Candidate goes homeless to investigate shelter care without cash
On October 29, 2002, I began a seven-night stay in our homeless shelters to experience the conditions first hand and to see what kind of care is available for those who need it. Below are my nightly experiences with our shelter system.
The Department of Elections allows any registered voter to write an argument against any ballot measure, and then they select the official opponent of each measure by lottery. I won the lottery. I wrote an argument against four ballot measures and won the privilege of being the official opponent of Proposition M, N, and O in the Voter Information Pamphlet (VIP) sent out to 450,000 registered voters for the November 2002 election.
Proposition N was the ballot measure that would change the city for better or worse. I believe that it will make the homeless problem worse and cause more panhandling and petty crimes because there is little CARE in Care Not Cash, Prop. N.
?Seven nights in hell?
The insane asylum Night one - Tuesday October 29, 2002
I entered my name in the bed lottery at two of our city homeless shelters before the deadline and lost in both but was in the first column of the long waiting list at Multi Service Center (MSC) South. I returned to the shelter at 7:00 p.m. and was the second last person in the door before it closed. There were about forty other men on the sidewalk, including a veteran my age and a younger frail man with a walker cane. Inside, I asked a man on the stairway in front of me what would happen to those men, where will they sleep. He said that there was a winter shelter opening in some gymnasium but he did not know where it was located. I could feel guilty for taking a bed from someone who was homeless, but I am the eyes of the non-homeless voters to experience the care we provide first hand. If I were not in line, there would only be 39 men without care.
My fellow homeless and I waited about 15 minutes in a stairway leading to the third floor as the staff checked us in and assigned us a bed or a mat on the floor. I felt like I was checking into an insane asylum. A young white man in his mid thirties was arguing with a Hispanic guy about the people who were trying to kill him and how he would kill them before the night was over. The conversation went round in circles. I just rolled my eyes. He reminded me of Bevan Dufty, candidate for Supervisor in District 8, but crazy.
The old black man in front of me in his sixties got to choose between a one-night bed or a mat on the floor for a week. He chose the mat. As I walked into the room, I counted around 200 beds. I got the bed next to the Hispanic guy, with the crazy guy one bed away. I was so glad to take my shoes off. I had blisters on both feet from all the walking I did in uncomfortable shoes. The Hispanic guy got changed into his nightclothes then took a bath in cheap aftershave right in front of me. I slept in my clothes. One guy offered to sell his bed and sleep in the streets for two dollars. There were guys going around selling food, single cigarettes, and earplugs. I wondered why the ear plugs. I found out after the lights went out at 9:00. The room actually got louder after lights out, many people talking, someone playing soft rock music. I felt like I was in a cheap motel. The giant Coke sign across the street lit the room with red, then white, then no light and repeated the light show again and again. The windows had no blinds and were open for ventilation because there were so many people in the room.
The crazy guy and the Hispanic went to a corner of the room to do drugs and than came back to chat. I was thinking, �Why am I torturing myself, when I have a nice quiet room with a big comfortable bed at home.� Fortunately, I have no problem sleeping and could sleep standing up if I had to. The crowd woke me a few times in the night with loud voices, talk of drugs, and even talk of Prop N. I heard some black guy say, �We are all going to loose our General Assistance because of you guys doing drugs.� I expect that there will be a lot more panhandling and petty theft when Prop N is enacted next July. Many people who are now in the shelters will be pushed onto the streets as those on GA get pushed into the shelters.
The lights came on at 6:00 a.m. with a big tattooed man telling people to wake up. This yanked me out of my dream of solving the many problems of building a humane homeless shelter that served the needs of the clients. I got dressed, went down stairs, put my name on the lottery for tonight, and began to walk home.
I notice litter and was amazed at all the litter on the streets. We spend millions of dollars sweeping the streets with expensive green machines and an army of men in orange vests with trash bags and the streets are still filthy. At home, I usually sit for an hour when I awaken at 5:00 a.m. and let ideas and thoughts just flow through me. I did this as I walked home in my uncomfortable shoes. I though about all the able-bodied men who were in the shelter last night and how easy it would be to build housing for them or teach them to build housing for themselves and place these houses all over the city. I saw a hundred places that we could put them as I walked the thirty blocks to my house. We could exchange simple high-quality tiny houses for one of these men taking care of one city block. We could spend much less money than we now spend sweeping the streets and house many of the homeless. This makes me angry that we have not made this connection. I plan to give my sore feet a rest and bicycle to three shelters to put my name on the lists for tonight. More tomorrow.
Looking in the window Night two - Wednesday October 30, 2002
Had my name on two bed lotteries south of market, lost out at MSC South, with a bad spot on the waiting list. Checked my luck at A Mans Place, discovered I was the last number picked, told to come back before 10 p.m. Got my hand stamped and bicycled to the Commonwealth Club to hear the Prop N Prop O debates. I am a lucky guy; I submitted a ballot argument against four of the 20 measures on the November ballot and won the Department of Elections lottery big time, making me the official opponent of three measures M, N, and O. They are about how we use nagging problems and campaign promises to get our mayors elected.
After the debate, I bicycled to the shelter. I first visited A Man�s Place in 1999 when it was first applying to be a shelter funded by the city and I was running for mayor. It still annoys me that some of the staff act as if I am annoying them when I walk up to the window and ask a question. Even though I look like a homeless person, I am still the customer of the services that they are paid to provide. I have a right to interrupt their conversation with their coworkers about the daily news or the ballgame.
A Man�s Place is about 500 feet from the Bay Bridge at Harrison and Fremont. Most of the sleeping accommodations are in a big gymnasium-like room filled with what seems like hundreds of army cots. The bathroom has three showers and three toilets, one with the tank broken. Perhaps the guests were sitting on the toilet too long because the partitions are gone. If you are homeless in San Francisco, you are glad to see any toilet.
