Fresno is two cities, like most American cities. It’s a city of haves and have nots. It’s near the bottom of the list in America for income equality. Some of the haves are employers who fail to pay [...] Continue Reading
Homeless
Shelter Emergency—Homeless Lives Matter
“I could care less about Disney on Ice when there are people [not] waking up, dead on the streets. I am the one who has to drive through Tower seeing bodies lying there, lifeless, because the warming [...] Continue Reading
Refugios de Emergencia: Las Vidas de Las Personas Sin Hogar Importan
“No podría importarme menos ‘Disney on Ice’ cuando hay personas que amanecen muertas en las calles. Yo soy el que tiene que conducir a través del barrio Tower de Fresno para ver cuerpos tirados allí, [...] Continue Reading
Excremental Change: Public Toilets Needed Now
A livable city should have an adequate number of public toilets. Urban planners plan for public spaces, pedestrian access, good transit and parks, but they almost never plan for providing public [...] Continue Reading
Letter to the Editor
Solving the Homelessness Problem I will be 82 years old soon and am not in the best of health, and things seem to be getting worse instead of better. I want to think positively, but have only a [...] Continue Reading
Newsom Suspends $1 Billion in Funding for Homelessness
On Nov. 3, calling the current approach unacceptable, Governor Gavin Newsom immediately halted more than $1 billion in Homelessness, Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grants to local [...] Continue Reading
Remembering Unhoused People Who Died on the Streets
In the mid-1980s—at the start of the country’s current wave of homelessness—advocates in Philadelphia and New York City set aside one day a year to remember the people who died homeless there. They [...] Continue Reading
Lack of Toilets for Homeless a Public Health Crisis
By age 40, Jack Sim had gotten rich off the construction industry in Singapore. (No, life “didn’t end” for him then.) At 41, he founded the restroom association in that sovereign nation-state that [...] Continue Reading
Fresno Residents Urge Leaders to Improve Housing
Thanks to money from the American Rescue Act of 2021, Fresno officials have targeted $40 million to improve housing in the city. But many residents, especially in less affluent parts of town, are [...] Continue Reading
Is the Fresno Police Department above the Law?
Our modern culture in America has long castigated and ignored the poor and unhoused. Many people just want the unhoused to go away, disappear or become [...] Continue Reading
HART-less in Fresno and How the City Spent $68 Million in Two Years
The City of Fresno recently presented a workshop and report titled “Homelessness Update.” The first page of the report is a photograph of the mayor and several City Council members posing proudly with [...] Continue Reading
One Fresno. Not.
Fresno’s mayor and City Council have coined the term One Fresno even though, according to a 2019 Urban Institute report, Fresno ranks No. 59 of 59 cities in California for economic inclusion and [...] Continue Reading