“Not the Way It’s Supposed To Work”
Community is where you find it. Especially when you’re someone who has already fallen through the cracks of this country’s community-at-large: someone who is houseless or marginally housed, unemployed or marginally employed, one of the growing number of people who have lost their footing in the world for reasons ranging from tiny accidents of luck or timing to severely disabling conditions of body or mind.
The current push to “end chronic homelessness” in San Francisco—according to the City’s much-vaunted 10-Year Plan, its accompanying press releases, and the resulting feel-good sound bites on the evening news—aims to return such people to the fold, enveloping them in the warmth, comfort, and safety of a service-oriented support structure that offers not only the bare necessities of human existence (a secure roof under which to sleep and three square meals a day), but also medical assistance for everything from a simple scraped knee to a severely ravaged psyche. Then, of course, there’s the cherry on the pie, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, for those still capable and desirous of such: gainful employment, renewed self-sufficiency, and return to a functional place in the social structure.
That’s the basic premise that underlies San Francisco’s homeless policy today. The following is the way it played out for one group of individuals recently.
Nearly five years ago, lured by the promise of work and a place to live (or at least set up camp), some of these marginalized people began to form an ad hoc community at the end of Wallace off Third Street in Bayview/Hunter’s Point. The man holding out that promise was one Mike Garza, a self-described “small-businessman and veteran of service in the U.S. constabulary facing Russian troops at the border of East Germany,” as well as a sometime Republican congressional candidate whose platform highlights include “siding with the Republicans in Congress in their fight against international drug dealing and the white slave trade… getting rid of ethanol and other unnecessary regulations which raise gas prices to consumers… and adequate [meat safety] testing to eliminate mad cow disease and other dangers.”
Garza’s Bayview property needed work. Apparently this former member of the City’s commission on toxic waste had some, well, noxious debris to take care of—a perfect task for those already on society’s margin, and a fine exchange for a place to park one’s vehicle or pitch a tent and reengage with life.
So Garza put the word out and people began to gather. Some brought their own vehicles and set up camp at the end of Wallace Road; some, reportedly at Garza’s request, came to live on the property itself, in abandoned vehicles already in place or put into place specifically for that purpose.
An odd community was born. It was composed of individuals who were themselves troubled, according to the norm, but they created their own rules and ways of coping with trouble and kept to them. By their own lights, they functioned; they had shelter, food, and a sense of common purpose.
It wasn’t Utopia, though, and rifts began to emerge. And the biggest of the lot, by all accounts, was that between the members of this burgeoning community and the man who’d brought it into being. According to some, the work that Garza wanted done proved too hazardous; others came to feel that they’d been promised more than they were actually getting: better housing, something closer to a living wage, a higher degree of confidence in the security and continuity of their situation.
Tensions mounted. The actual boundary between Garza’s land and the untraveled road adjoining it became a point of dispute. There were “lock-outs” and “lock-ins,” work stoppages and pay denials.
Ultimately, the dispute became official, with numerous complaints and cross-complaints filed between the members of the Wallace Road community and Garza, and some of the owners of adjoining parcels also chiming in with concerns ranging from allegations of “illegal activities” on the part of the encampment members to accusations that Garza was creating something approaching a SuperFund site in terms of its toxicity.
That’s why the initial appearance of City officials in the area occasioned no concern on the part of the residents. By this time, it was anyone’s guess whose side any representatives of the City might take-though those living in the by-now-four-plus-year-old encampment had some hopes that any official action ultimately taken might be on their behalf. In fact, after several visits from local police and even an official Mayoral walk-through, their hopes were high enough that some encampment residents were discussing the possibility of applying to the City for amenities such as portable toilets and the assistance of sanitation workers in their efforts to make their home more habitable.
Those hopes were abruptly shattered on September 30th, when, acting under the rubric of the recently created Bayview Neighborhood Rescue Team, a host of City agencies (including, not only those usual suspects, the Department of Public Works and the San Francisco Police Department, but also the Department of Parking and Traffic and Animal Care and Control, appeared on the scene in concert to, according to more than one City representative present, “clean up the mess.” Unfortunately for encampment residents, it rapidly became apparent that in the eyes of the authorities, they and their belongings constituted the “mess” that required immediate eradication.
