The Bush Administration has turned its back on the most vulnerable Americans. Since 2001 more than one billion dollars has been cut from the federal public housing budget in order to pay for President Bush's War in Iraq. This year only 76 percent of the actual need of housing authorities nationwide will be met. San Francisco has been one of the cities hardest hit by this chronic underfunding. The President's shortsighted policies has put the future of public housing in San Francisco and the nation at risk. While the federal government has a moral responsibility to provide more money for public housing, San Francisco has taken an unprecedented step to restore public housing in our city. With the overwhelming support of the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Newsom is launching Hope SF, the nation's most innovative plan to revitalize public housing.

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By Bonnie Eslinger
San Francisco Examiner

New statistics obtained from San Francisco’s 311 hotline are starting to home in on residents’ everyday concerns, with graffiti, illegal dumping and questions about “when’s the next Muni bus coming?” high on the list. In mid-February, city officials started to route calls for the Department of Public Works and Muni through San Francisco’s new multimillion-dollar call center. Nonemergency calls for other city departments will be integrated into the system during the next two years. Read more »

By Bernice Young
San Francisco Chronicle

Though community courts have emerged as a popular and practical method for integrating problem-solving justice approaches, there is no single way to do it. Other examples include community policing and drug courts. But what these efforts have in common is an openness to include the voice of the community in the court process, a willingness to look at a defendant as something more than the perpetrator of a crime, and a desire to look to root causes and rehabilitation, rather than resorting to straight punishment.

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By Heather Knight
SF Chronicle

San Francisco's unique foray into universal health care has proved more popular than anticipated, enrolling its 1,000th participant last week - weeks before public health officials expected to hit the milestone.

Coping with the overwhelming number of people wanting to learn more about the program - called Healthy San Francisco - has been the only major hurdle for the health department since the program started July 2, according to Dr. Mitch Katz, the city's public health chief.

"That's the kind of problem we want to have," he said Tuesday. Read more »

By Bonnie Eslinger
Examiner
Originally Published August 9, 2007

A city hit hard by gun violence should not have gun sales at its back door, said Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is expected to announce today that The City is seeking state legislation to end gun shows at the Cow Palace.

While the exhibition hall is technically located in Daly City, it is just blocks away from San Francisco’s Sunnydale Housing Project, one of many neighborhoods in The City plagued by gun violence.

Although the gun shows are legal, Newsom said numerous illegal gun transactions occur in the parking lot during the show, which will take place Saturday and Sunday. Another gun show is scheduled in November.

“It needs to be shut down, and we’re going to do our best to do that,” Newsom said. Read more »

By Heather Knight
San Francisco Chronicle
Originally Published August 7, 2007

After stalling for a few months, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's controversial plan for a new community court to prosecute quality-of-life crimes in the city's core has taken a big step forward.

Newsom and Superior Court judges have signed off on a plan for the court, dubbed the Community Justice Center, which was written by judges and presented to the mayor Friday.

The plan includes some major changes to the mayor's initial idea, including not handling infractions such as public urination and public drunkenness. Read more »

By KEVIN J. DELANEY
Wall Street Journal
Originally Published August 6, 2007

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is taking his push for free citywide wireless Internet access to the voters with a measure that will appear on November's election ballot.

The mayor and Aaron Peskin, president of the city's Board of Supervisors, Friday jointly put forward the measure that would make it the city's policy to pursue such high-speed wireless Internet access through a public-private partnership, with protections for user privacy. Voter approval of the measure wouldn't impose any binding requirements, but rather signal public support for a high-profile mayoral initiative that has encountered major delays and opposition. Read more »

New York Times
Editorial Originally Published August 1, 2007

On the streets of New York or Denver or San Mateo this summer, it seems the telltale cap of a water bottle is sticking out of every other satchel. Americans are increasingly thirsty for what is billed as the healthiest, and often most expensive, water on the grocery shelf. But this country has some of the best public water supplies in the world. Instead of consuming four billion gallons of water a year in individual-sized bottles, we need to start thinking about what all those bottles are doing to the planet’s health.

Here are the hard, dry facts: Yes, drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it. And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents. Read more »