A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
The seminal clinic that developed the gender protocols by which bigger, better funded medical providers now endeavor to treat trans patients, Lyon-Martin Health Services, is also my everyday clinic, and I still need it. It’s where I meet with my primary care provider, where I go when I’m sick, where I get my hormone scrips refilled, where I was able to get effective referrals for gender confirmation surgeries, where I got all my paperwork for legal gender change,
I’m not sure where to begin and end on this short tale about my homelessness. It’s just when you think it’s over the saga continues. So let’s start with when I first left home with no place to go. I was only 13 years old and I told my mama that I was a man, and she replied “get your ass out there and be a man. When yo’ mannish ass get yo’ own place you can do what you want to do.
“After all, every homeless Californian, living on a boulevard of broken dreams, is a casualty of institutional failures — a person who’s fallen through every possible hole in the safety net.”
On February 19, 2020 California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave his State of the State speech, focusing in large part on addressing homelessness. In many ways this was brave, as politicians have been ignoring this issue on the state and federal level since mass homelessness hit the country in the early 1980s,
We set out for months to put on a 2020 African-American centered event for Black History Month at the Coalition on Homelessness. Being my first time planning such a big event made me extremely nervous, but I was relieved to have the help of our peer organizer Tracey Mixon, who led the event with me. This was our first event planning, so yes we were nervous!
We were glad to join hands with Hospitality House as well.
Homeless Defense Strategies when “Officer Friendly” Won’t Help
It’s easy to take things for granted when you are housed each night: having a bed to sleep in, control over the temperature around you, access to a bathroom or kitchen, having personal belongings at close reach, or having some control over the disturbances around you. Even if you don’t have control over these things, you have protected rights under California law,
Unhoused people in the East Bay will be compensated by Caltrans for property that the state agency damaged or destroyed in encampment sweeps, thanks to a newly reached legal settlement.
A class-action lawsuit that began in 2016 is nearing its conclusion after the California Department of Transportation agreed to pay $2 million to reimburse homeless people for lost possessions and employ someone to recover their items and connect them to services.
On January 16, 2018, The City and County of San Francisco launched the Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC) in order to better coordinate the City’s response both to homeless encampments and, according to a 2019 report from the SF Controller’s office, ‘behaviors that impact quality of life, such as public drug use and sales.’ Instead of effectively addressing the needs of unhoused San Franciscans, what emerged was a harsh system, led by law enforcement, with an emphasis on criminalization and displacement.
Activists create chaotic mockery of city’s ineffective and inhumane response to homelessness
Community members, including homeless people and service providers, converged on City Hall on Thursday with push brooms and bullhorns and demanding solutions to homelessness. The spectacle drew attention to the cruel encampment sweeps led by San Francisco Police Department and the Department of Public Works that involve stealing homeless people’s belongings and pushing people from one block to the next.
A few years ago I wrote an article on violence against homeless people to give you guys a glimpse of how homeless people are treated. Now I’m about to give you a true eye opener on this subject.
OK, now here is the ice-breaker. No one wakes up in the morning and says “I want to be homeless,” or “I wonder what homelessness is really like,” or “I wonder how people are gonna treat me while I’m homeless?” No one does.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Mohammed Nuru sucks,
Sweeps do, too
Mayor London Breed has talked a lot lately about taking a ‘tough love’ approach when addressing the needs of San Francisco’s homeless population. It’s an odd, shitty, and shameful attitude for a city to take towards those whom life has already been toughest to, but it’s nothing new. In 2016, one week before Christmas, then-mayor Ed Lee called for a ‘tough love’ approach to homelessness,
