| Dear Neighbors and Community,
Beginning December 6, San Francisco, along with Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara counties and the City of Berkeley, is preemptively implementing California's Stay At Home restrictions in an effort to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, which continue to surge, and prevent hospitals from being overrun across the region. This order will last until January 4, 2021.
We know our small businesses have been hurting this year and are taking another hit with the new stay-at-home order. We have listed newly announced resources that small businesses can access for support in this newsletter.
In this update:
- COVID-19 Small Business Support
- COVID-19 New California Stay-At-Home Updates
- COVID-19 Testing
Please stay safe and be careful. The COVID-19 pandemic is still among us so we must remain vigilant and remember to do the following:
- Stay home as much as possible if you are able to.
- Wear a face covering: including masks, scarves, bandanas, anything that covers your nose and mouth. If you are working in an essential space with other people, you are required to wear a mask.
- Maintain 6 feet of social distancing
- Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap
- Only mingle with people in your household.
- Avoid touching your face, eyes, nose or mouth
- Do not dispose your used face covering/gloves/PPE in the streets, please properly dispose in a trash bin
- If you are an essential worker or believe you may be exposed to COVID-19, get tested: https://www.sf.gov/GetTested
Our office remains open and responsive remotely. My staff will periodically checks our voicemail at 415-554-7670 daily. You may also email my office at waltonstaff@sfgov.org.
Please stay safe and healthy!
In community,
Supervisor Shamann Walton
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COVID-19 Small Business Support
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San Francisco will extend the deadlines for businesses to pay their annual 2020 and 2021 Unified License Fees in order to provide more flexibility as a result of the economic impact caused by the pandemic. The Unified License bill accounts for a large majority of the licensing fees a business must incur in order to operate. Analysis by the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector shows that 69 percent of businesses that must pay a Unified License Fee have $2.5 million or less in gross receipts. Additionally, locally owned businesses that either hold or have applied for a Shared Spaces permit are eligible to receive up to $5,000 in reimbursement from the City, which will help businesses that have been forced to close outdoor operations as a result of the recent Stay at Home Order and prepare for an eventual reopening. Up to $1 million in funding comes from the Shared Spaces Equity Grants Program, which prioritizes minority-owned businesses and businesses that advance the City’s equity goals.
San Francisco is also launching the San Francisco Latino Small Business Fund, which includes $3.2 million to expand the San Francisco Hardship and Emergency Loan Program (SF HELP) that will provide zero interest loans of up to $50,000 to approximately 80 small businesses. The funds are intended to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on Latino-owned businesses and small businesses in neighborhoods that serve the Latino community. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the City has identified nearly $24.2 million in grants and loans for more than 1,150 local small businesses and their employees.
The Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) will conduct a lottery to identify the businesses invited to formally apply for the loan. Priority will be built into the lottery to small business located in neighborhoods with a large Latino population. Outreach will be conducted in multiple languages including in Spanish to businesses in partnership with community organizations that serve the Latino community. Small businesses interested in applying for the San Francisco Latino Small Business Fund can visit link.oewd.org/latinofund. The deadline to apply is January 14, 2021. Small businesses may also email for inquiries at FondoLatinoSF@medasf.org or call 415-612-2014.
While many Shared Spaces locations have been required to close as a result of the surge in COVID-19 cases locally and across the State, the Shared Spaces Equity Grants Program offers financial support to reimburse business owners for costs associated with building and operating Shared Spaces location. This support will also help business owners in the process of opening a Shared Spaces location in anticipation of future re-openings once this current COVID-19 surge is better controlled.
Priority for the Shared Spaces Equity Grants is given to locally-owned, minority-owned businesses that advance the City’s equity goals, including women-owned businesses, immigrant-owned businesses, legacy businesses, and businesses in established cultural districts or that serve a largely minority clientele. Applications are now open and there is no deadline to apply. Grants will be issued on a rolling basis with applicants notified every two weeks about the status of their applications. Interested businesses can apply at sf.gov/get-help-paying-your-shared-space-improvements.
