A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Jennifer Friedenbach
Lots of folks wonder what happened to Proposition C, the initiative entitled Our City Our Home,” that was authored by the Coalition on Homelessness in conjunction with many organizations and unhoused people. The short answer is: a lot.
The long answer is that in 2018 Prop. C, which taxes corporate income at about one-half percent starting from $50 million, was sued by corporations and held up in court until 2020 when the case was won in favor of San Francisco voters.
Less than two weeks before the planned closure of a shelter for unhoused families, housing and homelessness advocates converged on the steps of San Francisco City Hall to protest the Oasis Inn’s December 15 closing date. The demonstrators—many of whom live at the Oasis and are facing imminent displacement—demanded that the City move to buy the building in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood, while also calling on the Oasis’s owners to sell the property to the City or a prospective nonprofit contractor at the December 6 action.
The program accommodating unhoused San Franciscans during the COVID-19 pandemic is scheduled to end in mid-December with the shuttering of the Hotel Whitcomb, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH).
The Whitcomb has become the last remaining safe harbor for homeless people in its final days of participating in the shelter-in-place (SIP) hotel program. Since the program began during the pandemic’s early days in April 2020, the Whitcomb has been one of 25 sites that provide a place to stay for people who would otherwise have no roof over their heads at the onset of a global public health emergency.
A ‘Return to Normal’ in Abnormal Times
Wastewater testing is showing that San Francisco is currently experiencing perhaps the biggest COVID-19 surge yet, at the same time as the monkeypox virus is sweeping the country. With mask mandates gone and eviction protections being rolled back, the City seems set on a return to normal in the most abnormal of times.
Against this backdrop, the City is shutting down shelter-in-place (SIP) hotels,
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s shelter legislation is going to the full Board of Supervisors after the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee approved it on a 3-0 vote on May 26.
After several amendments through two committee meetings in May, one thing is for sure: Mandelman’s “Place for All Ordinance” is now a different animal from the legislation he introduced two months before with its primary focus on shelter softened as it moves to the full board on June 7.
San Francisco got a sneak peek last month of the results from its 2022 homeless point-in-time count, which showed a drop in some kinds of homelessness. Advocates say directing public money into certain programs played a key role.
The count indicated a significant drop in the number of unsheltered homeless people and chronically homeless people, as well as a large bump in the number of people staying in shelters and transitional housing.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman has been trying hard to get houseless people off the streets. But judging by his new bill, his definition of getting people off the streets does not mean getting them into housing.
For the second time in two years he is proposing legislation to the Board of Supervisors, where it will be heard first at the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee on May 12. If it passes, it would put people into temporary shelter: a tent in a sanctioned camp,
The manner in which the hours of freedom..
are spent determines, no less than labor or war, the moral worth of a nation.”
— Maurice Maeterlinck
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on her tuffet
Smoking a bowl in the dark
Along came a ranger,
Took her weed and detained her
On April 7, members of the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee considered whether to codify the Shelter Grievance Policy—a critical protection for homeless San Franciscans—in the City’s Administrative Code. Dozens of advocates turned out to make their voices heard in favor of the proposal, and the committee voted to send the proposal to the Board of Supervisors for a full vote. Given that six supervisors have joined Shamann Walton in sponsoring the legislation,
The author originally told this story before an audience in San Francisco as part of an evening of performance and storytelling sponsored by Tipping Point Community on November 18, 2021 at Manny’s, 3092 16th St. San Francisco. This story has been adapted and edited for your reading pleasure, and hopefully, inspiration.
I think of the places I’ve slept in in my life – buses, trains,
