Author: Ray Bramson (Ray Bramson)

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....

A friend recently recommended I check out a popular podcast where a person was being interviewed about a book he wrote on homelessness in California. The author was a controversial climate change writer who had wandered out of that arena after some particularly harsh public criticism and then decided to start delving into the lives...

When homelessness starts to dominate politics you know the election season isn’t too far away. And this year, with concern for the unhoused polling as a top issue, you can be sure that we’ll be hearing plenty of plans on what can be done now to solve this crisis on our streets. Some of this...

With tens of thousands of people on sleeping our streets every night, I’m amazed at how much energy we expend either fighting common sense solutions or pushing for or against issues that won’t really move the needle in the end. Take the new safe parking site in North San Jose for instance. The city provided...