2nd annual world homeless action day- san francisco- 10/10/11

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homes not jails and other folks in solidarity with world homeless action day will occupy a series of buildings on 10/10/11

details public atm-

meeting at civic center-larkin st. side 5pm

main group will occupy 4-5 buildings en route to the main occupation location.

also on that day groups will occupy buildings in three other neighborhoods throughout the city.

a total of 700 housing units will be occupied and liberated on this day.

i really hope people in norcal or where ever can make it, it should be a day to remember.

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Press release:

WORLD HOMELESS ACTION DAY 10.10.2011

San Francisco – Squatters collective, Homes Not Jails, convenes at Civic Center on World Homeless Action Day to rally, take to the streets and, occupy over 10 vacant buildings consisting of more than 700 housing units. Homes Not Jails is taking Direct Action on October 10th, by staging multiple public 'open occupations' of vacant residential housing in neighborhoods throughout San Francisco. Hundreds of homeless individuals, community leaders, activists, immigrant community members, children, families, social workers, squatters, students, educators, and San Franciscans of all stripes are gathering this Monday, 10/10/2011, at 5pm in Civic Center.

The group is rallying for the right to housing and engaging in Direct Action by marching directly into vacant property and reclaiming it for homeless families and individuals. Tours of the wasted housing will be available for those who come inside before the doors are blockaded by the police.

Organizers are outraged that while approximately 10,000 San Franciscans are homeless on any given night, according to 2010 Census Bureau data, over 30,000 housing units remain vacant. Organizers know that vacant housing is a unacceptable waste of resources and that it should be utilized by those who are most in need.

In the past year, five housing rights demonstrations in the San Francisco have included lively housing occupations, and this Monday' s action will be the largest, most exciting and educational occupation yet. A community assembly addressing homelessness and the housing crisis will take place on the sidewalk outside of the main occupation site. Live music, spoken word, poetry, and hot meals by Food Not Bombs will be served.

The October 10th direct actions are in solidarity with OccupySF as well as the 34 countries on every continent throughout the world, who are engaging in unique actions on World Homeless Action Day. The San Francisco event will begin with a rally at 5:00pm, and at 5:30pm the group will march to various undisclosed vacant properties to occupy, support and participate in the housing takeovers.

Event updates and details will be available throughout the day/night on Monday Oct. 10th at www.HomesNotJailsSF.org (http://www.homesnotjailssf.org/) and 1.877.50.SQUAT

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press release from occupations.


Homes Not Jails and OccupySF Take Over Cathedral Hill Hotel

Today at 6:41PM, the former Cathedral Hill Hotel at 1101 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco was occupied by demonstrators led by the squatters' collective Homes Not Jails and reinforced by the activists of Occupy San Francisco. Approximately 30 occupiers are presently inside the building, which contains 600 housing units. They report that most if not all of the rooms remain furnished and in habitable condition.

The historic hotel known once as the Jack Tar, which was damaged by a fire in 2008, reopened to the public in 2008, and finally closed its doors on October 31, 2009. For two years it has sat vacant while the deep economic crisis precipitated by avaricious Wall Street bankers has forced more and more working people into poverty and homelessness.

Activists demand that habitable housing stock be put into use for people not profits, and point out that enough residential units exist in San Francisco to eliminate homelessness in the City.


Homes Not Jails and OccupySF Continue Drive to Seize Wasted Housing in San Francisco

At 7:45PM tonight, a coalition of community organizers and homeless advocates led by the squatters' collective Homes Not Jails and reinforced by activists from OccupySF seized a vacant apartment building at 1028-1030 Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. The building contains 17 apartment units that activists say should be opened to homeless individuals immediately.

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Squatters occupy vacant properties in SF to house homeless

Bay City News Service

Some 30 protesters occupied several vacant properties in San Francisco's Cathedral Hill neighborhood along Geary Boulevard Monday night as part of World Homeless Action Day, organizers said.

The demonstrators, led by the squatters' collective Homes Not Jails, entered the shuttered Cathedral Hill Hotel at 1101 Van Ness Ave. at about 6:40 p.m. Monday, according to Brian Wilkes, a representative for the group.

Activists with Homes Not Jails were joined by OccupySF participants in occupying the 600-unit hotel, which closed in October 2009 to make way for California Pacific Medical Center's new Cathedral Hill Hospital, a $1.7 billion 555-bed acute and women and children's care hospital.

