Covering the Streets: The Legend of Street Sheet

35 years ago in 1989: San Francisco was in its first decade of mass homelessness since the Depression era.

The City opened emergency congregate shelters a few years earlier, but it would later turn away already homeless people to accommodate housed people displaced by the Loma Prieta earthquake.

That same year, Street Sheet printed its first issue. The newsletter—originally an internal memo for members of the advocacy organization Coalition on Homelessness—was printed on 8½” x 11” paper,

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Writing for Street Papers for Over Two Decades

by Jack Bragen

When I was young, in my 20s, I took pride in being able to get letters to the editor published. For a young adult with severe psychiatric illness, a letter to the editor in a paper is pretty good, but I wanted more. I really wanted to become a writer. Occasionally I submitted stories to publications, and considering the level of the writing I produced back then, I stood little or no chance of getting something accepted. 

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Sweeping Us to Nowhere

A RooflessRadio WeSearch project by Tiny with Leajay Harper, Momii Palapaz, Frankie Carter, Alex DeLeon, Jay Paulino

RoofLessRadioSOMA reporter Sr Asuncion with his bus ticket to Nowhere

“Do you know where the bus station is,” RoofLessRadioSOMA reporter Sr. Ascunsion, laughed nervously, throwing back his wavy black /silver hair as he uncrumpled a small piece of paper he held in his hand ”And do you know where this town is?” 

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Heat Waves Pose Disproportionate Risk to People Experiencing Homelessness

by Volker Macke

According to a new British study, people experiencing homelessness have, by the age of 43, an average state of health equivalent to that of an 85-year-old with a home. Common health complaints include heart disease, respiratory issues, organ damage and infections caused by poorly healing wounds. Heat waves can also be as fatal for people sleeping rough as they are for elderly people.

For years,

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Safe Ground’s Camp Ends Lease Over Lack of Support Amid Record Heat Wave

Story and photos by Isidore Mika Székely Manes-Dragan

Residents of Camp Resolution stand behind Anthony Prince in front of the gate (photo by Isidore Mika Székely Manes-Dragan)

Three weeks after the City of Sacramento stopped water delivery to Camp Resolution, and one week after camp residents announced that they would resist an unwanted inspection, camp members are now being forced to terminate their lease.

The residents at the self-governing homeless encampment,

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‘5150s’ Expected to Worsen Under New California Laws

by Cathleen Williams, Homeward Street Journal

Maggie, an activist and advocate for the unhoused community, is a single mom who grew up in Venice, California. (Maggie is a pseudonym, to protect her privacy.) Today, few can afford to actually rent in Venice—Maggie lives in an oversized van: “Barely legal,” she says. 

When her daughter became delusional, hallucinating, paranoid, reaching a crisis point in her struggle with mental health disability,

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Sweeping Decision

story and photos by Jeremiah Hayden, Street Roots

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers Grants Pass v. Johnson, there’s work to do to address homelessness, regardless of outcome

Cassy Leach woke up early on April 22, the day the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Grants Pass v. Johnson across the country in Washington, D.C. 

That morning, Leach, Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT,

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To Our Sacramento Readers

Hello San Francisco! Hello Sacramento!

The Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC)_ is now publishing news and views from the capital city in San Francisco’s Street Sheet.  SHOC has published Homeward Street Journal, our local homeless paper, for over 20 years, providing thousands of issues for distribution on our city’s street corners and in its encampments, supporting unhoused vendors and uplifting the movement for housing for all. 

Now we are moving in a new direction.

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Freedom from Domestic Violence: “How Could I Lose Myself Like That?”

By Christiane Rosenmuth

My name is Christiane. I’m married, still, and have three grown children. And this is one thing I’ve learned: leaving my husband was the only decision, the only right one that I could make to come into myself and finally, at just over 60, create a worthy life for myself.

I wanted to emigrate – to spend my twilight years in my husband’s home country, which had become my second home over the course of our 30 years together.

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The Story of 300—Chapter One: Street Survival

by Vinay Pai

This excerpt from “The Eviction Machine” was originally published by our allies in Street Spirit. It tells the story of the life of the man known as 300, a life-long Berkeley resident who died in 2019 after being evicted from his home. 

I met 300 sleeping on a bench outside Au Coquelet Café on University Avenue one late night in the summer of 2013.

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