citymaus

cob on wood: community kitchen and healing space. 

donate to cob on wood. read more: eastbaytimes, 30.04.2021. 

“Sick of living without basic resources and tired of waiting for the city to help, a group of homeless Oaklanders and activists have built their own unsanctioned community center from the ground up — creating a kitchen, shower, toilet, health clinic, free store and more. 

The community center, located in the heart of Oakland’s largest homeless encampment, looks like something out of a fairy tale. Wind your way through a maze of trash piles, burned-out RVs and junked cars, and you’ll emerge into a collection of tiny cabins with round, stained-glass windows, the walls covered in hand-painted tree branches and colorful flowers.

Each cabin provides a free service for the dozens of unhoused residents who live in the massive camp off Wood Street, under the 880 overpass in West Oakland. There are amenities to meet people’s basic needs, including a shower cabin with hot water and a kitchen with a propane stove and stocked refrigerator. But there also are things built just for fun, such as the pizza oven, the communal fire pit and the stage for open mic nights.

“It’s sort of like a little oasis in the middle of nowhere that makes you feel like maybe you’re normal again,” said John Janosko, who lives in a trailer in the encampment.

““This place and what we created can serve as a model for other encampments across Oakland, across the nation and across the world,” said Xochitl Bernadette Moreno, co-founder and director of Essential Food and Medicine, which has been providing healthy food and holistic health services — such as herbal medicine and acupuncture — to residents of the Wood Street camp since last year.

“Oakland officials are drafting new rules that could expand permitting options for alternative housing, potentially including structures similar to the Cob on Wood cabins, according to Darin Ranelletti, Oakland’s policy director for housing security. He expects the new rules will come before the Planning Commission in the coming weeks.

The vision behind the cob community started in November when Living Earth Structures founder Miguel Elliott built a cob pizza oven in the encampment and threw a pizza party for residents. That led to organizers speaking with residents about their need to cook and store food without running the risk of fire— a constant threat in unhoused communities.

“The following month, Elliott started work on a community kitchen. Now, residents can cook a meal or raid the fridge whenever they want, day or night. The kitchen has solar power and running water (the sink is hooked up to a water tank outside). Donated food stocks the pantry shelves and fills the fridge.

The cob structures are fire-resistant, according to the organizers, though they haven’t received an official safety inspection.

On Sunday, the organizers opened the Wood Street community clinic—a medical cabin where residents can find everything from herbal tinctures and sage bundles to diapers, condoms and Narcan, the nasal spray that reverses an opioid overdose.

“Next door is the “cobissary”—a free store where community members can take their pick of donated clothing, shoes, water bottles and other essentials.

And last week, the organizers finished the community shower, an amenity that will be a highlight for many residents, including Denis Emery-Young, who lives in an SUV in the camp.

Emery-Young’s eyes lit up when Elliott told him the shower had hot water.

“Oh my God,” he said. “I’m going to be next in that.”

In addition to the cob community buildings, volunteers also are building tiny homes where people can live. Artists Building Communities has built four wooden, one-room homes in the Wood Street camp, and is fundraising to build more.”

read more: eastbaytimes, 30.04.2021.  donate to cob on wood.

“In a blizzard of transactions that sidestepped many of the local rules that make California one of the nation’s hardest places to build, the state spent $800 million on 94 projects that will become permanent supportive housing, or housing that is paired with on-site social services. It has been a clear success for Mr. Newsom, a Democrat who was popular statewide but is now facing a potential recall. 

What was once a half-baked idea that in February 2020 got a sentence in his State of the State speech has since created 6,000 new supportive units, or about triple the usual pace of around 2,000 units a year. Hotel Diva, which in December was bought from an investment group by the nonprofit Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco with help from a state grant, accounts for 130 of them. 

the hotel diva, a seven story, 130-room former boutique hotel in san francisco, is being used to house the homeless during the pandemic as part of a state and federal effort.

“California’s hotel buying program, officially called Homekey, is both a drop in the bucket and a remarkable achievement. The state, which has 40 million residents, still has a crippling housing affordability problem, and even the most successful outcome would do little more than buy time to confront the decades-old structural issues—high housing costs, low wages, poor mental health care—that keep new people falling into homelessness faster than those on the streets can get out.

