Yellowsack giving back
Courtesy of Shots from Ricjmond
Yellowsack prides itself in bringing you the best, most efficient, and customer-friendly waste management solution around. But did you know that commitment to outstanding service extends further to our local community? We are heavily invested in our local community, giving our time and services to help the city and its residents. One of the most significant challenges the city of San Francisco faces is poverty and homelessness. Here's how Yellowsack helps their fellow SF residents to tackle these issues and build a stronger community and city.
SF homeless crisis
The homeless crisis in the San Francisco area has been a significant problem growing exponentially for many years. The covid outbreak and continued lack of affordable housing has only accelerated the situation. Other factors cited for homelessness in a 2019 survey commissioned by the City of San Francisco include job loss, alcohol/drug use, eviction, arguments, or being asked to leave by friends or family. Also, mental health issues and divorce or separation. Subsequently, tent encampments have sprung up all over the city where homeless people find shelter only to have the city move them on after some time.
Sfgate noted in 2018 that UN Special reporter Leilani Farha visited some of these camps and spent time talking to residents about their plight; she compared conditions to those of Mumbai, India. "It's damaging because they always have to move. They're treated like nonentities. Sometimes they say [belongings are] put in storage, but more often, they'll dump everyone's possessions into one dumpster. It's horrible. It's not dignified. The people have nowhere to go. It's illogical. It's tragic."
It's easy for many to take the view that the crisis is just based on unfortunate circumstances of human frailty. Still, in a report in the Guardian, Leilani gives her opinion on reasons for the problem, "If I turned to San Francisco and there were 100 people who were homeless. I might say, 'Hmm, this is probably about psychological disability, drug dependence, a history of sexual abuse in their childhood' or something like that. I might be able to say that it is very individualized. But when you're seeing the numbers of people who are homeless here and in every other city, you just know it's structural."
“When you’re seeing the numbers of people who are homeless here and in every other city, you just know it’s structural.”
Encampments and regulation
With the lack of affordable housing, a significant contributor to the homeless issue, along with shelter bed shortages, the city and its residents have realized that homeless encampments are part of the city's fabric that is here to stay for the foreseeable future. But many local communities and tent encampments are struggling to regulate themselves. Under constant threat of eviction, and crime the residents struggle to hold on to their health, safety, dignity, and humanity.
In Mercury News, the Crime prevention manager for the Richmond Police Department and a member of the city's homelessness task force, Michelle Milam, comments on the effects of unregulated encampments. "If we don't have a place for people to go, we have to be able to supply some support and some services to people where they are, or else you're going to have a public health hazard. As of January 2020, Contra Costa County counted 280 people sleeping on the streets of Richmond, but homelessness has grown exponentially during the COVID-19 crisis", Milam said.
Residents on the poverty line
This situation is compounded further by the low wages offered to minimum-income members of the community. The National Coalition Housing Association reported in 2014 that, "in San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment." The number of people in poverty rose from 8.6% in 2000 to 9.7% by 2010. In 2021, over 218,000 persons in San Francisco (28% of the total population) live below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level. According to the City and County of San Francisco Humanities Services Agency, one of the most striking statistics is that about 6,500 San Francisco children live in destitution, below the 50% Federal Poverty Line threshold. Homeless people from across the city are redirected to homeless shelters in Richmond, making it hard for the City of Richmond to deal with and accommodate this level of poverty. As of 2017, there were at least 76 encampments with as many as 800 people living in them. About 50% of these were families that lost their homes and ended up on the streets.
In 2017 the Richmond City Council voted to establish a task force to address the homeless crisis in the Richmond area; this involves disrupting the homelessness cycle. As part of this process, they aim to gather more accurate data, provide community education and engagement, emergency housing services, long-term housing solutions, and mental and behavioral health and self-sufficiency pathways. The city also has introduced legislation to allow homeless people to sleep in public places without risk of citation if they cannot secure a bed in temporary shelters.
Giving back
Organizations like Collaborising and Save Our Streets (SOS) regularly come together with participating local businesses to help combat some of the issues faced by the residents of these encampments.
