More than 200 people participated in San Francisco Public Press’s one-day symposium and workshop that explored bold and creative ideas to solve homelessness in the Bay Area. The event, “Solving Homelessness: A Community Workshop,” was held on Jan. 25 at the Impact Hub in San Francisco’s Mission District. Participants included local residents, policy makers, housing advocates, architects and city planners, and homeless men and women.
Even San Franciscans accustomed to hearing complaints about soaring housing costs were taken aback when Fiona Gray declared that she might be forced to leave the city.
She is, after all, a cheery-faced Mission High School student still living at home with her parents.
Sitting at a dinner table with her father, James Gray, and other Bay Area residents, Fiona was glum about what the present crisis in housing spells for her future. Many classmates are homeless and depend on free school meals. Homelessness, in effect, had become “normalized” at Mission High, she explained.
While daily newspapers across the country battle for their lives, a scrappy little ethnic newspaper in San Francisco's Japantown is discovering new ways to survive. It is the Nichi Bei Weekly, and it's become my poster child for the special role that ethnic news media can play in their communities.
