A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
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.
by Christin Evans
There are four so-called “Charter Reform” ballot measures on the November ballot that we should all oppose: Propositions A, D, E and F. While each measure does something slightly different, they all have the same effect: silencing the voice of everyday San Franciscans at City Hall.
The Clean Up City Hall campaign spent over $5 million from a couple of wealthy billionaires to put Propositions D,
by Jordan Wasilewski
On September 3, I rolled out of bed, went to the Homelessness Oversight Commission (HOC), saw that the director’s report did not include the annual report of evictions from permanent supportive housing, and, as is my style, called them out on it in the loudest and most profane way possible. I had a copy of the FY2025-2026 eviction data in my hands, but after channeling my best Peter Finch from the movie “Network,”
by Cathleen Williams
The introduction to the film “Unhoused Neighbors” asks us to consider “what it means” to live in extreme poverty in America’s wealthiest state. At the close of the film, on a black screen, the numbers scroll: upwards of 770,000 people unhoused in the U.S.
“These are just seven of them,” the final sentence reads.
It’s a quiet film. Seven unhoused people face the camera,
by Kidest Yigezu
infographic via schoolhouseconnection.org
In late August, the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization Housing Up released an article that highlighted the hidden homelessness in our K-12 education system. Under the McKinney-Vento Act, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines a student experiencing homelessness “as one who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”
But a significant part of the issue is the huge discrepancy in the representation of homeless students in national datasets like the the point-in-time count that happens every other year on a single night in January and focuses on visible homelessness,
