Homeless Groups Launch ‘Sweeps Free Sanctuaries’
By the Wood Street Commons and Poor Magazine
Contacts: Tina Gray-Garcia and John Janasko
Editor’s note: Today I attended one of the multicity “sweeps-free sanctuaries” set up by homeless groups at San Francisco’s Civic Center near City Hall. With tents lettered with messages, a table with coffee and bagels, a speak-out, dancers and a directions ceremony, symbolic sanctuary ground was claimed for people’s needs and as protest against sweeps and criminalization. Below are excerpts from the Press Release for the multiple actions, with the organizing groups’ demands, and photos from the San Francisco action. – Sarah Menefee, People’s Tribune
“On Tuesday, December 17th in response to increasingly violent and relentless sweeps of houseless residents of California, houseless and formerly houseless sweeps survivors along with housed allies and spiritual leaders launched ‘sweeps-free sanctuary communities’ at City Halls and other public land sites in Yelamu (San Francisco), Huchiun (Oakland), Yocut (Fresno), Tovaangar (Los Angeles) and Sogorea Te (Vallejo) and Chief Sia’hl (Seattle).
“In addition to providing crucial resources for fellow houseless relatives in the cold, wet winter, we will be presenting solutions to homelessness created by us houseless people. Solutions that are healing housing models like Homefulness and Wood Street Commons Community. As well as looking at the example of Tent city 3, created by Share/Wheel in Seattle, Washington, which could be replicated by cities and counties across the U.S.
“Public land should be for the public, instead we face violent sweeps,” said La Monte Ford, Wood Street Commons Sweeps survivor. Following the Grants Pass vs Johnson Supreme Court Ruling that deemed houseless residents of the U.S. no longer protected by the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, California Gov. Gavin Newsom enhanced his already violent “sweeps” policy of houseless people by directing state agencies to dismantle homeless encampments on state land. He also threatened cities across the state with drastic budget cuts if they didn’t comply with his clearing orders. Hundreds of houseless elders and disabled adults’ lives have become gravely endangered and have died in increasing numbers due to this state-sponsored violence over the last several months.
“All the government ‘Solutions’ like cabin communities and shelters have failed to create the necessary foundation unhoused people need to be able to rebuild our lives, said John Janasko, houseless resident leader at Wood Street Commons, a community of houseless people working to organize and support fellow houseless people.
“There is no social justice in criminalizing our unhoused community, there is no solution in solving homelessness by incarceration,” said Junebug Keaoloha, formerly houseless Community health worker and poverty skola with POOR Magazine /San Francisco.
The Press Release concluded with these ‘solutions to homelessness presented by houseless people’:
1. Sanctuary Communities, Not Sweeps: Stop sweeps, tows, and criminalizing poverty. Redirect encampment management funding towards positive solutions like encampment upgrades, sweeps-free sanctuary communities, and permanent low to no-income housing.
2. Land Back/Public Land for Public Good: House hundreds of people in the vacant Hilton Hotel on Port of Oakland land, The Civic Center Inn in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, and/or countless other vacant and hoarded lots and land across Oakland and San Francisco. Unsell and return sacred sites, vacant land, buildings and homes to stewardship by 1st peoples of Turtle Island who suffered the brutal genocide of colonization. Use public and vacant land for poor people-led solutions like rent-free forever healing housing like Homefulness and Communities, the Wood Street Commons housing vision designed with architect Mike Pyatok and Share/Wheel in Seattle.
3. Prevent Homelessness: Strengthen renter’s rights and provide rent subsidies. Create a permanent moratorium on rental evictions and foreclosures for non-payment. Evictions and foreclosures are elder and child abuse and cause homelessness.
4. Defund Coercive “Care Courts.” Reinvest in an accessible and non-carceral approach to mental health care and harm reduction rooted in a framework of interdependence, care, and love first. Stop 5150 holds, medical incarceration, and forced conservatorships through Gavin Newsom’s care courts which threaten to circumvent due process and other constitutional protections.
Follow the work of this movement on IG:
@BayHousingLiberation @poormagazine @woodstreetcommons
Or websites: poormagazine.org / woodstreetcommons.org
San Francisco poet Sarah Menefee is a long-time homeless rights activist. She is the Homeless Desk on the People’s Tribune Editorial Board. She is a founding member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade and 'First they came for the homeless'. Her latest collections of poetry are Human Star and CEMENT.
