Highlights Part 5 - Reinventing San Francisco: Government, Downtown, & Civic Trust - Transcript

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C-19 P-5 Reinventing Civic Trust:

[00:00:00] George Koster: In the depths of the COVID to 19 pandemic, San Francisco confronted its most consequential reckoning in a generation, a city straining under affordability, pressures faced, shuttered offices, darkened corridors, and thousands of vulnerable residents, many undocumented, locked out of federal relief into this crisis step.

[00:00:28] George Koster: Civic innovators, economic strategists, journalists and community builders determine to reimagine. What San Francisco could become. When we first produced this episode during the COVID Global Pandemic, we discovered that the five top challenges facing San Francisco were a downtown core and freefall once generating 72% of city GDPA tax structure pushing businesses out of San Francisco City governments forced to digitize overnight immigrant communities excluded from pandemic stimulus and the collapse of neighborhood corridors, defining the city's cultural identity.

[00:01:04] George Koster: Some of the solutions identified by our guests included office to housing conversion, civic tech, innovation, inclusive financial services, and neighborhood reinvestment. Your navigator through these conversations and breakthroughs shaping the reinvention of San Francisco is co-host and associate producer Eric Estrada.

[00:01:23] Eric VO: Our first voices are Judy Brown, co-founder of Civic Makers Rebecca Woodbury, former director of Digital Services for the City of San Rafael, and Kelly Parmley. Assistant Director of Human Resources for the City of San Jose as they share how their communities adapted and what they learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[00:01:43] Judi Brown: All right, Kelly, same question. How has COVID-19 impacted the operations of City of San Jose's programs? What have you and your team done to respond? How has it impacted your local economy or small businesses and nonprofits?

[00:02:00] Kelli Parmley: Yeah, so part of me wants to say exactly what Rebecca said, right? I mean, I think if you're in local government, those threads of the types of programs that we're talking about and the entire pivot of.

[00:02:14] Kelli Parmley: Your workforce, not only just in terms of the people part of it, but the how you do your work is all relevant. And in the case of San Jose, a lot of it's a matter of scale. So I'll try to focus in on a couple of things, pivot a couple things, but everything that Rebecca said we did at just at a larger scale.

[00:02:31] Kelli Parmley: I think it's important in the city of San Jose to know a few things that I did not know coming from the East Coast. So 180 square miles over a million people. About 40% of our population is foreign born, and almost 60% speak a language other than English at home. So why do I say all of that? In order to serve with your community on a regular day, that poses a lot of challenges.

[00:02:55] Kelli Parmley: And when you add on top of that a pandemic in which I really wanna emphasize, it wasn't just COVID, right? We hit then a financial crisis. Then we've known for a long time about issues of racial equity, and yet in terms of emergency operations center, we're confronted face to face with those issues in our community di directly at our city hall and on the streets.

[00:03:14] Kelli Parmley: On top of that, we had pg and e blackouts. We had early fire season. We had to deal with making sure that we were safe and secure for the election. So my reason for saying all of that is that the, the special circumstances then required a bunch of pivots. I would sort of call them. From a large city perspective.

[00:03:31] Kelli Parmley: So one was pivoting our workforce, pivoting our emergency operations center. They're set up for a very specific structure. I couldn't even tell you all the details, but you know, there's a blue shift and a gold shift, and they're very specific roles. And we've trained and trained and trained on how to do those roles and had to blow that up and rethink about what our EOC structure looked like, which was like setting up another small city.

[00:03:52] Kelli Parmley: And then thirdly, we had to pivot our programs in part because we were asked, in particular by the county to do some things that we had not done before. So in addition to all the things that Rebecca talked about, we actually then needed to stand up food and necessities for the entire county, not just our own folks.

[00:04:08] Kelli Parmley: And that was one of the biggest things that we did in, in the pandemic. So our programs got pivoted in in multiple ways. So making sure folks understand that that's both an opportunity and a curse at times in terms of disaster service work. Then move 40% of your work. 40% of 5,600 full-time people overnight went to work remote.

[00:04:26] Kelli Parmley: Some of them took their own personal devices and figured it out. We didn't have VPN access for many folks. There was a flurry of forms to do that. How do I communicate with my team? What's this thing called Zoom? I mean, when you think back about it, it's unbelievable to me that a place that has an inertia at times that is just frustrating to everybody suddenly had to rethink itself, like overnight.

[00:04:49] Kelli Parmley: So you got regular. Business as usual stuff that you need to do. And about 40% of our programs and services, those things that we don't care to talk about, like, does your sewer work? Do you have clean water? Did your garbage get picked up and did your recycling work? All those things kept going. People didn't miss a beat with that stuff.

[00:05:04] Kelli Parmley: And then the others came online after it. So there's the business as usual. And then we stood up in emergency operation center and disaster service work. That was basically a leadership side and a boots on the ground side, right? So it was assistance for homeless folks, food necessities, series of other things.

[00:05:20] Kelli Parmley: And my team got to make the phone call to folks who were on administrative leave to say, Hey, guess what? You're a disaster service worker and we need you to go spend some time now for the next umpteen weeks working in a homeless shelter for folks to make sure they have what they need and are able to be quarantined.

[00:05:37] Kelli Parmley: So it's that kind of pivot that was just so huge. We stood up at its peak, it was around 650 employees in our emergency operation center. That's the equivalent of taking our public works department. With no additional staff, and also about 650 to 670 vacancies in the city, standing that thing up and working it for months and months and months.

[00:05:58] George Koster: So Rebecca and Kelly, out of your pivot and all of the work you've done, what do you feel has been the biggest impact of a program? For example, Rebecca, your whole idea of free wifi, for example.

[00:06:11] Rebecca Woodbury: Sure. So I think that one of the most lasting and impactful elements of a lot of this work. Was the new partnerships and collaborations that were spurred.

[00:06:25] Rebecca Woodbury: The Wi-Fi project really stemmed from someone in the community emailing me and saying, I heard there's a lot of kids that don't have the internet right now, and I have some experience with wifi networks. I think we could probably design and build one pretty cheap. That's where it started. And he then put in countless hours of work.

[00:06:49] Rebecca Woodbury: We had another volunteer with a local IT company, step up, who had also built mesh wifi networks before. And so we had now hundreds of volunteer hours going into something. County supervisors stepped up and led the. Philanthropic efforts to get all the money donated for the project, and it was a real all hands on deck.

[00:07:12] Rebecca Woodbury: I had never worked that closely with the schools before. I had never worked that closely with the county IT department before, and also some boots on the ground, nonprofits in the community. What's great about a project like that and the. Intensity and the immediacy of the need, right? It really pushed us into action to do things quickly.

