On January 16, 2018, The City and County of San Francisco launched the Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC) in order to better coordinate the City’s response both to homeless encampments and, according to a 2019 report from the SF Controller’s office, ‘behaviors that impact quality of life, such as public drug use and sales.’ Instead of effectively addressing the needs of unhoused San Franciscans, what emerged was a harsh system, led by law enforcement, with an emphasis on criminalization and displacement.
Homeless San Franciscans Sweep City Hall
Activists create chaotic mockery of city’s ineffective and inhumane response to homelessness
Community members, including homeless people and service providers, converged on City Hall on Thursday with push brooms and bullhorns and demanding solutions to homelessness. The spectacle drew attention to the cruel encampment sweeps led by San Francisco Police Department and the Department of Public Works that involve stealing homeless people’s belongings and pushing people from one block to the next.
Violence Against Homeless People pt. 2
A few years ago I wrote an article on violence against homeless people to give you guys a glimpse of how homeless people are treated. Now I’m about to give you a true eye opener on this subject.
OK, now here is the ice-breaker. No one wakes up in the morning and says “I want to be homeless,” or “I wonder what homelessness is really like,” or “I wonder how people are gonna treat me while I’m homeless?” No one does.
Tough Love
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Mohammed Nuru sucks,
Sweeps do, too
Mayor London Breed has talked a lot lately about taking a ‘tough love’ approach when addressing the needs of San Francisco’s homeless population. It’s an odd, shitty, and shameful attitude for a city to take towards those whom life has already been toughest to, but it’s nothing new. In 2016, one week before Christmas, then-mayor Ed Lee called for a ‘tough love’ approach to homelessness,
CITY TAX RESTRUCTURE MUST SECURE HOMELESS FUNDING
An update on the 2018 Proposition C Our City Our Home measure
It’s been over a year since the 2018 Proposition C – Our City Our Home – was passed with 62% of voter support. The measure, which taxes the wealthiest corporations in San Francisco with income over $50 million an average of one-half percent, will garner around $300 million for homelessness every year. However, none of the money can be spent as the measure is held up in a hotly contested lawsuit.
The Coalition On Homelessness & Hospitality House Celebrate Black History Month
Tracey Mixon
The Coalition on Homelessness and Hospitality House will be having a Black History month celebration. This year’s theme is the displacement of African Americans in San Francisco. Please join us for soul food and share your stories. We will also be lobbying our leaders in City Hall to let them know how displacement has affected us and to demand changes.
Many African Americans came to San Francisco during and after World War II,
POLICE COMMISSION ADVISES SF NOT TO TURN TO COPS ON HOMELESSNESS
by TJ Johnston
Police should not be the first response to homelessness in San Francisco, the Police Commission decided when it unanimously passed a resolution on January 15.
The seven-member commission approved a measure calling for the City to organize a working group on developing alternatives to a police-centered response to homelessness. The Homelessness, Public Health and other related departments, as well as people with direct experience with homelessness,
NEWSFLASH:
DPW Director Mohammed Nuru Removed from Post
by TJ Johnston
On January 26th the U.S. Department of Justice arrested Mohammed Nuru, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Works, on charges of honest services wire fraud in an alleged bribery scheme involving a member of the City’s Airport Commission. He had also arrested five days earlier for disclosing the investigation and then lying about it to the FBI.
Moms 4 Housing
An armored vehicle was parked outside the house on Magnolia Street in Oakland when a SWAT team dressed in what looked like military fatigues broke down the door. Deputies from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department swarmed in to carry away their targets. So what threat was the police force sent in to pacify? What danger warranted all the police, the guns, the fatigues, the vehicle meant to respond to terrorism threats?
Mothers.
Solutions Not Sweeps
by Brian Edwards
On any given night in San Francisco, there are over 9,000 unhoused San Francisco residents, and as of Wednesday, January 29, there were 937 people on the single adult shelter waitlist. Without an indoor option, thousands of San Franciscans are forced to live outside in public spaces. The City increasingly criminalizes their presence in these places, and forcibly removes them with daily (and nightly) sweeps without offering adequate alternative shelter or services.
