It’s time to take a stand on Homelessness

Today I had one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I was given an opportunity meet and talk to Miguel Carrera, who is the Housing Justice Organizer for an organization called Coalition on Homelessness. The Coalition on Homelessness is a nonprofit organization that has been around since 1987 fighting for human rights and housing. San Francisco is known to be one of the richest cities but only contributes 1.2 percent of their budget to the homeless. In my Interview with Miguel I was able to get a perspective from a man who once lived on the streets, fought to get clean, and is now working to reprimand the city for its lack of resources and end the housing crisis.

Some Background on Miguel

Miguel has been working with the Coalition for 23 years now and is in charge of finding funding for housing. Before he worked for the coalition he lived a crazy life on the streets using drugs, and just trying to survive. He is originally from Mexico and because his mother was an Indian he witnessed at a very young age lynching and was exposed to slavery and abuse. When he was five years old he was hit in the face so hard that he has not been able to smell since then. Through all this abuse he still persevered on and received a bachelor’s degree, unfortunately that did not keep him off the streets. Miguel said, “Nobody wants to live on the streets; you can be a lawyer, engineer, have a bachelor’s degree, but when you have no one to turn to about your traumatic past it often leads you to the streets. When you can’t find support, your anxiety and depression is darker than you could ever imagine, you have to find an escape and often times that is drugs.” After years on the streets he found support turned his life around and joined the Coalition on Homelessness.

Let’s take a look at the numbers

Every two years the city conducts a Point in Time count which between eight pm and midnight volunteers cover 47 miles of San Francisco and counts the people they see on the street, in shelters, transitional housing, jails, hospitals, treatment centers, and domestic violence shelters. In 2013 the Point in Time count said that there were 6,436 homeless people and in 2016 there were 6,686. That is a 3.8 increase in two years. After reading this report I thought that was a pretty big increase but after talking to Miguel I was shocked to find out the actual number of homeless in the city. This report is actually not as accurate as it could be because it only counts the individual you can see. It is not taking into consideration any child from that age of 0–5 years old. These children are not in school so often times they are hidden and cannot be counted. Along with children 0–5 who are not being counted there are 699 families who live in SRO (singe room occupancy) meaning there are no bathrooms or kitchens. Along with the 699 families living in SRO’s there is an unknown number of families living in garages, cars, and Rv’s who are not accounted for. Even though these families and people may have roofs over their heads their living conditions are so terrible they are considered homeless. Taking all this into consideration that brings the count to 40,000 homeless people in the city of San Francisco.

YES, I SAID 40,000!

After receiving this crazy information my next question was how did this happen and what is the city doing?

Gentrification

Gentrification is the act of displacing a lower-income individual because of property values going up in an urban area. Is this what is happening in San Francisco — you better believe it! Since the tech boom we see more and more people being pushed out of their homes because of rent being increased. Through my talk with Miguel I was given the full low down of what the city and Mayor is doing to contribute to this problem.

As of right now Mayor Ed Lee is working with tech companies and the rich; this has led to increased evictions throughout the city, but especially in the Mission District. Just last year there were more than 2000 people evicted from their homes. We aren’t just talking about a single individual being evicted we are talking about families (kids, parents, grandparents) being evicted and having nowhere else to go but the streets. According to the school district there are 3,300 homeless children and with the lack of housing it usually takes families/single individual 6–9 months before they can get accepted to a shelter. The reason why it takes so long is because there are 7000 people living on the streets right now and in all the shelters combined there are only 1300 beds in San Francisco.

- I would say the city has a major housing problem on their hands.

Coalition on Homelessness

Right now the Coalition is working on Campaigns and creating a road map to end homeless families living on the streets in the next five years. As of right now they are working on two proposals one of which is through a group called the Art Group and another is to increase a one percent tax on hotels. With this one percent tax being added to hotels they would be able to receive an estimated 27 million dollars which would end family homelessness. They are working hard through meetings and campaigns to achieve their goal of ending this epidemic and could use all the support they can get. This one percent increase will be on the ballet next November so be sure to keep an eye out for it.

Thank you so much Miguel for sharing your stories, knowledge, and time.