“Can’t Get Well in a Cell”: Decarcerate Sacramento Scores a Community Win As Jail Expansion Is Put On Hold

by Cathleen Williams, Homeward Street Journal

In May 2024, the police got a call reporting that a man was lying outside an EV charging station with his head on the curb. When the police officers pulled up and got out of their car, they tried to get the man to move. He whispered, “Help me, help me…ambulance.” The man’s voice was so weak it is barely audible on the officer’s body-cam footage,

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“Look, There’s Nowhere Else to Go”: Inside California’s Crackdown on Homeless Camps

A tent is in the center of the frame. In front of it is what looks like a white dollhouse, laying flat on the ground. The image is in Black and White

by Marisa Kendall and Katie Anastas, CalMatters

It’s been eight months since the U.S. Supreme Court fundamentally changed how cities in California and beyond can respond to homeless encampments, allowing them to clear camps and arrest people  for sleeping outside — even when there’s nowhere  else to sleep. 

The July ruling in the case Grants Pass v. Johnson upended six years of protections for unhoused people.

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The City Sets Drug Raids in Motion, Raises Concerns of Human Rights Violations and Rise in Overdoses

by Lupe Velez

Mayor Daniel Lurie is delivering on his promise to address the overdose crisis through well coordinated criminalization efforts, much to the worry of drug policy reformers and harm reduction advocates. Throughout his campaign last year, he was vocal about the fentanyl crisis, framing overdoses as the most pressing issue his administration would confront. He stated during his inaugural speech, “Widespread drug dealing, public drug use and constantly seeing people in crisis has robbed us of our sense of decency and security.” He has since passed the Fentanyl State of Emergency Ordinance through the Board of Supervisors,

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Mental Health Patients are People, Too. I Wish the Psychiatry Profession Feels the Same Way.

by Jack Bragen

My first psychotic episode was a risk to life and limb, my biggest test up to that point, my family’s big test and a precursor to what was to come in the succeeding 43 years and running. 

In some respects, a second or third psychotic break isn’t as hard as the first. When I had my first extreme psychotic episode, I had no notion of what was happening to me.

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Humanitarianism and Commitment to Families in the Community from San Francisco/ Humanitarismo y Compromiso con las Familias de la Comunidad de San Francisco

by Andrea Bulnes Huane, Maritza Salinas, Helen Merlo, Maria Zavala and Veronica Aguilar

Contine desplazándose hacid abajo para ver en Español

Our hearts felt sad and very sorry to hear so many cases of homeless families with various problems of depression, anxiety and even mental imbalance. This situation is terrible, so many children with worry in their souls and hearts so fragile and innocent that instead of thinking about playing or socializing at school,

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