A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
By Ben Baczkowski
On December 11, 2019, San Francisco city officials officially announced the opening of the Vehicle Triage Center (VTC) located on San Jose Avenue near Balboa Park BART station. The yearlong pilot program will provide a secure parking location and targeted services for folks living in their vehicles, and is the first safe parking facility of its kind in San Francisco’s history. The site includes up to 30 parking spaces with mobile blackwater pumping services,
The flaws and failures of Sen. Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 50
by Didi Miller
The U.S. Senate wasn’t the only legislature suffering from an inability to compromise — California had also felt the brunt of unyielding adversaries in the heat of its housing crisis. California State Senator Scott Wiener, San Francisco’s district representative, brought his wildly disputed transit rezoning Senate Bill 50 (SB 50) to the floor on January 6,
By Mirjam Washuus
As of April 2019, over 1,800 San Franciscans were living in their vehicles. This is an increase of almost 600 people (49 %) since 2017 and simultaneously an undercount according to the point-in-time count itself. That is nearly 2,000 people sleeping, eating, fighting illnesses, helping neighbors, raising children, going to work and school from inside a tin box with very limited, if any, access to water and electricity. So, they are dependent on its community (both City and neighbors) to provide support as in any other community.
By Shyhene Brown
June 1, 2019
I can remember the first time I went to the navigation center. It was a long process getting documents ready to working with my case manager and going through the whole process. Yes, it was hard at the time, but now I’ve got keys to my own place.
It’s a big change from the navigation center. Like the navigation center, I can come and go when I want — the only thing is I have to check in after three days.
By Matt Levin, CALmatters
No wonder Gov. Gavin Newsom dropped those hints earlier this week about an upcoming “Marshall Plan” for affordable housing.
Sure, he’d made ambitious campaign promises to combat California’s housing crisis: leading the effort to build 3.5 million units over the next seven years (an unprecedented rate), jacking up state subsidies for housing reserved for lower-income Californians, and easing regulations so it would be easier to build all types of new housing.
Ronnie Goodman, a 58-year-old homeless artist, was arrested near the Redstone Building on 16th and Mission streets when he jumped on a Department of Public Works truck to retrieve 50 linocut pieces he created — and the rugs and boards he shelters himself with — that City workers seized.
Initially, he was charged with felony vandalism and illegal lodging for the September 15 incident, but those charges were later dropped for a lack of evidence.
An alliance of tenant organizations is demanding a “full repeal of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, nothing less.”
That could happen if enough Californians approve Proposition 10, the Affordable Housing Act. It would empower the city of San Francisco to pass its own rent-stabilization ordinances. It could also give residents a fighting chance to stay in their homes.
The San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition issued its findings in a report, “The Cost of Costa-Hawkins,” published in July.
Cities across the United States have tested the housing first model and found that it works very well, presenting a compelling case that housing first should be expanded where it is already used on a small scale and implemented where it is not public policy.
Despite the immediate costs and political resistance with building housing for chronically homeless people, the shift to putting homeless people in permanent, personalized shelter is justified on a range of grounds.
It would be easy to miss, with Prop C in full swing, with political candidates talking about their “solutions to the biggest challenges facing the city today”, with successive mayors intensifying the criminalizing sweeps of our friends and family on the streets… But San Francisco is making radical steps – leading the country, in fact – with the first ever demonstration model of a safe injection site in the United States.
“Safer Inside: A Community Demonstration” took place in the last week of August,
San Francisco is at a precipice – deep into a housing crisis that exists within great wealth and economic fuel. Residents more than ever are motivated to see homelessness addressed as property values and rents skyrocket. Housing-insecure renters see themselves in the faces of those on the streets and respond at times with compassion and other times fear-based hostility. Homeowners have spent small fortunes to acquire property. Yet homelessness is more visible than ever with the proliferation of tents throughout the city,
