In February of this year, San Francisco’s State Assemblywoman Carol Migden introduced legislation in the State Assembly to fund a new court that will experiment with your rights. The bill is entitled AB2899 — the “Homeless Court Pilot Project.”

Originally, the bill was modeled on a program operating in San Diego for several years. The San Diego homeless court runs out of the shelter system. Once a month a state judge holds hearings for shelter residents with criminal warrants for minor offences.

Defendants that go to the homeless court must be prepared to plead guilty but, according to sources that support the court, the sentences imposed have been progressive and non-punitive.

Initially, Migden’s Homeless Court bill was patterned on the San Diego Court but did not include specific guarantees concerning people’s rights in front of the court. Worse yet, the bill was going to put the State Attorney General (the head prosecutor for the state) in charge of the program.

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On Thursday, August 7, the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee will hold a hearing on the impending closure of Marian Residence for Women, currently run by St. Anthony Foundation and located at 1183-1185 Mission Street. The meeting, to be held in Room 263, will begin at 1:00 p.m., but the hearing closure is item nine.

The closure of Marian Residence would mean the loss of sixty more beds for women from the shelter system—a loss which a shelter system that already has a disproportionately low number of women’s beds can ill afford. At the same time, the City has no plans for a late-night drop-in center for women, thus leaving one of our society’s more vulnerable elements completely unprotected.

Please come, if you can, to testify with San Francisco’s homeless women. Both spoken and written testimony help.

In June 2005, the Housing First for Families campaign fought for a rental subsidy program. This program was designed to help families who were homeless and living in shelters, or in SROs (single-room occupancy hotels), or doubled-up conditions to receive a $500 rental subsidy: The families would be able to find an apartment and the City and Human Services Agency would pay up to $500 rent for the apartment.

The Coalition on Homelessness along with the SRO Families United Collaborative presented the Housing First campaign. After days, weeks, months, and years of hard work and consistency, the families did not stop until the campaign had reached its goals.

I thought we told you that we wouldn’t stop until the recommendations were signed and agreed upon by the City. Read the rest of this entry »

On May 12 of this year, a Federal judge ruled that by immediately seizing and destroying the personal possessions of the city’s homeless residents, the City of Fresno, California violated the Constitutional right of every person to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. Fresno and Department of Transportation officials had violated the rights of homeless people by “cleaning up” tent cities and destroying personal belongings. US District Judge Oliver W. Wagner also gave preliminary approval for $2.35 million to be awarded to hundreds of Fresno residents involved in the class action lawsuit Kincaid v. Fresno on June 12. That decision was finalized on Friday, July 25. The homeless plaintiffs were represented by a team of attorneys from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and the law firm Heller Ehrman LLP.

ACLU-NC staff attorney Michael Risher warned, “The court’s ruling and the settlement should send a strong message to other cities throughout our country that if they violate the rights of their most vulnerable residents, they will be held accountable.” He continued, “The ruling makes it clear that our constitution protects the rights of everybody, rich or poor.”

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Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly, and Jake McGoldrick have submitted legislation and garnered enough votes to put a Treatment on Demand initiative on the November 2008 ballot. The initiative would do what many politicians have promised but have failed to deliver.

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The current proliferation of separate court systems often referred to as “restorative justice” within the US criminal justice system tells us all we need to know about how government is addressing the health care and housing needs of America’s poor.

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A veteran, and himself a father of two grown boys, Tyrone has, for two years, made his regular home outside a newly-closed health clinic near Van Ness where he lives with Charease, his partner and friend of 14 years.

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TL Health. You know, that first traffic light at the top of the rise after you come through the dogleg behind UN Plaza. That crowd of folks milling about or sometimes standing in line on the right hand side have probably been TARC clients, to one degree or another. Except that last June, Continuum HIV Day Services and Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center were all rolled into one TL Health Clinic. I’m often running across folks I know from around town down there, and now that they’ve axed McMillan Drop-In Center/Buster’s Place, it’s one of last places I can wash my hands before I eat after spending an evening recycling around Downtown. Now it’s on the Mayor’s chopping block as fat to be trimmed from the City’s deficit-laden budget.

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At a special meeting in the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center on June 10, Joyce Crum of the Human Services Agency (HSA) tried to assure over 20 homeless people that the shelter’s June 30 closing was not the City’s decision.

Before Crum referred them to Homeless Outreach Team members to get them wait-listed at other shelters, the director of HSA’s homeless and housing division told them that City budget cuts played no role in the closing—Ella Hill decided not to renew their contract at the end of the fiscal year.

Crum also said Ella Hill’s board of directors decided in February to get out of the shelter business—and it was solely their call.

Or was it?

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