16 February 2025

Married couple Tracy J. Oxsen and Jaylene Oxsen

Tracy and Jaylene Oxsen outside the super market on a shopping run. Tracy, 53, has been unhoused in San Francisco for 12-13 years. Jaylene, 23, has been homeless for about 7 years.

Tracy and Jaylene with their dog Pistachio shelter just off Dore Street on CalTrans property in San Francisco, California. It’s been raining a few days but the California Highway Patrol has notified them that at 7am the next day they, and their belongings, will be moved off the property. What isn’t moved, they will loose. Since the land they are on is under a freeway, and next to an on-ramp, it belongs to CalTrans and is not enforced by the SFPD.

Date: 4 February 2025

San Francisco’s new mayor just took office, is there a difference between the new and old Mayor?

Tracy: I don’t know.  I don’t know.

Jaylene:  Always around election time they’re messing with us more, moving us around more. Other than that the politics don’t really affect us, that much.

Tracy: Actually, right before election, or right at election time they came in here and did a sweep, and took everybody’s stuff.  They cut my tent, right in front of me. Just took a knife and cut my tent, cut it right down either side of the door. Cut it for no good reason. just to do it, and rolled all by shit up in it and threw it in the back of a truck.  Ten minutes, ten minutes the local police gave us to get everything we wanted out; or it was going in the trash.  It’s so unreasonable.

Now CalTrans has this property, CHP (California Highway Patrol) enforces for CalTrans and they come, and they warn us that they are going to warn us.  Then they warn us, then they give us a week after they warn us.  And they always come when they say, exactly when they say.  They don’t come early, they don’t come late.  They come when they tell us they’re coming. (They) do their job, and we do ours; we should have everything we want out of here. I’m going to go right outside the fence into the alleyway, and wait until they finish cleaning over here, and then I’m going to come right back here.

What are your most important processions?

Tracy:  Shelter, whatever shelter we have. Tarps and tents, blankets.

Jaylene: The jewelry that I’ve gotten from her is the most important to me, I never take it off.

Tracy: Clothing for whatever the weather is. And then secondary would be like our little hobbies; books, paints and stuff. An instrument, and things like that. Our bicycles, because that’s our transportation.

I have had cars out here in San Francisco and it’s not worth it.  The amount of parking tickets you get no matter how hard you try is just incredible, truly incredible.  They’ve gotten 4 of my cars, and 4 of my RVs. So, I’ve decided I won’t give them anymore of those. I’d rather burn them to the ground than give them another one.

If there was housing, would you move into it?

Tracy: I’m trying to. I’ve been waiting for more than a year. We were in an SRO (temporary housing) and Five Keys (a nonprofit that contracts with the city) ran it. One of the people at Five Keys got a hair up their butt and didn’t like us. And so the next opportunity they had, they created an issue and thru us out right before we were supposedly getting into our housing.

Jaylene: We had to do a few things for GA (General Assistance, for the housing). I had to send them a picture of my ID, and a couple of forms filled out; and the building (the SRO) we were staying at had to fill out a form.  The only thing that didn’t get done for GA was that form that they (the SRO) were supposed to fill out. By the time I had gotten everything done they had thrown us out, which changes everything for GA, so I had to redo everything, all over again.

Tracy: It’s like a Catch 22 all the time.

It’s funny. They complain about garbage (authorities), and what not, but take away garbage receptacles. They complain about people’s feces on the street, and peeing on the street, yet they take away the place to use to go to the bathroom.  They complain about us in general, and I have seen residents, with homes, bring their trash to one of our spots and drop it off, take pictures of it, and say that we’re dirty, filthy people.

I get it. I get it, there are a lot of batshit crazy people that are homeless.  There’s a lot of mentally ill people that are homeless.  There’s a lot of reasons to be upset with homeless people, but not everyone of us is those people.

You get lumped together with everybody because of the situation you’re in, and it sucks. We’re not all out here causing trouble.  We’re not all out here not giving a shit about your children. Not all of us don’t care. I care!

