Homes Not Jails

Homes Not Jails is an American organization that emerged from two of San Francisco's prominent activist organizations, Food Not Bombs and the San Francisco Tenants Union, and describes itself as an all-volunteer organization committed to housing homeless people through direct action. The group was formed in 1992. Homes Not Jails does public actions as well as legislative advocacy and squatting (occupying empty buildings for free). Homes not jails groups do "housing takeovers", acts of civil disobedience in which vacant buildings are publicly occupied, to demonstrate the availability of vacant property and to advocate that it be used for housing. The group has done many such occupations. Homes Not Jails has also done and assisted with hundreds of "covert" squats in which vacant buildings are broken into so that people in need of housing can move in.

Invoking squatters' rights, Homes Not Jails has filed for legal ownership of a squat opened in 1993 through a process called adverse possession. Homes Not Jails recommend that squats that are set up run themselves according to three main principles: nonviolence, no drugs, and consensus decision-making. These recommendations apply to both types of Homes Not Jails occupation: covert squats, and public takeovers of symbolic buildings and are not policed in any way with individual squats running themselves autonomously. Homes Not Jails also encourages city and state officials to use their eminent domain powers to declare unused and vacant buildings a public nuisance, take them over and use them for low cost housing.

Homes Not Jails began in 1992 in the wave of homeless activist groups that began nationwide following the economic recession of the 1980s. In addition to traditional homeless advocacy, Homes Not Jails has used squatting as a tactic since its first public takeover. The group began in fall of 1992 with the takeover of a building at 90 Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin district. On Thanksgiving Day, shortly after this first occupation, the group held a rally and marched to another building at 250 Taylor street, and publicly occupied it. There were originally about 30 members. Homes Not Jails has had extensive media coverage of its advocacy in support of affordable housing, its covert housing of people in vacant buildings, and its protection of buildings slated for demolition.

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