In addition to the six beds available to shelter homeless and runaway teens at the Rev. Coffee House, the facility offers numerous other drop-in servcies for a wider age range, explains shelter manager Anita Rosales.

There are more homeless teens in Sonomna County than one might imagine, says SAY's Matt Martin. And they aren't always easy to identify.

 

Flood, droughts and rising sea levels and other effects of global climate change are already displacing millions of people around the world, a situation documented in the new film, Climate Refugees.

Documentary filmmaker Michael Nash first screened Climate Refugees at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen last winter. The film made its domestic debut at Sundance.  And even as he hopes for US commercial distribution to kick in later this fall, Nash says he is fielding requests for showings from a growing number of governmental and church groups.

Climate Refugees is meant to be apolitical, at least in the partisan sense, says Nash (right). And even if the issue he spotlights may be new to many viewers, he observes that it has been building for years.

Nash has said his starting point for making this filnm was a desire to show “the human face of climate change.”  In doing so, he learned that one doesn’t need to go very far to find it.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ULoJYTsrM

Holding on to old emotional wounds and resentments can be hard on your health, as well as your psyche. International Forgiveness Day, which is observed on August 8^th, promotes the healing of those hurts.

Dr. Frederic Luskin, Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, says practicing forgiveness offers numerous benefits.

Twin brothers Noah and Logan Miller, the co-writers and co-directors of the film Touching Home, say their autobiographical story of coming to terms with their difficult alcoholic father has resonated with a great many other families that had lived through similar issues.

The Logan brothers will be among the recipients of one of four awards at this year's International Forgiveness Day observation Aug. 8 in San Rafael, recognition that they find particularly meaningful.

See the trailer for Touching Home:

  It isn’t getting any easier to build affordable housing in California. But the need for it is continuing to grow all the same.

Cities across Sonoma County have done an admirable job of meeting their goals for creating affordable housing, as specified in the Housing Elements of their respective General Plans, Diane Spaulding (left)  told the Sonoma County Housing Coalition on Monday.  But a close examination of those housing numbers reveals that, even with good intentions and political will, building units for low and very low income families remains difficult.

Finding funding for affordable housing in the California budget will be especially challenging this year, but the demand for it is continuing to grow. In a “new normal” world, Spaulding suggests, the solution may lie in creating ways to mesh the housing need with other social goals.

Diane Spaulding is the Executive Director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California. She spoke at the kickoff breakfast Monday for the Sonoma County Housing Coalition's annual Affordable Housing Week.  See the full list of Affordable Housing Week activities here.  You can read the Coalition's  annual Housing Progress Report for 2009 here.