The SF Print Collective and the Coalition on Homelessness invite you to join us for a mural celebration to raise awareness about justice for homeless people.
Saturday, May 10, 2008, 12-4 p.m.
Clarion Alley, San Francisco (between 17th and 18th Streets and Mission and Valencia)
Poster and T-shirt printing
Food and music
For more information, call 510‧332‧7839.
Our society’s current insatiable appetite to see homeless people disappear from our parks, streets, business districts, and tourist areas requires us all to go back to one of the very first lessons we are taught as infants:
Just because you can no longer see it, doesn’t mean it no longer exists. Think of this the next time you play peek-a-boo with a toddler. Now you see the homeless people. Now you don’t. But either way, we’re still here: Peek-a-boo!
How does such a big heart fit into such a tiny body? Mara Raider started working at the Coalition on Homelessness in 1991 as a young, bright-eyed, idealistic college student. Almost 16 years later, we are sad to announce Mara Raider is leaving the Coalition.
The other day I’m sitting at a cafe reading the paper. At a table next to me are
three people: two young men and a girl. They start telling jokes to each other.
The Mexican-American man tells a joke about Jews. The white girl tells a joke
about blacks. Finally, the Asian man tells a joke about blondes. As the two men
laugh, the girl fixes them with an icey stare.
I am so mad at you right now!
San Francisco has been an enlightened city for as long as we all can remember, but in the past several years we’ve developed an indifference and at times downright suspicion of homeless people.
In this climate, on a chilly and dreary evening, Donald Turner walked by the Civic Center Residence at the foot of McAllister Street in the heart of the city, on the gritty streets of the Tenderloin. He stopped to smoke a cigarette with me, taking a quick break in the doorway, before hurrying home to his bunk at MSC South. He was tired after working his shift as a volunteer at the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center.
On Monday, May 15th I was standing at the bottom of the escalators to the BART station at Powell Street selling my Street Sheets. I glanced up towards the escalators, and noticed that Mayor Gavin Newsom was talking to my friend Rob. Newsom says a few words to Rob and Rob goes up the escalator.
I think to myself, “The Mayor is giving out money.” So I make my way towards him and proceed to sell my papers.
Mayor Newsom approaches me and says, “I am going to have to ask you to leave. We don’t want you guys selling Street Sheets down here anymore.” I asked him why. He says, “We have received a few complaints.”
Today is May Day, a day of worker celebration of the struggle for the 8 hour day around the world. It is fitting today, that we honor the emerging immigrant/undocumented workers uprising taking place here in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and cities around the country.
Today I see the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the Emma Lazarus wrote about on that poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.
Walking through the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District often feels like stepping out of the U.S. and into a bustling Central or South American city. The neighborhood’s vibrant street life, a medley of packed sidewalks, bright colors, and the smell of freshly cooked food, attracts residents and tourists year round. But on May 1st, yesterday, the Mission felt more like a ghost town.
Rows of shuttered businesses, closed in solidarity with the country-wide May 1st protests held to demand equal rights for immigrants, gave a harsh welcome to anyone venturing into the district’s relatively deserted streets yesterday. Those restaurants and shops that chose to stay open did so at their own peril, telling anyone who asked that business had been terrible due to the rallies.
Greetings fellow Seniors and welcome to the Senior Corner. This article is to introduce all of you to SENIORS ORGANIZING SENIORS or S.O.S. for short. S.O.S. was founded by homeless seniors to advocate for the needs of homeless and formerly homeless seniors. We have been in existence since November of ‘05, and along the way we have obtained the support of various Senior groups, organizations, and certain people of stature in and about the Senior Circle of San Francisco. Also, we have received the support of District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly as well as Ms. Angela Alioto, who has been most supportive of our efforts to put forth an agenda that is conducive to our needs.
The Coalition on Homelessness was created in 1987 to mitigate the impact of what we thought then to be a temporary housing crisis. 18 years later, homelessness has not simply failed to disappear, it is on the rise, as is the criminalization of homeless people. At the same time, our funding is severely threatened and we need YOUR support to help us continue offering true solutions to homelessness. If you have ever considered donating money to support the Street Sheet, our citation defense program, or one of our grassroots organizing campaigns, now is the time to act and make sure we can sustain our work.
For 18 years, concerned individuals such as yourself have sustained our fight against the root causes of homelessness: poverty and lack of affordable housing. However, what you may not know is that the Coalition on Homelessness DOES NOT accept government funds. We see criminally negligent federal policies as being one of the primary causes of homelessness in America. We also believe that the same lamentable federal policies that make people become homeless tend to help keep them on the streets and in the shelters by promoting a misguided and insufficient local response to homelessness. We feel that our work must be done by the people, for the people, and without any requirement to report to the entities whose actions are causing increasing numbers of working poor people to become homeless.
The City has enough homeless residents to populate a small town, and yet the local government, with the cheerleading support of the mainstream media, seems to want us to believe that homelessness will no longer be a problem in a matter of a few years. The most recent regional homeless count, conducted by the nine counties of the Bay Area in January 2005, indicated a sharp increase in the number of homeless people across the region, with more than 5,000 new cases of homelessness being reported.
San Francisco is mixing some positive moves towards housing people with very aggressive police activity. In 2005, San Francisco police officers issued more than 2,100 citations for sleeping on our city’s streets and in its parks. Armed with guns, bus tickets, citations, and threat of jail, police have been systematically harassing homeless people all over town with the hope that they will simply “leave.” In fact, the SFPD has 32 police officers that do nothing but interact with homeless people full time. For a Department that has failed to resolve 80% of the city’s homicides, that is an outrageous misuse of resources. The Department of Public Works and the Recreation and Park Department have created specialized units that work with the San Francisco Police Department to continuously identify, confiscate and destroy homeless people’s personal property.