The scene that followed was nothing short of surreal. DPT workers radioed in license plates and VIN numbers to determine the relative appropriateness of towing now or tagging now to tow later; tow trucks and their crews moved through the camp in their wake, hooking up and hauling away the identified “tow nows,” accompanied by Animal Care and Control staff ready to tackle any canine-related issues that might arise along the way.
Media members and some community activists had been alerted to the possibility of impending action the previous evening (the same short notice given to the encampment members), so the site’s sudden swirl of activity was immediately captured for posterity in the lenses of the whirring videocams.
One DPT worker interspersed her vehicle-ticketing activities with social commentary. “I grew up poor in the projects. My mom raised six kids by herself. Look at that woman over there. Look at her feet. She could get help. She could get a little hamburger job or something. Look around at this. It’s not healthy. Not even for them.”
One encampment resident used his moment of media attention to make an impassioned plea for an end to the City’s displacement of homeless people. “I’ve only been out here two years, but I can see what’s going on. It’s a circle: shelters one day and out the next. Everyone out on the streets ends up so worried about tows, cars, pursuit, they’ve got no time to worry about programs and services …people are so worried about this and that and being pushed around and moved from where they’re at—they’ve got no time to look at how to get out.
“We’re considered undesirable by some, but to us, what’s undesirable is people who steal from other people. We don’t tolerate that… take care of ourselves and each other. We’ve got lives here—and rules.
“It costs more money to the City to move people around than it would to support them to stay someplace and organize. We’ve got good hands and good brains. Just give us an opportunity to prove who we are and what we can do. I believe that with better organization and support, the homeless could be an asset to the City. But no, they just give ‘em a place to sleep for a day and they’re right back out again. Nobody’s winning.”
Meanwhile, all around the rapidly disappearing encampment, the overwhelming response on the part of those whose lives were being “bagged, tagged, and dragged,” was one of bewildered disillusionment. Amid the ambient radio crackle and hiss, with its occasional bursts of clarity (“Hey, this car’s out of the DMV system… Registered in Nevada?!?…just junk…good to go…tow ‘em away.” “Can someone reclaim…?” “Dunno, that’s what the tow company’s for.”) could be heard, quietly, the sounds of disappointment and despair. “Totally didn’t give us any notice… Totally said they’d let us know… What’d they tell everybody? …Said we gotta go.” And as the newly disenfranchised members of the now-defunct Wallace Road community moved back and forth struggling to reclaim and reorganize their possessions, more and more frequently, from more and more mouths, came a new mantra: “What now?”
When the dust had settled, the outcome was a debacle for all parties involved.
For the City, it represented a breakdown in communications-a black eye on its “Caring” countenance. Not only the Mayor’s outreach team, but also officials from DPH and DHS denied any knowledge of the action, and their representatives were conspicuously absent. In fact, the only “supportive services” in evidence came in the form of a handout with a host of helpful phone numbers-helpful to those with phones or phone change, that is (including the direction, to, if “in crisis,” dial 911).
For the City Attorney’s Office—the point people for the summary disbanding of the longtime encampment as the coordinator’s of the recently formed Bayview Neighborhood Rescue Team—it was, according to press representative Matt Dorsey, “Not the way it’s supposed to work.”
To do both Dorsey and the office he represents the credit they deserve, he was quick to, in his own words, “step up to the plate and take responsibility” for the way this entire unfortunate situation went down. According to Dorsey, “The ‘rescue team’ approach is new, and it truly represents an attempt to improve the coordination of City services to mitigate public nuisances and eliminate sources of crime. It’s based on a code enforcement task force model that basically allows us to unite agencies that might not otherwise be involved, like the State Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. It certainly wasn’t started with the intention of rousting homeless people. But obviously, we need to coordinate better. In the future, I know we’ll try to reach out beyond the already identified resources and enlist the involvement of community groups concerned with this issue.”
But, of course, the deepest debacle was that experienced by the former Wallace Road dwellers, whose carefully carved out niche on the edge of society-people whose community had been carefully crafted as a delicate balance of life on the edge, living on land desired by no one and deemed damned by many, in improvised shelters ranging from cardboard shacks to abandoned cars to RVs still capable of motion-had been destroyed.
One can only hope that something was learned—by someone.
Anne