A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Isidore Mika Székely Manes-Dragan
The Community Summit on Homelessness, held in September 2023, provided many ways to elevate the voices of the homeless community. The event was coordinated by the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC) and its many supporters and allies. Representatives from the Sacramento and Oakland homeless communities came together to attend. One of the functions of the event was listening booths,
by Gloria A Lightheart
In September 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1338, creating a mental health court. The Community Assistance Recovery & Empowerment (CARE) court program empowers judges to compel people with mental health disabilities or substance abuse issues to accept psychiatric treatment and medication. The legislature approved the bill on a near-unanimous vote.
In the new system, a court-appointed conservator would make financial and health care decisions,
by Marisa Kendall, CalMatters
Losing income is the No. 1 reason Californians end up homeless—and the vast majority of them say a subsidy of as little as $300 a month could have kept them off the streets.
That’s according to a new study out of UC San Francisco that provides the most comprehensive look yet at California’s homeless crisis.
In the six months prior to becoming homeless,
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,
by Anonymous
Few people believe disability rights is a racial justice issue. On face value, it isn’t. But did you know, although less than 3% of the total population, Black San Franciscans are twice as likely to be disabled than white San Franciscans?
How is this possible? How can somebody’s race make them more likely to be disabled or not?
While I don’t have all the answers to that question,
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.
Originally published in CalMatters.org
California has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the nation, and nearly six out of 10 California adults polled said they believe the government should do more to reduce the gaps between rich and poor.
But when presented with proposed policies to boost resources for disadvantaged groups, even liberals show reluctance to reduce inequality after all, according to a new study co-authored by researchers from UC Berkeley and released last week.
In early March, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court program, which would create yet another separate court for poor and unhoused people with mental health conditions and substance use disorders. Governor Newsom has explicitly discussed CARE Court as a tool to address street homelessness, and the proposal is consistent with a string of bills nationwide that seek to increase the power of the state to institutionalize unhoused people under the pretense of “compassion.” The devil is in the details,
What does it mean for tenants?
Reprinted from CalMatters
When California legislators voted last June to again extend eviction protections, they promised the third time would be the charm.
But the state’s rent relief program, which has struggled to reach the neediest tenants and landlords from the start, continues to lag. As of last week, the state has paid $2.4 billion to about 214,000 households — fewer than half of all who have applied for aid.
On Friday afternoon several dozen people gathered outside the unassuming Palms Motel in Oakland, CA with signs reading “Housing is a Human Right” and “Hotels Not Graves.” Inside, Stefani Echeverría-Fenn, an adjunct classics lecturer who herself was formerly homeless and has lived in the neighborhood for 11 years, has chained herself in the bathroom of a small room. She has been demanding that the City of Oakland offer hotel rooms where she has helped set up for her unhoused neighbors at the intentional encampment at 37th Street and Martin Luther King,
