Latest news with #CalMatters
Yahoo
a day ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
NC congressional delegation should support state's electric vehicle industry
An EVgo fast charging station charges a vehicle. (Photo: Loren Elliott for CalMatters) North Carolina's economy has undergone many important transitions over the last several decades. But in recent years there's been no more promising arrival on the scene than the electric vehicle industry. As experts at the national Electrification Coalition pointed out last week, federal EV tax credits have helped spur the creation of more than sixteen thousand jobs and over twenty billion dollars in investments in the state in recent years. And, of course, these are jobs and investments that are not only good for the state's economy, but for the world as it struggles to end its heroin-like addiction to fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the massive budget and tax bill approved by the U.S. House last week places all of this in jeopardy by eliminating several tax credits supporting the industry. The bottom line: Our nation currently spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. The least North Carolina's congressional delegation can do is help to retain some modest subsidies for an industry of the future that helps our people and our planet. For NC Newsline, I'm Rob Schofield.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Another Casualty of Trump Research Cuts? California Students Who Want To Be Scientists
This article was originally published in CalMatters. This spring, the National Institutes of Health quietly began terminating programs at scores of colleges that prepared promising undergraduate and graduate students for doctoral degrees in the sciences. At least 24 University of California and California State University campuses lost training grants that provided their students with annual stipends of approximately $12,000 or more, as well as partial tuition waivers and travel funds to present research at science conferences. The number of affected programs is likely higher, as the NIH would not provide CalMatters a list of all the cancelled grants. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Cal State San Marcos, a campus in north San Diego County with a high number of low-income learners, is losing four training grants worth about $1.8 million per year. One of the grants, now called U-RISE, had been awarded to San Marcos annually since 2001. San Marcos students with U-RISE stipends were often able to forgo part-time jobs, which allowed them to concentrate on research and building the skills needed for a doctoral degree. The cuts add to the hundreds of millions of dollars of grants the agency has cancelled since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. To find California campuses that lost training grants, CalMatters looked up known training grants in the NIH search tool to see if those grants were still active. If the grant's award number leads to a broken link, that grant is dead, a notice on another NIH webpage says. The NIH web pages for the grants CalMatters looked up, including U-RISE, are no longer accessible. Some campuses, including San Marcos, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Los Angeles and UC Davis, have updated their own websites to state that the NIH has ended doctoral pathway grants. 'We're losing an entire generation of scholars who wouldn't have otherwise gone down these pathways without these types of programs,' said Richard Armenta, a professor of kinesiology at San Marcos and the associate director of the campus's Center for Training, Research, and Educational Excellence that operates the training grants. At San Marcos, 60 students who were admitted into the center lost grants with stipends, partial tuition waivers and money to travel to scientific conferences to present their findings. Before the NIH terminations, Marisa Mendoza, a San Marcos undergraduate, received two training grants. As far back as middle school, Mendoza's favorite subjects were biology and chemistry. To save money, she attended Palomar College, a nearby community college where she began to train as a nurse. She chose that major because it would allow her to focus on the science subjects she loved. But soon Mendoza realized she wanted to do research rather than treat patients. At Palomar, an anatomy professor introduced her to the NIH-funded Bridges to the Baccalaureate, a training grant for community college students to earn a bachelor's and pursue advanced degrees in science and medicine. 'I didn't even know what grad school was at the time,' she said. Neither of her parents finished college. The Bridges program connected her to Cal State San Marcos, where she toured different labs to find the right fit. At the time she was in a microbiology course and found a lab focused on bacteria populations in the nearby coastal enclaves. The lab was putting into practice what she was learning in the abstract. She was hooked. 