Projects

This guide is part of our “Older and overlooked” series on the danger wildfires pose to California’s older population, especially during COVID-19. Skip straight to: How to research a care home The questions experts recommend asking The coronavirus pandemic is a sudden, new threat to assisted living and skilled nursing homes — and those facilities […]

When the ominous beep of an emergency alert roused Mark and Kathy Allen out of bed in Sebastopol on Oct. 9, 2017, the Tubbs Fire was heading toward Santa Rosa.  So the Allens did too. They knew the assisted living facility where Mark’s mother lived was in the path of fast-moving flames. They sped toward […]

The average age of those who died in the 2018 Camp Fire was 72. The average age of those who died in the fires that burned across Sonoma and Napa a year before: 73. As wildfires grow more devastating in California, some of the most vulnerable are older people who live independently and who live […]

| See how wildfires endanger older Californians — and it’s getting worse Climate change and COVID-19 are disasters. Long-term care homes and seniors may not be ready. By Lo Bénichou; Molly Peterson; Lisa Pickoff-White August 10, 2020 California is aging faster than the rest of the country. In 10 years, the state projects the number […]

It may be an agonizing decision — but the only way to get care their insurance won't cover.

Nearly 275,000 Black Californians have left high-cost cities, often for safer, suburban enclaves. Familiar obstacles follow.

In early March, before the pandemic closed the state Capitol to visitors, Esteban Núñez led former prisoners through the regal building where his father was once one of California’s most powerful politicians.   He exuded know-how, his shiny loafers clicking across marble floors as they moved toward an elevator. Down a hallway. Into the office of […]

During the pandemic, “there's likely much more use of substances that we're not capturing,” one expert said. Early signs suggest drops in people connected to care.

The pandemic has layered a health crisis on top of a housing crisis on top of a class divide. A clear pattern has emerged as the coronavirus spares some California neighborhoods and strikes others: The virus takes a heavier toll in neighborhoods where people pack into overcrowded homes, according to a CalMatters analysis of neighborhood-level […]

Until the pandemic struck, every day for the last 10 years, Isidoro Flores Contreras stood at the edge of the Sand City Costco parking lot, just a few feet from a set of McDonald’s arches, selling $15 flower bouquets.  No matter the weather, he slowly walked back and forth along the sidewalk, a hitch in […]