More SIPs to Close and Shelters Reopen as COVID-19 Variant Intensifies

by TJ Johnston

 As a state of emergency takes effect in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, the City has scheduled to close four more hotels sheltering unhoused people from the coronavirus pandemic in the next two months — even as the omicron variant surges in congregate shelters.

These shelter-in-place (SIP) hotels will shut down by the end of March. The SIPs – the Adante Hotel, Executive Hotel Vintage Court, Nob Hill Inn and Best Western Red Coach Inn – comprise almost 200 rooms among them and spread within a 50-square block area from the Tenderloin to Lower Nob Hill to Union Square. 

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Impact of Polluted Air on SF Unhoused Community Left Uncharted on CalEnviroScreen Map

by Hanisha Harjani

The CalEnviroScreen map is a pollution tracking tool developed to more clearly identify California communities with high environmental burdens and better focus where state and federal funding should go. However, when LaDonna Williams looks at this map, she notices the environmental hazards that the cartographers missed.

“Some of these communities have several exposures,” Williams says. Some are simultaneously situated next to raw sewage plants, refineries and highways. But when this data is translated through the CalEnviroScreen scoring system,

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Stories of Seeking Shelter, Before and After Prop C

by Tracey Mixon and Dominique Griffin

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.

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As Hotels Close, Advocates Say “Keep SIPs Open”

by TJ Johnston

On October 20, the Tilden Hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood saw more people outside its doors on a damp, dreary afternoon than were inside. About two dozen activists from the Coalition on Homelessness, Senior & Disability Action and other allies and members of the city’s unhoused community rallied outside the nine-story hotel that, until that week, was used as a shelter-in-place (SIP) hotel to protect homeless people from COVID-19. 

The advocates demanded that SIP hotels funded and operated by the City stay open,

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Gimme Shelter

by Brian Edwards

Ooh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away

“Gimme Shelter” -Jagger/Richards

Last weekend, San Francisco endured record rainfall during its first major rainstorm of the year, receiving over 4 inches of rain within the roughly 48 hours that it lasted. The storm had been forecast for over a week and was all over television, internet and radio. For most locals,

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Victims of a Failed System

by Solange Cuba

Coordinated Entry is known to most folks experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. It is a system designed to coordinate and manage the limited resources available to unhoused people in San Francisco, and to prioritize who has access to housing subsidies and who does not. The evaluation is very strict and asks a range of questions about the health, income, and current living situation of those who enroll. 

There are people with jobs who work full time,

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Families Speak Out About Coordinated Entry

by Ruth Wong

Since 2018, the City of San Francisco has been using a system called Coordinated Entry to distribute housing resources to homeless people. Coordinated Entry is mandated by the federal government, and requires the city to score homeless people with points, to identify which people are the most vulnerable. The people with the most vulnerabilities (for example disability, substance abuse, or mental illness), are the first ones prioritized to receive housing. The Coalition on Homelessness hosted a listening session in August with 35 families who were experiencing or had experienced homelessness to get feedback on how Coordinated Entry has been going for people.

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From Shelter to Her Own Place: One Woman’s Journey

by Dominique Griffin

My name is Dominique Griffin and I am an intern here at the Coalition on Homelessness. I wanted to take the time out of my day to share my story with you, about my challenges with being homeless and being housed. 

About two years ago I was living in the outer Bay Area in Suisun City, near Fairfield, with my 14-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. I started having trouble paying my rent, which was almost $1,800 a month!

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Tariq’s Narrative on Living and Surviving Homelessness

by Tariq Johnson
Street Sheet vendor Tariq Johnson stands in the Coalition on Homelessness office wearing his vendor badge on a landyard and grinning.

Editor’s note — we ran the first part of this piece in March of 2020, with the intention of running Part 2 in April. By April we were temporarily out of print as we grappled with how to continue the Street Sheet program safely while COVID raged in our communities. We’re so happy to be back in print twice a month, and to finally share Tariq’s story with our readers. Here is the full story:

I’m not sure where to begin and end this short tale about my homelessness.

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A Little Lot for a Lot of Help: Despite Disputes, the Embarcadero Navigation Center Debuts

by Silas Valentino

If your tickets to the Giants game are in sections 126 through 135 at Oracle Park, then you might meet Joanna Shober. 

She’s worked in guest services for the Giants the last eight seasons, guiding people to their seats and offering her assistance as needed. In between baseball seasons, she’ll take similar jobs at the Chase and Moscone Centers.

“I help people,” she said succinctly, seated at a lime green table last winter with a Giants ballcap shielding her from the sun and a Fitbit wrapped over her left wrist that she found one day on the street.

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