Annie Fukushima, associate dean of undergraduate studies, director of the office of undergraduate research, and associate professor ethnic studies at the University of Utah, was recently the guest of honor at the San Francisco SafeHouse 25-year anniversary celebration. SafeHouse provides a safe space for women who have experienced housing instability or sexual exploitation in the city of San Francisco. SafeHouse serves this population in part because women experience homelessness more than their male counterparts and in part due to the historical lack of resource investment in programs that support and provide services for women. Women who have joined the program are supported to thrive and break the cycle of intergenerational homelessness and incarceration. In this program, they can recapture their lives and build new opportunities.
Dr. Fukushima began work with the city of San Francisco, SafeHouse, and other community partners during her time at U.C. Berkeley over a decade ago. Since then, she has continued to use both advocacy and research to support survivors of violence experiencing housing barriers. “Dr. Fukushima’s work has been critical in highlighting the importance of supporting underrepresented groups through research,” said Acting Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner.
We are honored to support your efforts, Dr. Fukushima!
Dr. Fukushima’s speech during the award ceremony:
Today I would like to open with the words of Gloria Anzaldúa ‘I had to feel competent enough on the outside and secure enough inside to live on my own. Yet in leaving home I did not lose touch with my origins because lo mexicano is in my system. I am a turtle, wherever I go I carry ‘home’ on my back’. As a KoreXicana I am drawn to Anzaldúa, but for today, I believe she reflects the realities for many people today who carry their homes on their backs because they are displaced due to environmental catastrophes, war, experiences with sexual violence, domestic violence, neglect, colonization, or people whose visions of hope, were dashed by lies, and for some simply life – they simply moved because life, compelled them to.
Today we are gathered to celebrate SafeHouse, who supports women and women with an “x,” who are experiencing housing instability and sexual exploitation or trafficking, by creating survivor-centered spaces. The anti-violence movement has long recognized that a survivor-centered movement is one that listens to survivors.
So today, in this brief presentation, I invite us together to enact what Bronwyn Davies refers to as a radical act of listening, where it is, “through listening that being is made possible… It is a form of being-in-relation-to-the-other, the other that comes from a gift of listening and openness to the not-yet-known.”
When we listen, we see that national crisis has taken root across the United States.
Housing in the US is in a state of a crisis. The National Alliance to End Homelessness conveys that “Record High Numbers of People Living Unsheltered, Especially Among Individuals. In 2023, a record high 256,610 people, or 39.3 percent of all people experiencing homelessness, were unsheltered.” 1% of San Francisco’s population are described as homeless, or living without a house, or the marginally housed. 30% of residents in San Francisco are cost-burdened, meaning they have difficulty affording their housing.
Beginning in 2012, I began a journey to understand the needs of survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking through listening. I have learned through listening to people in a range of places from South Dakota, Louisiana, California, Texas, New York, Utah, North Carolina, that to understand what our communities need, is complex, yet also clear. Common themes emerge when listening to organizations and people as they appealed for housing as a human right. And thinking with Gayatri Spivak, it is more than a rights, it is also a responsibility.
In 2018, my journey to understand needs across the US brought me back to the Bay Area. I conducted a city-wide needs assessment for survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking, through the Department on the Status of Women – listening to 36 agencies from the city of San Francisco that included 132 individuals in San Francisco, who spoke English, Chinese, and Spanish.
I learned that numbers like 1 in 3 experience domestic violence, 27 million people are trafficked worldwide, 16,999 victims trafficked in the US in 2023, Every 68 seconds a person will be sexually assaulted, 1 in 4 transgender people experience sexual violence can only say so much about the kinds of violence and oppression people experience and how they are resisting, thriving, and alive in spite of. Thinking with Sonia Salari’s socioecological iceberg theory, that these numbers are the tip of the iceberg. How do you count the uncounted?
The over 1,000 survivors who received housing with SafeHouse are more than numbers. They were helped because despite the common barriers survivors face: fear of enforcement, oppression such as (i.e., racism, sexism, heterosexism or cis-genderism), the lack of translation/interpretation not being provided, bureaucracies, shame of reporting, the need for more support – they were helped.
Reflecting on 2018, the top 2 recommendations people provided then is reflected in SafeHouse:
- Increase economic resources to grow existing intervention & advocacy efforts
- Increase economic resources to grow housing support for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking
There is a need for places like SafeHouse. Therefore, to close I share the words of a San Franciscan Hawaiian Transwoman, who at the time of the interview was surviving cancer, living informal economies, and herself having faced many forms of discrimination, yet was alive. Her lesson was that it is not just about creating a house, but a home that is peopled, survivor-centered, and filled with community where she said: “I wanted to help people, especially the disabled and the elderly. You know we have elderly that are stuck in homes and they have no one. They don’t have family… People that had been in prison. People that had been abused. People that were on drugs. And when the two meet, the elderly or the disabled person, they have no knowledge of that type of lifestyle. The two meet and they tend to see each other like, I’ve had people that become friends… Because I think the thing about it is that we’re all humans and no matter what side of the fence we come from, we all have something to offer. That was my whole intention was just to bring people together and it was all about you. Being true to yourself. Being who you are. And people will accept you that way.”
In celebration of 25 years of progress and possibilities, I invite us together to continue to listen to survivors who are beautiful turtles who carry communities of homes on their bodies. And that together may we see the possibility in new friendships with our local organizations, who everyday show us that with every crisis, even a housing crisis, there is a turning point.