San Francisco, CA
Curbside EV charging in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO – New curbside chargers for electric vehicles are in place in San Francisco, as part of a program to bring innovators to San Francisco called Yes SF.
Pilot Program
What we know:
On Friday, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the cutting-edge technology took place at 55 Fillmore Street near Duboce Park.
“I’m really happy to be the first one to use this service,” Mario Landau-Holdsworth, a San Francisco EV owner, said as he plugged in a cable to charge his Chevy Volt.
The two chargers in the pilot program are built by the Brooklyn-based company It’s Electric. The company provides people with their own cable for their EV to plug into a curbside charger. That is an important piece of infrastructure for EV owners who don’t have a garage.
“I was an EV early adopter, but the challenge is if you don’t have a garage, you can’t charge your car at home,” Landau-Holdsworth said.
“I’ve been emailing SFMTA trying to get these installed and finally, after five years, it’s happened,” Adam Gill, another San Francisco EV owner, said as he plugged in his Tesla.
“The goal right now is to see what works in San Francisco and then the long-term goal is to scale by the hundreds,” Tyrone Jue, Director of the San Francisco Environment Department, said.
Grant money
This pilot program is part of Yes SF, a larger citywide public-private partnership which offered 14 innovation grants in 2023. The Yes SF program aims to pave the way for environmental start-up entrepreneurs to bring their green technology solutions to San Francisco.
Tiya Gordon, Co-Founder & COO of It’s Electric received one of the grants.
“They helped us move through all the right doors of all the right offices to speak to the right people. They really held our hand,” Gordon said.
The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce opened a Yes SF headquarters earlier this year at 220 Montgomery with a workspace and café.
“It’s a partnership between the Chamber of Commerce, Deloitte, Salesforce, Citibank. We work very closely with the city of San Francisco on this,” Emily Abraham, the SF Chamber of Commerce Yes SF Director, said.
Abraham says eleven of the 14 innovators have deployed their products in the city over the past year.
This week, Yes SF announced a second round of awards, with one dozen more innovators sharing in a $1-million fund.
“The hope is that they’ll use price-funding to hire up, open space, expand in San Francisco. And that’s a big point of this location here too,” Abraham said.
Successful model
The World Economic Forum is also a partner and says Yes SF is so successful, they want to replicate the model in other cities and countries.
“It’s exceeded expectations,” said Jeff Merritt, World Economic Forum Urban Transformation Director. “We’ve now built out a sustainable innovators network so that we can provide a lot of support to entrepreneurs from around the world who want to come to San Francisco to not only set up shop but deploy their sustainability solutions.”
“We announced in January this year in Davos at the World Economic Forum to scale this globally,” Merritt said, noting the plan is to expand the Yes SF model to a Yes Cities program in Bangalore, India and a city on the East Coast within the coming years.
San Francisco, CA
Maria Isabel Is a Masterclass in Mariscos and Moles
San Francisco first came to know chefs Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz through their pop-up Istanbul Modern, and later through their breakthrough Presidio restaurant Dalida. The duo’s success is grounded in their take on Eastern Mediterranean food, which they made a conscious decision to champion 10 years ago.
Fast-forward to 2026, and now Laura is taking on a personal project of her own, with Sayat by her side, placing foods from Mexico’s Guerrero and Sinaloa center stage at Maria Isabel. It’s a refreshing menu that combines both Mexican and local ingredients, through the lens of the Ozyilmazes cooking backgrounds.
Reservations are released on OpenTable 30 days in advance, but Laura confirmed that they do take walk-ins depending on space. Smaller parties or solo diners might have better luck sliding in, thanks to the counter in the brighter, “Maria” portion of the restaurant.
The cocktails from consulting bar director Evan Williams are always worth a glimpse, whether at Dalida or at Maria Isabel. They’re well-balanced and have incredible depth and technique behind them. That being said, the team sourced wines from woman-led wine brands such as LOTIS Wines and Amevive Wine, if you’re looking to explore past the usual selections you’ll see elsewhere.
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco considers closing some permanent supportive housing
In San Francisco, homeless advocates are expressing concern as the city considers potentially closing some of its permanent supportive housing sites. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, homeless service providers reported that the mayor’s chief of health and human services met with housing providers last month that the city was working on a list of potential buildings to be closed.
Multiple homeless advocates told NBC Bay Area they had heard about this proposal and the general approach by Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office to reexamine how the city uses permanent supportive housing.
“This is something that’s been discussed for a few months at this point,” said Christin Evans, a former San Francisco Homeless Oversight Commissioner and current small business owner in the city.
Advocates describe permanent supportive housing (PSH) as a more stable and long term option for people experiencing homelessness, providing a place to live that is directly connected to the health and social services a person needs when transitioning out of homelessness. San Francisco currently has more than 9,000 site-based permanent supportive housing units.
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s press secretary, Charles Lutvak, shared a statement on Thursday, noting, “… our administration is prioritizing tools to get people struggling with addiction into treatment and the path to stability.”
“Permanent supportive housing is a critical one, but we need to make it work better,” Lutvak continued, noting the city is spending $300 million a year while also facing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal cuts.
Lutvak also said it is not determined yet whether the city will be closing permanent supportive housing beds in the coming months.
Still, the conversations so far are enough to have advocates worried.
“Every housing unit you get rid of, you’ve got additional homeless people on the streets,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director with the Coalition on Homelessness.
Friedenbach said there are currently thousands of people on the city’s waitlist to get into permanent supportive housing.
“Permanent supportive housing does work. It has been studied to death, and it is the primary resolution of homelessness that has the highest level of success,” she added.
This conversation about permanent supportive housing units is unfolding as the city already faces a 643 million dollar budget gap. But advocates argue, while housing is expensive, it will cost the city even more to have unhoused people in the city who are disconnected from a place to live or support services.
“We’re cutting really essential services for our most vulnerable san Franciscans, and its actually going to harm our recovery as a city,” Evans said.
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco tops US housing market as homes sell far over asking, report says
The average San Francisco home sold for nearly 90% over the asking price in March, according to Redfin.
The city is now the most expensive metro area in the country.
Artificial intelligence is driving much of those costs, as companies grow and hire, with many requiring staff to work in person.
Housing inventory, on the other hand, isn’t keeping up.
NBC Bay Area spoke with Arrian Binning, an agent with the Binnings Team at Christie’s San Francisco, who said the city is expensive but worth the investment.
“San Francisco is one of the best markets in the world,” Binning said. “I’ve seen supply constriction benefit property owners, so when you’re a property owner in a market that has scarce inventory but also is an engine of growth, that’s kind of the trifecta in terms of investing your hard-earned dollars into a new home.”
San Francisco bumped San Jose out of the top spot.
In San Jose, the median home price in March was more than $1.46 million, about what it was a year ago.
NBC Bay Area’s Kris Sanchez has the full report in the video above.
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