Safer Inside: A Community Demonstration

by Jack Rice

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,

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Ending Homelessness for San Franciscans A Bold Direction is Needed

by Jennifer Friedenbach

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,

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Are Homeless People “Service Resistant”?

by Mike Lee

I just love the language used to describe homeless people: Drunk, crazy, helpless, ad nauseum. It’s also shrouded in industry-specific terms like “experiencing substance abuse issues.”

Alphabet soup of acronyms that only a handful of insiders know. My all-time favorite though is “service resistant.” Google the term. There is no definition for it except when applied to the homeless. Common sense leads one to conclude that there is a whole army who resist services.

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Littering Fine Could Increase to $1000 in Dolores Park

by Maia Hibbett

On any sunny Saturday, hundreds of people fill the Mission’s Dolores Park with their friends, pets, music—and their trash. Current anti-littering laws do little to combat this latter phenomenon, as on most days, police officers in Dolores Park can be seen standing at the top of the hill, surveying the park for violent or egregious misconduct but doing nothing about the wrappers, cigarettes, bags, and other refuse being left by the park’s attendees. While the officers watch along the perimeters,

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I Ain’t Your Unicorn

by Tanea Lynx

“You know what we call you guys, right?”

I knew immediately that this was heading in a direction that I wanted no parts of. Before I could decide if I wanted to play dead in the backseat, he answered to amuse himself.

“Unicorns.”

I was in an uber. I had spent hours at my friend’s house in Lake View, a small community in San Francisco,

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San Francisco Sheriff Seeks $82 Million County Jail Renovation

by Quiver Watts

Sheriff Vicki Hennessy has proposed to apply for state funding to renovate San Francisco’s County Jail No. 2, located at 425 Seventh St. The grant would provide the Sheriff’s office with $70 million on the condition that San Francisco would pitch in an additional $12 million, for a total of $82 million in expenditures.

At the Feb 14th Board of Supervisors meeting, the proposed project gained unanimous support from all eleven supervisors.

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Where New Supervisors Stand on Homelessness

by TJ Johnston

Just like the ones before, the latest class of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will have to tangle with the city’s homelessness crisis. And the four newest supervisors could play a key role.

The board welcomed them to City Hall on January 9. Three of the them—Sandra Lee Fewer, Hillary Ronen and Ahsha Safai—were elected last November to replace termed-out supervisors. The fourth, Jeff Sheehy, was appointed to fill a vacant seat after its previous occupant was elected to the State Senate.

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Social Service Providers, Advocacy Groups Recommend Improvements to Homeless Services

by Gianni Jones

Homelessness continues to be a pervasive social contemporary problem within the San Francisco Bay Area. Advocacy organizations and service providers of homeless people seek to implement policies that minimize barriers that homeless families, youth, and adults are facing. In fact, focus groups consisting of members of the homeless population and/or front line service providers in 12 different homeless service providers and advocacy organization took place.. The survey outcomes revealed interesting findings of barriers within the homeless system.

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Mayor Cuts New Housing Subsidies Putting Hundreds at Risk

by Crystal Yu


Mayor Lee recently cut funding for two new Board-funded housing subsidies, affecting 175 households across the city. The funding would have provided critical rental assistance for seniors, families, and people with disabilities.

These funds were backed by the Board of Supervisors and totaled $2.5 million—125 subsidies worth $1.5 million for seniors and the disabled, and another 50 subsidies worth $1 million for families with children.

“We have to invest the resources to keep people in San Francisco,” says Brian Basinger,

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