The Homefulness Project
Homefulness: A Poor & Indigenous people–led solution to homelessness. A sweat equity, permanent co-housing, education, arts, micro-business and social change project for landless/houseless and formerly houseless families and individuals.
Homefulness is what poor, houseless, indigenous, evicted, disabled, false-border-terrorized peoples from all four corners of Mama Earth, now residing on stolen and occupied Turtle Island, have dreamed, loved, and fought for. After lifetimes of being displaced, evicted, incarcerated, swept, criminalized and traumatized, our family is actually “buying” land and building permanent homes, food justice, art and healing comeUnity for ourselves and the world. We operate in the tradition of and in solidarity with landless people's movements across the globe.
The land we call Homefulness in East Huchiun (Oakland) now provides housing for families, space for Deecolonize Academy, PeopleSkool, Community Newsroom, Sliding Scale Cafe, the Uncle Al & Mama Dee Living Library, Revolutionary Radio on PNN–KEXU, and all of POOR Magazine's indigenous community arts & media programming.
The vision of Homefulness is a blueprint for unselling and physically and spiritually liberating Mama Earth by permanently removing land from the speculative "real estate" market. It is meant to be replicated all across occupied Turtle Island and Mama Earth.
There is a House in East Huchiun...
by Tiny Gray-Garcia
from The Sidewalk Motel: Poems from a Poverty Skola
There is a house in East Huchiun
They Call it Homefulness
And its been the dream of many a poor girl
And God I know im one
My mama was disabled
Tortured as a child
My father was a rich wite man
Who left us all to die
Now the only thing a poor mama needs
Are hands to hold her dreams
But mama and me were all alone
So instead we lived on the street
mama and me were broken
Barely made it out alive
but no matter what
She refused to believe in the
settler colonial lies
Sometimes the pain is too hard
Mama said I can’t go on
But walk this change
On this Ohlone land
And Build us all a home
Well there is a house in East Huchiun
They call it Homefulness
And its been the hope of many a poor girl & boy
And GOD I know we are them
Well there is a house in East Huchiun
They call HOMEFULNESS
And its been the dream of many a poor boy & girl
And god I know we are them...
Building Homefulness has been a labor of love by our poverty skola construction crew with the support of our radical redistributors and revolutionary architects and designers in a struggle against kkkrapitalist bureauKRAZY every step of the way over many years.
DegentriFUKation Site (Homefulness #2)
This site was targeted for a luxury condo complex, that thanks to POOR Magazine poverty skolaz, elders, and solidary family, was removed from speculative real Esnake market for the site of a future Homefulness
Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources UnTours
Launched by Tiny (@povertySkola) on Mama Earth Day 2016. We will come to your part of settler stolen/occupied, Po'Lice predated Turtle Island (or anywhere on Mama Earth) to pray, vision, dream teach, and share Radical Redistribution, ComeUnity Reparations, and Homefulness with wealth-hoarders, inheritors of stolen Mama Earth, and/or protected/occupied wealth neighborhoods.
Occupied Tongva Lands (so-called Venice Beach & Beverly Hills), 2016
Occupied Yelamu & Huchiun (so-called San Francisco & Oakland) Ohlone Territory, 2016
Occupied Lenape, Wampanoag, Shinnecock Territory (so-called New York, Philadelphia, Massachusetts, and Hamptons), 2017
Occupied Miwok Territory (Marin), 2017
Tech GentriFUKation of SillyCon Valley (Silicon Valley), 2018
Occupied Pomo, Yurok, Squaxin Island, Nisqually, Chehalis land in so-called California (Ukiah, Fort Bragg, Klamath) and Washington (Tacoma, Olympia), 2021
Occupied Apache, Comanche, Shoshone, Ute land in so-called Colorado (Boulder, Denver, Sand Creek & Amache), 2021
Occupied Lummi, Nooksack, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Chelamela, Kalapuya, Suislaw Winefelly territories (so-called Bellingham WA & Bend/Eugene OR), 2021
Occupied Lenape Land (so-called NYC), 2022
Community Newsroom
POOR Magazine's Community Newsroom is an indigenous news-making circle where we redefine news as art, poetry, talk-story, prayer, and music, where we redefine who is a news-maker, and where we decide what the news will be, together, as a family, in a non-hierarchical circle. This is the process for all PNN broadcasts—written, televised, photographed and spoken news—about youth, adults, and elders in poverty, locally and globally.
