Erin Baldassari
KQED Staff WriterErin Baldassari covers housing for KQED. She's a former print journalist making her first foray into radio. Erin most recently worked as the transportation reporter for the Mercury News and East Bay Times with a focus on how the Bay Area’s housing shortage has changed the way people move around the region. She also served on the East Bay Times’ 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning team for coverage of the Ghost Ship Fire in Oakland. Prior to that, Erin worked as a breaking news and general assignment reporter for a variety of outlets in the Bay Area and the greater Boston area. A Tufts University alumna, Erin grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains and in Sonoma County. She is a life-long KQED listener, a rider of motorcycles and a lover of history.
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What was once Northern California's largest homeless camp is down to its last residents. The city of Oakland is offering temporary housing, but those being moved worry about losing what they have.
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Evictions in some once-affordable suburbs are on the rise. During the pandemic, people looking for more space left high-priced cities and moved to the burbs, pushing out lower income renters there.
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California leased hotel rooms for unhoused residents during the pandemic to move them out of crowded shelters. Then it bought some of those hotels to create long-term homes for them. -
When the pandemic hit, states began leasing hotel rooms for unhoused residents. California went a step further and bought some of those hotels, opening nearly 6,000 new units for the homeless.
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In less than a year, California's Homekey program created nearly 6,000 units of housing for people experiencing homelessness — the state's largest-ever expansion of homeless housing in a single year. But supporters are wondering if can be sustained. -
By allowing multi-family housing, proponents across the state say the move could lower housing costs and redress decades of racial segregation. -
When the coronavirus hit, thousands of unsheltered people in the state were moved into hotels under a plan known as "Project Roomkey." Now many are ending up back on the street.
