A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
San Francisco’s Fines and Fees Task Force recently released a report summarizing the impact that fines and fees have on poor and homeless people. Created in late 2016, the task force was organized to provide advice to the city on how to reduce the negative impacts of fines, fees, tickets and other financial penalties on low-income residents.
First, the facts: Across the nation, fines and fees are spreading when Americans can least afford them.
Parents and community leaders rallied together to advocate for the funding of family navigation services, emergency child care services, and improved shelter conditions for homeless families at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors’ Administration Office on May 22, 2017. The action, organized by Parent Voices, a grassroots organization which advocates for quality and affordable child care services for low-income and homeless families throughout California.
Lack of access to child care services within the homeless and low-income populations results in the inability to sustain a job,
Try getting up in the morning to being told you have to pack up and leave. Try staying humble when you are being disrespected by the San Francisco Police Department and the Department of Public Works on a constant basis. Try standing back and watching DPW throw your most precious possessions away in the compactor. Try seeing your loved one’s hauled off to jail for not cooperating with the police. Or waking up in fear of random people hurting you for no reason all because you are homeless.
My name is Angel Mason. I am a Street Sheet vendor and a volunteer with the Coalition on Homelessness for the past 7 years. I’ve been working to pass out information in the East Bay, in Oakland, and Berkeley. I’ve been passing out papers who are fans of the Street Sheet. I made a couple of nice articles about flowers, which was my first article. I’ve always pushed for feminism and for women’s rights since very early back.
It’s Friday afternoon at the drop-in center known as Mother Brown’s on the corner of Jennings Street and Van Dyke Avenue. Despite the iron-gated door fronting the entrance, people drop in freely to check their mail, take a shower, do laundry, or chill out in the reception area. For a nominal fee, Mother Brown’s rents out lockers.
Gwendolyn Westbrook, the director of the United Council of Human Services — the official name of Mother Brown’s — as well as staff describe the place as a community center.
I’ve been living here in San Francisco going on the last seven years, and I have had my fair shots of violence towards me, such as being in my tent, asleep, while someone burned it down with me inside. The San Francisco Police Department also had a few involvements as well, from Luís Góngora Pat and Jessica Williams, two homeless people who were killed in officer-involved shootings, just to name a few.
One of one of our dear vendors, Robert Scallon, passed away on April 27th, 2017 in Golden Gate Park.
“I used to encounter Rob several times a week as I walked down Larkin to the Street Sheet office on Turk. Rob would be manning his post outside Saigon Sandwich, cheerfully vending the latest issue,” says Scott Nelson, Street Sheet vendor coordinator. “Sometimes his customers would give him a sandwich from the store, and on more than one occasion he offered the sandwich to me.
Homelessness is hard enough for single adults, while family homelessness has its own set of trials, but these are compounded when women find themselves pregnant and without stable housing.
While numbers for homeless women experiencing pregnancy are hard to come by, San Francisco estimated 228 homeless families with 630 family members living in the city in its last homeless count in 2015.
In the same period of time,
