COVID-19 Weekly Top Shelf Policy Recommendations Coalition on Homelessness | April 1, 2020

by streetsheet

HOUSE HOMELESS PERSONS IN VACANT HOTEL ROOMS NOW.

The Current Situation: The  City is only placing homeless people being discharged or diverted from SFGH beds who test positive or who are symptomatic into hotel rooms. The city announced today they are prioritizing hotel rooms for vulnerable people on streets, in shelters and in SRO’s but they have not moved any of them into a hotel room.  

What We Want: We are calling on the City to shelter all homeless people and those in congregate settings  into vacant units as a preventative measure, … READ MORE

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COVID-19: Homelessness & Faith Communities in San Francisco

by Kelley Cutler, Human Rights Organizer

Unfortunately we will not be publishing a print version of our April 1st edition because of the risk to our vendors and readers. In the midst of this pandemic, our Street Sheet vendors need your support more than ever. Please consider making a donation to our EMERGENCY VENDOR SUPPORT FUND to help vendors cover essential costs while they are unable to sell the newspaper.

Today we spent time figuring out how to organize collecting and distributing tents across the City for folks who have no place to ‘shelter in place’ during the pandemic.

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Former Foster Youth and Homelessness

by streetsheet

As information regarding the coronavirus and its potential threat of becoming a pandemic permeate every media outlet arising in pandemonium, prolonged homelessness as a social problem continues to fall through the cracks. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness in 2018, a total of 552,830 people experienced homelessness. This is an estimate calculated by using the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department’s annual Point-in-Time (PIT) count which is collected through Continuum of Care (COC) communities who self-report the homeless population.

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Homeless Director Steps Down to Street Operations 

by streetsheet

Jeff Kositsky, director of the city Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) stepped down into the much lower position of running the embattled Healthy Streets Operation Center (HSOC), after admitting the operation was a complete failure.  

HSOC started in January 2018 following a surge of encampments in the Bayview, Mission and South of Market.  It started as a mixed bag. Part Encampment resolution, where the homeless department would identify a large encampment,

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Fight for Essential Trans Services

by Scout Tranm President of the Board of Traction Project, a founding member of The Degenderettes, an Eisner-nominated artist with work commissioned by the SFMOMA, and was born and raised in the Bay Area.

The seminal clinic that developed the gender protocols by which bigger, better funded medical providers now endeavor to treat trans patients, Lyon-Martin Health Services, is also my everyday clinic, and I still need it. It’s where I meet with my primary care provider, where I go when I’m sick, where I get my hormone scrips refilled, where I was able to get effective referrals for gender confirmation surgeries, where I got all my paperwork for legal gender change,

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Tariq’s Narrative on Living and Surviving Homelessness

by Tariq Johnson

I’m not sure where to begin and end on this short tale about my homelessness. It’s just when you think it’s over the saga continues. So let’s start with when I first left home with no place to go. I was only 13 years old and I told my mama that I was a man, and she replied “get your ass out there and be a man. When yo’ mannish ass get yo’ own place you can do what you want to do.

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Newsom Fumbles State of the State Speech 

by Jennifer Friedenbach

“After all, every homeless Californian, living on a boulevard of broken dreams, is a casualty of institutional failures — a person who’s fallen through every possible hole in the safety net.”

On February 19, 2020 California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave his State of the State speech, focusing in large part on addressing homelessness.  In many ways this was brave, as politicians have been ignoring this issue on the state and federal level since mass homelessness hit the country in the early 1980s,

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MAKING HISTORY FOR BLACK HISTORY

by Emmett House 

We set out for months to put on a 2020 African-American centered event for Black History Month at the Coalition on Homelessness. Being my first time planning such a big event made me extremely nervous, but I was relieved to have the help of our peer organizer Tracey Mixon, who led the event with me. This was our first event planning, so yes we were nervous!

We were glad to join hands with Hospitality House as well.

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By Any Means

by Carl Jones

Homeless Defense Strategies when “Officer Friendly” Won’t Help

It’s easy to take things for granted when you are housed each night: having a bed to sleep in, control over the temperature around you, access to a bathroom or kitchen, having personal belongings at close reach, or having some control over the disturbances around you. Even if you don’t have control over these things, you have protected rights under California law,

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City’s Approach Produces Harm, More Than Reduces 

by Brian Edwards

On January 16, 2018, The City and County of San Francisco launched the Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC) in order to better coordinate the City’s response both to homeless encampments and, according to a 2019 report from the SF Controller’s office, ‘behaviors that impact quality of life, such as public drug use and sales.’ Instead of effectively addressing the needs of unhoused San Franciscans, what emerged was a harsh system, led by law enforcement, with an emphasis on criminalization and displacement.

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