Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco

In 1987, a ragtag group of community activists and homeless folks, fed up with the lack of a response to homelessness that addressed the root causes, formed the Coalition on Homelessness. In 1989, the Street Sheet was founded, now holding the double distinction of being both the oldest continuously published street newspaper in North America, and the paper with the largest circulation.

In 1990, following the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the Coalition created the first supportive housing for homeless people in San Francisco in the form of Community Housing Partnership, providing permanent affordable supportive housing as well as offering several services such as employment opportunities, job training, and case management. In April 1992, the Coalition along with other non-profit and advocacy groups helped create the San Francisco Shelter Grievance Policy. This makes San Francisco the only place in the country where shelter residents have due process rights.  The program allows shelter residents who are asked to leave to request an internal hearing, and if the resident is unsatisfied with the outcome, they can appeal to an independent arbitrator whose decisions are binding. The program was created by Susan Mizner who was an attorney at Homeless Advocacy Project and Arnette Watson who is a formerly homeless leader at the Coalition. In 1993 they designed and advocated for the McMillan Center, a 24-hour drop-in facility for substance users, in an effort to reduce the number of overdose deaths on the street. In 1996, the Coalition fought against the city’s “Matrix Program,” an initiative of Mayor Frank Jordan’s aimed at addressing homelessness through police and criminalization, including getting 39,000 tickets dismissed in court and the eventual end of the program.[2][3] Also in 1996, the labor group People Organized to Win Employment Rights (Power) formed from the Coalition’s General Assistance Rights Union (POWER went on to create free Muni for youth), and the Coalition’s efforts helped lead to the creation of the city’s “Treatment on Demand” Initiative, which resulted in the expansion of 1,200 treatment slots and dramatically reducing the number of fatal overdoses through the creation of the DOPE project. The following year, a group of low-income mothers with the Coalition designed and secured funding for Oshun, a 24-hour drop-in treatment center for homeless families.[4]

In 2000, the Coalition on Homelessness helped form and staff the People’s Budget Collaborative, a group of community-based organizations that fights for investments in community programs in the city budget.[5] In 2002, the Coalition helped create the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center.[6] In 2005, the Coalition pushed for the creation of the San Francisco Shelter Monitoring Committee to monitor shelter conditions across the city,[7] as well as creating the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) along with other organizations throughout California, Oregon, and Washington.[8] The release of the Coalition’s 2008 report on shelter conditions–Shelter Shock–led to the first legislation in San Francisco to set minimum legal standards for homeless shelters.[9][10]

In 2014 a Coalition work-group pushed for changes to the shelter system wait list requiring people to stand outside of shelters for hours, leading to the creation of a 311 call-in system.[11] In 2015 the Coalition released two influential reports: “The Roadmap,” a five-year plan to end homelessness,[12] and “Punishing the Poorest,” a collaboration with UC Berkeley Center for Human Rights studying the criminalization of homelessness.[13] In 2012, the Coalition along with Hospitality House, started the Homeless Emergency Services Coalition which by 2019 has successfully gotten the city to reallocate almost $50 million in housing subsidies, treatment beds and homeless prevention services, resulting in over 1,700 households exiting homelessness, and thousands more having displacement staved off.  The Coalition fought with WRAP to pass “Right to Rest” laws in the California legislature in 2016 and 2018, failing both times to become law.[14]  Throughout the decade, the Coalition also fought many battles against SFPD, including blocking attempts to implement tasers, pushing for crisis intervention guidelines, transforming Use of Force standards, and stopping the building of a new jail. In 2018, they led the campaign for Proposition C, a ballot initiative to levy business taxes to fund housing and services that passed in the 2018 election. In early 2019 the Coalition was the face of a very public battle surrounding the building of a navigation center in the Embarcadero. They also collaborated with artist Leslie Dreyer on “Stolen Belonging,” a multi-media campaign to expose the department of public works for allegedly stealing and throwing away people’s belongings.