From Housed to Houseless Post-Incarceration: Notes from the Inside WeSearch

As part of a Poverty Skola-led WeSearch© project,  we corresponded with 25 prisoners from behind the razor wire kages and 148 post-incarcerated, currently houseless reporters for POOR Magazine's RoofLESS radio project, in San Francisco, Sacramento and Oakland to report on their current state of houselessness and/or houselessness prior to their incarceration as well as their anticipated status of housing upon their release for currently incarcerated participants.

We, as Poverty Skolaz, houseless, formerly houseless, incarcerated, disabled, criminalized, indigenous, Black, Brown and poor wite peoples, understand and overstand the direct link (or “revolving door”) between houselessness, irace and class based profiling, anti-Blackness and incarceration and the criminalization of the poor. This WeSearch, a word and concept informed by Tiny from the Theory of Poverty Scholarship which is poor people-led research, not academic/othering research, will outline that direct link as politricksters and anti-poor people hate continue to wonder, “How do we get rid of the homeless problem?” and continue to sweep, profile and criminallize us like we are trash.

The WeSearch conducted inside the Kages was done n collaboration with IWOC, other collaborators include Prison focus, Free Aztlan, KAGE Universal and No Justice Under Capitalism and the San Francisco Bayview

This JAILS2 STREETS WeSearch is also part of POOR Magazine's LandBack demand making the direct connection to land liberation, self-determination for poor, Indigenous Black Brown and DIsabled residents of these colonial -run towns and cities that continue to incarcerate, sweep,  and profile poor people and people of color everyday.