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San Francisco Chronicle
11 hours ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Keep ICE out of Dublin': Hundreds protest prospect of immigrant detention centers
Hundreds of protesters gathered Saturday at a park in Dublin to oppose the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement reopening the nearby federal prison into an immigrant detention center. Drivers passing by the family-friendly protest at Don Biddle Community Park honked their horns in support of the demonstrators holding signs that read, 'Keep ICE out of Dublin.' There were designated art tables where children could color, and attendees could pick up screen-printed posters that read, 'Hands off our immigrant neighbors.' The protest was organized by Tsuru for Solidarity, ICE Out of Dublin Coalition, several labor unions and other organizations. Tsuru for Solidarity, a Japanese American social justice advocacy group that seeks to end detention sites, organized the rally in solidarity with immigrant communities and to protest detention centers from opening in the Bay Area, specifically the scandal-plagued former women's prison in Dublin that shuttered last year. FCI Dublin made national headlines in 2023 after incarcerated people filed a class-action lawsuit alleging rampant sexual abuse by many of the prison guards. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons closed FCI Dublin in early December, citing poor facility conditions and staffing shortages. Later that month, the bureau announced that it will pay $115 million to 103 women who were sexually abused — the largest monetary settlement in the bureau's history, according to representatives of the prisoners. Rumors of potentially reopening the site as an immigrant detention center began after ICE officials toured the facility in February. A bureau spokesperson told the Chronicle last week that 'there are no plans to reopen it.' Still, Bay Area residents have been on edge about the possibility of the prison reopening as a detention center, prompting demonstrators to take to the streets to protest. Stacy Suh, program director at Detention Watch Network and one of the speakers at Saturday's rally, told the crowd that immigrant women were targeted at FCI Dublin because of their immigration status. 'We do not want ICE in our backyard, not in Dublin, not in the Bay Area, and not anywhere,' Suh told the cheering crowd. 'Mass detention and deportation mean more and more and more Black and brown people are racially profiled because of the color of their skin,' Suh added. Marissa Seko, of the Oakland-based Family Violence Law Center, said she has worked with survivors of the prison for 15 years. The prison's conditions described by the survivors reminded Seko, a Japanese American, of the conditions her grandmother endured while she was detained at an internment camp in Arizona. Hundreds of thousands people of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 during World War II. In March, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to detain Venezuelans. 'As a kid, my grandma and my great aunt told me stories about what it was like losing everything, how desolate, dusty and dirty the camp was,' Seko said. 'Supporting the survivors of FCI Dublin … reminded me of what my family endured during the internment.' 'The prison was closed for good reason and should remain closed,' she added. Sharon Osterweil of Oakland said she attended the rally because, as someone of Jewish descent, 'we have a responsibility to stand up whenever any group is facing detention, concentration camps, kidnappings the way that we're seeing right now.' 'This is the time when elected officials need to stand up and actually represent people who elected them, which means not allowing ICE to expand, let alone keep operating the way they are,' she said.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Loss of ‘operational funding' leads to layoffs at Tacoma, Seattle shipping firms
Three local logistics operators tied to same parent company recently announced layoffs of workers in Seattle and Tacoma after the loss of 'operational funding.' MacMillan-Piper, a transloading company that operates six facilities near the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, on July 10 filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with Washington State Employment Security Department. In its letter to the state, the company cited 'sudden and unforeseeable business circumstances resulting from the loss of operational funding.' It stated that MacMillan-Piper LLC 'will be permanently ceasing operations effective July 10, 2025.' Affected locations included two sites in Seattle and three in Tacoma, affecting approximately 92 workers. The affected positions 'include a variety of warehouse, management, operations and support,' the letter stated, also noting the layoffs were 'permanent, and no bumping or recall rights exist.' The company in 2023 was acquired by Oakland-based GSC, a third-party logistics provider. At the time, GSC said, 'The combined MacMillan-Piper and GSC Transport fleet will now exceed 100 trucks to further enhance GSC's known transportation reliability.' GSC also noted that 'the acquisition creates an ideal new network of terminals, yards and chassis strategically located within two miles of both the Seattle and Tacoma ports for GSC.' Additional WARN letters obtained by The News Tribune from the state after two more filings were announced Tuesday offered more clues as to turmoil behind the scenes with both MacMillan-Piper and GSC. One WARN filing listed layoffs affecting 10 