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San Francisco and the other Bay Area Counties are opting into the Regional Stay at Home Order that Governor Newsom announced Thursday, December 3, for regions with less than 15% capacity in ICU beds. Although San Francisco and the Bay Area have not yet met that threshold, the City in partnership with Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara and City of Berkeley, is preemptively implementing these restrictions in an effort to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, which continue to surge, and prevent hospitals from being overrun across the region.
As of 10 p.m. on Sunday, December 6, the following applies for San Francisco:
The following activities will be required to SUSPEND operations until further notice:
- Personal services. Establishments offering personal care services including hair and nail salons, barbers, tattoo, piercing, estheticians and massage must cease operations, including both indoor and outdoor operations.
- Outdoor dining. Restaurants and any other establishments offering meal service, may only operate for delivery or take-out. Eating and drinking on the premises is prohibited.
- Outdoor museums, aquariums, and zoos. Outdoor installations or exhibits associated with museums, aquariums, or zoos may not allow entrance to visitors. Outdoor botanical gardens and historic sites may remain open.
- Indoor gyms. Limited 1:1 personal training within gyms and fitness centers that was allowed under the previous health order must cease, but may take place outdoors (see below).
- Drive-in gatherings. Drive in theaters and other performances delivered in a drive in context must cease.
- Outdoor playgrounds. Public playgrounds including climbing structures and walls, slides swings, sand pits, etc. must close.
- Outdoor family entertainment centers. Outdoor family entertainment centers including skate parks, roller and ice skating rinks, batting cages, go kart racing and miniature golf must close.
- Open-air bus and boat operators. Operators of open-air busses offering sight seeing and other tour services and open-air boat excursions, including leisure and fishing expeditions, must cease operations.
The following activities will be required to restrict their operations:
- Low Contact Retail. Service oriented retail such as dog groomers, electronics repair services and shoe repair services can operate in a curbside drop off context only.
- Retail. All retail establishments such as shopping centers, hardware stores, convenience stores, equipment rental, and specialty shops, and including standalone grocery stores, must reduce capacity to 20% (down from 25% and 50% in the case of grocery stores) and implement a metering system (see below).
The following activities will be required to proceed with modifications in place:
- Hotels and lodging. Hotels may only accept reservations from essential workers travelling for work purposes or to support critical infrastructure including accommodations for isolation and quarantine purposes. If an individual who is not travelling for essential purposes makes a reservation, it must be at least for the number of days required for quarantine. The persons identified in the reservation must quarantine in the hotel or lodging facility for the entirety of the time required.
- Small gatherings. Small outdoor gatherings, must limit themselves to members of 1 household with a maximum number of 12 people (down from up to three households or no more than 25 people). Face coverings must remain on at all times and no eating or drinking is allowed.
- Outdoor gyms. Outdoor gym or fitness center activities as well as outdoor fitness in-person group classes (such as boot camps, dance, yoga, tai-chi, etc.) are limited to groups of 12 people, including personnel, and must maintain strict distance and face covering requirements. Running groups are prohibited.
- Youth sports. Youth sports activities affiliated with a childcare program, Out of School Time program, or other organized and supervised youth sports program may continue operating outdoors only without competitions or spectators and with strict social distancing and face covering requirements in place.
- Indoor activities open to public. Any establishment allowing members of the public to access indoor areas, including shopping centers, grocery stores, corner stores, financial services, hardware stores, pharmacies, etc. must establish a metering system to monitor capacity thresholds and ensure capacity does not exceed limits. In effect, a business will need to assign a specific staff person to monitor the number of people in the establishment and ensure that the 20% capacity threshold is maintained at all times. This system must be in place as soon as possible and no later than Sunday, December 6th at 10 p.m. when the amended order becomes operative. Additionally, special hours should be instituted for seniors and others with chronic conditions or compromised immune systems.
- Adult Recreation. No/low contact adult recreational activities such as golf, tennis, pickle ball, and bocce ball may continue outdoors but must be limited to participants within the same household.
Additional information about which businesses and activities can operate in San Francisco and what modifications are required at this time is available at sf.gov/step-by-step/reopening-san-francisco.