'It just clicked, like me being able to do this, it came very easily to me, and it was just something that I came to be very passionate about as I was getting more responsibility in the lab,' Mendoza said. From Palomar she was admitted as a transfer student to San Marcos and more selective campuses, including UCLA and UC San Diego. She chose San Marcos, partly to live at home but also because she loved her lab and wanted to continue her research. She enrolled at San Marcos last fall and furthered her doctoral journey by receiving the U-RISE grant. It was supposed to fund her for two years. The NIH terminated the grant March 31, stripping funds from 20 students. For a school like San Marcos, where more than 40% of students are low-income enough to receive federal financial aid called Pell grants, the loss of the NIH training awards is a particular blow to the aspiring scientists. The current climate of doctoral admissions is 'definitely at a point where one needs prior research experience to be able to be competitive for Ph.D. programs,' said Elinne Becket, a professor of biological sciences at Cal State San Marcos who runs the microbial ecology lab where Mendoza and other students hone their research for about 15 hours a week. San Marcos doesn't have much money to replace its lost grants, which means current and future San Marcos students will '100%' have a harder time entering a doctoral program, Becket added. 'It keeps me up at night.' In a typical week in Becket's lab, Mendoza will drive to a nearby wetland or cove to retrieve water samples — part of an ongoing experiment to investigate how microbial changes in the ecosystem are indications of increased pollution in sea life and plants. Sometimes she'll wear a wetsuit and wade into waters a meter deep. The next day she'll extract the DNA from bacteria in her samples and load those into a sequencing machine. The sequencer, which resembles a small dishwasher, packs millions or billions of pieces of DNA onto a single chip that's then run through a supercomputer a former graduate student built. 'Once I found research, it was like a missing piece,' Mendoza, a Pell grant recipient, said through tears during an interview at Cal State Marcos. Research brought her joy and consumed her life 'in the best way,' she added. 'It's really unfortunate that people who are so deserving of these opportunities don't get to have these opportunities.' The origins of the San Marcos training center date back to 2002. Through it, more than 160 students have either earned or are currently pursuing doctoral degrees at a U.S. university. The grant terminations have been emotionally wrenching. 'There had been so many tears in my household that my husband got me a puppy,' said Denise Garcia, the director of the center and a professor of biological sciences. Garcia recalls that in March she was checking a digital chat group on Slack with many other directors of U-RISE grants when suddenly the message board lit up with updates that their grants were gone. At least 63 schools across the country lost their grants, NIH data show. In the past four years of its U-RISE grant the center has reported to the NIH that 83% of its students entered a doctoral program. That exceeds the campus's grant goal, which was 65% entering doctoral programs. Mendoza is grateful: She was one of two students to win a campus scholarship that'll defray much, but not all, of the costs of attending school after losing her NIH award. That, plus a job at a pharmacy on weekends, may provide enough money to complete her bachelor's next year. Others are unsure how they'll afford college while maintaining a focus on research in the next school year. 'You work so hard to put yourself in a position where you don't have to worry, and then that's taken away from you,' said Camila Valderrama-Martínez, a first-year graduate student at San Marcos who also earned her bachelor's there and works in the same lab as Mendoza. She was in her first year of receiving the Bridges to the Doctorate grant meant for students in master's programs who want to pursue a biomedical-focused doctoral degree. The grant came with a stipend of $26,000 annually for two years plus a tuition waiver of 60% and money to attend conferences. She can get a job, but that 'takes away time from my research and my time in lab and focusing on my studies and my thesis.' She relies solely on federal financial aid to pay for school and a place to live. Getting loans, often anathema for students, seems like her only recourse. 'It's either that or not finish my degree,' she said. These grant cancellations are separate from other cuts at the NIH since Trump took office in January, including multi-million-dollar grants for vaccine and disease research. They're also on top of an NIH plan to dramatically reduce how much universities receive from the agency to pay for maintaining labs, other infrastructure and labor costs that are essential for campus research. California's attorney general has joined other states led by Democrats in suing the Trump administration to halt and reverse those cuts. In San Marcos' case, the latest U-RISE grant lasted all five years, but it wasn't renewed for funding, even though the application received a high score from an NIH grant committee. Armenta, the associate director at the Cal State San Marcos training center, recalled that his NIH program officer said that though nothing is certain, he and his team should be 'cautiously optimistic that you would be funded again given your score.' That was in January. Weeks later, NIH discontinued the program. He and Garcia shared the cancellation letters they received from NIH. Most made vague references to changes