Finally home after decades of street life
Rufus Boykin balled up a brown napkin in his hand and swiped at the tears on his face. The pom on top of the commemorative Super Bowl 50 knit hat he wore bobbed as he dabbed at his eyes.
We were sitting in a conference room at the Henry Robinson Center, a transitional housing building on 16th Street in downtown Oakland, and Boykin was talking to me about his trek from homelessness to moving through one of Oakland’s “safe haven” sites to now staying in temporary housing.
It’s been an emotional journey.
Wearing a dark gray Alameda County Juvenile Hall sweatshirt, he walked into the room holding two coffee cups — one with coffee and the other with oatmeal. He barely touched either.
It’s been seven months since Oakland opened its first site — 20 sheds on an empty lot on Sixth Street between Castro and Brush streets — in December. The goal was to move people off the street and into a shed where social workers could help them get what they needed to be selfsufficient: health screenings, jobs, long-term housing.
I wonder if the shed strategy is helping people like Boykin, 70, a senior citizen who should be enjoying retirement instead of looking for a place to live.
Since opening, the Castro Community Cabins, as the city calls them, have served 59 people, six of whom have moved to shared permanent housing. Eight people, including Boykin, have transitioned to the Henry Robinson Center. Fifteen people now have jobs they didn’t have before the shed program began, according to Justin Berton, spokesman for Mayor Libby Schaaf.
At the Northgate Avenue shed site, which opened in May, 41 people have been served. Two people are now in permanent housing, and one person found a job.
Bay Area Community Services operates Oakland’s shed sites and the Henry Robinson Center.
Boykin, who is black, was raised in East Oakland by his grandmother. He says he has eight children, though he’s not in touch with them. He’s been to prison. He’s been addicted to drugs and admits he still uses sometimes.
“The only reason I ever used drugs is to help me get through what I’m going through,” he said. “I probably don’t need all the baggage I have in my mind.”
The shed sites don’t allow people to bring inside many of the items they’ve collected on the streets. That delayed Boykin from moving in, because he refused to discard the mattress he’d slept on in tents.
“The firmness of it was good for my back,” he said. After some negotiating, he was allowed to bring his mattress into the shed site.
He got a new mattress when he moved into the Henry Robinson Center. Now he does yoga two days a week across 16th Street at Left Coast Power Yoga to soothe his aching back.
“I would like to do it some part of every day,” he said. “There’s meditation involved. It has good properties for everyone. It’s an American pastime, isn’t it? You can calm down enough to be able to think.”
Anyone who’s lived on the streets for more than a few days will tell you that there’s little time to be calm, because you’re too busy thinking about finding the next dollar, the next meal, the next place to use the bathroom and, often, the next fix. It’s like a full-time job. I interviewed Boykin one morning last week. He said he’s friends with Schaaf, who is known to go to homeless camps to hand out food and talk to residents. Schaaf is up for re-election this year, and her opponents will surely criticize her for the city’s growing homeless problem.
“The mayor’s probably a good mayor, but she ain’t never been hungry,” Boykin said. “As far as I can see, she’s a nice lady.”
Sometimes Boykin answered my questions with eye-bulging indignation, like when talking about hygiene in homeless camps.
“Ten years to get a bathroom out there!” he shouted, referring to portable toilets placed at the Castro Street encampment. “What do they expect?”
Other times he answered serenely, like when we discussed displacement spurred by the Bay Area’s housing crisis.
“Most people out here, just like you, are just one step away from where I’m at,” he said.
Sometimes he couldn’t stop tears from flowing. The first time he cried was when I asked what he needed most.
“Love,” he said between sobs. “That would be a great place to start.”
And sometimes he offered comic relief, like when I asked him about the job he’s held the longest. “Living,” he responded. OK, what was the second longest?
“Staying alive,” he said with a smirk that made me crack up.
Well played, Rufus. Your third longest job?
“I’m at that right now,” he said.
The task, finding affordable housing in Oakland, might be the hardest challenge he’s ever faced. Howard Thurmond, a Bay Area Community Services housing coordinator, has been trying to find a permanent home for Boykin since March.
Thurmond has submitted applications for Boykin, and they’ve been to look at five apartments. Boykin would like to stay in Oakland, preferably in downtown, where he says his people are. He’s been homeless for more than two decades, living near Castro Street.
“Most of the people out here know me,” he said. “This is my neighborhood.”
It’s probably impossible for him to stick around, because, according to Rent Cafe, a real estate tracking website, the average rent for all residential rentals in downtown Oakland is a whopping $2,698.
Boykin receives about $900 per month in Social Security income, money he told me he didn’t start collecting until he moved into Henry Robinson in the spring. And he wants to live alone, but many Bay Area Community Services clients share rooms when they get apartments.
“Some people are turned off on that idea, because coming from the sheds or coming from being homeless, they only had themselves to contend with,” said Thurmond, who is trying to find housing for about 20 people. “Having to contend with another personality is difficult.”
Right now, Boykin is happy with his room at Henry Robinson.
“I can lock my door,” he said, jiggling the keys attached to a cord hanging from his neck. “I don’t have to let nobody in my room if I don’t want to.”
He agreed to show me his room, which is on the third floor. But he told Thurmond, who was with us, to wait in the hallway.
“He’s a private individual,” Thurmond told me later. “That’s just him.”
Thurmond, like other Bay Area Community Services social workers I’ve met, understands that to solve homelessness, each homeless person needs to be treated as an individual. There is no one-sizefits-all solution.
That means going door to door — or, in the case of people living on the streets, tent flap to tent flap. However slow the progress, the city’s plan is helping Boykin, even if just for a while.
In his room, Boykin proudly pointed to the succulent he has on the windowsill. He also showed me the three-wheel stroller that he uses when he scavenges for recyclables and other street finds.
“I need it all,” he said of the stuff he collects, “because I don’t have anything.”