It has also set up a national model to fashion tens of thousands of new homeless quarters for less than the cost of new construction, and in a fraction of the time, by repurposing hotels, strip malls and other distressed real estate that has been heavily discounted by the pandemic and its economic fallout. Several other state and local governments, including Oregon, Austin and King County, Washington, have since begun similar efforts. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, signed by President Biden in March, allocates $5 billion to fund efforts to provide housing for homeless people, including through conversions.

gregory sanchez at the site where he slept in a tent for six months in the mission district, before he got moved into a room at the hotel diva thru the homekey program. 

“Academics started documenting people sleeping in parks and bus stations in the early 1980s. Then, as now, researchers ascribed it to a mix of falling wages, rising housing costs and a fraying safety net combined with addiction and untreated mental illness.

Another factor, which has been mostly lost to history, was the loss of single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotels, which served as a crucial source of last-resort housing. 

There is broad agreement that converting hotels to homeless housing can work, at least in some instances. For years, hotels have been made into supportive housing, though never on a large scale, because they often cost less than new construction. Episcopal Community Services bought the Hotel Diva for $50 million or $385,000 per room, roughly half what it costs to build an affordable housing unit in San Francisco. They also filled it in a few weeks. Contrast that with a 256-unit supportive housing development the organization is building a mile away: E.C.S. was awarded the project in 2018 and after years of process and a neighbors’ lawsuit should finish the buildings next year.

The question is whether the urgency of the pandemic can be maintained as the virus fades. No matter how many units the state buys, there is no way to make lasting progress on its homeless problem without reforming its land-use laws to make housing easier to build—something legislators have generally been reluctant to do.”

read more: nytimes, 17.04.2021. 

“Clearing the Echo Park tent city quickly blossomed into a crisis of its own: Advocates and allies showed up to defend the park against authorities looking to sweep the encampment. Law enforcement made at least 180 arrests over two nights of protests. In the wake of the incident, the Los Angeles Police Department has announced an internal review of its procedures for closing encampments. Some city officials are demanding to know how much the effort cost the city in terms of overtime, equipment and helicopter expenses. 

In many ways, the standoff in Echo Park illustrates the complexity of a problem that city leaders and residents struggle with across the country. Among the factors in play: dignity for unhoused people, political pressure from neighbors, concerns for safety and sanitation and stopgap solutions that seem futile against the backdrop of an affordable housing crisis. The strategy that cities have adopted—clearing and closing encampments, with varying levels of support for people living in them—comes with high costs and mixed results. 

the encampment of tents along echo park lake in los angeles has been the focus of city efforts to address a growing homelessness crisis.

“That’s according to a first-of-its-kind report on tent cities, conducted by Abt Associates and commissioned by the federal government. Analysts spoke with people living in encampments as well as leaders and advocates in four cities—Chicago, Houston, San Jose, and Tacoma in Washington—and interviewed stakeholders in five others. The report finds a spectrum of policies in place and a growing awareness that simply sweeping away encampments is an ineffective response.

oceanside approves emergency measures to clean up homeless camps. sd u-t, 08.04.2021. 

“Clearing tent cities, it turns out, is expensive: The report determined that Chicago paid $3.6 million to respond to encampments in fiscal year 2019. San Jose, with a much higher proportion of people sleeping outdoors, paid $8.6 million. Costs for smaller cities also ran high: Tacoma paid $3.9 million to manage its encampments, several hundred thousand more than Houston despite having only a fraction of its population. The report doesn’t study what happened in 2020, but if anything, encampments have only grown in these cities since the beginning of the pandemic.

Overall, cities in the study paid between $1,672 and $6,208 managing camps per unsheltered person per year in 2019, requiring coordination across multiple agencies, with little to show for their efforts. Abt also says that there are costs that can’t be easily quantified, such as the trauma and losses endured by unhoused people when cities clear their communities. Few cities have dedicated funding for any approach.

