San Francisco Drags Feet Moving Tenderloin Residents into Shelter-in-Place Hotels

by Quiver Watts

While the Tenderloin Plan began to be implemented on Thursday, only 16 people were moved into hotels, a mere 5% of the 300 person goal.

Friday, June 12th — Early Thursday morning, San Francisco’s Health Streets Operation Command (HSOC) arrived in the Tenderloin under the pretense of placing at least 300 of the Tenderloin’s unhoused residents into Shelter-in-Place Hotels. Clutching their lists of names, city workers scrambled down Turk street struggling to locate some of the people on their list that they would be moving into a nearby hotel,

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Life Under Quarantine: Unhoused, Sheltered in Place

by TJ Johnston

Already normalized by COVID-19 “shelter in place” conditions that were prompted by the pandemic, housed and unhoused San Franciscans alike found themselves beset by a curfew that Mayor London Breed imposed on City residents for five nights from May 31 through June 4.

Through demonstrations and vocal outcry, community members rebuked the City’s response to nationwide protests against the killing of George Floyd and countless African Americans slain by police officers as part of the nation’s systemic and social racism.

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A Palace to Us: Unhoused 37MLK Residents Demand Hotel Rooms, Occupy Palms Motel in Oakland 

by Quiver Watts

On Friday afternoon several dozen people gathered outside the unassuming Palms Motel in Oakland, CA with signs reading “Housing is a Human Right” and “Hotels Not Graves.” Inside, Stefani Echeverría-Fenn, an adjunct classics lecturer who herself was formerly homeless and has lived in the neighborhood for 11 years, has chained herself in the bathroom of a small room. She has been demanding that the City of Oakland offer hotel rooms where she has helped set up for her unhoused neighbors at the intentional encampment at 37th Street and Martin Luther King,

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Outreach diary — Fulton Mall Camp

by Kelley Cutler

Friday, May 8th

I went out to the encampment at what they call Fulton Mall today — the area on Fulton Street surrounded by the Asian Art Museum, the San Francisco Main Library and the Civic Center Plaza; As outreachers at the Coalition on Homelessness, we’ve been spending a lot of time there over the past week and a half. Today, things got lively! It has been extremely challenging getting straight answers, but I feel like we started getting some today.

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California’s largest shelter outbreak: A case of government malfeasance

by Jennifer Friedenbach and Chris Herring

Doctors, public health experts call for testing and housing all shelter residents in hotels 

Yesterday, California experienced its most widespread outbreak of COVID-19 in any homeless shelter to date where nearly half of 144 shelter residents tested positive. For some perspective, the outbreak in this single shelter of 70 shelter guests comprises 8.5% of all positive cases in San Francisco, which total 857 as of Saturday. 

When looking back on the lead-up to this catastrophe we see a series of policy missteps that got us here. 

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Mayor Breed Opts for Mass Indoor Camps

by Quiver Watts, Street Sheet editor

UPDATE: Our coverage of this outrageous plan prompted a shift for the city. Get the latest coverage HERE

A look inside the new Moscone Center congregate “Shelter”

While hundreds of advocates have been desperately contacting Mayor London Breed imploring her to place homeless people in hotel rooms and vacant units, it seems she has her own plan for addressing poverty during the pandemic: opening indoor camps to further concentrate vulnerable people.

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Cities Are Moving Unhoused People into Hotel Rooms, San Francisco Isn’t

by Jennifer Friedenbach

In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, San Francisco Mayor London Breed has refused to use executive powers to house San Francisco’s 9,000 homeless residents living in the City’s streets and shelters. Under the Mayor’s emergency powers in the Charter and Administrative Code, Breed has the authority to commandeer a portion of the 33,000 vacant hotel rooms to house homeless residents, but has yet to utilize those powers in spite of the dire situation at hand. 

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Coronavirus Hits San Francisco: How Poor and Homeless People are Surviving

by Quiver Watts

Project Homeless Connect planned to host their regular homelessness services fair that centralizes services for unhoused people to access on March 4th. But two days before the date, the group sent out an email alerting participants and providers that the fair was cancelled, on the recommendation of the Department of Public Health (DPH). Health officials were gearing up for Coronavirus to hit the city, and bringing together thousands of providers and volunteers and unhoused people could pose a risk to the health of all in attendance.

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Save our SROs, Save our Homes!

by Curtis Bradford, Long-time Community Organizer and Affordable Housing Advocate from the Tenderloin Community.

     San Francisco is facing a serious housing affordability crisis.  We can all agree to that fact and I’m sure it doesn’t come as a surprise to hear.  With homelessness increasing by 15-30% last year depending on who you talk to, and the cost of rental housing at an all-time high, everyone in San Francisco is feeling the effects of the crisis.  So why, given the level of suffering we see on our streets every day,

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