Very shocking - because I've met that guy in the photos - Tom... his ex is a dear friend of mine and I'm Facebook friends with her and her daughter (also Tom's daughter) and my friend is definitely on my list of people to go visit once I start my travels. My friend is the one I was looking for in People's Park in Berkeley back in the 1990's. (She was homeless back then, but I didn't find her in Berkeley that day... she was at another homeless encampment in El Cerrito.) We met when I put my children into a parent participation preschool run by the Berkeley school district right across the street from the house they were all living in at the time... about 1993?
I was born in Oakland and raised in the East Bay Area. My father worked about 7 blocks from the place written about in the article. He worked there over 50 years. I lived in San Francisco as a very young adult. It grieves me to see that area being oppressed and run down. They need to do something to provide housing for all these homeless people. It should be a priority on a humanitarian basis, not just to make the city streets prettier.
Meanwhile, I'm planning to give the Bay Area a wide berth as I travel through the state even though my oldest son still lives there, in Pacifica. I will go to Santa Cruz then drive north from there to visit with him.
