Homeless on Wheels
David Murray had only been on the streets for three weeks when STREET SHEET met him panhandling in mid July at the corner of Geary and Powell Streets. In that brief period thoughts about going back to prison have entered his mind. Not because he wants to go back, but because he doesn’t feel that he belongs on the streets in a wheelchair.
Murray is just one of an unknown number of homeless people living in wheelchairs on San Francisco’s streets. There are supportive housing buildings in the city for homeless people, but only five percent of the units in such buildings is suitable for people with disabilities. And there is no low-income housing in the city available exclusively for people in wheelchairs.
Murray believed that he was going live in a Tenderloin half-way house when he got out, but six months before he was to be released the corrections staff said he wasn’t fit to be in the halfway house. Besides, the half-way house wasn’t set up to accommodate someone in a wheelchair.
“I should be in a half-way house at Turk and Taylor,“ he said angrily. “Not stuck on the streets trying to survive!”
Being homeless can be dangerous for anybody, but for someone in a wheel chair being homeless very unsafe because people believe they are helpless. Murray hasn’t been messed with since he’s been on the street, but for his safety he has picked the Pier 39 area to call home.
Murray, 39, spent 12 years in federal prison for credit card fraud and suffers from painful spinal scoliosis (curving of the spine) that worsened as he got older, and is now the reason he’s in the wheelchair. The prison gave him some pills, 200 bucks, and a bus ticket.
Murray said that since he doesn’t have any medical coverage, and not a lot of money either, he was having trouble getting his prescription refilled.
He said he went all over San Francisco to different non-profit service providers to see if any of them could arrange a room for him until his SSI starts up in August. One of them did, for a while — then they found out that he had been in prison and kicked him out. Their excuse, Murray said, was they were afraid he would fall and get hurt.
He will not stay in San Francisco’s shelters because they’re dangerous and they believe he’s likely to hurt someone for messing with him. “I’m not going into a shelter if the chance of going back to prison is 80 percent,” noted Murray.
Murray thinks it a shame that San Francisco has so many people living on the streets. He believes the City should help homeless people get permanent housing, jobs, and drug treatment. He understands why some of them would rather stay on the street, but not him. “Screw that shit, I’d rather use that money and get me a place to stay,” he said.
He said that he wants to get a room so he can get his life back on track. Before prison he had a house, a good job, and a daughter that he hasn’t seen in seven years. Murray would like to see her, but she’s in England — Murray’s birth place – and they won’t let him in the country because of the felony conviction.
“I don’t expect people to help me out,” he said about people giving him food and a sleeping bag. “but I would like to be treated like a human being.”
“Being homeless has changed my outlook and perspective of a whole lot of things,” he added. “It made me feel like an outcast, like I don’t belong in society. It was bad enough being in prison all that time, but homeless…”
Allison Lum, a member of the Mayor’s Disability Council and Shelter Outreach Project Coordinator at the Coalition on Homelessness, believes the City needs to address the lack of housing opportunities for the disabled, as well as access to buses.
And the problem all agree on is the difficulty finding wheelchair-accessible restrooms.
Funnyman “Gabriel,” 48, has been homeless since 1996 and says he has no desire to find a place to stay. He prefers the streets, even though he has had to endure attacks there. “On the Fourth of July this guy started swinging at me, so I stuck him,” he confides.
He said that some have also hit him and run away, or tipped him over in his wheelchair and run away, but he still wants to stay on the street.
Larry Richard is in a wheelchair and knows too well what it like to live on the street. Before he moved into the supportive housing unit he’s in now, he had been homeless off and on since 1986.
He became homeless when he couldn’t work anymore because of the pain in his back. It turned out to be a non-cancerous tumor in his spine. He said doctor’s didn’t find it until 1992. Being homeless was hard on Larry. Even though he was taking pain pills for his back, sometimes the pain was so overwhelming that he couldn’t move anymore and had to stay put wherever he was.
He said that when he was homeless he would stay in United Nation Plaza and would and for his safety would sleep in the day and try to stay up all night. Richard said that he wouldn’t been in San Francisco of he wasn’t waiting for the Ninth District Court of Appeals to decide on his SSI case.
The Independent Living Resource Center, on the 3rd floor of 649 Mission St., is one resource all persons with disabilities can use to get help finding a home, work, or find out about their rights protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are mainly a civil rights group, but they have linkages to services that can help.
They can also help people trying to get on SSI, and help those already receiving SSI to get work and keep their benefits.
Adrian