in NIH's priorities. However, one letter for a specific grant program cited a common reason why the agency has been cancelling funding: 'It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research programs related to Diversity (sic), equity, and inclusion.' That's a departure from the agency's emphasis on developing a diverse national cadre of scientists. As recently as February, the application page for that grant said 'there are many benefits that flow from a diverse scientific workforce.' Josue Navarrete graduated this spring from Cal State San Marcos with a degree in computer science. Unlike the other students interviewed for this story, Navarrete, who uses they/them pronouns, was able to complete both years of their NIH training grant and worked in Becket's lab. But because of the uncertain climate as the Trump administration attempts to slash funding, Vanderbilt University, which placed Navarrete on a waitlist for a doctoral program, ultimately denied them admission because the university program had to shrink its incoming class, they said. Later, Navarrete met a professor from Vanderbilt at a conference who agreed to review their application. The professor said in any other year, Navarrete would have been admitted. The setback was heartbreaking. 'I'm gripping so hard to stay in research,' Navarrete said. With doctoral plans delayed, they received a job offer from Epic, a large medical software company, but turned it down. 'They wanted me to be handling website design and mobile applications, and that's cool. It's not for me.' Valderrama-Martinez cited Navarrete's story as she wondered whether doctoral programs at universities will have space for her next year. 'I doubt in a year things are going to be better,' she said. She still looks forward to submitting her applications. So does Mendoza. She wants to study microbiology — the research bug that bit her initially and brought her to San Marcos. Eventually she hopes to land at a private biotech firm and work in drug development. 'Of course I'm gonna get a Ph.D., because that just means I get to do research,' she said. This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Advocates say US House budget cuts will harm NC's electric vehicle industry
An EVgo fast charging station charges a vehicle. (Photo: Loren Elliott for CalMatters) Advocates for speeding the nation's transition to electric vehicles have joined the list of groups and individuals criticizing the massive budget reconciliation bill that was narrowly approved by U.S. House Republicans last week. In a news release distributed Tuesday, Ben Prochazka, the executive director of the nonprofit Electrification Coalition said the bill 'takes a sledgehammer' to North Carolina's electric vehicle (EV) industry and would undo EV tax credits that have led to 16,300 jobs and $20.4 billion in investments in the state. Among the provisions in current law that would be eliminated by the legislation: a tax credit of up to $7,500 for the purchase of an eligible new EV a 30% tax credit up to $100,000 per single item or $1,000 for eligible home refueling infrastructure a credit that supports a portion of the cost of producing certain technologies a credit of up to $7,500 for the purchase of eligible commercial EVs under 14,000 pounds and up to $40,000 for those over 14,000 pounds a credit of up to $4,000 for the purchase of an eligible used EV. The bill 'would eliminate critical tax credits that are spurring private-sector investments, supporting critical mineral supply chain development, creating American jobs and ensuring the United States remains competitive in the global automotive market,' Prochazka said in the statement. 'Removing these credits would pull the rug out from under the auto and aligned battery industries at a critical time, immediately putting North Carolina jobs at risk. Industry needs policy certainty and consistency to build domestic and allied supply chains.' The bill now heads to the Senate, where Prochazka said he hopes North Carolina Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd fight to preserve the EV credits. The legislation also would implement a new car tax, which would levy an annual tax of $250 on owners of electric vehicles and $100 for owners of hybrid vehicles. 'While all drivers should pay their fair share, this proposal is nearly three times what the average driver pays in federal gas taxes, which have not covered the cost of infrastructure for nearly 20 years,' Prochazka said. 'Rather than imposing a punitive tax on a subset of Americans, Congress should identify a fuel-neutral solution to the Highway Trust Fund's structural insolvency.' According to the Electrification Coalition, North Carolina is currently home to eight EV and battery manufacturing facilities.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
After years apart, they found their loved ones experiencing homelessness
