The City has plans to shut down McMillan Resource and Drop-In Center at 39 Fell. According to a Department of Public Health official, the target date for closure is September 30. The good news is that the facility will be renovated and turned into a 40-bed medical respite facility. A respite facility serves homeless people who have recently been released from the hospital and need continuing medical care. Homeless people and their allies have been clamoring for the City to better address the needs of homeless people with medical problems through the addition of medical respite beds for years. Just as he recently discovered the existence of homeless families, Mayor Newsom finally noticed that there were sick homeless people without access to medical beds in San Francisco. In the Fall of 2005, he directed City workers from the Department of Public Health to plan the expansion of the respite system, and to add more beds. They chose the already occupied building at 39 Fell.

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Mayor Newsom painted quite a rosy picture of San Francisco’s budget this year. What one might notice listening to the media and reading the press release is what’s not in the budget. What may sound appealing to those of us who have the privilege to get upset over a pothole, is an outrage for those who are struggling to make rent.

Newsom is beautifying the city: He is spending money on fixing all those potholes. Meanwhile, 2,600 San Franciscans are members of families with no home. Families are moving from shelter to shelter, their children growing up without a place to call home. They are suffering the consequences of this neglect, falling behind in school, and being traumatized by uncertainty.

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They said it couldn’t be done, but in less than three weeks, more than 7,000 San Franciscans have signed the petition to stop the Redevelopment Agency from grabbing and “repeopling” Bayview Hunters Point. At that rate, we’ll have the needed 30,000 signatures (21,000 plus a cushion) well before the Aug. 21 deadline.
At Juneteenth and every day on Third Street, people are literally lining up to sign. Black folks need no explanation; no mo’ Fillmore is in our blood.

A rumor’s going around that Daddy Big Bucks is funding the petition drive. No! We’ve been blessed by getting the printing and other costs on credit; but now the bills are coming due, and only a few small contributions have come in. Please help if you can.

This petition is for a referendum. According to the law, once sufficient signatures are validated, the Bayview Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan goes back to the Supervisors for reconsideration first. If a majority approves it again, it goes to the voters. But if six or more Supervisors vote against it—two more than in May—the land grab plan is dead.

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Intensive lobbying by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) led to the tabling of a resolution expanding HUD’s definition of homelessness at meetings of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Las Vegas on June 3, 2006. The resolution was offered by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who was joined by 27 other mayors, and endorsed by over 100 national, state, and local organizations.

Mayor Begich’s resolution called upon HUD to expand its definition of homelessness to include people who are sharing the housing of others due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or similar reasons, and those who are staying in motels because of the lack of adequate alternative accommodations. The resolution urged HUD to adopt a definition of homelessness that matches the reality of homelessness among families and youth, and is similar to definitions used by the U.S. Dept. of Education, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

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Are you tired of waiting in line for a one-night shelter bed? Angry about how you are treated by shelter staff? Worried about the safety of your person and possessions when you stay in the shelters?

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Right now, a debate is raging among Federal policymakers about how to define homelessness—and about who counts as homeless. While this may seem like an administrative matter or a wording issue, it isn’t.

How homelessness is defined in our Federal policies has a huge effect on who has access to housing, education, and other critical services. Certain homeless people—particularly homeless families with children—are caught in the middle of this definition debate, losing access to some of the most important services for their children, and standing to lose even more if other Federal agencies follow the example of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

In an article entitled “Current Federal Policy on Homelessness: A Failure of Imagination,” Barbara Duffield, the Policy Director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, uses the example of a homeless family to explain the conflict. “Imagine that you’ve lost your housing. You’ve been evicted. You’re fleeing domestic violence. You don’t have money to rent an apartment or buy a house.”

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Note: Over five years ago, the Coalition On Homelessness played a central role in founding the SF Community Land Trust as a strategy for preventing homelessness through permanently affordable, limited equity housing. It has paid off, helping to stop the evictions of working-class Chinese immigrants.

Home to one of the most expensive housing markets in the United States, San Francisco has seen more than its fair share of working-class people being forced to leave the city their labor helped to create. However, thanks to tenacious community organizing and nimble legal advocacy, tenants of the Fong Building, a 21-unit apartment building in Chinatown, have saved their homes from the clutches of development.

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