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COVID-19 Testing & Flu Vaccines
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D10 COVID-19 FREE Testing Locations
- Alemany Farmers Market
- 100 Alemany Blvd, Walk-through & drive-through
- Monday. 12:30pm to 4:30pm
- Tuesday to Thursday, 8:30am to 4:30pm
- Friday, 8:30am to 12:30pm
- Bayview Opera House
- 4705 3rd Street
- Every Monday & Thursday, 8:30am to 4:00pm
- Southeast Health Center
- 2401 Keith Street at Armstrong
- Mondays to Fridays, 8:00am to 5:00pm
- Sunnydale Hope SF
- 1652 Sunnydale Ave
- Tuesdays, 2:00pm - 6:00pm
- Thursdays, 10:00am - 2:00pm
- Potrero Hill Health Center
- 1050 Wisconsin Street
- Mondays to Fridays, 9:00am to 12:00pm, 1:30pm to 3:30pm
- NOW Hunters Point Pop Up
For more information and to schedule a free COVID-19 test: https://datasf.org/covid19-testing-locations/
Flu Vaccine & Prevention
Why a flu vaccine is more important than ever in 2020:
- It could save your life.
- It protects the vulnerable members of your community.
- Getting COVID + flu at the same time = trouble.
- It will ease the burden on the healthcare system.
- It's FREE!
The flu vaccine protects everyone’s health. When you are vaccinated against flu, you protect yourself and lower the chances of infecting others, including people at high risk of developing potentially serious flu complications.
For those with insurance, a flu vaccine is widely available without cost to the patient as a preventive service from their regular doctor or most pharmacies. Call your doctor, clinic or pharmacy to schedule your flu shot in advance. To find a flu vaccine at a location near you, visit the Vaccine Finder.
For those without health insurance, DPH and community clinics will be offering opportunities to get a free flu shot. For more details and a list of San Francisco locations that offer free or low-cost flu vaccinations, visit www.sfcdcp.org/flushots.
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City Department Updates & Resources
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Clerk of the Board of Supervisors
Since COVID-19 visited the City, many calls have been focused around needed services to alleviate issues pertaining to COVID-19. To assist in our own constituent services, we created an Interactive Map with extensive COVID-19 City services that has quite a bit of helpful information for our residents. We are excited to unveil the Map and extend it to you for application in your newsletter or for your constituent use. The map is routinely checked and is updated by our staff and is live on our Board of Supervisors website here.
Additionally, as we work to induce public engagement, we have created a newsletter that provides information representing services that can be found in the Office of the Clerk of the Board and actions taken by the Board of Supervisors as a whole. We expect to send out our newsletter updates 4-6 times a year or as needed, informing the public on how to access our services and make their communities even better by learning where the pressure points are to engage with the Board of Supervisors.
On behalf of the staff in the Clerk’s office, I present to you our Interactive Map and our premiere newsletter issue, and we look forward to your feedback. The preferred browser is Firefox to see photos or use the web version in Chrome. A special thank you to John Tse, Wilson Ng, Eileen McHugh, Richard Lagunte, and West Coast Consulting.
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Can't pay your Muni fare? SFMTA can help!
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit people hard. Millions of people across the country have lost their jobs or lost their incomes. When times are tough, even paying for the bus can be a challenge. During times like these, the SFMTA has programs to help get you where you need to go, like Free Muni for Youth, Seniors and People with Disabilities, the Lifeline and Clipper START reduced fare program and our Essential Trip Card.
For more information: https://www.sfmta.com/blog/cant-pay-your-fare-we-can-help
Starting December 1, Muni fares will be enforced again. |
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The goal of the campaign is to promote individual actions that San Franciscans can take to support the City’s recovery from COVID-19. The campaign is divided into three parts: Holidays at Home, Shop and Dine in the 49, and Help Your Neighbors in Need, all of which are central to supporting San Francisco’s economic recovery.
For more information: https://sf.gov/we-will-recover
- Holidays at Home offers guidance about travel, gathering, and other holiday activities as well as safe options for San Franciscans to engage in over the holidays.
- Shop and Dine in the 49 offers information about how to support local restaurants and businesses during the holiday shopping season.
- Help Your Neighbors in Need offers information and access to San Francisco-based volunteering and philanthropic activities during the holidays and beyond.
Guidance documents:
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District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton | 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Pl, San Francisco | Room 282 Office Line: 415.554.7670 | General Email: waltonstaff@sfgov.org
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