The study points to three factors driving the growth of encampments: a lack of decent shelter options, a lack of political will to solve the problem and, above all, a lack of affordable housing options. Encampments pose unique challenges for local governments and for people dwelling in tents. Local agencies not traditionally tasked with or especially suited for serving homeless people wind up bearing a lot of responsibility for encampments, such as sanitation or environmental departments.” 

read more: citylab, 12.04.2021. the report: “exploring homelessness among people living in encampments and associated cost: city approaches to encampments and what they cost.” 05.04.2021.

tiny homes for homeless young people (18-23) opens in oakland, by youth spirit artworks, an art and jobs training program based in berkeley. 

read more: sfchronicle, 19.02.2021. you can help support by donating. 

“Keep Oakland Housed, a program launched by Mayor Libby Schaaf to help people on the brink of homelessness, prevented nearly 5,000 households from losing their homes with cash assistance and legal services, officials said.

At a news conference Friday, Schaaf touted the program’s success, which was initially expected to help 500 households per year since it started in 2018.

“In 2018 we had modest goals to try and keep a few hundred people per year from losing the housing they had,” Schaaf said. “Little did we dream what a phenomenal impact Keep Oakland Housed would have.”

The assistance comes as Oakland grapples with an increasing crisis on city streets. Oakland’s homeless population has increased by 47%, from 2,761 in 2017 to 4,071 in 2019. The number of unsheltered people grew by more than 68% to 3,210.

Keep Oakland Housed was boosted by $1.5 million in private donations and about $5 million in federal Cares Act funding. Donors include the San Francisco Foundation, Kaiser Permanente and Crankstart, a charity run by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

Since its launch, the program has doled out more than $2.5 million worth of legal services to prevent evictions and more than $9.4 million in emergency financial assistance for households, according to a report.

Tenants who need cash for housing can receive up to $7,000 in checks made out to landlords or third-party providers. Residents facing eviction lawsuits are eligible for legal representation.

Nearly two-thirds of the program’s participants were women and two-thirds were Black.

“In a video played during the news conference, Marquise Moore, a 31-year-old Oakland resident, talked about how he lost his job during the pandemic and had to resort to couchsurfing and sleeping in his vehicle.

Now he lives in a two-bedroom apartment with his daughter.

“I have piece of mind knowing that my daughter is OK and we have a place called home,” he said.”

read more: sfchronicle, 15.01.2021.  read the report of keep oakland housed’s first two years.

“Vincent Ray Williams III was born HIV-positive in Oakland, abandoned by his family and tossed into the foster care system to be tormented and sexually abused from ages 6 to 17, he was taught at age 9 to use crack cocaine. This is the neglected teen who formed a drug addiction, ran away from countless foster homes, turned to delinquency and ended up in a juvenile detention center. This is a person whose sister found him, modeled compassion and led him from homelessness to healing. 

Now 32, this is a man who battled—and won—his way free of addiction and never forgot the compassion that was his salvation. Ultimately, this is a man who found steady employment as operations coordinator at the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center and, independent of his workplace, formed and leads the Urban Park CleanUp project that picks up trash dumped in Oakland’s low-income neighborhoods.”

““We live in that van.” The boy pointed at a nearby vehicle. “And mama won’t let me play in the park ‘cuz she said it’s too dirty.”

I looked around and noticed the amount of trash—broken glass, empty drug baggies, discarded condoms, needles. I looked again at this six-year-old child, and I saw myself. When I was his age, I’d lived right up the block from this very place. And years later, when I was struggling with addiction, I’d sheltered myself in the park to use drugs and to sleep, though I had a home not a hundred yards away.

Early the next day, a Saturday, I went to Home Depot and bought trash bags, a rake, a shovel, and a broom, and rented a leaf blower. Then I went back and cleaned the park, bagging every piece of trash I could see. I worked for 12 hours that Saturday, and 9 hours on Sunday, until the park was completely free of trash.

The problem of trash and illegal dumping in Oakland wasn’t always this big. Growing up in different parts of Oakland I saw trash—mostly broken glass and sometimes needles—but we weren’t as worried about it then, and the amounts were nothing like what I see now. These days, it seems everywhere I look there’s trash, so much careless dumping in our streets.

