California has seen a recent nine percent drop in unsheltered homelessness. This statistic may not seem exceptionally significant, but it is nonetheless a massive accomplishment for the state with the highest population of unsheltered homeless individuals in the country. Yet, for the first time in fifteen years, the homeless population has significantly dropped in the […]
Tag: homelessness
San Francisco Fails to Meet the Tenderloin Where They Are At
San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood harbors the weight of the city’s ongoing drug and homelessness crisis, and the City and County of San Francisco has failed to deliver substantial and long-lasting government policies to address the neighborhood’s plight. From police sweeps to coordinated entry, harm reduction to interim shelters, the City of San Francisco has consistently […]
The Supreme Court has Empowered Cities to Crack Down on Homeless Camps
City of Grants Pass v. Johnson In June of 2024, the Supreme Court handed down its most important decision concerning homelessness in decades. In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Court decided that a prohibition on public camping does not violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment. The case concerned […]
Misfit Island: A Familial Lens on Fresno’s Battle Against the Homeless
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’ […]
Mental Illness in California: Catalyst for Crime or Criminal Offense?
California has a worsening homelessness problem. Today, there are over 150,000 unhoused people in the state. Mental illness and homelessness have a bidirectional relationship. Often, people end up on the streets because they are unable to live within the normal confines of society. Homeless people are more likely to face violence and fall prey to […]
California: The Most Over-Hated State
When I first came to Berkeley, I was well aware of the Bay Area and its reputation. Friends and family, both in-state and out, hit me over the head with tales of crime, homelessness, poverty, and stuck-up tech CEOs. Although the last admonishment was warranted, as soon as I arrived Berkeley struck me with its […]
Lessons From The Tenderloin
Ascending the Civic Center / UN Plaza BART escalator, I thought I knew what to expect. As I arose, it was as if an eyedropper picked me up out of my bubble and plopped me into what I perceived to be an epicenter of human misery. People walking like zombies, their eyes seemingly lifeless and […]
Do Progressives Ruin Cities? Analyzing Michael Shellenberger’s Book, “San Fransicko”
One night in late November, as Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season were right around the corner, I logged onto Twitter to catch up on news and the day’s events, a relatively normal routine I do multiple times a day. But what I saw on my feed, and on Trending, was anything but […]
Overdose Prevention Centers: Injecting the Drug Overdose Epidemic with New Solutions
For the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the defining health crisis of our lives. Government agencies rushed to implement effective public health guidelines, the scientific community rallied together to develop a novel vaccine in record time, and the public (for the most part) tolerated intense regimens of masking, quarantining, and testing in […]
A Conversation with UC Berkeley’s Homelessness Outreach Coordinator: The Past and The Future of People’s Park
This interview with UC Berkeley’s Homelessness Outreach Coordinator Ari Neulight was conducted before the university announced a comprehensive housing plan for the current People’s Park residents on March 9th. We hope that a conversation with Mr. Neulight will shed light on the homelessness crisis around the campus and the numerous obstacles that unhoused people in […]