'There are no winners here, because we are all bound by our nation’s refusal to confront its own soul. This fight is not over; it’s only beginning,' says Director of Los Angeles Skid Row organization, LA CAN.
For the third year, a group of former Wood Street encampment residents bicycled some 80 miles from Oakland to Sacramento in a show of solidarity with unhoused Californians.
Californians have an opportunity in Tuesday’s election to pass a ballot measure that will address the high cost of housing, which is one of the top grievances among the state’s voters. Proposition 33 will allow cities and counties to implement rent control ordinances.
Using fear and misinformation to manipulate California voters, the Yes on 36 campaign is based on lies: claiming crime is increasing when it is down; claiming 36 will get more people into drug treatment, when it will DECREASE funding, forcing people who want treatment to prison instead; providing zero dollars for housing and millions for prisons and jails.
I’m Crystal President of Sacramento Homeless Union, on the Board of the California Homeless Union Statewide Council, and an Executive Board member of the...
Hundreds of people who live in their RVs and other vehicles, many of them families, reject an attempt by the. mayor of San Francisco to criminalize them and force them into homelessness.
Press Conference, Speak Out and Prayer Ceremony, Monday September 24, 23rd Street and Northgate, Oakland, CA organized by formerly homeless, advocates and caregivers for the unhoused.
Wood Street Commons — with their motto of “Homeless Helping Homeless” — is a group of unhoused people from West Oakland, who work in solidarity with homeless communities in other cities.
In August, the city of Sacramento made good on their threats to break up Camp Resolution, a self-sustaining RV community that had endured for 17 months. A majority of its residents were women, over 55, many disabled. Hear their stories.
Sweeps kill! As history repeats itself the city and county of Sacramento are going to allow a sweep at Camp Resolution, home to many unhoused people who live there and care for one another.
The Poor People’s Army, a national group of poor and homeless people with a history of staging nonviolent protests, faces pressure from Chicago officials to stay away from DNC.
States are using their budgetary power to punish communities that don’t push people off the street, including places that have more unhoused people than shelter beds, and to arrest people who don’t have a safe space to go to.
The Wood Street Commons, a community of unhoused residents in West Oakland, is calling for immediate action to address the State’s homelessness crisis.
San Francisco begins brutal sweeps against people on the streets and their belongings, whether housing is available or not; a city with some of the highest rents in the nation.
Wood Street Commons community in Oakland is struggling to ensure housing as a human right in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling and the governor's order criminalizing homelesssness.
57 percent of unhoused women report domestic violence as their immediate cause of homelessness. The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold an Oregon law could further limit their options
Climate change and extreme weather is a real thing. This is evidenced by the fact that extreme weather events are becoming increasingly frequent and more intense.
A movement is growing against the latest “legalized” atrocity on the most vulnerable, in governments, among advocates, ordinary people, and most importantly, by organized and individual homeless people. As said in the homeless movement, “We only get what we are organized to take!”
Criminalizing the homeless for sleeping in public spaces when having no other option does not violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause of U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, according to new ruling.
Camp Resolution, the self-governing encampment for unhoused Sacramento residents, received a notice on March 28 for its nearly one hundred members to vacate by...
June 14, 2024
Interview with General Dogon of the Los Angeles Community Action Network by Cathleen Williams, Homeward Street Journal
General Dogon is an organizer at...
The Supreme Court’s decision in the case out of southern Oregon, expected in June, will broadly impact how local governments write homelessness policy in the United States.
Florida homeless advocate discusses new anti-homeless laws in Florida, and elsewhere, criminalizing those who have to shelter, including upcoming Supreme Court rulings that could impact the nation.
Actions are taking place in the following cities: San Francisco (Bay Area), CA; Los Angeles, CA; Sacramento, CA; Portland, OR; Medford, OR; Missoula, MT; Seattle, WA; Denver, CO
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.
A coalition of current and former San Francisco officials and civic organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in advance of...
Sacramento homeless and supporters rally at the state capitol in anticipation of a case before the U.S Supreme Cout that could criminalize sleeping outside even when cities have no beds or housing for people.
Home is a place where we go ….A destination. That destination does not need to be physical …. home is a space. Home is a place with family ….community support strength and the ability to feel secure in your fight where you stand.
San Francisco is banning overnight parking on Bernal Heights Blvd., endangering homes of RV dwellers. Residents are protesting their impending eviction.
