Author: Ray Bramson (Ray Bramson)

In an interview on Good Morning America in 1984, President Ronald Reagan addressed a topic rarely discussed by any commander in chief: homelessness. Yet despite his acknowledgment that this is a crisis that has faced our society for generations, he fell into the old game of shifting the blame. Bad economic and housing policy had...

With a winter storm rolling in on this bleak December night, it’s easy to start thinking about all that has continued to go wrong in 2022. Set against a backdrop of a looming recession, you can look out across the Silicon Valley and see a place where there just aren’t enough affordable homes, wages are...

Imagine waking up to the smell of smoke and looking out the window only to see a fire in your backyard. Once you get out of the house safely with your loved ones, you’re probably going to call the fire department for help putting out the inferno. But what if when the brave firefighters showed...

It’s football season in America, and here in San Jose, while we punt the political pigskin of housing this year, some people are fumbling the ball when it comes to understanding what really works to create meaningful change for so many in our community. So in a Hail Mary pass, I’m going to give it...

Recessions usually mean bad tidings for everyone. Jobs are lost, savings are depleted, and the poor get poorer. Generally the most vulnerable people feel the pinch the worst, struggling to make ends meet while shivering under the shadow of a bleak economic outlook. That’s why with major market indicators once again pointing to the strong...

Since 2015, over 20,000 people have left the streets to find permanent housing in Santa Clara County. Let that sink in for a second. It’s the population of many small cities in California. How have they found these new homes? It’s a combination of supportive services, rental subsidies, new affordable housing and crisis response. Often,...

How are we portraying the situation of homelessness in the United States? Over the course of a year, a recent study by the Center for Media and Social Impact looked at 150 episodes of 50 television shows, and 5,703 news articles published by 12 news outlets to investigate this very question. The results of this...

You’re probably familiar with some version of the story of a lost man wandering through the desert in search of water. In the distance, he sees palm trees, birds flying overhead and a shimmering pool below. Sadly, as he approaches, the water vanishes. Convection currents created by the extreme heat – coupled with the maddening...

Base pandering. Deceptive disinformation. Scare tactics. Impossible edicts. Rhetorical devices we’ve all become far too familiar with as it relates to what to do about the horror and impact of having people live on our streets. Facts are eschewed for flash judgements, while popular sentiment — as opposed to evidence-based solutions — begins to consume...

A few weeks ago, I was on a call with an elderly woman from Honolulu. She had lived in Hawaii her entire life, but her husband had recently died and due to a set of really terrible circumstances near the end of his life, almost all of their entire life savings had been depleted. With...