The last time Julie Crossman saw her little sister, Nanie Crossman, it was 2019 and Nanie was moving out of Julie's San Francisco apartment, destination unknown. For the next six years, Julie worried—especially every time it rained. She assumed Nanie was experiencing homelessness, but she had no idea where she was or how to find her. 'I just couldn't sleep at night because I was so scared,' Julie said, her voice breaking. 'I was really scared that she was just, like, cold and alone.' Then, in January, Julie got a text from her half-brother. It was a link to a CalMatters article about people without housing voting. And it quoted Nanie. That article launched Julie on a quest to find her long-lost sister, rekindle their relationship and—maybe—help her get off the street. It's estimated more than 187,000 Californians are without housing. But no one counts the number of people like Julie, who stay up late worrying, compulsively Googling their sister, father or child's name for a clue to their whereabouts. The people who scan every face each time they pass a homeless encampment. Their numbers are likely far greater. Some nonprofits that work in the homeless services sector say reconnecting with family is a crucial, and often overlooked, step in getting clients off the street. Even if a family member can't offer up their guest room or couch, they might help their loved one find housing, access addiction treatment, sign up for benefits, or simply provide emotional support — reminding them that they are important and worthy of love. But the process of finding and reconnecting with someone living outside can be difficult, both logistically and emotionally, for everyone involved. Once the person is found, it opens up a new question: What, if anything, can be done to help? The answer is almost never simple. Despite a growing effort by homeless service providers to reunite clients with their families, there's little data to show how often those reunifications end someone's homelessness. And, as Julie found when she searched for guidance, few resources exist to help families navigate this terrain. 'I haven't found anything,' Julie said. 'It's frustrating because this whole thing is happenstance and coincidence and lucky breaks but there's not really a road map that I can find of other people's methods, or things they've done that have been helpful.' From the CalMatters article, Julie gleaned one important fact: Nanie was living in an RV parked on a West Oakland street. It felt like a lucky break—Julie had since moved to Oakland as well. She emailed the CalMatters reporter to find out more. Three weeks later, on a sunny Tuesday morning, she and the reporter stood outside a row of RVs on a trash-strewn side street next to a graffiti-covered warehouse wall. It had taken a few tries to get there. Police had forced Nanie to move from her prior parking spot a week and a half earlier, so Julie and the reporter walked up and down the nearby streets, asking other RV-dwellers if they knew her. Eventually, they found an RV that had Nanie's name sketched near the door. Julie was scared. She worried Nanie wouldn't want to talk to her after all these years. They knocked—no answer. Nanie wasn't in her RV. But they soon found her in the RV next door. 'Julie!' Nanie exclaimed, stepping outside. The sisters threw their arms around each other in a tight hug. 'What's up, dude?' Nanie asked when they separated, as if it hadn't been six years. 'Nothing is up,' Julie replied, beaming. The resemblance between the two sisters, now both in their 40s, was obvious: Matching dark hair, pale complexions and smiles. Julie and Nanie immediately launched into a remarkably ordinary conversation, updating each other on their lives. They discovered they both have cats. Neither has a driver's license. Nanie described what it was like being homeless in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic (she liked having the streets to herself) and talked about the time she spent living in Sacramento. Julie wanted to know about the logistical details of her sister's life: How do you get clothes? What about food? They kept it light. They didn't unpack old traumas or air past grievances. Julie didn't ask Nanie if she was using drugs or badger her about getting a job and moving inside. Later, Julie said it took some willpower to tamp down her protective, older-sister instincts. 'I don't want to judge her life where it's just a fact of life. I just don't think that's a good way to approach it,' Julie said. 'If it were me, I would just shut down. I would not want to talk to someone like that, who was asking me that kind of question.' Julie presented Nanie with the offerings she brought: a few cans of sparkling water, wet wipes, socks and a fancy pen. She offered to do Nanie's laundry. 'Nanie, I'm so glad to see you,' Julie said with a squeal, giving her sister another hug. 'I feel like we're just chit-chatting.' Julie and Nanie were close as kids growing up in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood. They invented games, such as using a Barbie boombox to record themselves reading children's books in funny voices. As they got older, their conversations were so full of inside references that outsiders, including one of Julie's former boyfriends, were left in the dark. Nanie told a CalMatters reporter that after she moved out of her sister's apartment, she avoided trying to find Julie. She was afraid her sister would be mad at her or judgmental—or worse, that she'd died in an accident and Nanie hadn't known. Seeing her again was a big relief. 