Since 1993, more than 150,000 citations have been given out for so-called quality of life crimes such as sleeping and sitting in public (San Francisco Municipal Court, December, 2001). In the first 10 months of 2005 alone, 7,533 citations were given to homeless people for quality of life code violations. In 2004, camping citations almost tripled when compared to 2003. Each citation carries a fine of $76. An unpaid or unresolved ticket goes to warrant in 21 days and the fine doubles.
Accumulated warrants result in incarceration. These citations are dismissed only after a person is seen before a judge. Because the original infractions would not involve jail time, the Public Defender is barred from defending those who have been cited, thus eliminating the right of homeless person to legal counsel. This lack of due process guarantees results in a high number of homeless people being incarcerated. In 2004, the Sheriff’s Department issued a report stating that 27% of the inmates in San Francisco County Jail were homeless.
The Coalition on Homelessness assisted in the representation of over 10,000 people who have received so-called “Quality of Life” since 1995—averaging 1,225 cases per year. This caseload has increased to 1,841 cases in 2004, and 1,616 cases in the first 11 months of 2005 alone. Through our Citation Defense project we continue to bring in volunteers and provide a peer-driven direct service to our constituents. We have been successful in getting an astonishing 85% of bench warrants dismissed in court.
Did you know that more than 1,000 families go to sleep homeless in San Francisco each night? San Francisco officials are refusing to acknowledge the depth of the family homelessness crisis, and are planning only 214 housing units for homeless families over the next 10 years. Yet homelessness can have a devastating-and costly-impact on children. Homeless children are far more prone to developmental delays, serious chronic health problems, and academic failures.
Housing First is a policy the Coalition on Homelessness has called for consistently during the past ten years. Housing First challenges the deep-rooted belief that one must provide a continuum of services whereby homeless people are “made ready” before being put into housing. Housing First is that homeless people can be placed in housing directly off the streets, without first going through a “readiness process,” shelter, or transitional housing program. We welcome the paradigm shift that recognizes what we have been saying for almost two decades, but see many problems in its narrowly focused implementation.
The City’s Housing First policy has, for the most part, focused on a very narrow portion of the population—those dubbed “chronically homeless.” This is defined as, “an unaccompanied disabled individual who has been sleeping in one or more places not meant for human habitation or in one or more emergency homeless shelters for over one year” or “an individual who has had one or more periods of homelessness over three years.” Chronic homeless initiatives funded from the federal government are not meant for two of the most significant homeless populations in San Francisco: homeless families and immigrants. The city’s housing pipeline for the next ten years for homeless housing still only designates 7% of the 3,000 planned units for homeless families.
Homeless families are poorer, younger, more likely to be pregnant, from an ethnic minority and less likely to have a housing subsidy. Homeless families are not more likely to be mentally ill, depressed or less educated. As a group, homeless families are poorer, not more “dysfunctional.”
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, General Assembly of the United Nations, 12/10/1948)
As we continue to move forward toward our goal of reducing homelessness by attacking its root causes, we also realize the need to rearticulate the terms of the debate around the issue. It wouldn’t be a surprise if 2005 should be remembered as the year in which a hurricane brought back to our shores the demons of class and racial oppression while a criminal war served as a fig leaf to foster corporate interests and the final dismantling of our social safety net.
For too long, homelessness has been portrayed as a phenomenon rooted in drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness. The truth, though many try to hide it, is that homelessness is a symptom of extreme poverty and a violation of the fundamental rights of the people, such as the right to adequately paid employment and affordable housing. The violation in the United States of Article 25 of the Human Rights Declaration can be most visibly seen in the faces of the 3.5 million Americans who experience the trauma of homelessness each year. Therefore, any response to homelessness must be approached from a perspective of social justice and compliance with universally recognized human rights.
San Francisco has also failed to address the rising number of homeless immigrant families and individuals at every level of homeless services. Immigrants not only are unable to access shelters due to language barriers, but also are barred access to federal housing and income assistance. Similarly, people with disabilities and seniors continue to find obstructions in their search for exits from homelessness, with help from the City either virtually inaccessible or totally unavailable. As the federal government ignores the pressing national crisis of homelessness, our local authorities have responded by rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
We need to invest in human rights and dignity for all, in San Francisco and beyond. Peace, justice, and housing for all! We do grassroots organizing because we feel that any approach that is not led by homeless and formerly homeless people will be ineffective. Our organizing method, based on continuing dialog with homeless people and their direct participation in all levels of our work gives VOICE to the individuals and families on whose behalf we advocate. Through our four workgroups: Community Health Equity and Economic Rights; Civil Rights and Youth; Families and Immigrants; and Right to a Roof, homeless and formerly homeless staff and volunteers work to ensure health care, economic justice, affordable housing, and human rights defense while developing their own leadership skills and approaches.
And last, but not at all the least, through the Street Sheet, our newspaper, we reach 32,000 readers monthly, keeping them informed them about the work we do as well as the overarching issues of homelessness on both the local and the national level. If you have this paper in your hands now, you are likely to have purchased it from a homeless or formerly homeless person. Four hundred vendors use the Street Sheet as a means to obtain a legal income alternative to panhandling. Over the course of the years, the Street Sheet has given more than SIX MILLION DOLLARS to homeless people, by merely given out the paper at no cost to our vendors. When you think about it, a Street Sheet vendor can make more money selling the paper than what the average person can collect from any source of government cash assistance—that is real money for real people.
So, if you believe that the fight against homelessness is a fight for social justice, and if you appreciate and support the work that we do, it is time to come and help us. Please send in your donation, buy our merchandise and maybe try to get involved in the struggle by joining one of our workgroups.
In solidarity,
Juan Prada
