TL Health. You know, that first traffic light at the top of the rise after you come through the dogleg behind UN Plaza. That crowd of folks milling about or sometimes standing in line on the right hand side have probably been TARC clients, to one degree or another. Except that last June, Continuum HIV Day Services and Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center were all rolled into one TL Health Clinic. I’m often running across folks I know from around town down there, and now that they’ve axed McMillan Drop-In Center/Buster’s Place, it’s one of last places I can wash my hands before I eat after spending an evening recycling around Downtown. Now it’s on the Mayor’s chopping block as fat to be trimmed from the City’s deficit-laden budget.

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At a special meeting in the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center on June 10, Joyce Crum of the Human Services Agency (HSA) tried to assure over 20 homeless people that the shelter’s June 30 closing was not the City’s decision.

Before Crum referred them to Homeless Outreach Team members to get them wait-listed at other shelters, the director of HSA’s homeless and housing division told them that City budget cuts played no role in the closing—Ella Hill decided not to renew their contract at the end of the fiscal year.

Crum also said Ella Hill’s board of directors decided in February to get out of the shelter business—and it was solely their call.

Or was it?

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In 1933, when over a million Americans were homeless, President Roosevelt’s New Deal made their economic and social well-being a Federal responsibility. In 2008, an estimated 3.5 million Americans will live without housing; homeless children in school number more than 900,000 according to the Department of Education. Ironically, in this election year—which marks the 75^th anniversary of the New Deal—neither major party nor presidential candidate has acknowledged a Federal responsibility. It is time that they do so.

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Imagine a place where you can go and be provided with connections to job opportunities, mental health services, substance abuse treatment, and social services of various types. Public Defender Jeff Adachi says of the proposed Community Justice Center, “If you have something of quality to offer, people will come.” Only two tiny catches sit within this mirage: in order to “come” you must get arrested, and the services you have “come” to receive have all been cut in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ruthless budget.

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