In 2023, 68,440 Chicagoans experienced houselessness, lived on the streets, in shelters, or doubled-up. Bring Chicago Home was born out of the growing need to address the crisis in a real and meaningful way where people get housed and stay housed
The systemic causes of family homelessness are not the families’ fault— it’s mainly a lack of affordable housing, economic problems, and our nation’s relentless punishing of families.
Prop 1 Would gut local mental health services and further criminalize the unhoused. The following is an excerpt from a voting guide prepared by Kris Rehl, a writer and organizer with LA Street Care, and was lightly edited for length.
San Francisco’s centrally located Tenderloin area is about 25 blocks flanked by Union Square and Civic Center areas. The mayor’s reelection campaign aims to please the billionaire donors by punishing the thousands of unhoused living in this area and across the city, rather than provide people with housing.
The Supreme Court will decide whether it should be illegal to arrest and cite unhoused people for unauthorized lodging without offering immediate available shelter.
To most people, I’m invisible. Just another nameless Black man blending into the urban background. People avoid making eye contact as they walk past me on the sidewalk.
Dozens of unhoused, disoriented, disabled Chicago residents will die. Hundreds will get frostbite and/or hypothermia. The city must open warming senters 24/7.
A memorial was held for those who died in Santa Cruz streets unhoused, the most expensive rental market in the country. Hear voices of both sadness and hope.
Homeless and supporters stand together on this winter solstice night mourning the unhoused who have died on our streets. The memorial reminds us of the cruel reality that some of us are unhoused, living outside. Their voices must be at the forefront of the fight to end homelessness.
Wood Street End-of-Year Letter 2023!
Wood Street Commons
Season’s Greetings Wood Street Allies, Friends, and Family,
It’s hard to believe that we are quickly approaching the end...
Chicago voters will decide whether to increase the Real Estate Transfer Tax (RETT) on home sales of over $1 million, creating a dedicated source of funding for preventing and ending homelessness in Chicago.
CA Senate Bill 1338 created a mental health court. A court-appointed conservator would make health care decisions and control one’s medication and treatment — at an involuntary stay in a psychiatric facility. Could this be the housing promised by Governor Newsom?
Sacramento California has 22,000 unhoused people on the streets. This is the reality people live and die in. Sacramento Homeless Union leader asks, “Can we create a place we can all thrive and be healthy together?”
The Red Cross refused to help homeless families burnt out of the hotel they stayed at, which caused them to lose everything, because the motel was not a permanent residence.
Young homeless person in Oakland, California tells the story of the cause of homelessness, being homeless and solutions the cities can undertake to help homeless youth.
Editor's Note: This article was contributed from the Laney College Chapter, Poor People's Campaign
Being homeless at the end of my high school senior year...
It has now been over a month since the gruesome incident that caused the death of Christine Chavez, a houseless woman, and there are more questions than answers at this point.
San Francisco lost its appeal challenging an injunction prohibiting the city from enforcing penal codes such as the ban on sleeping on the streets, as the City has continued to violate unhoused residents’ rights, destroying their property while clearing camps on the streets.
Crystal Sanchez, president of the Sacramento Homeless Union, grew up in Sacramento. Formerly homeless herself, she brings insight into the homeless and housing crisis, urging us to come together and discuss plans to end homelessness by ensuring everybody has a chance to be heard and work together for a solution.
The deceased woman’s family and people who saw her shortly before she died claim she was sleeping in dry grass prior to being run over by a large tractor pulling a powerful mower. The father is asking for an investigation.
A court-appointed conservator would make financial and health care decisions and control a patient’s medication and treatment. Where is the housing promised by Gov. Newsom when he announced his CARE Court plan?
San Francisco is concentrating homeless arrests in areas where lots of people live on the streets. However, a new study by UCSF, found the leading cause of homelessness was overwhelmingly the crushingly high rents and unaffordable housing, and lack of meaningful help getting rehoused once housing is lost, despite millions of dollars spent on “homeless services” (mainly shelters and policing).
Friends offer warm remembrances of Joey Pace who died of fentanyl poisoning. Joey, a Special Forces veteran, was a years-long volunteer for Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs. The community had been reeling from recent deaths. And a total of 90 unhoused died in Santa Cruz in 2022.
Homeless Poet Linda Stevens presents her poetry, saying "I'm too old to go back to work, I don't have benefits . . . why don't cities have a help system? What can we do to get this world to wake up and help the unhoused? If we don't fight back, we're all going to die!"
Food is a human right. Yet over 34 million Americans — and those numbers are growing every day — are hungry, including 1 in 8 children. Why is anyone, let alone children, going hungry when there’s plenty of food in supermarkets across the country? And why are people who share food with hungry people being ticketed and fined?
