Demand among homeless San Franciscans for the 40 slots the city is making available in its Haight-Ashbury safe camping site has outstripped supply, even as more than 1,000 hotel rooms and trailers meant for vulnerable residents sit empty. Around 60 people have requested to stay at the site, which has space for only 40 tents, said Mary Howe, director of the Homeless Youth Alliance.
Category: Homelessness
Posted inCoronavirus, Homelessness, Housing
While S.F. Resists, Seattle Embraces Regulated Homeless Camps
San Francisco has approved temporary encampments to slow the spread of COVID-19. But in Seattle, a half-decade experiment with regulated sites has proved so much more successful at getting people off the streets than other solutions that officials recently voted to expand it fourfold.
Posted inEducation, Homelessness
School Doubles as Home for Some S.F. Students
The San Francisco school district’s Stay Over Program has played a major role in sheltering homeless students and their families and helping them move to more stable situations since the shelter-in-place rules were implemented. Service providers worry they may be joined in a few months by many more newly homeless students as job losses mount and more families get evicted.
Posted inHomelessness
43% of Emergency Hygiene Facilities for S.F. Homeless Lack Essentials
UPDATE 5/20/2020: Adds link to city website showing some open park restrooms in eighth paragraph of “Hygiene” section. More than four in every 10 emergency hygiene facilities the city has set up during the COVID-19 pandemic to serve homeless people lack at least one element essential to handwashing, the Public Press found. A third of […]
Posted inCity Hall, Coronavirus, Homelessness, Housing
Homeless Activists’ Latest Tactic: Occupying Hotel Rooms
Seven protesters from Poor Magazine, a publication and activist organization, attempted to occupy the Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown San Francisco on Monday morning to demand that the city house more homeless residents in the thousands of hotel rooms left vacant during the coronavirus pandemic.
Posted in“Civic” Podcast, City Hall, Coronavirus, Health, Homelessness
S.F. Targets 13 Tenderloin Blocks for Tent Relocation, Cleanup, Services
In response to an increase in tent encampments in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, city officials will target 13 blocks with outreach, services, cleaning and enforcement. People living in some encampments will be asked to relocate to permitted sites, and the city will open one such site with 50 spaces on Fulton Street between Larkin and Hyde streets.
Posted in“Civic” Podcast, Homelessness, Housing
Homeless Activists Occupied S.F. Home to Protest Real Estate Speculation
The same day tenant advocates in San Francisco organized a car caravan demonstration calling for the cancellation of rent, two homeless women, Couper Orona and Jess Gonzalez, briefly occupied a long-vacant home in the Castro before police removed them.
Posted inHomelessness, Housing
Two Squatters Occupy Vacant S.F. Home to Protest Housing Policies for Homeless
Two homeless women staged an occupation of a vacant single-family home Friday in the Castro in a move aimed at drawing more attention to their demand that the city move more quickly to shelter homeless people during the COVID-19 pandemic. They hung banners outside with messages such as “End homelessness, reclaim San Francisco” and “Housing is a human right” and attracted protesters and neighbors supporting the action before leaving several hours later after negotiations with police.
Posted in“Civic” Podcast, Coronavirus, Homelessness
Service Provider: Homeless Are Always ‘Last in Line’ for Help
Among the most exposed and often vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic are people who don’t have a place of shelter. Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, a nonprofit that offers a variety of services from employment guidance to emergency shelter, said the city seems to be waiting for people to get sick before intervening.
Posted in“Civic” Podcast, City Hall, Economy & Business, Health, Homelessness
S.F. Offers Hotel Rooms for Local Homeless, Not Newcomers, Breed Says
As San Francisco officials worked to expand housing options for the homeless, city leaders warned that anyone from outside San Francisco seeking a hotel room or other shelter would be turned away to preserve resources for those who were homeless within city limits before the pandemic hit.