A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
I have not been homeless in almost a decade.
But my homelessness was deeply influenced by the fact that my mother was homeless before me, for many years.
I loved her so much. When your own mother hits the streets, you learn something. When she was homeless, a part of me was homeless.
That is actually how the Buddha sees homelessness: If you suffer, I can embrace that. This is not an embrace as if it is a burden.
On October 20, the Tilden Hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood saw more people outside its doors on a damp, dreary afternoon than were inside. About two dozen activists from the Coalition on Homelessness, Senior & Disability Action and other allies and members of the city’s unhoused community rallied outside the nine-story hotel that, until that week, was used as a shelter-in-place (SIP) hotel to protect homeless people from COVID-19.
The advocates demanded that SIP hotels funded and operated by the City stay open,
Ooh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away
“Gimme Shelter” -Jagger/Richards
Last weekend, San Francisco endured record rainfall during its first major rainstorm of the year, receiving over 4 inches of rain within the roughly 48 hours that it lasted. The storm had been forecast for over a week and was all over television, internet and radio. For most locals,
Coordinated Entry is known to most folks experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. It is a system designed to coordinate and manage the limited resources available to unhoused people in San Francisco, and to prioritize who has access to housing subsidies and who does not. The evaluation is very strict and asks a range of questions about the health, income, and current living situation of those who enroll.
There are people with jobs who work full time,
To read more by this author, visit www.thepaltrysum.com
There are spirits on the streets. Spirits that walk the line between this world and the next. There are spirits that hide in the shadows. Yokai creatures that howl and bark and turn into tea kettles that do skateboard tricks along the Embarcadero, having lost their tightropes somewhere in Osaka in 1859. There are Angels. And there are demons. There is the ‘As Above’ and the ‘So Below’.
Since 2018, the City of San Francisco has been using a system called Coordinated Entry to distribute housing resources to homeless people. Coordinated Entry is mandated by the federal government, and requires the city to score homeless people with points, to identify which people are the most vulnerable. The people with the most vulnerabilities (for example disability, substance abuse, or mental illness), are the first ones prioritized to receive housing. The Coalition on Homelessness hosted a listening session in August with 35 families who were experiencing or had experienced homelessness to get feedback on how Coordinated Entry has been going for people.
On Tuesday, October 19, the Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to approve the proposed Vehicle Triage Center (VTC) at the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area in the southeastern corner of San Francisco. The site, funded by Proposition C dollars released in this year’s budget, would be large enough to accommodate up to 155 vehicles with 177 tenants. According to the Department of Housing and Supportive Housing’s (HSH) proposal for the VTC,
I was homeless for 15 years, and most of that time was spent on the streets of Berkeley and Oakland. I spend time thinking about those days now. I think about those moments often. I ask myself, “What is the takeaway? What have I learned from those years sleeping behind bushes?”
I never took a vow of poverty. If I had been able to hold down a job and pay rent and function the way that one is expected to do,
Originally published on thepaltrysum.com
In the middle of the storm it is hard to see the wood for the trees, the wind from the rain or the good from the bad. I lived in that storm for most of my adult life, and it is only in the last week that I have been inside looking out at the storm from a position of relative safety that I have been able to take stock.
My name is Dominique Griffin and I am an intern here at the Coalition on Homelessness. I wanted to take the time out of my day to share my story with you, about my challenges with being homeless and being housed.
About two years ago I was living in the outer Bay Area in Suisun City, near Fairfield, with my 14-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. I started having trouble paying my rent, which was almost $1,800 a month!
