ISSI Will NOT Close This Summer

After seven months of organizing, we have achieved a major victory! Issuing this statement, the university reversed their decision to close ISSI. Thank you to everyone who has supported the campaign to Save ISSI. There are still unanswered questions about the building, funding, and so on, and we count on your continued support going forward! Keep up with the future of our campaign, now focusing on keeping space, fundraising, and ensuring longeivity of the social justice community at UC Berkeley on the Social Justice Futures website. 

COVID-19 Leaves Unhoused Oaklanders with Fewer Winter Refuges

Coco Auerswald, a Berkeley Center for Social Medicine faculty affiliate, is quoted in this new article in Oaklandside detailing how critical services providing the unhoused with refuge from the cold have been severely limited due to COVID-19 safety concerns. Auerswald states that cities and counties don’t have to sacrifice winter shelter altogether just because they can’t safely establish communal sites. "'Putting people in danger, or leaving them in danger—those can’t be our only options,” Auerswald said. “I think we need to have more temporary housing that has a door and a bathroom. And to figure out ways to use city land for temporary shelters that are appropriate for human beings.'"