Most of the men in the big room had cots for more than one day. My winning lottery number got me a 3� thick vinyl covered mat on the floor of the dining room. There were about twenty of us on the floor, only five scored gray wool blankets. I�m a morning person, early to bed, early to rise, etc. A Man�s Place is set up for night people. Several of us tried to sleep before lights out, which seemed late. After lights out, staff came in several times turning the blinding florescent lights on to go searching for something. Three of us early birds were out before morning lights came on. My name was on line #3 on the lottery page and I was on the street by 5:38.
Several very new very tall high-end residential buildings dwarf A Man�s Place on the bayside. As I lay on my mat, I could look into the apartments of some people who must have spectacular views of the Bay. They could also look into our dining room and see twenty homeless guys sleeping on the floor without blankets. I wondered what they thought, or told their guests, or did they just look at the Bay? We seem to be building a lot of high-end housing in the City but not much at average or low-income levels. I would like to educate the homeless and those at lower income levels to imagine the American Dream shrunk very small. I built this tiny house, just 100 square feet, which has a bathroom with a bathtub, a kitchen, eating/sleeping area, large closet with a washer/dryer. The materials cost me 12 grand at Home Depot. When I talk to homeless people who were raised in bigger spaces, they cannot imagine living in a 10� x 10� space. Yet, they sleep on the floor of a shelter where they can reach out and touch someone in any direction. This little house is in my back yard in Bernal Heights. After my first night in the insane asylum, I walked the 30 blocks home, sat in the easy chair in the little house, and thought I died and went to heaven. My own room, a toilet with privacy, and sanity.
We need to solve this homeless problem. It angers me that homeless advocates block any attempt to build decent shelters because they want housing and are willing to let homeless people die on the streets until such time that we build housing for them. We are not building housing for people who earn $50,000 let alone those earning nothing. New York City has shelter beds for 32,000 people; we have cots and mats for 2,500 with 7,000 people sleeping on cardboard in the streets. The Coalition on Homelessness and other advocates need to get out of the way and let us build a decent shelter system that temporally houses our homeless until we can build simple decent housing with care included for those who need it. I am a building contractor and I could teach many of the homeless that I met in the shelters the building trades necessary to build very small high quality housing for themselves and others. There is dignity in building your own house.
Sitting on the sidewalk Night three - Thursday October 31, 2002
Put my name on the lotteries as usual, lost on both. On Wednesday, I had entered my fictitious name in the cities new computer registration system, where you can reserve a mat on the floor of a gymnasium in Bay View. I went to the South Beach Homeless Resource Center to see if I could reserve myself a place tonight, but the receptionist said they had no space. She told me to go back to MSC South by 7:30 p.m. I did. They started calling numbers from the four-column waiting list and lined us up against the wall. The first ten or twenty got a mat or bed for a week, the next twenty for one night, and the rest got to wait on the sidewalk or go away.
Two nights ago, I wondered what happens to those still on the sidewalk when they close the door. Now I know. About twenty of us, poor slobs got locked out tonight. They tell you that they will call the Mobil Assistance Patrol (MAP) van to take us to another shelter. The van came and took two women from this shelter to another shelter and did not return. What they didn�t tell us was that there were no shelter beds, mats, or space in any shelter in the city this night, the last night before GA checks. The head staff guy later came out, took our names, gave us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and went back inside.
Two hours later and ten degrees colder, the line had dwindled to ten sitting or sleeping on the sidewalk. The main staff guy came out for his break and said he would take care of us when he returned. Fifteen minutes later, he returned and invited us, now seven, inside. He gave us each the standard homeless issue gray wool blanket and told us we could find a place in the smoking room.
I hate the American tobacco companies more that any drug dealer and I thought that is was illegal to smoke in any public building in California. Well, an inordinate number of the homeless are addicted to tobacco, and we seem to look the other way when it comes to enforcing laws about public conduct and the homeless. The smoking room was a huge room at the front of the building, with about 100 poor souls sleeping on the floor covered with thin blankets. It reminded me of a scene from a movie where the survivors of a disaster were crowded together, but these victims have no normal life to return to. The smoking room was so thick with tobacco smoke that my eyes were burning. Now I know why we made it illegal to smoke in public buildings where other people are confined. I went to the main desk and asked if there was any other shelter. The staff person called a central number and was told there all the shelters were full. I bedded down in a wide hallway just outside the smoking room next to a tattered but elegant elderly woman and her distinguished husband. She was a chain smoker and a coffee drinker at 11:30 p.m. This was the room where the restless spent their time late at night. One young Chinese man paced the floor asking for a cigarette or dime.
During the day, I bought a five-pound bag of wrapped candies that I planned to deposit at the main desk as I checked into any shelter. While waiting outside MSC South, I watched several homeless guys come out with handfuls of candy. The wrappers dropped to the ground as they unconsciously unwrapped each piece. I hate litter and have a plan for homeless people to clean their own street in exchange for permanent housing. Our streets have gotten progressively more littered and filthy, as the homeless problem has worsened in recent years.
When the next shift took over, I was awakened and told that sleeping in the hallway was a fire hazard. I moved to a chair in the smoking room where I sat for an hour with my blanket over my head to filter the smoke. Just as I fell asleep, the same guy asked me if I had a bed. He assigned me a bed number 269 on the third floor. I went up stairs and was directed by the tattooed guy who woke me two mornings before. Bed #269 was occupied by a big black man who was abruptly awakened and asked for proof of ownership. I did not want his bed so I went back down stairs for another assignment. They just gave the last bed away while I was upstairs, but he took me to another room behind the main desk with about fifty people sleeping on the floor. He found a mat in the corner and offered it to me. I was asleep in five minutes, my head rested on a five-pound candy pillow with visions of candy wrappers blowing around the streets. I woke up at 5:00 a.m., folded my blanket, thanked the guy at the desk for the accommodation, and hit the road.
The snoring sea Night Four - Friday November 1, 2002
On my way out of MSC�South this morning the man at the desk told me, there would be beds in the shelters tonight because today the day that people got their GA checks. This in mind I stayed at home until 7:30 p.m. I had an appointment with Elaine Wu of Evening Magazine to do a film story on the Smallest House in San Francisco that I built as a piece of the homeless solution.