'I feel a lot less all alone out here,' Nanie said. Julie, pictured below, walked away from their meeting with mixed emotions. She was relieved that overall, Nanie seemed OK. The fears she had—that Nanie might have physically or mentally deteriorated due to drugs, or been forced to do sex work to survive—seemed unfounded. Nanie was safe from the elements in her RV and had a community of friends. But the meeting also raised a big question: What could Julie do to help her sister? Nanie says she wants a relationship, not help. In the past, after moving indoors, she became depressed. In her RV, within her street community, she feels like herself. 'For now,' Nanie said, 'I'm content out here. And I guess what I want from her is to understand that.' Julie understands that as well as someone who hasn't lived on the streets can — which is to say, not completely. She still wants to help, but she's struggling with how. Part of her wants to open up her home so Nanie can shower, do laundry and hang out, while another part of her thinks she should instead set boundaries. And then she feels guilty for even considering keeping her sister at a distance. 'It's tougher than I even imagined it would be,' Julie said. Programs throughout California offer bus tickets out of town to unhoused people trying to reunite with family or friends. That can result in people simply experiencing homelessness again in a new location. But proponents say that if done with the proper support, sending someone back into the arms of loved ones can be a lifesaver. 'We heal in community,' said Gabby Cordell, who runs the reunification program at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Miracle Messages. 'We're not meant to go through life alone. And everyone matters. Everyone is someone's somebody.' Using Google, social media and anything else they can think of, Miracle Messages helps unhoused clients find their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, or anyone else they are looking for. The organization receives about 50 referrals a month — mostly for cases within California, Cordell said. She and her team are able to find and get a hold of the person they're looking for about half of the time. Sometimes, the family member is thrilled. 'It's astounding how often we get an, 'Oh my gosh, I've been looking for him,'' she said. Other times, the relationship has been badly damaged, and the family member isn't interested in reconnecting. The group also offers the reverse, helping people who are housed find loved ones living on the street. That's much harder, Cordell said. 'Trying to find your brother is looking for a needle in a haystack,' she said. 'Trying to find your brother who is unhoused is looking for a moving needle in 10 haystacks.' The nonprofit has succeeded in arranging more than 115 of these more difficult reunions since around 2017, according to its website. Nonprofit LifeMoves also offers reunification services across 17 of its homeless shelter and temporary housing sites in Silicon Valley. Only a small percentage of clients leave homelessness that way (the nonprofit doesn't track exactly how many), said Heather Griffin, director of shelter and services for Santa Clara County. It's impossible to know how successful these efforts are. Neither LifeMoves nor Miracle Messages tracks what happens to people after they reunite with family. Ashanti Terrell lived a lot of her life without her father, Ashby Dancy. He was on and off the streets of Oakland for most of her childhood, while she grew up in and out of foster care and then with her mother's family. She lost touch with him as the years passed and she earned a master's degree, launched a career in public safety and had three children of her own in Atlanta. But as she got older, she felt a void. Her mother had died and her father was all she had left. 'When I was 18 years old, (I) graduated, I had nobody to go to my graduation,' Terrell said. 'I wanted my dad to at least be at my graduation. I haven't gotten married because I wanted my dad to be there, you know. I haven't done a lot of stuff because I wanted my dad.' Terrell had glimpses of her father over the years. Two years ago, he landed in subsidized housing in Oakland and she went to visit him. But he didn't know who she was, she said. Whether that was because of drug use, mental illness or both, she wasn't sure. Last fall, Terrell got a call from a social worker. The social worker said her father was trying to get to Atlanta to see her, but got stuck in Texas and ended up in a hospital. Terrell started planning with her sister to help him. But when she called the hospital again, he was already gone. No one knew where. She decided to pack up her life in Georgia, move to the Bay Area, and find him. Then, while Googling her father's name, Terrell saw him quoted in an October CalMatters article—coincidentally, the same article that helped reunite Julie and Nanie Crossman. The article said he was at a tent encampment in East Oakland. Terrell went looking. She drove around the area at different times of day, hoping to catch a glimpse of her father. She asked the workers at a nearby Burger King if they'd seen him. In March, Terrell emailed the CalMatters reporter for help. The reporter showed her where to find her father's tarp-covered tent, sitting by itself on the sidewalk. After that, Terrell started visiting her father, stopping by to check on him, talk and give him food. On a recent Friday afternoon, she brought her 7-year-old son, Mekhi. Dancy gave the boy a fistbump and asked about his school, and about the family's upcoming move to Oakland's Temescal neighborhood. But then he started talking about the 22 kids he'd had with his ex-girlfriend (something Terrell is positive didn't happen). He mumbled, making it hard for her to understand him. Mekhi asked his mom if they could buy Grandpa some Burger King, and she said yes, promising to come back with a burger after they picked the other kids up from school. 