[Photo: tongdang5/iStock]
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To use Nextdoor, the neighborhood social network with an estimated 26 million monthly users, you first have to have an address. That means that discussions about homelessness a common refrain in neighborhoods such as my own in the Bay Area typically don’t include any of the unhoused people in the neighborhood who are being discussed. If someone can’t use the site, they also won’t be able to see the type of useful posts that often end up there for example, where new doses of the COVID-19 vaccine are available.
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“There’s information that people have firsthand that you might not get anywhere else,” says Yasmine Pomeroy, a teacher and Los Angeles City Council candidate who recently sent Nextdoor a letter asking for a change in its policy. “As a high school teacher, I get emails from my principal who has firsthand information that I could then post to Nextdoor and say, ‘Hey, this is a va
Aimee Ziegler, Lisa Teague, Russell Bates, and Yesica Prado watch the Zoom broadcast of the Berkeley Community Safety Coalition Homeless Memorial on Dec. 12. Photo: Pete Rosos
On Saturday, a coalition of advocates for Berkeley’s homeless community gathered online to sing, pray and demand justice for the unhoused people and their supporters who died in Berkeley this year.
The memorial came as new shelter-in-place orders and heavy rain underlined the increasing pressures that quarantine and winter have placed on the city’s unsheltered residents.
“Winter’s here. With Covid, where are people going to go this year?” asked boona cheema, the former director of Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS) and community activist.