Uber, Lyft Drivers Demand $28 Minimum Hourly Wage During Rally At San Diego Airport And More Local News
Speaker 1: 00:00 Good morning. It's May 9th I'm Deb Welsh and this is San Diego news matters. Rideshare drivers are holding strikes across the country. I head of Uber's expected debut as a publicly traded company. KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman tells us Elvis strike played out in San Diego. Speaker 2: 00:17 Drivers are demanding a $28 per hour minimum rate. They were out urging people to join them in boycotting Uber and Lyft despite calls for a boycott. There were a number of rideshare drivers out picking up passengers. We caught up with Uber and Lyft driver John Wagner as he was dropping off passengers at the airport. Speaker 3: 00:34 People that used to do it part time and had a subset, had a, you know, substantial second income. That's not happening anymore. A lot of drivers are really, they're, they're, they're struggling. A lot of drivers are struggling Speaker 2: 00:45 and the statement to KPBS Uber's has drivers are the heart of their service and they cannot succeed without them. Uber says it's looking at waste to improve the driver experience, which includes more consistent earnings. A lift spokesman says driver's hourly earnings have increased 7% over the last two years and on average drivers earn over $20 per hour. Lift also says it's working to improve how to best serve drivers. Matt Hoffman Kpbs News, Speaker 1: 01:11 a new pilot program in San Diego is giving drug addicted, homeless people a choice to accept treatment instead of going to jail. KPBS health reporters, Susan Murphy tells us county and city leaders are joining forces to help people get to the root of their problem. San Diego prosecutors ends. Police have created an alternative to being arrested for homeless people with substance addictions. Instead of being locked up, they can avoid prosecution if they agree to treatment. San Diego City Attorney Mora Elliot says the program has three goals, one to turn lives around to it saves taxpayers one point $5 million a year on time spent by police attorneys, the courts and jail staff processing the low level drug offenders and third, to reduce recidivism, allowing police officers and prosecutors from the city attorney's office to focus on other public safety priorities. People who accept treatment will receive counseling and case management services. At a detoxification center in downtown San Diego, operated by the mcellister institute, Susan Murphy Kpbs News, the city of San Diego is taking a step toward tackling homelessness. KPBS reporter Prius three there says it's asking developers for help mirror Kevin Faulkner announced eight city owned properties will be made available for affordable housing. Together they can support nearly 200 permanent supportive housing units with subsidized rents and onsite access to social services. Greg block is a spokesman from the mayor's office. Speaker 4: 02:41 It's really for our city's most vulnerable residents. Um, it's, it's a lot of homeless individuals. It's people with a disability, mental health issues, people who just can't live on their own without those supportive services, without an ongoing housing subsidy. Speaker 1: 02:55 The properties are located in six of the city's nine council. The city plans to issue requests for proposals from developers this summer. The winning proposals will be presented to the city council in the fall. Priya there k PBS news, California budget negotiations, and the home stretch today as Governor Gavin Newsom releases his updated spending plan as a capitol public radio. Has Been Adler reports. The state is flushed with cash, but Newsome is trying to lower expectations. Speaker 5: 03:26 When former governor Jerry Brown released his final budget in January of 2018 and he warned that California's next governor would inherit a state on a fiscal cliff Speaker 6: 03:36 south. There is darkness, uncertainty, decline and recession. So good luck baby. Speaker 5: 03:43 But the economy is still strong and Gavin Newsome is working toward constantly new programs like universal health care and full day kindergarten. Still Newsome sounded a lot like brown last week as he warned lawmakers not to get over exuberant. Speaker 7: 03:56 Jerry Mason said it a little too early. Uh, the skies are getting darker and the horizon, uh, but I would be remiss if I didn't say this guys are darkening on the horizon and we better prepare for that rainy day. Speaker 5: 04:09 Even so Newsome has already said his revised budget. We'll expand child care funding and proposed sales tax exemptions for diapers and tampons at the state capitol. I'm Ben Adler, Speaker 1: 04:19 the home sale market in San Diego County. He did up in April. KPBS. As Sally Hickson has the latest numbers from the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors, and the data indicates sales of single family homes increased by 9% compared to march and attached homes like condos increased by 7% in April. This comes in contrast to recent news of lagging home sales. Industry experts say buyer demand is growing this spring and competition is heating up. However, sales of San Diego homes were still down compared to April of last year. The median price of a detached home ticked up 4% in April. Compared to the previous month, though prices have attached homes remained the same. The median price of a detached home last month in San Diego County was $655,000 Sally Hixon Kpbs News