16,000,000 housing units sit vacant on Turtle Island with more than 650,000 people living on Turtle Island’s streets
everyone could be housed with over 15,000,000 housing units to spare if slum lords and wealth hoarders actually cared
in occupied Huichin more than 10,000 housing units sit empty and meek while more than
5,000 people are out on these streets more than enough to provide everyone a home in a matter of weeks
but instead slum lords and wealth hoarders would rather spend blood money on sweeps
ed’s reiskin the brisket when he says, KOCB’s homeless encampment crews “annual personnel cost is…$2.9 million” desperately needed to respond to 311 callers
“in addition, staff estimates that O&M expenditures… is $3.5 million” crucial to keeping our offices neat and free of squalor
“combined with personnel, these direct costs total to $6.4 million” annual funding they score for cops and bulldozers to play whack a mole with the poor
1 year of sweeps comes to: $6,400,000 EMP passed in
2020 to the sound of sobs and hollers 4 years of sweeps approximate coffers: $25,600,000
Temporary shelter annually slaughters: $28,355,999
Between shelters and sweeps that recycle us on, off, and back on these streets, in a fiscal year reap around: $35,000,000 that us poor people never see
poor people prodded and ping-ponged across a meager 2,300 lane miles of streets from sweeps to shelters and back from shelters to sweeps
Just this year for $6,400,000 they put over 400 of our unhoused loved ones 6 feet deep
say what u will about our lives but our deaths ain’t cheap costs less to put us in a house than to bury us in these streets
settler pundits turn our erasure into a numbers game we’re born with a number before anyone knows our name churning our lives and deaths into data as if those are the same lord knows they’d love to keep it that way cuz when it comes down to numbers and names a number’s easy to forget at the end of the day
Solutions:
Stop the Sweeps: Create a moratorium on encampment closures
Abolish the Encampment Management Policy
Toilets, Trash, Water, Electricity Services Now!
Use Public Land for Public Good
Nothing about us without us: Create an independent advisory board and participatory budgeting process, comprised of Houseless Community Members, that oversees how money is spent and how shelters operate.
Safe Permanent Extremely Low-Income Housing Now!
Closing Statement
Our current society loses 295,000 people each year to poverty, which is more people than by homicide, gun violence, diabetes, or obesity but the corporate media does not talk about that. In California (fact sheet), 18 million people struggle to make ends meet, while 181,000 of our fellow Californians endure the dailstruggles of homelessness. Meanwhile, our federal budget allocates $1.1 trillion to militarization and war. If all that money was directed towards services such as housing, education, and healthcare we could eradicate poverty not only here in the United States but likely around the world. There is hope. We demand change. We demand action. We must make our demands known, that housing is a fundamental human right. That we will no longer accept the criminalization of our communities. That we will no longer put money towards the war economy that kills Palestinians and houseless folks here in the US and instead put money back into our communities. We must not only have our demands heard, we have to organize to have our demands implemented. Because we will only ever get what we are organized to take.
Please join us and our partner organizations throughout the next five weeks, in a month of action and reflection. We are looking for volunteers, concerned neighbors, struggling renters, and houseless leaders to join us. Here are some key dates.
April 22: Sweep the Court Demonstration in San Francisco
May 1: Labor Day, Workers Solidarity and Poor People’s Campaign Teach-In
May 14: Community Potluck and Gathering
Every Sunday: Houseless Community Outreach
Also, follow us on Instagram @eastbaystreetstories for more information
