Tag: Housing activists

Last month, community members, local environmental justice activists, human rights organizers, housing activists and neighbors got together and had a meeting. We shared a lot of information: falsified soil samplings at the Shipyard, the personal histories of environmental cancers, continual denial of resources allocated to District 10, HUD deficiencies, disparaging life expectancy rates, alternatives to policing, the obstacles to shelter beds, solidarity vs. charity and so much more.

Peter Owens, one of three landlords of Iris Canada, the 100-year-old African American woman evicted from her apartment in the Fillmore area by Sheriff Vicki Hennessy on Feb. 10, has removed Ms. Canada’s possessions from the home she’s lived in since 1965 without notice and while she was in the hospital. Ms. Canada’s niece, Iris Merriouns, her main caretaker, says that Owens’ attorneys have denied her access to the elder woman’s possessions.

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Ben Carson as the next secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and, former disgraced HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson supports and vouches for Ben Carson to take his old job, according to the Dallas Morning News. Having Jackson endorse Carson is troubling. In May 2004, as secretary of HUD, Alphonso Jackson made headlines across the nation when he stated “being poor is a state of mind, not a condition.”

For 17 hours – 4:45 p.m. Monday, July 4, until 9:45 a.m. Tuesday, July 5 – San Francisco Homes Not Jails took direct action conducting a second open housing occupation at the long-empty Mission District Sierra Hotel.