Part of the problem is the huge amount of garbage that’s being dumped in areas populated by unhoused people. Discarded household items like couches and dressers litter the streets and underpasses, and sometimes even block freeway off-ramps, posing a safety hazard. Rotting food gets left out for weeks. Stepping on broken glass or a used needle can be and is a traumatic experience. These things are a health risk to the housed and unhoused alike—but it’s unhoused people that have to live in it.

“Having been homeless myself in the past, and having seen the dumping firsthand, I know that it isn’t all being created by unhoused communities. I also know that our unhoused communities don’t welcome it. People who aren’t unhoused may see the dumping and assume it must have been “the tent people”—a term that I’ve actually heard used in my presence. In reality, it’s often regular citizens who don’t schedule pick-ups with the city for one reason or another and dump their garbage and unwanted items in the places where unhoused people live.

After my conversation with the boy in MLK Park on that weekend back in August, I realized that I could no longer ignore the problem. I was nine years old the first time I experienced being unhoused, and I know what it feels like to be stigmatized. I’ve experienced people stepping over me on the street like I was trash. I felt firsthand the lack of compassion and human kindness. To believe that people somehow want or deserve to live in these conditions, and to continue to allow it, is wrong.

“While I was deciding to take action to clean up my community, people in Oakland and across the nation were protesting, marching, and rioting. And everyone’s cry was the same: “Black Lives Matter!” For me, the expression of that was different. See, a majority of the unhoused in Oakland are Black. I battled with myself over how best to use my voice and decided that I wouldn’t speak, but act. At a time when so many of our people are afraid, hurt, and suffering because of the pandemic and the political climate of this country, I realized I could show that Black lives matter by acknowledging and engaging with my people who are unhoused while I cleaned. By learning their names, greeting them, asking them how they are doing, and showing them that, at least to me, their lives matter.

At the same time, I wanted to get the housed residents of some of these neighborhoods involved. By cleaning side-by-side with people who are unhoused, my hope was that maybe housed people could learn their stories, feel their energy, and be put more at ease, so that the next time they walked out their door and down the street, they’d have a different perspective on their unhoused neighbors.

I knew that I would have a difficult time getting people involved, with so many already apprehensive about leaving their homes because of COVID. I also knew that as a person of color in this society trying to do the right thing, I couldn’t necessarily count on enough help. So when I started out with the idea of organizing trash pickups, I thought it would just be me and a few of my close friends taking this on. I came up with a name for our group, Urban Park Cleanup, set up an email address, printed some business cards, and we moved forward with weekly weekend cleanups of dumping areas in and around West Oakland...”

read more: oaklandside, 18.12.2020. eastbaytimes, 19.12.2020. follow urbanparkcleanup on instagram, donate to help buy supplies.

“Now, with the economic fallout from the pandemic, the rental market is changing. Layoffs and remote work have led many workers to flee the Bay Area. In response, prices are plummeting—median rent on a two bedroom apartment is down 13% in Oakland and 24% in San Francisco since March, according to Apartment List.

That’s opened up an opportunity to get more landlords like Meilin Liu to rent to people who have been homeless—something they have been reluctant to do in the past. Bay Area homeless service providers see private landlords as a vital part of their effort to find permanent housing for people who have been staying in Project Roomkey hotels during the pandemic.

As Liu’s rooms sat vacant, her Zillow ad caught the attention of a woman named Jasmine Yohai. She is a housing locator for nonprofit Bay Area Community Services, and she spends most of her time finding places to live for her clients who are coming out of homelessness. 

...something that Yohai said made her change her mind, about renting to someone who had been homeless.

“She said that they are trying very hard to start a new life,” Liu recalled. “They just need someone to give them a chance. And I said usually I won’t, but because of you, I'm willing to give it a try.”

'building that relationship with landlords is really the important piece to our success in being able to house our clients,' jasmine yohai said.

“Since the pandemic began, thousands of homeless seniors and medically vulnerable people have been placed in Project Roomkey hotels to help protect them from the virus. But that was always meant to be a temporary solution. Now, Bay Area officials and service providers are scrambling to transition people to more permanent housing so they don’t end up back on the streets or in a shelter.

