A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Anonymous
Few people believe disability rights is a racial justice issue. On face value, it isn’t. But did you know, although less than 3% of the total population, Black San Franciscans are twice as likely to be disabled than white San Franciscans?
How is this possible? How can somebody’s race make them more likely to be disabled or not?
While I don’t have all the answers to that question,
by Jennifer Friedenbach
Lots of folks wonder what happened to Proposition C, the initiative entitled Our City Our Home,” that was authored by the Coalition on Homelessness in conjunction with many organizations and unhoused people. The short answer is: a lot.
The long answer is that in 2018 Prop. C, which taxes corporate income at about one-half percent starting from $50 million, was sued by corporations and held up in court until 2020 when the case was won in favor of San Francisco voters.
This article has been adapted from an episode of Street Speak, our podcast answering your burning questions about poverty and homelessness. To listen to the full episode, find us wherever you get your podcasts or on our website, streetsheet.org/street-speak-podcast
Right now, attorneys from the Lawyer’s Committee on Civil Rights (LCCR)—alongside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Coalition on Homelessness—are suing the City and County of San Francisco for their main response to homelessness: criminalization.
The program accommodating unhoused San Franciscans during the COVID-19 pandemic is scheduled to end in mid-December with the shuttering of the Hotel Whitcomb, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH).
The Whitcomb has become the last remaining safe harbor for homeless people in its final days of participating in the shelter-in-place (SIP) hotel program. Since the program began during the pandemic’s early days in April 2020, the Whitcomb has been one of 25 sites that provide a place to stay for people who would otherwise have no roof over their heads at the onset of a global public health emergency.
In April, Juan Carlos Cruz Mora received an eviction notice from his landlord that alleged he caused property damage and dirty, unsafe living conditions in the Sacramento suburb duplex he had called home for the last 10 years. He had only five days to file a response in court.
Mora, who blamed his landlord for those issues, tried to file an answer with the court himself but feared a mistake could land him,
A ‘Return to Normal’ in Abnormal Times
Wastewater testing is showing that San Francisco is currently experiencing perhaps the biggest COVID-19 surge yet, at the same time as the monkeypox virus is sweeping the country. With mask mandates gone and eviction protections being rolled back, the City seems set on a return to normal in the most abnormal of times.
Against this backdrop, the City is shutting down shelter-in-place (SIP) hotels,
About as quickly as it sprouted, a homeless encampment on Golden Gate Avenue dispersed last month. The San Francisco Police Department and multiple City agencies also tasked with moving unhoused people off outdoor areas were on hand.
For a few weeks, about 15 people had a place to lay their heads. They had slept on a vacant parcel that’s approximately 17,000 square feet—slightly larger than an NHL hockey rink—in San Francisco’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood.
In the fall of 2020, as the #30RightNow coalition was preparing legislation to cap rents at 30% of income for permanent supportive housing (PSH) tenants, I made a request to see the annual eviction report required of housing providers receiving funds from the city. I wanted to see if there was a positive correlation between buildings where tenants are rent burdened and the number of notices of eviction for non-payment. By cross checking that against a list provided to Supervisor Matt Haney’s office of buildings in which tenants were paying more than 30% of their income in rent,
Coalition on Homelessness Statement on Officer-involved Double Fatality on May 19, 2022
Rising rents and a lack of stable, affordable housing have pushed many people into homelessness in San Francisco, like they have in cities up and down the West Coast. Living without stable housing is difficult and traumatizing, and it has long-term health consequences for those forced to endure it. With no door to lock and no safe place to rest, unhoused people live without the fundamental stability and safety a home provides.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s shelter legislation is going to the full Board of Supervisors after the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee approved it on a 3-0 vote on May 26.
After several amendments through two committee meetings in May, one thing is for sure: Mandelman’s “Place for All Ordinance” is now a different animal from the legislation he introduced two months before with its primary focus on shelter softened as it moves to the full board on June 7.