Mexico's president says he wants to redirect foreign aid. The United States gives his country to combat drug trafficking. The president says he wants to use that money for economic development in southern Mexico and Central America from terrorists reporter Jorge Valencia. As the story from Kj Zzz, Mexico City bureau, Speaker 6: 05:29 Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is referring to an aid package known as the [inaudible] initiative under the United States has given one point $6 billion to Mexico over the past decade to fight drug trafficking and implement border security in a press conference. Lopez Obrador says it's not working out gay. Yeah, we don't want cooperation for the use of force. He says we want cooperation for development. Speaker 1: 05:58 Lopez or other has said he wants to invest in southern Mexico and Central America, so people will have jobs and fewer reasons to migrate to the U S in Mexico City. I'm Jorge Valencia. After years of complaints, the Pentagon is trying to reform the way it manages the movie process for military families. The current system is plagued by delays, lost shipments, theft, and lack of accountability. Carson frame reports for the American Home Front project. Speaker 8: 06:26 Do you want to come read a book? Andrea Cocho and her family are finally settling into their new home at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. After a difficult move last summer, the army transferred conchos husband from a base in Kentucky and paid to move all of the families possessions to their new home. But things got off to a rocky start. Cocho says the company assigned to pack the household, showed up late and did a careless job. The corners of the boxes were like bulging. My husband's a medic so we actually put it, we only had medical tape in the house, but I put medical tape on top of their packing tape cause it was just not sticking to the boxes. After the shipment left Kentucky, it took months for it to get to the cat shows in Virginia. A trip that normally takes about 10 hours. The items changed hands repeatedly with four companies responsible for packing, trucking and warehousing them. Speaker 8: 07:17 By the time they arrived, they'd been damaged to the tune of about $4,000 every box was smashed. There was water damage. There is mod, like our wedding photo or TV. Everything was shattered. Military families have long complained about the poor quality of their moves. Last August one spouse circulated a change.org petition pushing Congress to hold moving companies accountable. It went viral gathering more than a hundred thousand signatures that forced the military to rethink its approach. General Steven Lions' heads, US transportation command or trans comm, the part of the Defense Department responsible for household moves. He says there were too many offices involved and that makes it hard for the military to manage movers and there's little quality control to make sure companies with spotty records don't keep getting work Speaker 9: 08:05 today. If you were to look at the way we manage this program and the department completely diffused, completely decentralized, every service is running her own thing. It's there's no enterprise approach. A carrier can be suspended over here working over here. Speaker 8: 08:19 Now Trans Comm wants to hire what it calls a single move manager by the summer of 2021 it's a private company that would build networks within the moving industry and oversee contracting. The Canadian and UK military's already use programs like it. Rear Admiral Pete Clark of Trans Comm says, the current system is so complex and overregulated that movers often don't want to take part. He says that's why there's a shortage of quality movers during peak seasons. The primary premise is that the single move manager who will be an industry expert, we'll remove the barriers for entry that the government put in place, but the change worry. Some advocates, Kelly Raska of the National Military Family Association says she's not sure which problem trans comm is trying to solve. Speaker 10: 09:05 The most common complaint that we're hearing is a quality issue too. Few transportation providers, a lot of broken items, and that the claims process is overly burdensome, so I'm not exactly sure how outsourcing the management is going to solve all of the other problems. Speaker 8: 09:30 Roscoe says military families weren't adequately consulted about the changes and they're concerned that the military has so few specifics about a program that's supposed to start soon. Andrea Cocho says the stakes are high for fixing the problem because bad moves are more than just an inconvenience. They're affecting the military's mission. I know personally multiple people that were like, okay, we're just going to get out of the military after this term because of the move. So then you're losing your soldiers. The single move manager system is still in its infancy in June. The Defense Department plans to get bids for moving in logistics companies. The military still needs to work out a lot of details, but expects the system will do a better job getting service members possessions to their new homes safely. This is Carson frame reporting. This story was produced by the American home for a project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veteran's funding comes from the corporation for public broadcasting. Thanks for listening to San Diego. News matters. Get More Kpb as podcasts at k pbs.org/podcasts.
