A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
Leaving First Friendship
By Tracey Mixon
In August of 2018, I became homeless with my daughter, who was 8 years old at the time. After staying a few weeks somewhere unsafe for us, I found myself at the emergency family shelter at the First Friendship Institutional Baptist Church near Alamo Square.
I was so unprepared for what I encountered at First Friendship: mats on the floor, no showers and no privacy.
In the midst of COVID-19, a community-led encampment in the Haight Ashbury offered an oasis for formerly homeless community members. Thanks to funding for emergency shelter made available by Proposition C, campers had a safe place to stay, daily meals and important services—and most importantly, a say in how the operation was run.
When the pandemic struck in March 2020, Mayor London Breed issued a shelter-in-place order. But that order didn’t apply to those who had no shelter.
Make a left from Harrison onto Merlin Street in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and you enter another world. Past two low-slung, industrial buildings and under a noisy freeway is a scene that has come to define San Francisco: Tents line the sidewalks, and a collection of household items tumble out onto the street. There are cardboard boxes, coolers, overflowing garbage bags, containers of food, grills, chairs, and a pile of bicycles. A huge clock is attached to a chain-link fence and on top of it sits a red toy truck.
SoMa RISE is an innovative program that will provide low barrier services to people who use drugs in and around the SoMa and Tenderloin areas, with a particular focus on individuals who are marginally housed or are experiencing homelessness, starting this winter. The SoMa RISE Center at 1076 Howard St. will welcome people under the influence of drugs into a safe, indoor setting. We will provide a space for people in crisis to stabilize and get connected to care,
Safer Consumption Sites (also referred to as Safer Injection Facilities, Overdose Prevention Programs, Supervised Consumption Services) have been a hot topic nationwide, but especially here in San Francisco. There are over 25,000 people who inject drugs in San Francisco alone and the overdose crisis has only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many see the rising overdose statistics as a result of fentanyl, despite it being prevalent on the West Coast since around 2014. Those working in drug policy,
I’ve been fighting an eviction since 2019. After living in my apartment for 20 years, always paying the rent on time, never bothering our landlords, they sold the building. Our rent-controlled unit paid off their mortgage (maybe several times over), and now in retirement they cashed in on San Francisco’s nouveau riche market.
The new buyer, of course, wants to kick us out. They are exploiting an Ellis Act loophole that allows for “owner-move-in” evictions—meaning that they can legally force us from our home as long as they or members of their family intend to live in it.
Disease does not care about class divisions or housing status. If you leave anybody vulnerable to COVID-19, you increase your whole city’s vulnerability to COVID-19. When you increase access to stable, humane housing, you increase the health of your city. When you support and prioritize the health of your friends and community members who are experiencing homelessness, you support and prioritize the health of your healers in the hospitals and the health of those organizing in the community.
Developing nations could go solar in fighting climate change
We all know that fossil fuels cause the greenhouse effect and global warming. The question is how to stop it. For decades, activists protested against nuclear power. Germany closed many nuclear power plants. To generate electricity they are now burning dirty coal. Green energy—wind and solar—is still a very small part of the energy mix worldwide. Meanwhile, the greenhouse effect is becoming stronger and more deadly.
“Homes not barricades!! Homes not barricades!!”
These are the words chanted by protesters marching through the streets of the Tenderloin. Some were carrying police barricades, while others held signs that read ‘DEFUND SFPD,” “Rent is Theft” and “Black Homes Matter”. Others were equipped with medical supplies and sustenance, and in the back you could hear the Brass Liberation orchestra playing their instruments brightly to the beat of the chants.
Community organizations such as House the Bay,
The seminal clinic that developed the gender protocols by which bigger, better funded medical providers now endeavor to treat trans patients, Lyon-Martin Health Services, is also my everyday clinic, and I still need it. It’s where I meet with my primary care provider, where I go when I’m sick, where I get my hormone scrips refilled, where I was able to get effective referrals for gender confirmation surgeries, where I got all my paperwork for legal gender change,
