Its a fire everyday when you live outside

Aetna Street in Van Nuys with fire looming (foto by AetnaStreetSolidarity on IG)

Its a fire everyday when you live outside

Houseless peoples are living the everyday emergency of homelessness and Climate Terrorism.

by tiny , daughter of Dee, mama of tiburcio   

The flames of intense heat dehydrate 

The water from floods drown our outside spaces

The Cold seeps into our torn clothes 

Way down deep to our tired bones

The tornado winds 

The sun beats in 

The smoke will choke 

But none so hard as the 

Cop Cars

The park rangers and the DPW pickUp 

Yards 

Who take it all 

No matter who you call

Who predate and tow and take 

Everything we have in our humble streetscape 

Until we can’t breathe or see 

Or live or even be 

Its called a sweep 

And it happens every day to houseless me

This isnt climate change 

This is a poltricksters game 

For us impacted first and worst 

So close to mama earth 

So for all of u housed relatives too

suffering the terrifying Hurricanes and fire moves 

I ask u to recognize the pain 

The absolute terror of losing all you have to your name 

And for this moment you might be able to see

The violence of living homelessly 

Of daily and violent sweeps 

On all of these stolen land Turtle Island and Palestine streets 

“The roof (umbrella) blew off my home and the tarp blew away like a sail…” said Ruth Roofless, a houseless resident of Tovaangar (LA)

“They took our last tarp and all of our blankets. I have frostbite in my hands now and i can’t go to work,” said Sidney,a houseless resident, recycler and RoofLESS radio reporter in Yelamu (San Francisco) who had just sufferred a sweep of all of his warm clothes and sleeping bag. 

Across the US the people impacted first and worst by climate change or what Dine brother Klee Benally called Climate Terrorism, are houseless people, living, hiding, surviving on Mama Earth while unhoused. 

Right now Los Angeles fires  have consumed  miles and miles of the county, have displaced at least 200,000 people and destroyed more than 12,000 homes and businesses including entire residential neighborhoods and so far 16 fatalities. 

The Veterans Affairs Medical Center “relocated” already houseless, disabled veteran residents from its community-living facility on the north campus to homelessness again. 

Aetna street houseless comeUnity is facing a threat of evacuation from their humble outside area in Van Nuys that they have already been violently removed and evicted from multiple times.  

On September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene swept over Western North Carolina, bringing record levels of rainfall. Rainfall totals reached 12 to 16 inches (305-406mm) in some areas, leading to what is now referred to as one of the most severe floods in the state’s recent history.

Entire streets where houseless elders would sit or stand in that state were flooded and the few homeless shelters spaces were closed. Houseless peoples were pushed into more unsafe homelessness. 

What is rarely, if ever, mentioned when these increasingly common disasters occur, is the impact on houseless residents of these areas. 

This is not strange. Houseless peoples are never mentioned or discussed except in some vague amorphous way as though we are all a monolith called the “homeless people” with no face or name or identity except our lack of secure housing. 

Whether it’s fires or floods, hurricanes or tornadoes, we ae dangerlousky impacted by these severe weather changes. As I often repeated in the Covid pandemic, and some of our California wildfire emergencies, “How do we shelter in place when we don’t have a place?”  

From the air we can’t breathe to the heat or water we can’t escape from, our lean-to’s, tarps, tents and/or cardboard motels are destroyed, blown-off, lost or crushed in torrential rains. Our lungs get no rest from smoke or soot. We have no windows to close, no air conditioners or purifiers to turn on or outlets to plug them into and rarely any covered areas or trees to shade under to get cool in extreme and dangerous heat. 

And when there are violent hurricanes like in Western North Carloina or never ending fires like the reality of LA right now and much of California these days, where can we, who are already evacuated, removed, swept and evicted people, go? A question articulated by comrades at Where Do We Go to the City of Berkeley, who like so many of these US towns have mandated its own non-fire related emergency of sweeps against its houseless residents.  

How do you evacuate when you have already been evacuated?

RV home to houseless Oakland resident being towed to nowhere by City of Oakland (foto credit: Love and Justice in the streets)

Because the other terrorism we face is the terroism of criminalization. Since June of last year after the Grants Pass versus Johnson Supreme Court ruling, every city in the US has waged an un-ending and deadly war on houseless peoples bodies. 

No matter where we sit, stand, walk or god forbid, try to sleep, we are forcibly evacuated, removed, swept or evicted from,  only we have nowhere to go. 

In Callifornia Governor Newsom has threatened cities to remove and sweep or lose their state funding. Local Mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, Sacramento, Berkeley and Los Angeles to name a few, have implemented their own endless attacks on houseless peoples bodies as well as new laws on top of the old laws that crimianlize our existence, and the result is houseless peoples don’t dare to rest for fear of removal. From everywhere.

“The city of Oakland is towing houseless peoples RV’s in Estuary Park, they are not giving them any referrals to safe parking places, even though they have nowhere else to go,” Oakland_revealed reported out from a highway in East Oakland this week.

Across the City of Oakland every single day under the guise of “encampment management” hundreds of houseless Oakland residents are subjected to violent sweeps with subsequent arrests if they don’t comply, resulting in the loss of most if not all of their belongings, no matter how important or necessary they are.

