This story aired in the July 16, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Homelessness ends with a home... Technically. But there’s much more to it, and the path to live indoors is most always complicated.
For many unhoused people, access to services is only half the battle. The other half is trust. Like the disappointment of overpromised services that don’t deliver, inadequate shelter conditions, and just the accumulated trauma of life on the street. All that can leave people deeply skeptical of the outreach workers and programs meant to help them.
So what does it actually take to build trust across that divide? One Oakland organization may have found a starting point: pets.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: Loco lives in a homeless encampment under the West Oakland BART tracks. He's energetic, he cautiously sniffs out each passerby, and he’s got this wild, toothy smile.
JACQUELYN: He is kind of a lot loco.
REPORTER: Loco was born in this encampment. He has three generations of family here: His mom is a Pit Bull name Suzuki, who lives next door. And his grandma, a German Shepherd named Diamond, is two doors down.
Sound of barking
REPORTER: Loco belongs to Jacquelin Batterina.
JACQUELYN: He'll eat, like, his brother's, you know, uh, stuff.
REPORTER: And by stuff, she means poop. For this and other reasons, having a puppy has been a challenge for Jacquelyn.
JACQUELYN: It’s very overwhelming. Because I've not had responsibility to anyone in, or anything, in a while, so, you know. I feel like my son will be jealous if I, if I, if I pay more attention to the dog than him, but I don't get to see my son often. I don't wanna mess up this time.
REPORTER: In part, not messing up means establishing veterinary care. When you’re homeless, getting to the vet can be an insurmountable challenge. The cost of a typical visit can easily reach hundreds or thousands of dollars. And figuring out how to transport a sick pet to one of the city’s limited community clinics can feel impossible.
But there are groups working to solve this problem in Oakland: One of those groups is the Human and Pet Initiative — which goes by the acronym HAPI. It’s a very small nonprofit, with one consistent staff member and a rotating cast of about 5 volunteers. This motley crew has provided mobile medical support to animals living in encampments for the last three years. They bring shots, microchips, flea medication, kibble, and other resources to about 15 encampments in Oakland on a weekly basis.
Meg McAdam is the founder and president of HAPI.
MEG: We don't charge for anything, right? And we don't put up any barriers. No one has to prove any kind of need.
REPORTER: Meg literally wears her heart on her sleeve. Her arms are covered in animal tattoos: A dog on her right arm, and a vibrant blue sleeve of sea creatures on her left. It’s a fitting look for the job she does seven days a week: Providing no-cost, mobile medical support to unhoused residents of Oakland.
MEG: If you're asking, we're giving. You know?
REPORTER: Meg knows that a lot of people worry about the well being of the animals they see on the street. And have strong opinions about who deserves to have a pet. But that’s beside the point for her.
MEG: You know, anytime I talk about what we do, I, I always think that there's people that, whether they say it or not, like, may be thinking in their minds, like, well, they, they really shouldn't have animals. And it's like, I don't even have to debate that, 'cause it doesn't matter, 'cause they do. So as long as they do, I wanna help them take care of them. And I can do that with no judgment. I don't have to have an opinion on that. You know, they have animals, they need resources.
REPORTER: So I joined Meg at HAPI’s headquarters in East Oakland — a old dusty warehouse lined with shelves stuffed with collars and toys that look like shiny little gems in their bins.
I was greeted by volunteers Chris Slater and Jen Strauss, who waved hello as they scooped hundreds of pounds of kibble into Ziploc bags and loaded them into two cars.
Most supplies are donated, but high-quality pet food — and flea medication — are HAPI’s biggest expenses.
Volunteers grab harnesses, collars, leashes, and treats.
BRIAN: If you wanna make friends, pigs ears [are] the key.
REPORTER: And Meg loads up coolers full of vaccines before heading outside for a group huddle. Today, she’s joined by her two pet loving volunteers and one registered vet tech. She walks them through their stops for the day.
