Time for S.F.’s old, poor folks to give up fight, get out of way
San Francisco has a problem with its elderly citizens. There are too many of them. More than 37,000 homes in the city are owned or rented by people 65 or older. And about a quarter of our seniors are considered poor and need public assistance of some kind. Meanwhile, we have a growing housing crisis, with thousands of young, productive tech workers — who frankly are the future of our city — forced to pay exorbitant rents and to stuff themselves into veal-pen-like apartments. Something does not compute here.
It might not be politically correct, but there is a solution. Call it, if you will, an “immodest proposal,” with no apologies to Jonathan Swift. Put the old onto the streets, and nature will soon take its course. Even the mere threat of eviction is enough to get rid of some of these frail souls, who could succumb from worry and stress and the other challenges of life that the more hardy can endure. In fact, in recent months, three ancient mariners — ages 82, 93, and 100 — passed away in San Francisco while entangled in eviction battles. And while some might find it indelicate to say aloud, let’s be honest, most of us were secretly thinking, “What took you so long?” And “When can I move in?”
I know, I know — the housing market can be a cruel god when it comes to survival of the fittest. But it beats death panels. Much less bureaucracy. The invisible hand and all that.
And yet many of these old-timers keep putting up a fight, trying to hold onto the homes to which they claim deep sentimental attachments.
Last week, I visited with one such stubborn obstacle to progress, an 82-year-old gentleman named Ramon Garcia, who is fighting eviction
from the small backyard cottage in Noe Valley where he has lived for 16 years. His landlord did not respond to my requests for comment — and frankly the ins and outs of these eviction stories are always so tedious and have such a grim finality that I’m happy not to get into all of that legal stuff. But I did find myself charmed and intrigued by Garcia’s life story as he unspooled it for me, which I share herewith.
Garcia was born in Spain and moved to Florida with his parents when he was a boy. His father had aristocratic blood but found himself working as a high school handyman in America, while Ramon’s mother worked as a high school cook. Garcia arrived in San Francisco as a young man on the heels of the Summer of Love after reading Jack Kerouac. He was a happy participant in the queer bacchanalia of the late 1960s and ’70s — a word he prefers to gay. “Queer is hip; gay is society’s stereotype,” he told me, sitting in an orthopedic chair due to various maladies from which he suffers.
His cottage was cluttered and dimly lit because bright light hurts his eyes. But the decor was a whimsically artful melange, including thumbnail quilts masquerading as tapestries, a Tiffany lamp, Chinese lanterns, a Buddha statue and tropical ferns that recalled the Sunshine State of his boyhood.
A photo of Garcia taken in 1973 showed a handsome disco blade, with a Fu Manchu mustache and tinted aviator glasses. But this was just one of many looks Garcia used to try on.
“I hated that gay clone look, with the military gear. I’d go running to the Castro wearing a pink and white caftan and a matching train and hood, just to stand out.”
Garcia has also lived a life of the mind, earning a doctorate in fine arts and briefly teaching art before his genetic sensitivities to paints and turpentine forced him to change careers and become a registered nurse. It was one of the voracious reader’s more elaborate costumes that attracted the eye of his literary hero, playwright Tennessee Williams, one day in fall 1980. While dashing to a Polk Street disco, Garcia spotted the diminutive Williams in a liquor store reaching for a bottle of gin on a shelf beyond his wingspan.
“No need to thank the kindness of this stranger,” Garcia told the famed author of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” as he handed him the bottle.
It was a “corny” line, Garcia now admits, but Williams nonetheless found the younger man dazzling, in his “Greek mariner” disco getup, including a wig of golden curls. The two men ended up in bed at the cottage where Garcia lived at the time, engaging in some kissing and fondling, but mostly just “pillow talk.”
Garcia recalled that the playwright “seemed nostalgically transported” as he reclined in his new friend’s German handcrafted bed and inhaled “the scent of blooming orchids I cultivated on a portable fountain. We could hear the blues from a nearby cafe floating through my windows. He was in Elysian Fields. He stayed until 3 or so in the morning.”
San Francisco lacks the same spirit of enchantment these days, Garcia told me.
“Humanity is dwindling at a fast rate. You know all these zombie movies that young people find so entertaining? It’s because they themselves are so lifeless. Listen to the way they talk. Everything is huge and amazing and awesome. But the truth is there’s nothing remarkable at all about their lives. I was educated by Jesuits — they taught me
to be correct in my speech.”
Garcia is terribly melancholy these days. “I’m grumpy and angst-ridden, but please don’t take it personally. I just can’t bear my existence anymore. Old movies are my only distraction now. I don’t even have a doggy anymore. My last one was a blond Labrador named Garbo,” he said, choking back tears.
“I find it ironic to have to fight to stay in a neighborhood that I don’t even like anymore,” said the old man, whose neighbors are young tech industry workers.
“The battle over my house is the last straw,” said Garcia, sounding resigned and overwhelmed. “They have the money, so they have the power. Therefore they can be cruel.”
Ramon Garcia knows that the city where he has lived for a half century has passed him by and that his days are numbered. “Being old and poor is a double stigma. They can see I need a cane now — they sense your weakness.”
The gods of the housing market don’t see another twinkling city light growing dim. They see a shining opportunity.