Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

In San Francisco, a fight over a homeless shelter shines a harsh light on a conflicted population

As of 2017, there were roughly 7,000 people living without homes in San Francisco, a number that comprises minors — a lot of them. The San Francisco Unified School District estimates that as of 2017, roughly 2,100 of the children in the school system were homeless —  a number that it said looked to be escalating, not shrinking.

While parents may not hesitate to send their offspring to these same schools, some may be uncomfortable with the idea of homeless adults and families seeking shelter in close proximity. Such appears to be the point of a GoFundMe campaign that was launched late last week called “Safe Embarcadero for All.” Its objective: to raise $100,000 for legal counsel to push against the creation of a shelter along the city’s eastern waterfront region.

The campaign is a reaction to an idea introduced earlier this month by San Francisco Mayor London Breed to turn a parking lot along Embarcadero that’s owned by the Port of San Francisco into a center that would provide health and housing services and round-the-clock stays for up to 200 of the city’s homeless residents.

It isn’t just theoretical. If the Port Commission agrees to the plan, Breed estimated the center could be open by summer. Thus the GoFundMe campaign, which has now raised $71,250 as of this writing from 180 people, some of whom presumably live in the luxury high-rise apartments nearby and others who share the  campaign organizers’ concerns that the shelter could introduce “public safety, drug use, and other problems.”

It’s a frustrating state of affairs, though some are finding inspiration in a new, rival campaign that was created yesterday in support of the center and which is fast gaining financial support.  Called a “SAFER Embarcadero for ALL,” it has already raised more than earlier GoFundMe campaign, with more than 1,021 donors  contributing more than $76,000 as of this writing, including Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who has been a frequent and public supporter of Breed and a number of her initiatives.

Lawson appears to have given $20,000; Benioff has given at least $10,000 to the campaign and is using Twitter as a platform to drum up more support.

Some are heralding their involvement as proof that tech CEOs do care about San Francisco’s homeless population, which they’re often accused of exacerbating by planting themselves in the city, paying their employees high wages, and driving up the cost of everything from rent to groceries in the process.

Even GoFundMe itself has joined sides, donating $5,000 to the new campaign in support of the homeless center or, more specifically the Coalition on Homelessness, which has been promised the monies.

“I don’t think the tech industry is doing enough about the homeless issue,” GoFundMe CEO Rob Solomon told the San Francisco Chronicle this morning. “We wanted to do our small part, even though we’re not located in San Francisco.”

No doubt critics will argue that it’s because GoFundMe is 25 miles south of the San Francisco, in Redwood City, that the company has less at stake.

Still, proponents of the center will take support wherever they can find it.

Indeed, Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told the Chronicle earlier today the group is already planning to use the new funds to help with public education, to get input on the center, and to educate residents about what they misunderstand about the city’s homeless population.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line
Post a Comment
Read more

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities

ProtonMail , a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French authorities managed to obtain the IP address of a French activist who was using the online service. The company has communicated widely about the incident, stating that it doesn’t log IP addresses by default and it only complies with local regulation — in that case Swiss law. While ProtonMail didn’t cooperate with French authorities, French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users. For the past year, a group of people have taken over a handful of commercial premises and apartments near Place Sainte Marthe in Paris. They want to fight against gentrification, real estate speculation, Airbnb and high-end restaurants. While it started as a local conflict, it quickly became a symbolic campaign. They attracted newspaper headlines when they started occupying prem
Post a Comment
Read more