Street Spirit is an independent newspaper in the East Bay dedicated to covering homelessness and poverty from the perspective of those most impacted. Est 1995.
Street Spirit is an independent newspaper in the East Bay dedicated to covering homelessness and poverty from the perspective of those most impacted. Est 1995.
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It is absurd that the Downtown Berkeley Association, representing the wealthiest property owners in town, is taking public money to pay a private patrol to tear down the posters of poor artists, activists and community groups. We’re paying them to tear down our posters — and rip up the First Amendment.
Just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas, the City of Berkeley is turning its back on the Department of Justice and HUD guidelines and embracing more anti-homeless laws. This new slate of anti-homeless laws will be considered at the City Council meeting on the evening of Tuesday, November 17.
Where is a person who attended Santa Cruz High 15 years ago and who is now broke and troubled and living on the streets supposed to sleep tonight? What purpose is served when an unsheltered, impoverished person gets a citation for sleeping outside? Is that having any positive impact on homelessness?
On August 6th, 2015 the DOJ released a statement of interest expressing opposition to the criminalization of homelessness in a Boise, ID anti-camping case. More recently, HUD released its guidelines for “Continuum of Care” consortiums vying for a share of the $1.9 billion in homelessness assistance funding. They will now require applicants explain how their communities are combatting the criminalization of homelessness and giving preference to applicants who provide evidence of their policies. The actions of these two federal agencies are especially welcome at a time when more and more laws criminalizing homeless people’s right to exist in public spaces are being passed every day throughout the country.
The City of Berkeley has blown off decades of opportunities to listen to its citizens and has opted for big developer, corporate, and university perspectives every time. Berkeley citizens have no reason to trust city planning processes that are designed to grease the path for their own exploitation.
Berkeley needs truly affordable housing, City Councilmember Kriss Worthington said. It is a strong indictment by Worthington directed at members of the Berkeley City Council who act in the interests of developers and wealthy landlords against the needs of people with low or modest incomes.
HUD just added a high cost to the growing federal pressures against cities that criminalize homelessness. Cities that enforce anti-homeless laws risk losing $1.9 billion nationwide from federal homelessness funding. For the first time HUD is asking applicants to “describe how they are reducing criminalization of homelessness.”
At Urban Shield’s vendor expo, a hundred companies sell military grade weapons and surveillance equipment to local police departments. As much as organizers claim Urban Shield is about saving lives, the focus on guns and death is overwhelming. City agencies should not participate in an exercise that militarizes the police.
There was just a sense that Archbishop Hunthausen was a holy person. He really stood for what he believed and he took a lot of flak for it. He stood for people who were disenfranchised, and he stood for people who were poor. He stood for an end to the arms race.
"The feminism that I believe in is a defense of all life. Not only women, not only the earth, but all together. It’s all reweaving the web." — Shelley Douglass
“We are reclaiming our history—remembering all those founding mothers, all those women who kept the movement going without credit for so long, all the contributions we women have made and undervalued.” — Shelley Douglass
Nobody buys the hype about insanely tall buildings somehow saving the whales or solving the housing crisis. Insanely tall buildings full of luxury housing fill up with insanely wealthy people who rarely wonder why a town which once had a thriving black community now looks like a white country club.