workers with GSC Transport in Tacoma, along with another filing for GSC Solutions of Tacoma, affecting seven workers, both also going into effect July 10. Both GSC Solutions' letter and GSC Transport's letter to Washington's Employment Security Department state, 'On July 10, 2025, GSC received confirmation that its primary lender had terminated operational funding. This unexpected and unforeseeable development left the company without viable alternatives.' It added, 'Efforts to secure other financing or complete a business sale were unsuccessful.' Given the details from the three notices, it is unclear whether GSC would be taking on any former MacMillan-Piper workers. Attempts to reach officials with GSC and MacMillan-Piper were unsuccessful. MacMillan-Piper was founded in 1969 by James MacMillan Piper in Seattle and eventually became the largest transloader and container freight station in the Pacific Northwest, according to his 2009 obituary. Piper sold the company to his son-in-law and daughter in 1990, who in turn sold it to another family in 2019 before GSC's eventual acquisition. Industry media site Trucking Dive reported on Tuesday that GSC workers took to LinkedIn with personal announcements of their own layoffs. Those positions, according to the report, included workers in Oakland, California as well as Tacoma and Seattle, and included managerial, planning and client-related posts. GSC for its part, has been posting on LinkedIn, promoting the benefits of the MacMillan-Piper transload sites in both Seattle and Tacoma. In a post from two weeks ago, GSC wrote, 'Since our acquisition of MacMillan-Piper, Inc. in 2023, our 3PL operations in the Pacific Northwest have exceeded expectations.' On its website, it noted, 'GSC has invested heavily in the Seattle and Tacoma markets, building an extensive network of facilities and systems that offer comprehensive logistics solutions. Over the last two years, we've handled more than 20,000 containers in the region, including over 12,000 containers last year, with 3,480 deliveries to Puyallup and Spanaway alone.'
Miami Herald
6 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Bay Area developer building ‘micro-studios,' and yes, people are renting them
The size of a typical studio apartment is 500 to 600 square feet. The studios that Riaz Capital is building around the Bay Area measure on average 300 square feet - which is on the small side, even for a standard hotel room. But the Oakland-based developer sees micro-studios as a way to provide "affordability by design" in a state where the cost of housing is a major financial burden for many residents. Units come with only the essentials. Many don't have ovens - just two electric burners. The first few units the company built came with mini fridges rather than full-size ones. (Upon residents' frustration with the lack of freezer space, they upgraded to bigger ones at their next project.) The small unit size means they can squeeze more apartments into a single building, achieving greater economies of scale when it comes to their maintenance and operating budget. So do the units rent for half as much as a 600-square-foot apartment? Well, no. But the rent is cheaper than many of the newly built apartments across the Bay Area. At ArtHaus Jack London, a former motel Riaz converted into 130 apartments, a 277-square-foot studio goes for $1,750 a month. That price is the same whether you're renting a market-rate apartment or one of the income-restricted 'below-market-rate' units for those making less than 110% of the area median income (about $120,000 for a single-income earner in Alameda County). Other newly built studios around Oakland of more typical size run closer to $2,200 a month. Riaz Capital is bringing the micro-unit concept elsewhere. They have built 2,200 residences throughout the Bay Area, and have 3,700 units in development across California, including in San Diego and Santa Cruz. Riaz Taplin, CEO, and Lisa Vilhauer, vice president of design and entitlement, sat down to explain why they're betting their smaller units can be a solution for some Californians looking for low-cost housing options. Q: How did you get into multifamily real estate? Taplin: In the 1970s, my dad was working in condo conversions. Some people bond with their dad around sports - me and my dad bonded over real estate. We started buying apartment buildings in the late '90s. Then, after I went to college, I felt like, "I didn't get a degree to deal with toilets and tenants." So I wanted to do something different. I spent the first part of my career building luxury housing, but I was interested in the idea of a design-based solution to affordability. I've spent the last five years focused on housing single-income professionals at scale. Vilhauer: I have a degree in landscape architecture but ended up working in civil engineering and planning. After eight years, I decided I wanted to be on the developer side instead of the consultant side. So I went to Taylor Morrison, which is a public national home builder, and a few years later went to a smaller family-owned development company in the East Bay, and then came to Riaz. Q: Land is so expensive in the Bay Area that we see most ground-up developers focusing on the top end of the market, where rents are the highest. On the other side of the spectrum you have nonprofit developers that rely largely on subsidies (typically, tax credits) to build affordable housing. Why focus on building apartments that are in the middle of the market? Vilhauer: Few people are building for the people who make somewhere in between - between $60,000 and $120,000. We