She and her cameraman arrived at 12:30. I hadn�t shaved in a week and felt that I had to explain why I looked like a homeless man not a building contractor or a future mayoral. We spent about two hours talking and filming about this tiny house and where it fit between the homeless and the marginally housed of San Francisco and how it might house a volunteer who would cleanup and keep an eye on the neighborhood. They asked me to take the No on N sign off the house because the election would be over by the time their piece aired and they did not want to give equal time to Newsom and Care Not Cash.
I spent the afternoon and early evening writing and doing research on the internet. It got dark and late and I sensed that I really did not want to go out to another shelter and sleep on the floor. I took a nap in my very comfortable bed and wanted a good night�s sleep. I was debating how and why I could rationalize giving up my seven-night stay in shelters. I finally jumped on my bike and headed to the South Beach drop-in center. I sat and watched people watching TV for two hours until a guy asked if anyone needed a place to sleep for the night. I got in line and they entered my fictitious name and SS# in their date base for the third time and reserved a mat in Provident Church gymnasium shelter, way out on Third Street.
A MAP van showed up in ten minutes and two guys loaded four of us up for a very fast ride to the shelter. I sat next to a 63-year-old man in a simple suit without a tie. He was well spoken and rather new to being homeless. He had stayed at this shelter Halloween night and complained that ten guys pushed their way to the front of the line because they knew someone in the shelter. We stood on the sidewalk and talked for an hour about life that leads to homelessness and his aversion to tobacco smoke. The black guys on both side of us alternately lit up cigarettes and he moved on either side of me. I became the filter. He lived in San Francisco since the late 1970�s then moved to Florida for ten years and came back here five years ago, regretting he had not bought a house in the 70�s when they were $40,000.00 and he had a good job. He got depressed, lost his job, got evicted, even though an agency was willing to help with his back and current rent, because he could not find another job. He keeps himself very clean and presentable but has no idea how he would ever survive until his social security kicks in years from now. There must be tens of thousands of people like him in the City who are one paycheck from becoming homeless.
A black vet next to us, probably nearing sixty, over heard our conversation about tobacco and he acknowledged his addiction. I was saying that the average smoker spends $1,800.00 a year for one pack a day habit, first and last months rent on a small studio. He owned a small house in Oakland for thirty years but lost it in a divorce. He is # 33 on a waiting list to get into some permanent housing and sleeping in shelters until the number comes up.
Eleven o�clock arrived and they checked us in to a basketball court with half the floor covered with blue tarps and camouflage colored mats and basic cotton blankets. They did not have my name in the computer but it didn�t matter. The staff poured fruit punch into Styrofoam cups and set out tuna sandwiches and donuts. I was first in line, ready to dig in, when a black man pulled me back. We had to pray first. He lectured us, with his warm brown eyes focused on me, about why I should embrace Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. I had heard this before and had to wait almost ten minutes for the prayer to end. I felt like a sinner for being in a hurry to eat. It is strange, both times I played at being homeless, my body and mind went on auto pilot�feed me and I never turn down food any time any where. Maybe my subconscious body/mind is concerned about starving or freezing to death.
Lights went out right after dinner and the snoring began. It seems like half the homeless snore and some of them loudly. I woke up in the middle of the night; the snoring had synchronized, with one loud uniform snore like a huge wave on the sea, in and out. It made me laugh as I went back to sleep. Lights came on about 6:00 and they threw us out at 6:30 with no breakfast.
I headed in the direction of what was supposed to be a 24-hour drop in center about ten blocks away. I ran into a young surfer from L.A. who was in the shelter with us. He told me a lot about the shelters, where to go, where the food was good, etc. He said he was homeless by choice but it was beginning to be a drag. He stayed in the shelters most the time and worked when he needed money. He was going to Hawaii soon to do some surfing and stay in shelters in Honolulu in a few weeks. We talked about what a drag it must be for the old guys who did not choose to be homeless and could not get a job. He said he was going to rely on Social Security when he was old. I laughed aloud. I told him that I was 52 and had no expectations of ever getting Social Security and I slept next to a 63-year-old man who would be lucky to be able to afford housing when he gets it.
That surfer boy is in for a rude awakening when he gets old unless he plans for his own retirement. We walked to the drop in center together, I told him of my plans to be elected mayor and my housing plans for the homeless. The center was closed and a line was forming. The surfer walked a couple of blocks to piss in the Bay. I waited in line until one of the arriving staff parked and sat in his car blasting rap music for us as the sun rose high over Hunters Point Ship Yard. I hit the road, seeking a quiet breakfast at home, as I hit third Street, I saw the surfer panhandling at a local McDonalds drive up window. He asked me for a quarter, so I gave him the change I had to take the bus home. When Prop N passes, I predict that we will see twice the number of panhandlers on the street. Every fast food restaurant will have a panhandler like this guy and they will work in shifts.
It took me about half an hour to walk home through neighborhoods unknown to me. I saw many parcels of land that would be great for building one or two or a dozen of my ShelterOne volunteer housing units. Then there is Hunters Point Shipyard. Five hundred acres of land that the Navy wants to give us along with a hundred million dollars to get them off the hook for the toxic wastes they deposited there in the last 90 years.
What a great place to build housing for all of the homeless and to rehabilitate them before they move back into San Francisco, California, or where ever else they came from and might be persuaded to move back to with a tiny house in tow at Uncle Sam's expense of course. So much for there being no land in San Francisco, it is an unexamined myth. What better place to shelter homeless veterans than a former Navy property. A very large percentage of homeless people are veterans and this is how we repay their service to their country. What a disgrace.
Something died in the church Night Five - Saturday November 2, 2002
In the afternoon, I bicycled to the newly opened Mission Resource Center, searching for the good Mexican food and the shelter that the surfer talked of. The guy at the desk did not know much but told me they only do intake Monday through Friday, but that he thought that I could just drop in and that the church was on South Van Ness at 21st Street. I bicycled up there and inquired at two churches. I recognized one doing canned food distribution months ago. A young woman directing a youth program told me to come back after 6:00 p.m.