Housing insecurities affect about 83% of Peralta Community College Students. About 14% of students nationwide self-report experiencing homelessness in the past year. Students are asked to speak out at the Peralta Board of Trustee Meeting June 27.
Las Vegas buses have security guards to make sure people don't fall asleep on busses, which are sometimes the only place the homeless can shut their eyes without worrying about being robbed or harmed.
After 40 years, the system is still doing exactly what it was designed to do: manage and minimize the presence of homeless people. It was NEVER intended to address homelessness in any real way.
Black homeless street artist Jordan Neely, 30, walking through a NYC subway car saying he was hungry and thirsty, was held in a choke hold until his death. Widespread protests finally resulted in manslaughter charges being brought against his perpetrator.
As summer rolls around, one group of motel-dwellers will feel the heat the most — families and individuals who’ve lost housing. Motels/hotels welcome tourists in summer, so they want to get rid of the “riff-raff”. . .
View photo essay by the renowned photo journalist David Bacon of the unhoused people who live in the Wood Street community in Oakland, CA. They have been facing the city’s earth movers with metal jaws destroying the homes and belongings of the residents.
Residents say it has been a tense week with heavy police presence at the Wood Street Commons community in Oakland, CA where the City is destroying a long-standing camp of the unhoused violently, without respect for residents rights, lives or property.
SAN JOSE, CA– On Friday, April 21 at 11:30 am, Students Against Sweeps will hold a
press conference discuss the City’s plans to
address homelessness, and human rights issue.
OAKLAND, CA - On Monday, April 10, the police of Oakland, along with clean-up crew were at 1707 Wood Street to start evicting residents of Wood Street Commons.
On April 1, Camp Resolution, a self-run community of tents and vehicle dwellings of about 50 people on a fenced city-owned lot in Sacramento CA, celebrated a victory.
The City of Oakland , CA has begun demolishing the Wood Street Commons encampment of the unhoused, the City's largest camp. The residents wow to continue their fight for housing
Alicia Kuhl, president of the Santa Cruz Union of the Homeless, describes how she and her three children became homeless in the past, and how the homeless are stigmatized by false narratives put out by public officials and others.
City of Santa Cruz refuses requests to open empty public buildings for 24 hours a day during deadly storms. The city also threatened to arrest a group sharing meals next to a city garage, leaving people to eat outside in the downpour.
Residents of Wood Street Commons in Oakland, CA ask public to help stop City’s eviction of the mutual aid community they built. Creating community helps solve homelessness.
In Sacramento, Oakland, in cities across the West Coast and in other places, unhoused residents have banded together and built self-governing settlements. Their struggle also shows how the broader community supports these encampments as a common project.
General Dogon, homeless organizer in Los Angeles' 'Skid Row' community, reports on efforts to oppose LA's city-wide ordinance 41.18, which makes 20 percent of the city off-limits to the homeless.
The co-founder of Food not Bombs writes about his recent arrest for providing food to the hungry during the California storms and new charges related to his effort to house people during the Pandemic.
Roy Sterling Trout, based in Tucson, AZ tells his story of being homeless for most of his adult life, for 29 years. He advocates for the homeless, and produces podcasts that give a voice to the unhoused.
California’s 172,000 Homeless face two storms: natural disaster and govt Indifference Yet enough vacant housing exists in SF and LA to house all of California's unhoused.
Hundreds of people became houseless as sheriffs with guns drawn knocked on each room in a hotel complex, telling occupants they had four hours to get out, per the District Attorney Coty Wamp.
Jared DeFigh, a former resident of the Wood Street encampment in Oakland, CA discusses his current life at one of the city’s Tuff Shed [tiny homes community.] He also makes a proposal to save what is left of the city’s destruction of Wood Street encampment.
The writer speaks to a mother outside her tent about the meaning of
the season of giving and sharing, and meditates on our need for each
other, now and all year.
A sweep of a camp in San Jose, CA proceeded after several unhoused people had already died due to the weather. Supporters tried to keep people warm with tents/tarps/blankets, but now they are in a nearby "no re-encampment zone", and in danger of losing those few belongings when they get swept from there as well.
Approximately 800 people including 75 or so school-age kids have been evicted, left houseless, from a hotel outside Chatanooga in 4-hour shuffle out of their rooms. People are wondering if developers are after the property.
Sacramento voters, misinformed and misled, passed an ordinance to outlaw being unhoused and living outside, doing nothing to address housing needs. The dwellers are resisting. Meanwhile giant corporations and the war industry receives lavish subsidies with public funds.
