A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Javier Bremond
The Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco has documented numerous violations of the preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in their lawsuit against the City of San Francisco for violating the constitutional rights of unhoused San Franciscans.
In September 2022, the Coalition filed a lawsuit stating that the City has been unjustly sweeping homeless individuals by displacing them with no alternatives to adequate shelter,
by Anonymous
Few people believe disability rights is a racial justice issue. On face value, it isn’t. But did you know, although less than 3% of the total population, Black San Franciscans are twice as likely to be disabled than white San Franciscans?
How is this possible? How can somebody’s race make them more likely to be disabled or not?
While I don’t have all the answers to that question,
This article has been adapted from an episode of Street Speak, our podcast answering your burning questions about poverty and homelessness. To listen to the full episode, find us wherever you get your podcasts or on our website, streetsheet.org/street-speak-podcast
Right now, attorneys from the Lawyer’s Committee on Civil Rights (LCCR)—alongside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Coalition on Homelessness—are suing the City and County of San Francisco for their main response to homelessness: criminalization.
A ‘Return to Normal’ in Abnormal Times
Wastewater testing is showing that San Francisco is currently experiencing perhaps the biggest COVID-19 surge yet, at the same time as the monkeypox virus is sweeping the country. With mask mandates gone and eviction protections being rolled back, the City seems set on a return to normal in the most abnormal of times.
Against this backdrop, the City is shutting down shelter-in-place (SIP) hotels,
About as quickly as it sprouted, a homeless encampment on Golden Gate Avenue dispersed last month. The San Francisco Police Department and multiple City agencies also tasked with moving unhoused people off outdoor areas were on hand.
For a few weeks, about 15 people had a place to lay their heads. They had slept on a vacant parcel that’s approximately 17,000 square feet—slightly larger than an NHL hockey rink—in San Francisco’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood.
Funding for public showers across San Francisco was combined with funding for bathrooms in this fiscal year’s budget, leaving advocates and service providers doubtful that the showers will actually be implemented.
The Coalition on Homelessness’s original budget request called for $1,070,636 as a stand-alone program through fiscal years 2022 and 2023. These funds would have been sufficient to provide 112,000 showers free of charge in locations in the Mission, Bayview and Haight.
However,
Human rights monitors should observe homeless encampment clearances to ensure that residents who are being connected to services keep their belongings and City workers follow their own policies, according to a new report.
On June 16, the Latino Task Force released a study based on more than 100 surveys with unhoused San Franciscans in the city’s Mission District. Almost two-thirds of those who responded said they are often displaced in encampment sweeps,
(In memory of Luis Temaj Tomas)
I
On Tuesday, October 12, 2021
TV news announced
That a homeless man
Had died from his burns
He had been sleeping
In his sleeping bag
The previous Friday
When someone set his
Sleeping bag on fire
At 25th street and South Van Ness
In the Mission neighborhood
In San Francisco’s Latinx neighborhood
He was Latinx.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s shelter legislation is going to the full Board of Supervisors after the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee approved it on a 3-0 vote on May 26.
After several amendments through two committee meetings in May, one thing is for sure: Mandelman’s “Place for All Ordinance” is now a different animal from the legislation he introduced two months before with its primary focus on shelter softened as it moves to the full board on June 7.
San Francisco got a sneak peek last month of the results from its 2022 homeless point-in-time count, which showed a drop in some kinds of homelessness. Advocates say directing public money into certain programs played a key role.
The count indicated a significant drop in the number of unsheltered homeless people and chronically homeless people, as well as a large bump in the number of people staying in shelters and transitional housing.
