POOR Magazine/RoofLESS Radio Street Writing Workshop Yelamu/SF 3/21/2025

Define Home- What is home mean to you

How did you become Homeless?

Would you be interested in helping to build homefulness?

Anthony Land

Home is a word  that the meaning h has changed in my Journey Of  Life.  Home was the physical building mom dad the place you rest.  Now becoming homeless home is the place my soul feels rest and safe & can change as I grow older.

I am inflicted with the terrible Disease of Addiction to Drugs.  Its cause me to Burn all my bridges lost the trust of my family & worst caused chronic health problems the will ultimately shortening my Life.  This is the Sad but Honest non bullshit story of how I became homeless.

Not sure I can Build but I’m 4 it.

Davonte

Where i took my First nut

Pissed out my own blood

Testified and Tested

U misunderstood did it myself

And represented many languages

Obedience and given time out of my days

Worked on the new thats now i know its true

Home is this to me

I simply ran away from home

Sharon DeShay

To me that word is kina of hard to define.  Myself, personally that word means to be around people, or loved ones over that you care about and vice versa.  Not necessarily meaning you “love”.  That and you being able to live with each other. In an enclosed space, doesnt have to be a room.  Feeling safe, comfortable, a place that puts a smile on your face when you thnk about it.  A place that you love to go to HOME!!

…in a relationship with this beautiful lady + her family.  ..1 time..many and an argue started!  …going to jail for a year and got out to nothing at all.  Went to a program and left that.  Dont know why?  But after that I found myself outside for the last 6 years.  Hopefully this ends sooner than later.

I am very interested in supporting homefulness

Jonathan C…

..is a place to be happy

Home is a sanctuary to raise your family

Home is where you feel safe to grow old

Drugs, and I also traveled on Grateful Dead Tour my whole life.  I’m from East Coast and gre up poor…

Homefulness all the way!

Buddy

I .. in a apartment with my mother and father.  We had a regular amount of money and I went to school like most other kids.  At 12 years old I started using dope with my friends at first it was kind of worse than better but my friends pushed it on me so I thought I was supposed to do it more.

After a while I could keep drugs a secret and my friends and parents found out that I was using drugs then they wanted me to stop and decided just leave because they couldnt watch me all the time.

Yes, but I have struggle staying sober but I support it

Blake Ferrell

What is home to me 

Home is were the heart

Is home is were I

Keep my hat and

If I ever find it

I’ll be there

I drop a scrwe in the hop house why I do not NO

Homefulness Yes!

Anonymous

Safe place to call my own

Making decisions & different life experiences

Homefulness Ase!

Anonymous

Built

Has become homeless

Shana Miller

I never considered myself HOMELESS - Just HOUSELESS.  Home to me is wherever I lay my head, where my partner is comfortable & where we raise our kids (and dogs)

On and off my entire life.  I learned to embrace it rather than resent it so I rode trains thru 28 states and now I found a place that I love, SF, and I’m struggling to stay HOUSED w/my life partner here.

I would be very interested in homefulness - we need healing & housing

Killian P

Home is A safe space filled with love and compassion.  A place where you go to rest your head at the end of the day.  Your personal decompression zone.

I was living and working in Portland, Oregon. (This is back in 2019). I met  A young woman who was everything my current parner wasn’t.  Soon we were causing chaos in the streets.   Doing drugs and I was no longer going to work.  Everything screwballed from there…

Would you B

A Junes

Home to me means I’m with my kids and Family wherever they are is Home.  I Guess you could say “Home is where the Heart is”  Because they are my heart

My dad passed in 2016 and I started using heroin to deal with that and that led me to prison ..programs and I didn’t have anything to go to when I got out  so I started using again and just didn’t care about anything.  So I would rather be on the street getting High than being alone inside.

Home is homefulness

…Harris

Home is where you feel safest and you know you can have most things your way.

I lost my way.  I gave up on my marriage, and began to turn to drugs

Homefulness YES!

Micaele Wimbush

Is a secure safe Place

Were you dont have to

Worry bout Nobody hurting 

You

I became homeless

When I ran from

Foster care when I was

Sixteen because I was

Being sexual abused

Homefulness is A BeAuTifUL VISION

Sf Needs it

Dave  ….

