KQED: Frontline Communities Gain New Air Quality Sensors

An air-quality sensor hangs in Boeddeker Park in San Francisco's Tenderloin

KQED, August 22, 2020

Impoverished SF Communities Get New Air Quality Sensors — Just in Time for Smoke-Clogged Skies

Brightline Defense launched the Brightline Air Quality Monitoring Program admist Northern California Wildfires and the COVID-19 Pandemic to protect frontline communities in San Francisco.

The 21-sensor network provides free local air quality monitoring across four San Francisco neighborhoods: South of Market (SoMa), Mid-Market, the Tenderloin and Chinatown. The network serves low-income tenants of Single-Room Occupancy buildings (sometimes referred to as “SRO Hotels” or simply “SROs”). SROs were originally intended as temporary housing for blue-collar and immigrant workers. This building stock is more than 100 years old and are extremely vulnerable to bad air quality events from wildfires since they do not have any air filtration infastracture.

Gail Seagraves lives in one of those SRO hotels in the Tenderloin, on Turk Street.  She says tenants there live on the margins and are often "invisible."

"We have to fight for every single thing," Seagraves said. "This is really exciting for us that tenants are involved, and someone wants to listen to them."

"It just makes us feel like somebody cares," she said.

“ On Thursday, Brightline Defense Executive Director Eddie Ahn climbed ladders and clambered onto rooftops in San Francisco's Tenderloin, Mid-Market and South of Market neighborhoods, working to install more than a dozen air-quality sensors near SRO hotels, and some parks — like Boedekker Park in the Tenderloin — where SRO tenants frequent.”

Brightline’s network can be accessed at tinyurl.com/BrightlineAQ