A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
If you are placed in supportive housing, it will likely be a single-room occupancy (SRO) unit, and you will also come into contact, in various contexts, with the SRO Collaboratives. They tend to get tenants plugged in by holding dinners, giving out free ice cream and getting them involved in neighborhood issues, and yes, an SRO Collaborative got me interested in these oft-ignored equity issues. However, if you dig deeper, you will find conflicts of interest,
The author originally told this story before an audience in San Francisco as part of an evening of performance and storytelling sponsored by Tipping Point Community on November 18, 2021 at Manny’s, 3092 16th St. San Francisco. This story has been adapted and edited for your reading pleasure, and hopefully, inspiration.
I think of the places I’ve slept in in my life – buses, trains,
It was a Friday morning, January 2020, when I woke up with a bad stomach and couldn’t keep down food. I was driven by my wife to get OTC stomach drugs, but the dispensing pharmacist suggested we take a blood sugar test. We drove to the nearby clinic and, upon administering the test, the doctors panicked. My sugars were so high the machine literally just indicated “High” as they were off the scale. They got a drip running to rehydrate me,
Seeing the mother with a young child in her arms broke my heart. They were standing on a street corner on a cold early December day holding a cardboard sign that said, “Please help.”
I stopped my car, rolled the passenger window down and asked, “What do you need?” “Money for a motel room for tonight,” she said, looking into my eyes. Her young daughter’s eyes were dim above her runny nose. I gave the Mom $20 and said,
From Gender-Based Violence to Homelessness
San Francisco, The Bay Area, my home. My well-furnished house that I felt I would never leave, not even in my worst thoughts. Little did I know this comfort of having a nice home, family and even cars would be short-lived. In October of 2013, I got married to my sweetheart—let’s call him Michael for privacy reasons. I was filled with happiness and expectations of a long-term marriage. Months later,
Last month, public restrooms reopened in two underground BART stations after more than 20 years, having been closed after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Powell Street Station’s two public restrooms reopened on Feb. 2, while bathrooms reopened at Oakland’s 19th Street station on Feb. 25.
Advocates applauded the reopening but faulted the Bay Area-wide transit agency for shutting public bathrooms in the first place, which has denied the human right to accessing water for drinking,
I arrived in San Francisco from Anchorage, Alaska on Feb. 20, 2008. I stayed with the father of my children and my two sons. We stayed in my mother-in-law’s apartment in the Alemany projects. It was there I conceived my second son. I drank and did drugs during this time, while working for my brothers-in-law and my kids’ father through In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS). I went to jail due to domestic violence incidents between me and my partner at the time,
San Francisco las personas desamparadas aún tienen fe y esperanza en la organizaciones que le hagan brillar sus vidas de nuevo
El reto del como y cuando,
sigue siendo
el dilema
de una sociedad
que se insensibiliza,
frente a la crisis de las personas desamparadas
This article has been translated from Spanish to English. Read the translation HERE!
Las personas en crisis de desamparo, tienen una gran tensión física, sicológica,
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual individuals, alive or dead, is coincidental.
Case counts were down; I told the folks delivering vaccinations that I could help. We set up Mobile Outreach Vaccine Events to find homeless people to vaccinate. We gave people twenty bucks worth of gift cards for vaccinating, and offered flu vaccines, booster shots, Johnson and Johnson one-shot-gets-you-done vaccines, and completion doses for Moderna and Pfizer.
The most direct way to permanently solve homelessness is to provide homes for people to live in. Every San Franciscan deserves to live in safe and permanent housing, including those who don’t currently have a home.
One of the promises of Proposition C was to find permanent solutions for people experiencing homelessness. This past October, the City purchased three hotels using Prop. C funding for just this purpose. The first was the Mission Inn in the Outer Mission neighborhood.