I arrived to see two men standing by the door, just after church bells declared it night. An older bearded guy in shorts with a backpack leaning on his cane greeted me. I smelled something that reminded me of a dead cat. The other guy told me they did not open until 7:00 p.m. I bicycled up to 24th street to check out the Day of the Dead parade that was gearing up, with loud drums and many white painted faces. I got back to the church by 7:00 to see about 20 men standing on the sidewalk. Ten minutes later, a Spanish speaking man unlocked the iron gate. I learned that I needed a red slip of paper procured earlier in the week to get in. Five of us remained paperless, on the sidewalk outside as men with red slips of paper trickled in past the gatekeeper. We could look into the open atrium of the building as men disappeared in rooms. About an hour later, I could see men coming out from a shower room, changing clothes at their locker, and preparing for bed. The bearded guy told me that they would let us in about 8:30 after all those with the red slips were in and bedded down.
The gatekeeper spoke no English and struck up a conversation with three Hispanic guys on the sidewalk. They pooled their change and one was sent off to buy cigarettes for the four out of five who smoked. Most smokers do not consider cigarettes to be trash or throwing them on the ground to be littering. One of the smokers was eating a rolled fruit chew and I expected him to throw the packaging to the ground when he finished. I bet myself a nickel that he would, but he held it for ten minutes until the gatekeeper finished the last cigarette and threw the empty package into the street. The man with the empty fruit wrapper threw his trash a second later almost unconsciously. We have a seldom-enforced $154.00 fine for littering, that could be a powerful educational tool when levied against someone with a low paying job like the gatekeeper.
I was standing in the doorway to stay out of the cold, as people in costume walked wide around the homeless encircled in tobacco smoke. Many empty MUNI buses were speeding to the maintenance yard for the night. Every time the bearded guy got within five feet of me, I noticed this bad odor, and I moved away from him.
Shelter curfew time arrived and the gatekeeper let the undocumented in. I was honored to be taken into the church sanctuary to sleep; it was beautiful and very colorfully painted. Some churches get good marks for caring for the less fortunate. There were about thirty men sleeping on the floor of the new looking church. The man who checked us in sent us to get a mattress and blankets from a trailer at the back of the property. We walked through two other large rooms with about fifty men bedded down for the night with Spanish TV playing in each room. The bearded guy and I were the only guests in line who spoke only English, his name was Ronald, he was 56, and he smelled very bad. The church had showers available and he had said that he had his own towel and soap, but he did not avail himself of the facilities.
I was assigned floor space right next to him and promptly moved my mattress about ten feet away. The director moved me back next to him saying that they needed the floor space for other people. I have a very poor sense of smell. A dead cat ten feet away from me could go unnoticed by my nose; however, his man smelled so bad that even I could not miss it. Resigned to my fate, I took off my wool cap, rolled up my tattered jacket for a pillow, took my shoes off, and got into bed. I covered my body and head with the blanket, hoping to filter out the stench; not sure, I could stay the night. I thought about going home, but the homeless cannot go home, this is home, stench and all. Minutes later I heard someone walk around the room spraying something from a can with a very heavy fruity smell. He sprayed it throughout the room after spending a long time near the smelly man. I felt the cloud of air freshener land on me and the heavy fragrance sink into me; the overwhelming artificial smell masked his odor. I slept with my head covered by the blanket that masked the usual mantra of snoring men.
I was tired of this ordeal and slept soundly though the night until 5:00 a.m. when someone�s alarm went off. There was a big Spanish looking woman who I think was a man sleeping by the door who loudly told them to turn that f---ing thing off, not very ladylike, but thanks. I saw her come in earlier in the evening. A few Hispanic guys giving her strange looks with laughing comments. When she first came in, she got a bucket and mop and cleaned the floor. Before lights out, she was actually ironing and folding her clothes. Her hair was done up above her head and she was very neat. After she yelled in English about the wakeup alarm, I wanted to give her my card and talk with her about cooping as a homeless person, but I was ready to hit the road and the lights were still off and I looked like a bum not a mayor.
Jailed for sleeping in the cold. Night six - Sunday November 3, 2002
The guide to shelters said check in at Episcopal Sanctuary is from 4 to 6:00 p.m. I arrived by bicycle by 5:45 and was told that the guide was wrong, that they have a lottery. Name on the list in the morning, results in the evening. A nice Irishman with few teeth, his skin as black as midnight and the voice of an angel, told me to go to the shelter at Fell Street near City Hall. I locked up my bike by the bright lights at the shelter entrance and walked to Civic Center. I arrived too early and they told me to come back after 7:00. I walked to City Hall, sat on the grass, and enjoyed the architectural splendor. I imagined a weeklong homeless summit where the homeless entered Civic Auditorium without hope and left a week later believing that an end to homeless was possible. They could tour portable housing built by homeless people and find hope for a new way of life.
I returned to Fell Street shelter at 7:30, entered my younger brothers name on the computer assuring me a bed at Ella Hill Hutch emergency shelter at Webster & Golden Gate. I was told to stand against the wall, as there were no chairs. I sat on the cold floor reading the paper for about an hour waiting for the MAP van. It arrived and took about eight people to the shelter. This older woman with a lot of baggage and I waited for the driver to return 15 minutes later to take us. I presumed that those who preceded us, both men and women would be checked in and bedded down when we arrived. I was in for a rude awakening. We were dropped off on the sidewalk in the dark, with no instructions where to go. Fortunately, Ruth had been there last night. We walked through a dark park with people milling around, then onto a long dimly lit walkway between tennis courts and a recreation center. There were well over a hundred men and women waiting in a line of sorts.
