Homelessness
Every September, the Alameda County Community Food Bank joins a network of 200 food banks nationwide for Hunger Action Month to promote volunteering, social media activity and advocacy to raise awareness about food insecurity, a term food bank staffers, activists and the government organizations use to mean that people lack access to enough safe, nutritious food to be healthy.
Oakland residents have started a trend to independently fund cabin communities for the homeless.
Early Wednesday morning, city police, BART police and employees from Oakland’s Department of Public Works demolished 21 pallet homes from the curbside homeless encampment on San Leandro Avenue in East Oakland, citing fire hazards.
In West Oakland, volunteers constructed a tiny house village intended for young people.
The jury considering allegations against two men connected with the 2016 Ghost Ship fire reached a verdict on Thursday afternoon, acquitting Max Harris, a former tenant and creative director of the Ghost Ship, of 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter. But after the jury deadlocked, Judge Trina Thompson declared a mistrial regarding identical charges against Derick Almena, the Ghost Ship’s primary leaseholder, who now faces a possible second trial. The fire broke out on December 2, 2016, at a party at the…
A closed downtown Oakland jail could become a new homeless shelter.
Organizers said the main objective of the event was to amplify the voices of people most affected by poverty, and to challenge the notion that the poor are to be blamed for their poverty.
The City of Oakland is working to provide safe sites for homeless living in their RVs and more sanitation services at encampments in an effort to help address the city’s homeless crisis.
Over the years, Nella Gonçalves has become very used to hearing a certain question: “Ew, you work with the homeless? Don’t they stink?” Gonçalves is the deputy director of Beyond Emancipation, an organization that helps foster youth transition into lives as independent adults. Gonçalves meets a lot of very young people in very difficult positions; she said there’s not a single youth she works with who wouldn’t know what it’s like to fear homelessness. Yet, she observed, even though barely…