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A SEA CHANGE:
ETHNIC MEDIA FAREWELL: After
Citing longterm risk of severe flooding from melting glaciers, state officials may require cities to begin planning for inevitable sea rise. | 11
nearly 50 years, journalism legend Sandy Close shutters New America Media and Pacific News Service. | 8
TECH-COMPANY TOWN: Will Google swallow up Mountain View? | 10 $1.00
SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG
SPRING 2018 • ISSUE 24
IMMIGRATION: Trump ending protected status
FIGHTING STAY TO
Legally in U.S. for years, thousands face deportation
Rehousing Programs Send Most Out of City Fates of hundreds of families unclear after rent help ends By Rob Waters // Public Press
A
San Francisco initiative to help homeless families find affordable apartments and assist them in paying the rent is sending most of them out of the city because of the high cost of housing. The families are moving to Oakland, Richmond, Vallejo and, increasingly, to the edges of the Bay Area and beyond, such as Stockton or Sacramento. The multimilliondollar subsidy program, called Rapid Rehousing, has helped hundreds of families regain their footing after an eviction, SOLVING job loss or other crisis HOMELESSNESS left them homeless, and for many families it has worked: They stabilize and remain housed after their rent assistance runs out. But one year after their subsidies end, some families end up homeless again, and the whereabouts of hundreds of other families are unknown because they lose contact with their service providers. As a result, it is difficult to gauge the long-term success of the program, a Public Press review of data has found. The number of families leaving the city through the program has been rising steadily over the past decade, from 45 percent in 2006 to 87 percent in 2016, according to an internal report prepared for San Francisco’s Human Services Agency that tracked 1,708 families. For 2017, the agency put the figure at 88 percent. “This trend raises new questions about the efficacy and costs of the Rapid Rehousing model in San Francisco,” the report’s author wrote, in part because the emergency and family shelters where many families return after their subsidies end are “amongst the most expensive interventions.” For families, relocating out of the city frays social ties and makes it harder for people to keep jobs, get child care and stay in their new homes, according to the report and officials of nonprofit agencies interviewed by the Public Press. Agency leaders REHOUSE continued on Page 4
INSIDE ONE SYSTEM: New computer platform for Photos by Anna Vignet // Public Press By Roberto Lovato // Public Press
F
rom her office in the Mission District, Yanira Arias organizes immigrant communities throughout the United States, winning some campaigns, losing others. Through it all, she has known the day would come when she would be organizing to hold onto the life she has created in San Francisco. With the U.S. government’s blessing, she has been able to stay here since fleeing El Salvador after a series of deadly earthquakes in early 2001. That day has arrived for Arias and more than 195,000 other Salvadoran immigrants and tens of thousands from the region who were granted temporary permission to live, work, raise families and buy homes after being driven from their homelands by natural disasters, civil war and gang violence. They are the latest immigrants whose fortunes have changed for the worse under President Donald Trump. In January, the administration announced that Salvadorans, as Nicaraguans and Haitians learned for themselves weeks earlier, would lose
437,000
Temporary Protected Status holders in U.S.
55,000
TPS holders in California
INSIDE: Demographic and economic snapshots. | 6-7
Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, forcing them to plan their departure from the country or become fully legal by early 2019. Their predicament is shared by the so-called DREAMers, children brought into the country illegally who are fighting to remain since the president ended DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Without intervention by Congress, Arias and the others benefiting from TPS — which San Francisco activists helped birth in 1990 — face three choices that offer radically different futures: try to “adjust” their status through the immigration system to become permanent
the homeless sets priorities for housing. | 4
IN CONSTANT MOTION: Mother seeks residents, return to homelands ravaged by poverty and violence, or join the millions of undocumented migrants already threatened with deportation. Advocates are turning to the courts for help. “They’re getting ready to criminalize me,” said Arias, the national campaign manager in the Bay Area office of the immigrant-advocacy group Alianza Americas. “I’ve seen what they put people through in those awful detention centers. I have started imagining myself in those horrible places, because the fact is, that could be me. I may face a prolonged detention like so many others, but I will do whatever I can to avoid that.” The effect of ending legal protection will be enormous for the Salvadorans and more than 120,000 Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Haitians who also have lost or may soon lose their legal status. But it extends beyond their personal upheaval, research shows: • In California, which has the most TPS recipients, the estimated 49,000 Salvadorans and 6,000 Hondurans TPS continued on Page 6
Immigrants, their families and activists rallied at the San Francisco Federal Building on Jan. 5, days before the Department of Homeland Security ended Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans. Nicaraguans and Haitians were dealt the same hand late last year. Hondurans, who were granted a brief extension, will learn their fate this summer.
affordable, stable housing for her family. | 3
TEAMWORK: School districts and nonprofits
provide resources for homeless children. | 5
SOLVING HOMELESSNESS: Community
engages at Public Press workshop. | 12
Noel Rivera, top center, originally from El Salvador, showed his support along with his son, Alan, and his daughter, Zaira. TPS holders Rina Valle, left, who was born in El Salvador and now lives in Hayward, and Jose Ramos, a native of Honduras, fear they will lose their jobs and be deported because of Trump’s actions.
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Photo by Garrick Wong // Public Press
Facilitator Priya Kothari moderates a workshop discussion about obstacles to connecting homeless people with loved ones.