Before the ink was even dry on the settler colonial paper lie
That which is tied
to multiple acts of genocide
from Turtle Island to Palestine
Eviction, foreclosure, treaties, murder and
Sweeping humans until we die….
They came for us—enforcing, removing, with multiple tools to criminalize..
—Tiny
“I’m from code enforcement,” said a woman standing at the entrance to a tiny triangle of land at Cesar Chavez and Mission streets, wearing an official looking lanyard claiming DPH (Department of Public Health) and handing me a card. “I’ll be passing onto my manager what I witnessed here and if you want to send an email to her directly you can.”
“Instead of enforcing, sweeping, cleaning, criminalizing and removing, how about actively redirecting those funds and all of that work into housing these San Francisco residents?” I asked her, to which she replied: “Well this isn’t my call.”
Before the ink was even dry on the settler colonial paper that says us poor/houseless/indigenous peoples at POOR Magazine “owned” a tiny slip of Mama Earth at the crossroads of Cesar Chavez, Mission and Capp street, in the so-called Mission district of Occupied Yelamu, we were bombarded with calls, messages and emails about houseless residents of the land, most of which included all the usual tropes about our houseless bodies, nothing we weren’t used to of course.
“Just letting you know there are discarded needles and broken glass on the property you own.” Literally one week had passed after the papers were signed, and POOR Magazine started getting an endless stream of calls from housed neighbors, wanting us to “take care of the homeless problem on this lot.”
In the same week we got a call from a trusted ally and homelessness advocate we have worked with on the streets for years in Yelamu, who also had received calls “about us.”
Then we got a call from one of the more progressive supervisors in SF, who had also gotten calls from more irate “neighbors”
And then on our first day stepping on the land, where we came to begin building relationships with houseless residents already there, offering what we call a “love-clean,” which is poverty scholarship informed care, support and advocacy to find out what the lot residents and other poverty skolaz in the neighborhood needed, it was another in person endless stream of so-called “concern.”
Code enforcement “visiting,” cops circling, and more neighbors questioning.
But this is always the strangeness of HOMEfulness—because we are the “homeless people” that society casually disrespects, we are also the people that society never believes could have the answers to our own problems. We are never listened to or honored for what we call our poverty scholarship. In fact, we are usually met with fear, disgust or straight up hate. Even if we supposedly “own” the land.
“I have a room the City got me, but I don’t feel safe there and I’m all alone, I have no family,” Paul, a current houseless resident of HOMEfulness4, explained in our street writing workshop we held on the land on day one to write the HERstories and HISstories that will “build” HOMEfulness Yelamu. After having all of his clothes, medicine, and tent stolen in a sweep, the city gave him a referral to a room that doesn’t feel safe, and also feels so lonely he would rather sleep outside near his friends. There are so many ways krapitalism causes homelessness, not the least of which is the violence of loneliness.
One of the many things poverty scholarship teaches us is that isolation kills, and is one of the many things we have to address if we build homes for houseless people. It is why the “solutions” of just putting people alone in a room never works, and why HOMEfulness is such a powerful healing model.
If you are scratching your head wondering how our poor and houseless peoples-led movement, which doesn’t have two nickels to put together, own anything, much-less over-priced, gentriFUKed and commodified Bay Area mama earth—first of all, we don’t.
We teach people with different forms of race and class privilege the concepts of ComeUnity Reparations, Poverty Scholarship and Radical redistribution at PeopleSkool, theories of change and concepts rooted in radical interdependence, ending the violent acts of looking away, scarcity, hate and separateness.
The Decolonization and DegentrniFUKation seminars, led and created by all of us poor, houseless, disabled, indigenous peoples at POOR Magazine’s PeopleSkool, focus on teaching, healing, decolonizing and changing the ways people are conditioned into behaving in this society so they can be numbed into uncaring, exploiting and extracting Mama Earth and her Earth’s people, all for their own profit or gain, which leads to the multiple diseases of hoarding money, land and resources while people are starving and freezing on the street with nothing.
Our seminars, held since 2009, have led to the creation of the POOR Magazine solidarity family of conscious folks with race and class privilege who put in practice these teachings in many ways in their own lives, in street-based mutual aid and support of the many reparations funds of poor and houseless people and the Bank of ComeUnity Reparations—which is currently supporting more than 15 houseless residents in the HOMEfulness Hotel Fund, hundreds of houseless mamas in the Po Mamaz Reparations Fund, Po Mamaz PAnale Fund (Free diapers for Mamaz in poverty) the weekly Sliding scale cafe, which currently provides fresh organic produce, bakery food, diapers and groceries to over 500 families and elders and the HOMEfulness project which currently houses 25 houseless youth, adults and elders in rent-free forever housing.
The seminars help wealth-hoarders unlearn the violence of hoarding and practice radical sharing with HOMEfulness, Bank of ComeUnity Reparations and other poor, houseless and indigenous peoples led land liberation movements.
Through radical redistributed dollars of the Soildarity Family and permission and prayer protocol from First Nations leaders and land protectors and endless work, labor, and time from all of us houseless povertyskolaz we were able to launch HOMEfulness 1 in deep east Occupied Huchiun. Which is the only reason this chronically houseless poor single mama and my son are housed and homeful.
