San Francisco News

Mayor Faulconer on Wednesday announced he is directing all vacant city property to be used to support an expected surge in COVID-19 patients. “Hospitals will need all the help our community can offer,” he said. “We need all hands on deck.” The properties involved could include city recreation centres, libraries, which are all closed, and even city parking lots, he said. They could be used as field hospitals, space  San Francisco News to conduct tests, and anything the state, county or hospitals need, Faulconer said. An example of this is the SDCCU Stadium parking lot being used by the county Health and Human Services as a mobile testing center, the mayor said. Earlier Wednesday, the Convention Center opened as a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. Some 400 people have moved there from the city’s downtown bridge shelters. The next step is to move more homeless individuals downtown from other bridge shelters, Faulconer said. The mayor said he was i...

you create enough disruption, it’s not so easy to go back,” Mitchell said. “So you could be looking at a very prolonged period here in California where the underlying economy is not good.” Under a moderate recession scenario modelled by state finance officials — larger than the dot-com bust of 2001 but not as bad as what happened in 2008 — California would lose $50 billion in tax revenue over two years. Declines of $15 billion to $20 billion would continue for several more years as the economy clawed back to recovery. “Conditions are incredibly fluid and dynamic,” said H.D. Palmer,  San Francisco News a spokesman for the Department of Finance. “We’re going to have a better sense four to five weeks from now what the world looks like than we do today.” Gabriel Petek, the nonpartisan legislative analyst, warned in a memo last week that “abrupt and nearly across-the-board curtailment of spending that now underway sets it apart from previous downturns.” His office expects...

A pedestrian crosses a nearly empty California Street at Polk as the city began to shut down following an order to shelter in place in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, March 16, 2020. The six Bay Area counties issued a shelter in place order for residents to try and curtail the spread of the Covid-19 virus. 13A pedestrian crosses a nearly empty California Street at Polk as the city began to shut down following an order to shelter in place in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, March 16, 2020. The six Bay Area counties issued a shelter in place order for residents to try and curtail the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Jennifer Vaughn poses in front of the Starline Social Club she used to attend but now is boarded up due to the lockdown on Monday, March 16, 2020, in Oakland, Calif. 13Jennifer Vaughn poses in front of the Starline Social Club she used to attend but now is boarded up due to the lockdown on Monday, March 16, 2020, in...

San Francisco Latest Update  On any given weekday, as clocks approach lunch hour, the streets of San Francisco's Nob Hill neighbourhood are bustling with pedestrians strutting to the clanging bells of iconic cable cars packed with wide-eyed tourists. But as Ree Ree Li, 25, peeked out her apartment window on Tuesday, she described a desolate scene punctuated by an eerie silence."I see the street. It's very empty. There are no people," Li told ABC News on the first full day of a citywide lockdown prompted by the global coronavirus pandemic. "It feels kind of apocalyptic. People are really nervous, which is fair."But while Li and others stayed to hold up in their apartments, people elsewhere in the city seemed a bit more cavalier. Footage from news media outlets captured people jogging, biking and Rollerblading along the Embarcadero waterfront, some appearing to be in violation of a chief tenet of the new rules: Stay at least six feet apart Mayor London Bre...