It took two cops to nab Charles Donovan outside Coffee to the People on the corner of Haight and Masonic streets. Dressed in camouflage and carrying a sign that read, “Need food,” Donovan was whisked away, ordered to remove his sunglasses and duly patted down. The officers told him he was being detained. A barista saw the scene and ran outside to intervene. Donovan, eventually, was let go with a warning as the cops wrote down his name in their notebooks. His offense? Reclining on a large backpack against a tree outside the coffee house, an activity that stands in violation of San Francisco’s newly enacted “sit-lie” ordinance. Dozens of others haven’t gotten off as easily as Donovan since the city started enforcing the law in February. None, yet, have gone to jail for a repeat offense; but that could soon change in the coming months, eventually costing the city nearly $4,000 per arrest after the third offense.
Category: Homelessness
Posted inCity Hall, Homelessness
City tries lottery system for homeless shelter beds
One of San Francisco’s principal shelters is gambling on a new lottery system, operational as of today, that it says will more effectively allocate available beds for homeless people. The plan by Multi-Service Center-South, a 300-bed shelter at Fifth and Bryant streets, is aimed at ending competition among shelter seekers, who line up daily during the early morning hours in the hopes of obtaining one of 60 single-night bed reservations available across the city.
Posted inHomelessness, Neighborhoods
Are food service providers really to blame for human waste in the Tenderloin’s streets?
First of two articles about hygiene options for San Francisco’s homeless
This much is clear: the lack of public restroom facilities in the Tenderloin is causing a stench. Fecal matter covers the streets, making it nearly impossible to walk without looking down to dodge the droppings. But what is less clear is who’s to blame.
At the end of February, SF Weekly, The Examiner and SF Gate each ran stories accusing food service providers of not offering adequate bathroom facilities to accompany their operations – effectively saying that they were stuffing people with food, then giving them no place to go afterwards.
However, an investigation by the Public Press showed that the largest non-profit kitchens, which serve food more than three days a week to thousands of hungry people in the Tenderloin, also provide restroom facilities.
Posted inCity Hall, Homelessness
Computer system shutdown hurts homeless at city shelters
A computer failure forced San Francisco homeless shelter residents to wait hours in the cold to gain admittance as staffers turned to pen and paper to register those who needed assistance.
The system, known as Coordinated Homeless Assistance through Guidance and Effective Services went offline on March 12 as the city’s Human Services Agency underwent seismic upgrades at its building on Otis Street.
Posted inCity Hall, Homelessness, News
Steering city’s homeless focus from sin to sickness
In her new book on homelessness in San Francisco, “Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders,” Teresa Gowan describes how former Mayor Frank Jordan’s framing of the issue in terms of crime and sin evolved into Willie Brown’s conflicted policies, finally emerging as Gavin Newsom’s version of “authoritarian medicalization” policies, most controversially the policy idea that got him elected in 2003, Care Not Cash. This essay condenses some of the discussion of the book (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).
San Francisco, a historical stronghold of the labor movement, civil rights activism and other social movement activity, embodies the tension between valuable public space and progressive politics to a high degree, an important reason for the central position of the “homelessness problem” in the city’s electoral politics over the last 25 years.
Posted inHomelessness, Housing, News
Homeless advocates say federal government has key to ending problem
San Francisco is not alone in its public housing woes and a homeless activist group’s report said it is up to the federal government to lay groundwork for housing to end homelessness.
Recent attempts by policymakers to create and preserve housing are just the first steps to housing reform, the Western Regional Advocacy Project wrote in an update of its 2006 report, “Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures.” The update was released in July.
Posted inHomelessness, News
Reforms aim at saving shelter beds
San Francisco’s adult homeless shelter system is seeing fresh attempts at reform on two fronts: one through the settlement of a lawsuit, the other through new legislation. Since July 2004, more than 400 shelter beds have been eliminated, and the lawsuit settlement between the city of San Francisco and the Western Regional Advocacy Project will spare further reduction from budget cuts for this fiscal year.
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Posted inCity Hall, Homelessness, News, Social Services
Long-planned closure of homeless shelter sparks controversy
A homeless shelter at 150 Otis St. shut down this month, but will reopen sometime in 2012 as a homeless shelter for veterans. Swords to Plowshares, a nonprofit organization catering to homeless veterans, will run the facility. While homeless activists warn that the city will lose 59 beds, officials maintain they can fill the need because the shelters overall have about 100 vacancies a night.
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Posted inCity Hall, Health, Homelessness
Brakes put on indigent transportation program
The homeless and disabled are facing proposed cuts to a program that provides them with transportation to pick up prescriptions and obtain medical treatment. Mobile Assistance Patrol is facing a $300,000 reduction in funds for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, which means that the transportation service will operate for shelter clients only at night.
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Posted inCity Hall, Health, Homelessness
Marathon public hearing decries cuts in health services
An overflow crowd at San Francisco City Hall testified into the early morning hours over proposed cuts in the public health budget. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposed 2010-2011 budget would trim $6 million from mental health and substance abuse services in the city.