Homeless people are targets

By now, most of us have seen the video. An older man with white hair stands on a sidewalk, leaning against a railing, his legs crossed casually, as he blasts water from a hose at a homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk near him. She puts her hands in an effort to protect herself and can be heard shouting for help. He eventually stops his assault and steps closer to her.

“Just move. Move. Move!” he says, pointing down the street. “Are you going to move?”

The man, identified by The Chronicle as gallery owner Collier Gwin, is far from the first person in San Francisco to resort to brutal and possibly illegal vigilantism in an effort to move homeless people away from businesses and homes. Gwin isn’t even the first gallery owner to do so; in 2019, Don Soker was caught on camera dumping a bucket of water from his roof onto a homeless woman below.

Both gallery owners were unapologetic, as was Peter Glikshtern, a partner at event company Non Plus Ultra who in 2020 forcibly, and without city approval, cleared a homeless camp from behind his building in the middle of the night.

All three made notably similar statements justifying their actions: They reached out for help from the city, received none, so they took matters into their own hands.

In the most recent incident, the homeless woman sprayed by the hose was well-known to the neighborhood. Supervisor Aaron Peskin tweeted that his office had been trying for months to get her support from the Department of Public Health.

When I asked Peskin’s office why the woman was still on the street despite those efforts, I was told that the city’s systems of service are opaque: There is no clarity on where the Department of Public Health, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and the Human Services Agency were in their respective efforts to help her. With no clear understanding of where she sat in a messy, slow and complicated system, Peskin’s staff struggled to successfully advocate for her.

If the new president of the

Board of Supervisors can’t get help for a homeless woman, who can?

However you spin it, this is a situation of San Francisco’s making. And while the outrage over Gwin’s actions is more than justified, that indignation needs to be channeled in more than one direction.

In a city that has failed to make meaningful progress in combating its visible homelessness crisis, these sorts of conflicts between city residents, business owners and unhoused individuals are inevitable. We are not housing people fast enough, nor are we preventing people on the margins from becoming homeless.

In the face of these failures, the narrative that homeless people’s personal failings led to their state of despair has made it easy to dehumanize them. They alone are responsible for their plight. Why treat them as people, many seem to think, when they are such an incredible nuisance?

Under these conditions, spraying another human being with a hose in winter becomes remarkably easy. With the recent injunction banning San Francisco from conducting encampment sweeps — unless the city ramps up its shelter and housing programs — conflicts like these will likely only get worse.

On the rare occasions these behaviors are caught on camera, they’re widely condemned. But that’s only once a year or so, and this violent dehumanization happens almost daily.

A few years ago I saw a woman berate an unhoused man for not getting a job after he begged her for change on Market Street. He had no legs and was in a wheelchair.

A sweet couple I know, one of whom is a veteran, had water dumped on them while they slept outside a residential building in the Haight.

Last year, I spent a morning talking to older men living at a small camp in Potrero Hill, one

of whom had just had the corner of his tent lit on fire. He was OK, but as we chatted, I noticed the charred edges of the red shirt he was wearing.

Not everyone is so lucky. A man was killed in San Francisco last year when his sleeping bag was set on fire while he slept. Four of the seven people killed by the Stockton serial killer were homeless. A recent report from Los Angeles found that unhoused people made up 24% of the city’s homicides in 2022. About a third of homeless women in San Francisco have experienced physical or sexual violence while living outdoors, according to researchers.

With their humanity and lives so continually at risk, it’s no wonder so many people living outdoors suffer from mental health crises. When a city is unable or unwilling to house people, this is what happens.

There is an epidemic of violence happening on our streets, but it’s not usually covered in

the media. We will forever remember the short video of a man stealing items from a Walgreens, an infamous incident national right-wing media latched onto and which many argue played a key role in recalling District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

The hosing incident was far more egregious, with a much more vulnerable victim. There are people on trial right now for less violent crimes.

In all likelihood, this week’s viral video won’t result in any real consequences. No political careers will face the guillotine. I’ll be surprised if charges are pressed. The story will soon fade from headlines, and the brief collective outrage will dissipate.

That is until the next out-ofcontrol vigilante is caught on camera.

Provided by Edson Garcia Collier Gwin was caught on video spraying water on a homeless woman. Attacks on unhoused people are not always recorded.