[00:07:36] Rebecca Woodbury: The relationship that were formed are going to have long lasting impacts beyond this wifi project. So out of this, we also learned as we got out there that a lot of these families didn't have. Computers in their homes, uh, didn't have access to laptops, so the devices were an issue. A lot of folks, their only access to the internet was through their smartphone and on their data plan.

[00:08:06] Rebecca Woodbury: So we learned a lot, and this has spurred other efforts. We then partnered with the same partners on the wifi project and created a donation fund that we are now using the funds generated to just buy. Laptops for families so that they can own them. I think that there's gonna be a lot more partnerships and collaborations from these efforts that are gonna have these long lasting impacts.

[00:08:31] Eric VO: We are pleased to welcome Joaquin Torres, San Francisco assessor Recorder, whose lead efforts to revitalize downtown San Francisco, prioritizing affordability, middle wage jobs, and economic recovery post pandemic.

[00:08:46] George Koster: So we have been just talking about the importance of the multi-pronged approach of economic workforce development.

[00:08:53] George Koster: So what would you say over your decade of work have been some of the biggest impact? OEW D'S programs. There's, there's business creation component, so there's that right impact there. And then impact and workforce, which you were just saying a second ago that on the front of it, it looks like, you know, pre COVID, we were doing wonderful.

[00:09:13] George Koster: Now, during and post COVID we're gonna be doing horrible, and we'll get into that towards the end of your lessons learned, et cetera. But what do you feel have been the big impacts of the programs? And then I'd love to have you share perhaps your favorite story of, uh, the years that you've been working there.

[00:09:27] Joaquin Torres: Oh wow. Well, there is, there's internal impacts and then of course there are the external impacts. And I think both are important because you want to leave an organization in a place where, uh, it is in a place of ongoing and consistent and possible expansion and development. So, you know, I led and grew the organization from a budget around $67 million to almost 92 million when I departed.

[00:09:54] Joaquin Torres: Being able to be in a leadership position and have that office be seen. As one that could be a leader in relief and recovery for communities both large and small, for advancing our approach to racial equity and partnership with Sony Sim agencies. Deepening work in communities, so again, they could see themselves reflected and respected in the work that we were doing together, making sure that that was focused on the communities of color that most needed our city resources.

[00:10:20] Joaquin Torres: Advancing housing development, seven major sites across the city. Approvals of, you know, nearly 10,000 units of housing. With around 31, uh, hundred union sale, affordable housing included in those developments. The nonprofit sustainability initiative, investing over $12 million to help nonprofits purchase their own space, build up their capacity, which supports again, our overall vision for supporting those communities that are most in need.

[00:10:46] Joaquin Torres: Creating the investment neighborhoods program and seeing it thrive, and seeing and seeing as a extraordinary resource across the city to foster the identity of San Francisco. And I think what was kind of cool too was, you know, welcoming the matrix of filming last year and putting San Francisco on a different kind of map as well before the pandemic.

[00:11:03] Joaquin Torres: Now that was before the pandemic. And all the work that we did, especially around workforce development, creating youth programs through opportunities for all the mayor's initiative to make sure that every child could have access to first a summer job for the experience. Uh, and that we're reaching individual youth to make sure that they could, uh, have an opportunity.

[00:11:24] Joaquin Torres: 'cause so many of us take that for granted, but it has to be intentional in many communities if you wanna see those opportunities taken advantage of. And then during the pandemic. I think what's been extraordinary is because we had the ability to know community, we had the experience of working deeply within community, understanding the bureaucracy of the city, that we could be a leader in recovery efforts, and be asked to lend our time and our resources and our services and our people to supporting that recovery effort.

[00:11:57] Joaquin Torres: I'm extremely proud of the fact that we. Specifically supported communities of color in San Francisco during this time. Not always perfect. We're certainly not done. The city has a lot of work to do like so many others across the country do. But I think we should feel very proud about what we started and now it's about following through on our commitment and doing that work.

[00:12:16] Joaquin Torres: I'm very proud that our office was looked to, to support the mayor's redistribution of public safety funds within the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Don't support the full portfolio that I talked about before.

[00:12:28] Eric VO: We now turn to Chris Wright, senior VP of Advanced sf, and Jeff Berio, executive Director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, as they discuss policies that restore vibrancy and economic recovery that attracts residents and businesses back to San Francisco.

[00:12:46] George Koster: I wanna turn back to you, Chris, and just have you, if you will, kind of frame up for the audience, the affordability crisis in San Francisco. It's obviously been building for a decade plus, and the COVID-19 pandemic's really had an impact. So share with the audience from your organization's point of view, its impact on San Francisco's economic core.

[00:13:05] Jose Quinonez: Sure.

[00:13:05] Chris Wright: But just to frame it in the beginning or before COVID, the city's economic core and, and by the economic core we're, we're not just talking about the old financial district. We're looking at Union Square, the old financial district, Soma and Yuba Buena, and maybe even closer to City Hall, that area accounted for 72% of the city's GDP, and that has significantly changed as a result of.

[00:13:30] Chris Wright: COVID and the use of remote work because of people being required to stay at home and relying heavily on remote work. Many businesses learned that they can be as just as productive as they were before. And on the other side, the employees learned or understood or realized that they appreciated the flexibility of working from home.

[00:13:51] Chris Wright: With that. As a result, we're now in a situation where between 25 and 30% of workers have returned to that downtown core. I think San Francisco right now has the highest office vacancy maybe in the nation. Highest, certainly none that's ever been measured. About 25% of our office space is actually just.

[00:14:08] Chris Wright: Outright vacant, and that number's probably gonna climb when you have fewer people coming downtown. That estimate has been, you know, around the 300,000 mark, 300,000 people are no longer coming down to that downtown economic core. That has a tremendous impact on a lot of jobs at a lot of businesses, small businesses, restaurant tours, retailers.

[00:14:29] Chris Wright: Because of that, there's a whole drop in sales tax revenue that the city won't be collecting now because people are doing their shopping in other locations. So because of COVID and the use of remote work, we're looking at an economic core that looks significantly different than it did pre COVID. And you know, some of those affordability issues that we've had.

[00:14:48] Chris Wright: Again, we've had a high cost of living in San Francisco for a long, long time. A high cost of leasing space for businesses, and obviously a high cost of living, high cost of housing for workers. Now that people can work wherever and businesses can operate wherever, that raises a whole question of what are we doing in San Francisco?