I saw a man dressed in a suit and tie, who looked like Milton Marks sitting on a large flat suitcase reading and mumbling to himself. There were many in the line who seemed mentally ill. I kept saying �Unbelievable� to myself as I thought about how we treat these people, and the rainy season had not yet arrived. Tonight seemed colder than last night and these people were waiting in this alley to be let into a gym. The doors opened about nine-thirty and the line slowly checked into the shelter. There were ten people in front of me when the door closed. These people wait in the cold for two hours and are turned away. Five men behind me headed for the street cursing. I was pissed and tired of being a passive homeless person.
I knocked on the door loudly and identified myself and asked why these other seventeen men, several of them seniors, could not wait inside the shelter. The courteous doorman said that they did not have enough blankets and though they had mats on the floor, they could not let people in without blankets. It was the rule and the 150 blankets that they were supposed to have come, did not all arrive, and they would get in trouble if they let people in without blankets. I told him to call George Smith, or MAPs to get more blankets or a van to pick these people up. He said that the other shelters were full and there was nowhere for MAPs to take them. I said that there were blankets to the shelter where we came from and the van should go pick them up. He reluctantly let remaining men in, one by one, after testing them for drunkenness and rejection three. He asked me if I wanted a mat. I told him no, I was walking back to the shelter at Civic Center.
It was after ten and getting colder. I arrived at the shelter ten minutes later and told the desk attendant who checked me in earlier, that I did not get a mat and asked him if I could stay there or go to another shelter. He said they were all full. I told him the other shelter needed blankets and he had some in the closet. He said they are our blankets. He told me to go sit on the floor and wait. I told him I was going to sleep on the street. I was so pissed. I walked down Market Street and saw a man sleeping in a doorway on a piece of cardboard. I walked to Civic Center Park, picked up a piece of damp cardboard and walked up the steps to City Hall to the Mayor's favorite doorway. I placed my cardboard mattress on the granite floor, set my pack as a pillow, laid down, pulled my wool stocking cap over my face to block the light, and tried to go to sleep. It was cold and I was shivering, but I was pissed. Care Not Cash was going to pass in two nights and hundreds more homeless were going to go without shelter or money. A few people went in and out of City hall though it was near eleven. Supervisor Peskin walked up and asked me what I was doing. I told him the story and he said I should come to the Board meeting tomorrow and they will investigate the blanket problem. About a half an hour later, two deputies came out and said that I could not sleep here, go sleep in the park. I said that the shelters were full and I was staying the night.
I turned on my side and went to sleep. Some noise and bright lights awakened me and someone shook me. Two big deputies ordered me to get up. They told me that I could not sleep there. I told them my story and that I was not leaving. They tried to persuade me to leave and not make their life difficult. They offered to find me a place to sleep. I told them what I was not going to leave. They resolved to arrest me. I was handcuffed and in the van in five minutes. Deputies make the handcuffs extra snug when they have extra work. We sped off and they almost hit a car running a light. They stopped, and arrested the driver because he had a few drinks. We made two more stops at local police stations and within an hour we had six in the back and two in the front and sped off to the Hall of Justice.
At the back entrance, they check you in. The service was much better than at any shelter. They search you, take all your things, and lock you in a cell. They question you, fingerprint you, photograph you, and put you back into a cell. They photograph you again, scan your fingers again, do a thumbprint, and move you to another cell where you can make phone calls. I called my friend Bart, told him I was in jail, and would be out soon.
They gave my things back to me, handed me a ticket, and said to be in court by 9:00 a.m. this morning, then released me. I walked the six long blocks to where I locked my bike up eleven hours ago. The guys I was in jail with joked that the bike would probably be stolen. It was; the cut cable lock was on the street. The bike was a big help to me and saved my tired feet a lot of walking. If I were truly homeless, this would be a devastation loss. I take things in stride and I have another older bike at home. I was neutral about the event and walked quickly home, thinking about what I would have to say about the shelters when I spoke before the Board of Supervisors this afternoon and my not guilty plea and defense in court later this morning.
Being homeless is hell.
Note: I spoke before the Board of Supervisor that afternoon and was given a note from Supervisor Peskin that he would investigate the situation with blankets and people being turned away. I was later told that the Mayor�s Office of Homelessness reported that there was no blanket problem and that no one was turned away from any shelter. They are very clever. I was actually never turned away from a shelter. The door was just closed in my face twice and I was asked to wait in the cold for two hours. If I was still there just before midnight when they do their vacancy/turn away count, they would put me somewhere, like the smoking room. Would you wait in the lobby of a nice hotel for two to four hours to get your room or would you go elsewhere? This is why homeless people find doorways to sleep in and why they take wool blankets from the shelters when they stay in them. Supervisor Peskin may now believe that people are not turned away from our shelters. Would George Smith lie to him? See attached letter from George J. Smith III
A night at the Ritz Night Seven - Monday November 4, 2002
Being homeless is a lot of work; I want my old job back. Drove the little GEM electric truck, which is plastered with No on N signs, to a busy intersection South of Market and walked to the Episcopal Sanctuary where I had put my name on their waiting list this morning on my way home from jail. I walked in the door on 8th Street about ten after seven and panicked for a moment thinking I missed the time window and was locked out. I read a sign at the desk saying to go to Howard Street for intake. There were about 30 men mostly black waiting on the sidewalk. About 7:20, the crowd snapped to attention to the familiar sound of the door being unlocked and forced open. Listen up said the gatekeeper as he starter reading from the lottery list. The first three names were for 30-day beds, a prize if you are homeless, like being sentenced to jail if you are not. The rest of the names were for overnight beds. I really wanted to get in because of my experience with this shelter in 1999 when I stayed homeless day and night for nine days.
I have fond memories of the cook at this shelter in 1999, he was like a Jewish mother heaping on more food. This big potbellied man must have wanted us poor souls to have lots of fat on our bones for those cold nights on the street. We had beans and hotdogs one night and he came around the tables asking if we enjoyed his cuisine. He would pile on more and more hotdogs until you were ready to bust. He later came around with lots of wrapped chocolates and poured them out on the table. They looked like seconds but to us they were the finest. He looked like he had had a rough life, perhaps been homeless himself, but he was in his glory here watching us enjoy his cooking. I will never forget this man.
