San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/homelessness/)
San Francisco should brace for a surge in homelessness.
That was the assessment of local housing advocates following a Department of Housing and Urban Development announcement that it would “take steps” to ensure no funding would be used to “support sanctuary policies of states or local governments that actively prevent federal authorities from deporting” undocumented residents.
Solomon Bukenya, a formerly unhoused San Franciscan, has never lost hope for long — surviving a genocide in Rwanda, the loss of his leg, addiction and homelessness. Though he had no interest in civic engagement for years, today he’s on a mission to make sure his community’s voices are heard. Even after a tumultuous election, he remains undeterred.
An escalation in encampment clearings could be leaving unhoused San Franciscans with fewer of their vital documents, making them less able to access services and, this month, vote, service providers and homeless advocates say.
In light of reports of these worsening problems, the city’s Homeless Oversight Commission has urged local government agencies to prevent the loss of essential items.
Many older adults living on fixed incomes in San Francisco teeter on the brink of homelessness. After rent, they have little money for other essentials.
Proposition G could keep some of those people off the streets by reducing rents in hundreds of already-subsidized units, putting them within reach for extremely low-income seniors and other groups.
If you’re unhoused, you might wonder if you are eligible to cast a ballot this November. The answer is yes — even without a fixed address. We’ve tried to answer the big questions you might have about voting while experiencing homelessness in this how-to guide, to make sure your voice is heard this Election Day.
See our November 2024 SF Voter Guide for a nonpartisan analysis of measures on the San Francisco ballot, for the election occurring Nov. 5, 2024. The following measure is on that ballot. Proposition B would let San Francisco borrow up to $390 million to carry out infrastructure and other projects, like upgrading health care facilities, creating homeless shelter, repaving roads and renovating Harvey Milk Plaza, the Castro neighborhood spot honoring the city’s first openly gay supervisor, who along with Mayor George Moscone was assassinated in 1978. Listen to a summary of what this ballot measure would do.
Street outreach by San Francisco’s premier team for helping people living on the streets has fallen for years and could continue dropping.
Years-long staffing woes and shifting work priorities have driven the decline, leaving the team less time for their core mission: building trust with unhoused people and helping them access social services and housing. Homelessness advocates approved of the team’s new efforts to bring people indoors, but worried that officials’ political motives might be influencing these changes.
More than 1 million California adults — and 19.4 million Americans — live with both a serious mental illness and substance use disorder. In fact, roughly half of all people with severe mental illness are thought to also have a co-occurring substance use disorder. Traditionally, treatment programs target one of these populations or the other. Progress Foundation is one of the few across the country serving people who have both — so-called dual diagnosis patients.
Domestic violence survivors in the Golden State are getting some help in the form of recent regulatory reforms. That includes one policy that prohibits some landlords from rejecting housing applicants based on their credit histories, which often suffer in abusive situations.
But more big fixes are needed, a UCSF report notes, like additional domestic violence shelters and better coordination of shelter and social service intake systems. Many women find today’s homeless shelter settings unsafe, so they opt to sleep on the streets after they leave an abusive partner.
In San Francisco, it is not uncommon to cross paths with a person experiencing homelessness in the throes of a mental health crisis. The scene can be tragic, confusing and sometimes might feel dangerous.
Bystanders might wonder how to summon help from the city — and what will happen if they do.
We created a flow chart to answer those questions. We show how cases traverse a tangle of pathways, through handoffs between dispatchers and myriad public workers. The person in crisis might spend days or weeks tumbling through the criminal justice system or health care facilities. Often, they return to where they started: the streets.
Thousands of people last year fell into San Francisco’s complex, reactive, strained system for treating severe mental health and drug-related crises.
To explain how that system works and its effects on the people who enter it, we begin with the story of one man, Jay. As with many others — including those who are unhoused or are detained without their consent following a call from an alarmed observer — Jay had received temporary care, entailing multiple involuntary psychiatric holds, that failed to address his long-term problems. That left him back on the streets to fend for himself or, with the help of passersby, try again to get the aid he needed.