MEG: We’ll go see Drama’s folks. She still has those two puppies. I’d like to go see Crazy Face AKA Josh, cause his puppies are in need of vaccines. And Gregario. He used to live over on Wood Street, him and this guy Alfonso. Alfonso is the only person who ever said to us, get away from my dogs. I wanna get those dogs vaccinated and dewormed and not make them feel pressured that we’re like in their space. So it looks like we’re ready.
BRIAN: Alright closing up.
REPORTER: I want to give you a sense of the whirlwind pet parade that Meg and her team experience on a typical outreach day. First stop: West Oakland – to meet our first, wild beast of the streets:
Sound of barking
REPORTER: A Chihuahua mix named Little Bit.
REPORTER: 12:20 pm. 26th Street Encampment. Human owner Tommy. Little Bit and a pack of five Dobermans. Dog sporting a thick bedazzled chain around furry neck, needs a Leptospirosis vaccine.
MEG: Buenos dias!
TOMMY: Hola commo estas?
MEG: Commo esta? His dogs are bilingual.
REPORTER: 12:46 pm. 26th Street Encampment. Human companion Hawaii.
JEN: Oh, you're still so tiny, Shaka. Oh, I can't believe you're staying small.
REPORTER: Shaka, a squishy three-month-old Pit Bull puppy, needs a Parvovirus vaccine.
Sound of barking
JOCELYN: Is now still a good time for the vaccine?
HAWAII: Yes
JOCELYN: So I’m going to have you turn him around and cuddle his face and then I just need the butt.
Sound of tail thumping against microphone
REPORTER: That’s the sound of his wagging tail beating against my microphone.
BRIAN: Did you already do the shot?
JOCELYN: Yeah.
BRIAN: Oh my gosh!
HAWAII: He’s a champ!
BRIAN: Alright, here’s your toys then.
MEG: So I’m at Wood and 26th, do you want us to come to you now?
REPORTER: 1:05 PM: Circling back to a little white dog named I AM who we missed earlier that morning. I chat with his owner while Meg’s team gets a vaccine ready. Meg always circles back when she can.
OWNER OF I AM: She came back for me. Like without that, I was crying, like, in there. But she came back and so now, you know.
Without their help, without their services, it would be so, like, such a disaster. It’s already, it’s bad out here, you know.
REPORTER: Poplar Street encampment. Human companions Bradford and Ophelia. I meet Dexter the one-eyed calico and a band of 13 other cats.
Sound of meowing
BRADFORD: This is Dexter.
REPORTER: And climb up into a netted gym that hangs across the whole top of the encampment.
REPORTER: Oh my gosh are we going in?! Wow!
BRADFORD: Dexter right here is the Calico orange boy with the eye missing. And that’s DJ right there, and that’s Baby Lester, the black cat. Everybody just got spayed and neutered so we’re feeling very responsible about that.
REPORTER: People really trust Meg and her team. Bradford and Ophelia, the owners of Dexter and his 13 cat siblings, trusted her so much that they let her take all their kittens away to get surgery. Imagine giving someone your pets, to get an operation, without any way to know whether or not you’d get them back. That’s how much people trust her.
Because for a lot of folks, these pets are like family; they’re beloved companions in a world that can otherwise be pretty lonely. But I start to notice how these animals are also extensions of their owners. When the pets are cared for, there’s a sort of butterfly effect on the owners’ well being. I AM’s owner echoes this idea when she talks about HAPI:
OWNER OF I AM: They help me survive out here… because they take care of my animal, you know? It just takes consistency, takes care.
REPORTER: Next, we pull into a large encampment beneath an overpass near the Lake Merritt Estuary. We’re here to see Star and her three giant dogs.
MEG: Alright. There's a lot going on in this lot. So let's see if Star is around. Star? Hi, Prince! Hello, buddy! Hi, Joker! Oh there’s the little girl.
REPORTER: Star’s dogs are all enormous guard dog breeds: two Doberman mixes and one Anatolian Shepherd, over 100 pounds each. And now is probably a good time to share that…I’m kind of afraid of dogs. Especially big ones… So I say something stupid to Meg, like ‘wow these dogs are big.’ But, she is unfazed.
