Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly, and Jake McGoldrick have submitted legislation and garnered enough votes to put a Treatment on Demand initiative on the November 2008 ballot. The initiative would do what many politicians have promised but have failed to deliver.
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.
Friends:
As you know by now, Buster’s Place closed yesterday at 5:00. We went there to witness the closure and what we found was quite distressing.
Buster’s Place, which served approximately 150 people a day and 700 people annually, appeared on the Mayor’s mid-year budget cuts. Over 90 individuals stayed at the center each night, sitting in chairs. As many who use the center are disabled, and have nowhere else to go, this put them in grave risk.
The City responded only part way, by opening up 150 Otis (but a day too late as it was closed last night when people were put out of Buster’s Place), which cannot stay open year round has only 40 chairs and will serve only men, and must close down every nine months. It is set to close in June. The City offered up another center called Oshun for women, but it was already at capacity.
Appeals to the Mayor for mercy went unanswered.
At least 20 people were filed out the door. Four of them were in wheelchairs. Many were elderly. Not one that we talked to had anywhere to go.
There was no one from the City. Not one person—no homeless czar, no HOT, no DPH—to assist them.
Many filed over to 150 Otis to try their chances at a bed in the CHANGES system for the night.
The shelter had not opened yet.
There were TV cameras everywhere.
One woman we talked to was in a wheelchair and looked to be in her early 90s. She was rolling slowly away, and said she had somewhere to go. When we asked her where, she clearly had no idea and was very confused. She had nowhere to go, and we did not see her in line at 150 Otis, where, her being female, they would not have given her a number to hold her place in line anyway.
Another couple had a woman in a wheelchair and her husband to care for her. Of course with the loss of Buster’s there is nowhere for them to be accomodated. She needs his care, and they cannot split up. No couples are housed in our shelters, and a room was never forth coming.
These are just a couple examples, and there are dozens more.
Once people had numbers, they were allowed to return to Buster’s to wait for a few more hours as they could not wait at 150 Otis.
We called DPH, and they were going to send HOT team out, but we have little faith that many were placed anywhere for more then one night.
We have a court case on Wednesday that may help. We still have a budget process to bring back 24-hour low-threshold health/hygiene-based drop-in to the city, but already we can say based on last night, the personal impact on human beings was devastating.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ resolution endorsing the HealthCare Action Team’s (HAT) recommendations for procedures on homeless patient hospital discharge went to the three-member Board of Supervisors City Operations and Neighborhood Services committee in January, where it was discussed and continued after a vote by Supervisors Alioto-Pier, Chu, and McGoldrick.
There are some strong opinions about Insite, Canada’s only supervised site for substance abuse victims to inject themselves with illegal narcotics.
The enforcement pillar of the drug industry, the police department, lobbies the governments to shut down the facility. The whole project has survived on six-month exemptions to Canada’s drug laws, leaving staff and clients not knowing how long the site will last. Vancouver’s Mayor Sam Sullivan makes statements on both sides of the fence and has stated that Insite might make the transition to distributing legal drugs.
Please join us to commemorate homeless people—our friends, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances, and even some who none of us got the opportunity to know—this Thursday, December 20, at 5:30 p.m. at Civic Center Plaza. Bring a candle, if you can. If you know of any one who has passed away, please make sure that their name is included in the service by contacting San Francisco Network Ministries at 415.928.6209.
The HealthCare Action Team (HAT) is a project of Planning for Elders. HAT has worked for several years on the issue of appropriate hospital discharge planning. HAT advocated for and helped create legislation that created the San Francisco Hospital and Nursing Home Discharge Planning Task Force.
HAT is leading the work to improve how homeless patients are discharged. In September, HAT members and allied community organizations held a press conference to bring attention to the issue. HAT has continued to press for solutions to this issue before both the Board of Supervisors and the Hospital Council.
After decades of slashing voluntary mental health treatment, the state passed bill (AB 1421) that would allow the government to lock up people with mental health issues for not complying with their treatment plans. Counties now have an option to implement this law if they choose. As health professionals and people living with mental illnesses we oppose this law in SF.
When Michael Moore—a filmmaker and former Eagle Scout, who went to seminary to become a priest—solicited health care stories from his e-mail list, he got a flood of responses. He reported in a PBS interview, “I put out a call for people to send me their health care horror stories. I got over 25,000. It was appalling to sit there for literally months and read what they had to go through.”
The massive health care industry is 15% of our gross national product. “I am tilting at a pretty big windmill here,” said Moore, “but we have to do something about this because it’s criminal that we let 47 million of our citizens go uncovered, uninsured, and we allow the profit motive to be involved in a hospital or doctor’s decision-making process.”
I was not spared Moore’s agony by my tiny interviewee group of four San Franciscans—two housed but at risk of homelessness and two unhoused—who shared their health care stories.
If you happen to require impatient hospital or rehabilitation (rehab centers are commonly called Supervised Nursing Facilities, or SNFs) treatment here are a few tips that may help you get everything you need when you are released:
