“Instead of lead,” Urban Alchemy says on its website, “we seek to transmute human suffering. Instead of gold, we create peace.”
Urban Alchemy describes itself as a job-creation program for formerly incarcerated people, but when examined more deeply, the nonprofit organization based in the poverty-stricken city of San Francisco seems to be policing public space, stealing wages, and using homelessness to churn a profit. For our latest issue, reporters Paige Oamek and Rohan Montgomeryinvestigate the organization and reveal it for what it really is.
Cities are pouring money into the nonprofit to manage encampments and patrol the streets where unhoused residents congregate. Not everyone is happy about it.
The child welfare system has served as a convenient narrative device for novels, podcasts, and the like. A new book interrogates what we think we know about foster care.