decided to focus on them. We saw such a need. During 2020, when we started leasing our first project, that's when we saw that we'd really hit the nail on the head. We were finding a lot of renters who couldn't work remotely – who needed to be here in Oakland. People like teachers, bus drivers, nurses, who didn't want to be sharing spaces at that time, but they still needed to find somewhere within their budget. We're even seeing some retirees, who enjoy the convenience of living downtown. Q: During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people wanted to live alone rather than with roommates. What are the trends in how people are living today, and how did that inform your design for these units? Vilhauer: People are often living in roommate situations because it's affordable. While some people enjoy the community aspect, a lot of people prefer to live on their own. That really informed our design. We're trying to build naturally occurring affordable housing, versus income-restricted. Some of our units are rent-restricted - like the moderate-income units that we built so that we could be allowed to build more units in each property with the state density bonus program. We also have a lot of renters staying here for shorter periods - like traveling nurses. We offer leases that are less than a year long for them. We also offer furnished units that are move-in ready. Q: During COVID-19, a lot of people decided to leave the urban environment. These ArtHaus apartments are very "urban" projects. How has that impacted your business? Taplin: The trend before the pandemic was small house, big life. You exchange having a big home in the suburbs for a smaller place in the city, because your backyard is the urban environment. The pandemic created a shift against proximity. That coincided with the end of a major tech cycle here. Now, with the rise of so many artificial intelligence companies in the Bay Area, I think we're starting to see another tech cycle. That's bringing people back, and they're looking for housing. Vilhauer: Here at ArtHaus Jack London, after nine months of lease-up, we're about 93% occupied. Q: Rents in most parts of California and the Bay Area have started to recover from the pandemic slump - except for in the East Bay. Are you getting the rents you expected? Taplin: No. This five-year period is an anomaly in California history - it may or may not correct itself. I believe that we'll see a reversion to the mean. Q: Can you talk a bit more about the state density bonus program and how you've used that in your projects? Vilhauer: The density bonus is a state policy program intended to get more housing built, both market-rate and affordable, through a trade off: the developer provides a certain amount of affordable housing, and in return they either are allowed to build more densely, or get out of development standards that might add costs to a building. Santa Cruz, for example, has a standard that developers can't use vinyl windows. And it's hugely costly to install aluminum windows. So through the density bonus, we're providing more affordable homes, and we're able to install vinyl instead of aluminum. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
San Francisco Chronicle
12-07-2025
- Science
- San Francisco Chronicle
A Bay Area fault that could produce a major earthquake is not where scientists thought it was
The Bay Area's Concord Fault — which is capable of unleashing a major earthquake — isn't where scientists thought it was. The fault runs for about 20 miles through Walnut Creek and Concord, from North Gate Road near Mount Diablo north to Suisun Bay. A previously unknown 4.4-mile stretch, or strand, of the fault is actively moving about a tenth of an inch per year as it runs beneath residential neighborhoods in the Ygnacio Valley. 'Many of the people we have spoken to have noted their houses and yards being deformed, water lines being broken and other effects of the creep,' Jessie Vermeer, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said by email. Vermeer and colleagues reported the new path in a study published July 2. The scientists documented that the southern half of the Concord Fault is one-tenth to three-tenths of a mile west of where researchers previously mapped it. 'By identifying the new strand of the Concord Fault we can use it to refine our earthquake magnitude and timing calculations,' Vermeer said. The California Geological Survey could classify the new strand as an active fault zone, a designation that affects construction of new buildings, property values and real estate transactions. The findings could also help guide preparations ahead of big quakes. 'Cities, utility companies with underground lines, road repair agencies (and) even homeowners, can understand better where to expect damage, to plan for it financially, or to try and mitigate it altogether,' author Austin Elliott, who led the research as a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said by email. The Concord Fault can produce earthquakes of 6.7 magnitude or higher, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A magnitude 5.4 quake on the fault caused widespread damage across the Bay Area in 1955. The southern portion of the Concord Fault was previously mapped along the edge of Lime Ridge, which extends from the southern edge of Concord to Mount Diablo. The newly identified strand runs beneath residential neighborhoods; it even runs right through Valle Verde Elementary School in Walnut Creek. In the study, the researchers describe slow and steady movement of tectonic plates, known as creeping, along the newly defined southern segment; this behavior had previously been reported only on the northern half of the Concord Fault. As the Concord Fault creeps, it can deform structures, break water lines and cause other damage for people living along the fault line, explained Andrew Alden, an Oakland-based geologist and writer, who wasn't part of the new research. 