freelance reporter
I'm a freelance reporter and producer for print, online, and radio who covers homelessness, health, the environment, environmental justice, and local government. My work has appeared in many publications including The Frisc, Bay Nature, and Wired, along with radio pieces airing on Making Contact and public radio station KALW.
Where was all this money going? Partly into no-bid contracts.
Amid plenty of praise for the nonprofit’s hard work, there‘s also a troubling allegation, an explosion under investigation, and inflated claims.
The homegrown nonprofit has risen fast in four years, from managing portable toilets to running hotels. Now it has national ambitions.
We should know in a few months how many people are living on our streets, but that’s just a start.
The budget of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has grown to an unprecedented level of $1.2 billion, thanks to federal and state pandemic funds.
A new department was tasked with using technology to track people across the social services system, but the effort failed expectations.
SF is bringing people off the streets, but a shortage of mental health workers to help them stay housed could put all this effort at risk.
In an ideal world, the city could quickly and permanently house thousands. But the real world requires transitional places to give people hope and keep them off the streets. Can SF do it with fresh ideas and smart spending?
Now five years old, the city agency without formal oversight or permanent leadership struggles to get a handle on a chronic health and humanitarian crisis.
The city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is the main agency that oversees San Francisco’s shelters and services — and it has little to no oversight.
