Poetry by Cierra Murray
Poetry by Virginia Barett
Radical Guide to Holiday Giving
Street Sheet’s radical guide to supporting houseless people during the cold season (and always)
As yet another atmospheric river heads for San Francisco, unhoused San Franciscans are getting ready for a cold, wet holiday season. Unsheltered people bear the brunt of our changing climate, as tents are not an alternative to safe and permanent housing. Keeping dry is an unending challenge during wet and rainy months.
While there is increased need in unsheltered communities during the winter months,
Reflecting on #30RightNow Victory
After two and a half years of organizing and movement building, the #30RightNow campaign has come to an end here in San Francisco.
The movement to implement a 30% of income rent standard for all housing for formerly homeless San Franciscans ended with a victory rally in front of the Department of Public Health (DPH), which, 48 hours before, was slated to be a protest against the same department refusing to implement the standard in the few supportive housing sites they fund.
Are You Still Awakening?
So this is me catching up to myself, and this process of endless awakening is really the same path towards finding a home.
We all must navigate a society that endlessly attempts to diminish our relationship to soul-spirit-body-heart-mind-God-earth.
I say that it attempts to diminish the relationship, which is very different from stating that it diminishes the soul itself. That never takes place, even though we all believe it does somewhere in our deepest suffering.
One Day in December
The snow is falling, and the world is quiet. I feel like the only person left in the world. Snow absorbs sound, bringing a quiet that only comes with the snow. I stand on my porch, watching the snowflakes flutter in the streetlights and fall to the ground. I start to get cold after a while, and I go back into the darkness of the house. I hear a Christmas song, and I remember that I’d left the TV on in the bedroom.
Prop C Money Funds Hotel Acquisitions
The most direct way to permanently solve homelessness is to provide homes for people to live in. Every San Franciscan deserves to live in safe and permanent housing, including those who don’t currently have a home.
One of the promises of Proposition C was to find permanent solutions for people experiencing homelessness. This past October, the City purchased three hotels using Prop. C funding for just this purpose. The first was the Mission Inn in the Outer Mission neighborhood.
Legal Defense Clinics to Launch
After fifteen years of planning, strategizing, connecting, and building, Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) is proud to announce a huge step in our work: the official launch of the Legal Defense Clinic (LDC) Project! With the support of the National Homelessness Law Center, WRAP’s local member groups are developing a national network of legal defense clinics that promote access to justice by bringing dedicated legal services to the neighborhoods where unhoused people live. These are the neighborhoods where WRAP’s local member groups have built deep relationships with unhoused community members,
We Kept Our Eyes Trained on Home
In 2018, the Coalition on Homelessness worked hard to craft and then pass Proposition C, “Our City Our Home,” to make significant systemic changes to address homelessness. The measure, which taxes the most profitable San Francisco corporations with annual incomes over $50 million an average of one-half percent, garners around $300 million for homelessness every year. At least half of the funding must go to housing, and at least a quarter must go to mental health and substance use treatment.