They’re right about open drug use, but they take your tent away.  I mean they’re going to do drugs out here, they’re going to keep doing their drugs.  They (authorities) take away their shelter, their only means of hiding themselves, and they complain that they’re not hiding! It’s so ass backwards out here. It’s hard to figure out what they fucking want, you know.

Jaylene: They want us all to die off.

Tracy: It’s in their best interests if we all just disappeared. But we’re all survivors, so it’s going to be hard. We’re hard to kill.

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Update: True to their word, the CHP did come on the rainy morning of the 5th of February and the Oxsens moved onto Dore Street. Sometime after having reestablished their shelter a representative of the new Mayor’s housing departments came by to ask a few questions, promised to contact the Oxsen’s case worker and to insure the SFPD did not disrupt or remove either their belongs or them. One can hope…

The Reads

“In Her Playful New Work, Camille Henrot Questions Everything”  Annabel Keenan/Artsy

“The Daily Heller: Typographic Elegance, From Pakistan to Australia”  Steven Heller/Print

“Before Black, There Was Blue - In Black in Blues, Imani Perry reaches to the height of the sky and the depth of the ocean, casting the history of blue as one of both triumph and tragedy, possibility and limitation.”  Chloë Bass/Hyperallergic

“Sakir Khader’s Unflinching Portrait of Pain and Grief in the West Bank - As his new exhibition opens in Amsterdam, the Palestinian-Dutch Magnum photographer talks about using his camera as “both a witness and a weapon”  Emily Steer/AnOther

“Hoosier Cabinets and the Dream of Efficiency” - Out of Indiana came a beloved wooden innovation that helped change the status of the kitchen in the American home.  Michelle Mastro/JSTOR

“San Francisco's solution to drugs and mayhem on 6th St.? Tents.”  Joe Eskenazi/Mission Local

“Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills”  AJ Dellinger/Gizmodo

“DOT’s Plan to Distribute Funding by Birth and Marriage Rates Would Leave Communities Most In Need Behind” Yonah Freemark, Lindiwe Rennert/Urban Institute

“Kendick Lamar’s Halftime Revolution: A History Lesson in Storytelling” Nettrice Gaskins

Copies of “Division Street are still available!  Order your copy from Dewi Lewis:

“Division Street” – Order from Dewi Lewis: Orders: U.S.A – Britain - Canada

8 February 2025

Photos

“Saint” Luigi Mangione on a wall in San Francisco’s Mission District. Photo: Robert Gumpert 28 January 2025

Bibbiti’s claw emporium on Taraval Street between 25th and 26th Avenue. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 01 February 2025

Reads

Photography:

François Prost's fascinating photo series of Love Hotels in Japan  Katy Cowan/Creative Boom

“What we’re reading #3: Winter 2025” 1000 Words

"A Record of Exile from Syria - Sara Kontar left Damascus in 2015 and, like many Syrians fleeing an intractable war, began a new life in France. For her, the camera became a means of processing displacement and nourishing community”  Kaelen Wilson-Goldie/Aperture

“Exile and identity in the portraiture of Amak Mahmoodian”  MARIAMA ATTAH?BJP

“Loving”  Monroe Gallery

Articles:

“What to do if confronted” Molly Montgomery/Searchlight NM

“America Can’t Look Away — “Weegee: Society of the Spectacle” the International Center of Photography

“Spiders think with their webs, challenging our ideas of intelligence”  David Robson/New Scientist

“Bonobos can tell when they know something you don’t”  Sophie Berdugo/New Scientist

Podcasts:

Crunch  The Food Chain

The War of Troy tapestry  Moving Pictures/BBC Sounds

Headlines:

“Blind man gets license to carry permit to make a point about Indiana gun laws”  Newsweek 3 Feb 2025

Copies of “Division Street are still available!  Order your copy from Dewi Lewis:

“Division Street” – Order from Dewi Lewis: Orders: U.S.A – Britain - Canada