A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
By TJ Johnston
Dec. 11, 2017
In one of the most recent forced relocations of encamped residents of San Francisco, the City has swept an encampment on San Bruno Avenue and Division Street hours after a U.N. official visited the residents, Street Sheet has learned.
The sweeps happened twice on the morning of December 7, around 3:30 a.m., then again at 8 a.m. The day before, a U.N. Special Rapporteur’s delegation spoke to some people living there as part of an investigation on poverty.
By Allen Armstrong
It doesn’t take long for one to figure out if the homeless shelters are truly here to help or harm homeless people. While it’s not important to most people in San Francisco, it’s certainly important to those who actually want to be off the streets for the most part and be a better, more productive member of society that also wants to be a positive influence on people. There is no reason to hold grudges against anyone really,
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.
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.
Survival Guide
by Darnell Boyd
Dec. 15, 2017
by T.J.Johnston
The topic of homelessness is often addressed as an economic, health, or safety issue. But a special investigator from the United Nations came to San Francisco on December 6 to hear from community members with a take not often heard from officials in the U.S.: the human rights of homeless people.
Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights,
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!
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,
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,
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.
