A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
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.
After fifteen years of planning, strategizing, connecting, and building, Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) is proud to announce a huge step in our work: the official launch of the Legal Defense Clinic (LDC) Project! With the support of the National Homelessness Law Center, WRAP’s local member groups are developing a national network of legal defense clinics that promote access to justice by bringing dedicated legal services to the neighborhoods where unhoused people live. These are the neighborhoods where WRAP’s local member groups have built deep relationships with unhoused community members,
In 2018, the Coalition on Homelessness worked hard to craft and then pass Proposition C, “Our City Our Home,” to make significant systemic changes to address homelessness. The measure, which taxes the most profitable San Francisco corporations with annual incomes over $50 million an average of one-half percent, garners around $300 million for homelessness every year. At least half of the funding must go to housing, and at least a quarter must go to mental health and substance use treatment.
In the midst of COVID-19, a community-led encampment in the Haight Ashbury offered an oasis for formerly homeless community members. Thanks to funding for emergency shelter made available by Proposition C, campers had a safe place to stay, daily meals and important services—and most importantly, a say in how the operation was run.
When the pandemic struck in March 2020, Mayor London Breed issued a shelter-in-place order. But that order didn’t apply to those who had no shelter.
The Eviction Defense Collaborative (EDC) has been putting Prop C dollars to work keeping people in their homes as more and more households are swept up in the wave of evictions that has followed the roll-back of the moratorium imposed at the beginning of COVID. The money is being used to supplement federal and state money that is helping tenants catch up on rental debt, and is currently being disbursed to cover three months of back rent and three months of future rent for tenants impacted by the pandemic.
Make a left from Harrison onto Merlin Street in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and you enter another world. Past two low-slung, industrial buildings and under a noisy freeway is a scene that has come to define San Francisco: Tents line the sidewalks, and a collection of household items tumble out onto the street. There are cardboard boxes, coolers, overflowing garbage bags, containers of food, grills, chairs, and a pile of bicycles. A huge clock is attached to a chain-link fence and on top of it sits a red toy truck.
