On a hot summer day, Cindy Jones, her boyfriend Peter, and their two dogs, Hercules and Mudders, were awoken from their sleep to the sound of bulldozers. However, it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill construction. Instead, City of Fresno crews were arriving to remove their tented encampment under the highway where they lived. Given only ten minutes’ […]
Tag: affordable housing
A Tale of Two Cities and Their Homelessness Crises During COVID-19
New York and San Francisco have quite the reputations for their homeless populations, but there is one key difference between these two cities. Although New York City has a similar rate of homelessness to San Francisco, only 5% of homeless New Yorkers were unsheltered in 2020. On the other hand, nearly 75% of San Francisco’s […]
Revising the Community Reinvestment Act Under Biden: Advocacy, Targeted Reinvestment, and the Reversal of Redlining
Manilatown was supposed to be an asylum for Filipino men immigrating into San Francisco in the ‘20s and ‘30s. It wasn’t formed by resident choice, however, but rather necessitated by neglect and violence — beatings of Asian immigrants, redlining, and broader trends toward gentrification ultimately forced these Filipino immigrants into Manilatown where they managed to […]
Who’s at People’s Park? Mutual Aid Networks on the Rise!
In April of 1969, the University of California purchased the site that is now People’s Park. Located just blocks away from the University of California, Berkeley campus, People’s Park has been a community center for refuge, recreation, and political activity since its very origin. Today, the University wants the Park gone more than anything […]
Eden in Crisis: Orange County in Denial
The image that most Californians have of Orange County is a sprawling suburban community, framed by orange groves. That is true to an extent. First of all, OC barely has any original citrus trees anymore. The groves were removed when OC started making space for its iconic suburbs. And since then, it has continued to […]
SB50’s Failure: Lack of Leadership Amidst Regional Divide
Why Can’t California Build? It is no secret that California has a monumental and expanding housing crisis on its hands. In fact, for Californians experiencing it, it has become glaring and inescapable in daily life. And yet, on Thursday, January 30th, landmark housing bill SB-50 failed to pass in the California State Legislature. This marks […]
Mobilizing to Fight the California Housing Crisis
In the Bay Area, one can see the effects of the California housing crisis in the slew of RVs and mobile homes parked on the streets. The residents of these mobile homes are much more resistant to the change offered than expected, indicating the need for different ways to address the issue. The housing crisis […]
Zucchini-gate or Bust: Berkeley’s Battle for Affordable Housing
Standing at the podium in front of the mayor and eight City Councilmembers, cameras zooming in, lights blurring, voices fading to a dull murmur in the background, one citizen was brave enough to brandish an anti-housing weapon no one had ever thought to wield: a zucchini. At the Berkeley City Council meeting on the night […]
Housingcare: How to Solve California’s Affordable Housing Crisis
As a mother of two children and wife to a steadily employed husband, Brianne Reynolds considered herself to be a typical, hard-working American. In addition to taking care of her kids during the day, she worked the night shifts at a local grocery store as a custodian in order to pay the bills. In what […]
Bay Area Private Transportation
You might have seen them– sleek, white buses with tinted windows, cruising up and down Highway 101. Or perhaps you noticed one along Market Street, pulling over to accept a herd of young professionals juggling cups of fair-trade coffee and MacBook Pros. Or maybe, if you live further south, you’ve been able to see one […]