Posts Tagged ‘san francisco chronicle’

Citing recent research that shows a link between soda, obesity, and soaring health care costs, Gavin Newsom announced last week that he intends to introduce legislation that will charge stores a fee for selling soda. How much? What drinks exactly will be targeted? Where will the money go? No one knows all that stuff for sure; the San Francisco Chronicle reports that when Newsom first breathed of the idea in 2007, the money was supposed to go to his Shape Up San Francisco program. Now, who knows? May we suggest using it to fund more Sunday Streets days?

The beverage industry traditionally fights like a tiger against taxes; we’ll see what ends up coming of Newsom’s plan. Meanwhile, potent evidence on the side of cutting down on the soda suckage was uncovered by the UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research that convinced Newsom to take a stand: adults who drink a soda or more a day are 27 percent more likely to be obese than those who don’t, and 41 percent of kids under 12 and 62 percent of teens drink at least one soda every day. Yoinks!

Incidentally, Newsom is right in the zeitgeist: President Obama himself is in favor of taking a look at a tax on sweet drinks.

A story in the San Francisco Chronicle last weekend makes a very good point: building a dollhouse with your kids can be equal parts science lesson and architecture appreciation primer. Build out the house structure and your child learns principles of engineering and construction; getting the lights on provides a primer on electricity; creating bedspreads and curtains teaches newbies to sew. And certainly after a child glues together her own house, she’ll better appreciate traipsing around Bay Area neighborhoods to ogle the Victorians, Arts & Crafts homes, and other gorgeous architectural styles.

Want to get started? Stoke your children’s interest with a pair of upcoming shows: The CHAMPS Miniature Dollhouse Show & Sale in El Sobrante this Friday and Saturday, 9/5-6, and the 33rd Annual Good Sam Show Showcase of Miniatures in San Jose, 9/20-21.

The Chronicle also has great links to the cream of the crop of local miniature stores, but if you live in San Francisco and don’t feel like a drive to San Carlos or Novato to visit these places, you can find decent miniatures at The Hobby Co. in San Francisco, out on Geary.

By the way, when you read the Chron article, don’t miss the related feature on Stockton miniature maker Connie Sauve, whose gateway drug miniature project was a dollhouse she built as a kid with her father. See if you don’t get a little choked up as the article describes how happily the two still collaborate on their tiny interiors. Man, I’d like to have a relationship like that with my kid when she’s a grown-up. See you at the hobby shop.

If you’re in the nauseous trimester of pregnancy, you may want to stay far away from last weekend’s San Francisco Chronicle story, European nations offer incentives to have kids. Because as you’re looking down the barrel of a two-week maternity leave, followed by multiple years of ceding most of your salary to keep your kid in a crappy daycare, you’re definitely going to puke.

Concerned about declining birth rates, countries such as Sweden and France offer up lengthy maternity leaves, government-subsidized daycare, cheap health care, tax breaks and other sweetmeats to couples who breed.

In France:

Mothers with three children can take a year off of work - and receive a monthly paycheck of up to $1,180 from the government to stay home. Families get subsidized public transportation and rail travel and holiday vouchers.

and in Sweden:

Fathers and mothers are entitled to 18 months paid leave from the government. There is also subsidized child care and flexible work hours to accommodate working families.

and in Great Britain:

In 2007, the government extended paid maternity leave from 26 to 39 weeks. The measure also allows fathers up to 26 weeks of unpaid paternity leave.

Contrast that with the United States, one of only two industrialized countries where maternity leave is not guaranteed by the government. Instead, leave is left to the employer’s discretion, and they don’t have to offer squat. Subsidized daycare? It exists, but in such a substandard form that only the truly desperate would choose it. Flexible work hours and paternity leave? Don’t make me laugh.

It’s enough to make this U.S. mom want to emigrate.

If you have a kid in the city, you’d better be rich, or just get used to renting. According to a fascinating article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Exodus of S.F.’s Middle Class,” the median price for all houses in the city is a sickening $790,000. A source estimates the yearly income needed to buy a house in San Francisco to be in the neighborhood of $200K.

Do you know who can make $200K and afford a $790,000 house? Two people making excellent full-time incomes. You know who can’t? Parents that cut their working hours to take care of the kid(s). The Chronicle story agrees:

The social consequences for a city where moderate- and low-income families can’t get by are manifold. Many believe it’s the primary reason San Francisco has the fewest children per capita of any major metropolitan area in the United States. In 2006, a group of Potrero Hill parents concerned about declining public school ranks surveyed families that had left San Francisco to find out why they had done so. Fifty-three percent cited the schools; 70 percent blamed housing costs.

For most of the decade, San Francisco Unified School District has lost an average of 800 students per year, which has meant losing an additional $4 million in state and federal funds each time.

“So we offer less for kids in terms of programs and classes,” said Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education. “It definitely hits us hard.”

So you shell out an insane amount of money monthly to live here, and if you want your kid to get a great education, you have to shell out even more to pay for private schooling. No wonder people split for Redwood City and Pacifica.

Got a community project that needs an infusion of cash, or just a grand plan you can’t bankroll? The San Francisco Chronicle has a line on a local agency that distributes hundreds of thousands of dollars in “Parent Action Grants.” The money comes from a pool of $564 million raised by Proposition 10, which increased taxes on cigarettes by 50 cents a pack. SF gets about $9 million to spend, about $200,000 of which is handed out to average Joes and Janes by First 5 San Francisco, an agency charged with improving the lives of kids aged five and under.

And apparently, says the Chron, which takes a rather chiding tone, First 5 isn’t uptight about the grant programs having some widespread impact. Examples of some of the projects funded by First 5 San Francisco: “‘Multi-Family First Time Camping Experience’ included a camping lesson and overnight trip to Big Sur for six families” and “‘Couples Travel and Learn Together’ included an overnight stay at the Four Points Sheraton in Pleasanton, where couples from Chinatown took marriage workshops. It also included $250 in Target gift cards.”

Nice! The grants aren’t based on income, like many social programs, so just about anyone can get them — a relief for parents like me, who in most other cities would be well-off, but in San Fran are just scraping by. There’s a reason why families have fled our city in droves, and it’s not that we don’t like foggy afternoons and Victorians. As the Chronicle article notes, “Children younger than 18 made up 22 percent of the city’s population in 1970, compared with just under 15 percent in 2006.”

Find out more about First 5 San Francisco funding opportunities at its website, first5sf.org. Hey — maybe this is the way I can get my dreamed-of organic garden started in the blighted patch of city-owned land in my neighborhood!