According to Wilkes, people who occupied the building found that most of the rooms remained furnished and in habitable condition.

A call to a CPMC spokesman seeking comment this morning was not immediately returned.

The activists say that enough residential units exist in San Francisco to end homelessness in the city.

Citing 2010 U.S. Census data, Homes Not Jails claims that more than 10,000 people are homeless in San Francisco but that the city has 30,000 vacant housing units.
The group rallied at 5 p.m. at Civic Center before marching to the vacant properties. By 8:15 p.m., activists had occupied three more properties near the hotel: 1020 Geary Blvd., 1028-1030 Geary Blvd. -- a 17-unit apartment building -- and 1034-1036 Geary Blvd., Wilkes said.

Police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said police cannot take action to remove the demonstrators unless the building owners ask them to do so.
A property owner would need to sign a citizen's arrest form to give police that authority, Esparza said, adding that the Police Department has been in contact with the owners of the Cathedral Hill Hotel.

"Typically, these protesters that occupy these buildings don't tear them up, and they don't vandalize them," he said.
The demonstrators tend to be peaceful and vacate the buildings on their own after drawing attention to the issue, Esparza said.
"Time is on our side," he said.

World Homeless Action Day is held annually on Oct. 10 to shed led on "homeless people's needs locally and provide opportunities for the community to get involved in responding to homelessness," according to the World Homeless Day website.

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GD2zaFL7m2o

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There was another occupation later in that week. from bay of rage (http://www.bayofrage.com/from-the-bay/in-san-francisco-the-struggle-for-housing-continues/)


Wednesday night’s occupation of the Hotel Sierra in San Francisco’s Mission District marked the continuation of a week of housing takeovers in the city. The 40-room hotel, which has stood vacant for years, has become a highly contested space in the struggle between San Francisco’s low-income community and the building’s owner. This occupation, the third takeover of the landmark hotel, follows Monday night’s action where a roving march roamed through the Tenderloin, taking over 3 buildings in the struggling neighborhood in a desperate attempt to create housing for people who can no loner afford the rising rents of the city. The doors of the 600-room Cathedral Hotel were opened to the crowd by an ambitious group of masked homeless and precariously housed people who stormed past the security guards that were attempting to prevent their entrance and ran straight to the roof, dropping banners from the windows on the way up. A block away and 2 hours later, a 17-room abandoned hotel and an adjacent vacant building were occupied by the crowd, with free food being served on the street in front of the building.

This bold approach, to directly take what is needed without asking, may prove to be the only way the emerging social movements will be able to withstand the rising poverty rates and continued budget cuts in the deepening of this recession that we were told was over.

These types of housing actions are nothing new for San Francisco, despite the fact that these most recent demonstrations occurred during the era of the Occupy Wall Street-inspired movements. While many in those movements have consistently insisted on being part of a common struggle of the 99%, the marginalized people who took part in these housing takeovers realize that theirs is not a struggle of the vast majority of Americans, but of those who, having been excluded from the relative wealth of American society, have taken directly what is needed for their survival.

Despite the eventual eviction of these publicly occupied spaces (dozens of police spent hours searching the 600 rooms of the Cathedral Room hotel unaware that the occupiers had already moved on to take over another building), every month countless people are housed in covertly occupied squats by housing militants in San Francisco.

It is unfortunate that, despite being alerted of these actions and encouraged to participate, very few people from the Occupy San Francisco encampment were present. If the nation-wide “Occupation” movements intend to become a social force with the strength to reshape the course of history, they would do well to consider occupying not merely sidewalks and parks, but to begin actually taking the spaces that allow people to live and operate with dignity. With over 50,000 homes in foreclosure in California and hundreds of thousands going through the process across the country, it is only rational for any social struggle to support and encourage people to stay in their homes in defiance of eviction notices and to begin using vacant buildings for our own purposes. With increasing rents and rising tuitions, a property that was abandoned when the banks could no longer profit from it would be put to better use as a social center or free school.

Only the course of time will tell if the emergent “Occupy” movements of parks across America will become more ambitious and start taking over more useful spaces, but regardless of what they decide, the building takeovers that began long before the inception of these movements will continue, with or without their participation.