A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
Our City Our Home
It’s a NO BRAINER
Many of our local policy makers, if they are not on board already, are considering support for Our City, Our Home.
This measure is fantastic and is being put forward at a magical moment. After decades of going further down the rabbit hole of human suffering caused by the federal divestment from housing its poorest citizens, we have wasted billions on the ripple effects of mass homelessness.
Earlier this month, Our City Our Home qualified for the November ballot in San Francisco. If passed, the measure would develop 4,000 new permanent housing units for homeless and marginally housed people, expand homelessness prevention services, and develop new public mental health resources. Before turning in 28,000 petition signatures—roughly four times the amount required to make the ballot—the campaign hosted a rally on the steps of City Hall. At the rally, a crowd of homeless and formerly homeless people,
By publication time, the votes in last month’s special mayoral election will show that London Breed has prevailed.
As San Francisco’s mayor, she will own the City’s response to homelessness, just as her immediate predecessors, Mark Farrell and the late Ed Lee, did.
That response in the last two years included sweeping sidewalk encampments. These operations, headed by the Police Department, with assistance from the Departments of Public Works and Homelessness and Supportive Housing,
On June 18th the Budget Justice Coalition, a collaboration of more than 40 community-based and labor organizations serving impoverished and poor communities in San Francisco, rallied on the steps of City Hall to to demonstrate that the city’s budget should increase resources to address the unmet needs of the city’s most disenfranchised populations. The Board of Supervisors hosted a public hearing to hear from the people of San Francisco before voting on the final budget on June 27th.
The United States incarcerates the highest number of people in the world, both in absolute and relative terms. But prisoners and abolitionists are challenging the foundations of incarceration. Over the past decade, a prisoners’ movement has arisen within facilities. Prison actions have been increasing in intensity and frequency.
What follows is a press release form April 2018 by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, calling for a two-week national strike beginning Aug. 21, the anniversary of George Jackson’s assassination,
More than 300 people gathered at Embarcadero Plaza on Saturday, June 23 to protest the Trump Administration’s inhumane “Zero Tolerance” child separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. The “Families Belong Together Rally” was just one of hundreds of associated events held across the country protesting the separation of children from their parents, and their indefinite imprisonment in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers (read: concentration camps).
Supporters began streaming into the plaza at 9:30 a.m.
The following is a first-person account from Jesus Perez, a longtime member of the Coalition on Homelessness, on a recent health episode and its ensuing hospitalization. It is also a story of resilience. To donate to Jesus’s recovery fund, go to https://www.gofundme.com/helptxutxo.
At first, when I went to the Coalition on Homelessness Board of Director’s meeting, I was okay, but then when I came to the office I started having this pain,
GENEVA (4 June 2018) – The United States’ principal strategy for dealing with extreme poverty is to criminalise and stigmatise those in need of assistance, a report by a UN independent expert has found.
“For one of the world’s wealthiest countries to have 40 million people living in poverty and over five million living in ‘Third World’ conditions is cruel and inhuman,” the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston,
A hectic election cycle has come and gone in San Francisco. The dust is settling as Mark Leno is making a concession speech and London Breed is preparing to take office, and San Franciscans are grappling with the implications of propositions passing or failing. Proposition F passed this cycle, meaning that the city will now provide legal representation for tenants facing eviction, while Propositions D and H were defeated, which would have respectively taxed the lease of commercial properties for low- and medium-income housing and homeless services and permitted SFPD to develop a policy governing Taser use without the established oversight of the Police Commission.
I heard too many times from people struggling with addiction about their challenges getting any help, including even medical services. Nobody is taking their needs seriously. As we know from the American mental health manuals, junkies “always complain and they always lie”.
Recently though several authors came forward with a completely different approach, protesting the dehumanization of those who are self-medicating to the point of losing control over substances which initially helped them to tolerate otherwise unbearable challenges of life.
