Uncle Anonymous’ Tour of Heck: No Glasses, Homeless/Poverty Disconnect Half Empty
Several months ago Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation and other entities sponsored a Tenderloin visit of a mobile optical clinic to help poor folks get new glasses, etc. The flyer advertising the event said it was to be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., which encouraged me to break the first law of getting any benefit offered to poor folks—get there early and get whatever it is.
So I thought a noon-ish visit to the van was doable. It wasn’t. What also wasn’t were the facts that only the first 100 people seen would get served, that those people were supposed to return beginning at 2 p.m., and anyone else who wanted to see if there were any “no-shows” (people who didn’t show up for their appointment) could be there then too and maybe get served.
This isn’t the only disconnect between entities with services and folks who need them, but that experience and several others lead me to a bit of ye olde rant and rave.
Second on my S**t-list is Episcopal Community Services (which apparently has a very thin skin when anyone {like, ahem… POOR Magazine…} critiques their services, um, critically…), which seems to not have the ability to tell its receptionist when it does or does not have services to offer someone who needs more than the usual skin-deep sort of services, job skills training programs, computer skills programs, etc. etc. etc. I visited ECS several months ago on a whim and went through a pretty in-depth interview with someone about what I was looking for (the questionnaire about computer skills was actually sort of impressively deep)—only to find out they didn’t even have the ability to open their computer lab to anyone who didn’t need bargain-basement hunt-and-peck-skills-level training in using a computer.
I must assume that this too would have to change, since the only thing you can really depend on is change (well, there is that death and taxes thing too…), but I was so disgruntled about having wasted some time I’d never get back I haven’t been back to that place. A simple bit of communication would have warned me off.
The worst example of lack of communications skills and ineptness—whether it is deliberate or not is a very good question—is Project Homeless Connect. The fact that Project Homeless Connect skips months is one of the bigger crimes committed by this crew of well-meaning folks, but if you’re going to spend a day trying to connect folks to services one would think that bankers’ hours just don’t cut the mustard! Can’t go until 5 or 6 p.m.? Lions and Tigers and shopping carts, oh my…
Lastly, the April 2009 Homeless Connect turned out to be Family Connect. Only Families seen, no singles. I found out about this a week before the event and no person I asked before the day in question could clear this up. I wanted to know because the issue that took me to the mobile van event (and to a somewhat unsatisfying visit to the previous Homeless Connect in February… my first time there…) was going to get me there if I could get in the door.
A source I trust told me the morning of Family Connect that he’d been stopped at the entrance and told it was only for families. Another source I trust, someone who was inside offering services, said Family Connect was slow: There were very few people—if any—there for services.
Project Homeless Connect is one of Gavin Newsom’s babies. One of his malnourished babies. One can only hope he’ll be a better father in real life than in his mirage-like political existence.
One can only hope that all of the entities I’ve ranted and raved about here will take what has been said seriously and do something to fix what’s busted. Anyone else out there want a visit from Uncle Anonymous?
UncleAnonymous