As the dreaded forklift moved in, crushing tents and campers' belongings at the Benchlands, a lone woman sets up a food service station for houseless people.
Absent from coverage despite its priority for many voters is housing. Yet half of Americans struggle with housing. Real estate industry groups spent over $187 million nationally during this election cycle.
Following weeks of organizing by KC Tenants Power, Kansas City voters passed a voter resolution authorizing a $50 million bond for deeply affordable housing. The bond is the largest commitment to housing in the City’s history.
Oakland and Sacramento unhoused people occupy a lot in Sacramento, calling on state officials to support the rights of unhoused people to permanent housing.
In a shock to many Americans, the U.S. ranks 41st in the United Nations’ latest annual ranking of nations, which includes the absence of poverty and hunger, good health and education, gender equality, clean air and water, and reduced inequality.
On August 9th Martha Escudero addressed a crowd of city residents preparing to enter the Los Angeles City Council to protest a law, LAMC 4118, that would expand areas in the city to 20% of city land where sitting, sleeping, or lying is a crime.
The message must be delivered loudly to the Biden/Harris Administration that disabled people are in jeopardy due to leftover Trump policies and must be addressed.
Jazmine, a young massage therapist is homeless, living in a large encampment after she became gravely ill and couldn't work. She tells her story, warning that it could happen to anyone.
Plaintiffs argued that the city should stop evictions and build permanent housing for anyone regardless of income. They say the settlement is a compromise in a system that does not protect their interests; the fight continues.
PreambleNo one should go unhomed.There is plenty.If we work toward balance,There is enough.Balance does not occur without struggle.If you were ever a child who...
Hear voices of homeless campers in Santa Cruz about their planned evictions, alongside the City’s misuse of $14 million in funds that were to help the homeless.
Hear testimony from rally at Los Angeles City Hall, as the city council approves an expansion of L.A. Municipal Code 41.18, which prohibits sitting, sleeping or lying on the sidewalk, which means greater criminalization of poor people.
Santa Cruz, CA, plans to evict the Benchlands Camp of hundreds of unhoused people. Even when provided with millions of dollars from the state and federal governments, the city, in one of the wealthiest places on Earth, can't even offer dignified housing for people in need.
A 32-year-old homeless woman in Knoxville was arrested and charged under Tennessee's new felony law that criminalizes homelessness. Photo/hardknoxwire.com
End game – to incarcerate the unhoused who have experienced the violence of being stigmatized for mental health and substance use, both of which are results of state-inflicted violence on poor communities of color.
Joy Bunton, a public health activist, shares her testimony from a rally held by The People’s Response Network to COVID on April 24, 2022, at a COVID vaccination in Chicago’s Little Village.
Residents of a tent community near the Los Angeles harbor mourn the death, and celebrate the brave life, of one of their own — one of an increasing number of lives lost to the city's streets this past year.
A resident-run community of small homes, with heat and light, on 'beautiful' grounds, is being planned by grassroots organizers in Oakland, CA, as a model of autonomy and stability.
A Sacramento resolution to suspend the towing of people's vehicle homes — unless 'alternative shelter' is offered — is seen as toothless by advocates who want the underlying causes of homelessness addressed, and by others as an excuse to demonize their houseless neighbors.
In her book, Dismazed and Driven: My Look at Family Homelessness in America, Diane Nilan hit the road in 2005 to chronicle stories of family homelessness with a focus on children.
Members of the Council and my fellow citizens, in the spirit of the ancient Greek forums of old, when men of reason, logic, and a sense of civic duty gathered to bear witness to ...
No place is safe to sleep in Vegas. If you're not gambling, you have no business being here . . . I've been thrown outa casinos, buses, laundromats—but to jail for sleeping in a hospital waiting room?
Fiesta Flea Market is classified as a commercial vending establishment for sellers. The site includes almost 100 storage units which are used as living quarters as well as for sellers in a Texas community ...
To some people, "the community" means "the people who live here" and to others it means "the people who pay to live here." To me, a community is not a group of people ...
In Berkeley, CA, a plan to put homeless people into a camp that resembles a refugee or prison camp, with fence and guard shack, has outraged the homeless and ...
I first ended up homeless when I had to move out of an elderly man's house who allowed me to live there in exchange for ten hours of work a week. I was a ...
Housing is not a reality. How many years do you have to wait? So, until then, you are a target. No stability at all. Keep your gear close. They are coming for you. No ...
Last year, I moved into one of three buildings for low-and fixed-income seniors, owned and operated at that time by Presbyterian Homes* (a non-profit company ...