But there’s a shortage of affordable housing options, so recruiting more landlords like Liu is a top priority.

Alameda County maintains a database of landlords who have available units and has added 65 names to the list since September.

The county coordinates with nonprofit agencies, who help match clients staying in Project Roomkey hotels with a new place to live. The agencies include Bay Area Community Services and Abode Services, a homeless service provider that operates in six Bay Area counties. Since September, 174 people in Alameda County have been housed through this program. 

People who get housed through one of these programs pay 30% of whatever income they have for rent, and the subsidy they receive picks up the rest.

But the subsidy does more than that—it pays for wraparound services as well. That could include help with grocery shopping, budgeting or moving expenses.

Each person also gets a case manager who helps them access those services, and serves as a liaison between the tenant and the landlord if any problems arise.

“We're not just moving someone in and then abandoning them right there,” said Stephany Ashley, Northern California director of housing services for the nonprofit Brilliant Corners.

“There's going to be someone working around the clock to make sure that this housing match is successful for everybody involved,” Ashley said.”

read more: kqed, 23.12.2020. 

what would you like your city to do with $1 million?? guess what mountain view is doing. 

“The Mountain View City Council has unanimously agreed to begin restricting RVs from narrow streets across the city starting April 1, a move critics say could displace dozens of families.

City staff on Tuesday said it should take five to seven months to install 2,600 new parking restriction signs on 444 streets at a cost of nearly $1 million.

After Mountain View voters overwhelmingly supported banning RVs from the city’s narrow streets with 57% of the vote, city council members were tasked with enforcing the new rules and dealing with the consequences.

The council’s decision to move quickly threatens more than two dozen families in RVs and oversized vehicles that have over the past decade continued to park along the city’s streets as rising home prices force people into precarious living conditions.

One of the largest concentrations of RV and vehicle dwellers in the city is on Crisanto Avenue near Rengstorff Park, where dozens of people have gathered to form an impromptu community of homeless families, young people and elderly.

crisanto ave, mountain view, 20.01.2020. flickr/riobranden

“In order to house the people that the council is likely to displace, several members questioned staff about the city’s safe parking program and Project Homekey funds, state and federal money to house homeless people.

But council member Alison Hicks cautioned that many RV residents who she has spoken with have told her they have trouble qualifying for Homekey-type programs because they “are not vulnerable enough” based on income or need.

Hicks also argued the council should go slow on implementing the new policy due to the health risks of displacing people while the Bay Area remains under strict stay-at-home orders. 

But council member Lisa Matichak and Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga argued that the city has ample safe parking to accommodate the displaced RV dwellers and said the city will use Homekey funds to place RV dwellers in permanent housing.

During the meeting a Move Mountain View representative said that their services for safe parking are “full” and there is more demand for safe parking than supply. The same night the council voted unanimously to negotiate a contract with Live Nation for cheaper rent without adding more safe parking spaces at the Shoreline Amphitheater.

“read more: mercurynews, 09.12.2020. 

SPUR’s 2020 oakland and california voter guide.

yes on county measure W: alameda county sales tax (additional 0.50%) intended for homelessness programs

“Nearly a year after Moms 4 Housing became a national sensation by squatting in an empty West Oakland home, the group on Friday announced another victory: That house will soon become the first of many that members hope to turn into housing for homeless mothers.

After months of negotiations with corporate owner Wedgewood, Oakland Community Land Trust bought the Magnolia Street house for $587,500. Now, Moms 4 Housing intends to turn it into a transitional home where mothers can stay while looking for jobs, getting their credit in order and finding permanent housing.

The home also will serve as a center for Moms 4 Housing’s next project. In partnership with the Alameda Labor Council and the Rising Sun Center for Opportunity, the group intends to train unhoused mothers in contracting work and then employ them to renovate other vacant homes to create additional affordable housing.

“An emotional Dominique Walker, one of the founding Moms 4 Housing members, announced the deal Friday.

“This is officially Moms’ house,” she said, standing on the steps of the home as supporters cheered. “This moment is so special to me. Today is my son’s second birthday. He took his first steps in this house.”

