A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
By: Johanna Elattar
The morning sun is shining through the windows of my mother’s small Brooklyn apartment. It feels like it’ll be a scorching August day, and I’ve been up for hours. I live in upstate New York, but I love coming back to Brooklyn to visit my mother, and to spend a few days in the city. The landline she refuses to get rid of rings and I quickly answer it. I recognize the voice on the other end right away: It’s Bettina,
By Detroit Richards
San Francisco, once famous for the Summer of Love, beautiful views from the hills, and stunning architecture, is now known for having a large amount of human excrement on the streets, unchecked open drug use, and fearsome rates of overdose deaths and criminal activity. Fingers are unfairly pointed at the homeless population, who are scapegoated as the cause of all of society’s problems, and as a result the animosity towards those who are unhoused in the city continues to escalate.
by Ben Judd
As pandemic relief efforts come to a close in this city, the future of solutions to homelessness is uncertain. Frustratingly, it has taken emergency responses to life-or-death illness to effectively address the problem.
The recent Point-in-Time (PIT) survey findings show that unhoused people have been relying on safe-sleeping locations that opened during the pandemic. As these sites close, people will be forced to once again search for a safe place to rest.
Evaluating New Drug Policy Legislation
Substance use can be a coping mechanism, a way to self-medicate to soothe mental health symptoms, a means to dull pain, or to drown out recurring traumatic events. According to the 2022 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, a small minority—about 12%—of unhoused people reported that substance use disorder led to their homelessness. For many more, substance use disorders developed when they became homeless, bringing health and socio-economic consequences.
There has been a strange debate brewing of late,
by Dan Hoeweler
To my quad-processing binary
Turing machine,
To my machine language
Interpreter,
To My discrete algorithm
Analyzer,
To my multi-thread
Processing module,
Your cache
Your chassis
Your solid state drive
Your motherboard
Electrify my cerebral pathways
In ways that no programming language
Can express.
19 May 2022: Anthony Covarrubias – Utah and Alameda.
Name and age: Anthony Covarrubias, 37
Date: May 19, 2022
Place: Alameda and Utah streets
Without a home: “A good 12, 13 years now.”
What does home mean?
Home is changed for me now. Initially it was a house with my parents and brothers and sisters,
By J de Salvo
I have Bipolar I Disorder, which means I go through long periods of mania and depression; as opposed to BP II or Rapid-Cycling BPD, which present as extreme mood swings, my depressive and manic periods can continue for months at a time. When I’m manic, it can be almost impossible to sleep sometimes, and if I go long enough without sleep I start hallucinating and hearing voices. My illness has gotten worse over time,
In 2013, Maximus Real Estate Partners began to plan for a housing development at 1979 Mission St. to replace the current businesses located there including a Walgreens, a Burger King, the Hwa Lei Market and spaces for the community to sit, rest, meet up with one another and sleep. Although the project was halted for a few years due to a legal battle between the real estate company and landowners, Maximus seems to be gearing up for a final showdown to move forward with the project many are referring to as the “Monster in the Mission.”
The nickname was coined by the Plaza 16 Coalition,
Yesterday, San Francisco broke an all-time high in temperature records and hit 106 degrees. It was hot, really hot—and it still is. The heat wave continues on this weekend, with Saturday slated to reach up to 93 degrees and Sunday, 83 degrees. While housed folks may complain about the rising temperatures—especially since most homes in San Francisco have no air conditioning, it’s crucial to remember and support the folks on the streets living in tent encampments,
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. The first part of my life was pretty violent. My dad was an alcoholic drug dealer and he was a very violent man, but the second part was pretty cool. Me and my stepdad spent a lot of time working on getting and feeling better, but I was already traumatized. My stepdad had a hard time with me, because I never told anyone about my trauma, and I had a lot of trauma in my early years of life.
