One thing that strikes any visitor to San Francisco is its population of homeless wandering dowtown. This might be true for any big city, descrepancies are always more prominent in such environments. But one thing is that they are much more visible here for they are all gathered in the same area dowtown, in and around the Tenderloin, right next to the financial and commercial heart of the city.
To get an insight into this issue, I had the opportunity to help feed the homeless people preparing meals at Glide Church memorial. Glide is a Church very much dedicated to social causes and to helping minorities. It has been one of the most prominently liberal Churches in the US since 1960, defending homosexual rights but also providing primary health and social care, such as a daily free meal program that serves 3000 meals a day to homeless in dowtown San Francisco.
When I went there on a saturday morning I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into. We were 10 students from St Giles. We went in the basement of the Church where there was a big collective kitchen. We were given masks, plastic apron and gloves, and then we were all set to work as little soldiers on a food assembly line production with a target of 3000 lunch bags. On one side: paper bags, one team filling them with mustard, ketchup, salt and Pepper. On the other side: packs of sliced bread, giant bowls of peanut butter and jam, or cheese and sliced ham, and here we are, making either jam and peanut butter sandwiches or ham and cheese sandwiches, a last team wrapping them into plastic, and filling in the previous paper bag we came across at the beginning of the line.
And that was it. No vegetable, nor fruit. It is not the soundest and healthiest diet you could imagine for already unbalanced people but it's better than nothing, and it fits the american way of eating, sandwich for lunch and a balanced meal for dinner, therefore I assume the meals are more varied in the evening.
I had at this occasion no contact whatsoever with the homeless for we were not to distribute the meals, and there was nobody I could ask questions to.
So I tried to figure out what could have brought about such a situation in San Francisco. I was told many different versions of the story so I had to check.
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| Powel Bart Station (RER), a dormitory for homeless. |
The story began 10 years ago (well it can begin 100 years ago with the story of the Tenderloin area, but I won't go so far) when the mayor of San Francisco set about to tackle the issue of chronic homelessness in the city launching a big social program. Today it seems that it had a mitigated success. The city says it has succeeded in moving 20 000 homeless off its streets over a decade, but they are still there ! How come?
In June 2004, Mayor Gavin Newsome pledged that in 10 years the Homeless problem would be solved. The primary goal was to build 3 000 permanent housing units for homeless, which they almost did for the city is short of 300 units this year, but will reach the target in 2015.
In addition the city also succeeded in finding housing solutions for 11 300 homeless people, when 8 000 have been sent home to friends or family outside SF. Which means almost 20 000 people have been moved in ten years, the size of the town of Fécamp, isn't that amazing?
And yet the most recent count found 7 350 of homeless people according to SF Guardian on line - 6 436 according to the city! (I am amazed by such accuracy). In 2004 they were estimated 3000.
Two main reasons could explain this bottomless pit phenomenon.
First reason can stem from a lack of supportive measures and incentives to social integration. Newsome's ten year program was actually primarily based on permanent housing before adressing people's problems, such as alcohol, drug or mental illness. Nothing seems to have been done to drive those people towards social integration. Moreover the city focused on single men but failed in taking care of single families with children. In addition, when people get a chance to get subsidized housing, there is no conditions for them, like a limited time, to leave. So when people move in... they don't move on. They stay for ever with no incentive to get trained, abide by a schedule, find a job, earn a salary and the situation is stuck.
But the main reason seems to me to be "the magnet theory".
The social Policy of the city, aimed to provide support for the homeless, has unwittingly converted itself in a haven for homeless attracting all the freaks of the US. 40% of the homeless in SF are effectively coming from somewhere else.
I heard rumors about states that did send full buses of homeless to San Francisco, which seemed to me rather doubtful. But I actually found evidence of this: The city of San Francisco is suing Nevada for having dumped thousands of poor homeless patients with mental illness into buses with one way tickets to San Francisco and told them to seek medical care there. This state has sent allegedly 1500 people over 5 years, people who should have been taken care of by psychiatric hospitals in Nevada. Can you believe that!
All this comes down to what a federal nation is based on: independant state policies, with the flip side of the coin. The absence of nation wide social program can lead to such a preposterous situation when a state is more careful than its neighbor.
However I am not sure we have anything to brag about, when we witness the booming of slums spreading out along the northern or eastern highways going out of Paris. I have no numbers for that!
Merry Christmas !!!
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| The ginger bread house at the Fairmont hotel. |
