【Voice of Hope August 14, 2023】
(Voice: Dong Hai / Editor: Si Qi)
Program duration: 3 minutes and 40 seconds
◇ Program summary
1. San Francisco government employees are advised to work from home due to criminal concerns
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recommended that hundreds of government employees telecommute for the foreseeable future in a memo to employees due to public safety concerns outside the federal building in San Francisco.
The 18-story building on the corner of Seventh and Mission streets houses various federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor’s Department of Transportation, and the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The area is believed to be home to open-air drug markets, where dozens of dealers and addicts gather every day.
In May, two men were charged with allegedly conducting a drug trade while the federal building was fully watched by surveillance cameras, according to a June news release from the U.S. Department of Justice’s office.
San Francisco has been battling a drug and homelessness crisis in recent years.
The California Highway Patrol seized more than four kilograms of fentanyl in and around Tenderloin in just six weeks, the California governor’s office said in June. Authorities claimed the drugs were enough to kill nearly three times the population of San Francisco.
2. Amazon restarts plans for new San Francisco fulfillment center
Amazon has restarted the application process to build a 650,000-square-foot fulfillment center on six acres in San Francisco’s South Market, a project stalled in 2022 by a dispute over zoning regulations.
The e-commerce giant originally filed for the project in 2021, a year after buying the site at 900 Seventh Street from Recology for $200 million. The plan was put on hold in 2022 when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an 18-month moratorium on new delivery facilities amid concerns from residents and local unions. After the moratorium, Amazon abandoned a 75,000-square-foot warehouse in Dogpatch but kept the 7th Street property.
With the moratorium expiring next month, Amazon is rethinking its plans to build a massive fulfillment center in SoMa. According to the San Francisco breaking latest news, Daniel Sider, chief of staff of the San Francisco Department of Planning, said the company submitted a conditional use authorization application for the site last Thursday, but did not pay the application fee, so the application materials are incomplete.
3. Report: Only 16% of California households can afford median-priced single-family homes
Buying a home in California has become harder as rising interest rates and scarce inventory drive up prices.
The California Association of Realtors reported Friday that only 16 percent of households could afford a median-priced single-family home in the second quarter, down from 19 percent in the first quarter and 17 percent a year earlier.
Nationwide, more than one-third of households can afford to buy a home with a median price of $402,600, according to the report. The median price of an existing single-family home in California was $830,620 in the second quarter, meaning homebuyers would have to earn at least $208,000 a year to afford a 20 percent down payment and get a 30-year mortgage.
Single-family home prices in California fell 2.4 percent in the year through June, but as mortgage rates rise, homebuyers’ monthly payment costs have soared, hovering around 7 percent.
Homeowners with low-interest loans are reluctant to sell, limiting the inventory for sale. The number of new listings in June was down 29% from a year earlier, according to the Realtors Group.