A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Jordan Wasilewski
A long time ago, when I was on the SRO Task Force, one older commissioner told me after a meeting one day “please don’t push your own agenda.”
The only agenda I ever pushed was the tenant agenda. However, “pushing one’s own agenda” seems to be common in City Hall. One example of this is District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who is pushing legislation to end all funding for new site-based permanent supportive housing unless it is drug-free.
by the Western Regional Advocacy Project
Everyone is familiar with a sweep, be it by definition, bearing witness to somebody being displaced or even coming across a familiar place and noticing people who used to live there are suddenly gone. Sweeps happen every day in our communities. Yet despite new policies, rhetoric and media portrayals of sweeps and city government’s asinine excuses for doing them (i.e. health or drug issues),
by River
For years, the rhythm of my life was measured in losses. Two to four times a month, I would lose everything. My bedrolls, my clothes, my toiletries—stolen by others on the street or swept away by the Department of Public Health. Each loss pushed me deeper into the cycle of addiction, a blur of panhandling, washing windshields, and calling cabs outside the theater for tips just to find the next drink or the next hit.
by Benjamin F. Henwood
Can giving homeless people US$750 a month to use any way they choose help them move into long-term housing?
I am the director of the University of Southern California Homelessness Policy Research Institute. My research team, in partnership with Miracle Messages, a San Francisco social services nonprofit, set out to answer that question in a study that will be published in an upcoming peer-reviewed issue of Social Work Research.
by Zach Bollinger
Four out of 10 San Francisco RV residents are at risk of losing their homes when their six-month parking permits lapse on April 30.
Of the 225 RVers who still need to renew their Large Vehicle Refuge Permit, 88 have yet to renew as of April 14, the final scheduled in-person renewal session on the City’s schedule. This is just the latest example of a pattern of a hastily implemented plan,
Street Speak is a podcast of Street Sheet. The following excerpt is from Episode 22, a conversation between Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, the San Francisco-based homeless advocacy organization that produces the podcast, and Anya Worley-Ziegmann, coalition coordinator of the People’s Budget Coalition. To listen to the entire interview, go to streetsheet.org/street-speak-podcast or the platform where you listen to podcasts.
This interview is edited for brevity and clarity.
by Tiny
Police car outside 71st Avenue safe parking sites in Oakland, which has since closed down.
Closure of small house community forces several previously unhoused residents back to the streets
“They said we have to leave … today … I’ve been here for four years and I’ve never received help or resources or even a referral of someone to talk to about housing” said Dennis houseless resident of Third and Peralta tiny home community.
Nancy McCombs, born in Dallas, Texas, September 11, 1947, died on March 5, 2026 in San Rafael following a fall in December that resulted in a traumatic brain injury. She was 78, and survived by her partner, Kenton Lai.
Nancy served as an SSI attorney. She assisted the disenfranchised to access Supplemental Security Income, which the federal government is supposed to provide to citizens who are disabled and unable to support themselves with jobs.
story and photos by Shakema Straker
Pancakes in the Park in San Francisco celebrated its 20th anniversary. Since 2006, members of the unhoused community gather every week for brunch at Golden Gate Park.
The smell reaches you before anything else. Warm batter on a hot griddle, drifting through the eucalyptus and fog of Golden Gate Park on a Tuesday morning. On March 17, near the Children’s Playground,
by Lukas Illa
San Francisco community based-organizations enter another city budget cycle with great uncertainty of whether their core programs will exist in four months time. With Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Austerity First budget (my words, not his), San Francisco is once again electing to siphon funding for working-class communities of color to pad law enforcement agencies’ already bloated budgets.
The People’s Budget Coalition has tracked a combination of $62 million expected cuts to the Department of Public Health (DPH),
