Berkeley, California
A Floridian finding stories on the West Coast.
Oakland's black churches struggle as African Americans leave From the sound flowing from Beth Eden Baptist Church in West Oakland when the congregation and gospel choir join in a joyful crescendo, a passerby could be fooled into thinking the pews inside are packed. Longtime congregants recall the days when people spilled into the aisles.
Financed by POOR Magazine, those who live at Homefulness don't pay rent.
When it comes to doing business, Leaf isn't discrete. The friendly 25-year-old saunters around Dolores Park in San Francisco with a big teddy bear on his shoulder and a ring of plastic marijuana leaves around his neck. You can't miss him. Selling weed is his game, one he won't quit anytime soon.
Anti-hunger advocates say they are stretched thin as they help an increasing number of clients navigate the new system, and food pantry staff are grappling with a surge in clients.
NORTHAMPTON -- At Cooley Dickinson Hospital, tucked away in a sleepy residential area of the city, about two or three people who have overdosed on heroin come through the emergency room each week. If there's a potent batch of dope in town, that number might jump to two or three in a weekend, said Chris Hopewell, Emergency Medical Services coordinator at the Locust Street hospital.
Hampshire County's lack of detox beds reflects a fragmented continuum of care for local addicts, advocates say. According to a study by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, detox center across the state are operating at a 97 percent capacity at any given time.
An aging bald man waist-high in trash rummages through a dumpster outside Stay Gold Delicatessen. Residents walk by and yell, tell him to stop messing with junk, but he keeps sorting through it as if he can't hear them. Just over a fence covered with black fabric and grapevines, another Oakland exists.
Polluted and warm waters long ago depleted wild trout populations in Berks, leaving comparatively few local streams that can sustain them.
After 14 years of not being able to speak, Barry is used to others talking for him. But if you ask the 50-year-old how it feels to be so limited in verbal expression, his warm features darken.
The number of workers with temporary jobs is at an all-time high nationally, and many are finding that they are part of a cycle of such employment - a trend that labor leaders bemoan but manufacturers see as prudent.
When a few businesses left Northampton's core in late 2015 and early this year, residents and visitors alike began to question the financial well-being of this 28,000-person community that has made a name for itself as a pillar of arts, culture and food.