Newsitem List

Just another slum statistic?...

Three months after fighting for their lives in the days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, many survivors are now fighting to keep their homes in the city of New Orleans. We speak with attorney Ishmael Muhammad and a N.O. resident being evicted about the rising costs of rent and the legal challenges facing evacuees....

The Ethics Commission will hear a proposal Monday that advocates hope will be a major step towards leveling the playing field in mayoral elections. Dubbed ‘voter-owned elections,’ the legislation would promise more public funding to candidates who demonstrated a large base of supporters. In exchange, the candidate would them voluntarily cap the amount of money they could obtain from private fundraising. With San Franciscans seeing wealthier candidates outspending their opponents by margins as...

The Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee approved two proposals yesterday aimed at decreasing the number of ‘bad’ evictions – evictions that displace seniors, disabled and low-income people - in San Francisco. The first proposal would force those trying to sell buildings where bad evictions occur to notify potential buyers earlier in the home-buying process. The second would inject more city oversight and public input into the condo conversion process by forcing the Planning Commission to ...

An editorial last Sunday in the New York Times, headlined “Death of an American City,” begins, “We are about to lose New Orleans.” It goes on to state that “the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.”...

Questions still remain over how many people died after Hurricane Katrina as well as the whereabouts of all of the evacuees. The official death toll stands at about 1,300 but thousands of people are still reported missing. One newspaper reported the whereabouts of 6,600 people reported missing have not been determined. We speak with New Orleans evacuee Leah Hodges, who is still missing her brother, and Tina Susman, a Newsday reports the number of missing include over 1,300 children....

The flicker of the changing images held the packed warehouse community co-op audience spellbound. At least 70 people, mostly white social justice activists, turned out to watch the New Orleans update from the Common Ground Collective’s Video Committee. The new video is a compendium of footage and images from at least seven Bay Area volunteers who took part in the organization’s rebuilding New Orleans campaign....

Tamika Middleton, of Critical Resistance South, was unfazed by tense exchanges between Republican congressmen and survivors of Hurricane Katrina during a Dec. 6 special hearing in Washington, D.C. Trouble brewed when survivors stated flat out that what happened was genocide, aimed at killing poor Black people. The red-faced GOP leaders wanted kinder, gentler language and explanations for government failures, deaths and the unclear road ahead....

Death, Politics and the Condom By YIFAT SUSSKIND...

For the past three years, the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Shame of the City” series has sought to chronicle the city’s battle to reduce homelessness. The paper has written dozens of stories on Care not Cash, Project Connect, and other strategies, and has been overwhelmingly supported of Mayor Newsom’s response to homelessness. But when several prominent religious leaders held a City Hall press conference last Thursday to criticize a dramatic increase in criminal citations for camping under New...