Category: Homelessness
Posted inEconomy & Business, Homelessness, Media, Neighborhoods

A look at life along 6th St.

by Shawn Gaynor

This piece was produced as part of a project sponsored by The Bold Italic. Sixth Street at Market is one of San Francisco’s most well known intersections, yet one of the least understood. People from all walks of life cross paths there, but most don’t intermingle. The neighborhood is well known for its gritty liquor stores, strip clubs, and SROs, yet the landscape is changing dramatically with pioneering restaurants, cutting edge galleries, and revitilization efforts taking hold. To get a better sense of what the intersection is really like, The Bold Italic decided to stay a while — for 24 hours in fact, and got their experiences on video as well. Have a look at a day in the life on Sixth Street.

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Posted inCensus, City Hall, Homelessness, News

Census methods could provide lift to hidden homeless

by T.J. Johnston

The 2010 Census may address an old problem in dealing with San Francisco’s homeless population by getting an accurate head count. The city’s homeless figures have ranged between about 6,500 and 8,600 people in the last decade, but the real number is anybody’s guess. The sketchy knowledge of who is living on the street has been a big impediment to perennial attempts to solve the crisis.

Posted inHomelessness, Housing, Social Justice

Shanty towns rise in the Central Valley as poverty levels climb

by Thea Chroman

Fresno, Calif. has the highest levels of concentrated poverty in the nation. In some neighborhoods, nearly half of all residents are living below the federal poverty line. Over the past year, many of those poor residents have slipped out of housing completely. Now shanty towns are springing up along the railroad tracks, an image that recalls shanty towns of a different era: the so-called Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. KALW’s Thea Chroman reports.

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