But the other changes Moms 4 Housing and its supporters pushed for months ago have been slow to make a difference. In January, when Wedgewood agreed to start negotiations with the land trust on the house, Mayor Libby Schaaf announced another major Moms 4 Housing win: Going forward, any time Wedgewood wanted to sell a home in Oakland, the company must first offer the property to the city, the land trust or another affordable housing organization.

Since then, Wedgewood has offered its entire Oakland portfolio—more than 100 homes—to the Oakland Community Land Trust for purchase, according to a Wedgewood spokesman. So far, the land trust hasn’t bought any. But the organization is in talks with Wedgewood about several homes, said Steve King, executive director of the land trust.”

read more: mercurynews, 11.10.2020.  previously: “moms 4 housing-inspired policy could shake up oakland real estate market”, 09.02.2020. 

“The initial statewide stay-at-home order, which was issued after the Bay Area's, excluded homeless people.

Then, in April, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a statewide initiative, Project Roomkey, which aimed to open up 15,000 hotel rooms to the state's homeless population. As part of the initiative, the state would receive a 75 percent reimbursement rate from The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in which California county leaders were supposed to use to work on housing the vulnerable, unsheltered population. As part of Newsom's emergency action, $150 million was set aside for local California governments to purchase trailers and lease rooms in motels, hotels, and other facilities, prioritizing counties with high homeless populations. Kushel was part of shaping this plan.

It was the first initiative of its kind in the nation, hailed as a "win-win," and aimed to prioritize homeless people from the following categories: people over 65 and/or who have certain underlying health conditions, homeless people who have been exposed to COVID-19, and those who are COVID-19 positive, but didn't need hospitalization.

hemlock street, san francisco. flickr/sirgious

“But in Alameda County, only a small percentage of its homeless population have actually been housed as part of the two countywide programs that are part of Project Roomkey: Operation Comfort and Operation Safer Ground.  According to numbers provided by Alameda County, at least 641 rooms have been leased, but the county itself has at least 8,022 homeless people; 14% of whom are over the age of 60, which means that there isn't enough housing for even the most vulnerable of the vulnerable to self-isolate. More than half of Alameda County's homeless people are in Oakland. 

As of June 19th, 390 homeless individuals in Alameda County have been housed in hotels as part of Operation Safer Ground, which is meant for people over the age of 65 or those with underlying conditions to shelter-in-place. Sixty-three unsheltered people have been transferred as part of Operation Comfort, which is for homeless people who have tested positive for COVID-19 or have symptoms. At least 83 homeless people have been diagnosed with COVID-19. 

fulton street, san francisco. flickr/sirgious

“In San Francisco, Board Supervisor Matt Haney told Salon he believes that some of the eligibility criteria became a bottleneck for the program in San Francisco, limiting its efficiency, adding that it has been interpreted "very narrowly." In San Francisco, homeless people have to be on a list that deems them eligible for a hotel, which is sorted by people over the age of 60 or those who have documented underlying conditions.

"They get a list of names of people that they're looking for, and then they go out and spend all day trying to find those people . . . . and then pass nine people trying to find John when most of those nine people should qualify," Haney said.

read more: salon, 21.06.2020. 

“At a special meeting Friday morning, the Oakland City Council unanimously approved plans to request and use state coronavirus funds to buy two hotels, a dormitory, and 20 single-family homes, to open supportive housing sites for homeless people. The success of these plans is dependent on Oakland actually receiving the $37 million it’s applied for from the state “Homekey” program, however.

If Oakland gets the money, it will keep and lease the California College of the Arts’ Rockridge dorm building, but give the rest of the money to local non-profit organizations to purchase the other sites themselves. Most speakers and officials Friday were enthusiastic about the plans, but some questioned why Oakland wouldn’t just buy all of the buildings instead of giving them to the organizations. City staffers said they expect to hear about the Homekey awards by mid-September. 

Through Homekey, a California coronavirus relief program, the state is offering a total of $600 million to counties and cities that buy existing buildings and convert them into long-term housing for people experiencing homelessness. One catch: if Oakland gets the emergency funding, the city will need to spend the money by Dec. 30. And the city must promise to fill at least half the rooms within 90 days after that in order to be prioritized for the grants. 

