Tagged With "avoid homelessness"
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1 in 5 L.A. community college students is homeless, survey finds [LA Times]
One in every 5 of the Los Angeles Community College District’s 230,000 students is homeless, and nearly two-thirds can’t afford to eat properly, according to a new survey commissioned by the system’s board of trustees. The study looked at students with unstable housing and ”food insecurity,” which is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as lacking enough to eat to sustain an active, healthy life. Nearly half the L.A. community college students surveyed reported struggling with high...
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2019 Los Angeles Women's Needs Assessment [downtownwomenscenter.org]
By Downtown Women's Center, February 2020 A report on women experiencing homelessness The 2019 Los Angeles Women’s Needs Assessment is a community-based research project developed in partnership with unsheltered and sheltered women in the City of Los Angeles. Expanding on the legacy of six past projects documenting the demographics, needs, and conditions of homeless and low-income women in downtown Los Angeles, this project includes women from a broader geographic swath of the city. [ Please...
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$3 billion state program hopes to improve healthcare for the poor in 18 counties, including O.C. (ocregister.com)
Orange County hopes to get homeless residents into housing – and help them stay there. Riverside County plans to connect former inmates with health clinics and social services. Placer County is opening a respite center where homeless patients can go after they leave the hospital. Those are just some of the pilot projects in a $3 billion experimental effort officials hope will improve the health of California’s most vulnerable populations. The effort is a recognition that improving people’s...
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37th Annual Child Abuse Prevention Symposium Recap
"Speak Out! Confronting the Culture of Child Sexual Abuse and Secrecy" was the theme of Santa Clara County's 37th Annual Child Abuse Prevention Symposium which featured a Keynote conversation with Olympic Gold Medal winning gymnast and current UCLA Assistant Gymnastics Coach Jordyn Wieber. Jordyn, and other athletes and survivors of former USA Gymnastics team doctor and serial child sex abuser Larry Nassar, earlier spoke to a U.S. Senate Subcommittee about a “culture of silence” more...
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5 things to know about LA's big homelessness fix [SCPR.org]
....The numbers are bleak: more than 44,000 people are homeless in L.A. County. Of that, about 30,000 are unsheltered — living in tents, cars and makeshift shelters. Officials have called it a " state of emergency ." They've pledged to find the money to address the problem. They've produced studies to better understand what it will take, and they've asked the public to weigh in . Here are a few things that stand out in the plans: 1. Prevention is a priority. Both the county plan...
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A little hope for a homeless solution: Tiny housing units sprout in the Bay Area (sfchronicle.com)
Nearly two years after a smattering of tiny homes popped up in the Bay Area as a peculiar new way of housing homeless people, the technique is exploding from one end of the region to the other. Nearly 1,000 tiny homes or their close cousins — stackable modular housing units, typically with less than 200 square feet of living space — are being planned in San Francisco, San Jose, Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland and Santa Rosa. Planners say that’s just the beginning. “We’re very excited about...
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A MUST WATCH: Addicts Among Us - a hopeful documentary about ACEs and addiction in Humboldt County, California (YouTube Video)
I want to share this important documentary from Humboldt County with you and encourage you to make the time to watch it and share it with others in your organizations and spheres of influence. It is 52 minutes long, but well worth your time. The associate producer of the video, James Faulk - one of the central interviewees of the film - attended First 5 Humboldt's Town Hall on Adverse Childhood Experiences where the connection between early childhood adversity, mental health struggles,...
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A New Program Helps Foster Kids in Orange County Avoid Homelessness when They Age Out of Public Care [ocregister.com]
By Theresa Walker, The Orange County Register, December 20, 2019 For three years after he aged out of foster care, at age 18, Christian was homeless. During that time, he was hit by a car and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for six months and his speech and memory were affected. Over most of the last year he’s lived at The Link, a homeless shelter in Santa Ana. This week, Christian, now 22, moved into his own one-bedroom apartment, in Tustin. That change is the result of...
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Being homeless during coronavirus adds hardship for California college student [edsource.org]
By Marisa Martinez, EdSource, April 17, 2020 Mornings for student Cristina Zetino at California State University, Los Angeles are as normal as they can be. Before she packs up her things, she checks in with the family that offers her an occasional place to lay her head for the night. The self-described “couch surfer” alternates between three different homes throughout the week while juggling work and classes. Always in her possession are three bags: “One bag for school, one for clothes and a...
