New homes bring veterans off streets
From her thirdfloor apartment in Mission Bay Margie Talavera can hear the foghorns blowing early in the morning.
As a city native who spent six years in the Navy, the sound is a comfort. It’s as San Francisco as cable car bells ringing or sea lions barking at Pier 39.
“Forget about it,” said Talavera, 66. “You hear those sounds and you know you are in San Francisco.”
Talavera is one of 69 veterans who moved 14 months ago into the Edwin M. Lee Apartments in Mission Bay, an affordable housing complex that is the first focused on veterans in 10 years.
The building opened in February 2020 at the beginning of the COVID19 cri
sis. It offers 62 units of housing to formerly homeless veterans and 57 apartments to very lowincome families. It’s the first San Francisco building that mixes homeless veterans housing with family units. The $78 million project is a joint venture between Chinatown Community Development Center and Swords to Plowshares.
Talavera, who served in the Navy in the 1970s, fell into homelessness after a stint as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service. Even with a small pension and Social Security, she could not afford to rent an apartment in the Bay Area. She was couch surfing with her siblings in the East Bay and Napa between stretches of homelessness in San Francisco. She slept in churches, cars and tents.
“When you are on the street, all of a sudden a tent is an upgrade from the sidewalk. And then a car is an upgrade from a tent.”
Prior to becoming a letter carrier Talavera worked as a waitress, landscaper, factory worker and spent nine years as a clown for the Ringling Brothers circus, traveling all over the United States and Japan. A social worker with the Veterans Administration told her about the building — while she didn’t hold out much hope that she would land a unit she figured it was worthwhile filling out the paperwork and she made sure to show up to appointments with her VA case worker.
Residents in the Edwin M. Lee Apartments are single and formerly homeless veterans with disabilities and lowincome families from a variety of backgrounds. Onsite supportive services are provided by Swords to Plowshares, Chinatown Community Development Center and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Malcolm Yeung, Chinatown CDC’s executive director, said that it’s appropriate that the building is named after Mayor Lee, who passed away in 2017.
“(Lee) brought affordable housing into the center of our collective consciousness as a city and allowed the local policy to work in favor of affordable housing,” said Yeung.
In addition to Swords to Plowshares’ existing supportive housing programs, which provide homes to hundreds of veterans each year, Edwin M. Lee Apartments will contribute to San Francisco’s efforts to significantly reduce veteran homelessness.
“After 45 years serving homeless and atrisk veterans in San Francisco, we know that stability and the path to recovery start with housing,” said Swords to Plowshares Executive Director Michael Blecker. “For veterans who suffer from poverty, lack of support network, PTSD and other disabilities, permanent supportive housing is the solution that will save their lives.”
The building comes as Mission Bay, a planned community constructed on a former railyard, is nearly fully built out. So far 6,060 housing units have been completed, of which 1,456 are affordable. Two more affordable projects are in the pipeline: 141 units for formerly homeless, expected to be complete in 2022, and 148 affordable homeowner opportunities, expected to start construction next year.
Reggie Barham, an Army vet, moved into the building on March 6, 2020. Before landing the unit he spent his nights walking the city.
“I had been awake for a month,” he said. “I just couldn’t stay in shelters. I never felt comfortable in shelters.”
Barham, 59, who spent his childhood in Ohio, Los Angeles and San Francisco, said he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for much of his adult life. In addition to three years in the Army, he worked as a merchant marine in Texas and Louisiana. He was a security guard in downtown San Francisco, including at the Transamerica building. He is a licensed barber and has cut hair at barbershops in multiple cities.
Affordable housing advocates often talk about “housing first” — the concept that it’s difficult to tackle substance abuse or mental illness before you are housed. While housing may not always be the secret to ending addiction, it was for Barham. He said that he had been ready to get sober for several years before moving into the Lee Apartments, but that being homeless made that tough. Once he had his own place, he found it easier.
“I just stopped. I didn’t go to any meetings. No church basements. None of that. I was just sitting right here gave me a sanctuary where I can fight my own demons,” he said. “A place like this that is my own is the only thing that really helped. My thought pattern changed. It was a perfect time for me to have a little place to deal with my own life, to get right with my higher power. That is where I am today.”
Right before moving back to San Francisco in 2019, Barham was homeless in Atlanta. A selfdescribed clotheshorse, he had a roller suitcase full of fine threads. One day the wheels fell off at an Atlanta bus station. He just left it there and got on the bus to San Francisco with two outfits, his phone and a speaker so he could listen to music.
“I’m just now starting to buy clothes again. This is an aristocratic city. We like culture. We like nice things. We like music and art. Living down here by the water is a spiritual place. You have the Giants stadium on one side and the Warriors on the other.
From his window he looks across Third Street at the San Francisco police headquarters. He doesn’t mind.
“I made my peace with the police a long time ago,” Barham said. “I haven’t stolen anything since March 6th. I haven’t lied. I don’t have secrets. A lot of negative thought patterns came along with the alcohol. A lot of selfdestructive behavior.”
Talavera said she has had a similar experience.
“Here it is a brandnew apartment no one has ever lived in before. A brandnew bathroom no one has ever used before. A brandnew bed nobody has ever slept in. Brandnew kitchen utensils. When I walked in here with my little dog I just was doing my happy dance. I felt like I won the lotto.”