[00:15:07] Chris Wright: So we wanted to take a closer look at, you know, the hollowed out middle that we have in San Francisco and the economy. We wanna take a closer look and use this. Going forward, you know, what do we need to maintain that middle income employee? A lot of those small employers and also mid and large size. How can we make sure that the economy is whole and that the jobs there are as inclusive as possible?

[00:15:30] Chris Wright: And that's the work that Jeff and the payer council started to look at more closely.

[00:15:35] George Koster: Staying with the report, Jeff, the report actually teased out 10 trends driving post COVID recovery. Can you share what those trends are?

[00:15:43] Jeff Bellisario: So, you know, when we look across the country, dense urban economies have really been impacted the most from COVID-19.

[00:15:50] Jeff Bellisario: Those high cost coastal areas have seen loss of population. They've seen loss of jobs, and we've seen the center of gravity shift to what you might call more second tier location. So Austin is at the top of that list. Salt Lake City, Denver, Nashville, Phoenix, all of these lower cost places have seen population growth and they've seen employment growth.

[00:16:10] Jeff Bellisario: Whereas here in San Francisco and New York is another example of this, we're still trying to catch up in terms of the amount of jobs that we've lost. So another piece of this is in our region. Leisure and hospitality has been hurt more than in other regions across the country. So a lot of middle wage jobs are in that sector, and we've really seen massive job loss there.

[00:16:28] Jeff Bellisario: Still 25% job loss within that sector. That sector's still down about 30,000 jobs today from where we were. Pre COVID. San Francisco overall is down about 40,000 jobs, so that's one of the key issues here is that there are fewer workers coming into downtown supporting those restaurants. There are fewer tourists coming into the city supporting hotels and supporting the entertainment and the arts.

[00:16:49] Jeff Bellisario: Sector. So leisure and hospitality really fractured within San Francisco today. Uh, we've seen thousands of people drop out of the labor force altogether in San Francisco. Part of that is the population decline when you look across the country. San Francisco on a percentage basis, has had the largest population decline over two years of any city or county in the us and then, you know.

[00:17:10] Jeff Bellisario: All of those things are driven by remote work, and it's really been a game changer for workers. It's untethered that home work location nexus we've had for so long. If you can work remotely a hundred percent of the time, if you can move out of the state, move out of the city altogether, right? If you can work remotely just a day or two or three days per week, maybe you're going to make a longer commute into the city than you would've otherwise.

[00:17:31] Jeff Bellisario: It's also changed the game for employers where now previously used to have to have that location in San Francisco or Silicon Valley to draw that talent. Now you're looking for remote workers. You're employing in the cloud. You're looking across the globe for your talent. It's not necessarily geographically focused.

[00:17:47] Jeff Bellisario: And then the other half of the equation is driven by cost, right? So San Francisco's never been the cheapest place to live or to do business, but are high housing costs. Now with remote work and ability to move around our height housing costs are potentially finally outweighing all the benefits of the city and the great aspects of the city.

[00:18:02] Jeff Bellisario: The new business taxes the city has imposed in the last couple years is also, you know, adding to that cost equation for many businesses and then other geographies are just catching up to San Francisco. You know, everyone was looking at the San Francisco Silicon Valley playbook. How do we attract tech?

[00:18:17] Jeff Bellisario: How do we attract workers to places like Austin, Miami, Denver, Boise, you know, all of them have had these campaigns to draw in workers, and we're not competing against just one of them. We're competing more so against the cloud and all their geographies in San Francisco, but everyone's catching up to us.

[00:18:33] Jeff Bellisario: The center of gravity for tech is still very much here, but other places have taken, you know, bigger pieces of the pie. I'll close just by saying the tech economy has driven a lot of San Francisco's growth. Over the past decade in particular, the tech economy does have, you know, trickle down effects.

[00:18:49] Jeff Bellisario: Those tech workers are supporting our service workers. Tech companies need lawyers and they need architects and construction workers as they grow too, right? But now we're seeing in a remote work world where tech is going more. Those workers have disappeared from San Francisco to a certain extent that a future San Francisco economy just can't be so relying on tech.

[00:19:08] Jeff Bellisario: So there's been lots of change and upheaval, and I think what COVID-19 has done is really magnified the challenges of living and working in the city, but it's also created now an opportunity to re-envision what San Francisco can look like going forward.

[00:19:21] Eric VO: Next on the program is Anna to of the San Francisco Standard, who brings on the ground stories of resilience and adaptation from the heart of the city.

[00:19:30] Eric VO: And Noah Arroyo of the San Francisco Chronicle, who uncovers the human impact of the pandemic giving voice to the city's evolving story.

[00:19:40] George Koster: That was a really good overview that leads directly into your reporting. Anna did a really great piece just on how taxes incentivize, if you will, businesses to not have folks sitting in offices.

[00:19:51] George Koster: So share with the audience about your reporting.

[00:19:54] Anna Tong: So the way that business taxes are structured in San Francisco are that they're based on the percentage of a company's workers that are working from sf. So whether it's from your home or from an office in downtown. And so, you know, as Noah was saying, you know, once.

[00:20:09] Anna Tong: COVID hit. Most people come into FF for work. They don't live in ff so everyone started working from home in the East Bay, you know, in Napa, PA Alto, whatever. And so a lot of companies saw their tax liability to the city dropped dramatically in one case. You know, I was talking to a tax accountant, she was saying, what if her client that their tax bill to SF had dropped 88%?

[00:20:30] Anna Tong: So these companies are seeing significant decreases and their tax liabilities, and they actually do technically owe money. If you conduct business in a city, many cities do have business taxes, so you would owe taxes in those jurisdictions, but. The reality is SF business tax structure is just so much more expensive for companies than essentially all other cities.

[00:20:51] Anna Tong: But it's so much more expensive and it's also so much more complex. So, you know, for many cities, the business tax code is basically just one sheet of paper. And in s sa we have this whole portal. There is 30 people, you know, that spend 70% of their time supporting business taxes. So it's just very, very, very complicated.

[00:21:09] Anna Tong: Yeah, so that's the situation. It, it is incentivizing companies to, in some cases just move entirely out of San Francisco. And I think we heard Stripe was saying that they were paying their employees just to actually get out of the Bay Area in general. And so a lot of these companies don't even wanna have one employee who's even living in San F.

[00:21:27] George Koster: And Noah going, going back to you, your take on it. 'cause this also ties back into your last two pieces with regards to kind of the re-envisioning of downtown and yet another study that's been, you know, been funded by the city to try to bring people back with events, space, et cetera. But share a little bit about, uh, vacant office space and retail.