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Bill Would Boost Mental Health Counselors At CSUs (capradio.org)
Mental health advocates say anxiety is up among college students dealing with things like debt and the cost of living. That's prompted a push for more counselors at California State University campuses. CSU campuses would be required to have at least one full time mental health counselor for every 1,000 students, under legislation passed by the Senate Education Committee. Few campuses meet that standard now. Jared Giarrusso is with the California State Student Association. He says students...
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Black People Disproportionately Homeless in California [calmatters.org]
By Kate Cimini, Cal Matters, October 5, 2019 Just a few years ago, Yolanda Harraway was living in a tent on the streets of Chinatown in Salinas, an agricultural hub struggling with a growing homeless community. Harraway’s slide into homelessness began when her son was taken from her custody by Child Protective Services. She struggled with addiction and had several felonies on her record, which cut her off from various state and government-funded housing options. She also had a hard time...
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Board of State and Community Corrections Awards $96m In Prop 47 Grants
SACRAMENTO (June 13, 2019) – The Board of State and Community Corrections today approved grant awards from a voter initiative that reduces from felonies to misdemeanors certain low-level crimes and directs state savings to programs primarily focused on mental health and substance-use disorder treatment. It is the second round of Proposition 47 funding approved by the Board, to which voters allocated the bulk of the state savings for rehabilitative grants targeting Prop 47-impacted...
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CA Could Reduce Its Prison Population By 30,000, Says Report (witnessla.com)
A new report outlines strategies the state of California could employ that would reduce its prison and jail populations by 30,000 and save approximately $1.5 billion in prison spending. In 2016, there were over 200,000 people were locked in California’s prisons and jails. According to the report, lowering the incarcerated population by 30,000—by reducing the length of prison time for the majority of inmates by 20 percent—would make it possible for the state to close five prisons. The report,...
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ACEs Science Champion Series: Dr. Angela Bymaster: This Faith-Based Physician Integrates ACEs Science with Healing Arts
Dr. Angela Bymaster, a family physician at Washington Elementary School in San Jose, CA, operates her clinic in a portable unit on the school property.
Because the unit faces students as they are dropped off by their families, she gets to “pick up the kids” before they are sent to the clinic, practicing “upstream medicine.”
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Aiming to Help Homeless, UCLA Residents Practice ‘Street Psychiatry’ (californiahealthreport.org)
New programs begun in the last two years at UCLA include a resident-faculty group focused on community psychiatry, as well as health-system and community mentorships. There are also new clinical electives for psychiatry residents at the Los Angeles County Jail and the county’s Office of Diversion and Reentry . The Diversion office was created by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in 2015 to develop and implement alternatives to the criminal justice system for people with mental illness and...
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America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals. [New York Times]
To live in California at this time is to experience every day the cryptic phrase that George W. Bush once used to describe the invasion of Iraq : “Catastrophic success.” The economy here is booming, but no one feels especially good about it. When the cost of living is taken into account, billionaire-brimming California ranks as the most poverty-stricken state , with a fifth of the population struggling to get by. Since 2010, migration out of California has surged . The basic problem is the...
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Amid affluence, youth homelessness surges in the Bay Area (edsource.org)
The San Francisco Bay Area, with its Teslas, tech start-ups and $3,700 one-bedroom rents, is one of the most affluent regions in the country but also home to nearly 15,000 homeless children. Most of the students are in the urban areas, but they also live in the wealthy enclaves. They're in Menlo Park, they're in the San Ramon Valley, they're even in Ross in Marin County, where the median household income tops $200,000. And they're most certainly undercounted: parents report to schools...
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An opportunity to shape the Children's Bill of Rights in California
The ACEs/Resilient Sacramento community is ideal for providing insightful feedback about the needs of California's children!
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Analysis: Lack of Beds Keeps Homeless on the Streets Longer [thesungazette.com]
By Reggie Ellis, The Sun-Gazette, February 5, 2020 Visalia has the highest percentage of homeless people with highest need in the entire country. The Sun-Gazette reported last week that Tulare and Kings County, where most of the homeless population lives in Visalia, had the highest percentage nationwide of unsheltered, chronically homeless people, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2018 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. Nearly one-third of the...
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As Homelessness Rises in Many Parts of California, Counties Search for Solutions [calhealthreport.org]
By Alyse DiNapoli, California Health Report, July 17, 2019. Many California’s counties reported having more homeless residents this year, according to the 2019 Point in Time surveys, which aim to count the number of people experiencing homelessness on a given night. The surveys are completed once every year or two years depending on the county. San Francisco and San Jose counties reported increases of 17 percent and 42 percent in the last two years, respectively. Los Angeles County...