'Having a precise location (for the fault) is really important for emergency response,' Alden said. The analysis 'is important for understanding the seismic hazards that the fault poses,' Wendy Bohon, branch chief of seismic hazards and earthquake engineering with the California Geological Survey, said by email. 'The more we understand the seismic hazard of an area, the better job we can do at decreasing the seismic risk and increasing the resilience of California communities,' said Bohon, who wasn't part of the new study. Scientists have known since the 1970s that the northern half of the Concord fault is steadily creeping. This northern section stretches from Concord, alongside Mount Diablo High School and Buchanan Field Airport, through Acme Landfill in Martinez. The southern half of the fault, however, hadn't been conclusively mapped. In the new study, the authors defined the trace of the southern Concord Fault by identifying and measuring offsets in curbs and sidewalks in the area. 'Some faults break quickly, causing large earthquakes, and some move slowly, creeping along without causing shaking. Other faults do a combination of these two things,' Bohon said. The authors say that the new findings raise the question of whether there are other active strands of the Concord Fault.
San Francisco Chronicle
02-07-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
California finally passed CEQA reform. Will it stop housing roadblocks?
The titanic shift in California housing policy orchestrated by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday night, resulting in the rewriting of large parts of the California Environmental Quality Act, will allow him to spend the final 18 months in office trying to correct one of his biggest policy failures unencumbered by what he views as a key roadblock. Newsom and housing advocates have long blamed the CEQA environmental review process for the state's inability to keep up with growing housing demand. But with the legislation passed Monday those reviews have been severely curtailed. As pro-housing advocates celebrated one of their biggest victories in years and environmentalists decried the potential damage from the new laws, one question went largely unasked: Will they work? While CEQA lawsuits from environmental groups and neighbors across California — often a single neighbor — have protected open space, thwarted polluters and spared pristine coastlines from luxury resorts, Newsom and housing advocates believe they have also been weaponized to bog down and kill badly needed housing, and in doing so, have helped make housing more expensive and less accessible. But plenty of obstacles to home-building remain — including construction costs and interest rates — meaning it's unclear just how big of an impact the CEQA reforms will have and how quickly Californians will feel them. Proponents of the legislation saw some quick victories. After a five-year period in which the slow pandemic recovery and high costs clogged the pipeline of new projects, a much improved regulatory landscape awaits builders as soon as conditions improve. 'It will absolutely speed up project approvals in infill locations with no or low litigation risk under CEQA,' said land use attorney Jennifer Hernandez. 'And it will make the application cheaper for sure.' Labor unions will no longer be able to use CEQA lawsuits to extract better wages and other concessions from developers on individual projects, sometimes without any clear benefit to the environment, according to Oakland-based real estate attorney Robert Selna. 'The unions have gone astray in this regard — they use environmental law as leverage to extort contracts for their members, which has been a significant impediment to building housing,' Selna said. He pointed to a former client's project in San Lorenzo, which faced heavy opposition from organized labor after its developer declined to commit to exclusively using union labor. The project was never built. 'This is the first time I have seen a CEQA reform really have a chance to make a difference,' Selna said. Union representatives contacted by the Chronicle were reluctant to speak on the record. But the general sentiment was that not all were neutral about the provisions of the reform. In San Francisco the laws won't make a huge impact because the majority of infill housing developments already take advantage of state programs that exempt them from CEQA review. The problem in the city remains challenging market conditions. Nonetheless, Mark MacDonald of DM Development, one of the city's most prolific buildings over the last 12 years, said that the streamlining bills have been a game-changer, cutting at least a year off the approval process — and sometimes more. 'In San Francisco, best case you are looking at 18 months and worst case you are looking at years, or never,' he said. 