Barbara Taylor covered yesterday’s homeless families’ rally for an increase in homeless family rental subsidies. Learn more in the stories in the “Families” category of our archives!

Ari Burack and Luke Thomas of FogCityJournal.com covered Wednesday’s rally and hearing for shelter reform here. Check out their story!

Watch the story here.

This week’s Bay Guardian carries a look inside San Francisco’s shelter system from under-cover reporter Amanda Witherell. (Be sure also to check out Amanda’s and intern Bryan Cohen’s blog coverage of their experiences.)

Building on Witherell’s coverage, the Guardian also ran an editorial supporting some serious positive changes in the shelter system.

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

The Coalition’s executive director, Jennifer Friedenbach, spoke on the KPFA program Pushing Limits, today. Listen here.

Read ‘Removing homeless from sight doesn’t make them go away’ here.

The Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness, Jennifer Friedenbach, spoke on NPR’s Talk of the Nation this morning. Check it out here.

I am an advocate for healthcare and affordable housing in San Francisco. I work with homeless people.

I read your obituary article column (4/26/07 page 1 of Section B) for Monty “Skateboard” Holmes and I am disgusted by your absence of respect for his life and your personal value judgments that you put in the piece.

Who gave you the right to define this man’s life by writing:

So if you are looking to muster a lot of sympathy, this is an uphill battle. Skateboard was a reckless, homeless drinker who, after any number of close calls, finally got run over. Frankly, he was probably living on borrowed time. So it goes.

I guess you think he deserved it. No sympathy needed. I assume if you were run down by a truck you would somehow deserve sympathy because you are not a disabled double amputee alcoholic street person struggling with “demons.” Why didn’t he have housing if he was disabled? Why didn’t he have the appropriate durable medical equipment required for mobility? Your article focused on his addictive disorder and homeless status as opposed to his disability or lack of relevant placement.

You claim his life is not one “many of us would have chosen.” Is this meant to imply that homeless people choose to live that way?

I guess someone needs to educate you, so I will: Homeless people really don’t choose to live that way. (Okay, studies by the Urban Institute show that some do: 5%!) The cause of homelessness is actually the lack of affordable housing, not personal choice or problems. Ask anyone who works daily with homeless people and they will tell you this. Everybody knows that. Do your research, man. I guess you are struggling with your own demons of accuracy and fact-finding ability.

What do you mean filling this man’s obituary with things like, “Of course we all know the drill in dealing with street people—eyes straight ahead, keep walking and ignore them if they try to talk to you.”

Of course you are wrong when you say that. As a community organizer who works with homeless street people, I don’t know the drill you refer to. I actually talk to people and I happen to know many of them.

Your naked contempt for poor and homeless people is revealed when you say that his memorial was filled with, “pencil scratchings and scrawlings from black markers,” as if they weren’t actually messages written by human beings. There is no love or respect in your article and you should not go around scrawling columns and obituaries for people that you don’t know, and despise.

I urge you to examine your privilege and confront your own biases regarding disadvantaged people in our community. Who gave you the right to put Skateboard and other homeless people down?

The Coalition on Homelessness fully subscribes to the opinions set forth in James Chionsini’s letter.

Here’s a question: How do you, yourself—personally—feel about homeless people?

No kneejerk, politically correct responses allowed, let alone their dark flip-side, those politically IN-correct, personally inhumane one-liners uttered by a certain kind of guy seemingly in hope of eliciting a giggled “Oh, you’re awful” from a feminine companion.

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