Homeless mom with infant girl highlights divisions
San Franciscans are known for their firmly entrenched viewpoints and their ability to defend them vigorously.
Uber is either a savior for those needing to zip quickly around town, or the devil’s spawn for its taxi-wrecking bro culture. The new Salesforce Tower is an inspiring symbol of the city’s new place in the international economy or an unforgivable blight on the once-charming skyline.
Nuance is not exactly our strong suit.
But perhaps there’s no greater test for San Francisco than homelessness. And, in particular, one homeless woman: Megan Doudney, who has been very publicly panhandling with her now-7-week-old daughter on Market Street.
Last week’s column about the shocking sight of Doudney holding her newborn while panhandling generated a huge, extremely polarized response.
Some readers said it was clear Doudney is a good mother, that nobody should judge her and that she should be left alone. “Why is your criticism directed so strongly at Megan?” one asked.
Really? Are we so live-andlet-live here in San Francisco that nobody should blink at the sight of a homeless new-
born?
Other readers — they read the exact same story — said the baby should clearly be removed from Doudney and placed in foster care, and that the column was “entirely sympathetic” to her and that I was just another bleeding-heart liberal.
Really? It always strikes me as ironic that people on the conservative end of the spectrum say they want less government interference in our lives until it comes to intruding into the lives of people who are in situations they find unsavory.
Those opposite viewpoints are typical of how we discuss homelessness in San Francisco, and part of the reason it’s been such an intractable issue for so many years.
We should either allow the down-on-their-luck residents of tent camps to do whatever they want, including chop up stolen bicycles and cook over open flames, or we should lock them all up in jail.
We should allow huge tents to block sidewalks and bike paths, or we should ban everybody from sitting or lying on sidewalks. (That last one really did, incredibly, pass muster with voters back in 2010, and look how effective it’s been. The sidewalks are entirely clear! Oh wait ...)
Missing in this conversation is the complexity of solving an enormous societal problem and the complexity of homeless people themselves.
“Most people view homeless people as angels or animals, and the truth — as with all human beings — lies in the middle,” said Kara Zordel, CEO of Project Homeless Connect, a one-stop shop for homeless services.
“Seeing a baby with a mother asking for help on Market Street should hit all of us in the gut,” Zordel said. “Not because we judge the mother, but because this doesn’t represent who we are as the city of St. Francis.”
Rose Broome — founder of HandUp, which crowdfunds for homeless individuals — agreed there’s a false dichotomy.
“Poverty is very ideological,” she said. “It’s hard to get everybody on the same page and take a pragmatic, solutionsfocused approach.”
For those who would like a refresher, Doudney is from Nebraska and took a Greyhound bus here five years ago seeking medical marijuana for the chronic back pain that had led her to become hooked on opioids. She said she no longer uses hard-core drugs, though she does smoke cigarettes heavily.
She said she got pregnant before her boyfriend became abusive, and he’s no longer in her life. She said she has struggled with depression and suicidal tendencies, but she’s feeling better now.
At night, Doudney and her daughter sleep in a shelter run by Hamilton Families. But she says she needs extra money for diapers and other essentials, so she panhandles with her newborn. Passersby have called 911, and police have responded. The city’s child welfare workers have determined the baby is healthy, and that there’s no justification for removing her from her mother.
Doudney hasn’t been hanging out at her usual location near Market and Third streets since the column ran last week, and some readers said they tried to bring her money or baby supplies but couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find her again either, but she’s still sleeping at Hamilton.
Though city and Hamilton officials couldn’t discuss her individual case for confidentiality reasons, it’s clear Doudney has other options than panhandling, and that she has been presented with them.
Asked whether all new mothers who enter Hamilton’s shelter are told of how to obtain free day care, diapers, formula and other baby supplies, Tomiquia Moss, the agency’s director, said, “Absolutely.”
“Any mom who is receiving services from Hamilton is not only made aware of them, but those resources are provided immediately,” Moss said. “The challenge is that how folks access services is always up to them.”
The city operates 500 permanent supportive housing units just for families, and another 500 will be built within five years. San Francisco also offers rent subsidies for homeless families and can connect them with jobs through the Human Services Agency’s Jobs Now program.
Doudney, it seems, accepted a shelter bed, food and case management from Hamilton but nothing else. Moss, who once worked as a social worker in the Tenderloin, said that’s common.
“I’d be having a case management session with one of my clients who was housed, and then I’d go to the BART station and I’d see them panhandling or sleeping on the street, and I’d be like, ‘Wait a minute. What is going on?’ ” she recalled.
Sometimes it’s out of habit, a desire to earn extra cash, the refusal to be inside all day or the feeling that panhandling means they’re working for the money rather than just getting a government handout, Moss said. It may not make sense to us, but it’s also not our choice to make.
“There’s a lot of implicit bias in how we view this issue, especially in this town,” Moss said. “It’s so volatile.”
Jeff Kositsky, director of the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, agreed the sight of a homeless newborn on Market Street is “uncomfortable,” but he’s confident the city is making strides in helping moms like Doudney.
“There’s always going to be situations that come up that are confounding, but what we’re focused on, is the city has a very real plan to dramatically reduce family homelessness,” Kositsky said. In the city, approximately 55 percent of the homeless children under 18 are age 5 and younger, he added.
Surely we can all agree the fruition of that plan cannot come quickly enough.