Coalition on Homelessness et al v. San Francisco: City Balks on Settlement Offer

by TJ Johnston
A tent is in the center of the frame. In front of it is what looks like a white dollhouse, laying flat on the ground. The image is in Black and White

The Coalition on Homelessness offered to settle its lawsuit against San Francisco for its illegal practices of sweeping unhoused people off sidewalks. The City rejected the offer.

In a Thursday letter to City Attorney David Chiu, Mayor London Breed and others, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the American Civil Liberties Union Northern California said that both sides could work together toward a shared goal of tackling the dual problems of street homelessness and a lack of affordable housing. 

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In the East Bay: Four Decades of Police Encounters

by Contributing Author

by Jack Bragen

Content warning: This article describes police harassment perpetrated toward me. I acknowledge that this article could reopen old wounds of some past acquaintances and could step on some toes: You know who you are. I am sorry about that. However, this is a story that I need to tell.

As a teen, I was arrested in an incident where I was clueless, and didn’t have any “criminal intent,”

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These Researchers Lived Through Homelessness. Now, They’ve Analyzed It. 

by TJ Johnston
Let This Radicalize You

The latest study of unhoused Californians made headlines, even though its findings are already considered common knowledge among people engaged with the issue. However, what was unusual about the research team investigating homelessness in California is that the team are formerly or currently unhoused residents of the Golden State—and similar groups are emerging around the state. 

Call them lived experience boards, lived expertise boards or community advisory boards—bodies with formerly and presently unhoused folk are becoming commonplace in nonprofit organizations and municipal agencies,

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Anti-Homeless Violence

by Quiver Watts

The New Lynchings of the 21st Century

Updated on May 16th to reflect current developments

What does Walgreens carry on its shelves that could be worth a human life? Banko Brown was a young Black trans activist who had been unhoused in San Francisco for a decade. In his volunteer work and community organizing with the Young Women’s Freedom Center, he consistently advocated for basic access to services, and was beloved by his community. 

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CART’s Alternative Response to Policing May Turn into Alternative Policing

by Contributing Author

The Compassionate Alternative Response Team (CART) was envisioned by a broad coalition of homeless people, activists, service providers and community members as a safe and dignified way to respond to complaints from the public about street-based folks. The idea was to replace the current—often traumatic—police response with a compassionate response rooted in meeting the needs of those on the street. 

After years of advocacy, CART was finally funded and set to be implemented,

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City Violates Court Order on Homeless Sweeps, says Coalition

by Contributing Author

by Javier Bremond

The Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco has documented numerous violations of the preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in their lawsuit against the City of San Francisco for violating the constitutional rights of unhoused San Franciscans. 

In September 2022, the Coalition filed a lawsuit stating that the City has been unjustly sweeping homeless individuals by displacing them with no alternatives to adequate shelter,

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Why is the Coalition on Homelessness Suing the City of San Francisco?

by Contributing Author
In the foreground we see a figure holding a sign that reads "Housekeys not Handcuffs", and a crowd is gathered. In the background San Francisco City Hall seems to loom.

This article has been adapted from an episode of Street Speak, our podcast answering your burning questions about poverty and homelessness. To listen to the full episode, find us wherever you get your podcasts or on our website, streetsheet.org/street-speak-podcast

Right now, attorneys from the Lawyer’s Committee on Civil Rights (LCCR)—alongside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Coalition on Homelessness—are suing the City and County of San Francisco for their main response to homelessness: criminalization.

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No CARE in the Courts

by Lisa Willis
In the foreground we see a figure holding a sign that reads "Housekeys not Handcuffs", and a crowd is gathered. In the background San Francisco City Hall seems to loom.

Invest in housing and mental health services, not criminalization

The CARE Court Governor Newsom is backing is dangerous! Senate Bill 1338 would establish “C.A.R.E. Courts’’ in California. C.A.R.E Court has a $65 million starting cost and claims to combat houselessness and support people with mental health disabilities, but provides no funding for permanent supportive housing or mental health services.

CARE Court can require participants to take medication against their will. If they refuse medication for any reason,

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To ‘Protect and Serve’ Whom? Violence by Police Continues

by Tyler Kyser

In the United States, we know that law enforcement agencies that were put in place to “protect and serve” have done nothing of the sort. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, community activists, organizers and allies came together across the country to protest and to hold law enforcement agencies accountable to the violence that they cause marginalized communites. Two years after one of the biggest movements began to halt police violence, few true solutions,

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Police Know Arrests Won’t Fix Homelessness. They Keep Making Them Anyway

by Melissa Lewis, Reveal

In the Lents neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, residents gathered at a public forum last June to voice their concerns about the city’s growing population of homeless individuals. 

Over the last decade, rent grew twice as fast in Portland as the rest of the country, and the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness increased by nearly 30 per cent. The effects of those dynamics were on full display in Lents, one of the city’s most racially diverse areas and among the neighborhoods where home prices had been rising the fastest. 

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