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Camaron Stevenson

I'm a writer of scripts, blogs, and profoundly unreadable napkin scribbles. I also produce television segments and various web series. I prefer trains over boats, salad over barbecue, and I give earth-shattering high-fives. Finding a new project gets me as excited as a groundhog on Feb. 1, and I'm still trying to make fetch happen.

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This city might have discovered how to end homelessness. And it's sharing the secret.

Of the nearly 600,000 people who experience homelessness on any given night in the United States, more than 40,000 are veterans.

But in the city of Riverside, California, that number has dropped to something known as "functional zero."

The city has maintained functional zero — meaning the number of people experiencing homelessness is less than the monthly housing placement rate — since 2016.

Riverside Mayor Rusty Bailey says that as a veteran himself, he had to try to solve this problem. "Some of my own neighbors have become homeless, and they've been erased from society and ended up dying because of homelessness," he says.

[rebelmouse-image 19476268 dam="1" original_size="465x222" caption="Photo via Chris Murphy/Unsplash." expand=1]Photo via Chris Murphy/Unsplash.

Bailey joined 77 mayors, four governors, and four county officials from across the country in committing to end veteran homelessness.

The movement is a part of former first lady Michelle Obama's program "Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness," an extension of the 2010 program Opening Doors. Opening Doors combined the use of federal resources and local leadership to help communities put a plan in place to ensure homelessness is prevented whenever possible. Or if it can't be prevented, it is a brief, and non-recurring experience.

Bailey attributes Riverside's success to the city's Housing First Policy.

"You can't end homelessness without housing," says Bailey. "Becoming homeless is a vicious cycle our neighbors without homes end up in, and the sooner we can take them out of that cycle the better, the sooner we can place them into housing, the better."

It all starts with the city's Homeless Outreach Team, who first gets to know people who are homeless and help them feel like they are part of the community.

The team assesses health care needs, learns about their family, and builds a relationship of trust with each individual until they are ready to accept help in finding housing.

The policy uses a combination of local, state, and federal resources to create enough affordable housing options to meet the amount of unsheltered persons living within city limits, along with wrap-around support services put in place to help those who battle with substance abuse and mental health issues.

Bailey says the first step is helping homeless veterans take advantage of programs that were already put in place through the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This means taking additional steps that often go overlooked, such as helping veterans obtain valid IDs and convincing landlords and accept housing vouchers. Bailey says the city even offers some landlords annual stipends of up to $250 to cover the cost of any repairs housing units may need.

Photo courtesy of Lechenie Narkomanii.

And the policy seems to be working.

Since the city first identified 80 veterans who were homeless in early 2016, Riverside has consistently maintained its veteran homeless population of functional zero.

"Now that we have this model, we can take it to the rest of the population," says Bailey. "They're all human beings, and we're all neighbors here in Riverside."

Now that veteran homelessness has been greatly reduced, the city is focusing on high school and college students without homes.

Riverside is home to thousands of high school and college students, many of whom have no place to live. Bailey says the city is working with schools to determine which students are currently homeless and create housing projects in areas of need, but with the stigma attached, identifying students in need is sometimes a difficult process.

Now that a potential solution to aiding people who are homeless seems to be working in Riverside, city officials are working with other regional leaders to spread their success to neighboring communities. The Western Riverside Council of Governments is made up of 18 cities, and members of WRCOG are optimistic that what works in Riverside can work in their communities as well.

"It's important for us to work on this together," says Bailey. There's no city limits to homelessness.

Theresa was arrested in April, and without the $5,000 she needed to post bail, she couldn't leave the holding facility in Estrella, Arizona, until after her trial.

Theresa (whose last name is not being published to protect her privacy ahead of her trial) was nine months' pregnant with her third child when she was arrested. Instead of being surrounded by family and friends, she gave birth in jail, and her child was immediately taken by the department of child safety.

Even though Theresa hadn't been convicted of a crime, she was held in jail until May, when her friend came to take her home before Mother's Day. She was speechless.

Photo courtesy Analise Ortiz, ACLU of Arizona, used with permission.

Theresa's friend came up with her bail money with the help of dozens of community groups nationwide that are working to bail women out of jail in time for Mother's Day.

The initiative, in collaboration with Black Mama's Bail Out and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), also aims to raise awareness about America's growing mass incarceration problem — and how to fix it.

Theresa is one of the 1,400 women who give birth while incarcerated annually in the United States. These women have to work through bureaucratic processes to get their babies back.

