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<p>Home prices have soared so high that affording housing is a problem not just for the poor but for middle-class families as well, experts say.</p> <p>"The run-up in single-family home prices is crowding out solidly middle-class households from buying," says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution.</p>

San Francisco In my apartment building people of various income levels are stacked on top of each other. The architect and the teacher occupy one-bedroom apartments on the floor above me. They are considered middle-class and, for that matter, so am I. An affluent, well-traveled couple lives in a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor. A poor Chinese immigrant family of five is crammed into the converted storage room where half a dozen bicycles were once kept, their children often turning the foyer into a makeshift playground strewn with plastic toys. This is typical of the way we live in...

In urban centers around the country, rental prices are soaring. Cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City routinely report double-digit increases that make it nearly impossible for residents to make ends meet. But it’s not just dwellers of those metropolitan areas who are having a hard time paying the rent. According to a report out this week from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than half of renters in America are considered to be financially burdened by their rent, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income just on where they live. High...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — There’s no one at this new San Francisco vegetarian restaurant to take your lunch order or tell you when its ready. Instead, you’ll depend on machines for a fully automated dining experience straight out of an episode of The Jetsons. Welcome to Eatsa, a new futuristic fast food chain opening Monday in the Embarcadero (121 Spear Street) offering quick, healthy food for about $7 — a deal compared to other lunch time options in San Francisco. Customers tap their meal selections on an iPad or their smartphone and pay electronically. No cash is taken here....

San Francisco's homeless population plummeted by more than a quarter in the past two years, the city reported Monday, a dramatic change Mayor Gavin Newsom says is a credit to his policies of cutting cash assistance to street people and aggressively moving them into housing with counseling services. San Francisco's new figures are based on a one-night homeless count, taken between 8 p.m. Jan. 26 and about 8 a.m. the next morning. It showed the city now has 6,248 homeless people living on the streets or in jails, shelters, rehabilitation centers or other emergency facilities -- a 28 percent decline...

First, police fatally shot two minority suspects carrying knives. Then transcripts surfaced showing officers using racial slurs in text messages. Finally, a young black woman was shot dead as police tried to pull her from a stolen car. The woman's shooting death Thursday was the tipping point for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who forced Police Chief Greg Suhr to step down after months of mounting pressure. The new chief inherits the daunting task of turning around a troubled department in a city deeply divided by race — and doing it fast. "Reforms, reforms, reforms," acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Longtime San Francisco Giants third baseman Jim Ray Hart has died. He was 74. The Giants announced Hart's death Friday, saying he passed away Thursday in Acampo, California, following a long illness. Hart played 11 seasons for the Giants from 1963-73. He also spent parts of two seasons with the New York Yankees before retiring in 1974.

The Bay Area has one of the nation’s highest rates of car thefts, according to the FBI.Her friends jokingly call it “Boomerang.” Maika Nicholson’s car has been stolen four times, but has also returned four times. “I always come out to make sure it’s there because often times it’s not,” Nicholson said, about her ’97 Honda Civic. “It’s been stolen in San Francisco three times and probably been broken into three or four times, I would say – I can’t even keep count anymore.” This week, her car came back for the fourth time. San Francisco Police found it less...

The resignation comes after police earlier in the day fatally shot a woman in the Bayview DistrictPolice Chief Greg Suhr has resigned from the San Francisco Police Department in the midst of the shooting of a black woman by SFPD officers and other racial tensions, Mayor Ed Lee announced at a news conference late Thursday afternoon. Lee said he had asked Suhr, who has served in the city's police department for more than 30 years, to resign. The mayor appointed Toney Chaplin, former SFPD deputy chief of the Professional Standards and Principled Policing Bureau, as the acting police chief. "The...

SAN DIEGO – The Los Angeles Angels sought out a character reference on Tim Lincecum. They did not need to think twice about whom to call. “They asked my opinion,” said Bengie Molina, “and I gave it to them straight-up.” For all that Lincecum accomplished with Buster Posey, he always talks in glowing terms about Molina as the catcher who shepherded him as he broke into the big leagues, became his friend and support network besides his batterymate, and channeled his talents when he was at the height of his powers. While Molina does not hold an official title with...

