Homelessness

Formerly incarcerated people rebound into job market

For Carmen Garcia, the end of a prison sentence was the beginning of a new set of problems.

“The biggest obstacle for me was continuing to stay in school, because the halfway house wanted me to get a job right away, a full-time job,” she said. “And I remember a case manager said to me, ‘You need to take this job, whatever job they offer you, because now you have a criminal record and you’re not going to be able to get another job. Don’t worry about education, because that’s not going to help you.’”

An RV, needles, Narcan: Street-level services in an opioid epidemic

O’Neil is using the training device that comes with each set of Evizo auto-injectors, which deliver a potentially life-saving dose of naloxone, a drug that counteracts the effects of opioid drugs. This includes both prescription drugs like hydromorphone, hydrocodone, and oxycodone, and street drugs like heroin and fentanyl.

Gabby Falzone translates the study of trauma

When she was 12, Gabby Falzone and her family became homeless in New York. At 15, she ran away. She moved between squats and stints with her family, but said she suffered too much abuse from them to stay for long. At 17, she moved to Boston, where she said she survived by exchanging sex for rent. At 19, she got into a friend’s car and drove to San Francisco. Within a month, she said, she was shooting heroin. “I…

The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program, 50 years later

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was founded on October 15, 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The party was a political organization that agitated for greater rights for Black people in the United States. Seale and Newton captured the attention of the country (and of law enforcement) through their tactic of openly carrying rifles and shotguns while observing police officers in their community.

BOSS graduates celebrate changing their own lives

Stay the course. That was the message given to those sitting in the front row of Oakland’s city council chambers Friday night, when friends and supporters gathered to watch 29 men and women graduate from the BOSS Career Training and Employment Center, in a ceremony that acknowledged the significant hurdles they had overcome to gain employment while under the supervision of the Alameda County Probation Department. BOSS, which stands for Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, is an East Bay non-profit which…

New oral history map shows Oakland eviction data

After a year of collecting eviction data and personal accounts, members of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project unveiled their latest oral history map and urged supporters to take action by protesting and raising awareness of evictions.

BOSS and Albany High School students host homeless resource fair in Oakland

BOSS staffers joined hands with Albany High School students to help some 1,000 people address a variety of health and social needs at their first homeless resource fair held in Oakland. Based on an event the organization holds in San Francisco called the Homeless Project Connect, executive director Donald Frazier said he decided it was time to try the project in the East Bay.