“The Hotel Travelers, a single-room-occupancy hotel (SRO) at the center of a years-long saga is also on the city’s Homekey list.

Hotel Travelers is is an 82-unit building located at 392 11th St. in downtown/Chinatown. In 2016, real-estate investor Danny Haber bought the building and began demolishing and rebuilding parts of the interior, saying he wanted to attract a higher-income group than its existing SRO tenants and open a restaurant and bar on the ground floor. The same owners had previously converted another SRO into a dorm-style home for tech workers. Some of the Hotel Travelers residents sued the owners for harassment, alleging Haber tried to push them out by removing services and safety measures during construction. In 2019, the lawsuit was settled for $575,000.

Now, the city is attempting to return the building to something closer to its previous use. If Oakland receives around $14 million in Homekey funds, the city is proposing to contribute another $7 million so that the non-profit organization Oakland & The World, run by former Black Panther Elaine Brown, can buy the hotel along with developers Memar Properties and McCormack Baron Salazar. 

If the deal goes through, the Hotel Travelers would house formerly incarcerated tenants, initially those who are among the 8,000 people released by the state from San Quentin and other prisons because of the spread of COVID-19 inside.”

read more: oaklandside, 27.08.2020. 

“At this hour, there were only about 10 people on the bus, mostly sleepy commuters getting off the night shift. But there was one woman she flagged immediately as a potential PIN (Person In Need). She was an elder, white hair stuck to her pale forehead, with a tattered raincoat hanging off one shoulder and three canvas bags slumped at her feet. As Cruz passed her seat, the woman began talking and gesturing. “They are all dogs,” she said. Her voice got louder. “They are dogs and killers!” Surreptitiously, Cruz checked to see whether the PIN had an earbud. Negative. She was talking to herself.

It wasn’t necessarily a sign of distress. Lots of people talk to themselves without realizing it. Still, Cruz made a mental note to keep an eye on the woman, looking for signs of escalation. Part of her training involved mental health interventions, and the rule was to leave people alone unless they were overwhelmingly disruptive — or a danger to themselves or others. She took a seat behind the potential PIN, trying to beam a chill vibe directly into her brain.

morning commute on muni. flickr/dlytle

“A Black woman in a nurse’s uniform got on the bus at Masonic, and the PIN in front of Cruz got agitated. “Your dog is killing me!” she screamed. “It almost bit my face!” Ignoring her, the nurse walked to the back of the bus and sat down with a sigh. The PIN was just getting started, though. She screamed again. “Call off your dogs!” A few of the sleepy commuters woke up, and one moved to a seat farther from the PIN. The woman continued to yell about dog attacks. This was officially a disturbance...

Gently, Cruz put her hand on the PIN’s arm...

“Hey, I’m with Muni Social Support,” Cruz said. “Do you need some help? We can find you a warm meal or a place to sleep tonight. Or we can get you a doctor if you are hurt.” The woman turned to Cruz, face distorted by rage or confusion — maybe both. She glared at Cruz’s hand, brown against her white bicep. Cruz thought about how the PIN had started really losing it when the Black nurse got on board. Was this going to become a thing? Was this woman going to pull a Karen?

read more: sfchronicle, 12.07.2020. 

social workers on public transit to take care of the “crazies” and homeless. what do you think? would you support it? 

“For years, San Francisco police have ordered tents removed from city streets, even at times slashing them with knives themselves. Public Works employees have tossed the ever-ubiquitous nylon homes of desperate people into dump trucks on a weekly basis.

This week, however, San Francisco will launch the first of five planned “Safe Sleeping Sites,” KQED News has confirmed, with the hope that unhoused people will be kept physically distant amid the COVID-19 pandemic in a controlled location, replete with services like showers and food.

Tents, once an ultimate bogeyman of San Francisco's government, will be revered as lifesaving.

The first location was announced Wednesday by Mayor London Breed: an encampment of roughly 90 tents piled nearly on top of each other near the Asian Art Museum – on City Hall’s front doorstep – will be officially sanctioned and allowed to expand onto Fulton Street, between the museum and the Main Library.