Gabriel Bodenheimer could have lost his job when he recently came out as transgender to leaders of a San Francisco Catholic high school. Instead, in what some call a momentous step, the English teacher will remain at Mercy High, fully accepted as a man. The announcement of support by an order of the Sisters of Mercy, which owns and operates the four-year college preparatory school for girls on 19th Avenue, offers a rare policy position on transgender rights from within an internationally respected Catholic order.

Target CEO Brian Cornell says the company isn't backing down from its stance on transgender bathrooms, despite a widespread backlash.

Authorities say 33 people were arrested at San Francisco’s City Hall during a protest calling for the firing of the city’s police chief. Dozens of protesters converged on the building Friday night and clashed with deputies in riot gear. […] The standoff came after five people who are on their 16th day of a hunger strike to demand the firing of Police Chief Greg Suhr were taken to the hospital and their protest camp outside the Mission District police station was packed up. …

When I arrived in Los Angeles on August 22, 1960 with my wife Carol, recruited from Illinois to teach Chemistry, I thought it was perfect, busy and a little scary, but just about the finest place on this planet.  As the years went by and I traveled to other countries that idea was enforced.  “LA had it all,” and I was there for 26 years watching it decay imperceptibly and that would flash on me once in a while. What is it like today?  Here following is a controversial list that has been seen in several publications with no challenge...

Nancy Pelosi Plotting With Mexican President Fox TO STOP DONALD TRUMP May 7, 2016 by Aleister The minority leader of the House of Representatives is now plotting with the president of a foreign country to keep the presumptive Republican nominee from winning the presidency. How is this even legal?The Washington Examiner reports: Pelosi, Vicente Fox plot to defeat Trump, Mexican calls Trump voters lazy drunksLatin America’s toughest critic of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spent 30 minutes with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in Mexico this week plotting to help the Democrats defeat the businessman and give the presidency to...

Animal rights activists circulated photos of the husband and wife team behind Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre eating a burger and keeping freezer full of beefThe California-based husband and wife founders of celebrity-endorsed vegan restaurant group Cafe Gratitude say they have received death threats after it was revealed last week that they are raising, slaughtering and eating animals on their farm north of San Francisco. Matthew and Terces Engelhart, both in their sixties, who opened the first Cafe Gratitude in 2004 and whose celebrity followers have included Gwyneth Paltrow, Beyoncé and Sacha Baron Cohen, countered the firestorm of criticism with...

For my money, San Francisco is the most beautiful city in America. But that hardly matters to residents fighting sky high housing costs, traffic gridlock, and a quality of life that has been declining in recent years. A survey by the Bay Area Council reveals that 34% of residents would leave the city if they could. Surprisingly, those who have moved to the city in the last 5 years are more likely to look for greener pastures. CNBC: "We can whine about this, or we can win by solving our traffic and housing problems," Carl Guardino, president of the...

A San Francisco police officer was arrested and suspended without pay Friday after a months-long investigation into allegations he made “false representations” on his Department of Motor Vehicles confidentiality form, authorities said.Saqib Aslam, 29, of South San Francisco was charged with felony counts of filing a false document and perjury, officials in the district attorney’s office said.Officer Albie Esparza, a police spokesman, said Aslam put down someone else’s information on a DMV INV 32 form. An INV 32, according to the California DMV website, allows qualified persons, along with their spouses and children, to ask for “home address confidentiality on...

Former 49ers defensive tackle and Super Bowl champion Dana Stubblefield was charged Monday with the rape of a “developmentally delayed” disabled woman, the Santa Clara (Calif.) County District Attorney’s office announced. According to the San Jose Mercury News, prosecutors said the 5-foot, 105-pound woman was assaulted on April 9, 2015 during an interview at Stubblefield’s home for a babysitting job. "This was a crime of violence against a vulnerable victim," Deputy District Attorney Tim McInerny said in a statement. "She was looking for a job and she was unconscionably assaulted."

Trump-supporting mortgage banker born in Burlingame, CA. walks through hundreds of violent, masked, profanity-spewing lefties, totally on his own after a recent Trump speech at the local Hyatt Regency near SFO. The tall, suited, brave professional is repeatedly sworn at, jostled, punched, and kicked as he walks along, defiantly. His red Trump hat is repeatedly torn off his head and stolen by pro-immigration activists and racist anti-racists. This is the most violent Trump-related encounter I have ever seen. I believe this is reliable foreshadowing of what is to come and I think THIS is what the tone will be after...