[00:21:45] George Koster: And then, you know, kind of ramp into what your take is on the new reinvention plans. That

[00:21:51] Noah Arroyo: fixed question. Well, you're not wrong. You walk around downtown and you see that that very little is, is lively. It's, it's not true that there is no life going on. There's no commerce. We have seen improving figures for tourism especially, and, and the hotel tax is one of the primary revenue sources for City Hall.

[00:22:11] Noah Arroyo: And so that is very good for the city in a general sense. And obviously those tourists are gonna spend on a lot of different things, not just their hotel stays. I live in the Tenderloin, so I'm a hop, skip and jump down the street, or I should say up the street from, from the downtown area. And I see those tourists and sometimes they spill in over into, uh, my neighborhood.

[00:22:28] Noah Arroyo: And frankly, it's nice to see just because it's nice to see the streets filled with more people. That said, Anna, you had mentioned to the story that your publication came out with today speaking, which kudos. Good story. One of the numbers in that story was something, I want to say it was backed down to 30%, uh, of office workers are in their offices at this point based on security card swipe information from, from Castle Systems, which has been the pretty consistent metric throughout the pandemic here, as well as in other major cities about.

[00:22:59] Noah Arroyo: How is our revival going? And while other cities have trended upwards, including some in the Bay Area that ha are not that much better than San Francisco, but still have been trending upwards. San Francisco has fluctuated but hovered around 30 to 35% at least as long as I've been looking at it. And that's.

[00:23:16] Noah Arroyo: Been a while, so we see more people on the ground. I imagine that's gonna be better for the downtown retail establishments and the on the ground floors. But at the end of the day, I think that the bigger, more ominous sign fiscally is that those offices are not filling back up. Now there's a caveat to that, and that's that not all offices are created equal.

[00:23:37] Noah Arroyo: If you're talking about what we'll say are AAA properties or trophy properties, the Salesforce Tower is an example of one of those. The very high-end office properties are, I'm told by brokers and, and real estate sources, they're much more populated during the day than the lower end class C, the class B.

[00:23:54] Noah Arroyo: And so different subsets of office properties have different problems we'll say, or different degrees of the same problem. And so. All of this is the complexity that the city is gonna need to grapple with. You know, when they're figuring out what the financial future of, of this city is, and how do we access that best?

[00:24:10] Noah Arroyo: How do we get there? Now, you were asking me about how all of this dovetails with my recent reporting.

[00:24:16] George Koster: Right. Correct.

[00:24:17] Noah Arroyo: Okay. What we have seen from some local groups on the ground, including downtown SF Partnership, what seems to be the loudest nonprofit in the area, this is a business improvement district.

[00:24:27] Noah Arroyo: In other words, they provide a number of services for the financial district in Jackson Square area. In downtown, and what we have seen from them is a plan. A plan about how to revitalize downtown area by area, and they have a number of pilot areas. One of those that I looked at most closely was lead store.

[00:24:43] Noah Arroyo: The idea is that you, you pump resources into these areas and you maybe tweak some of the regulations around what is allowable there. For instance, you would shut down an alleyway to car traffic so that it became more walkable. You would. Have pop-up businesses or pop-up restaurants in, let's say a commercial spot that has been defunct for a number of months, which means that you'd need to coordinate with whoever owns that spot and see if they'd be cool with a business coming in and operating there for a week and having a rotating crew.

[00:25:10] Noah Arroyo: You might have events. So the question is, where is the money gonna come from for all of this? There are ideas about this and the city is, is definitely putting forward a number of millions of dollars for us. But the idea after that is these various urban planning and design improvements to certain parts of downtown.

[00:25:28] Noah Arroyo: Hopefully we'll start to draw more and more foot traffic to the area, more and more commerce. Now, will that be effective at increasing tourism to those areas? Probably. Will that be effective at increasing office attendance in those areas? That is a big question mark. Now, the reason why I don't say it won't is because I've talked to people who have jobs at companies that are in San Francisco, as well as that are not who are residents of San Francisco and working from home, and they have both told me, Hey, if there was some event and they had free wifi outside and I could just go there, or some intersection that was closed to cars and I could hang out and there are people laughing and enjoying wine at some outdoor table, I'd go there and I'd work there all day.

[00:26:08] Noah Arroyo: I asked one, how many days a week would you go there? She told me, three to four I'd take my kids. So at that point, maybe what we don't have is a solution that so much brings more people back to their offices. Maybe we do, because maybe they're there during the day and they're at these events right after work or something.

[00:26:26] Noah Arroyo: But at least I think what you have is increased presence, including by people who work off of a laptop. As long as, as long as wifi is supplied and that that is another big question.

[00:26:39] Eric VO: We're at the halfway point of reinventing San Francisco government downtown and civic trust. Part of voices of the community's COVID-19 impact on San Francisco's nonprofit series. In the first half, we heard from eight thought leaders, Judy Brown of Civic makers, Rebecca Woodbury of San Rafael, and Kelly Parmley of San Jose showed how local governments reinvented overnight digitizing services.

[00:27:05] Eric VO: Redeploying staff and building civic capacity under pressure, Joaquin Torres San Francisco's assessor recorder reminded us that neighborhood corridors are the city's cultural lifeblood protecting them. Demand sustained investment. Chris Wright of Advanced SF and Jeff Berio of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute put stark numbers on the crisis.

[00:27:27] Eric VO: 300,000 fewer daily workers. 25% office vacancy. Highest in the nation with rippling effects threatening the Bay Area. Noah Royo of the San Francisco Chronicle and Anton of the San Francisco Standard showed a broken tax code incentivizing businesses to leave with one company cutting its city bill 88% by going remote.

[00:27:49] Eric VO: Bold. Regional solutions are required. Tax reform, downtown conversion corridor reinvestment and civic innovation support our work. Donate at voices of the community.com and visit series highlights, part five for guest resources and archives. We'll be right back. Coming up next are Sarah Wright and Kevin Trong, reporters for the San Francisco Standard as they spotlight stories of resilience and explore how communities are navigating the pandemic's lasting impact.

[00:28:19] George Koster: Well, and, and staying with you, Sarah, why don't we, uh, segue into the findings from your reporting about the housing and transportation component?

[00:28:27] Sarah Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So there's a couple things that we found in our reporting. I think the first one that stood out to me is unlike some other cities, which we'll talk about later, San Francisco, the city government is not.

[00:28:41] Sarah Wright: Pushing for these downtown office to housing conversions. The mayor's office is still trying to get businesses back. They're launching all of these campaigns to incentivize workers coming into the office. And when we talked to the planning department, what we found is that it's actually not. Gonna be that difficult to make these conversions.

