Winter 2024/25

Hello, all, and apologies for the delay in getting our winter update out to you!  It’s been a busy season for the nonprofit and the communities we serve, and we’d like to cover a few different topics in this quick blog post.  

First, we’re happy to report that the Resource Pamphlets are in distribution in New Orleans, marking the official launch of this program.  We’re working with local schools, shelters, community centers and more to determine the best ways to make these pamphlets available to community members who could reap the greatest benefits.  And, of course, we’re excited to be able to distribute them at our first Community Event.  On that front, we’re working to set up mutual aid drop-off areas to collect goods to distribute at our first test run of the Community Event program, which will finally take place this spring if all goes according to plan.  

We’ve also started working on the Resource Pamphlets for San Francisco, which will be an important addition to our Shelter and Unhoused Support program… which brings us to our most poignant topic for today’s blog post.  The good news for this program is that we’ve massively optimized our system for distributing meals and narcan, as we’re now able to easily cook 50-60 meals in a big pot and distribute them all at once.  We’re still in search of regular sponsors to provide the produce, but some individuals in the community have been generous enough to keep us going.  

The bad news is… San Francisco is at war on the homeless and people who use drugs right now.  Many people who live and operate only amongst upper class peers in this city seem to be unaware that the extreme political changes sweeping the nation are in fact quite present in our backyards, and very much affecting the poorest and most vulnerable populations.  It’s been devastating to see our neighbors and clients have their belongings swept into pickup trucks headed for the dump when they can’t effectively move everything by themselves when an encampment sweep takes place, and has made finding and serving our usual tented folks increasingly difficult.  

Until very recently, many have been taking refuge at the 16th Street Bart station, but Mayor Daniel Lurie and the police have decided to “crack down” on the communities they deem too uncivilized to be perceived by the healthy and wealthy.  Cops have been swarming these areas under the guise of “fixing” the city’s decades-long battle with homelessness and dangerous drug use, but in actuality are doing absolutely nothing to address the unique and complex issues these individuals are facing.  

It is extremely troubling, in a city that does have resources to enact harm reduction practices and create safe housing opportunities and access to medical interventions for these high-risk San Franciscans, to see them instead use the police to violently arrest folks who need serious help, as if locking them up will help address any of their health needs.  Outside of the indignity and moral issues with criminalizing these folks’ desperate situations,  it’s also extremely dangerous to stop a regular user from consuming drugs without proper medical supervision and detox care.  Forcing someone to “dry out” in a jail cell can, quite simply, kill them.  And while we empathize with the frustrations of trying and failing to address these crises for so long, the recklessness to play with peoples’ lives in this way is heartbreaking and, frankly, disgusting.  

As a 501(c)(3), it’s true that we can’t endorse any particular party or candidates, but we’re free to state our case on specific issues and remain steadfast in our desire to see the needs of our neighbors and clients reflected in our city’s representation.  To see our city’s leadership use research-backed approaches to address cyclical health/wealth issues on our streets would be, at this point, nothing short of a miracle.  

But we’re determined to stick around and keep chasing that miracle through advocacy and education, and continuing to try and do the best harm reduction and resource distribution we can in the current climate.  We will not abandon the folks who need our compassion and creative problem-solving the most, even if the nation, state and city leadership does.  

As far as funding, we’re leaning more into grants now, utilizing AI to help source the most appropriate opportunities for which we can apply to be beneficiaries.  That said, we appreciate any individual donations and participation in our fundraisers immensely.  We couldn’t function without that sort of help, but we’re at a place where, if we want to keep expanding, we need more sustainable and larger sums landing in our accounts regularly.  Should anyone reading this have connections to grant opportunities in SF or New Orleans (or non-location-specific grants in the health/poverty areas), please share them with us if you’re able.  

We’re going to wrap this update here, as we’re determined to keep our momentum going in the launching and expanding of our ground programs (and if anyone’s been on our instagram recently, that’s also why we’ve suspended the regular education surrounding chronic illnesses affecting our communities, because with resources as thin as ours we need to be channeling every ounce of manpower into our tangible work.  We do dream of a future, however, where we have enough capital to cover all those bases at once, but prioritizing remains a necessary part of being a tiny org with big impact goals.  

As always, thank you so much for reading this far, and for continuing to stay tuned as we work to make better health and the pursuit of happiness more accessible in our precious communities.  Take care of yourselves.