On October 20, the Oakland City Council unanimously passed the Encampment Management Policy (EMP), despite hundreds of public comments decrying the policy and public demonstrations organized by a coalition of homeless advocacy organizations. The policy threatens to force unhoused people out of the encampments they have created to survive in 98% of Oakland. 

The EMP sounds innocuous enough, especially how the councilmembers frame this policy they claim will help unhoused communities. Even Mayor Libby Schaaf encouraged housed people to support the EMP,

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NO NEW SF JAIL COALITION & THE CLOSURE OF COUNTY JAIL 4 IN 850 BRYANT ST

In late September 2020, after years of work and support heightened over the past several months via No New SF Jail Coalition, San Francisco is no longer imprisoning individuals in County Jail 4, 850 Bryant Street. 

    No New SF Jail Coalition, founded in 2013, is an abolitionist coalition based in community accountability and transformative justice practices.

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Meanwhile, advocates advise San Francisco on homelessness funding

“The Court of Appeal Decision stands. Proposition C is valid.

WE WONNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!”

That was the announcement I received via Facebook Messenger on Wednesday, September 8 about Prop. C taking effect.

After almost two years, the measure known as “Our City, Our Home” can now live up to the promise of its name, affirming that I’m part of a city committed to housing homeless people and keeping them housed.

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Over the past 10 years, San Francisco has gone through a thorough change of scenery, from artist weirdo hub to an odd suburbia parallel timeline. The kind of people that inhabit the city change the landscape and the city seeks to appease these people while maintaining its glory. Where you are on the tier systems of the city will shape how you view what’s working and what’s not. Here’s one person’s living example of moving through the system created to house or hurt San Francisco’s houseless populace. 

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As I write this, it is Labor Day, and I am struggling to get through this overly hot weekend, especially as a tenant in a 100+ year old building master-leased for formerly homeless folks. Furthermore, as the COVID-19 crisis continues, we are urged to stay at home, but what happens if home is too hot for us?

And speaking of COVID-19, as an activist, I must advocate for supportive housing rights remotely, but this often is complicated by the fact that Zoom meetings being data-intensive,

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I scan the City’s COVID-19 Alternative Housing dashboard this morning as I have most mornings since April. “Total Current in SIP Hotels: 2,340” and “Total Current in SIP Congregate: 485” read a few of the metrics, typical of the acronym-filled jargon that fills most City reports. (Translation: “SIP” stands for “shelter in place” and “congregate” is a group setting like a shelter.) My fellow Hotels Not Hospitals organizers and I have struggled to find out what’s really going on in the hotels,

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Black, Latinx and unhoused people in California are hit harder with citations for non-traffic infractions compared with their white peers, a legal advocacy group announced in its new report.

And San Francisco hits Black and Latinx people as hard as anywhere.

Those are some of the takeaways in “Cited for Being in Plain Sight: How California Polices Being Black, Brown and Unhoused in Public.” The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area released the report’s findings in a September 30 press conference.

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“The Court of Appeal Decision stands. Proposition C is valid.
WE WONNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!”

That was the announcement I received via Facebook Messenger on Wednesday, September 8 about Prop. C taking effect.

After almost two years, the measure known as “Our City, Our Home” can now live up to the promise of its name, affirming that I’m part of a city committed to housing homeless people and keeping them housed.

… READ MORE