[00:29:01] Sarah Wright: So it's not the city's planning processes that are actually standing in the way. It feels a little bit more like a willpower problem, at least from the bureaucracy side. So Dan Cider, who is the chief to the city's. From the city's planning department said that approvals for an office to housing conversion could take a matter of months, and some of 'em wouldn't even require a hearing of planning commission.

[00:29:24] Sarah Wright: It's also a process that may be easier than normal housing building of this size, simply because the building already exists, right? And so a lot of the barriers that housing developers find in San Francisco is often community opposition. To a large scale building in a neighborhood, and that can delay the process by months, even years.

[00:29:46] Sarah Wright: But because these buildings already exist, Jan said it's possible that that step of the process would actually be a lot easier than normal. So that's not really the big barrier. Soon in the way. I think the, the biggest thing that we found with this, and I've. Dove deeper into, since Kevin and I did this report, is the the cost of making these conversions.

[00:30:09] Sarah Wright: So there haven't been any applications in downtown San Francisco for this type of housing conversion, and one of the reasons for that is because it's just so expensive to make these types of conversions. So inflation is adding up here in San Francisco when it comes to boom costs. And rents are steady or even down here in the city, and so across all types of housing development, builders have told me that things just aren't penciling out for them these days in San Francisco.

[00:30:40] Sarah Wright: So they are looking elsewhere outside of the city in the East Bay on the peninsula where the cost is lower and the process is a bit simpler. They're deciding that it's not worth it. The other thing that Kevin and I found is that just like the city's not necessarily betting on these offices staying empty forever, neither are developers.

[00:30:59] Sarah Wright: They have a pretty long range of planning when trying to figure out where and when to build. And it's still not certain, even after two and a half years, whether offices will be full again at some point. And so developers just aren't right now ready to bet on a future of San Francisco that doesn't have tech offices bustling downtown.

[00:31:21] Sarah Wright: And then, you know, the other thing is that offices aren't built with. Housing in mind. If you think about an apartment building, every unit would have to have its own kitchen. Every unit maybe would have laundry. Every unit would maybe have a dishwasher. Lots of power fixtures. At least in this kind of like modern open office style building, we don't have all of that happening.

[00:31:47] Sarah Wright: So it would take a, a large scale gutting of a building to actually change that infrastructure, which again, would be costly. What they did tell us that at the planning department is there's a type of housing that this could work for, which here in San Francisco, we call group housing, which is like this dorm style, which does have communal spaces like, you know, kitchens, you know, laundry, and even sometimes funeral restrooms, which.

[00:32:11] Sarah Wright: Would be a better fit for this type of conversions if developers were, were gonna go ahead with this.

[00:32:16] George Koster: Well, and, and staying with the idea of cost again as well for any of the listeners and folks that. I call it the magical office Conversion building, which is Ericsson's Amal team converted the old AA building on Van Ness and uh, fell Street into office space.

[00:32:32] George Koster: And I think both of you talked to them as well. So Sarah, do you wanna share a little bit about that conversation?

[00:32:37] Sarah Wright: I'll let Kevin jump in as well, but the conversations that I've had with folks at Emerald and and elsewhere is that the cost of building is, is only rising. And so that office conversion, it was complicated.

[00:32:51] Sarah Wright: I think that Oz told us that he's not even sure that it would be worth doing something like that today. It may have been the last of its kind at that price, and so that. Tracks exactly with what I've heard from other developers is experimental stuff isn't necessarily a good idea Here in San Francisco where it's already tremendously difficult to get projects through all of the permitting processes.

[00:33:17] Sarah Wright: And then by the time you do, hopefully prices haven't risen tremendously and you can still actually physically build the housing on site.

[00:33:26] George Koster: Thank you. And Kevin, would you like to add to that?

[00:33:28] Kevin Truong: Yeah, and I actually had lunch with Za, a couple of. Weeks ago and he said, forget conversion projects. No housing is going, basically getting built right now.

[00:33:36] Kevin Truong: If you look at sort of tiny applications, they've really fallen off a cliff and, and you think about the kind of macroeconomic situation when that development went through San Francisco was on the rise, capital markets were free, interest rates were low. Much, much easier to get a project like that financed in addition to getting it built.

[00:33:54] Kevin Truong: I mean, construction costs basically have only increased since then and have. Like Sarah said, inflation has has definitely added fuel to. To that fire. And he said that was a very special building. It was a really nice, I think the term he used was skeleton. Something that really worked because of a small, narrow floor plate, which is basically the way that the building is laid out, which allowed for access to open light, which is a, is something that San Francisco's building requirements have for these types of residential projects.

[00:34:22] Kevin Truong: And obviously nobody wants to live in a place that's all shut in without any windows or anything like that. But it was expensive at or more expensive than they initially first set out to do. But they were also in an environment where rents were high and still growing higher.

[00:34:37] Joaquin Torres: So

[00:34:37] Kevin Truong: the economic sort of math made sense.

[00:34:40] Kevin Truong: A lot of times what gets built and what doesn't get built is pretty simple math. It's how much it takes to build and how much is gonna come in. And if that equation doesn't balance, then projects, that project probably won't get built.

[00:34:52] Eric VO: Joining us now, our co-founder and CEO Jose Quinone, program Director ENA Fairley and Financial Education and Engagement Manager F Faren Segundo Orozco from Mission Asset Funds.

[00:35:04] Eric VO: This organization bridges the gap in financial literacy, offering education and tools to help immigrant communities build credit and secure their futures.

[00:35:13] George Koster: Well, and staying with that, if you could provide some context or if you will, framing around the conversation that we're gonna have today about the need for mission asset funds, value proposition or services.

[00:35:25] George Koster: And I think piece that you talk about in your own mission is the financial and visibility of literally millions of people in the United States. So could you share with the audience a little bit about what you mean by financial? Invisibility, how that impacts folks. And then for anyone who's been spending any time with regards to finance and our underserved communities, there's an entire community of what, around nine to 11 million unbanked people in the United States.

[00:35:52] George Koster: So I think providing some context around that, and then we can turn to landed and fra into tell us more about programs.

[00:35:58] Jose Quinonez: Well, you know, we kind of got into this work not really even understanding what that term was. I don't think we enhanced that term about being financially invisible or even being credit invisible at the time.

[00:36:10] Jose Quinonez: That wasn't a term. I think, from our perspective, we basically looked at the mission, which was how do we help low income immigrants improve the financial security, when in fact half of the people that we were targeting to help didn't have a checking account or savings account. At that time, there was a study that came out that basically found that 44% of mission households did not have a credit score, or their file was so thin that they couldn't generate a credit score.