'It's certain and it's fast and that is why S.F. has tens of thousands of units entitled. If market conditions were different we would be building a lot of housing now. That time will come.' The new laws were spearheaded by two Bay Area housing reform advocates, Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. But by making the state budget contingent on the reforms' passage, Newsom employed all his political clout in what was for him an unusual foray into the legislative process. In a statement after he signed the measures, Newsom called them 'transformative' and 'the most consequential housing and infrastructure reform in recent state history.' Sam Oliker-Friedland, executive director of Institute of Responsive Government, agreed, calling the new laws 'one of the most important housing reforms in a generation.' But environmentalists, who said CEQA is not to blame for California's housing crisis, predicted that relaxing the law will provide a gaping loophole for developers willing to damage the environment in pursuit of a profit. Bradley Angel, of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, said its reform comes 'under the false guise of promoting affordable housing' and weakens an 'incredibly important' tool for advocates to 'challenge bad decisions that pose a threat to public health.' 'Any weakening of CEQA will make it easier for dirty industries to pollute communities,' he said. Longtime environmental law and land use attorney Stu Flashman agreed. 'They are telling untruths and they are telling them on purpose. The fraud is: if we get rid of CEQA, we get much more affordable housing,' Flashman said. 'It's a minor factor in the cost of housing in California.' Flashman credits the law with preventing a Chiron biotech manufacturing plant from encroaching on a residential neighborhood in Emeryville in the 1980s. 'The city of Emeryville was going to approve it under a negative declaration,' said Flashman, referring to a determination under CEQA that a proposed project will not have a significant negative impact on the environment. Flahsman, who lived two blocks away from the planned project, was part of a lawsuit against the city to thwart the massive development. A settlement between the parties required the city to conduct a full blown environmental impact analysis for the project. The plan ultimately unraveled. Flashman is as certain today as he was then that Emeryville was 'the winner of that fight.' 'There is still biotech going on in the city, but it's not manufacturing. It's much more contained. Part of the area (where the plant was planned) later on became Pixar Studios,' he said. 'Development still happened, jobs still came, but the risks of building a huge biotech plant weren't there, and other (growth) happened instead.' Flashman referred to the present attempt at reforming the law as 'horrifying,' The fact that CEQA legal process is 'complaint based' has long meant that the more urban the location, the more vulnerable a developer is to being challenged in court. That means that the 100-acre subdivision in an exurb often flies through the approval process while the 100-unit apartment building next to a rail station gets bogged down, and often killed, in appeals. 'If you don't have any neighbors, if you are building in a green field, a place that is by definition the least sustainable, then you are going to have an easier time with CEQA than if you build in a place where people already live,' said Sonya Trauss, who founded the YIMBY movement in 2015 and is the executive director of the group YIMBY Law. As the housing crisis has tightened its grip on the state, pressure to make building housing easier has ratcheted up. Still, instead of major reforms, lawmakers over the last few years took a piecemeal approach — carving out so many projects for exemptions that critics have called it 'Swiss cheese CEQA.' But the bills Newsom signed Monday grant broad exemptions to CEQA for homes and other buildings in already developed areas. The list of projects that are now exempt includes mostly categories that would hardly be seen as environmental scofflaws: childcare centers, food banks, farmworker housing, health clinics, advanced manufacturing sites, and infill housing complexes less than 85 feet. And the list of exemptions is not exactly random. From a food bank in Alameda to a plan to add 34 bike lanes in San Francisco to farmworker housing in downtown Half Moon Bay, the list includes types of projects that have been targeted by opponents using CEQA. As he was failing to meet his goals for building new housing, Newsom tried, among other things, forcing cities to rezone for bigger buildings and denser neighborhoods and punishing towns that blocked development. But those steps didn't work, leading to Monday's drastic actions. Trauss attributed CEQA reform passing with such a lopsided vote to the fact that so little housing is being built at the moment. She compared it to the years after the Great Recession when San Francisco lowered affordability requirements with the support of groups normally on the opposite sides of the political spectrum. 'This is a similar moment,' she said. 'People are surprised that politics lined up to facilitate homebuilding without doing all these exactions for labor or affordability. It makes sense. We are not seeing applications, stuff is not being built. When things dry up that much everybody starts to realize what an emergency it is and they are more open to solving the problem.' Trauss said the CEQA reforms 'really zero in on where the action is.' 'It's definitely the new environmentalism,' she said. Melissa Romero, policy advocacy director for California Environmental voters, disagrees, predicting that public health and community safety will suffer under the new laws. 'The quiet but dangerous rollback of California's core health and safety protections paves the way for industrial projects to move forward without proper review and creates a long list of exemptions from endangered species habitat protection,' Romero said.
