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For years, Gov. Jerry Brown has resisted efforts to spend more money to build affordable housing. As part of his revised budget released Friday , Brown announced what he said was a better solution: making it easier to build homes for low-income residents. In a new package of legislation, Brown is proposing to streamline the permitting process for developers building affordable homes. “Hopefully, the supply is going to bring down the cost,” Brown said. “Otherwise, through subsidies and...

Putting a cold financial price tag on the impact of school discipline practices, researchers have calculated that a 10th-grade California student who drops out because of suspension could end up costing the public $755,000 in lost tax revenue and increased health care and criminal justice expenses over the life of the student, according to a report released Thursday by the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies. The researchers amalgamated decades of studies to produce what they said was the...

What if you spent years in a job gaining valuable experience and honing useful skills, yet every interview or job lead is a dead end? That's the unfortunate reality for many of today's veterans in Orange County. According to a report by the University of Southern California School of Social Work, more than 60 percent of Orange County veterans believe employers don't understand or value their skills, almost 30 percent of post-9/11 vets are unemployed, and three-quarters earn below the...

For years, Gov. Jerry Brown has resisted efforts to spend more money to build affordable housing. As part of his revised budget released Friday , Brown announced what he said was a better solution: making it easier to build homes for low-income residents. In a new package of legislation, Brown is proposing to streamline the permitting process for developers building affordable homes. “Hopefully, the supply is going to bring down the cost,” Brown said. “Otherwise, through subsidies and...

This video is about 2 years old, but I just came across it last week and wanted to share with you all. It is a powerful statement by the students at Leadership High School in San Francisco, CA. They speak about the ongoing adversity and toxic stress in their daily lives and in their community, all through the power of music. The youth voice is so important as we work to bring trauma-informed and resilience building practices to communities. Link to video: Toxic Stress, Toxic Streets

Ventura County government has quietly joined a brave new world of government financing. The county has signed off on a program that will use private money to pay for a program to reduce recidivism. If the program succeeds, the private investors will get their money back (plus interest), and taxpayers will pay the bill. This is the Pay for Success financing model that was launched in the United Kingdom six years ago and has moved to the United States, mostly under the umbrella of the...

"My experience with violence is very brutal...I grew up with violence as if it were my sibling." - LC participant (youth) "We know we can't run the city- it's too complex- but our experience and our voices should count, especially because we're the most effected ." - LC participant (youth) "Our city's problems are shared by us all; we are all part of the problem AND the solution. Listening is a key component to healing." - LC Share Out partici pant (adult) Three years ago, RYSE Center in...

A state law going into effect this month would make several thousand undocumented children in Santa Barbara County eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal coverage . Starting this month, undocumented children 19 and under in California are eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal coverage, including an estimated 3,000-4,000 children in Santa Barbara County . Senate Bill 75 , signed into law last June, expands health insurance coverage options to undocumented children. Currently, many of these children are...

A decent two-bedroom rental today will cost you on average more than you could afford working full time on the local minimum wage everywhere in America — in every state, every county, every metropolitan area. No matter how you draw the geography. Whether you live in Sioux Falls or San Francisco. What the government considers to be a local "fair market rent" for a two-bedroom would eat up more than 30 percent of a minimum-wage worker's earnings. This fact, from updated data annually compiled...

Even as the federal government provides housing assistance for 5.5 million households, 7.2 million housing units are needed for more than 10 million extremely low-income families. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro delivered this bad news in a report on housing for low-income renters that is “Out of Reach,” which is the name of the study. “Our nation can’t fulfill any of our major goals — whether it’s tackling inequality, improving health care, keeping neighborhoods...

At a workshop Wednesday in Ukiah, local agencies learned how to apply for a pot of funding for homeless services that typically gets scooped up by larger cities. “In the past two years, we haven’t got a dime of the (Emergency Solutions Grant) funding north of Marin County,” said state Sen. Mike McGuire, (D– Healdsburg), referring to $20 million that is set aside for agencies serving the state’s estimated 144,000 homeless residents by California’s department of Housing and Community...

I'm not sure if this has already made the rounds, but I didn't see it on after scrolling 10 pages, and it's such good news, it's definitely worth a repost! "Oakland Unified school board voted unanimously Wednesday night to eliminate willful defiance as a reason to suspend any student and to invest at least $2.3 million to expand restorative justice practices in its schools". What a beautiful commitment to the child, to meeting their actual needs rather than just sending them away with their...