Author: Ray Bramson (Ray Bramson)

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...

When Randle Patrick McMurphy was locked up in an asylum in Ken Kensey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the 1962 novel directly exposed readers to the institutional horrors that had been going on for a long time in the United States. Led by Nurse Ratched, patients at the so-called hospital were neglected, abused and...

In the midst of a crisis that has left thousands of people without a home in our community, I have to admit the recent discussions about homelessness seem a bit odd to me. Instead of keeping up the spirit of collaboration that’s housed more than 20,000 people over the past several years, some of us...

Having worked with and in the public sector for most of my career, I know that there are many facets in government that remain a mystery to most people on the outside. Whether it’s the nuances of land use authority, the purpose of a board resolution, or simply the role of the many commissions and...

With the holiday sleigh bells ringing, the season of giving is upon us. What I really want for Christmas this year is for the city of San Jose to make a common sense policy reform that will help us build more deeply affordable housing so people don’t have to live and die on our streets....