Homelessness
The city and the Federal Small Business Administration (SBA) are offering low-interest loans and technical assistance to business owners, nonprofits, homeowners and tenants in the vicinity of the fire. According to Economic Development Manager Aliza Gallo, anyone can apply but must show proof that the fire negatively impacted them physically or economically.
Oakland’s six-month program to provide fundamental public services and housing resources at its first sanctioned homeless encampment is two-thirds complete. Yet with less than two months to go, the city is still left with lots of work to reach its goal.
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.’”
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.
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 (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.
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…
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.
“Dogtown Redemption,” a documentary film shot over seven years in West Oakland, follows the lives of three local shopping cart recyclers.