Health
This year is the driest in recorded history in California. This has forced the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) to declare a stage 4 drought, the highest stage ever announced in the area, although even higher stages can apply if the drought gets worse. EBMUD is asking East Bay citizens to cut down their water usage. Water is a vital resource to survive. But most of the water on Earth is salt water and not directly usable for humans. Only about…
The members of 10 households living in Richmond’s infamous Hacienda public housing complex are claiming the city should pay them damages because the city failed to maintain the housing complex and caused them physical injury, property damage and emotional distress. The Hacienda apartments caught media attention when the Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit investigative news organization based in Berkeley, California, broke a series of stories last year about the disturbing living conditions there, which include infestations of bugs, mice…
It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon in April at the Richmond College Prep School, and the fourth grade students were divided among three tables near the outdoor garden. In front of the tables was a mobile kitchen called the Charlie Cart that can roll from classroom to classroom. Each table had placemats, bowls, cutting boards and the cooking lesson for the day. The students were making spring salad with garlic vinaigrette. As for the Charlie Cart, imagine a kitchen, shrunk…
Plywood with large red letters simply reading “DMC Closed” was affixed to the signs on the street that once welcomed patients to the largest public hospital on the western part of Contra Costa County. Members of the community gathered at the hospital in the early morning of April 21 to say goodbye, then made their way to the Board of Supervisors meeting at the county seat to inform the public about the threat of living in an area without a hospital….
As she gets off BART, Chloe Lipton makes her way to one of her favorite destinations: Maya’s Music Therapy Fund. Her new caretaker, Kayla Jenkins, worries that they might be going in the wrong direction. But Lipton knows exactly where she’s going—after all it’s been 25 years. Lipton, Maya’s most loyal client, has cerebral palsy, a disability resulting from damage to the brain, which manifests itself in muscular incoordination and speech disturbances. For the past 27 years, Maya’s has provided music therapy…
So far, around 20 families who live at the Hacienda public housing complex have received Section 8 vouchers intended to help them relocate while the building undergoes renovations. They have 60 days to find a new home. But some of them say they have received little search or transportation assistance and are worried they will not be able to find a new home before time runs out. The Hacienda apartments caught media attention when the Center for Investigative Reporting, a…
It’s not over yet. The measles outbreak, which started in December, 2014, at a Disneyland theme park in Orange County, is still ongoing in the United States, and has now reached Mexico and Canada, where more than 100 people have been reported to have the disease. By March 6, 17 US states and the District of Columbia reported measles cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website. The CDC is only one of the many health…
It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon and the new health clinic at Richmond’s John F. Kennedy High School is open for service. In an impeccably clean waiting area decorated with plants, a round table and a bright area rug, teenagers sit scrolling through their phones as they wait their turns, and Ferris Bueller plays overhead on the wall-mounted TV. LaShonda Williams, a health educator with Contra Costa Health Services (CCHS), leans over and checks in briefly with a young man sitting…
When homeowners first moved to the Marina Bay area, they say, it was a country-like neighborhood. Birds nested on the trees in the gated community. Nights were dark and tranquil. But, they say, everything changed last December when the neighboring business Richmond Wholesale — “one of the largest West Coast distributors of frozen, chilled, and dry food products,” according to its website — closed its Factory Street facility in North Richmond and made the Regatta Boulevard facility its main one….