In March, an article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline “3 public housing complexes to be rebuilt with more units.”

With the excuse that the projects are decrepit, and claiming that they will be “refashioned” into denser neighborhoods, the powers that be have slated countless tenants of Westside Courts in the Western Addition, Potrero Terrace in Potrero Hill, and Sunnydale Projects in Visitacion Valley for evictions.

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98 we hate!

99 is fine!

Spread the word!

Vote June third!

I recited this cheesy poem for artist and videographer, T.J. Walkup, hoping its doggerel claws would sink into his brain. I wanted to warn him in an unforgettable way about the savagely deceptive ballot measure Prop. 98. No rock star Obama or Clinton appears on the June 3 ballot. There is strong concern that low voter turnout could result in Prop 98 permanently wiping out rent control across California.

“The California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act” seeks to prohibit governmental use of eminent domain to seize and transfer private homes to a private developer. However, the prop does not stop there.

Trolling the web, T.J. discovered a pro-Prop. 98 site linked to a “low-end” YouTube video. Comedian Drew Carey was paid to tell a “sad story” about a developer scheme using eminent domain to displace “poor Hispanic and Black kids” from a fitness center. The motive for this child abuse? These builders wanted to construct “mixed income housing.” To T.J. it suggested, “they were doing something for the greater good of the community, but taking the community out while they were doing it.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” T.J. told me. “[On the surface,] this looks harmless.

“The most evil thing about [Prop. 98] is that it’s written to deceive people who have reasonable intelligence or better. It presents itself such that a person like myself struggles for the logic [in] what’s going on.”

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I remember having a beer bottle keychain. It was heavy and metal and hard to lose. It opened up its fair share of longnecks and it would jangle my keys like chimes when I pulled it from my pocket.

I used to have a lot of keys. They’d weigh down my worn out jeans and poke holes through the pockets. They’d end up collecting trinkets—weird plastic chains with bottle openers or flashlights or cartoon characters dangled off of them. The bigger and heavier they were the better. That way, I wouldn’t lose them. But over time my key ring’s gotten smaller and smaller and it seems like I just can’t keep a hold of nothin’ but the bottle opener.

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Draft legislation reforming the City’s housing subsidy program for families, a program which had placed strain on the ability for homeless families to find housing, was released by Supervisor Chris Daly’s office on April 18 for review by SRO Families United, a collaborative effort of community housing advocacy organizations. If passed, this legislation will call for an increase in the subsidy from $500 to $1,000 per month per family, and an end to the arbitrary two-year time limit placed on these subsidies, in favor of need-based time limits that vary from family to family.

Upon inspection, the organization will send the draft back to Daly’s office. If passed, this bill will be a long-time victory for SRO Families United, which has fought for an improvement and expansion of the subsidy program.

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On Thursday, March 6, homeless families and their supporters gathered on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall, to mark the week of International Women’s Day and to demand expansion of City-funded rental subsidies as well as a lifting of the arbitrary time limit that had been placed on them.

Last year, the City of San Francisco made a commitment to support homeless families with a subsidy program that would help them move out of shelters, garages, and crowded and dangerous single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels into longer-tem and livable family housing. However, when the program was put into place, changes were made from the original plan as written by its advocates, resulting in rules that made it difficult or impossible for families to hold on to their new housing, and which made others ineligible.

Under the new rules, the subsidies would only be for a year, or extended to two years. Many needy families didn’t qualify because their income was too low! Others were disqualified because they couldn’t demonstrate the ability to raise their income by $6,000 within two years.

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Photos from last week’s rally for modifications to a rental subsidy for homeless families, courtesy of Osama Dawod. Stay tuned here to find out what happens with the subsidies, and how you can get involved in ending family homelessness in San Francisco.

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The Coalition on Homelessness and the SRO Families United Collaborative present this letter to the community to inform all homeless families what has been happening with the Housing First for Families Campaign. (Families living in SRO [single-room occupancy] hotels, families living in shelters and doubled-up are all included in San Francisco’s definition of homelessness.) We want to thank you for your support and participation in this campaign. What we have won so far has been possible because of the support from the families and everyone who has been involved.

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Check out a COH interview on Friction.tv, or watch it here:

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.

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