A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
Content warning: The stories throughout this issue may be especially activating for some readers. Many of these pieces involve descriptions of traumatic experiences including sexual violence, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, queer/transphobic violence, in addition to the violence of states and false borders.
Africa is a beautiful land full of resources, tourist attractions and diverse culture, but still many of us leave it to visit the U.S. and look for greener pastures.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual individuals, alive or dead, is coincidental.
Case counts were down; I told the folks delivering vaccinations that I could help. We set up Mobile Outreach Vaccine Events to find homeless people to vaccinate. We gave people twenty bucks worth of gift cards for vaccinating, and offered flu vaccines, booster shots, Johnson and Johnson one-shot-gets-you-done vaccines, and completion doses for Moderna and Pfizer.
It’s a frigid day in New York as I step outside to check the mail. A snow storm has covered everything in glistening white, and I’m only dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. It only takes a minute to check the mail, but I’m already freezing. I open the mailbox and there’s no mail. I’ve forgotten that it’s Martin Luther King Day. I stand on the porch for a second to look at the snow,
So this is me catching up to myself, and this process of endless awakening is really the same path towards finding a home.
We all must navigate a society that endlessly attempts to diminish our relationship to soul-spirit-body-heart-mind-God-earth.
I say that it attempts to diminish the relationship, which is very different from stating that it diminishes the soul itself. That never takes place, even though we all believe it does somewhere in our deepest suffering.
Leaving First Friendship
By Tracey Mixon
In August of 2018, I became homeless with my daughter, who was 8 years old at the time. After staying a few weeks somewhere unsafe for us, I found myself at the emergency family shelter at the First Friendship Institutional Baptist Church near Alamo Square.
I was so unprepared for what I encountered at First Friendship: mats on the floor, no showers and no privacy.
I owe an incredible debt to Huckleberry House.
I’ve always considered myself an open person, but this is not a part of my life I am comfortable talking about. It’s taken me several tries to get my thoughts out, but I believe that if my story can shed light on the need for our government to invest in social services, and soften the heart of even just one of our legislators,
It is difficult for me to write about the topic of homelessness because it brings up many upsetting emotions and past experiences. But I will write anyway and simply accept the pain that will arise.
I ask myself what can I say about this issue that has not yet been said? What contribution can I make?
I was homeless for 15 plus years. I have personal experiences with the injustices that often cause one to live without housing and I also am aware of the ongoing oppression that happens when you are living on the street.
I’ve been fighting an eviction since 2019. After living in my apartment for 20 years, always paying the rent on time, never bothering our landlords, they sold the building. Our rent-controlled unit paid off their mortgage (maybe several times over), and now in retirement they cashed in on San Francisco’s nouveau riche market.
The new buyer, of course, wants to kick us out. They are exploiting an Ellis Act loophole that allows for “owner-move-in” evictions—meaning that they can legally force us from our home as long as they or members of their family intend to live in it.
I have not been homeless in almost a decade.
But my homelessness was deeply influenced by the fact that my mother was homeless before me, for many years.
I loved her so much. When your own mother hits the streets, you learn something. When she was homeless, a part of me was homeless.
That is actually how the Buddha sees homelessness: If you suffer, I can embrace that. This is not an embrace as if it is a burden.
To read more by this author, visit www.thepaltrysum.com
There are spirits on the streets. Spirits that walk the line between this world and the next. There are spirits that hide in the shadows. Yokai creatures that howl and bark and turn into tea kettles that do skateboard tricks along the Embarcadero, having lost their tightropes somewhere in Osaka in 1859. There are Angels. And there are demons. There is the ‘As Above’ and the ‘So Below’.