My space where I stay

I run the area mostly now

Where I sleep and sty (occupy)

When I stay with others to dwell

And occupy.  To have privacy or perks

I ran out of people I could trust

And money at the same time

Then I couldn’t decide where I want 

To be-by myself or with others

Homefulness is SAFE!

Kelly Ambrose

Home is your sanctuary.  A place to escape the stress of the world.  A vessel for you material possessions, as well as sentimental landmarks of life.  A Home is a .. castle, until your castle ..then it becomes a distant memory of some past life when you don’t have adoor to close, or escape from whatever you want to be away from-it … like I never had one before

I was in an accident in 2004, got put on pain pill, got cut off, then started self  medicating…rtsdrf the next and before i knew it, my wife, children and I had worked for all my life, ..I was now an addict. It felt like a tornado blew ..my ..and I awoke in the aftermath, destitute and cast out..a family hopes and dreams but I couldn’t put the drugs on the shelf even…I was losing all I could have had, helpless. I try to stay positive, but positive isn’t what gets me through each day. ..slave to my habit and all controls every… decision I make. I’ll keep crawling till I stand up.

HOMEFULLNESS!

David

Home is where you feel safe.  Its some where only those you want to surround yourself with can be  It’s where you can start new lives

I became Houseless by a number of factors deaths in the family and drugs all play a part out ifs a never ending cycle

Homefulness yes!

Isabella Peru RIP bunny Foster

A home is where im safe I have my children my husband would be home but for some reason God wanted him in heaven a year ago now my home will look like me and kids

I became homeles a year ago after losing my husband who was walking to work and got hit by a car and died of a heart attack  I miss him everyday  Im trying to do good by kids

Thank you for letting me tell my story

Homefulness is everything!

Tony Vialau

Home is a destination it’s also a place where you Feel safe-a place were you can lay your head shower and also spend the most of your time

I became homeless when I was s24 I’m 30 years old when I started bing homeless my Family abandoned me because I started using drugs and alcohol

Anonymous

I Trying to right Back on the page

BC I statd to get hiht

MATTHew

Home means to me a type of sanctuary and or safe gathering place for a group tribe or family …meet congregate and dream together.  Being able to take part in building a home with other people can be an especially rewarding process.  Both the building and certainly the enjoying of the said space.

A very long story involving highs lows and some unfortunate sideways manuevers by some less than ethical  People acting under the guise of friendship.  It involved a good friend passing away, Me getting repeatedly robbed (inclduing my dog!)  and opportunistic Bad Actors coming to claim whatever .. had been left on the ..sorry for being vague! More..

Yes!

Anonymous

Home to me is where you can go to feel content and happy.  Where nobody Judges you, where you can be yourself.

I came down to San francisco to be in the occupy movement.  I really felt lik I was going to somehow make a difference, but occupy ended and I had nowhere to go so I drowned myself with heroin/Fentanyl, being an addict made it so hard to Just be a “normal” person.  Which I guess …paying rent and being a “contriibuting member of society”

100%! Yes

Alexander

Family have a food bed a place to stay every day

Lost everything job

I stared doing dope-every day I need more money for my

Yes please!

Noel Davis  Thank you!

My own safe, clean sanctuary that I can come & go as I please–Homefulness PLeASe!

I got divorced & my ex husband has- (had) money for a decent lawyer & screwed me out of our home - cars- pets- & $

Kristin Showers

It did mean a shelter with 4 actual walls, ..from the elements, that is safe clean and with privacy & with food, a place that is yours to grow and live.  Somewhere to be comfortable and provide for our family.

Came to

Yes

Anonymous

Home doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, I think that’s obvious by now.  For me, home means feeling safe.  Feeling like nothing bad can or will ever get to you.  HOme is a quiet smile on top of loud music while we sit in the car and unwind after putting our son to bed.  Home is teal and yellow light gleaming through her hair from the summer sun.  HOme is where I have no doubts, no worries, and can do no wrong because she’s there, and I donn’t believe in much but I have com plete faith in her.

In  2019 my mother stopped paying our rent. In 2022 she left my brother & I to fend to ourselves.  Shortly after my best friend moved in with us and we kept the home going until Oct 15, 2023.  By ..the landlord and barricaded ourselves inside until the sheriff’s showed up