A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
In 2018, the Coalition on Homelessness worked hard to craft and then pass Proposition C, “Our City Our Home,” to make significant systemic changes to address homelessness. The measure, which taxes the most profitable San Francisco corporations with annual incomes over $50 million an average of one-half percent, garners around $300 million for homelessness every year. At least half of the funding must go to housing, and at least a quarter must go to mental health and substance use treatment.
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.
In the midst of COVID-19, a community-led encampment in the Haight Ashbury offered an oasis for formerly homeless community members. Thanks to funding for emergency shelter made available by Proposition C, campers had a safe place to stay, daily meals and important services—and most importantly, a say in how the operation was run.
When the pandemic struck in March 2020, Mayor London Breed issued a shelter-in-place order. But that order didn’t apply to those who had no shelter.
The Eviction Defense Collaborative (EDC) has been putting Prop C dollars to work keeping people in their homes as more and more households are swept up in the wave of evictions that has followed the roll-back of the moratorium imposed at the beginning of COVID. The money is being used to supplement federal and state money that is helping tenants catch up on rental debt, and is currently being disbursed to cover three months of back rent and three months of future rent for tenants impacted by the pandemic.
Make a left from Harrison onto Merlin Street in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and you enter another world. Past two low-slung, industrial buildings and under a noisy freeway is a scene that has come to define San Francisco: Tents line the sidewalks, and a collection of household items tumble out onto the street. There are cardboard boxes, coolers, overflowing garbage bags, containers of food, grills, chairs, and a pile of bicycles. A huge clock is attached to a chain-link fence and on top of it sits a red toy truck.