'I just wanted to let you know that I'm here,' Terrell told her father, as they left. 'As soon as I get myself together, I'm going to help you out.' 'I love you, sweetheart,' he said. And then to Mekhi: 'Take care of your mom, OK?' Terrell teared up as she and Mekhi walked away from her father's tent. 'That was hard,' she said. He had admitted he was drunk, which disappointed her. Just like today's Oakland—with its massive homeless encampment along East 12th Street—is unrecognizable as the city she grew up in, the man she just talked to was not the father who raised her. The father she remembers won trophies for boxing. He was a 'big kid,' a gentle soul who ran around and played with her and her two sisters, did their hair in cute braids and took them camping. 'I don't know who he is,' she said of the man in the tent. 'I come from him, but I don't know him.' The last real memory Terrell has of her father is from July 1998, at the same Burger King across the street from her father's tent. It was Terrell's 8th birthday. She was in foster care, but was visiting with her parents at the fast food chain — her favorite — to celebrate. She moved with her mother to Chicago and then Atlanta shortly after, and lost touch with her father, who stayed behind in Oakland. Now, Terrell wants to repair their relationship. She wants him to get to know his grandchildren, and she wants to take him to visit his 86-year-old mother in Stockton. She also wants to save him, before it's too late. He's 63, and Terrell is scared that if he stays outside, he'll fall victim to fentanyl, or one of the many other dangers of the street. Terrell imagines helping her father will involve rehab and an assessment of his mental state — if he's willing. She wants to figure out why he lost his subsidized housing, and if he can get it back. But she's not sure where to start. 'Maybe 20 years might be too late,' she said. 'I don't know.' This story was produced by CalMatters and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
After years apart, they found their loved ones experiencing homelessness
The last time Julie Crossman saw her little sister, Nanie Crossman, it was 2019 and Nanie was moving out of Julie's San Francisco apartment, destination unknown. For the next six years, Julie worried—especially every time it rained. She assumed Nanie was experiencing homelessness, but she had no idea where she was or how to find her. 'I just couldn't sleep at night because I was so scared,' Julie said, her voice breaking. 'I was really scared that she was just, like, cold and alone.' Then, in January, Julie got a text from her half-brother. It was a link to a CalMatters article about people without housing voting. And it quoted Nanie. That article launched Julie on a quest to find her long-lost sister, rekindle their relationship and—maybe—help her get off the street. It's estimated more than 187,000 Californians are without housing. But no one counts the number of people like Julie, who stay up late worrying, compulsively Googling their sister, father or child's name for a clue to their whereabouts. The people who scan every face each time they pass a homeless encampment. Their numbers are likely far greater. Some nonprofits that work in the homeless services sector say reconnecting with family is a crucial, and often overlooked, step in getting clients off the street. Even if a family member can't offer up their guest room or couch, they might help their loved one find housing, access addiction treatment, sign up for benefits, or simply provide emotional support — reminding them that they are important and worthy of love. But the process of finding and reconnecting with someone living outside can be difficult, both logistically and emotionally, for everyone involved. Once the person is found, it opens up a new question: What, if anything, can be done to help? The answer is almost never simple. Despite a growing effort by homeless service providers to reunite clients with their families, there's little data to show how often those reunifications end someone's homelessness. And, as Julie found when she searched for guidance, few resources exist to help families navigate this terrain. 'I haven't found anything,' Julie said. 'It's frustrating because this whole thing is happenstance and coincidence and lucky breaks but there's not really a road map that I can find of other people's methods, or things they've done that have been helpful.' From the CalMatters article, Julie gleaned one important fact: Nanie was living in an RV parked on a West Oakland street. It felt like a lucky break—Julie had since moved to Oakland as well. She emailed the CalMatters reporter to find out more. Three weeks later, on a sunny Tuesday morning, she and the reporter stood outside a row of RVs on a trash-strewn side street next to a graffiti-covered warehouse wall. It had taken a few tries to get there. Police had forced Nanie to move from her prior parking spot a week and a half earlier, so Julie and the reporter walked up and down the nearby streets, asking other RV-dwellers if they knew her. Eventually, they found an RV that had Nanie's name sketched near the door. Julie was scared. She worried Nanie wouldn't want to talk to her after all these years. They knocked—no answer. Nanie wasn't in her RV. But they soon found her in the RV next door. 