Homeless at the Piano

by Andy Pope

When I was homeless, I would wake up on a couple pieces of cardboard, sometimes set over dirt. Sometimes I slept on a ramp on the side of a Catholic church. I would wake when the sky was getting light, then wander into a nearby AA fellowship. There I would hit the bathroom for a quick clean-up before grabbing a cup of coffee.

Make that three cups.

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Sacramento Gave a Homeless Camp a Lease as an Experiment. Here’s What Happened

by Marisa Kendall/ CalMatters

When Sacramento changed its plan to demolish a homeless encampment on a vacant lot on Colfax Street, instead offering the homeless occupants a lease, activists and camp residents celebrated it as a win.

The first-of-its-kind deal, which allows the camp to remain in place and govern itself without city interference, was held up as a model Sacramento could replicate at future sites. Other cities, including San Jose,

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“We Don’t Have Anywhere Else to Go”: Bernal RV Residents Face Deadline with No Exit Plan

by Madeleine Matz

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) recently began enforcing a ban on overnight parking on Bernal Heights Boulevard, endangering the homes of RV dwellers who have parked there for years. Now, the RV residents are protesting their impending eviction.

Two neighborhood residents—Armando Martinez, who lives in an RV on Bernal Heights Boulevard, and Flo Kelly, a traditionally housed neighbor—gathered vehicularly housed residents to give public comment at the March 5 SFMTA board meeting.

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SF Public Employees Union: Newly Passed Prop. F is Unworkable

Proposition F, the measure that requires welfare recipients to be referred to drug screening if suspected of drug use, was approved by 58% of San Francisco voters in the March 5 primary election.

Prop. F passed with less than half of the City’s registered voters casting a ballot, and did so despite opposition from various political and advocacy organizations, medical providers, media outlets and labor unions.

Two days after the election,

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It’s now significantly more deadly to be homeless. Why are so many people dying?

by Marisa Kendall, CalMatters

For many people, living on the streets of California is a death sentence.

That’s according to a recent study that took the first deep look into mortality rates in homeless communities throughout the country. It found the death rate more than tripled between 2011 and 2020. The findings make it clear that at the same time the number of homeless Californians is soaring,

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