Street Spirit

Segregation Shaped San Mateo’s Housing Crisis

Features   Uncategorized
Skyrocketing rents, multimillion-dollar homes, and an epidemic of evictions have become fixtures of life in San Mateo County. Widening income inequality is feeding this housing crisis, and decades of discriminatory policy decisions have excluded poor people and people of color.

Santa Cruz Activists Join Together to Defend Right to Sleep

Features   Uncategorized
The UN Human Rights Committee condemns the criminalization of homelessness in the U.S.. Santa Cruz attorney Ed Frey says, “Sleeping is and has always been a human right that should be protected and defended by international convention. The time is right for a full-throated advocacy of that right at the highest levels.”

Gimme Some Truth

Opinion
"I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other. Not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I can’t change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit."

New Shelter System — and New Attacks on Berkeley's Homeless

Features   Uncategorized
Under Mayor Tom Bates, Berkeley has become more conservative in its social policies, and much more intolerant towards homeless people. Mayor Bates and some City Council members have tried repeatedly to criminalize homelessness. As a result, people on the streets have been under attack repeatedly in recent years.

San Francisco Supervisor Tries to Ban Tents in Winter

Opinion
Activists condemned Supervisor Wiener’s proposal to ban tents during the winter, saying: “Mr. Wiener’s letter is in direct contrast to the very spirit of the City of St. Francis. His timing was telling, as was his lack of solutions. Homeless people are suffering enough, and his letter was surprisingly cruel.”

Celebrating Frances Townes’ Lifelong Work with Homeless People

Arts and Culture
Frances Townes used her creative talents to support faith-based love for ALL our neighbors, including our homeless neighbors. Frances was a giant role model in how to live one’s faith through spirited actions seeking justice and loving kindness. Frances never retired from her deep concern for the lives of those less fortunate!

Serving the People on Martin Luther King Day

Features
Leajay lost everything all at once — her job, her housing, her belongings in storage, her children, and then her freedom when the Berkeley police arrested her and put her in jail. This happened many times. Homelessness is a crime in Berkeley, she said, and the remedy, incarceration.

Greyhound Therapy: Symptom of a Failed Mental Health System

Commentary
Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas handed out bus tickets to about 1500 gravely disabled patients, “transferring” them to states all over the country. Patients were sent to states where they had never been a resident and areas that had no mental institution prepared to receive them.

January Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
BEATITUDE/ Believing that love/ silently expressed/ will be heard/ and silently answered,/ we need not celebrate/ by trumpet blast,/ tambourines, a dance/ around the block,/ need not kneel to pray/ in the garden of moonlight./ Love/ in its own quiet way/ feels like enough.