Search Results for: San Francisco Magazine

California’s Housing Crisis Is About Jobs, Not Houses

Frederic J. Brown /AFP/Getty Images

The median home price in California has reached $500,000 — more than double the cost nationally — and a new brand of housing crisis is here. It’s nearly impossible for anyone to afford a home in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or any surrounding suburbs. As today’s New York Times reports, this means people like Heather Lile, a nurse making $180,000 a year, live in distant Central Valley towns like Manteca and commute two hours to get to work. “I make really good money and it’s frustrating to me that I can’t afford to live close to my job,” she tells the reporter. Read more…

Prosecutor, Interrupted: A Kamala Harris Reading List

(Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

The junior Senator from California, Kamala Harris had made headlines for more than a decade. She was the first woman appointed District Attorney of San Francisco, the first female and first non-white lawyer elected to the office of Attorney General in California, and the second black woman ever elected to the Senate. If it is possible to go too far with praise, President Barack Obama once had to apologize for calling her good-looking. Elected on the same day Hillary Clinton failed to shatter the presidential glass ceiling, the Sentor has been deemed “the center of the resistance” against President Donald Trump. And during Jeff Sessions’ testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, she was criticized for being too good at her job.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo: Matt, Flickr

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Why Certain Workers Are More Vulnerable to Wage Theft

The problem of wage theft is not confined to any one industry, ethnicity, size of business, or corporate structure, says Labor Commissioner Julie Su. Each year, California loses approximately $8 billion in tax revenues to wage theft, and Su’s office has investigated millions of dollars’ worth of violations committed by, among others, a hospital, assisted living providers, and a construction project. But restaurants in Chinatown are particularly egregious offenders: A 2010 report by the CPA found that half of Chinatown restaurant workers have had their wages undercut, payments withheld, or tips stolen. A survey of low-wage workers in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, performed by the National Employment Labor Project, reveals that close to 85 percent of foreign-born Asians, 78.8 percent of women, and nearly 85 percent of undocumented workers have experienced overtime violations.

Among the most likely victims of wage theft are nonunion workers, people who don’t speak English, and immigrants who lack an understanding of their rights. Not all of the workers involved in the Yank Sing campaign fell into these categories, but many still felt vulnerable. If they went public too soon, if they picketed the sidewalk or stormed the dining room or publicized their story in the media, they risked turning management against them and losing their livelihood— and many of them wanted to keep working for Yank Sing. Their situation was unusual: According to Kao of the Asian Law Caucus, three-quarters of the wage claims received by the organization’s free legal clinic in San Francisco are filed by workers who have already left their job. People who are still employed, notes Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, typically don’t risk such actions without the protection of a union contract.

Vanessa Hua, writing for San Francisco Magazine about a brigade of kitchen workers who successfully fought to recoup $4 million in lost wages from Yank Sing, one of San Francisco’s premier dim sum restaurants.

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What It’s Like for Renters in America: A Reading List

As we all recently learned from the now-Mayor of New York Bill de Blasio’s campaign, America is becoming increasingly divided along class lines. Major cities, such as de Blasio’s New York (or #deblasiosnewyork, if you like Twitter), are keeping up with that trend. These are three stories of hellish renting experiences in major American cities:

1. “Sympathy for the Landlord” (Lauren Smiley, San Francisco magazine, October 2013)

Smiley’s story about renting in the most expensive city in the country isn’t a very light read, but her nuanced view is essential to understanding the current political and societal climate in San Francisco.

2. “Why Run a Slum If You Can Make More Money Housing the Homeless?” (Andrew Rice, New York magazine, December 1, 2013)

The story of how one family gamed the system and is charging the government $3600 per month, per room, to house some of New York’s many, many homeless.

3. “Lord of the Sties” (David Bates, Boston magazine, January 2014)

Bates’ story about nightmare landlord Anwar Faisal is a terrifying portrait of what it’s like to be a college student renting in Boston.

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Photo: eviltomthai, Flickr

“Circumstances in the Tenderloin are not normal. And San Francisco is not a normal city. Barring a seismic shift in city politics, the TL is not going to gentrify the way that similar neighborhoods have in other cities. Not next year. Not in five years. Maybe never. For better or worse, it will likely remain a sanctuary for the poor, the vulnerable, and the damaged—and the violence and disorder that inevitably comes with them. The thousands of working people, seniors, and families, including many Southeast Asians, who make up a silent two-thirds majority of the Tenderloin’s 30,000 residents will remain there. And so will the thousands of not-so-silent mentally ill people, addicts, drunks, and ex-cons who share the streets with them—as well as the predators who come in from the outside to exploit them. The Tenderloin will remain the great anomaly of neighborhoods: a source of stubborn pride for San Francisco, or an acute embarrassment—or both.”

-A look at the future of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood (via San Francisco Magazine). Read more about San Francisco in the Longreads Archive.

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Photo: markcoggins, Flickr

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“How Much Tech Can One City Take?” — David Talbot, San Francisco magazine

More from San Francisco Magazine

Featured Publisher: San Francisco Magazine. See their stories on the ‘female Mark Zuckerberg,’ California foreclosures, a woman in a witness protection program, plus more on their #longreads page.

[Not single-page] From the 2012 James Beard Award nominations: A profile of Sam Mogannam, who transformed his tiny family grocery store, San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market, into one the most influential stores in the country: 

When Mogannam was 15 years old, the market was owned by his father and uncle. The Mission district hadn’t yet been discovered by a generation of tattooed 25-year-olds happy to stand in line for a $3 latte. Just up the street, Mission Dolores Park was popular with unemployed men who spent their days drinking fortified wine, some of which they bought at Bi-Rite. Though he was not yet old enough to drink, in 1983 Mogannam asked his father if he could remerchandise the wine department. He got rid of the Night Train Express, MD 20/20, and Ripple, and on the advice of the store’s wine reps brought in their strongest sellers—Sebastiani, Robert Mondavi, and Beaulieu Vineyard. The drunks found someplace else to shop, and Bi-Rite’s wine sales soared.

“Cornering the Market.” — Emily Kaiser Thelin, San Francisco Magazine

See also: “The Great Grocery Smackdown.” — Corby Kummer, The Atlantic, March 1, 2010