"She's currently taking the steps she needs to take to get her baby back, but it's definitely going to be a fight," says Nicole Hale, community organizer for Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), one of the grassroots nonprofits working with the cross-country initiative. LUCHA has raised nearly $10,000 to pay the bail of mothers who are in jail.

More than 200,000 women in the U.S. are currently in jail or prison — one of the highest rates in the world — and 80% of those women are mothers.

And while black and Hispanic people make up 32% of the U.S. population, they represent 56% of those who are incarcerated.

Those numbers don't lie: The system disproportionally affects people of color and America's poor.

The Estrella Jail in Maricopa County, Arizona. Photo by Camaron Stevenson.

"Even spending a few days in jail has a profound impact on people's lives," says Will Gaona, policy director for the ACLU of Arizona. "Especially for those with low incomes, they're likely to lose their jobs, they may lose their housing, they're in danger of losing custody of their children."

The current cash bail system is part of the problem, Gaona says. It's inefficient and expensive and has a huge, negative effect on low-income individuals.

"We've accepted the idea that the government can hold people in jail — who are legally presumed to be innocent — only because they're poor," he says.

What's more, a study by the New York City Criminal Justice Agency found that conviction rates skyrocketed from 50% to 92% for individuals who are jailed pretrial.

"When you're in jail, you're stuck," Hale says, "for a lot of people who can't afford to pay bail, they don't really have another option other than to take a plea agreement."

Hale says the Mother's Day bailout is an opportunity to shed light on the problems with the cash bail system and inspire people to do what they can to fight it.

She says if you want to get involved, you can donate to the bail fund, refer mothers in need of bail by texting "CHANGE" to 94502, and share information about the event with friends and family.

"Every donation goes a long way," Hale says. "Once [Theresa's] case is finished, we'll get that $5,000 back, which turns into a larger, permanent bail fund that can benefit the whole community."

600,000 kids could've missed a meal with schools closed. But these teachers had a plan.

Arizona provides less funding for schools than it did in 2008 and is ranked 49th in the country for teacher salary.

After months of rising tensions with state lawmakers over low pay and low funding, teachers walked out of schools April 26, 2018. In the second week of the strike, educators weren't backing down and planned to head to the state capitol to continue arguing for higher funding.

But even in the middle of a protest, teachers had their students' needs in mind.

Photo by Andrew Millett Photography.

"My friends and family believe in properly funding our public schools and making sure kids are affected by the walkout as little as possible," said Rodi Vehr, a first-grade teacher at Longview Elementary in Phoenix.

As teachers were preparing for the strike, they were making plans to help their students, too.

Thousands of city leaders and community members across Arizona were opening their doors to provide free or low-cost child care and meal services for the nearly 850,000 students whose schools were closed due to a statewide educator walkout.

Community members throughout the state worked together to plan meals for the 600,000 students who rely on free or reduced-price school meals. According to Vehr, her friends and family pooled their resources to buy and prepare $1,000 worth of meals for students to take home.

"They [legislators] keep saying that children should never be hungry, and we want to help make sure they aren't," Vehr says.

Elaine Glassman and Abbey Johnson crowdfunded money to provide 90 students with meals. Photo courtesy Elaine Glassman.

Elaine Glassman, a first-grade teacher in the Deer Valley Unified School District, put out a call for food donations on social media and was able to prepare meals for 90 students in the district. Glassman works in a Title I School, a federal designation for schools with a high number of students that come from low-income families.

"Sometimes they don’t even have dinner," Glassman says. "They’ll have breakfast and lunch at school, and then not eat until breakfast the next day."

After the first week of schools closures, her school announced it would open its cafeteria from 11 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. to serve students throughout the duration of the walkout. After it became clear the walkout would extend to at least a second week, most of the state’s 1,794 Title I schools arranged for meals to be available to their students as well.

In addition to meals, community organizations are finding ways to provide child care services to keep kids engaged and safe during school hours.

Photo courtesy YMCA Valley of the Sun, used with permission.

Peyton Tune, the chief operating officer for the YMCA Valley of the Sun, announced that its facilities would extend their daycare hours and reduce their prices until the end of the walkout.

"Nobody will be turned away based on an inability to pay," Tune says.

Photo courtesy YMCA Valley of the Sun, used with permission.

Arizona is far from alone in the ongoing battle for education funding.

