Editor’s Note: This article was first published in the Street Sheet, a street newspaper published by the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. The following is a call to action the author gave in a speech in front of San Francisco City Hall on June 9, 2026. It was part of an action against the City’s practices of sweeping people who live on the streets or in vehicles because they have nowhere else to be. This piece had been edited as lightly as possible. – Editors, Street Sheet
So I came out of it homelessness understanding something that a lot of people in power desperately do not want the public to recognize: There is absolutely a war on the poor in this City.
I’m not speaking on that as some abstract political concept. I’m here to talk about what that actually means and the effect it has on the human beings who are targeted in this war, because I’ve been there, and I’ll tell you this: I barely made it out alive.
So I’ll do my best to describe this experience to you so you FEEL it.
And if you’ve never been homeless, I want you to put yourself in the shoes of a homeless person for a moment, to really FEEL in your body the desperation, the exhaustion, the fear, and then realize how fortunate you are that you aren’t actually THERE, that you aren’t stuck in that experience every single day. You’ll be OK, I promise.
And for those of you who HAVE lived through it, I know how tempting it is to separate yourself from that part of your life once you finally make it out. There’s this instinct to bury it so deep you never have to emotionally touch it again.
But right now we cannot afford to disconnect ourselves from that humanity. Because surviving the streets actually equips you with a kind of empathy that can only be carved into someone through lived experience and trauma.
But you can forget about that for a second.
Because right now, what I want you to do is fully immerse yourself in imagining having to sleep outside on the cold, sometimes damp concrete every single goddamn night.
You just spent the entire day lugging around every material thing you have in life—maybe 40 or 50 pounds—all over the city trying to keep appointments, find food and access resources, all the while trying to avoid being harassed by all kinds of people: cops, people who want to rob you, assault you, or who think your existence is disgusting simply because you are visibly poor.
All while searching for somewhere safe and out of the way enough that you might be able to actually rest for a bit tonight before someone fucks with you, threatens you, or demands that you move.
You are existing in a state of prolonged exhaustion where your body never fully rests because your nervous system knows you are not safe and you must stay on high alert.
When night comes, literally ALL you want is a place where you can close your eyes for a few fucking hours without being fucked with.
Then finally, you think you found somewhere relatively safe and hidden where maybe you can actually rest.
Then, before the sun even comes up, you’re jolted awake by flashlights in your face and cops yelling at you to move while city workers are already grabbing your stuff.
If you’re lucky, they tell you that you have ten minutes before it all gets thrown away.
You just woke up. You don’t even get to take a piss because if you can’t get everything you have out of that spot in 10 minutes, Say goodbye, because it will be taken. Doesn’t matter what it is: Your tent, clothes, blankets, ID, meds, the ashes of someone you lost.
Ten minutes.
If you think that’s a lot of time, allow me to explain something to people who have never had to sleep outside in freezing temperatures: when your body has been exposed to cold all night, your hands don’t just magically start functioning the second you wake up. Your fingers are stiff. Your joints ache. Your muscles lock up. Your body temperature drops while you sleep, so you wake up shivering and disoriented and still freezing cold.
None of that matters during a sweep.
It doesn’t matter if you’re disabled, elderly, pregnant, mentally ill, injured, sick, sleep deprived, traumatized, or running on pure survival instinct after months or years outside.
You have 10 minutes till everything reduced to “debris” and thrown into the back of a fucking trash truck. This is violence. It is inhumane.
For me, it literally took being four months pregnant, soaked by rain, and shivering under a single piece of plastic stripped of everything I had before outreach offered me emergency shelter that day. And that was three years ago. Things are even worse now.
Many of the emergency hotel programs are gone. Shelter capacity has been cut. Harm reduction programs are being gutted. Permanent supportive housing is under attack. Sweeps are escalating. RV bans are escalating. People are being pushed further and further into instability while the city pours more money into policing and criminalization.
And then politicians stand in front of cameras bragging about it like they solved something.
They brag about “cleaning up the streets.” Cleaning up what— human beings?
Let’s be honest about what this really is: this City is not trying to end homelessness. It is trying to erase visible poverty from wealthy neighborhoods and business corridors so rich people feel more comfortable.
This entire strategy revolves around optics, around appeasing the wealthy, developers, business owners, and political interests that want poor people removed from public view, by any means necessary.
So when I leave here today, I do not want people walking away feeling sad for homeless people.
I want people to be angry.
I want people paying attention.
I want people to be organizing.
Fight the sweeps. Fight the RV ban. Fight the rollback of harm reduction. Fight the criminalization of unhoused people. Demand actual housing. Demand dignity and policies rooted in care instead of punishment.
Remember that empathy I was talking about? Use it.
San Francisco mother, artist and activist Apple Cronk works with Glide Memorial Church's Social Justice Academy
