California Health Report

1 month ago | calhealthreport.org | Tammy Eden Shaff |Jeremy Cantor

Housing affordability and homelessness are a top concern across California communities. Solutions so far have focused on closing the gap between housing supply and demand, but that will take years, decades or generations to fully implement. In the meantime, local communities are trying to figure out how to address the conditions and challenges unhoused individuals experience that take years off their lives and make it harder for them to return to stable housing.

1 month ago | calhealthreport.org | Ricky Rodas

Wyatt Ahders had a routine. Every week, the 18-year-old would step out his front door and walk to friends’ houses in the neighborhood. Along the way, he’d stop and exchange hellos with any neighbors he passed. Then that routine was disrupted. The Ahders’ family home burned in the recent Palisades fire. Along with it, Ahders, who has autism, lost his familiar schedule that brought him a sense of security.

2 months ago | calhealthreport.org | Claudia Boyd-Barrett

On a recent evening in downtown Oakland, seven women sat on couches arranged in a circle around a table with flickering candles, passing around a small, pink ball. Each passing of the ball signified the holder’s turn to speak, while the rest of the group listened. The women shared how they were feeling, recent challenges they’d faced and about people they were grateful for. Then it was facilitator Kusum Crimmel’s turn to speak.

2 months ago | calhealthreport.org | Claudia Boyd-Barrett

Jessica Pequeño of Napa has been taking breaks from watching the news lately. But when she opens her social media feeds for the support groups she frequents for parents of children with disabilities, they’re full of panicked chatter about the news she’s been trying to avoid.

Mar 6, 2025 | calhealthreport.org | Magaly Munoz

Up and down the streets of the Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland, immigrant workers head to empty parking lots and street corners waiting for a job. Some are as young as 14 and as old as 60. Diego, a man in his late thirties, is a construction worker who arrived in the United States nine months ago. He, like many of the men standing beside him at the day laborer site, came to the U.S. in the hopes of providing a new life for his family.