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California Air Quality: Should You Wear a Face Mask for Wildfire Smoke [nytimes.com]
By Sarah Mervosh, The New York Times, October 28, 2019 With wildfires raging up and down the state of California on Monday, smoke filled the air in many places, ash fell from the sky, and residents were once again left to wonder whether the very air they were breathing was safe. The largest, the Kincade fire in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, nearly doubled in size in 24 hours and was just 5 percent contained on Monday, prompting volunteers downwind in the Bay Area to scramble to hand...
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California bill would allow homeless college students to sleep in campus parking lots [The Hill]
A bill proposed in the California State Assembly would allow homeless community college students to sleep in their vehicles in campus parking lots, according to The Sacramento Bee . The bill is reportedly aimed at combatting California’s increasing homeless problem — particularly among college students — as property values and rent prices soar in the state. The legislation, [ AB 302 ] introduced Wednesday by state Rep. Marc Berman (D), would require the California Community Colleges System...
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California campuses confront a growing challenge: homeless students [calmatters.org]
The dream was always the same, Arthur Chavez says. He was following a bumblebee through a forest, stumbling over puddles and branches. When he caught the bee, he’d find himself onstage, wearing a suit, in front of an applauding crowd. After the third time, Chavez decided the dream was a sign. He quit his job at a Fullerton gas station and enrolled in community college, on his way to a bachelor’s degree. His first semester as a transfer student at Sacramento State, he started participating in...
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California Child Welfare Policy and Progress, Winter Issue [Insight]
The California Child Welfare Co-Investment Partnership Report This issue of in sights provides an overview of the latest legislative developments in California, including data and perspectives on the policy and practice transformation taking place with the Continuum of Care Reform (CCR). Beyond a comprehensive summary of child welfare state legislation, this issue also includes a discussion on the key provisions of the Family First Prevention Services Act. The issue concludes with...
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California lawmakers propose $2 billion plan to aid homeless [OCRegister.com]
SACRAMENTO – California would spend more than $2 billion on permanent housing to help the nation’s largest homeless population, under a proposal outlined by state senators on Monday. The housing bond would be enough to construct more than 10,000 housing units when it’s combined with other federal and local money, estimated Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles. The bond would be repaid with money from Proposition 63, the 2004 ballot measure that added a 1...
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California map shows hot spots of homeless students (edsource.org)
This map shows the percentage of homeless students as reported by California's more than 10,000 schools. To see each school's location and data, click the + sign. In 2016-17, just over 200,000 students, or 3 percent of all students, reported living conditions counted as homeless: motel, shelter, trailer park, car, park, emergency housing or - due to economic hardship - with friends or family. The map's colors reflect the percentage of homeless reported by each school from 0 (green) to...
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Updated Community Health Assessment now available [Humboldtgov.org]
The Community Health Assessment (CHA), a comprehensive overview of the health of the Humboldt County community, was presented at the Board of Supervisors meeting this afternoon. The Humboldt County Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) Public Health report looks at traditional public health measures of illness, mortality, nutrition and physical activity in the community. The CHA also includes data about income, housing status, community safety and access to care, as underlying...
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Updated Data Show Over A Quarter Million Public School Students Homeless
Data on homeless children and youth in California are now available on Kidsdata. Over a quarter million , or 4.4% of public school students, were recorded as homeless at some point during the 2015-2016 school year. Most homeless students stayed with friends or relatives because of loss of housing ( 85% ), and the remainder were in a temporary shelter, motel, or were unsheltered. Unaccompanied Homeless Youth (Point-in-Time Count), Ages 0-17: 2017 Recording homeless students during the school...
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Use-of-Force Incidents Against Homeless People Are Up, LAPD Reports [latimes.com]
By Leila Miller, Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2020 More than one out of three times that a Los Angeles police officer used force in recent months involved a person experiencing homelessness, according to a new LAPD report. During the third quarter of 2019, officers used force on homeless people 217 times, a 26% increase from the same period in 2018 when that number was 172. LAPD homeless coordinator Cmdr. Donald Graham pointed to the city’s growing homeless population and an uptick in...
