I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.

It's hard to remember a time when we weren't talking about America's homelessness crisis.

It's a vast crisis, and in many U.S. cities, one that is becoming increasingly visible.

In West Coast cities like Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle, homeless

encampments are a part of the urban landscape. They sprawl over city blocks and are a point

of tension for local residents, business owners, housing advocates, and elected officials.

During the COVID lockdowns of 2020, reporter Shana Shealy spent a lot of time walking around

her neighborhood in Oakland, California.

On her walks, she passed people sleeping under underpasses and in makeshift tents on the sidewalks,

under piles of blankets in the woods and in parking lots, and she wanted

to talk to those people. Then in 2021, she heard about a group of people who had barricaded their

tent encampment in the face of a city eviction. They lived at a park along the water called

Union Point. Shealy is a producer for the water called Union Point.

Shealy is a producer for the podcast, Snap Judgment.

At the time, she was searching for stories for the show,

so she went to meet people from this tent encampment.

One of the first people she spoke to was a woman named Deanna Riley. We was a family. We was a community that wouldn't let nobody come in and take that from us.

Deanna was around 45 and had been homeless for about a decade.

People at the park called her Mama Dee.

Even grown adults called her mom.

Mama Dee was a force.

When the park had a rat infestation,

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