Health
San Francisco plans to open its first psychiatric hospital specifically designed to help youth experiencing a mental health crisis at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. The facility will be funded by a $33.7 million state grant to the San Francisco Department of Public Health and will include a 12-bed psychiatric inpatient program and a 24-slot intensive behavioral health outpatient program. Currently, the only psychiatric beds catering to youth in the City are in private hospitals; just 15 beds exist for adolescents experiencing an emotional breakdown, located at St. Mary’s Medical Center. When these are fully occupied, San Francisco youth in a mental health crisis are often referred to hospitals out of the county. The expansion could serve up to 450 youth annually through inpatient services and 900 with outpatient treatments. State funds will be invested this year to renovate two large unused spaces at SF General to bring them up to code for youth medical services. The 12-bed inpatient adolescent psychiatric hospital will operate on General’s seventh floor; the sixth floor will expand current outpatient services. It’s not yet known when the beds will be available.
Dance
ODC has added a third building to its Mishpot network of performance spaces, classrooms, and studios. The new addition, 3175 to 3177 17th Street, formerly occupied by Seven Tepees, is next door to ODC Theater, around the corner from the multi-purpose ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell Street. The $6.7 million acquisition will increase the company’s total footprint by 40 percent, from 36,000 to 50,400 square feet. The added space will be used to house ODC activities and be available to other performance groups…Construction of the Mission Bay Elementary School is proceeding, with the contractor collaborating with utility companies to locate existing underground utilities for removal/demolition, a process that’ll continue into early next year.
Free
Last month’s San Francisco Free Museum Weekend, made possible by an anonymous benefactor who paid admission costs at all San Francisco museums, demonstrated that art for free creates a free for all. On the Saturday of the event the Museum of Craft and Design had one of its biggest days ever, with 1,200 people keeping their Alexander Hamiltons in their pockets. On Sunday, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art drew 9,253 viewers, topping the 2017 paid admission record of 9,070… The San Francisco metropolitan population shrank by 64,934 people between 2016 and 2021, a 1.4 percent decrease, in a period in which the national populace increased by 2.8 percent. San Francisco is one of just eight large U.S. metropolitans to see its population decline.
Cops
“In a drab building flanked by police vans in Potrero Hill, there’s a windowless room where a handful of officers sit among empty desks and computer screens,” starts a recent story in The San Francisco Standard. “A wall of televisions play the news. Military flags hang from the ceiling. Phone numbers are scrawled on a whiteboard. Without stepping outside, it’s hard to tell if it’s day or night.” The article goes on to convey that the room, located in the municipal building at 17th and De Haro streets, is where problem cops are parked to bypass the difficult process of removing sworn officers. At the Department Operations Center San Francisco police officers field phone calls, email bulletins and run a database of missing and stolen vehicles instead of patrolling the streets. Uniforms aren’t required. For some, they’re not allowed, because the Operations Center is a de facto holding facility for cops deemed unfit to don a badge, gun or police blues. Many of the officers are in limbo because state law makes it hard and time-consuming for the department to enforce its own rules. They can spend years earning a good salary for work that may not require much law enforcement training. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department is short more than 500 officers.
Union
Last month roughly 50 demonstrators, including community members, organizers and a dozen workers rallied in front of Tartine Manufactory to push for a union contract. Despite formally unionizing in March 2021 with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 6, workers at the bakery, with locations in the Mission and Mishpot, have yet to receive a union contract. At the center of the conflict: increased wages in an era of ever-rising living costs.
Corrections
The December Short Cuts, “Bus Yard Development Lurches Forward” contained a few errors. The accurate number of planned housing units is 575. Plenary Americas US Holdings Inc, the project lead, is headquartered in Los Angeles and has a history of developing complex infrastructure projects as part of public-private partnerships.