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Change Package for Advancing Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) in Primary Care Settings
Are you looking for concrete guidance about how to make your primary care organization more trauma-informed? Earlier this year, to help primary care address the impacts of trauma, the National Council for Behavioral Health, with the support of Kaiser Permanente, launched a three-year initiative, Trauma-Informed Primary Care: Fostering Resilience and Recovery . Over 14 months, seven primary care organizations worked with National Council experts to pilot resources, tools and processes,...
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What the ACEs Screening Movement Can Learn from the Healthcare Hotspotting Movement
No brief intervention or short-term infusion of services is a silver bullet that will overcome the long-term harm caused by structural racism, poverty, and multi-generational trauma.
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Where are most homeless from? Locally (Merced Sun-Star)
About 80 percent of the homeless people in Merced County first became homeless while living within the county, and about the same portion still think of it as home, according to a recently completed survey. The survey of 104 homeless people followed a census of homeless conducted earlier this year by Continuum of Care, a coalition of advocates and service providers. Results were released Monday by leaders of Urban Initiatives, a Pasadena-based nonprofit that organizes the Continuum. more by...
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Why California’s rural areas are seeing a surge in homeless youth (edsource.org)
Crystal Willoughby, her five kids and two grandchildren have bounced around the hamlets and hillsides of Lake County for four years, always close to — but never quite — landing a permanent home. They’ve lived in motels, campgrounds, a minivan, shelters, trailer parks and, on some nights, the bathroom at a city park. “It hasn’t been easy, but I try to make the best of it. When we’re sleeping outside, I say we’re on a camping trip and we roast marshmallows and stuff like that. I try to make it...
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Why Yolo County is signing hundreds of college students up for food stamps [ABC 10]
DAVIS, Calif. — More than 1,000 college students have applied for food stamps in the past year and a half at UC Davis, courtesy of focused outreach efforts from both the university and Yolo County. As applications for food stamps grew by hundreds, the number of students actively seeking help grew by thousands. “The amount of students that they [UC Davis] are seeing that are homeless, that are sleeping in their cars, that are using the showers in the locker room, that are food insecure, and...
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Wisconsin state agencies end year one of trauma-informed learning community; goal is to be first trauma-informed state
Here in California, many people think that it’s only liberal Democrats who have a corner on championing the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and putting it into practice. That might be because people who use ACEs science don’t expel or suspend students, even if they’re throwing chairs and hurling expletives at the teacher. They ask "What happened to you?" rather than "What's wrong with you?" as a frame when they create juvenile detention centers where kids don’t fight, reduce...
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With an epidemic of mental illness on the streets, counties struggle to spend huge cash reserves (latimes.com)
When California voters passed a tax on high-income residents in 2004, backers said it would make good on the state’s “failed promise” to help counties pay for the treatment of the mentally ill. After nearly 15 years, Proposition 63 — the Mental Health Services Act — has steered billions of dollars to the counties across the state. But huge sums remain unspent at a time when mental illness has become an epidemic among the homeless population. As of June 2017, $1.6 billion was being held in...
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Workshop on funding for homeless services hosted in Ukiah [UkiahDailyJournal.com]
At a workshop Wednesday in Ukiah, local agencies learned how to apply for a pot of funding for homeless services that typically gets scooped up by larger cities. “In the past two years, we haven’t got a dime of the (Emergency Solutions Grant) funding north of Marin County,” said state Sen. Mike McGuire, (D– Healdsburg), referring to $20 million that is set aside for agencies serving the state’s estimated 144,000 homeless residents by California’s department of Housing and Community...
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Wristbands Connect East County Homeless To Services (kpbs.org)
For the past week, the East County Chamber of Commerce has been giving out wristbands to local homeless shelters and first responders. Their goal is to better connect homeless people to services and resources. People can text "ConnectEC" to 77453, which then gives them options for help covering basic needs such as health and shelter. The idea is to refer them to local resources, like the Crisis House in El Cajon. The East County Chamber of Commerce said they worked with people who are...
Ask the Community
Anyone using MHSA or other funds in innovative ways to address ACEs or trauma?
Question: Please share examples of innovative uses of existing funding to address ACEs and trauma. For example, Mental Health Services Act has a funding category called "Innovative Projects" which might be a way to fund ACEs and trauma related efforts. Are you aware of any CA communities that have found ways to utilize MHSA or other funds in unexpected ways - that have the potential of addressing trauma and ACEs? See below and attached for more background re MHSA. Background: The CA...