'Julie!' Nanie exclaimed, stepping outside. The sisters threw their arms around each other in a tight hug. 'What's up, dude?' Nanie asked when they separated, as if it hadn't been six years. 'Nothing is up,' Julie replied, beaming. The resemblance between the two sisters, now both in their 40s, was obvious: Matching dark hair, pale complexions and smiles. Julie and Nanie immediately launched into a remarkably ordinary conversation, updating each other on their lives. They discovered they both have cats. Neither has a driver's license. Nanie described what it was like being homeless in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic (she liked having the streets to herself) and talked about the time she spent living in Sacramento. Julie wanted to know about the logistical details of her sister's life: How do you get clothes? What about food? They kept it light. They didn't unpack old traumas or air past grievances. Julie didn't ask Nanie if she was using drugs or badger her about getting a job and moving inside. Later, Julie said it took some willpower to tamp down her protective, older-sister instincts. 'I don't want to judge her life where it's just a fact of life. I just don't think that's a good way to approach it,' Julie said. 'If it were me, I would just shut down. I would not want to talk to someone like that, who was asking me that kind of question.' Julie presented Nanie with the offerings she brought: a few cans of sparkling water, wet wipes, socks and a fancy pen. She offered to do Nanie's laundry. 'Nanie, I'm so glad to see you,' Julie said with a squeal, giving her sister another hug. 'I feel like we're just chit-chatting.' Julie and Nanie were close as kids growing up in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood. They invented games, such as using a Barbie boombox to record themselves reading children's books in funny voices. As they got older, their conversations were so full of inside references that outsiders, including one of Julie's former boyfriends, were left in the dark. Nanie told a CalMatters reporter that after she moved out of her sister's apartment, she avoided trying to find Julie. She was afraid her sister would be mad at her or judgmental—or worse, that she'd died in an accident and Nanie hadn't known. Seeing her again was a big relief. 'I feel a lot less all alone out here,' Nanie said. Julie, pictured below, walked away from their meeting with mixed emotions. She was relieved that overall, Nanie seemed OK. The fears she had—that Nanie might have physically or mentally deteriorated due to drugs, or been forced to do sex work to survive—seemed unfounded. Nanie was safe from the elements in her RV and had a community of friends. But the meeting also raised a big question: What could Julie do to help her sister? Nanie says she wants a relationship, not help. In the past, after moving indoors, she became depressed. In her RV, within her street community, she feels like herself. 'For now,' Nanie said, 'I'm content out here. And I guess what I want from her is to understand that.' Julie understands that as well as someone who hasn't lived on the streets can — which is to say, not completely. She still wants to help, but she's struggling with how. Part of her wants to open up her home so Nanie can shower, do laundry and hang out, while another part of her thinks she should instead set boundaries. And then she feels guilty for even considering keeping her sister at a distance. 'It's tougher than I even imagined it would be,' Julie said. Programs throughout California offer bus tickets out of town to unhoused people trying to reunite with family or friends. That can result in people simply experiencing homelessness again in a new location. But proponents say that if done with the proper support, sending someone back into the arms of loved ones can be a lifesaver. 'We heal in community,' said Gabby Cordell, who runs the reunification program at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Miracle Messages. 'We're not meant to go through life alone. And everyone matters. Everyone is someone's somebody.' Using Google, social media and anything else they can think of, Miracle Messages helps unhoused clients find their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, or anyone else they are looking for. The organization receives about 50 referrals a month — mostly for cases within California, Cordell said. She and her team are able to find and get a hold of the person they're looking for about half of the time. Sometimes, the family member is thrilled. 'It's astounding how often we get an, 'Oh my gosh, I've been looking for him,'' she said. Other times, the relationship has been badly damaged, and the family member isn't interested in reconnecting. The group also offers the reverse, helping people who are housed find loved ones living on the street. That's much harder, Cordell said. 'Trying to find your brother is looking for a needle in a haystack,' she said. 