Alameda County Homeless Action Center issued the following announcement.
The Homeless Action Center is pleased to announce a donation of 6,000 bars of soap from Soapbox, as well as gallons of hand sanitizer from both Seven Stills Brewery & Distillery and a student teaching lab at UC Berkeley’s La Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.
During this time, HAC staff are still meeting with our clients for limited essential services on the sidewalk outside our offices. Additionally, HAC has partnered with other outreach providers to distribute tents, health and hygiene resources, and other supplies to people who are living on the street and in encampments. Many of these individuals do not have access to basic health and hygiene supplies. These donations of soap and hand sanitizer will enable homeless individuals to follow recommended hand washing and sanitizing practices to limit the spread of the virus. Many of these homeless individuals are at great risk: many are elderly and living with chronic and acute conditions and disabilities that are more difficult to manage on the street. Limiting contagion through something as simple as soap and hand sanitizer will help save lives.
Buffalo Exchange Promotes Homeless Action Center!
The Homeless Action Center is proud to be one of three local charities selected by Buffalo Exchange in Berkeley for its “Tokens for Bags” charitable donation program. Customers are given a token worth $.05 instead of a plastic bag and they can donate the token to one of the charities. The store adds up all the tokens and donates the cash value to each charity.
Buffalo Exchange in Berkeley is temporarily closed due to shelter-at-home directives. When the store reopens, HAC will be eligible for donations until December 31, 2020!
We are grateful to the Buffalo Exchange for creating this program and for selecting HAC to be a beneficiary.
Lawsuit against CalTrans
HAC has joined with several individual plaintiffs as an organizational plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against CalTrans. This state agency is the owner of property under freeway overpasses where homeless people commonly camp out. When it clears those encampments, CalTrans violates state law and its own policies. CalTrans is required to hold people’s property for a set amount of time and allow people access to claim it. Instead, the agency has been unlawfully disposing of the property. Many times this property is immediately and summarily destroyed. The lawsuit seeks damages for the aggrieved homeless plaintiffs and a declaratory judgment that CalTrans’ conduct is unlawful.
2016-17 Annual Campaign a Great Success
The Homeless Action Center set out to raise $50,000 in 2016-17. We came extremely close. Contributions totaled $48,090 (96% of goal). This was an increase of 79% over 2015-16. HAC received a total of 267 gifts (70% increase over last year) from 235 donors (58% increase).
New and returned donors were very important to our success. These donors contributed 72% of all gifts.
Thank you to everyone who supported this successful campaign.
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up