Greetings fellow Friscans and those interested in the latest from our much maligned and beloved city. As readers know, I occasionally write about San Francisco’s people, poets, places and solutions to its problems for a project dubbed SF Lives. Its print/text version is in process of seeking a new home beyond this blog and the archives of the San Francisco Examiner. However, if you’re interested in keeping up with all the news that I see fit to report from my outpost at the edge of the world, our SF Lives/Lives Talks, is once again livestreaming conversations from Bird &Beckett Books and Records.
This month I interviewed Kelley Cutler, the human rights coordinator at the Coalition on Homelessness. Cutler is a 20-year veteran of providing services to our unhoused neighbors and has seen firsthand the way people’s lives change dramatically for the better when they are able to secure housing. But promised housing by the City of San Francisco and the supportive services to assist people in need have still not materialized: There are no beds available and a dysfunctional intake system continues to challenge and stymie the best efforts by outreach workers and the people living on our streets. In this conversation, Cutler helps us understand why the cycle of dysfunction persists. With much gratitude to her and the work she the Coalition do, I hope you will take an hour to hear why the mayor’s Tenderloin emergency plan and other efforts to house people are failing, why the city is in violation of people’s basic human rights, and why the work Cutler does is essential to all of our SFLives.
Filed under: California, gentrification, income disparity, San Francisco News, Tales of the Gentrification City, Coalition on Homelessness, homeless, San Francisco, unhoused
Photo by 
Denise Sullivan 