'Trying to find your brother who is unhoused is looking for a moving needle in 10 haystacks.' The nonprofit has succeeded in arranging more than 115 of these more difficult reunions since around 2017, according to its website. Nonprofit LifeMoves also offers reunification services across 17 of its homeless shelter and temporary housing sites in Silicon Valley. Only a small percentage of clients leave homelessness that way (the nonprofit doesn't track exactly how many), said Heather Griffin, director of shelter and services for Santa Clara County. It's impossible to know how successful these efforts are. Neither LifeMoves nor Miracle Messages tracks what happens to people after they reunite with family. Ashanti Terrell lived a lot of her life without her father, Ashby Dancy. He was on and off the streets of Oakland for most of her childhood, while she grew up in and out of foster care and then with her mother's family. She lost touch with him as the years passed and she earned a master's degree, launched a career in public safety and had three children of her own in Atlanta. But as she got older, she felt a void. Her mother had died and her father was all she had left. 'When I was 18 years old, (I) graduated, I had nobody to go to my graduation,' Terrell said. 'I wanted my dad to at least be at my graduation. I haven't gotten married because I wanted my dad to be there, you know. I haven't done a lot of stuff because I wanted my dad.' Terrell had glimpses of her father over the years. Two years ago, he landed in subsidized housing in Oakland and she went to visit him. But he didn't know who she was, she said. Whether that was because of drug use, mental illness or both, she wasn't sure. Last fall, Terrell got a call from a social worker. The social worker said her father was trying to get to Atlanta to see her, but got stuck in Texas and ended up in a hospital. Terrell started planning with her sister to help him. But when she called the hospital again, he was already gone. No one knew where. She decided to pack up her life in Georgia, move to the Bay Area, and find him. Then, while Googling her father's name, Terrell saw him quoted in an October CalMatters article—coincidentally, the same article that helped reunite Julie and Nanie Crossman. The article said he was at a tent encampment in East Oakland. Terrell went looking. She drove around the area at different times of day, hoping to catch a glimpse of her father. She asked the workers at a nearby Burger King if they'd seen him. In March, Terrell emailed the CalMatters reporter for help. The reporter showed her where to find her father's tarp-covered tent, sitting by itself on the sidewalk. After that, Terrell started visiting her father, stopping by to check on him, talk and give him food. On a recent Friday afternoon, she brought her 7-year-old son, Mekhi. Dancy gave the boy a fistbump and asked about his school, and about the family's upcoming move to Oakland's Temescal neighborhood. But then he started talking about the 22 kids he'd had with his ex-girlfriend (something Terrell is positive didn't happen). He mumbled, making it hard for her to understand him. Mekhi asked his mom if they could buy Grandpa some Burger King, and she said yes, promising to come back with a burger after they picked the other kids up from school. 'I just wanted to let you know that I'm here,' Terrell told her father, as they left. 'As soon as I get myself together, I'm going to help you out.' 'I love you, sweetheart,' he said. And then to Mekhi: 'Take care of your mom, OK?' Terrell teared up as she and Mekhi walked away from her father's tent. 'That was hard,' she said. He had admitted he was drunk, which disappointed her. Just like today's Oakland—with its massive homeless encampment along East 12th Street—is unrecognizable as the city she grew up in, the man she just talked to was not the father who raised her. The father she remembers won trophies for boxing. He was a 'big kid,' a gentle soul who ran around and played with her and her two sisters, did their hair in cute braids and took them camping. 'I don't know who he is,' she said of the man in the tent. 'I come from him, but I don't know him.' The last real memory Terrell has of her father is from July 1998, at the same Burger King across the street from her father's tent. It was Terrell's 8th birthday. She was in foster care, but was visiting with her parents at the fast food chain — her favorite — to celebrate. She moved with her mother to Chicago and then Atlanta shortly after, and lost touch with her father, who stayed behind in Oakland. Now, Terrell wants to repair their relationship. She wants him to get to know his grandchildren, and she wants to take him to visit his 86-year-old mother in Stockton. She also wants to save him, before it's too late. He's 63, and Terrell is scared that if he stays outside, he'll fall victim to fentanyl, or one of the many other dangers of the street. Terrell imagines helping her father will involve rehab and an assessment of his mental state — if he's willing. She wants to figure out why he lost his subsidized housing, and if he can get it back. But she's not sure where to start. 'Maybe 20 years might be too late,' she said. 'I don't know.' This story was produced by CalMatters and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