[00:36:36] Jose Quinonez: So to me, the question was, well, how do you help people build financial security when they don't have even access to the most basic of tools like a checking account or credit score or credit history for them to build their financial lives? How do you do that? At that moment in time, that conventional wisdom was that, well, all we needed to do is provide people with more financial literacy, get 'em in a classroom, teach 'em how to, you know, balance a checkbook and maybe they'll take note and then that'll be it.

[00:37:05] Jose Quinonez: I mean, that was convention, but at the time we knew that that wasn't gonna be enough. We knew that we needed to do more and provide something that was actually gonna be real and tangible and practical to actually help improve their financial lives in intangible ways. So for us, even before understanding that the term credit and visibility, we knew that credit, however, was gonna be really an important component of that.

[00:37:29] Jose Quinonez: And so, you know, in the asset building world, in the, in the financial carbon world, credit wasn't even the topic of conversation frankly, but we were able to sort of push that idea through and now have made that issue of concern. But at that moment, you know, thinking about, well, how do you do that? How do you help people improve their financial lives?

[00:37:47] Jose Quinonez: When they don't have a basic access, well then you have to help 'em create that access, right? You can't just talk to them. You can't just lecture at them. Even if the lectures are in Spanish, it's not gonna work, right? So you have to basically create it for them. So we were able to sort of use that as a starting point to innovate and how to make that happen.

[00:38:06] George Koster: Thank you. It's a really good table setting, if you will. So I'm gonna turn to you, Alina, and ask you to share with the audience, and there's so many wonderful programs that Math provides, and I don't want to get us into all of the granular detail, if you will, but you have a whole concept called community centered approach.

[00:38:22] George Koster: So let's start there and go into the programs, and then I wanna turn to Efrain and talk about education and outreach and how you use technology.

[00:38:30] Elena Fairley: Well, thank you, George, for highlighting our community centered approach, and that's really where we like to start when we talk about our programs because it is really the foundation for everything that we do.

[00:38:41] Elena Fairley: It informs our work from the smallest client interaction to our vision for change. So this community centered approach can be summarized with just four words. Engage, build scale, and mobilize. And to break this down, what this means is that first and foremost, we engage deeply with communities to really understand client's real lived experience and context.

[00:39:03] Elena Fairley: And I think that came through very clearly in Jose's retelling of our founding story. We trust that clients are the experts of their own lives, and we seek to listen to them next. We build, so we build on clients' innovative practices and strategies. We know that our clients are already actively participating in their financial lives, and so instead of thinking about, oh, what needs to be fixed, what's broken, we wanna really shine a spotlight on what's really good in people's lives and seek to elevate that and build on that.

[00:39:31] Elena Fairley: The third part of our approach is that we scale our programs using the best of finance and technology. So we're a very, very tech forward organization. We see this as a really important lever in bringing our programs to more communities and also doing so in a really accessible and dignified way. And then the fourth part of our approach is mobilize.

[00:39:51] Elena Fairley: So we mobilize to use our deep learnings and insights to advocate and to organize for systemic change. And we do this because we want to create a fair financial marketplace that really works for everyone. So with this, you know, context of how we do this work, how we engage communities, and bringing this down to earth a little bit and providing an example of what this actually looks like.

[00:40:14] Elena Fairley: I think a great example is our Lending Circles program. This is really our signature program. We've been offering lending circles since the very beginning, and for those of you who are not familiar, lending circles really at its core is a. Common global tradition, a community of coming together and lending and borrowing money with one another.

[00:40:32] Elena Fairley: And so what we've done is we have formalized that process. We've created a program that is recognized, that is visible, and we've added credit reporting. So I think this goes back. Directly to Jose's vision for our founding, we knew that credit was so important and we knew that community members were already engaging in all this bonafide financial activity.

[00:40:50] Elena Fairley: So how could we just simply elevate that and give people credit for what they were already doing in their lives? So, fast forward many years, we've grown our Lending Circles program. You know, it's become just a signature part of our work in San Francisco and beyond. We've also brought lending circles to to more communities.

[00:41:08] George Koster: And to just stand the, the Lending Circle component for folks lending circles at its basic core is any of us in the Zoom room at this moment could participate in lending circles. It's people in the community basically showing up with whatever they have available to lend into the circle, and those pools of funds can be accessed by community members.

[00:41:26] Elena Fairley: That's exactly right. It's all about community showing up for one another, community members supporting one another, and it's really a beautiful thing. We host what we call formation events where the group actually comes together sometimes in person. During the pandemic. We did it virtually, and one of the things that we hear really often is people say like, I've done a lending circle before.

[00:41:46] Elena Fairley: I'd built my credit. Now I'm here to support the next people. That is absolutely part of what we do and how we do it.

[00:41:53] George Koster: Thank you. And Efraim, your focus is on education and community outreach, and Jose talked a lot about basically meeting people where they're at, et cetera, and listening to the community.

[00:42:03] George Koster: And I have a feeling you have some really great stories and was hoping you could share with us as story of someone who came in through the coaching program and has been able to utilize the maths tools to change the trajectory of their financial life. I

[00:42:17] Efrain Segundo Orozco: actually have a really good story about someone who participated in one of our programs.

[00:42:21] Efrain Segundo Orozco: So every month at math, we choose a theme for the month, and all of our group Finit events revolve around that theme in the month to May. We have small business support because as Elena and Jose mentioned, our base is a very entrepreneurial base and they have big aspirations. And man, they're just very innovative in the way that, you know, they hustle frankly.

[00:42:39] Efrain Segundo Orozco: So I want to talk a little bit about one of our participants. His name is Jesus. So Jesus was working in a restaurant when the pandemic struck and like many, he lost his job and he had to figure out exactly how he was gonna maneuver and be able to provide for his family. He came to our community conversation and he shared his story because in the community conversation it was a lot of people like him who are entrepreneurs, who have their own small businesses, and how he came about doing so.

[00:43:02] Efrain Segundo Orozco: So what did he do? He actually started selling fruit. He became a fruit vendor. He got himself a cart. He started loading up on fruit and doing whatever he could to put money on the table. And what I really appreciate about his story is one, his gratitude that he had for math because he was one of the recipients of our grants, and he is one of the participants in IFRP.

[00:43:19] Efrain Segundo Orozco: So he receives the most funds and is really helping him. But he also learned about our micro loans for business, and he was able to use those funds that he's getting from us every single month to start a microloan and to buy a bigger card and to buy more material that he's able to grow his business with.

