The most recent count of Oakland’s homeless population in 2019 found 4071 unhoused people, an alarming 47% increase from two years prior. In recent reporting, San Francisco Chronicle reporters put faces on those numbers, spending five months shadowing four Oaklanders who lost everything and are now unhoused in the communities they grew up in. Reporter Kevin Fagan will join us to share what he and his colleagues learned about how Leonard “Pumpkin” Ambrose, Delbra Taylor, Derrick Soo, and Gwyn Teninty became homeless after the age of fifty. And we’ll talk with experts about the role healthcare, low wages, and lack of affordable housing play in Oakland’s growing crisis.
Profiles of Oakland’s Unhoused Spotlights Local Residents Who Aged into Homelessness
51:49
"No trespassing" signs and a Moms 4 Housing banner hang on the front of the now fenced off vacant home that Moms 4 Housing activists occupied during a months-long protest which ended in a court ordered eviction, in Oakland, California on January 28, 2020. (Photo by PHILIP PACHECO/AFP via Getty Images)
Guests:
Kevin Fagan, reporter, San Francisco Chronicle
Margot Kushel, director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations; professor of medicine, SF General Hospital
LaTonda Simmons, interim homeless administrator, city of Oakland
Sponsored