9/17/2023 0 Comments Art fibonacci spiral![]() Mental illness and substance use are clearly troubling pieces of the puzzle, as is the terrible job we do helping people re-establish themselves when they come out of our jails and prisons. That’s not to say that there isn’t also a crisis of mental illness on our streets, or that substance use isn’t a problem. Those facts are shameful and should change both the narratives we tell ourselves about the 171,000 people homeless in California and how we fix the crisis. Native Americans are also over-represented in our homeless population. “The sad thing is that in those seven years, no one ever asked me why or how I became homeless,” Hancock told me.Īnd like so much of our inequality, race is a big factor - Kushel found that more than a quarter of those surveyed identified as Black, while only 6% of Californians overall are Black. She remained homeless for seven years until she was able to apply for early Social Security at age 62. But eventually she wound up on the streets, two weeks before Thanksgiving in 2009. Her 12-year-old son went to live with his football coach, and she began sleeping in a storage unit where she was keeping the remnants of her lost life. She ended up losing that property, too, when she couldn’t pay off a loan against it. She and her son moved into her mother’s home, but within a few months, her mom died of pancreatic cancer. She lost her job as an administrative assistant at a nonprofit after pointing out a financial discrepancy, she said, and filed a wrongful termination complaint.īut losing her job started that spiral that ended up with her losing both her properties. She’s a member of the lived experience advisory council for the study.Ĭalifornia Column: Killed for shoplifting snacks and a Sprite: San Francisco, Walgreens and an ugly legacyĪ security guard in San Francisco shot Banko Brown, a transgender Black man, exposing how the city’s Black community suffers under the pressures of poverty and racism.īefore becoming homeless in 2006, Hancock, who has a psychology degree from UC San Diego, owned both a home and a rental property. ![]() “What people need to know is there are professionals on the street,” DeDe Hancock told me. ![]() That makes obtaining and keeping permanent housing an ugly game of musical chairs, as the report puts it, in which too many are left standing when the music stops. ![]() For every 100 extremely low-income people in California, defined as making less than 30% of area median income, there are only 24 units of affordable housing available. We have come to the point of income inequality that if you are older and unable to work, homelessness is a real threat throughout the Golden State. As much as we want to see the average homeless person as a drug tourist dropping into too-progressive cities for the good fentanyl and lax laws, as is the narrative in San Francisco, or someone whose mental illness makes it impossible for them to live unaided, the truth is simpler - and much more devastating: As Californians age, they are being priced out of housing. If that doesn’t kindle at least a bit of fear and empathy in your heart, you’re either a mogul or a trust fund baby who has never struggled to pay the bills. ![]()
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