[00:43:35] Efrain Segundo Orozco: So he realized that he could have gone back to the restaurant industry once things opened back up. And relied on that source of income. But he also realized that he wanted to put matters under his own hands as much as possible. And I think that's one of the things that he learned throughout the pandemic is that unexpected things happen, and with unexpected things happen, you wanna have as much control as possible.

[00:43:54] Efrain Segundo Orozco: And I think that was something that was lacking for many of us. When the pandemic struck because of so much uncertainty, so much fear, and so much just unknowing about what's gonna happen, that a lot of us felt like we lost our sense of control. And that was definitely the case with Jesus. And I guess the last little thing I'd wanna mention as far as stories, it's not about a specific person, it's about all the people that are tender chatlass.

[00:44:14] Efrain Segundo Orozco: Because our chat bots, sometimes we don't get to see their faces. It's on Facebook Live or it's on Zoom. They have their cameras off. But what I really, really love and shout out to the mobilize and engagement team, they're the ones who carry this work. I definitely don't do it by myself. It's a team of nine of us who carry out this events and work really hard to make sure.

[00:44:30] Efrain Segundo Orozco: We try to deliver 'em as best as possible, but we really enjoy the questions because the questions that people ask us during these live events give us an insight as to, Hey, what do we need to focus on? We want to have our ear to the ground as much as possible. And say, Hey, you know, these are the interests that people have now.

[00:44:47] Efrain Segundo Orozco: These are the things that are impacting people now, and we try to be as fluid as possible in our creation of content to be able to deliver it in a timely fashion in a way that's gonna be impactful to people.

[00:44:57] Eric VO: Lastly, we feature the voice of Madison Alvarado, a San Francisco public press reporter who ensures transparency and accountability, giving voice to the city's underserved and marginalized communities.

[00:45:09] Eric VO: We also feature the voice of Michelle Moritz from the League of Women Voters as she drives civic engagement, inspiring San Franciscans to participate in building a fairer, more inclusive city.

[00:45:21] George Koster: Alright, so moving on to propositions C. So.

[00:45:24] Madison Alvarado: Proposition C would create oversight commission to oversee one of San Francisco's largest departments, and that is the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

[00:45:34] Madison Alvarado: The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, or HSH is the eighth largest city department, and in fiscal year 2022 through 2023, it has a budget of. 672 million. So that makes it right now the largest city agency without an oversight committee. And so Proposition C would create an oversight commission to have binding authority over projects and funding for the department.

[00:45:59] Madison Alvarado: And that would make it the first oversight committee in the Bay Area that. Tackling projects sort of around homelessness. A lot of other cities have commissions and committees that advise their homelessness departments, but these public bodies aren't able to hold city agencies or service providers accountable.

[00:46:18] Madison Alvarado: And here in San Francisco, a lot of people know that a large portion of homeless services come from. Third party providers like nonprofits, and in the last few months there have been several big investigations. I know I'm thinking of the San Francisco Chronicle investigating conditions in single room occupancy hotels.

[00:46:37] Madison Alvarado: Also here at the public press, one of our reporters was looking into. Really long wait lists, but there were lots of vacancies in the different shelters and SROs, and so this measure is kind of designed to create a lot of more, a lot more oversight and transparency around that department for an issue that San Franciscans and California's widely list as a top concern for them, which is homelessness.

[00:47:01] Madison Alvarado: The board of supervisors unanimously voted to put this measure on the ballot, so clearly it has a lot of support. If this commission is created, it will have seven members and initial appointments will be made in March of 2023. Four of those appointed appointees will be appointed by the mayor, and the other three will be appointed by the board of supervisors, and basically, if the oversight commission is created.

[00:47:26] Madison Alvarado: They will formulate, evaluate, and set homeless policies, serve as a public forum to raise accountability issues, and advocate for fair policies, conduct investigations into governmental operations that are within its jurisdiction and a few other key roles. So yeah, if you are interested in looking into that more, our reporter kind of did, does a full breakdown of a lot of the different aspects that that.

[00:47:52] Madison Alvarado: Oversight commission will do. But that's kind of the bare bones of what it we'd be looking at if this measure passes.

[00:47:58] George Koster: All right. Thank you. And now moving on to the dueling affordable housing coming from the mayor or the porter supervisors.

[00:48:04] Madison Alvarado: Yes. Yeah, so I think this is a topic that we've been hearing a lot about, at least I've been seeing a lot.

[00:48:10] Madison Alvarado: Because once again, yeah, homelessness, affordable housing, all of these issues are a really upfront and center in voters' minds. I think these two are coming at a pretty critical time for San Francisco. Three months ago, the California Department of Housing and Community Development launched an investigation into San Francisco's housing policies to sort of figure out why.

[00:48:30] Madison Alvarado: The permitting process takes so long here, especially considering we have a massive, affordable H housing shortage. And so these two measures are both focused on streamlining that process and sort of who gets veto power and within the city looking at the permitting process for various affordable housing projects.

[00:48:51] Madison Alvarado: There are a few key differences, so. I'm gonna sort of outline some of those two, but as George said, it really makes sense to kind of talk about the two of them together because they're both targeting the same thing, but have sort of different ways of going about it. So starting with Proposition D, this was brought forward by Mayor London Breed, and she tried to get it passed by the Board of Supervisors, but ultimately was not successful in that.

[00:49:15] Madison Alvarado: So she turned with. A group of other groups like Habitat for Humanity Greater sf SF ybi, which we know stands for yes, in My Backyard and a few other groups to get the 10% I believe required. 10% of registered voters signatures to have this appear on the ballot. And basically what her plan will do is it will streamline approval for three types of affordable housing development, and that is 100% affordable housing development, affordable housing that's designed for teachers.

[00:49:48] Madison Alvarado: So folks who are employed with. City College of San Francisco and the San Francisco Unified School District. And then a third category, which is mixed income buildings. And this is where you kind of start to see some of the differences in the two proposals. So for Mayor London Breed, the plan that cheese backing the buildings that would qualify are mixed use buildings.

[00:50:11] Madison Alvarado: With 15% more affordable housing than currently mandated by the city. And so the city currently mandates that 22% of a mixed income building is affordable. And so this plan being pushed by Mayor London breed Proposition D would require an extra 15% on top of the 22% mandated by the city. In contrast. The other plan, proposition E, which was pushed by several members of the Board of Supervisors, has a flat requirement of 30% for mixed income housing developments to be streamlined through this approval process.

