“Aggressive” Sweeps Loom in SF After Grants Pass

by Contributing Author
A tent is in the center of the frame. In front of it is what looks like a white dollhouse, laying flat on the ground. The image is in Black and White

On a rainy day in 2021, I witnessed San Francisco workers throw away a woman’s leukemia medication during an encampment sweep. They also forced her to move without offering her a shelter bed, in violation of City policies and an ordinance requiring the City to offer shelter before it can clear encampments.

When the Coalition on Homelessness filed a lawsuit against the City in 2022 over this practice, we provided documentation that San Francisco had cited and arrested more than 3,000 unhoused people without first offering shelter and illegally trashed their belongings,

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Safe Ground’s Camp Ends Lease Over Lack of Support Amid Record Heat Wave

by Contributing Author

Story and photos by Isidore Mika Székely Manes-Dragan

Residents of Camp Resolution stand behind Anthony Prince in front of the gate (photo by Isidore Mika Székely Manes-Dragan)

Three weeks after the City of Sacramento stopped water delivery to Camp Resolution, and one week after camp residents announced that they would resist an unwanted inspection, camp members are now being forced to terminate their lease.

The residents at the self-governing homeless encampment,

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Assessing the System That Assesses My Disability

by Contributing Author

by Jack Bragen

As a disclaimer, I’d like to emphasize that this piece does not offer proven facts, but merely opinions based on my own experience. And in that respect, it’s not unlike most of my other work.  

I collect my information and draw conclusions through seeing the details in Contra Costa County, where I live. It seems that social service systems, administered by counties, are not designed to make poor people into highly successful people.

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PSH Tenants See Another Policy Change Without Their Input

by Contributing Author

by Jordan Davis

Last year, I joined several former and current permanent supportive housing tenants, as well as an attorney from the Eviction Defense Collaborative, in presenting possible solutions to the eviction crisis in PSH to the Homelessness Oversight Commission. We worked off a draft of a document that detailed best practices from the Department Of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH),  which consulted only PSH providers. This was only one example where tenants were never “in the room where it happens.”  

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Newsom Orders State Agencies to Clear Homeless Encampments

by Contributing Author

by Marisa Kendall/CalMatters

Gov. Gavin Newsom today ordered state agencies to remove homeless camps throughout California, his first major show of force since the Supreme Court granted state and local authorities more power to clear encampments.

Newsom’s executive order mandates that state agencies and departments adopt policies to clear camps on state property. It also encourages local governments to do the same.

“This executive order directs state agencies to move urgently to address dangerous encampments while supporting and assisting the individuals living in them — and provides guidance for cities and counties to do the same,” Newsom said in a news release.

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Supreme Court Allows Criminalization of Homelessness

by Contributing Author

story and photos by Jeremiah Hayden

The United States Supreme Court issued a decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson on June 28. The case out of Oregon will broadly impact how local governments write homelessness policy across the nation.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson on June 28, reversing the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals injunction barring the southern Oregon city of Grants Pass from enforcing ordinances banning sleeping in public spaces.

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Op-ed: Still Cruel and Unusual, Despite SCOTUS Ruling

by Contributing Author

by Lukas Illa

In the waning hours of its 2024 term, the U.S. Supreme Court published its decision on Grants Pass v. Johnson, which criminalized the existence of homeless people. In the days that followed, homeless advocates in the Bay Area pointed to the fact that in his majority opinion, Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch cited the amicus brief filed by San Francisco officials eight times.

The City’s amicus brief,

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Locked Out: Supportive Housing Denies Tenants Access to Community Areas

by Contributing Author

In 2008, the Salvation Army opened a community center at 242 Turk St. in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. It’s a Ray & Joan Kroc Community Center, whose stated mission is to provide supportive health services and housing for formerly homeless adults, foster youth and veterans living with behavioral health conditions, and nurture a safe space for the community’s youth. Next to the center is Railton Place, an apartment complex owned by the Salvation Army and managed by the John Stewart Company,

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‘5150s’ Expected to Worsen Under New California Laws

by Contributing Author

by Cathleen Williams, Homeward Street Journal

Maggie, an activist and advocate for the unhoused community, is a single mom who grew up in Venice, California. (Maggie is a pseudonym, to protect her privacy.) Today, few can afford to actually rent in Venice—Maggie lives in an oversized van: “Barely legal,” she says. 

When her daughter became delusional, hallucinating, paranoid, reaching a crisis point in her struggle with mental health disability,

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Everybody Hurts: It’s All Part of Being Human 

by Contributing Author

by Jack Bragen

Many emotions that we attribute to human beings appear to be universal among all animal life, even insects and maybe even plant life. 

I have dealt with insect life invading my dwelling. I have adopted a policy of killing the bugs, because I feel strongly that I can’t coexist with “vermin.” When a bug realizes I’m after it, it will become fearful, and it will try anything at its disposal to evade death.

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