In a California Watch investigation released today, Rick Jurgens reports on a Texas company that is aggressively pursuing hundreds of Californians in an effort to collect second-mortgage debt on foreclosed homes. To understand the article and the firm’s aggressive collection methods, you must first look at the origins of the mortgage crisis. We do just that with a React & Act guide on the California Watch website. Click here for an explainer, glossary of terms, guide ......

Some of San Francisco's homeless young adults will now have a place to call home. The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation and Larkin Street Youth Services announced on Monday the completed renovation of the Aarti Hotel, which will house homeless at-risk young adults between 18 and 24 years of age. "It allows us to more than double the number of youth we serve," Larkin Street executive director Sherilyn Adams said. "There ......

A celebration is being held Thursday to mark the opening of a new low-income housing complex in San Francisco's Mission District. Casa Quezada, located at 35 Woodward St., near Duboce Avenue and Mission Street, is named after Eric Quezada, the former executive director of Dolores Street Community Services and a longtime affordable housing advocate who passed away last year. The building, which was used for supportive housing in the 1990s and early 2000s, had been ......

State Attorney General Kamala D. Harris unveiled the California Homeowner Bill of Rights Wednesday, a series of proposed laws aimed at shielding homeowners from fraudulent and unfair mortgage practices.The bills would prevent banks from dual-tracking — negotiating a loan modification with a homeowner at the same time it conducts a foreclosure process; force lending institutions to maintain a single point of contact for homeowners instead of passing customers from one person or ......

When people ask me what my column is about, I tell them my agenda is always the same: to present something new that I think is interesting and worth having a public discussion about. Well, my latest column has certainly started that discussion — and then some. I wrote about a growing quandary: as more and more wealthy people live in San Francisco, should they be eligible for rent control? After ......