The Sanctuary was once a gay bathhouse in the 1980�s and still had the little rooms that were rented out for private sex. They were now providing sanctuary for the weary. Not much sex going on here, in fact most of these men sleep in their dirty clothes. I had expected to sleep on a mat on the dining room floor after dinner was cleared away, but we were upgraded to first class, the Sanctuary had became the Ritz. Upstairs was a vast maze of rooms full of small iron bunk beds. They were narrower than the bunk I slept on as a kid with my older brother below. They had a steel mesh grid with springs at the edge for comfort, with a three-inch thick mattress on top. I got a bottom bunk in the corner. I sat on my bunk and my butt almost hit the floor. I guess I put on a little weight since I was a kid. Each room had six lockers and a chair in the corner. The smooth tile floor was very clean and each person got two clean tattered sheets and a blanket. I got a pure white blanket and the guy behind me said that I really scored. I was tempted to give it to him, but I kept the treasure for myself.
The bathrooms and showers were cleaner than I remembered from my last visit and there was lots of toilet paper, huge rolls. If you are homeless, toilet paper is like grocery bags at CostCo, a rare commodity to be treasured and appreciated. Most shelters do not have toilet paper in the bathrooms because the rolls disappear. You had to go to the main desk to get a few sheets, as you needed them. I knew I was living at the Ritz tonight because there were two giant rolls in each toilet stall and there were paper towels at the sinks. I had gotten used to drying my hands on my grimy pants before going to eat or to bed. I was hoping there would be a chocolate under my pillow, but there was no pillow, just my pure white blanket. But, this was the homeless Ritz. Two of my seven nights in shelters there was no blanket, just a vinyl mat on the floor. I slept in what I recognized as a bed only two nights out of seven.
I walked around the upstairs sleeping area, looking into rooms, an endless maze of tiny rooms with no doors. I once visited 8th and Howard in the 80�s and this brought back memories of those days. Lots of wild sex in those rooms, but here now sex was forbidden and there was no privacy but in a shower stall. I wonder how homeless people of any sexual persuasion have sex. Men and women cannot sleep in the same shelter or at least not on the same floor. Homelessness is a very unnatural lifestyle. I walked past the TV room, it was filled with men, and a cloud of cigarette smoke drifted toward the light of the TV. I want back to my room as men prepared for sleep and looked thought the two adjoining rooms, each with a pair of bunk beds. A small number of the homeless are very clean. One black man prepared for his shower, carefully folding his day clothes. Upon returning from the shower, he carefully rubbed oil or lotion all over his body, before climbing into bed. Some of these men were actually sleeping in their underwear, not their dirty street clothes. After watching this, I stripped down to my shorts and slipped between my luxurious sheets. This bed was like a steel hammock, your head and feet are elevated, and your torso sagged in the middle. If you lay on your side, your knees or your butt rest on the metal frame and the rest of your body slides into the hole. However, this was luxury compared to last night standing in a cold breeze until after eleven, then sleeping on the cold granite slab steps of City Hall insulated by a thin piece of damp cardboard, or the cold steel of the Sheriffs van, or the sticky wood benches in the jail cells. This was sanctuary.
With lights out came the usual sound of snoring along with a new sound of squeaky bedsprings. A young man I talked with on the sidewalk who was reading a paperback he found on the street, Heart of Darkness, was sleeping on the next bunk. He had a very dramatic voice, as if he had been trained as a radio announcer. He moaned, groaned, and talked out his dreams as he slept. I started to imagine his dreams and to whom he was taking. Other men would fart and burp loudly, some proud of their skill. Many coughed, some endlessly. I would hate to be sick or have the flu while homeless. I was slow to fall asleep tonight, though I had little sleep the night before. I was savoring the sensory experiences of my last night in hell.
Lights came on at 6:00 a.m. I jumped into my clothes, took my sheets and the white blanket to the laundry, and went down to breakfast. I began helping a man set the tables for breakfast than sat down next to the black Irish angel who had directed me to shelter the night before. It is very strange to see a black man with a voice and Irish brogue like Joe O�Donohugh. This older man, perhaps sixty, was a resident of the Sanctuary and in a program to teach homeless people to cook. I once heard him sing at a homeless rally. He had the voice of an opera singer with an Irish accent. I was honored to be sitting with him. We talked about the cooking program that I had read about on a bulletin board at another shelter.
I have a dream of someday-leading tens of thousands of homeless people to Sacramento and then to Washington D.C. to camp and build a shantytown along with the Mayors of many American cities plagued by homelessness. This army of the homeless would be a powerful force in demanding that the state and federal government take back their responsibility to fund care for the mentally ill and fund construction of housing for the poor that would integrated them back into society, not in high-rise concrete ghettos. The key to my dream of a homeless army camped on the park near the Capital in Sacramento and the great mall in Washington between the Lincoln Memorial and the Federal Capital Building is food. The homeless follow food. To be successful with a long-term visual siege of Sacramento and Washington would take a small army of former homeless cooks and service workers. This morning I was sitting at a table with a small core group of such people. The State and federal government have abrogated their duty to help the lowest members of our society to care for themselves and have dumped the problem and burden of responsibility on big cities. This is wrong. When I am mayor of San Francisco, I will invite the mayors of all big cities to San Francisco to develop a strategy to take our homeless with food, clothing, shelter, and police protection to first our state capital than then on to Washington. We should be building housing and waging a war on homeless not dropping bombs on foreign soil. Building housing creates wealth; war does not. We should be dropping small houses on the Middle East not bombs. We should teach US soldiers to build housing and then send them into Iraq and Palestine to teach refugees to build housing for themselves and others. When they returned from War, they could do the same for our millions of homeless; many who like them are veterans.
I thanked the black Irish saint for his time, walked to my car, and drove home digesting my seven nights as a homeless San Franciscan. I went home planning to vote No on Care Not Cash because of the lack of Care I experienced.