Housing insecurity is at an all-time high. Gentrification in our major cities is spreading a cloud of doom over once stable communities. Small homeowners can’t afford the ...
One-year ago, gentrification developer, Brehon Capital LLC, Paul Callero and Scott Holloway, purchased a 12-unit building at 1606-10 N. Harding Ave. in Chicago’s Humboldt ...
Recently, ‘First They Came for the Homeless’ was approached by Dan McMullen, Berkeley City Commissioner for the Disabled People's Outdoor Project. Berkeley's one-stop ...
Eric Garcetti, the Mayor of Los Angeles has instituted Project H.O.P.E, a thinly veiled attack on the homeless population of Los Angeles, the largest in the country. Masquerading ...
On April 21, five individuals known as ‘The Frisco Five’ began a hunger strike at the Mission Police Station in San Francisco. They were protesting the string of police ...
This society is dying right before our eyes. Capitalism has advanced to the stage where human labor is becoming obsolete. The micro-chip processor, introduced into ...
I got a chance to do something last month that made me want to tell everyone about it. There was a bill brought forth to a Senate committee, SB 876, the ...
I need to break people’s hearts. I need to share with them the cruel horror of the marsh. It is the coldest, windiest, wettest place around here and yet this is where ...
The People’s Tribune devotes much of its coverage to homelessness, its cause, the solution and a vision of the new society where every single person...
Independent journalist Mike Rhodes has been involved in homeless issues in Fresno, California since 2002. His tenacity as an investigative reporter has ...
Tent cities are popping up everywhere. Uncaring city governments tear them down as they go up. Homelessness illustrates the decay of an economic system ...
Homelessness is on the rise in America. In Los Angeles, 15,000 become homeless monthly. No longer relegated to primarily urban centers, the homeless population...
During police sweeps you have a few minutes to save your belongings if you are lucky. Cities have no intention of preserving or keeping it for you. The intention is to purposely ...
Last night, Dec. 20, 2015, I spent what can only be called the night from Hell [at the homeless protest in front of Sacramento City Hall]. Even with a tarp over and under ...
It is not a choice made, this birth. It is the direct result of the implantation of injustices, fertilized by greed and unconcern, that impregnates certain ...
For two weeks a group of homeless have occupied City Hall in protest of the new anti-homeless laws. We protest for equal rights, equal protection, and ...
Tenants and members of the homeless community protested early in the morning outside the hearing of the California Senate Committee on Transportation and ...
Hi everyone. I'm Rick and I live in Clearwater Florida. Homelessness is not necessarily what you think or what you've been led to believe. I was your classic middle class ...
Such testimony was heard repeatedly at the Oakland-wide Anti-Displacement Forum, “Speak Out to Stay Put”, held on October 17. Over 400 people joined together ...
Members of the public recently lined up to testify before the Berkeley City Council at a hearing on the Berkeley Police Department’s desire to acquire tasers as ...
Michael Clift [‘Pirate Mike’], homeless veteran, member of Veterans for Peace and founding member of OccupySF, was struck and killed October 30 on a Texas highway ...
Homeless residents all over Los Angeles woke up on June 16 to the realization that their possessions, if left on the street for more than 24 hours, could be ...
Friends, families, and supporters of inmates incarcerated in the Santa Clara County Jail here rallied on September 4 to protest the brutal murder of ...
People in San Jose, California and elsewhere in the Silicon Valley area have erupted in a surge of organizing activity around skyrocketing rents and ...
By Geo Errol Jennings, President, Russell Woods Neighborhood Association
Please understand why coming together is important! The NAACP is not doing it. The churches are...
Help get the People’s Tribune out to homeless organizations and places where the homeless gather!
Homelessness is a stark example of the degeneration of an...
Homelessness is a stark example of the degeneration of an economic system based on the private property of a billionaire owning class. Automation is replacing workers ...
I was one of the many homeowners, now an x-homeowner, who has battled with Bank of America and Fannie Mae since 2005 when the housing market began to crash ...
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Title 24 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Section§966.4 Lease requirements, Part (l)(5)(iii) Eviction for criminal Activity ...
HOUSTON—For almost a year, Martina Grifaldo and Monica Rodriguez, President and Vice President respectively of Alianza Mexicana, an organization formed by Mexican origin residents...
CHICAGO—If you receive an eviction notice from the CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) or one of its private management firms, you must know your rights....
Truth Commission documents Economic Human Rights Violations
CHATTANOOGA, TN—Over 150 people attended the December 10 Truth Commission at the public library in downtown Chattanooga, TN. ...