[00:50:52] Madison Alvarado: So that's one key difference between the two. Another important aspect that the backers of Proposition D. Our pushing is that going through the approval process, there are certain housing developments are subject to review under the California Environmental Quality Act, and that act has been cited by supervisors in several controversial rejections of housing developments and under the Proposition D, these projects.

[00:51:20] Madison Alvarado: I just described those three categories, they would not be subject to review under CQA. And so supporters say that this is really key to making sure that there's no unnecessary stops or rejections of the development of certain proposed sites. However, proposition E. Does not make a complete exemption. So there are some projects under Proposition E that may be subject to review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

[00:51:47] Madison Alvarado: And so that is another key difference between the two. And people who are in favor of eliminating CQA oversight say that's really important to making sure that none of these projects are vetoed. And so the opponents of Proposition E are saying, you know, by not including that exemption. That's gonna affect how many sites get built.

[00:52:10] Madison Alvarado: So the critics of Prop D say that it won't actually generate affordable housing, and they're saying it's a developer giveaway. And then the critics of Prop E are saying they're missing this really important inclusion because there's no CQA. Because CQA oversight is still allowed. And so they're worried that.

[00:52:28] Madison Alvarado: Projects will be stopped through that. And the opponents of Proposition E are also saying the affordability requirements are so high that the projects will not pencil out and it won't produce any new housing. So that's an overview, trying to get to some of the nuances and differences between these two.

[00:52:46] Madison Alvarado: But yeah, they both kind of have the same goal but different, uh, strategies as to how to fix that end. Different groups on either side supporting, you know, which measure they think should pass, and both sides are very passionate about which one is more effective or which one, yeah. Will result in higher affordability and less gentrification and all of these other factors.

[00:53:11] George Koster: Yeah. Very good. And so now moving on to a proposition that I'm sure no one hates and that's libraries.

[00:53:16] Madison Alvarado: Yes. So Proposition F is an plan to extend the library preservation fund for another 25 years. So that would extend the fund through June, 2048. And right now the fund draws 2.50 cents out of every a hundred dollars from existing property taxes.

[00:53:34] Madison Alvarado: And so this rate, setting aside this rate would. Basically be continued if Prop F passes. And so the fund is designed to provide library services and materials and help operate library facilities. So yeah, this basically would just extend that fund for another 25 years. Supporters note that there is no increase in cost as this is part of a set aside and that libraries are a really key public resource.

[00:54:02] Madison Alvarado: As far as I'm aware, there are no arguments against this measure and the city controller estimates that it will have very minimal costs. So yeah, that's a brief overview of Proposition F.

[00:54:14] George Koster: Michelle, any thoughts on libraries?

[00:54:16] Michelle Moritz: I did come across a couple of opponents arguments. One that the current voter approved library preservation fund renewal period of 15 years is satisfactory and provides more flexibility in terms of not locking it in for 25 years.

[00:54:32] Michelle Moritz: And another opponent, one that I saw was a set aside, does not allow flexibility for other city needs driving up property taxes.

[00:54:41] Eric VO: That brings us to the close of reinventing San Francisco government downtown and Civic Trust, the fifth installment of our special COVID-19 impact highlight series here on Voices of the Community.

[00:54:54] Eric VO: In the second half, we heard from seven Extraordinary Voices, Sarah Wright and Kevin Trong of the San Francisco Standard brought the human and policy story of downtown's transformation. Documenting what is being lost and what communities are still actively fighting to reimagine. Jose Quinonez, Elena Farley and Ra Segundo Orozco of Mission Asset Funds exposed one of the pandemic's cruelest truths.

[00:55:20] Eric VO: Millions of undocumented and low income residents were excluded from every round of federal stimulus through policy. Not oversight. Their response, lending circles, micro loans, immigration loans, and direct cash assistance showed what Community centered finance can do when trust replaces gatekeeping Madison Alvarado of the San Francisco Public Press Connected pandemic recovery to the 2022 ballot.

[00:55:46] Eric VO: Helping communities understand measures, shaping housing, public health and public safety. Michelle Moritz of the League of Women voters brought the nonpartisan explanation of the 2022 state propositions. Our defining themes this episode were financial invisibility as a systemic crisis, community trust as the engine of real innovation, independent journalism as civic infrastructure, and voting as an essential act of recovery.

[00:56:13] Eric VO: Thank you to every guest and to you, our listeners, for caring about this city. Its people and neighbors. Donate at voices of the community.com Visit series highlights, part five for guest profiles and the full episode archive. Now back to George for our wrap up.

[00:56:30] George Koster: Before we sign off, a sincere thank you for spending time with us today.

[00:56:34] George Koster: This episode is part of our special highlight shows drawn from our COVID-19 special series, A body of work that began when be VAC Media invited us under Paula a's leadership to co-produce SF nonprofit Spotlight. Those 10 television episodes we helped produce led us to chronicle the wider ecosystem of social, government and economic support.

[00:56:58] George Koster: We introduced you to nonprofits, small businesses, libraries, artists and public agencies, adapting in real time to the first global pandemic in several generations. From April, 2020 through January, 2023, we produced 105 episodes documenting what it looked like to serve, survive, and innovate under extraordinary pressure and what our common community ecosystem demands from all of us today and into the future.

[00:57:28] George Koster: Here's how we can keep the momentum going. Start by subscribing to the Voices of the Community podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to new episodes, find you automatically. Next, please rate the show and share it with friends or colleagues. Your reviews and repos markedly increase our reach, putting these voices in more ears that can act.

[00:57:49] George Koster: Then subscribe to our YouTube channel for full video episodes and archives. Search YouTube for Geo Coster and click subscribe. If this storytelling serves you, please consider making a tax deductible donation at voices of the community.com. Just click the donate button in your contribution directly supports field reporting editing.

[00:58:10] George Koster: Mixing transcription and distribution. It keeps community media independent and accessible. We also want to hear from you. Send feedback on today's show, propose topics, or suggest guests by emailingGeorge@georgekoster.com. Your note, shape our editorial calendar and introduce us to new problem solvers. We could not make these shows possible without our wonderful team.

[00:58:36] George Koster: Associate producer Eric Estrada for co-hosting, plus his audio and video wizardry and designer Casey Naz of Citron Studios for her visual brilliance. Thanks also to our broadcast partners, K-S-F-P-L-P-F-M 1 0 2 0.5 FM in San Francisco, and K-P-C-A-L-P FM 1 0 3 0.3 FM in Petaluma for highlighting these stories.

[00:59:00] George Koster: I'm George Koster in San Francisco. And join us for our next highlight episode in the COVID-19 series featuring voices addressing homelessness and housing services for our unhoused neighbors. Until then, take care and remember, your voice matters.

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