Paying Too Much for Rent? #30RightNow!

Starting in August, all tenants in Direct Access to Housing (DAH) program will pay only 30% of their income towards rent. Previously, while most supportive housing units — and all units that have come online since 2016 — were at 30%, 678 tenants in the DAH program were paying literally half their income towards rent, a legacy of backwards and cruel policies from the City and County of San Francisco.

The funding that was released came from a $1 million allocation that came as a result of me hunger striking for rent relief in 2019,

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A Dangerous Message in Dangerous Times: HUD’s Transphobic Shelter Ban

We All Belong Here, We Will DEFEND each other

If you are a woman and happen to exhibit facial hair, a certain height or a noticeable Adam’s apple and you’re looking for a place at a federally funded single-sex or sex-segregated homeless shelter, you may soon be under particular scrutiny by the admissions staff. In other words, discrimination based on gender identity could become legal, especially discrimination that is based on stereotypical gender features – such as the ones listed above. This is according to a new proposal by U.S.

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Amid a pandemic and housing shortage, can LA find homes for 15,000 people?

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic reached Los Angeles County, more than 66,000 of its residents were experiencing homelessness, and almost 600,000 low-income people were spending 90 per cent of their income on housing. The city ranked near the top of the list of places where renters experienced the highest cost burdens. And the state of California had one of the worst shortages of affordable housing in the country.

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Before They Haul Your Home: Stories of Ending Poverty Tows

Towing practices have always been a particular plague for poor and homeless people, especially in San Francisco – the city with the nation’s highest towing fees, averaging $574 in the current fiscal year. However, when the current shelter-in-place order was issued, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) stopped what advocates call “poverty tows.” Normally, poverty tows occur when vehicles accrue five or more unpaid parking tickets, a vehicle’s registration has been expired for more than six months;

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Beware the Budget Cuts, Cameras and Civilians: On the Future of Policing in San Francisco

Near the seven-hour mark of the July 8 meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Appropriations Committee on the San Francisco Police Department budget for the next fiscal year, I realized I simply could not go on. After two long presentations, dozens of questions from supervisors and almost five hours of public comment, the end was not in sight. I was exhausted.

This was, for some organizers, the goal. Many of the over 400 callers used a script,

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Crisis Response: A Shelter Client Advocate Reflects

As San Francisco starts to slowly emerge back into a false sense of normality, I wonder where that will leave the homeless population staying in “shelter In place“ hotels and shelters scattered throughout the city. Before I cover that, I must recollect what events took place to get us here today. 

Back in March, everyone was on the fence about just how serious COVID-19 would be. No one could fully grasp then just how long we all would be under shelter in place,

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Defunding the Police: On the road to abolishing oppressive policing

Black Lives Matter and other abolitionist groups are leading communities across the country to recognize that the criminal justice system is a powerhouse of violence and white supremacy. Policing was racist at birth, with its origins in scalping Indigenous people and kidnapping Black people escaping slavery. It has a long history of keeping non-white, non-property owning people “under foot” and disempowered. From Reconstruction to Jim Crow and up to the present, police budgets across the country have continued to grow,

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Detention Pandemic

I have been in I.C.E. detention for 32 months now, and let me tell you it does not get any easier. In the 32 months I have been in 3 detention facilities in California, and Yuba County Jail is by far the worst! When I think about it, it makes sense why it remains in business. 6.5 million dollars a year for the I.C.E. contract, yet we can’t get adequate hygiene, decent clothes, a clean housing area,

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(UC) PoLice Terror in a Pandemic- UC Hastings Demands Sweeps of Houseless San Franciscans

barricades around the Tenderloin community garden

by Tiny of POOR Magazine

“They came by and took our tents,  said we had to go and not come back or we would be arrested, you know a sweep” said Johnell, 48 , a black disabled, houseless elder and RoofLESS Radio reporter who lived in a tent at Larkin and Mcallisters streets since April when Covid19 struck. Johnell and his wife both got a tent from POOR Magazine’s radical redistribution /RoofLEss radio cru who distributes masks,

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Tenderloin Rises Up Against UC Hastings Lawsuit

For Immediate Release

June 23, 2020

Press Contact: 

Jennifer Friedenbach 1(415)577-9799 jfriedenbach@cohsf.org 

**PRESS RELEASE*** 

Tenderloin Rises Up Against UC Hastings Lawsuit

Community members, students, and  organizations protest the offensive move by UC Hastings to clear black and brown residents from tent encampments in middle of the pandemic

When:     3:00 pm Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020

Where:   

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