Now we begin the love journey to build the same vision in occupied Yelamu and Tovaangar. One year (Dec 17th) after an epic state-wide action we called Sanctuaries NOT sweeps, in collaboration with fellow poor/houseless people-led movements Wood Street Commons, Aetna Street Solidarity, Homeless in Fresno, Western Regional Advocacy Project, Self-Help Hunger Program and many of the powerful homeless unions across the bay, we began the prayer, love and liberation work of unselling and liberating this small part of Mama Earth in the occupied village of Yelamu (SF) with our street newsroom, street-writing workshops, sliding scale cafe, direct advocacy and HOMEfulness Hotel Fund—not to sweep or terrorize the residents who are already houselessly staying there but to figure out safe housing and shelter for them until HOMEfulness is built
The prayerful and sorrowful part about of HOMEfulness Yelamu is that ever since my disabled mama and I were on the streets, sleeping in doorways, shelter beds, bus shelters, Golden Gate park benches and the back seats of hoopties whenever we were lucky enough to have one (they were usually towed for expired registration and/or too many parking tickets for sleeping in our own vehicle), we dreamed the vision of HOMEfulness.
Then in 1998, two years after the launch of POOR Magazine and while we were still struggling with homelessness ourselves, we proposed the vision to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, taught ourselves how to write the insane 94-page grant application and submitted it.
Three months later we found out “we got the grant,” but because we didn’t know what we were doing and they offered no technical assistance to fill out the insanely hard budget, we only received $12.00 a month. Yes, I did say $12.00 a month, which wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread much-less enable us to “purchase” or lease anything to have houseless families like ours live in in San Francisco. We were so heartbroken. But we kept trying.
In 2004, while then-mayor Gavin Newsom was stealing money from houseless people in his Care Not Cash program, so he could get points on the backs of poor peoples’ suffering, we approached the San Francisco supervisors with a proposal for HOMEfulness—a homeless peoples’ solution to homelessness. It was rejected because we didn’t have enough experience with housing.
Then in 2005 we submitted HOMEfulness to the “homeless czar” or whatever ridiculous name Gavin Newsome was giving it. Rejected again because we didn’t have enough “support.”
In 2007 when POOR Magazine, the organization, and its members were houseless again after losing all of our funding, we proposed it to non-profit housing developers and big non-profits working on “housing for the homeless.” Again, rejected because I don’t think they trusted our knowledge.
In 2008, knowing that HOMEfulness would never happen unless we, the poor and houseless folks ourselves, built it, I began the journey with my fellow houseless/poor mamas and povertyskolaz to create the curriculum of the Revolutionary Change Session at PeopleSkool.
Once we received the first act of redistribution for $100,000, we began desperately searching all of occupied Yelamu for a site. But for what seemed to me like sooooo much money, we couldn’t find any place to build, stop, stay, or dream. After prayer with ancestors and multiple elders council and elephant meetings (where we poor/indigneous peoples decide together about our actions and movement), we expanded the search for a small part of Mama Earth to the neighborhoods my mama and I had been houseless in in Oakland, and where many of our other members were from. POOR Magazine was always an all Bay Area organization, even though our original headquarters were in San Francisco.
On a rainy day in March we found the site of HOMEfulness1—a place, not accidentally, where me and my mama parked when we were houseless. It was an almost empty lot, abandoned long ago and with hardly any space to build the vision of 14 units of rent-free forever housing for houseless families, elders and children, but it was the best we could find.
“Here come the crackheads and the homeless people.” The landlord next door greeted us with the usual warmth one reserves for your worst enemy. But hey, nothing new for us. People were always calling police, calling us out our name and blaming us for all of the “crimes of poverty.”
“I gave up, after I lost my housing, I looked and got on waitlists and showed up to endless meetings, but none of it panned out, I guess I just gave up” Sal, another houseless resident finished by looking down.
“I have spinal cancer,” Juan C, one of the residents, who has created a street bicycle repair business, tried to get into housing and very little luck even though he is struggling with a serious health fatal health condition like cancer.
There are many reasons we are on the street. These reasons take care and love and time to solve and hold. This is the medicine of Poverty Scholarship, PeopleSkool and HOMEfulness and can’t and won’t be solved by sweeping us criminalizing and enforcing us, but rather how about caring and housing us.
Instead of calling for sweeps, enforcement and removal, please concerned housed neighbors, community and friends: Call the City and ask them to fast track the HOMEfulness building project thru the zoning and permit process, and/or help us raise the resources to build the HOMEfulness healing center, sliding scale cafe/free market and housing for more than 30 houseless SF residents, and urge the city to open vacant hotel rooms for houseless relatives, as we are doing right now with our meager resources— and redirect all that money spent on sweeping humans into housing humans right now.
We will be having a press conference about what we are doing and a prayer ceremony with Ramaytush Ohlone relatives, Danza Azteca, Ifa prayer warriors and for the whole community on Jan 24th at 1pm at HOMEfulness4. To get involved in this caring movement and learn more about the next session of PeopleSkool which is on Jan 31st/Feb 1st go to www.poormagazine.org/education.