“The second city-sanctioned safe sleeping site is already under operation by a local nonprofit, Mother Brown’s Dining Room in the Bayview, at a park known locally as MLK Park, on Third Street and Armstrong Avenue.

For now it's a rogue operation, but later this week the official OK from San Francisco City Hall will see services, showers, and other resources blow in like a breeze under the sails of that existing effort, Gwendolyn Westbrook, Mother Brown’s executive director told KQED News.

Those wrap-around services are planned for all of the city-sanctioned sleeping sites.

Mother Brown's shelter, nestled on Jennings Street and Van Dyke Avenue in the Bayview, sees nearly 70 people sleeping in it nightly. Westbrook, the shelter’s proprietor, said homelessness has grown in the Bayview so precipitously that people sometimes sleep in Mother Brown’s dining room and hallways.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has required many San Francisco establishments to close, or maintain strict social distancing, and Mother Brown’s shelter was no different.

So Westbrook and other women from the Bayview took matters into their own hands. They walked over to what locals call MLK Park – which on city documentation is called Bay View Park—and measured out the distance between plots themselves.

A renegade camping site was born, from the community, serving the community, with roughly 60 souls sleeping there in tents for weeks.

“No one wants to die from this coronavirus," Westbrook said. "But if I had waited on the city, people out here might’ve been dead.”

“Eddie Tillman, 65, was raised in the Bayview—it is his home—but his extended family is largely dead or gone. He also said he doesn't want to “burden” his adult children with his own life choices. So Tillman has been living on the streets, slowly withering away, he said. Then he found the MLK Park encampment. It not only saved him from COVID-19, he said, but from his darkest thoughts.

“I don’t say I was going to kill myself. But I didn’t want to live,” he said.

Now he says he feels upbeat once again and is better prepared to find a job.

Three other sites are now under various phases of negotiation to potentially become San Francisco’s next wave of safe sleeping sites, public documents and City Hall insiders confirmed:

read more: kqed, 06.05.2020. 

“because we are labeled homeless, we are unseen. we could sit here butt-naked and still no one would look at us.” — calvin shorts jr.

calvin, 37, was evicted from his apartment three years ago and has since been unable find an apartment that he can afford. he lives in a tent under highway 101 in hollywood, los angeles. photo: rachel bujalski

read more: “on the streets of LA: the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted how vulnerable the homeless population is.” nytimes, 04.04.2020. 

“After failing to pass legislation to open up less densely populated parts of California to multifamily housing, state Senator Scott Wiener is trying again with a “lighter touch” plan aimed at suburbs.

The San Francisco Democrat on Monday introduced SB902, which would essentially eliminate single-family zoning across the state by allowing multi-unit housing in nearly all residential neighborhoods. Unlike his past effort, however, Wiener’s new proposal would cap the number of units that could be built in the smallest communities at two and limit the number in midsize cities to three.

“In unincorporated areas and cities up to 10,000 people, the bill would allow duplexes on any property. It would permit a building with up to three units (triplexes) in a city with between 10,000 and 50,000 people, and up to four units in a city with more than 50,000 people.

The legislation would not make changes to local height or design standards. That was a major source of anxiety for many opponents to SB50, who worried that it could radically change the look and feel of their communities by requiring cities to permit four- and five-story buildings near public transit.

research shows that duplexes and additional housing units will make housing affordable for a wider range of incomes. via portlandtribune, 17.01.2020.

“But the new bill does create an option for cities to rezone residential parcels for apartment or condominium projects up to 10 units, without having to go through the formal environmental review that Wiener said can add five to 10 years to the process. Unlike his previous measure, allowing such construction would be up to cities — it would not be a state requirement.

The provision would apply to neighborhoods near public transit and in high-income areas with access to jobs and good schools. Cities could choose to adopt the change for any qualifying area through an ordinance.

“It will be much, much faster than the usual process,” Wiener said. “I hope we’ll signal to cities that we’re serious about giving cities more and more tools to make their lives easier in zoning for and approving more housing.”

read more: sfchronicle, 10.03.2020.  related: minneapolis bans single-family zoning. nytimes, 15.06.19.