MEG: Yes, they are. They're very big dogs. Hi. And then Joker's on the other side. Yes. Hello, my love.
REPORTER: Star kneels down to give Prince a scratch. He’s got a short, sleek coat and stubby little tail that almost vibrates with excitement.
STAR: Yeah, he's my baby. He's my heart right here.
REPORTER: Yeah it's clear that he loves you.
STAR: This is my baby. Yeah, he's, um, he's my service dog. I have epilepsy, and he helps me, like, if I have a seizure, if, when a seizure's coming up, he knows when. He, he tells me, he alerts me. He can pick things up for me. He's very good at stability. Like, if I go to fall, he'll catch me.
REPORTER: In addition to helping with her epilepsy by sensing oncoming seizures, Star says her dogs also help protect her from external threats, like theft, sexual assault and harassment — the dangers of being a woman living outside.
STAR: The bigger, the better, I feel like. They're better 'cause they can cuddle you, they can love you, they can protect you.
REPORTER: I AM’s owner and Star are not Meg’s only clients who see their pets as crucial to their own survival.
JACQUELYN: He's gonna be a big vicious dog that protects me, so...
REPORTER: Yeah [laughs]
JACQUELYN: Watch out, guys!
REPORTER: Under the West Oakland BART tracks, we meet up with Jacquelyn and her dog Loco, the Pit Bull puppy with the toothy smile I mentioned earlier.
JEN: We got a leash for you!
JACQUELYN: Oh that’s neat! I love it!
JEN: It is a little, a little more durable for the baby teeth chewers, but, you know, try not to let him chew on it in general.
REPORTER: We’re at this encampment to leave food, and vaccinate some puppies. But Meg immediately notices that — that Diamond, the German Shepherd — is acting differently. Usually she’s full of energy. But today she doesn’t get up from where she’s laying in the shade. And she’s drooling a lot, and breathing heavily.
Meg is concerned. She asks the vet tech — a volunteer named Jocelyn Saenz-Sanchez — to perform an exam while Diamond eagerly drinks from a bowl of water.
MEG: Her breathing’s definitely labored.
JOCELYN: Yeah she sounds congested. I would be more concerned for like, kennel cough. Do you get me?
MEG: Really? That sick?
REPORTER: In the middle of the exam, Diamond’s owner comes home. It’s Alfonso — the man Meg warned us about in the morning huddle. The one who has refused her help in the past.
Without thinking, I get nervous, and quickly shove my microphone in my bag to give them some space.
Sound of microphone being shoved into canvas bag
The way she described Alfonso, I thought he might yell at Meg and her team for looking at his dog when he wasn’t home.
But when we get back in the car, Meg feels hopeful about their interaction.
REPORTER: Tell me about what just happened.
MEG: So this was a huge breakthrough. Today he returned home and was very excited to see us and happy that we were there because he's worried about her 'cause she's sick. Um, so he talked to us, collaborated with us.
REPORTER: They made a plan for Meg to come back and take Diamond to the vet.
MEG: So I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a new relationship with him.
REPORTER: Building this level of trust can take a long time. In this case, it took three years of offering food and other support and being turned down or ignored. In the world of services for homeless people, support is often conditional. Like, you can move into this housing program, but you can’t have any guests. Or there’s a bed in this shelter for you, but you have to give up your vehicle first.For some people, accepting help can feel like a tradeoff.
So it can be a process, even for a group like HAPI, whose only goal to bring resources to pet owners in the encampments where they live.
But time is a finite resource. And the need can be urgent. In this case, Diamond’s health drastically declined in the days after we saw her. She died before she could get in to see a vet.
This is why Meg works so hard on these relationships — because she knows that without them, she can’t reach the animals that need help. And ultimately, she also knows that helping people care for their pets is part of helping them care for themselves.
The City of Oakland recognizes this, too.
JOE: These nonprofit groups, they are, um, a force multiplier for our work. And, it's really critical in the resources that they provide. But I think what's even more important is the relationships that they provide.
