A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
by Jordan Davis
As you might already know, I write mostly about permanent supportive housing and how San Francisco’s government stands in the way of delivering effective services on time, under budget, and in a manner that works for everybody. I don’t like to talk much about my past, but since it’s Pride month, I’d like to share how being a neurodivergent, non-binary trans femme who began transitioning nine years ago has impacted me,
by Billy Thomas
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is adapted from multiple pieces of correspondence by Billy Thomas, an inmate at the John Wynne Unit of Texas State Prison in Huntsville to A.B.O. Comix in Oakland, California throughout 2022 and 2023. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.
I am a 51-year-old person, a two-spirited transgender. I am a survivor of mental and sexual abuse from my time in the care of Texas Child Protective Services,
by Akir Jackson
To most people, I’m invisible. Just another nameless Black man blending into the urban background. People avoid making eye contact as they walk past me on the sidewalk. Pretend not to notice me shivering on the street corner. But if you look closely at the worn lines on my face, you’ll see the story of how I wound up here.
I’ve been homeless on and off for the past decade since losing my job as a machinist.
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,
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic due to COVID—19, the viral disease that is affecting many countries throughout the world. As a result, LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning) communities all over the United States are facing challenges, especially those who are homeless. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation published a research brief recently that indicates that 17% of LGBTQ people lack health coverage, 1 in 5 LGBTQ people live in poverty,
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,
