Street Speak

On this episode we are joined by Lukas Illa, Human Rights organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness and Armando Martinez, RV resident and End Poverty Tows activist. 

As part of the RV ban, RV residents who were counted by the City in a May 2025 count may be exempt from the 2-hour enforcement for only 12 months unless they are offered a housing subsidy or shelter placement. But the plan only has 65 family housing subsidies allocat...

In this episode we host Laura Guzman- the Executive Director at the National Harm Reduction Coalition and Shakema Straker, human rights organizer and harm reduction advocate at the Coalition on Homelessness. Our guests discuss the basic tenets of harm reduction and the data and research that champions harm reduction as an evidence based practice. We explore the harmful misconceptions and stigma that surrounds the overdose crisis, d...

Join us this episode with Lauren Hall to chat about DISH's commitment to providing high quality permanent housing to San Franciscans who suffer from serious health issues. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, theres is a nationwide shortage of affordable housing and permanent supportive housing. We explore the political attacks on the Housing First framework that stigmatizes drug use and users and call for t...

On Today's episode we will be speaking to the Lucia Obregon, the director at the San Francisco Latino Party and Equity Coalition (SFLPEC) a citywide coalition of more than 22 Latinx-led and Latinx serving community based agencies, she is also the appointed commissioner for the immigrant rights commission of San Francisco, a volunteer with the Building Community Collective and lastly an artist and of the lead singers of the ban...

In this episode, we delve into the intersectionality of homelessness and the Black experience with two prominent leaders in the fight for social justice and housing equity: Shellena Eskridge, Executive Director of the Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP), and Joe Wilson, the Executive Director of Hospitality House. 

Shellena, a San Francisco native who is a passionate advocate for families, is leading HPP into a new era of hope and trans...

Today's episode features some incredible poets reading their pieces aloud. To read these poems and many others, check out our full 2023 poetry edition of the Street Sheet, available at streetsheet.org

Featured Poets:
Virginia Barrett
Dee Allen
Johanna Elattar
Detroit Richards
Aaone Enosa
Revolt
Martine Khumalo
Lisa Willis

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On September 27th, the ACLU, Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights, and the Coalition on Homelessness—the organization that creates this podcast—filed a lawsuit against the City of San Francisco. They, and the seven homeless plaintiffs they represent, allege that the constant "sweeps" of homeless encampments carried out by numerous city agencies are unconstitutional.

We speak with Zal Shroff and Hadley Rood, ...

This podcast is created by the same people who bring you the Street Sheet, San Francisco’s street newspaper.  This year's April Fools Day issue hits the streets of San Francisco full of comics that were compiled and submitted by A.B.O. Comix, a collective of creators and activists who work to amplify the voices of LGBTQ prisoners through art.

On today’s episode, we speak with Casper Cendre, the director and a co-foun...

Today's episode features some incredible poets reading their pieces aloud. To read these poems and many others, check out our full poetry edition of the Street Sheet, available at streetsheet.org

Featured Poets:
Kevin Madrigal Galindo
Detroit Richards
Jonah Raskin
Judy Joy Jones
Johanna Elattar
Revolt Right Now
Virginia Barrett

Submit Your Writing!
Street Sheet is always accept...

The overdose crisis claimed the lives of 700 San Franciscans in 2020—twice the number of COVID-19 deaths during the same period. Poverty, criminalization, and the demonization of people who use drugs has put our community members in greater danger, and the stigma surrounding drug use has stalled meaningful efforts to create services and implement policies that will save lives.

We speak with Ashley Fairburn—a harm reduction...

At the height of the Delta variant spike, the City of San Francisco announced plans to close down the Shelter in Place Hotels that had kept about 2,000 people safe and off the streets over the course of the past year. We spoke with Lina Khoeur, a fourth year medical student at UCSF, and with Naomi Shoenfeld, a medical anthropologist and nurse practitioner who has been working and researching in the SIP hotels. Both of them shared w...

This episode features an interview with Paul Boden of Western Regional Advocacy Project, a local organization coordinating a regional response to the criminalization of homeless people. We talk about Business Improvement Districts, the shadowy private entities that are turning neighborhoods across the country into outdoor malls - and determining who has access to spaces that were once public.

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Western Regional...

This episode features an interview with Celestina Pearl, the Outreach director at St. James Infirmary. She spoke with Street Speak about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sex workers in San Francisco, the history of SESTA/FOSTA, the connections between homelessness and sex work, and the incredible mutual aid work that is sustaining sex workers during this challenging time. 

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St James Infirmary: https://www.stja...

This episode is a pre-recorded panel hosted by the Housing Justice Workgroup of the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco exploring the panelists own experiences with racism and homelessness. The speakers draw connections between racism, structural causes of homelessness such as neoliberalism and the defunding of housing investments for poor communities, the use of homeless people as a political wedge by monied interests as a sm...

This episode dives into the reality of life inside San Francisco's Shelter in Place (SIP) Hotel program. There are 2,400 formerly unhoused people currently staying in SIP hotel rooms in San Francisco, and while the City has committed to housing most of them, the details of where and how that will happen are unclear.

We'll hear first from Mary Crisis, a former SIP hotel worker who penned a damning open letter abo...

Episode 4 - Why Do You Need Housing?
September 22, 2020

HOUSING IN THE TIME OF COVID-19, AND WHY IT MATTERS
A panel discussion hosted by House the Bay with unhoused San Franciscans speaking about the urgent need for housing. This conversation happened August 13th and the full video can be viewed on House the Bay's Facebook or Instagram.

PANELISTS:

COUPER ORONA
https://www.couperwashere.c...

Episode 3: What Are Shelters Like in the Time of COVID-19?
August 13, 2020

In this episode we speak with Meghan "Roadkill" Johnson and Ben Baczkowski, both Shelter Client Advocates who work at the Eviction Defense Collaborative to protect the rights of people living in San Francisco's shelter system. They offer a brief history and overview of the program before diving into the nitty-gritty details of how...

Episode 2: What is an Encampment Sweep?
Feb 14, 2020

What happens when enough 311 complaints come in and the city decides to clear out a community of people? What happens to their belongings? And importantly, with over a thousand people on the shelter waitlist, where are people supposed to go? Today we answer the question, what is an encampment sweep? 

To get a better sense of what an encampment sweep is, we sat down wi...

Episode 1: What is Street Sheet?
Dec 09, 2019

We start off with the headlines impacting homeless people, from Trump's atrocious new pick for the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness to the "Love Our City Eco-Blitz" announced by Mayor Breed's office, to the impending eviction of mentally ill people living at VanNess Manor. Then listen to a conversations between Street Sheet editors Quiver Watt...