Please join us to commemorate homeless people—our friends, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances, and even some who none of us got the opportunity to know—this Thursday, December 20, at 5:30 p.m. at Civic Center Plaza. Bring a candle, if you can. If you know of any one who has passed away, please make sure that their name is included in the service by contacting San Francisco Network Ministries at 415.928.6209.
Read ‘Removing homeless from sight doesn’t make them go away’ here.
Could a year get any rougher for poor folks in Frisco? The city seems to be building housing left and right, but, as evidenced by a March report by Marc Solomon, that housing is apparently doing far more to attract more wealthy residents than to house existing low-income San Franciscans. The city’s daily paper of record has declared a self-serving war on poor people, people dealing with mental illnesses, users of harm reduction programs, and even recyclers, calling for the elimination of existing programs and solutions as varied as: 1) jail; 2) increased citations, followed by jail; and 3) forced treatment and… jail. The result has been predictable: The first of the most repulsive Chronicle columns was published one week after the murder of a homeless man in the Mission. Two more murders occurred in Golden Gate Park over the Fall. Finally, the executive leadership of this city has failed homeless people. By late last year, the Newsom administration was already beginning to backslide away from its espoused belief in housing as a solution to homelessness. The situation continued to deteriorate after the homeless count could find no real change in homelessness in San Francisco, despite the Mayor’s best showmanship. (As the old Christmas poem has it, Some say the Gav’s heart shrank three sizes that day.) This year, Care Not Cash was accompanied by Heavy-Handed Harassment Not Housing: In May, the Mayor politicked his way around a direct veto of a Board allocation of $28 million in affordable housing, but managed to quash the measure nonetheless through questionably legal means. The Mayor has campaigned continually behind a Community Court or Community Justice Center or something, but hasn’t been able to be too clear about any aspect of it other than that it will somehow solve poverty through tough love. And finally, the Mayor has increased displacements and rumors of displacements—displacement being one of the most ineffective approaches to homelessness—in a frenzied effort to hush ignorant media critics. We have more violence against homeless and poor people, gang injunctions for black- and brown-skinned kids, huge increases in City-funded health care in the form of co-pays, and poor people’s programs closing and opening like the mouths of so many snapping turtles. In spite of all this meanness, inside this media-controlled, whitewashed reality of increasing income disparities, a shrinking working class, and increasing homelessness, poor people’s movements in San Francisco are still standing and accomplishing a hell of a lot.
“We should just gas all of the poor people sleeping in the parks!” The words slashed through the Board of Supervisors’ hearing and through the thick and stuffy rhetoric of politicians and advocates alike.
“Well, at least we’re being honest now,” I thought.
On July 31, Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced changes to the park codes, 3.12 and 3.13 specifically, that would change the definition of camping and outlaw sleeping in the park for an additional four hours. Right now, sleeping is not allowed in the park from 10 p.m.—6 a.m. Newsom’s amendment expands the no-sleeping hours from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
It’s no secret that San Francisco is one of the most expensive places to live here in Amerikkka. It’s even less of a secret that it’s illegal to be poor here.
| Total | Chinatown | Tenderloin | Mission | SoMa | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surveyed | 77 | 56 | 14 | 6 | 1 |
| Placed | 18 | 12 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Approved | 24 | 23 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Since 2006, three agencies have been placing families in a $3 million shallow subsidy program designed for low-income working families to get out of shelters and singleroom occupancy (SRO) hotels in San Francisco. Since the program began, life is much better, for now, for the families placed. However, “for now” is not a good forecast for any family in regards to its housing situation. Since this subsidy was designed, the Housing First for Families Campaign, one of the projects of the Coalition on Homelessness, has designated a monitoring committee to assess the needs of these families and how the subsidy is working for them. In order to do this, the monitoring committee created a list of survey questions.
All five organizations that make up the SRO Families Collaborative conducted surveys with families living in SRO hotels. Of the SRO families with whom we work, we were able to survey almost all of the families who applied for the rental subsidy program. We know that these are not all of the families that have applied for the program, but it is a significant percentage of the total.
The surveys were carried out by peer organizers who conduct regular outreach to the SRO families.
In addition, we spoke to a number of families who decided not to apply at all. These people’s experiences are relevant because they point to some of the core issues with this program.
In November, Supervisor Ammiano introduced ground-breaking legislation that would create for the first time minimum standards in the shelter system. Currently, City-funded shelters are not required to meet any specific standard of care in the provision of services.
This standard of care would require healthy and hygienic conditions in our shelters, and create a right for shelter residents to be treated with dignity and respect. This legislation was initiated by the Coalition on Homelessness and the Shelter Monitoring Committee.
Some of the highlights include:
Only weeks after Religious Witness with Homeless People denounced the wastefulness and cruelty of the City’s policy of issuing “quality of life” citations to homeless and poor folks, the District Attorney’s Office is being more aggressive than ever in prosecuting those cases.
According to the SF Chronicle, the District Attorney’s office is now assigning prosecutors to go into court to defend any challenge to the issuance of those citations by volunteer lawyers from the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights representing homeless individuals.
The HealthCare Action Team (HAT) is a project of Planning for Elders. HAT has worked for several years on the issue of appropriate hospital discharge planning. HAT advocated for and helped create legislation that created the San Francisco Hospital and Nursing Home Discharge Planning Task Force.
HAT is leading the work to improve how homeless patients are discharged. In September, HAT members and allied community organizations held a press conference to bring attention to the issue. HAT has continued to press for solutions to this issue before both the Board of Supervisors and the Hospital Council.
