Navigating the streets while awaiting a home

San Francisco’s much-celebrated Navigation Centers for homeless people have been shifting their mission. Initially the promise was that they would put clients into housing quickly, but in practice it takes far longer. Now there are limits on how long most clients can stay — 30 days in the case of the center on Mission Street, for example.

I’d heard complaints, because 30 days is just long enough to start getting used to life off the street. I wondered whether the new policy was discouraging homeless people from trying to get into the centers. So on Wednesday I asked a few of them what they thought.

I met Joe Aguon Villagomez, 54, outside of the Navigation Center on Mission Street near 16th. Villagomez said he was a U.S. Army veteran who served in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. He was sitting on a stool in front of three large carts full of his belongings, which he’d managed to cover with tarps and a blanket.

Whenever the wind blew back those covers, Villagomez got up from his stool and used his cane to shove them back into place. There was a kind of nobility in how adamant he remained about order, despite the grime of the street and the troubles he had with his vision and his speech. I asked him about his housing situation.

“I just want to find a place where I can stay with my girlfriend,” Villagomez said. She was the reason he’d left VA housing, he said. Shelters wouldn’t let him bring in his belongings.

Life on the street has been rough for both of them. “She got her ID stolen out here, so it’s been tough to get things arranged,” Villagomez said. “I want to live inside, but I need to have her with me.”

He was uncertain about what the changes at the Navigation Center would mean for them, but he was still determined to keep asking.

“All I keep hearing is that they can help you, but I can’t get anyone to say when or whether we can move in.”

My next stop was a small tent encampment on Capp Street near 17th.

For a reporter, there are particular challenges to approaching people who live in encampments.

If I’m approaching someone’s home to request an interview, I can knock on the door or ring the doorbell. Tents lack doors, doorbells and anything else that would allow me and the person inside to maintain the courteous distance on which an initial reporting encounter usually relies.

But a tent is still someone’s home, and I want to approach the person inside with respect. I like to stand near the tent flap and to speak loudly. I tell whoever’s inside what my name is, the newspaper’s name and the nature of the story I’m working on. Sometimes, after a little cajoling, they’ll unzip the tent flap and start talking to me. Sometimes they’ll tell me to go away.

So I was surprised when Tracey Jane Lemay, 50, yanked open the flap to the tent she was sharing with Andre Davis, 65, almost as soon as I started talking.

My phrase — “I’m talking to people about whether they’d like to get into the Navigation Centers” — contained her magic words.

“I got out of prison in 2012, and Sandy from the H.O.T. (Homeless Outreach) Team told me I was going to get into the Navigation Center,” Lemay said. “I’ve been waiting ever since.”

The first Navigation Center didn’t open until 2015, but I decided not to argue. Instead I asked her what she was hoping to get out of a stay in the center. She knew the stays were short, she said, but that didn’t bother her.

“Hopefully they’ll help place me in housing,” Lemay said. “They’re also supposed to help you get your ID and your paperwork. But really I want housing — I’m a woman out here.”

Davis agreed with her. I asked him about his tent, which looked new. He told me his old one had been stolen four days ago.

“My neighbors gave me a new one,” he said, “because I keep people from breaking into cars on this street.”

But he would give up watching the block for a chance to go inside. “I’ve been waiting for the H.O.T. team to get me for nine months,” Davis said. “I’ve heard a lot of broken promises.”

Granted, the people I met this week represent a very small sample of homeless San Franciscans.

But it was a good reminder that very few people are on the street because they want to be there. Instead, they’re still hoping for help — even temporary help — that has yet to arrive.

“All I keep hearing is that they can help you, but I can’t get anyone to say when or whether we can move in.”

Joe Aguon Villagomez