Brilliant Corners Chief Operating Officer, Chris Contreras, joined Brilliant Corners participant Boyce Osife on a Spectrum News 1 Segment. During the conversation, Boyce shared how housing made a transformational impact on his life and recounted for us the multiple barriers he experienced with housing instability before being connected to Brilliant Corners.
Brilliant Corners Chief Operating Officer, Chris Contreras, joined Brilliant Corners participant Boyce Osife on a Spectrum News 1 Segment. During the conversation, Boyce shared how housing made a transformational impact on his life and recounted for us the multiple barriers he experienced with housing instability before being connected to Brilliant Corners.
After leaving an unstable home situation at a very young age, Boyce often found himself without stable housing. Boyce is Native American, and he shared that his family had grown up on a reservation but that his parents had been placed in what were called residential schools, a shameful part of North American history, where Native American youth were systematically robbed of their language and cultural practices through forced assimilation at boarding schools.
Boyce carried deep trauma from his upbringing, and experienced instability and incarceration on and off for decades. Boyce ultimately was connected to Brilliant Corners through the Office of Diversion and Reentry (ODR), and shared that when he first walked into his new apartment, his Brilliant Corners Housing Coordinator, Elizabeth Jaramillo, and his case manager had it set up with furniture, and he was overwhelmed with how they had made a home for him. He also shared that after years of being on the streets, he had a very hard time adjusting to sleeping on a bed, and he placed photos of his family on his bedroom wall to remind him that he was now in a safe place. He spoke about how his healing could not start until he had housing, and that having a stable home has allowed him to reconnect with his family.
Stories like Boyce’s show us what kind of impact housing makes on a person’s life, and that housing is a vital part of the healing journey people who have experienced homelessness. And while Fair Housing laws prevent discrimination, people who are justice-impacted continue to experience barriers to housing because of background checks. That’s why efforts to pass a Fair Chance Housing Ordinance are critical to ensuring that people who have been impacted by the justice system are not discriminated against in their housing search. Brilliant Corners is actively working to call for an LA County Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, which would give equal access in the housing application process to people in LA County who have experienced incarceration.
Boyce now is an active community organizer and uses TikTok as a platform to connect with Native American community members and share cultural practices. You can find him on TikTok at @uncleboyce.
“My healing could not begin until I had housing.” – Boyce O.