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Sexually Transmitted Disease Rates Continue To Rise In California [Cap Radio]
Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are up in California over the past five years, including in places like San Francisco county, where people are contracting chlamydia at nearly twice the rate of the rest of California. Gonorrhea among women is up 47 percent, and there’s a concerning spike in the number of babies being born with congenital syphilis. Dr. Karen Smith, director of the California Department of Public Health, says the rise in homelessness statewide has led to more unprotected sex.
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Shelters, cars and crowded rooms - Housing crisis forces more students into homelessness (edsource.org)
As California's housing costs continue to soar, more and more children like Alison are suffering the severest of consequences: No place to call home. Since 2014, the number of homeless children in California has jumped 20 percent. In the most recently released data, 202,329 young people are living in cars, motels, shelters, on the street or in crowded homes shared with other families. That's just over 3 percent of the enrolled K-12 students, more than twice the national rate, but the actual...
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‘Sicker than the rest of us” — More docs making house calls to people without houses (calmatters.org)
Instead of trying to powerwash the problem away, California’s hospitals, public health departments and homeless service organizations are increasingly sending trained health practitioners into homeless encampments in a quest to improve health outcomes for individual homeless people. The reality of California’s homelessness crisis is that it has a bodycount. Life expectancy for those who are living outside is about 30 years shorter than those who are housed. The median age of death outside is...
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Silicon Valley 'triage tool' calculates the neediest homeless cases [MercuryNews.com]
First, there was a shocking report last spring revealing that homelessness in Santa Clara County cost in excess of a billion dollars every two years. Now, the same firm that calculated those staggering figures has developed a computer model that will identify the most desperate and costly homeless individuals and prescribe cost-saving fixes -- including immediate housing. And because the algorithm, introduced today by a local support group for the homeless, can be employed by any...
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Six children are dead. Could these needless deaths have been prevented? [LATimes.com]
A woman accused of stabbing her three young daughters is on trial in Compton on murder charges. Carol Coronado's husband testified that she'd been "acting weird" before allegedly killing the girls and then stabbing herself May 20, 2014, in the...
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Small wonders: Chico State professor offers lessons in tiny-house villages [NewsReview.com]
From TV shows such as Tiny House Hunters to books such as The Big Tiny, the notion of living a smaller-scale life has large-scale awareness. “People are overhoused,” said Mark Stemen, Chico State professor of geography and planning, noting how the average American takes the same amount of residential space that two generations ago sufficed for an entire family. The popular—and popularized—approach to downsizing is the tiny home that resembles an RV, with comforts of...
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Sobriety program for homeless people yields results in Petaluma [PressDemocrat.com]
Paul Palmer is part of Sober Circle at the Mary Isaak Center (Photo by Beth Shankler) ____________________________ At this time last year, Paul Palmer was going on seven years of being homeless. A methamphetamine addict living along the Petaluma River, he had been in and out of rehab a few times, but it never seemed to work. He mostly kept to himself, staying out of the way of police officers and other homeless people, burrowed deep into the bushes along the river bank on the north side of...
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Solano County launches its ACEs and resilience initiative inviting all to take action
Elizabeth Huntley recalls the day when her family’s life was turned upside down. “One day my mom woke up and she packed up all of our clothes, all five of us…and she took me and my younger sister who had the same father… down to my paternal grandmother’s house…and she left us there. She took my middle sister to a town near Birmingham, Ala., and left her there. She took my only brother and an older sister back to Huntsville and left them at a sister’s house. Then she went back to that housing...
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Solano County's (CA) ACEs initiative, a robust community effort, makes room for input from all
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
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"Someone will contract the virus here:" Meet homeless Californians trying to survive a pandemic [calmatters.org]
By Byrhonda Lyons, Cal Matters, April 30, 2020 The vast majority of people who were unhoused in California before coronavirus swept across the state are exactly where they were. Encampments still line the streets. Shelters feel more like a risk than a refuge. And affordable housing is as elusive as ever. Watch as they capture moments from their everyday lives — and talk about how they struggle to stay safe and healthy under circumstances that have often grown only more hazardous. For the...
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Speaking and training services from a first-hand, tenaciously resilient experience
My name is Rebekah Couch and I am a former teen mother of five children, the youngest child being my only clean & sober pregnancy allowed to remain in my care. I am a survivor of multiple sexual assaults and was afflicted with untreated mental health issues as an adolescent. My destructive journey began with self-medicating and illegal activities in Jr. High and a daily cocaine addiction by the age of fifteen that eventually advanced to methamphetamine abuse. My addiction and criminal...