A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
An armored vehicle was parked outside the house on Magnolia Street in Oakland when a SWAT team dressed in what looked like military fatigues broke down the door. Deputies from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department swarmed in to carry away their targets. So what threat was the police force sent in to pacify? What danger warranted all the police, the guns, the fatigues, the vehicle meant to respond to terrorism threats?
Mothers.
By Ben Baczkowski
On December 11, 2019, San Francisco city officials officially announced the opening of the Vehicle Triage Center (VTC) located on San Jose Avenue near Balboa Park BART station. The yearlong pilot program will provide a secure parking location and targeted services for folks living in their vehicles, and is the first safe parking facility of its kind in San Francisco’s history. The site includes up to 30 parking spaces with mobile blackwater pumping services,
Thief: The City of SF – DPW, SFPD and Caltrans
Interview with Crystal by the Stolen Belonging team, January 31, 2019, Bayview District, San Francisco.
Crystal: My name is Crystal and I’ve been here since 2002, but I grew up in the North Bay. I’ve been in every district and neighborhood in the city at one point or another.
The sweeps really suck. It’s happened a few times in the last month or two.
Patrolling and controlling our public spaces— sidewalks, streets and parks— Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are privatizing our downtowns and main thoroughfares. Our public spaces are becoming corridors and shopping centers that are welcoming consumers with open arms and excluding everyone else. Most particularly impacted by this emerging trend are the houseless communities, who are seeing these areas to rest and sleep, free from harassment and criminalization, shrink.
BIDs have been growing significantly across the United States.
It would be easy to miss, with Prop C in full swing, with political candidates talking about their “solutions to the biggest challenges facing the city today”, with successive mayors intensifying the criminalizing sweeps of our friends and family on the streets… But San Francisco is making radical steps – leading the country, in fact – with the first ever demonstration model of a safe injection site in the United States.
“Safer Inside: A Community Demonstration” took place in the last week of August,
For many people, especially Black people, the month of February signifies the annual celebration of Black History Month/African-American Heritage Month. February is designated as a time to recognize African American achievements and contributions to America. One notable consequence is the hero worship of a handful of prominent figures. What’s more, this celebration of Black achievement particularly tends to be sanitized, and this selective representation is often at the expense of erasing a rich legacy of individuals,
We are excited to present an upcoming benefit for the Coalition on Homelessness at the historic Roxie Theater! Mark your calendars for this special occasion: Saturday, August 12 at 1:30pm. Details below.
<< BUY TICKETS ONLINE HERE! >>
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(NOT) IN MY BACKYARD is an evening of local documentary short films on San Francisco’s housing crisis, followed by a panel from the Homeless Speakers Bureau.
I’ve been selling the Street Sheet for over a year now. I sell the Street Sheet in order to provide for myself and my needs, and help others. I like the paper; I want the people to understand what’s going on here in San Francisco. I’ve been in Oakland, San Leandro, Sacramento with the Street Sheet and most people are amazed by the stories going on in San Francisco. I’m glad we have the paper called the Street Sheet,
As we see there is a total of four Navigation Centers here in San Francisco. There is one in the Mission, another on Market, the third at the Dogpatch, and the last one on Army Street.
So I asked a few people about their opinions about the new Navigation Centers and this is what they say. (Mind you, some of these individuals asked to keep their names anonymous during this interview,
Raise your hands if you’re in favor of housing homeless people and programs that make it possible.
Now, raise your hands if you support laws imposing bans on sleeping outside or panhandling.
Chances are, in this scenario, you’d see the same set of hands raised favoring both approaches to homelessness. According to a pair of political scientists, that’s not unusual.
Scott Clifford of the University of Houston and Spencer Piston of Boston University studied this phenomenon of dueling impulses by commissioning a public opinion poll.