Conclusions from seven nights in our homeless shelters
Wednesday November 6, 2002
Homelessness is an unnatural state for human beings in the modern world. It is a national disgrace in a country like the United States. Every housed person should spend one night in any of our shelters and they would demand that we do better. I stood in the cold night air looking out over a hundred people waiting for our so-called Winter Shelter to open at 10:00 p.m. and I just repeated the word: �Unbelievable!�
Homeless shelters are unhealthy unnatural places to live, even for a very short time. Like a lifeboat, they are a temporary solution in a disaster situation. The disaster of involuntary homelessness has been going on for over 20 years.
If I were mayor, I would declare a homeless emergency. That done, the mayor can act over the objections of most anyone, including members of the Board of Supervisors. We could move most of our homeless out of downtown and the tenderloin within three months. We could build a homeless shelter/rehabilitation center that would house ninety percent of our homeless, 24-hours a day, until they could be reintegrated into society. This will happen one person at a time and it may take many years to accomplish. Abraham Maslow talked about the hierarchy of needs, food, clothing, and shelter being most important. We need to provide the homeless with all the tools, skills, and help they need to go beyond the three basic needs.
Over the objection of the Coalition on Homelessness and other so-called homeless advocates, I would build a permanent shelter system to temporally shelter all homeless people until they can be rehabilitated. The homeless are a vast labor pool that is underutilized. Their productivity may be as little as 25% of that of a housed worker, but I believe that we need to utilize their skills and energy to help them help themselves. We can exchange food, clothing, and decent shelter for volunteer service. I believe that we can create a shelter system where people work for credits that they can spend as they see fit. They could work in and around the shelter to pay for better accommodations within the shelter system. They could work to save for first and last months rent or the down payment on simple affordable housing, built by homeless people outside the shelter system.
We need to discover the aptitudes of every able-bodied homeless person, then teach them skills, and put them to work for credits not cash. We need to teach homeless people to build simple decent housing for themselves and others. I would like to see a construction company staffed by former homeless people who build high-quality ultra-affordable housing throughout the city for the tens of thousands of working poor to buy. There is no security for tenants as your rent is sure to go up, even under rent control. A poor working person who would buy a small affordable unit would be set for life with ownership and a mortgage rate that would not go up and would someday provide security and equity.
I am a building contractor and I could teach any homeless person of my choosing to do any of the building trades necessary to build housing. I met many skilled tradesmen in shelter lines who had drug or alcohol problems that prevented them from keeping a job. We need to give these people the help they need to recover and build housing that they could own and have one less worry to contribute to their addictive behavior.
We need to teach homeless people to be carpenters, painters, cooks, gardeners, street sweepers, guards, guardians, babysitters, housekeepers, bookkeepers, etc. There is dignity in work and pride in accomplishment and ownership. Many illegal immigrants are able-bodied and homeless. Historically immigrants have built much of the infrastructure in America. I could imagine immigrants building enough housing for a long enough time to earn enough volunteer credits to buy several very tiny housing units, which they could sell and return to their native country rich. Building housing creates wealth for all in our society.
Labor and land are the two highest cost components of housing. We will explore the land myth later. If we could develop a labor compensation system where a rehabilitated homeless people could be trained to build housing and own housing in San Francisco due to their volunteer labor, we would be well on the way to solving the homeless problem and the housing crisis nationally.
For the health of the planet, we need to teach people to live more simple lives and to be willing to live in smaller housing units that they own rather than larger units that they rent. Simple decent housing is easy and inexpensive to build. Within one year, a small crew of 100 former homeless people could build 2,000 tiny housing units that could be placed in every neighborhood in the city. Former homeless people trained as gardeners and painters could move into these fully contained houses. They could pay their rent or mortgage on their house by volunteering to maintain the city block in which they live. This could end litter and graffiti in our neighborhoods and give dignity and pride back to people who have lost these personal values.
In the months following the 1906 earthquake and fire we build 5,610 small houses to house the 16, 448 people made homeless by the earthquake and fire and we could do this again. Within six months, we could house all of our homeless population at Hunters Point shipyard and throughout the city.
There are likely tens of thousands of San Franciscans one paycheck from becoming homeless. It is much easier and less expensive to prevent a person from becoming homeless, than to pull someone up from the despair of losing everything and falling into the depths of homelessness. We need to build simple decent housing and allow the working poor to buy these units rather than paying rent. They then will not fall into homelessness because their small home will appreciate and allow for a reverse mortgage in their old age. Rental housing only benefits landlords.
There is a persistent unexamined myth that there is no land in San Francisco. Hunters Point shipyard is 500 acres of land that the Mayor could use to site all homeless people and all homeless services. There will be many people who will give us endless reasons why we cannot use this land for the homeless. Their reasons include that the land is too valuable, it is polluted, we are creating a ghetto, it will hurt the property values in the neighborhood, etc. These people are part of the problem not part of the solution. We need to address their concerns and proceed to house the homeless. The mayor�s declaration of emergency can override all of them. I believe that the people (voters) will support a mayor with legislation that would continue, beyond three months, the emergency powers he would need to continue to deal with the homeless problem.
Being homeless is a very depressing lifestyle with little hope of escape. We need to separate the homeless based on need and the level to which they have fallen. We need to separate the working poor from the drunks and alcoholics. We need to create housing that fits the needs of the different classes of homeless people. We need to stop warehousing people and put them on the conveyer belt out the hopelessness with hope of owning housing. We need to pick the homeless up, give them a long hug, then shake them, and ask them want they want to do about their situation and then help them make the changes needed to return them to society.
We can create a model for care and housing of homeless people that the nation can copy, by pushing through the fear that, �if we do this, more will come.� I believe that when we create a compassionate functional care model, that State and Federal government will fund and replicate the model. In the 1980�s San Francisco developed the model for care and treatment of those suffering with HIV and those dying of AIDS. We developed this comprehensive and compassionate model in spite of fears that drug addicts and gay people from around the country would migrate to San Francisco and bankrupt the city. Neither happened and the Federal Government mandated and funded the model.