In San Francisco, you can’t even sit down or put up a tent without facing forced removal, meaning that when the rain and cold comes you have no protection. 

Evacuation to Where?

“I almost died in a fire (2018) and I have lasting breathing issues and can’t run for my life like I was able to then, I know the evacuation warnings are for people with phones and power and cars who can stay in hotels…they’re not for we the unhoused (who they then arrest under curfew orders)” concluded Ruth RoofLess 

In this terrifying and dangerous time poor and houseless peoples have proposed actual solutions. Solutions rooted in right relationship with Mama Earth, Solutions created by the people impacted first and worst by climate terrorism and the violent criminalization of our bodies. Solutions that actually house and heal, not harm and hurt. 

Solutions like Homefulness and Wood Street Commons

On December 17th, several houseless peoples -led movements across California launched a state-wide sanctuary movement to respond to violence of sweeping peoples like we are trash  For five days we held sweeps free sanctuary spaces in all of the impacted cities to lift up these actual solutions. 

Homefulness is poverty scholarship informed, rent-free forever healing housing. But it is also informed by ancient teachings and spiritual traditions of 1st Nations people. It is not rooted in more extraction like buildings made of wood and concrete, deep and violent cutting down of Mama Trees that we need to provide us all with urgently needed shade and coolness. 

Homefulness Projects launch with community gardens where there used to be asphalt. The planting of Ancestor forests where there used to be parking lots. Sliding Scale Cafes with free food and diapers and produce for the whole community for free and Humetkas (Ohlone concept of Emergency preparedness) to provide water and emergency support to the whole neighborhood when, not if, emergencies like the LA and Oakland Hills fires happen . 

Solar and wind power so we don’t CONtinue to steal from and poison Mama Earth and babies in the Congo just to have energy. 

Fire and Water and MamaEarth solutions based on Indigenous peoples ancient teachings (which should have been followed in Tovaangar and must be implemented across turtle island.)

In addition HOMEfulness and Wood Street commons models include Liberation education for houseless youth and adults so we can all learn how to take care of mama Earth with humility and love for the next seven generations of fires and climate terrorism caused disasters that so many of us are complict in enabling. 

And finally Homefulness is actively working to take parcels of MamaEarth off the extractive real estate speculative market by working with conscious lawyers at Sustainable economies law center to create a liberation easement that ensures that land will only be used for rent-free forever housing and gardens and radical sharing  and therefore humbly saving more mamatrees and safe spaces for all of us humans to benefit from. 

Emergency Vs Emergency - How do you respond to an emergency when there is already an emergency?

Solutions like Homefulness are the answer with or without the compounded emergency of fires or Tornadoes, because its an emergency every day when you are houseless,. Everyday we have no home, no roof, no medicine, no toilets, no beds or safe places to sleep. Everyday we have the emergency of PTSD from our trauma filled lives that is only compounded and made worse by just trying to stay alive everyday outside in the ongoing emergency called homelessness

Everyday we are scared for our lives and subject to cold so intense we almost die. Everyday we find ourselves outside, roofless without a dry blanket or a warm plate of food or a heater to stand next to or a swamp cooler to cool down next to. 

Everyday mutual aid warriors like Wood Street Commons, POOR Magazine, Aetna Street Solidarity, Punks With Lunch and JtownAction, Love and Justice in the Streets and so many more show up with love, resources, tents, sleeping bags, food and justice to radically share to houseless relatives. Oftentimes these beautiful love-workers (as we call them at POOR Magazine) are replacing what is procedurally stolen from houseless peoples daily. It is a bizarre whackamole and yet without this support people would die at greater rates than they already do. It’s up to 6 people dying on the streets in LA everyday from the fire called homelessness. 

In the end we must stop “responding” to emergencies as though they just started. We are living an emergency everyday when we live outside. And the answer to the emergency is to change the mind-set to liberation and love 

I am humbly asking resourced , housed residents of Turtle Island who are or have suffered the great loss of these Climate terrorism fueled  disasters  to consider them as a moment of great transformation, to embody  what I'm calling radical empathy where you overstand that you  will be able to rebuild and recoup, there is a motel room or a family member to stay with or an insurance claim to rebuild or even a decision to relocate,  but imagine you had no such support and the same “disaster” was happening to you on a daily basis. From this overstanding reimagine the solution  you could be a part of implementing with radically redistributed resources to support your  fellow humans all the time not just in an “emergency” 

Respond now with MamaFesting, supporting, building and implementing actual love-centered solutions that have answers to climate Terrorism and answers to the spirtual terrorism and physical abuse of sweeping humans like we are trash. 

Scarcity is killing us, not fires, not hurricanes, not mama earth. 

The love and liberation of Homefulness and Wood Street community are solutions for now and later and forever. Not just now. 

Thanks to Ry and Ruth Roofless from Tovaangar and Oakland Revealed for contributions to this story 

To learn more about Homefulness and Poor and houseless peoples solutions to homelessness thru radical Redistribution come to PeopleSkool Degentrification /Decolonization two-day Seminar on zoom which happens twice a year- the next session is Jan 25/26 for more information go to www.poormagazine.org/education. To redistribute now to Homefulness in Huchiun ( Oakland, SF or LA ) go to poormagazine.org/donate  to support Wood Street Commons project go to www.woodstreetcommons.org