On-site child education and food provided at ALL Community Newsrooms
You can find the recorded sessions on our social media
Outside at Homefulness with COVID protocol (PPE provided)
To participate, come to POOR Magazine on the 1st Thursday of every month at 1 PM
To get on the agenda with a story, problem, action alert or breaking news piece, call 415-863-6306 and leave a message (preferably two weeks ahead of each meeting)
Sliding Scale Café
Sliding Scale Café takes place at Homefulness on the Sidewalks of Huichin (East Oakland) every Thursday at 12 PM. A poor people’s solution to feeding ourselves, we radically redistribute to the Black, brown and indigenous mamas and families in the area who are in struggle and need groceries, hot meals and household items. We share free produce, food, diapers, paper products and cleaning supplies. Our Bank of ComeUnity Reparations helps fund this, as well as donations of food, diapers and other products from community organizations.
Photos by Jennifer Wiley
Bank of ComeUnity (Community) Reparations
The Bank of Community Reparations is a national fund of redistributed and stolen wealth that is distributed equally among poor and indigenous people-led land use projects.
Resources from the Bank of Community Reparations may be designated to these funds:
Po’ Mamaz Reparations Fund
Dedicated to redistributing resources directly to poor, unhoused and formerly unhoused single mamaz, (fathers) and children who are unable to afford rent, a drivable vehicle, diapers, food, and other emergency needs related to their survival and thrival.
Tech Reparations Fund
Dedicated to building/preserving the equity of poor and working class communities who have been displaced or are at risk of displacement due to the presence of Tech industries and their employees.
Homefulness Community Reparations Fund
Dedicated to building, launching and growing homefulness comm-UNITIES across Mama Earth. Homefulness is a self-determined landless people’s solution to the housing crisis, and POOR Magazine is currently in the process of constructing a multi-unit housing complex in East Oakland to provide housing for houseless families. POOR Magazine is also preparing to launch the DegentriFUKation Site (Homefulness #2) at 7600 BlackArthur and Homefulness #3 in so-called Bellingham, WA.
Radical Redistribution Fund
Dedicated to emergency needs of Po’ folks—not related to a specific fund but rather the need of traditionally silenced, criminalized communities in struggle.
What are Community Reparations?
Community Reparations, a concept launched by Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, is rooted in the notion of Interdependence. It’s meant to be a healing medicine of resistance to the lie of independence and the separation nation, which encourages the violent act of looking away from people who are poor or unhoused.
Community Reparations instructs us all to resist capitalism’s normalizing of separateness and “success” through land-stealing and wealth-hoarding. Instead, Community Reparations recognizes our shared humanity and invites those of us who benefit from stolen or hoarded resources to engage in loving, radical redistribution of these resources.
What does Reparations mean to you?
Voices from the POOR Magazine Solidarity Family
Doing the learning/unlearning work to understand how resource and land acquisition has been maintained culturally/ideologically as well as politically… Giving back and building relationships of support… Being a part of community and interdependence building and learning.
Julian
Reparations are a way to heal and to repair broken connections and relationships with those who have been harmed by racism, capitalism, violence, and resource extraction. Reparations have deepened my relationships, and also make it clear that not all indigenous people left the area. This process has led to the formation of some of my closest relationships.
Cynthia
Reparations is a process of building relationships and connections to redistribute all kinds of access, knowledge, and skills in addition to financial resources. Reparations is what happens when folks with privilege use it to undermine the systems that exclude people in the first place. It comes from a place of compassion and responsibility, not guilt. It is doing what needs to be done because it is the right thing to do.
A.S.
Reparations is active and is meant to help mend past/present/future wounds. It’s a responsibility to the interdependence of earth and her residents. It’s also seeing that my privilege has been precisely in being able to look away/disconnecting, and so reparations looks like having the hard conversations with family members about this stuff, and not avoiding.
Miyuki
Naming the harm that I’ve caused or benefit from, doing what I can to respond to that harm with material resources that mitigate it.
Jessica
Reparations means making up for past wrongs that my family, ancestors, and I have financially benefited from. It means that every dollar that sits in my bank account and every dollar that I spend is a dollar that cannot be accessed by folks of color. It means that I cannot be whole while I have access to wealth and others do not. Reparations are an opportunity for me to get free.
Paige
I’ve always tried to be generous with sharing my resources. I haven’t had a lot of money in the last 4-5 years. I do things like cook for people and drive people places. Reparations looks like mama giving money or other donations to churches and charities. Her way of showing gratitude for the abundance she has.
Sandra
When we minimize the impact of slavery or of Native genocide or of the Chinese Exclusion Act or any other example of racism and oppression—we are lying. If your reaction to systems of oppression that you materially benefit from is anything other than wanting—truly wanting—to redistribute resources to mitigate that oppression—then you are lying to yourself about reality, and you will never get a chance to admit that you are human, or experience your own humanity. Reparations are the gateway from lies to life.
Toby