The Great Key Migration
I remember having a beer bottle keychain. It was heavy and metal and hard to lose. It opened up its fair share of longnecks and it would jangle my keys like chimes when I pulled it from my pocket.
I used to have a lot of keys. They’d weigh down my worn out jeans and poke holes through the pockets. They’d end up collecting trinkets—weird plastic chains with bottle openers or flashlights or cartoon characters dangled off of them. The bigger and heavier they were the better. That way, I wouldn’t lose them. But over time my key ring’s gotten smaller and smaller and it seems like I just can’t keep a hold of nothin’ but the bottle opener.
I know I’m not the only one that’s been hit by the Great Key Migration. There are lots of folks in San Francisco losing their keys. Our pockets are getting lighter and lighter by the day. It’s like they’ve all been called home by their herders. Keys don’t just disappear. They become somebody else’s. Or most of the time they were somebody else’s in the first place. I mean, c’mon now. Who really owns land in these States? Keys get taken back. When the owners get greedy, keys are called home.
Growing up, I had to borrow keys. Mostly from different portions of my wildly messed up, violently dysfunctional, barely working class, chemical-soaked, mixed-race family. We had very few keys left. They were mostly strays that weren’t reliable. We’d grab one, wrestle it to the ground, fumble with it for as long as we could, and then watch it run right off until we could wrestle another. It’s hard to hold onto them keys.
Lots of folks in San Francisco know how that goes. Knowing that one last slip and you’ll lose the damn things and everything they keep forever. Folks in San Francisco are constantly having their keys taken from them. John Stewart harvested keys from North Beach, The Presidio, and Treasure Island. Lennar stripped the Bayview/Hunter’s Point communities. CitiApartments has corralled the Tenderloin, Hayes Valley, and Nob Hill. Trinity’s also working on Downtown and Northbeach.
They’ve systematically kicked out the poor folks, renovated, and driven up the rent prices to make sure folks can’t get back in. Keys fly out of poor folks’ and families’ wallets. Communities are broken, children displaced, mothers and fathers and sons and daughters in struggle.
Every time I see a CitiApartments sign in the TL where I spend most my time I see a death mark, a chalk outline, a target.
Some folks are just fatally wounded by homelessness. They recover possibly. Maybe temporarily. But they will never be the same.
They’ll find other keys—usually leading to less comfortable spaces or spaces that are far away from their families and communities and the things and people and places they know and love. Some folks cram into tighter sardine cans with folks and friends and share keys to small rooms. Some folks borrow keys from other family members and hope their family ties can bear the weight. Some folks bounce from couch to couch or hotel to hotel like they’re playing leapfrog. Some folks sleep in cars. Some folks end up in shelters or on the streets or in abusive situations or in lock-up.
Other folks end up dead.
Shelter is one of the most basic human needs. It’s crazy to think we’re expected to pay taxes and follow laws, respect businesses and people in suits, and work respectable jobs when the privileged folks in charge aren’t even willing to keep us from dying in the streets when they get too greedy.
No matter how many jobs we’ve held or what we mean to our families and communities or what societal-ism of the month we’re facing or what fuck-up in this crazy-ass, blood-driven economy happens, they ain’t even willing to give us toilet paper in the emergency shelters when their fuck-ups land on our heads. Ask the folks at the Coalition on Homelessness how hard the Mayor’s office fought against shelter standards. The Mayor can sell our homes to the John Stewart Company, but he doesn’t think he even needs to make sure we have soap and water in the shelters he’s forced us into.
There are between 6 and 15,000 homeless people in San Francisco. We’re dying on the streets while livable apartment units remain open and empty so realtors can drive up the costs of their units. Check out the studios in the Tenderloin going for $1,200 a month. You barely clear that much if you’re afforded the privilege of working 40 hours a week on minimum wage. Why is that legal? How are folks and families supposed to get by? Thanks, CitiApartments.
Folks with lots of keys like to pretend that their keys were stolen fair and square. Stolen by their genocidal great-grandfathers and their slave-owning grandfathers. Stolen by their homophobic and misogynistic fathers. Stolen by their pony-tail-wielding cousins and their suit-wearing step-brothers. There’s lots of reasons why people with big key chains have made up lies that tell us why we don’t deserve to live in safe and comfortable spaces. Without those lies, they’d have to face the red hot truth of all the fucked-up shit they did or let be done to get what they’ve got. They have to pretend that they took our keys fair and square to survive.
Right now I have a key to a closet in someone’s basement in the Sunset. I pay $400 a month for it. There’s no kitchen and the shared bathroom is unspeakable. Various members of the family seem to find their way to the garage when I am just coming out of the shower and walking through the laundry area. I can see my breath at night. But, it can hold a few books and papers and clothes. And I’m not going to be physically threatened like I had been in other places. Even though anemia from not being able to cook is starting to make me dizzy, I am still fortunate to have a toilet and sink. A safe place for my things. I’m gonna keep alive, even though its visibly and permanently fucking me up.
Homelessness is an act of societal violence. It’s a slow mass murder for the thousands of poor and struggling folks in this city, the millions in cookie-cutter cities around this country, and the billions worldwide who have been separated from their homes and their communities. Somehow the script’s been flipped and folks that are homeless get criminalized but folks that cause homelessness get off scot free.
Like here in San Francisco, for example. A few guys in suits that run CitiApartments, John Stewart, Lennar, and Trinity are fattening their wallets and keychains directly off of making folks homeless. Right now, they own thousands of open units that sit vacant while thousands of San Francisco’s men, women, and children are forced into homelessness. People are dying on the streets so a few rich assholes can make a few more million. What the fuck?
And then sometimes, you get to thinking, “Well, maybe keys are migrating ‘cause they are out of season. Maybe the right to a key is more important than the right to a fat wallet.”
You get to thinking that maybe there are other ways to open doors. Doors are just wood and metal right? A little glass every now and again. Maybe we’ve been giving keys too much damn credit. Maybe they can keep their damn keys, but we can take back our homes. Imagine that.
Lola
