Press Release: Houseless People Create a Real Solution to Homelessness in San Francisco

POORMAG
22 hours ago
5 min read

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: tiny gray-garcia or Muteado

Phone: 510-435-7500

Organization: POOR Magazine / HOMEfulness

Houseless People Create a Real Solution to Homelessness in San Francisco

With prayer and permission from First Nations land protectors, indigenous, houseless, and formerly houseless families and elders reclaim a tiny triangle of Mama Earth in occupied Yelamu (San Francisco) to build a healing solution to homelessness.

What

Prayer Ceremony & Press Conference announcing HOMEfulness in Yelamu

When

1:00 PM, January 24

Where

3990 Cesar Chavez Street, San Francisco, CA

“We are dying just trying to be housed,” said Walter, a houseless RoofLESS Radio reporter for POOR Magazine and longtime San Francisco resident.

As one of the coldest winters in the Bay Area and across the U.S. bears down, homelessness among families and elders continues to rise. Meanwhile, the primary “solution” offered by local, state, and federal governments remains the same: the erasure of houseless bodies from public space through violent police-led “sweeps”—a chilling, hygienic metaphor used to justify the physical removal of human beings from the environment.

“When my mama and I were being police-harassed, swept, and arrested for trying to sleep in doorways, bus shelters, and the back seats of cars in San Francisco and Oakland, we dreamed of HOMEfulness,” said tiny gray-garcia, co-founder of POOR Magazine and visionary co-founder of Homefulness. “Homefulness is a dream born from a dire emergency. The emergency is homelessness.”

After years of surviving poverty and homelessness, tiny and her mother Dee, a disabled artist, began articulating the vision of Homefulness. That vision’s first iteration emerged in 1996 with the launch of POOR Magazine, an intentionally glossy literary magazine co-created by houseless artists, poets, and journalists working out of community centers, shelter beds, and jail cells.

The first issue—POOR Magazine: Homefulness—examined the root causes of homelessness and uplifted solutions created by poor and houseless people themselves.

Over time, the magazine became a movement: a poor-, houseless-, and Indigenous-led collective creating art, media, education, advocacy, and real-world solutions by and for poor and houseless people across the Bay Area. POOR Magazine launched a press, multiple books, curricula, theater and poetry workshops, a radio station, and an online magazine and video channel—while never letting go of the vision of Homefulness.

In 2009, amid devastating budget cuts and renewed waves of homelessness within the movement itself, POOR Magazine shifted toward a radically different funding model rooted in interdependence, repair, and reparations.

“We tried HUD grants. We approached housing developers and established nonprofits in San Francisco and Oakland,” said tiny. “No one believed houseless people could create our own solutions. So we had to do it ourselves.”

This prayerful shift led to the creation of the Bank of ComeUnity Reparations, and Solidarity Family of POOR Magazine, composed of housed or class-privileged allies. “I come from generational wealth built through real estate here in the Bay Area, and I see how my family’s story is directly connected to the housing crisis we face today,” explains River, a Resource Generation member who graduated from PeopleSkool and helped lead fundraising for Homefulness in Yelamu (San Francisco). “I also see how my own liberation depends on projects like Homefulness succeeding.”

In 2011, with a donation from a Solidarity Family member, POOR Magazine’s houseless leaders were able to purchase a small piece of Mama Earth in Deep East Oakland. Today, in 2026, 25 houseless youth, adults, and elders live homeFULLY—rent-free forever—in healing housing at Homefulness Oakland.

“In the time of my ancestors, there was no concept of homelessness,” said Corrina Gould, Tribal Chair of the Ohlone/Lisjan peoples. “Homelessness came with the commodification of Mother Earth.”

Before building Homefulness Oakland, POOR Magazine sought permission from First Nations people of the land, recognizing that the United States is a settler-colonial project rooted in theft and genocide. Those First Nations relatives now serve on Homefulness elder and advisory councils. That same process of permission, prayer, and relationship is guiding Homefulness in Yelamu.

There is now a small triangle-shaped lot in Yelamu that POOR Magazine can begin the process of spiritually and legally unSelling and building Homefulness—which will include the Homefulness healing center, educational space, sliding scale cafe/free market, and housing for over 30 houseless residents.

Because POOR Magazine understands that Mama Earth is not a commodity, they worked with revolutionary legal advocates at the Sustainable Economies Law Center to establish the first-ever Liberation Easement, permanently removing Homefulness land from speculation and profit. A similar Liberation Easement is now being shaped in partnership with Ramaytush Ohlone leaders in so-called San Francisco.

“At the beginning of time, our Ancestors came to know the Original Instructions from Creator. Among the most important is that we are to care for the earth and all things upon it—especially one another. It is time that we remember these covenants that have guided our blessed lives and communities for countless generations. Let us remember our commitments that allowed no hunger or homelessness in the bounty that surrounds us, let us turn to HOMEfulness in our hearts,” said Gregg Castro (t'rowt'raahl Salinan / rumsen & ramaytush Ohlone), Culture Director, Association of Ramaytush Ohlone.

“No one owns Mama Earth—she is not a profit-making commodity,” said tiny at a statewide action demanding “Sanctuaries, Not Sweeps” held one year ago in response to escalating, deadly sweeps across California.

“The dream of bringing Homefulness to Yelamu is at the heart of my work and organizing,” said Mohini Mookim, an attorney at the Sustainable Economies Law Center and Resource Generation member who partnered with POOR Magazine on this land liberation move. “I feel the immense wisdom and medicine that POOR Magazine has to offer to our housing justice movements.”

“I got out with the clothes on my back,” said Monique M., POOR Magazine RoofLESS Radio reporter and sweeps survivor. She was describing a violent sweep where she lost her medicine, clothing, and the RV she was sleeping in. Monique—like the majority of houseless residents in San Francisco and Oakland—is a disabled elder who had nowhere to go after surviving that sweep.

Since the 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, houseless people have lost constitutional protections, leading cities across California to dramatically increase sweeps—each one more dangerous and deadly than the last.

HOMEfulness is an answer to the immediate emergency of homelessness. But it is also healing medicine—not only for houseless elders, families, and disabled people, but for all of us, housed and unhoused, who are in need of hope, repair, and home.

Please join us on January 24 at 1pm at 3390 Cesar Chavez St, San Francisco for a Prayer Ceremony & Press Conference announcing Homefulness in Yelamu.

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