A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
My name is Gerome V. Owens. I was born June 6, 1950. I was raised in San Francisco. I grew up in Lower Pacific Heights, Japan Area and Lower Haight, which is called the Western Addition. I am the oldest child of four children that precede me in death. At the age of seven, my parents separated. The second oldest and I stayed with my mother.
My youngest brother stayed with my dad.
In the Bay Area, accessing housing is a challenge many Americans face. While rents are rapidly rising, wages have stagnated; someone who works one, two, or even three minimum wage jobs in the Bay Area just can’t afford to live here anymore. Now imagine being an undocumented immigrant attempting to access limited, expensive housing and provide for your family. Often times, it can be a debilitating and stressful experience. The current implications of immigration policies in America displace and traumatize immigrants and refugees as well as foster hysteria and xenophobia amongst non-immigrants.
I am 38 years old. I was born and raised here in San Francisco Hayes Valley, Fillmore. I have three kids. I also taught my kids before our life took a left turn about 2 and a half years ago. I have been homeless ever since. I was in a really bad relationship domestically, physically, socially, and emotionally. My kids were illegally taken from me by Child Protective Services. I really don’t know what’s going on;
On February 27, 2017, community members, faith leaders, advocates, and public officials gathered to observe the second anniversary of the slaying of Amilcar Perez-Lopez. An undocumented migrant from Guatemala, Amilcar was shot in the back six times by the San Francisco Police Department on February 26, 2015. He came to America hoping to live out the “American Dream,” earn money and help take care of his family. It’s important that the public be aware of the story of Amilcar Perez-Lopez so that there can be effective measures in bringing justice to him and his family.
If suffering were an Olympic sport, Raven Canon would be a gold medalist. She was born in 1976 with her intestines outside her body, and came into this world facing surgeries, poverty, problems eating, and eventually, addiction and two decades of on and off homelessness.
She took all of that and turned it into her superpower. When I met Raven, she was still homeless, nearly a year sober, and all about helping others.
The housing crisis in San Francisco is layered with various forms of grief—from the truly heartbreaking to the minor irritant. All of us in the Bay Area have been touched by it in all of its iterations: personally losing housing, friends moving away, losing your child’s favorite teacher from a school, lost diversity and vitality of a city, unfilled positions in the service sector causing long waits for food. Of course none of that compares to stress-induced fatal illnesses in elders who face losing their lifetime homes,
Despite the fact that transgender and gender non-conforming people have recently become more visible in the media and popular culture, the realities for street-based, poor, black and brown and disabled trans women remain the same. Trans people continue to face discrimination from traditional housing, employment and healthcare forcing many trans people into alternative street economies like sex work, drug sales and whatever other work people can find. As a result of being pushed out of these traditional systems,
What better way to foster a community of empathetic and understanding individuals than by shaping the perspective of our children, who will one day act as allies, friends, leaders, freethinkers and aware members of society?
This is the question Mike Boyce, a senior at California College of the Arts double majoring in Graphic Design and Illustration, focuses on in his final project—a children’s book that tries to make visible what many people intentionally hope remains invisible: homelessness.
“You know what we call you guys, right?”
I knew immediately that this was heading in a direction that I wanted no parts of. Before I could decide if I wanted to play dead in the backseat, he answered to amuse himself.
“Unicorns.”
I was in an uber. I had spent hours at my friend’s house in Lake View, a small community in San Francisco,
One of our dear vendors, Don Jones, passed away on January 30 at the St. Francis Hospital. He will be very much missed and was loved by many, including his Street Sheet customers. We received many calls and Facebook comments about how much Don meant to people.
2014 STREET SHEET VENDOR INTERVIEW
“I’m native to San Francisco but since me and my fiance separated, I landed in the Tenderloin.
