Vendor Could Benefit from New ID

by Charles Davis

I was born in Vancouver, WA. We had relatives that lived over on Vashon Island so we’d spend a lot of time over there, weekends in Seattle. I had two sisters and one brother. My mom and dad got divorced when I was a kid. I like Seattle, I consider it my second home. Last time I was there, which wasn’t that long ago, it still felt the same even though it’s gotten a lot bigger.

… READ MORE

GETTING PERSPECTIVE ON HOMELESSNESS

GETTING PERSPECTIVE ON HOMELESSNESS

Bob Prentice

In reading media coverage of homelessness, it has been stunning to note the lack of historical perspective and what we are up against.  It portrays homelessness as largely a local problem—what is each city doing?—or even a regional problem—how is homelessness connected to more general housing problems in the Bay Area?

        Of course it is a local and regional problem, but it is much more than that.  

… READ MORE

My survival guide for homeless people

Survival Guide

by Darnell Boyd

  1. Get a waterproof backpack and fill it up with doggie bags because you will need to keep your feet dry. The doggie bags you can get in the parks—they’re the poop bags for the dogs. You put them over the feet and then put your socks on so your feed don’t get wet. Next, you need big plastic bags to put all of your electronics in them and important papers.

… READ MORE

Advice from the YPAC

Advice from the San Francisco YPAC (Youth Policy and Advisory Committee).  This report gives  topical brief and straight to the point pieces of advice to service providers and policy makers. The advice comes straight from the minds and hearts of youth with lived experience and knowledge of homelessness.

November 2017: Top Ten pieces of advice for Outreach Workers!

  1.   If I am asking for help I obviously need help so don’t turn me down.

… READ MORE

East Bay Solidarity

April Anthony: I was houseless for the better part of twenty years. During the last six of those years while living at our beloved community at the Albany landfill (AKA the Bulb) I became an activist/advocate for the houseless.

I went to the city’s homeless task force meeting and introduced myself, including telling them where I lived, adding “without one of us representing the houseless community, this task force could be a waste of your time,

… READ MORE

The Long Years

How do you find yourself on the streets as a vagabond? Let me share this with those who think this cannot happen; when you are weak socially, economically  and ill,  you really have no way to defend yourself against less-than-honorable landlords, bosses and strangers. It was the perfect storm, that came on the back of years of surviving the social wars of poverty. Let me be clear to you GOP types: if you are middle -aged,

… READ MORE

A Sleepout Against Homeless Criminalization

Neither rain nor darkness of night keeps postal workers from delivering the mail. Rainfall and darkness also didn’t deter homeless people and their allies from staging an outdoor sleepout in downtown San Francisco.

While homelessness and hunger awareness events were happening nationwide that week, the Coalition on Homelessness, which publishes Street Sheet, staged its own event on November 16 near the entrance of the Powell Street BART station during the evening commute. Organizers said it was a protest against ongoing abuses against homeless people and the failure of the City to provide adequate housing.

… READ MORE

[Comic] Fentanyl by Mission Mini-Comix

So this comic is about fentanyl, and changing drug market in America, and specifically, the West side. Frisco. California. Where the entrepreneurial spirit knows no bounds.

This mini-comic is attempting to be a non-fear-mongering warning about what fentanyl is: why it’s now a factor in S.F, and causing over-doses. How the drug market here has many drugs that have had the supply of them contaminated with fentanyl, and had people take it unknowingly and O.D.,

… READ MORE

Street Life Takes Years Off of Aging Women

 

One of the main arguments against San Francisco’s attempts to create solutions to homelessness like the coordinated entry system is that there is no “one size fits all” solution to homelessness. While the intention is to create more entryways into housing, these entryways look more like major hurdles for those who have different sets of needs being overlooked.

Women over the age of 50 experience the same discomforts that everyone living without a permanent home knows,

… READ MORE

Parkmerced Tenants Hope to Keep Units Amid Demolition

Construction in Parkmerced, the sprawling apartment complex located next to Lake Merced in southwest San Francisco, will begin in the spring of 2018, kicking off a 20 to 30 year redevelopment process.  

Maximus Real Estate Partners, the company that owns Parkmerced, will construct several new high rises, adding 5,679 new apartments for a total of 8,900, almost triple the current 3,221 units. Other planned amenities include community gardens, open spaces such as playing fields and bicycle paths,

… READ MORE