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 ar