Bay Area comedian W. Kamau Bell and community members were able to successfully raise money to help a Berkeley veteran move back into his home.
And it all started with a couple of tweets from Bell, that got hundreds of people to take up the cause of Leonard Powell. The senior citizen claims the City of Berkeley forced him out of his home over code violations.
Strangers raised tens of thousands of dollars, enough to pay off the repair debt and get him back into the place he's called home for 45 years.
On Monday, Bell tweeted out that enough money was raised for Powell to move back in.
Powell said he was forced to move from his house in 2017 after he was unable to pay for repairs required by Berkeley city officials. He said that the scope of the work was never made clear to him, and he eventually ended up with a $700,000 bill.
Powell worked to get loans to cover lots of it, but was still about $70,000 short.
Bell tweeted about Powell's GoFundMe page, and he now has enough to cover the remaining costs.
