EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article was found in the July 4th Mission Police Station Weekly Newsletter, which we have reprinted here [with poor grammar intact]. The appended reply was written by the nameless “homeless advocate” in question. Please note that while the Mission Station’s Captain was circumspect in maintaining anonymity for the police officers and the attorney involved in this case, he didn’t extend the same respect to the homeless person who was being charged, even though he reports her charges were dismissed. Assholes like the Captain Goldberg make it pretty hard for this publication to keep SFPD officers in a humane perspective, but we thought we’d share this exchange with our readers to illustrate the palpable disdain SFPD routinely [and officially] displays for homeless peoples’ constitutionally-protected civil rights. c.m.

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Blame homelessness on alcohol. Alcohol or heroin. Or laziness, maybe. Laziness or disease or mental illness or bad schools or deteriorating family structures. Or just bad luck. There are a thousand explanations that lay fault at the feet of those without homes or their families or minority and poor cultures. In any homeless individual’s life, there is a combination of personal, biographical factors that contribute to a life without shelter. But when homelessness is viewed not simply as an individual problem but as a social fact affecting millions of Americans and rising and falling at specific points in time, all of these personal explanations prove sorely lacking.

Homelessness is perhaps the most severe form of poverty America knows today. Every year, between 2.3 and 3.5 million people—some 1.35 million of them children—are likely to experience homelessness. Homelessness is not unknown in American history—Puritan Boston had laws punishing “vagrants,” and Civil War veterans were among the first train-hopping hoboes—but between the 1930s and the 1980s homelessness was effectively minimized in this country. While poverty remained a part of American life, very few people were in such dire circumstances that they were forced to live on the streets.

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In all of the President’s State of the Union Addresses and stump speeches, the issue of housing simply never comes up. While it’s obvious that Mr. Bush has other priorities such as the war and tax breaks for the wealthy, he has been known to at least give lip service to some issues that are important to working people such as healthcare, jobs, and social security. Even if those on the Left don’t like what he has to say about these issues, the President does bring them into the national debate.

Housing doesn’t even seem to be on the administration’s radar, however, despite the critical importance of the issue to most Americans. The administration’s public discussions of Federal policy just don’t include talk of high housing costs or plans to address the growing housing needs of the working poor. The closest we’ve come to hearing from the White House on these issues is its vigorous defense of the mortgage interest deduction, a Federal housing policy that provides a tax break for people who own second homes.

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Readers may recall that the March issue of the Street Sheet included a look at a U.S. Senate proposal to reauthorize the HUD McKinney-Vento homeless assistance programs. As Congress returns to work from its August vacation, it seems worth revisiting this piece of legislation, the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act (S. 1801).

Congress enacted the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act in 1987 in response to the homelessness crisis of the early 1980s. The majority of Federal homeless assistance dollars are administered by HUD through this set of programs, renamed the McKinney-Vento Act in 2000, which provide access to emergency shelter, transitional and permanent housing, supportive services, outreach, and homelessness prevention. A little over $1 billion in grants is awarded annually under a nationwide competition. Last year, San Francisco received roughly $17 million under this process.

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August’s Street Sheet reported the impending closure of the McMillan Drop-In Center at 39 Fell. That closure is slated for the end of this month, and at the time of printing, nothing has changed for 39 Fell, or for the people who make use of its services.

While the Coalition on Homelessness applauds the City’s decision to open a respite center in central San Francisco, we are dismayed that the city will lose its only 24-hour drop-in center. We have sent the following open letter to Mayor Gavin Newsom and Human Services Agency Executive Director Trent Rhorer—

This letter concerns the planned closure of McMillan Drop-In Center at the end of September. We have serious concerns about the resulting lack of after-hours drop-in access for homeless people in the central city area. The need for 24-hour drop-in capability is disconcertingly absent in this part of the city. We support the addition of a respite center in San Francisco, and believe that this is a good use of the facility at McMillan. We therefore call for the City to identify funding and relocate the drop-in services on a 24-hour basis.

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I am too old to play hide and seek. Indeed, I don’t even remember all the rules and protocols of the game. I do remember that the goal is to find an object who is doing his or her best to escape detection. Delightful enough pastime in its proper place, but not a game you want to play in order to find an attorney—especially when you have a desperate need for one. If you have ever had need of a civil rights attorney, as I in the past have had, you often get the feeling that you are involuntarily playing this sadly familiar game: hide and seek.

What are “civil rights” and why are they important to all citizens, especially the poor and homeless? In a nutshell, civil rights are laws that protect and grant liberty to all citizens of a government. In America, these laws are granted by the Constitution—the highest law in the legal pecking order. Constitutional amendments and legislative enactments are other vehicles creating civil rights laws.

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