A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
By Renee Belinda Cooper
After months of begging, pleading, applications, phone calls and waiting, a possible room appeared: $788 a month.
My current Social Security and SSI income is approximately $1,260. The rent alone would take nearly 63 percent of it, leaving $472 for everything else.
Apparently, retirement planning now requires a calculator, a miracle and a landlord who accepts the miracle as verifiable income.
I am 65,
by Jordan Wasilewski
In one of his corny anti-graffiti videos, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood talked about how he is all about the data. However, data can have many shortcomings and might not be able to tell the whole story, as we have seen with low-income people being evicted from housing that is supposed to help them stabilize.
I went to the Homelessness Oversight Committee’s October 1 meeting.
By Eva Schwienbacher
What does protesting achieve? Who takes to the streets? And are people protesting more today than they used to? Social movement researcher Karin Fischer of Johannes Kepler University Linz responds.
20er: It feels as if you can take part in a demonstration almost every week. Are we living in a time of protest?
Karin Fischer: Protest is part of democracy and occurs in cycles.
by Marisa Kendall/CalMatters
New legislation forces the city and county of Sacramento to collaborate on homelessness. Stakeholders say it could have repercussions California-wide.
The Legislature is forcing the city and county of Sacramento to try something unusual in their fight against homelessness, and both critics and supporters of the controversial plan say it could have broad implications for the rest of the state.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 802 in September,
photos by David Elliot Lewis and Zoey Laird
left to right: Hannah Beazely, Lukas Illa, Couper Orona, Carolyn Goosen, Dean Preston, and Maurice Byrd at the Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore on October 6, 2026. They spoke at a panel on San Francisco’s response to street homelessness.
“Our city is brushing people under the rug like we don’t exist. We exist and we belong somewhere,
by Christin Evans
The November election is nearly here and you should have received your ballot by now if you are registered to vote.
There are three ballot measures to support when you fill out your ballot: Vote YES on Propositions B, C and I. Each of these props will help us expand our City’s affordable housing stock. With rents soaring, we need to spend more of our City money on expanding the number of permanently affordable homes for San Franciscans making less than $90,000 per year.
by Lupe Velez
Proposition 43 on the November ballot for California voters would raise the required threshold for special taxes to pass from a simple majority of 50%+1 to a supermajority of two-thirds, or 66.67%. The Coalition on Homelessness and a number of groups and organizations including Evolve California, League of Women Voters of California, SEIU, Union of Educators and Classified Professionals, American Federation of Labor, the ACLU Southern California,
By Kidest Yigezu
At the October 1 meeting of the Homelessness Oversight Commission, several community members weighed in on a plan to recontract more than $500 million in annual grants and contracts that will affect the homelessness response system, or “reprocurement” as the City calls it. It was the first hearing on the plan since the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) held three “listening sessions” in September.
Among the critiques were the short-notice announcements of the sessions and the expectations placed on service providers.
story and photos by Andrew Anderson
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy in the world, with a rate of 580 per 100,000 residents, according to a 2026 report by the criminal justice reform nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. Every year, hundreds of people are released from prison with little or no resources. Many face an uphill battle reintegrating into society. Many of those people released from prison face homelessness and other obstacles such as family reunification,
by Lukas Illa
In San Francisco, the richest and most powerful industries in the world are spurring a devastating affordability crisis, where a median one-bedroom apartment is going for $4,000 per month and pre-IPO stock is being used as a bartering chip when touring rental units. We are in desperate need of affordable housing for the working people of this city that are consistently at the whims of the ever-greedy speculative real estate market.
