STORIES OF FEAR, HOPE, SURVIVAL
Portraits of life on the street during the pandemic
For most of the 35,000 people who find themselves without a home on any given night in the Bay Area, the coronavirus crisis has been a gnarled mixture of blessing and fear.
More than 4,500 of the sickest and most vulnerable have been shepherded into hotel rooms or spots in temporary trailer parks, a significant upgrade from the streets or a shelter bed. Perennially crowded shelters have been thinned out for more physical spacing, making them safer and more livable. Handwashing and toilet stations have been installed near usual homeless haunts in the main cities.
But those are just flickers of fortune for a relative few. Shelters are closed to newcomers. The majority of the homeless are sleeping outside, either jammed together in chaotically crowded streets or hunkered down in RVs or tents away from the main downtowns.
On waterfronts, under highways and in suburbs, hillsides and cities, attempts to wear masks and keep social distancing while living outside are sketchy at best. The invisible viral killer preys on those with weakened immune systems. Which means pretty much any longtimer sleeping in the streets.
Here are some snapshots from around the region of people struggling to survive in a world where, suddenly, the safest place to shelter from the pandemic is the one most out of reach — a home.
Larry Greer
Larry Greer has prayed every day for four years that he could spirit his wife and himself out of their tent and back into a real home. Maybe an apartment — better than the one they were evicted from in a spat with the landlord. Or a small house. He just needed his gardening and carcleaning business to take off.
Their tent on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Oakland is now at the end of a sidebyside row of 40 tents that snake beneath the roar of the Interstate 980 freeway, a ramshackle settlement that has grown significantly since the coronavirus crisis descended. They are across the street from the St. Vincent de Paul homeless shelter in Oakland, where meals get served and counselors come and go. That means nothing to 56yearold Greer and his 60yearold wife, Angela.
“I never considered a shelter,” Greer said, straightening as tall as he can with his perennially stiff back, which he says he injured decades ago when on a state prisoner firefighting crew. “It’s my duty as a husband to take care of my family. And our time is coming. I believe in Hebrews 11:1 — ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ ”
As the words left his lips, Rama Chunburi drove up in an Acura RDX. Through the back window, his wife handed Greer a bag with a freshly made peanut butterandjelly sandwich, banana and apple juice. They bring food every week to the camp from their San Ramon home. “Good people here,” said Chunburi, who works in IT. “They just need some help.”
Greer profusely thanked the couple and gave the lunch to Angela. “See how that works?” he said. “I ask God to strengthen me, and he does.”
A few minutes later, a street counselor who’s been working with the couple came by with news: The Greers were on track for placement at an emergency RV park the city had set up near the Oakland Coliseum.
“It’ll be great to get off this strip,” he said. “We are a community here, but there are people in these tents who don’t believe there’s a virus at all.” He shook his head. “Mmm, mmm,” he said. “You ask me, the real pandemic is homelessness.”
Shawna Lynn
Shawna Lynn’s handbuilt palace sits in a wide, grassy field at the foot of Berkeley’s University Avenue near the bay. Giant blue and brown tarps drape over a square frame of 2by4s; inside is a makeshift kitchen, a big bed, a lounging area and another bed for her three big dogs.
It’s Lynn’s refuge from the moneyed conventional world, a place where she and boyfriend Will Baird can live like pioneer homesteaders of old. Or Gypsies. They hitchhiked here a year ago from Oregon, and they’ll love it until they drift somewhere else, as they have for the past three years.
The constant rumbling of Interstate 580 and its glaring headlights can make it hard to sleep. Squeaking field rats eat things in the palace. But it’s free. The neighbors in the dozen other tents scattered across the windblown field call this settlement “The Island,” and they mean it. They mostly keep to themselves. There are only two differences the coronavirus crisis has made in Lynn’s life. One is good: The camp is cleaner now that the city has installed a portable toilet in the field, and the California Department of Transportation, which owns the land, comes by weekly to truck out the camp’s trash. The other is bad: The crisis shut down the recycling centers where 38yearold Lynn and 30yearold Baird could earn hundreds of dollars every month.
“We’ll do OK until the recycling centers open up because people in Berkeley are good people, down to earth,” said Lynn, helping Baird repair one of the handbuilt trailers they pull behind their bicycles to collect scrap metal, cans and bottles. “We just hold out our signs on University Avenue — mine says, ‘Smiles help too’ — and people give us money, weed, food. Until we can make our own money again, the kindness helps.”
James Jefferson
It was devastating enough in December when James Jefferson hit the streets of his hometown of San Francisco for the first time in many years after his roommate died and he lost the apartment they’d shared on the southern edge of the Tenderloin. He says he’d been getting by on odd office and driving jobs, but they dried up. Then came the coronavirus.
The neighborhood exploded with tents, drug dealers and wandering street people, so he moved his tent across Van Ness Avenue to a sidewalk near sleepy Jefferson Park. Selfisolating, in a street way.
Now, several months into the pandemic, he’s given up applying for jobs. He would love to ditch the tent for a roof, but he’s been told that, because he’s 38 and fit, he has no chance at a hotel room. And the shelters aren’t taking newcomers like him.
“I never expected to be out here, and now it’s a worse nightmare than I even thought it would be,” Jefferson said, resting in a chair on the sidewalk with his pit bull mix Sparky. “There are no jobs anywhere because everybody’s at home and things are mostly shut down.”
He watched the sun slowly sink over the park. A siren echoed a block away. The dog perked up, then lay back down again.
“You know, you feel alone when you’re homeless anyway, but with that virus out there and me trying to stay safe, now I’m really alone,” said Jefferson, a ruggedly independent sort who said he doesn’t depend on family or friends for anything. “I moved to this block because nobody else was on it, and I guess this is where I’ll stay. Nobody can plan ahead. We all just have to hope for a vaccine.”
“I never expected to be out here, and now it’s a worse nightmare than I even thought it would be.”
James Jefferson