Teachers in West Virginia were the first to strike this year, and their success — a 5% raise for all teachers in the state — inspired educators in Oklahoma (which secured a funding raise, too) Colorado, and Arizona to follow suit. The recent strikes are emblematic of America's larger issues with how it funds schools and how students and teachers lose when that funding isn't enough.

While they’ve expressed how much they miss teaching and working with their students, Glassman and Vehr say they’re committed to walk out of their schools and proudly wear their #RedForEd until their schools receive funding.

Until that happens, they have one message for students, families, and fellow educators: Stay strong.

Photo by Jeisenia Estrada.

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Of the 3.3 million Muslims in the United States, 21% are converts to Islam.

And of those approximately 693,000 converts, one of them hopes to be the U.S.’s first Muslim senator.

Deedra Abboud has faced Islamophobic attacks since she first announced her plan to run against Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake in 2017. Abboud says that while people throughout the state have been largely supportive, many questions she receives are about her faith rather than her proposed policies.

Abboud documents these interactions in the hopes of clearing up misconceptions about Muslim Americans.

All images courtesy of Deedra Abboud, used with permission.

Abboud says there are some questions regarding her beliefs that come up regularly.

In many cases, people are asking out of genuine confusion or an eagerness to learn more.

Here are answers to five common questions people ask Muslim Americans. Abboud hopes that speaking to these might help more people understand her faith — and the religion of many Americans — better.

1. “Why Islam?”

“The first thing I was told was that they [Muslims] were all going to hell because they didn’t believe in Jesus,” says Abboud, talking about what she was taught growing up in Arkansas. “Then when I went to university I saw a Middle Eastern exchange student so I was always trying to convert them to Christianity.”

Abboud remembers the Muslim students being patient with her. They explained their beliefs in a way she could understand. This led to her studying Islam extensively and her decision to ultimately convert when she moved to Arizona in 1998.

2. “How did people react to your conversion to Islam?”

“My mother was actually very supportive,” Abboud explains, adding that since she had studying Islam for years before converting, it wasn’t a surprise to most people close to her.

Her transition in the workplace, however, took time.

Abboud says that she would get ready for work in the mornings, remove her hijab (headscarf) in the parking lot when she got to work, then put it back on when she left for the day.

“The reason why I disclosed it was because I heard someone saying, ‘You know, Muslims want to kill all Americans,’” she says.

Islamaphobia is not new in America, and Abboud’s action is just one example of what Muslim Americans are doing every day to avoid persecution.

3. “Do you feel your decision to wear the hijab contradicts your stance as a feminist?”

“If a woman is forced to wear a piece of clothing, it’s oppression,” she explains, “and forcing a woman to wear something or forcing a woman to not wear something are equal on the oppression scale.”

Abboud continues:

“Saying that that this is a symbol of oppression is equivalent to people saying that a woman who wears a miniskirt is asking to be raped. Neither is truth. What I choose to wear in the morning is completely a personal choice.”

4. “But isn’t Islam oppressive to women?”

Abboud is quick to point out that oppression of women happens everywhere, regardless of religion. Her faith is not what mistreats or limits women — it’s other people who use faith as an excuse for their behavior.

“My dad beat my mom, and when she went to the church, they told her to be a better wife,” she says. “When she went to her dad, he told her to be a better wife. When she went to the police, they said be a better wife.”

Abboud explains that while there are some cultures in predominantly Muslim areas that are oppressive to women, many Muslim countries have elected women as their prime minister or president, including Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey. (Can you say the same about the U.S.?)

5. “You worked for CAIR — isn’t that a terrorist organization?”

CAIR, or the Council on American-Islam Relations, is a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group that formed in 1994 as a reaction to negative depictions of Muslims in the media. Despite its status as a nonprofit, critics have accused CAIR of being a terrorist organization affiliated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I just don’t understand,” Abboud says. “If it’s supposedly a terrorist organization, how it does it continue to have nonprofit status in several states and has survived every administration for the last almost 30 years?”

Abboud started the Arizona chapter of CAIR in 2001, shortly before 9/11.

Traveling for her campaign gives Abboud the chance to clear up misconceptions about Islam, but she’s happy when voters just want to talk about the issues.

“Most people actually do want to talk about things that matter,” she says, “you know, like not dying from poor health care, protecting the internet, basic freedom issues — things [that] actually affect their lives,” she says.

It’s a great shift and is evidence progress is being made, even if slowly.

