Ronnie Collins

He’s got a double bed. A kitchen. Shower and bathroom. Simple things, yes, and they come in a metal box on a set of wheels. But after sitting up in chairs at Mother Brown’s allnight dropin center in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood for two years, desperate to replace the apartment and restaurant job he lost, Ronnie Collins couldn’t be happier to call an RV home.

Collins’ rig sits on a windswept asphalt field at Pier 94 in the Bayview. That’s where the city has planted 120 new trailers and RVs to shelter vulnerable homeless people like Collins from the coronavirus. It’s quiet. Clean. And it’s doing more than just saving lives from the virus, Collins says.

“I’ve seen the difference in me and in everyone out here,” he said before stepping out to pick up a citysupplied lunch at the entrance to the lot. “Everyone is calmer. You get hope for your future when you’re not in pure survival mode all the time.”

Collins is 57 with respiratory issues, and walking around all day with other homeless people and then sleeping on a chair beside them at night was practically inviting the disease to attack.

“It’s scary when you live like that,” Collins said. “Someone you know might have it, someone you just walk past. Here, I can stay away from people. I wear a mask when I go out and hope I won’t have to someday, but it seems like this whole coronavirus thing will never end.”

Gwendolyn Westbrook, executive director of Mother Brown’s, which manages the RV/trailer park, hopes it will become a permanent shelter after the coronavirus crisis dies down. The park has helped her reduce the population at her dropin center to make it safer.

“People just need time to transition into permanent housing, and these trailers can really help with that,” she said. “I’m praying something good will come out of all this coronavirus mess.”