Finding homeless solutions, even in own backyards
Every day, a stream of cars, trucks and Google buses flows along Cesar Chavez Boulevard (sorry, fact checkers, it’s more than a street), to and from Highway 101. Some of the sleekest vehicles — the Ferraris, Teslas, Mercedes-Benzes — glide to and from my neighborhood. Bernal Heights was once a ramshackle sanctuary for blue-collar and immigrant families, a neighborhood whose serenity was only marred by the occasional gang shootout (or FBI arrest of Symbionese Liberation Army outlaws). More recently, it’s become a refuge for tech millionaires who enjoy its sunny open spaces and proximity to downtown and the Silicon Valley corridor. Moms and nannies plugged into their smartphones as they push their pricey strollers across the street to Precita Park must sometimes dodge a speeding Bugatti. Hey, time is money, baby, get out of my way.
These luxury cars rush past the other San Francisco — the homeless camps under the freeway overpass that spans Cesar Chavez. The ragged tents sprout and grow like wild mushrooms, until they’re periodically uprooted by city cleanup crews, only to spring anew shortly after. I realize that I too dash by these neighbors every day, although my vehicle is but a humble Nissan. So the other day, I decided to leave my car behind and take a short walk to
meet these neighbors.
The sun had finally broken through the siege of rain clouds, but the cluster of tents I came upon were still soggy. I found a white-bearded man in a bulky coat sitting outside his tent and turning his head to the sun to soak up the warmth. He gave me his first name only, Gene, and he said he was 72. But he didn’t want to talk about what had brought him to the streets, where he has lived off and on for 10 years. He said he was sick and not feeling up to such a conversation — it would only make him feel worse.
But Gene was happy to talk about his earlier life, when he worked as a pipe fitter in New York, back in the days when it was hard for an African American to get a union job in the construction industry. Despite the physical hardships of life on the streets, Gene said he had no interest in moving into a shelter, even if a bed were available. “We take care of our own,” he said, pointing to his compound of tents.
Across the street, I found Pedro Rojas, 52, who immediately asked if I knew where he could find work. He said he was an itinerant laborer, driving up and down the West Coast looking for work as a painter or handyman. When he runs out of gas money, his journey comes to a temporary halt. He’s been grounded in San Francisco for the past eight months, because he hasn’t found enough work to move on. He lives in his stranded car. “People sometimes come by and give us a little food or money. They’re kind.” Before I left, he asked me to come back if I heard about a job for him.
The city has help for people like Gene and Pedro, but it’s limited. Pedro might benefit from the city’s Homeward Bound program, which connects homeless people to family and friends back home. He has a wife and grown children in Los Angeles, but it’s unclear whether he would want to return to them penniless since he still sees himself as a proud wage earner.
As resistant as Gene seems to shelters, he might appreciate life under the roof of a Navigation Center — the city’s state-of the-art homeless shelters that offer residents a degree of autonomy and a range of services aimed at rebuilding their lives.
But, at this point, there is no Navigation Center in the Bernal Heights area. Tenderloin activist Randy Shaw, who’s closely aligned with Mayor Ed Lee and enjoys taking shots at progressives whom he suspects of hypocrisy, recently chided me (as well as former Supervisor David Campos, who represented the neighborhood, and 48 Hills blogger Tim Redmond, another resident of the area) for not publicly advocating for such a homeless center in Bernal Heights. Point well taken, Randy. So for the record: I strongly support a Navigation Center and other homeless services in my neighborhood. And, by the way, so do Redmond and Campos.
The good news is that Hillary Ronen, Campos’ former chief of staff and successor as District Nine supervisor, is moving aggressively to build a Navigation Center in the neighborhood. This week, it was announced that Ronen cut a deal with real estate development company Lennar to create a temporary Navigation Center in an abandoned building on South Van Ness Avenue, near the Mission-Bernal Heights border.
Jeff Kositsky, the mayor’s point person on homelessness, is also a neighbor of mine. He, too, strongly believes there should be Navigation Centers throughout the city, including in our own neighborhood. Ever optimistic, Kositsky thinks the community support will be there, pointing to a recent Chamber of Commerce poll indicating that 77 percent of San Franciscans would back a homeless center in their own neighborhood. Whether this is true remains to be seen.