One of D.C.’s 4,000 homeless youth just received an amazing opportunity.

Destyni Tyree was 16 and living in a homeless shelter when she was voted prom queen and graduated high school two years early.

All photos via Destyni Tyree, used with permission.

A few years before graduation, Destyni’s family fell on particularly hard times. Her mother lost her job, and not long after, they lost their apartment, too. They ended up at the D.C. General Homeless Center, a city-run shelter that houses about 270 families.

“It was tough,” said Destyni. “We didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Destyni dropped out of two different high schools before getting accepted to Roosevelt STAY, an alternative high school that aims to transform students' lives and change the trajectory of their future.

“If it wasn’t for the people at STAY, and my mom, I don’t think I would have made it through high school,” Destyni said.

Roosevelt STAY is one of eight alternative high schools in the District of Columbia. Throughout the U.S., there are over 10,000 of these schools designed to help at-risk students gain an education, and they can make a huge difference. Overall, alternative high schools have a graduation rate of 52% — 30 percentage points lower than the national average. But these students might not have graduated at all without the additional assistance alternative schools provide.

With the help of her mentors, Destyni set two big goals in the new program: graduating high school early and getting into college.

Getting to school was an hourlong commute for Destyni, but that didn’t slow her down at all. In addition to going to class every day — something new for her — she went to class on Saturdays, took online courses, and even spent her summers in the classroom.

“I just knew that whatever happened, I didn’t want to live my life in a shelter,” Destyni said.

But schoolwork wasn’t all she was doing. When she wasn’t in class, Destyni worked 25 hours a week at a local ice cream shop, was captain of the school’s cheer squad, and even found the time to go to prom — where her classmates nominated her to be their queen.

After prom came graduation, where she was awarded the Principal's Award for Academics and the Leadership Award.

Destyni also received another important award: a scholarship to Potomac State College of West Virginia University, where she will start classes at in the fall.

“My goal and career choice is to be a high school principal and to one day own my own charter school,” Destyni announced on her GoFundMe Page.

What does an award-winning high-school graduate who spent her teenage years in a shelter want to study in college?

Education, of course. Go, Destyni!

L.A. is creating 500 new housing units with this smart plan.

In 2015, Los Angeles declared a state of emergency because of their "unprecedented and growing homelessness crisis."

Since then, L.A. city and county agencies have executed a series of actions, and while homelessness overall has had a slight rise in 2016 — not quite 6% over 2015 figures — the number of veterans without homes has gone down 30%, meaning over 1,200 have obtained places to live.

L.A.'s most recent undertaking is different, though: The city will convert old motels into 500 permanent apartments for veterans who are homeless.

If everything goes according to plan, the 500 units, built with help from Step Up, will be available for veterans to move into by January 2017. Coupled with the 300 units the city already provides to homeless residents, L.A. is on track to create 800 permanent housing units annually.

Image via David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons.

Repurposing old living spaces as housing for people who are homeless is an unusual idea but not a new one.

The nonprofit homeless housing agency Step Up is helping to facilitate about 400 of L.A.'s motel conversions, and they've been working on developing housing for people on the streets since 1994.

One of Step Up's other transitional apartment conversions — Step Up on Vine in Hollywood — has 34 housing units, and it's been a raging success. Occupants are provided supportive services and may live there as long as they like.

This is the first Step Up on Vine complex in L.A., before and after. Image from Step Up, used with permission.

Images from Step Up, used with permission.

This new housing for homeless veterans in L.A. will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis — hopefully soon.

Step Up plans to use a combination of L.A.'s homeless services registry and their own outreach and engagement team (which actively canvasses the city looking for those in need) to place residents in the new buildings.

This is all part of the city’s plan to achieve a homeless population of functional zero, which means that the number of people who are homeless entering the city every month should be no greater than their monthly housing placement rate.

In addition to the motels, L.A. also has an ambitious 47-point plan for working with the city's ever-growing homeless population in the next few years.

In addition to creating new housing for people on the streets, L.A. has worked to incentivize landlords to make units available those in need. Some of those incentives include guaranteed rent payments and bonuses for holding open housing for someone coming from the streets, too.

"But you can only incentivize so much," said Ben Winters, housing policy specialist for L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. "The next step is to build more housing."

Photo by Pretzelpaws/Wikimedia Commons.

Building housing isn’t cheap, so the city’s annual budget calls for $138 million to be used to address homelessness.

