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Crosscurrents

Daily news roundup for Tuesday, April 5, 2016

"Galapagos sea lions," by Flickr user Derek Keats/Used under cc license/Resized and cropped
http://bit.ly/1RWnKzI

Here's what's happening in the Bay Area, as curated by KALW News:

Doctor fighting S.F. diabetes epidemic backs soda tax // SF Chronicle

“When Dr. Dean Schillinger started his residency at San Francisco General Hospital in 1991, practically every other patient he saw had AIDS. Now just about every other patient has diabetes.”

“Forty percent of the general medicine practitioner’s patients have diabetes, and an additional 25 percent have prediabetes. But unlike the city’s battle against AIDS, there aren’t big rallies in the streets demanding more funding for diabetes research. Nobody, according to Schillinger, really cares.”

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San Francisco And Beyond: Evictions Seen As National Crisis // SFist

“Headlines and protests remind us daily that San Francisco is in the midst of an eviction crisis — the Rent Board tells us that between March 1st, 2015 and February 29th, 2016 there were 2,134 evictions, a 36 percent increase to a six-year high. But our sad state of affairs might stand as an extreme example of a nationwide eviction epidemic.”

“As LAist wrote just two days ago, evictions to our south were skyrocketing as 1,000 rent-controlled units were removed from their city's rental market in 2014, almost three times as many as were removed in 2013, with evictions from similar apartments doubling in the meantime.”

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San Francisco Tech Firms See Workers Flee From $4,500 Rents // Bloomberg

“When automation-software company executive David Nichols and his wife were preparing to start a family last year, he learned that the rent on his San Francisco office was set to jump 50 percent. So he picked up and moved to Portland, Oregon.”

“The technology-jobs boom that’s made San Francisco one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S. is starting to taper off as it becomes too pricey for the workers. That’s led some companies to open offices in places like Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles to draw in-demand software engineers who want a similar quality of life at a lower price.”

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Bay Area Jobs Become ‘Softer’ // Govtech

“Move over factory workers. Make room for coders.”

“The Bay Area job market has climbed to record heights in recent months, much as it did during the dot-com era. But the shift in demand for tech and computing skills has created a very different economic landscape for workers.”

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California's new minimum wage expected to boost Bay Area automation firms // Mercury News

“The state's new minimum wage law, signed into law Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown, is expected to give a boost to Silicon Valley's burgeoning robot and automation industry as businesses seek to replace increasingly expensive workers.”

“With wages rising and technology advancing and becoming cheaper, agriculture, restaurants and hotels are expected to turn more to automation. It's an unintended consequence of a law designed to improve the lives of lower-paid workers struggling in pricey California.”

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Wayward sea lion might have brain damage from domoic acid // SF Gate

“A wayward sea lion named “School Daze” who peeked his nose into traffic Monday morning on Highway 37 in Sonoma County was successfully herded into a pet carrier, officials said.”

“The creature had evidently wandered out of Tolay Creek near Sears Point about 9:45 a.m. — the same location a 900-pound pregnant seal waddled onto the roadway in late December and needed to be tranquilized with a heavy sedative after an hours-long standoff with authorities.”

Crosscurrents