REPORTER: This is Joe DeVries. He’s the Director of Oakland Animal Services.
JOE: I'm from the government, and that is not always a good thing. Um, animal control officers wear uniforms, and so they're constantly associated with law enforcement.
REPORTER: Oakland Animal Services was once a part of the Police Department. It isn’t anymore, but it does have a mandate to enforce local pet laws: like leash laws, and animal cruelty and neglect.
Joe says it’s actually not common for them to seize pets from their owners—housed or unhoused. It’s happened about 200 times so far this year. More often, their job is to manage a menagerie of stray animals, or those that are surrendered.
JOE: We have a lot of cats. It's kitten season, so we're, we're flooded with kittens right now. Um, they're buy one, get one free. Um, we've got, uh, rabbits in the back, a smaller, smaller group of rabbits. We've had a couple of goats, a couple of pigs in my tenure here. Um, we had a water monitor that we found at Lake Merritt.
REPORTER: One of their major goals is to get a handle on overpopulation: like the feral cat colonies that proliferated during the pandemic when spay and neuter clinics were shut down.
They also shelter vulnerable animals: white pigeons, for example, which are more docile than regular pigeons, and are often released during their wedding and then get lost.
And often, they are the landing place for domesticated pets that are surrendered. In these cases:
JOE: The number one reason is housing, um, whether it's they can't afford their housing...
REPORTER: Or they’re moving, and can’t find a place where the landlord will accept their animals.
Like the city’s homeless shelters, Oakland Animal Services is constantly full. There aren’t enough resources to meet the scale of the need. More wiggle room to provide affordable resources for these pet owners could keep them from having to choose between their housing and their pet.
JOE: I've got a big dog. He's part Pitt, part Plott Hound. You know, I would choose to live in my car with him before I'd choose to get rid of him.
REPORTER: He witnessed this impossible choice when he worked as Oakland’s homelessness administrator back in 2018.
JOE: What I saw when we were out at, at, in, at encampments, and people weren't accepting offers of shelter, their, their, um, criticism of congregate shelter was very valid. You know, like, "It's a big room. I can't bring my belongings. I can't bring my pet. I don't feel safe. What am I gonna do with my dog?"
REPORTER: Joe says that when some city run shelter programs started allowing pets:
JOE: That was a big, big deal. I mean, I met people that said, "I'll move in because I can bring my two dogs with me."
REPORTER: This makes it easier for unhoused people to take the first step toward getting indoors. But figuring out how to care for the animals in those shelters takes time.
I talked to Lindsay Partridge, a program manager at a transitional housing program in Oakland: the Mandela Community Cabins, where Meg stops twice a month to bring resources. Lindsay told me that partnering with HAPI is an essential part of helping her human clients transition into permanent housing. Basically, HAPI covers the pets’ needs so that Lindsay and her team can focus on the people. Meg says:
MEG: When they're making a choice of whether to feed their dog or themselves, if I can feed their dog so they can feed themselves, it's a win, right?
REPORTER: Back in the outreach van, HAPI’s day ends around 6:00 PM.
DOG OWNER: Say Bye!
JOCELYN: Bye!
DOG OWNER: [Door closes] Thank you!
REPORTER: In all, Meg and her crew distributed 270 pounds of dog kibble, 45 pounds of cat kibble, and vaccinated 15 dogs and two kittens. Some of these animals were already on her list, but others were new.
MEG: It’s kind of fun when we meet new people. You walk up to, like, an encampment or whatever or someone just on the side of the road or something, and you're like, "Do you want some dog food?" … And, you just see people's bodies, like, relax. You know, that, that common ground of, of loving someone's pets…really breaks down barriers. Um, and I honestly think that it would be amazing if the person in my role was a social worker.
REPORTER: Meg is not a trained social worker. And feeding and vaccinating pets on the street won’t end homelessness. But her outreach does reveal a useful strategy when it comes to working with people: That offering unconditional support for their pets provides a common ground that leads to trust. And that helps both the pets and the people.
