Homelessness
On the morning of Saturday, May 19, Oaklanders will participate in the 7th Annual Walk to End Poverty. The event is hosted by the Alameda County-Oakland Community Action Partnership (AC-OCAP), and is one of many initiatives in Oakland and nearby communities that the partnership is spearheading to combat hunger, staggering unemployment rates, and homelessness.
As the number of homeless and illegal boat dwellers has increased, they say, so has a chronic wave of thefts that has kept marinas on both sides of the Oakland estuary under siege. Meanwhile, they complain, the illegal estuary dwellers are causing a host of environmental problems by disposing of sewage in the water or abandoning their boats, which can leach toxic substances as they disintegrate.
In the Tuesday afternoon sunshine, a line of people formed on 10th Street outside Oakland’s downtown Marriott Hotel while inside, hundreds of volunteers—including Mayor Jean Quan—bustled back and forth in the banquet hall, preparing to serve over 2,000 people at the city’s 20th annual Thanksgiving dinner.
Every Saturday morning, volunteers from North Oakland’s Lighthouse Mosque come to the Rainbow Recreation center on 59th and East 14th Street in East Oakland to give hot food and groceries to people in need.
A small group of Oakland homeowners led by the housing rights group Causa Justa, Just Cause (CJCC), gathered outside of Wells Fargo’s main branch in downtown Oakland Thursday afternoon to publicly propose solutions to the city’s foreclosure crisis.
This September, in an effort to encourage public engagement in the fight against hunger, Alameda County’s Community Food Bank is working with 200 food banks nationwide to promote “Hunger Action Month.”
The Oakland Police Department is reporting that at approximately 12:30 am on Wednesday, a man and a woman who were feeding the homeless on 47th Avenue in East Oakland were shot by an unknown person who pulled up alongside them in a car.
California’s state legislators aren’t the only ones uncertain about Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed cut of redevelopment agency funds. Even though schools stand to gain if lawmakers approve the proposal, Oakland educators worry that taking funds from affordable housing could put more students at risk of homelessness.
Crowded in the back of St. Vincent de Paul’s community center, dozens of people paint an extensive wood panel with a mosaic of images—trees, faces, buildings and flowers. They’re creating a work for display at the center, but these painters aren’t professional artists, they’re low-income and homeless clients of St. Vincent de Paul.