crisis, but it’s also been in a housing crisis. For almost a quarter of renters, more than half of their income goes to their landlord. Eviction displaces a million households a year. About four million people spend at least three hours driving to and from work.

The Bay Area, one of the wealthiest regions in the world, also has the largest percentage of unsheltered people in the United States. For those who devote their lives to working with these individuals, the cost can be burnout, “compassion fatigue”. This story is about someone who is determined to keep going.

The carpet in Maria Montes de Oca’s apartment is matted and discolored. She shows me how the base of the cabinet under her sink has collapsed from water damage.

Host Ethan Elkind sits down with Bay Area's Senator Scott Weiner to discuss legislation to address California's housing crisis.

Residents at the Westwinds Mobile Home Park in San Jose started this decade off with an unsettling surprise.

Oakland city officials estimate that more than 4,000 people are homeless. Activists are demanding the city do more immediately. A group called Moms 4 Housing are taking a stand by occupying a vacant home in West Oakland.

Lots of new affordable housing is planned in San José but will take five to 10 years to build. So San José is launching a project called Bridge Housing Communities. It will temporarily house people in cabins and help them find a permanent place to live. 

Apple is pitching in $2.5 bilion dollars to help ease California's housing crisis.

$2 billion will go toward an "open line of credit.” That will build new low and moderate income homes, as well as a mortgage assistance fund.

October 28, 2019: Next Tuesday, San Francisco voters go to the polls to vote on a slate of city officials -- many of whom are running unopposed -- and ballot measures that address housing, campaign finance, e-cigarettes and taxes on Uber and Lyft rides.

San Francisco’s public housing is in the middle of a huge transition. In 2007, the city rolled a plan to redevelop four of the city’s public housing sites in phases to avoid displacing any residents. Now, residents in Potrero Hill are in the first phase.

The median home sales price in San Francisco is $1.35 million. The median rent of a one bedroom apartment is $3,700 per month. It’s a lot of money.

Advocates warn that people who need nursing care may increasingly be sent far away from San Francisco in a developing shortage of affordable nursing home beds linked in part to the cost of doing business and the cost of living in the Bay Area. 

For few generations now Berkeley has been home to alternative living arrangements like communes and co-ops. There’s a new intentional community keeping this tradition alive.

Here, no one’s in charge and decisions are made by consensus. This place is at the forefront of the housing crisis — in fact, it’s the reason the people here came together in the first place. 

A real estate company recently proposed a big development plan for Alameda South Shore Center. It has residents talking about the need for more housing, potential traffic problems and future of the island’s culture. 

On Thursday, the city and county’s Planning Commission unanimously approved a proposal to designate a parking lot near Balboa Park BART Station for long-term parking and overnight camping in vehicles. This approach has already been tried in Oakland, Palo Alto, and San Jose, but it’s a novel move for San Francisco. 

San Francisco currently has 9,784 people living without a home.

That’s according to a “point-in-time” count last month. It’s more comprehensive than previous measurements — including not just people living on the streets and in parks, but also homeless people who are incarcerated, hospitalized, and in residential treatment facilities. 

On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, we’ll discuss coverage of this weekend's California Democratic Party Convention in San Francisco. Fourteen Democrats running for President will address delegates and hold a number of fundraising and policy events in the Bay Area. With California moving its primary to March, what role is the state playing in the 2020 race?

On this week's media roundtable, we’ll discuss coverage of the snap elections in Spain. The fractured political landscape handed the Socialist Party most of the parliamentary seats, and, for the first time, the far right anti-immigrant Vox Party, which was backed by Steve Bannon, won 10 percent of the vote. What’s next for Spain?

San Francisco’s Mission District was once a neighborhood known for being home to working-class immigrants. Now, it’s a hipster haven thanks to the tech boom. 

San Francisco approved a plan to build its largest homeless Navigation Center yet, against vehement opposition from some residents.

Karen Coppock of Home Match SF and Wendi Burkhardt of Silvernest highlight their services providing shared housing alternatives. 

On this edition of Your Call, how many millionaires can the Bay Area sustain? When Uber and Lyft go public this year, thousands of employees will become incredibly wealthy overnight. Home prices are expected to go up, making the Bay Area even more unaffordable for working class people.

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss what resources are available for Americans facing a a housing, money or food crisis.

After a year and a half of negotiations, a diverse group of Bay Area officials, housing advocates, and other stakeholders have signed off on what they’re calling a “grand bargain” on housing.

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss what it will take to prevent even more people from becoming homeless.