A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Jordan Davis
About a year ago, District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents the majority of permanent supportive housing tenants in San Francisco—including myself—introduced and passed a resolution calling on the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) to fill vacant PSH units. Given that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Grants Pass case makes it easier to sweep unhoused individuals, and that Mayor London Breed is now trying to bus homeless people out of town,
This year’s ArtAuction24 (AA24), Transforming Art into Action, is celebrating 35 years of our amazing Street Sheet. This illustrious paper started in a classically organic, only at the Coalition way. Phil Collins had just released a fan favorite, “Another Day in Paradise,” and invited us to table at Shoreline Amphitheatre. The year was 1989. We created a newsletter to give out and made thousands of copies. Concertgoers were not particularly interested in reading literature during a show so we came home with a lot of those newsletters and couldn’t think what to do with them.
by Jeff Musser
There is a unique way that sunlight hits the pavement under a freeway overpass. Or maybe it just appears unique to my eyes. Walking under a multi-lane freeway is a bit like walking through a tunnel. The atmosphere is dark, so your eyes have to adjust to the momentary change in light. But unlike a tunnel, a freeway overpass has gaps. I first saw Angela when I was walking underneath one of those gaps.
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,
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,
by Jack Bragen
As a disclaimer, I’d like to emphasize that this piece does not offer proven facts, but merely opinions based on my own experience. And in that respect, it’s not unlike most of my other work.
I collect my information and draw conclusions through seeing the details in Contra Costa County, where I live. It seems that social service systems, administered by counties, are not designed to make poor people into highly successful people.
by Jordan Davis
Last year, I joined several former and current permanent supportive housing tenants, as well as an attorney from the Eviction Defense Collaborative, in presenting possible solutions to the eviction crisis in PSH to the Homelessness Oversight Commission. We worked off a draft of a document that detailed best practices from the Department Of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), which consulted only PSH providers. This was only one example where tenants were never “in the room where it happens.”
by Marisa Kendall/CalMatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom today ordered state agencies to remove homeless camps throughout California, his first major show of force since the Supreme Court granted state and local authorities more power to clear encampments.
Newsom’s executive order mandates that state agencies and departments adopt policies to clear camps on state property. It also encourages local governments to do the same.
“This executive order directs state agencies to move urgently to address dangerous encampments while supporting and assisting the individuals living in them — and provides guidance for cities and counties to do the same,” Newsom said in a news release.
