A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Volker Macke
According to a new British study, people experiencing homelessness have, by the age of 43, an average state of health equivalent to that of an 85-year-old with a home. Common health complaints include heart disease, respiratory issues, organ damage and infections caused by poorly healing wounds. Heat waves can also be as fatal for people sleeping rough as they are for elderly people.
For years,
by Jack Bragen
I live among low-income, disabled people, and I see poor people using high tech every day. This is made possible by means of mass production and innovative ways products can be cheaply manufactured. Where these so-called “low-end” products are concerned, I find high tech to be a boon for poor people who are willing to apply themselves to get used to this gadgetry.
A microcomputer costs only a few hundred dollars.
On a rainy day in 2021, I witnessed San Francisco workers throw away a woman’s leukemia medication during an encampment sweep. They also forced her to move without offering her a shelter bed, in violation of City policies and an ordinance requiring the City to offer shelter before it can clear encampments.
When the Coalition on Homelessness filed a lawsuit against the City in 2022 over this practice, we provided documentation that San Francisco had cited and arrested more than 3,000 unhoused people without first offering shelter and illegally trashed their belongings,
Arresting and ticketing people for sleeping outdoors, even when no shelter is available, is not unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 28.
In doing so, the court’s conservative majority overturned previous decisions maintaining that Martin v. Boise, a case that removed such criminal penalties for acts of homelessness in the absence of shelter and protected unhoused people’s constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
So does that mean the arguments made by the Coalition on Homelessness and seven unhoused plaintiffs in their lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco are gone,
Story and photos by Isidore Mika Székely Manes-Dragan
Residents of Camp Resolution stand behind Anthony Prince in front of the gate (photo by Isidore Mika Székely Manes-Dragan)
Three weeks after the City of Sacramento stopped water delivery to Camp Resolution, and one week after camp residents announced that they would resist an unwanted inspection, camp members are now being forced to terminate their lease.
The residents at the self-governing homeless encampment,