And there already are encouraging signs that the effort will really work. When the state of emergency was announced, there were approximately 4,362 veterans who were homeless in L.A. In May 2016, the L.A. Homeless Services Authority reported that had decreased to 3,071.

Plus, 500 new units coming soon means 500 more veterans will be off the streets in the months ahead. That’s something you can’t put a price tag on.

Meet the Truckers Against Trafficking.

Note: This story contains descriptions of sexual violence.

When Beth Jacobs was 16, she was drugged, kidnapped, and forced into prostitution.

She says that her captor took her to a truck stop and forced her to have sex with a man who asked for a discount afterward because she “cried too much.”

Photo by Ira Gelb/Flickr.

This traumatizing experience was the first of many during her six years as a sex slave.

While the world is a dark place for the approximately 4.5 million people currently trapped in the human trafficking industry in forced sexual exploitation, this is also a story of redemption and heroes.

In 1983 — six years after she was kidnapped — Jacobs was arrested on prostitution charges for what she said felt like the hundredth time. A friend bailed her out, but instead of returning to her pimp, she fled. Jacobs eventually ended up at a battered women’s shelter, where she found the resources she needed to get her life back in order.

Now, she has made it her mission to combat the illegal sex trade and save others like her.

In fact, she’s helping to build an army of folks who want to help fight the sex trade every day … an army that could be almost 3.4 million strong.

Jacobs works as a trainer for Truckers Against Trafficking, or TAT, a nonprofit organization rallying America’s 3.4 million truck drivers to combat trafficking.

Beth Jacobs conducts a training for TAT. Image via Truckers Against Trafficking, used with permission.

She trains the drivers to spot traffickers so they can report their suspicions to the authorities. "If [these drivers] had been around [when I was a sex slave], I truly believe someone would have helped me," Jacobs said.

"The first thing truckers say when they hear about TAT is that they have daughters, they have granddaughters. They want to help," Truckers Against Trafficking’s executive director, Kendis Paris, said.

She’s been amazed by the sweeping acceptance of the program so far: There are over 214,000 people trained by TAT, and she has partnered with hundreds of companies in the trucking industry, including Walmart Transportation and UPS.

Image via Truckers Against Trafficking, used with permission.

Although truck stops can have bad reputations, the people running them often want to put a stop to human trafficking as much as anyone.

According to The Polaris Project, truck stops aren’t even on the top of the list for trafficking venues, though; in 2015, truck stops accounted for 1.5% of sex trafficking cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. But many of the venues of choice for sex traffickers — hotels, motels, bars — are also frequented by truckers, too. "They’re the eyes and ears of the country." she said.

The first organization to take a chance and partner with TAT was the truck stop TA and Petro Stopping Centers.

Since TAT’s first partnership with TA/Petro, they have since teamed up with multiple law enforcement agencies, trucking companies and nonprofits. Law enforcement in Kansas is the most recent of 22 state agencies that have partnered with TAT throughout the U.S., and the state highway patrol in Ohio provides information and training from TAT to everyone who obtains a commercial driver's license. Eventually, Paris hopes that it will be mandatory training in every state.

And by the numbers, it looks like TAT’s plan is working. Though calls to NHRTC hotline are anonymous, calls from truck drivers have skyrocketed since TAT came onto the scene. The hotline has received 1,371 calls from truck drivers since 2007, which involved 744 victims — 249 of which were minors.

The TAT driver training is free, and it only takes a short time.

Basic training for truck drivers is a 26-minute DVD designed to give the basics of what to look for and what to do in case they come across suspected sex traffickers.

Some of the warning signals TAT trains for are tattoos (for branding purposes), recreational vehicles with different people coming in and out, and cars flashing their lights on and off. If a trucker is suspicious, they’re instructed who to call the authorities or the NHTRC hotline. Truck drivers are told not to engage with suspected sex traffickers.

Drivers are also given a wallet card that bullet-points their training, and they’re encouraged to display posters that let victims of human trafficking know they have options, too.

Photo by Truckers Against Trafficking, used with permission.

While the drivers certainly can’t identify every victim of trafficking, the more eyes and ears we have out there, the better.

Human trafficking is a global problem, and it’s going to take a united effort to put a stop to it. But if the testimonials on TAT’s website are any indication, people are ready to fight.

"There’s a place for everyone," Paris said. "We provide the pathways for those who want to help."