We have between seven and fourteen thousand homeless people, but no one knows for sure. We need to develop a system to identify and track the homeless. This would be good for them and us. As usual, so-called homeless advocated oppose this. Many homeless people fear that their past will cause them trouble. We need to develop a new tracking system that enables us to identify and serve the homeless without compromising their rights and safety. Those of us who are housed are clearly identified, tracked, taxes, and marketed to, and the homeless should be treated no different. We need to make a social contract that temporally erases their past and gives them a new start with solid identification, including photo ID, thumbprint scanning, and a debit card that will be as valuable as a checking account. A debit card with a $200.00 initial debit, which will be added to as they do volunteer work within the shelter debit system. If they commit a crime, they will be back into the Criminal Justice System with all of their old history, right where they left it. If they stay clean, sober, and honest, they are a new person in the new system.
And what of the drunks and drug addicts? I believe that we should have a shelter where people can be drunk and even drink alcohol and still have food, clothing, and shelter and have care including alcohol treatment programs available. I believe that we should have a shelter where people can do drugs, be high on drugs, and still have a place to sleep, bathe, and eat. I believe that we should have a shelter where the mentally ill can eat, sleep, bathe, and get the help they need. I believe that all of these shelters should be separate. We also should have a shelter where people who abuse themselves and others while under the influence can be incarcerated and forced to dry out for as long a period as necessary. We need to have a shelter system where there are clear rewards for taking responsibility and penalties for abusing the system.
Once we have a shelter rehabilitation system in place, we can address the people who choose to be homeless and or drunk or high on public streets. I have great respect for the US Constitution and I do not believe that it guarantees a person the right to be homeless, drunk, or on drugs in public. We can then enforce laws already written to prohibit public nuisance. Public spaces can again have benches where a person can sit or sleep during the day. We can put the panhandling profession mostly out of business by asking residents and tourists not to give money to panhandlers because food, clothing, and shelter are available at our shelter system. Those many panhandlers who actually have housing will need to retrain themselves for another career, because their income will dry up.
The way that our society is set up, every time a person makes a mistake a door is closed on them and it is much harder to return to where they were. If you default on a payment, or are late with your rent or file bankruptcy it is very hard to get an apartment or a loan or anything; your credit card interest quadruples, bank changes triple, etc. I personally have bad credit and if I were not a very skilled building contractor, I would be homeless or at best not able to afford to live in San Francisco any longer. If you make mistakes and have felony convictions, you cannot get a job. If you have an addictive personality, you may have difficulty keeping a job, etc.
We need to give these people a new start with a new system that lets them buy simple decent housing, using their own labor to pay for the necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare. We need to give them something substantial to loose if they fail to be responsible.
How are we going to pay for all of this?
Putting all homeless services in one place, preventing expensive healthcare problems, and housing the homeless, not incarcerating them will save the city tens of millions of dollars each year.
It is the responsibility of the state and federal government to care for the mentally ill and to house the homeless. Thanks to Ronald Ragan and Bill Clinton, this responsibility has been unfairly shifted to large cities. This must change if we are to solve this problem. Taxpayers in large cities should not alone bare the burdened of the enormous costs of dealing with homelessness. We pay taxes to the state and federal government and that money should pay for resolve the homeless problem. Willie Brown twice promised to use his considerable influence to persuade the state and federal government to pay the costs of solving the homeless problem. He failed to keep this promise, twice. We actually received less federal and state money under his administration; shame on him.
The homeless follow food. We need to enlist an army of homeless people, many of them veterans to go with our elected officials, first to our state capital and then to Washington D.C., to lay siege to the treasury and the legislature to pay for the solutions that we have developed. As mayor, I will organize every mayor in California who has a problem with homeless people in their city to go with me to Sacramento and demand that the governor take responsibility for paying for this problem, in spite of the budget deficit. Each mayor will bring hundreds or thousands of our homeless to camp in the park adjoining the state capital building. We will stay with our homeless until an emergency appropriations bill is signed by the Governor. When we succeed in Sacramento, we will lead our homeless army to Washington D.C. to camp on the mall between the Capital Building and the Lincoln Memorial with tens of thousands of homeless people, mostly veterans, until the Federal Government budgets the money to pay for the solutions that we have developed. We will take food, tents, healthcare, and police to protect our homeless army from federal or state harassment. We the mayors of America will invite the Governors to join us in lobbying Congress and the President to take back the responsibility for paying for this problem.
This great homeless migration should take place in the late spring and early summer of 2004 so that it will coincide with the presidential election and the reelection of the Members of the House of Representatives. We need to force George Bush to face the bad budget choices he made in 2003 in perusing war not in rebuilding the economy by building housing for the poor.
Homeless is a solvable problem, in spite of Willie Brown�s belief to the contrary. Building housing is easy to do and it develops wealth for the nation. We need to stop building rental housing for the poor. The poor should have the same right to homeownership as any middle class citizen and the same old age benefits of having a mortgage free home.
We will make many mistakes in the process of developing this solution and some people will die in the process. We need to do it anyway because what we have been doing in the last 20 years is not working. We spend 200 million dollars a year on homelessness in San Francisco and we are not building housing for people. This is wrong. Our Mayors since Dianne Feinstein have severely damaged our tourist industry and our reputation as a tourist city. This MUST change.
I ran for mayor because I am tired of politicians making campaign promises to get elected and then not keeping their promise. I do not believe that Gavin Newsom, Tom Ammiano, Angela Alioto, or Susan Leal will do what I have outlined above AND I will.
The following is a statement of policy that I will put on the ballot this year to give the next mayor the mandate to house our homeless people at Hunter�s Point Shipyard.
The City of San Francisco shall hold the land at Hunter�s Point shipyard in trust and build ultra-affordable housing for homeless veterans and other homeless people and shall use all federal pollution mitigation moneys associated with the shipyard transfer to clean up the pollution immediately.