Author: Ray Bramson (Ray Bramson)

Have you noticed how often homelessness and poverty are crowding your news media feeds lately? It’s everywhere from Nextdoor to the nightly news to your local paper. Evictions, encampments, unemployment, affordable housing developments, community responses, failures and new reports. And without question, there is a growing fascination with finding the headline grabbers that scrutinize and...

In a 2020 tweet — that really could have been a sound byte from any platform in the last century or so — a former U.S. president claimed a victory that “people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream would no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood.” It...

Not too long ago, in a Silicon Valley very, very close by, tens of thousands of hardworking people could be heard asking themselves: “How am I going to pay the rent this month?” This was before the pandemic wiped away their jobs, emptied their bank accounts and left them with a mountain of debt and...

Amid all of the chaos of the past few weeks, I find myself dumbfounded by the raging national debate over the amount of stimulus checks. Whether it’s $600, $2,000, or any other one-time denomination, part of the discourse feels like our leaders are agreeing that we should be allowed to eat cake, but still not...

With an utterly horrific and terrifying year nearly wrapped up, I have spent the past few weeks thinking about what gifts might still be under the tree despite all the carnage. And I have to admit it’s hard to get in a festive mood this holiday season. The pandemic is still raging across the country,...

On the heels of an historic year that has hammered poorest people the hardest, I find myself thinking about the future of affordable housing. Even in the best of times, it’s a tough row to hoe. From finding a place where it’s even feasible to build to navigating the complex innerworkings of the local land...

With the election season now crashing down upon us, it’s a good time to think about how your vote might open – or close – some doors for your fellow residents in the days ahead. Oddly, despite a housing crisis of epic proportions, a tsunami of anticipated evictions and hundreds of thousands of people seeking...

Make no bones about it: 2020 has been rough. From the horrible spread of coronavirus to wildfires blackening the sky and scorching the earth, we have all felt the impacts of this year in some tragic and personal way. If you woke up tomorrow to a meteor crashing, a plague of locusts swarming above or...

What makes San Jose great? The verdant parks, wild spaces and plentiful sunshine. The diversity and richness of its culture and history. The boundless innovation and abundance of some of the world’s most creative and thoughtful people and companies. There’s no shortage of possibilities, which is why our city consistently ranks as one of the...

It’s no secret that homeownership has been a challenge, if not an impossibility, for many poor people for a long time in this valley. From the redlining of the 1930s to the current day attempts of the federal government to dismantle the protections of the Fair Housing Act, we continue to take actions that limit...