Collaborising is a non-profit agency; its website states that it is "dedicated to improving race equity by facilitating community conversations on race. Our goal is to build cross-cultural relationships between racialized groups who compete for limited financial and social resources and view one another as opponents rather than collaborators. We work with groups and individuals to increase self-awareness, to expose racial bias, and to replace these biases with an understanding that racism divides us as human beings."
Collaborising’s important work
The organization's name is a fusion of the words collaborate and rising. Its current projects include Sister Circles for both UNSHELTERED (homeless) WOMEN and women RE-ENTERING SOCIETY from prison. Racial Affinity Groups for People of Color and Black People. How to Talk to Black People About Racism workshop and The Appreciation of Blackness workshop. Through its community outreach, collaborising aims to offer maximum social impact to businesses, non-profits, municipalities, and individuals. The agency's founder, Lea Murray, is a life-long learner who earned a MA in African Diaspora Studies from FIU and an MPH in Public Health Nutrition from UC Berkeley. She is currently the Executive Director of Collaborising. She advocates for the misrepresented and the misunderstood, and she believes that all people have value and deserve acknowledgment as human beings.
“ It’s great to partner with Lea and to be an asset to her community, beautifying and cleaning, anywhere we can be of use.”
Clearing the Targetville Encampment
Recently Collaborising, along with local politician and Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, Target, Core, SOS, Home Depot, and Yellowsack, as part of Clean Air Day, worked to clear a significant trash build-up that sat between a local Target store and Targetville, one of Richmond's encampments. The aim was to reduce health hazards and provide a cleaner area around the encampment to give residents a better living environment. While in doing so, gathering members of SF's rich community to build awareness and work together for a better city for all.
Troy, our Chief Operations Officer, Vee, our Transportation Area Manager and Helen our Guest Services Manager, were on site for the initiative to volunteer their services by clearing the debris and organising collection with Yellowsack’s dumpster bags. Yellowsack provided ten bags paid for by Richmond Neighbourhood Housing Services and offered one of our crane trucks to transport the trash from the encampment.
Troy, Helen and Vee helping the community
Vee told us, "We are here today as part of this project to clean the city of Richmond. It's great to partner with Lea and to be an asset to her community, beautifying and cleaning, anywhere we can be of use. It's been such a pleasure to be part of this program and invest in the community that we love so much, we are all part of the Bay area, and we are here to help in any way possible."
Troy told us, "We are always looking for partnerships with different cities to make a better environment and a better city. Our number one purpose is to create a better society and environment. Every time an opportunity like this arises, we are hands-on; we always make sure we join in and are on board to help in these kinds of aspects. That's why we are here as Yellowsack, too; we want to make sure that we influence to work together, be together, and stay together. So it's definitely an amazing experience."
Politician John Gioia, a Contra Costa County Supervisor for Richmond, said, "It's great to see Collaborising out here, working with so many partners and the community to clean up this area. There are a number of unhoused people who live near here, and a lot of trash has accumulated, and this effort is to clean it up and make it a healthier and safer place for them to stay as they look for housing. We hope to move these individuals over time to stable housing, which is what they deserve and are entitled to. Working together with the San Francisco community and encampment residents, together we removed over 50,000 pounds of trash. I really acknowledge the hard work and partnerships that Collaborising has formed. Lea has done an amazing job, and we need to continue these kind of community, government, business partnerships. This is a great model for how we can clean up these kinds of areas around Richmond and our county; we need to put resources, effort and time to make these happen."
A new hope
For the residents at the TargetVille encampment, who are often misrepresented and made to feel worthless, the Collaborising initiative means that they can live in a safer, cleaner environment as they wait for permanent housing solutions. Initiatives like these help them to keep their pride because they, like us, are only human and have every right to live in clean conditions.
Much of the debris the Collaborising team and Yellkowsack removed can be recycled, reused, and repurposed, and our crane helped lift it over the wall. It's great to help our community in any sense; at Yellowsack, we are always happy to volunteer, so if you know of any upcoming community projects that we could assist with, drop us a line. For Yellowsack, giving back is not a bonus; it's essential.
