Panelists at the homeless forum: (L to R) Paul Kozakiewicz, Supervisor Mark Farrell, Supervisor Scott Weiner, Lt. Walter Cuddy. Photo by David H.A diverse group of over 50 neighbors packed the Richmond District SFPD community room on 6th Avenue for a forum on homelessness in the Richmond District on Wednesday night. The event was co-sponsored by The Richmond Review newspaper, New Bay Area Media, and the Chinese American Voter Education Committee (CAVEC).
In the last homeless count performed by the city of San Francisco in January 2015, there were 6,500 sleeping on the streets (data will be made available soon by neighborhood). $265 million is spent by the city to support homelessness, with 8 hearings alone last year across the city to discuss the issue.
The purpose of Wednesday night’s forum was to exchange views, ideas and information about the homeless problem in the Richmond District.
The idea for the event came from Richmond Review editor Paul Kozakiewicz, who after a severe storm last year, began researching resources for homeless in the neighborhood. What he found was that there were none – no homeless shelters, no outreach organizations, no food programs.
In addition to Kozakiewicz, the panel at the forum was comprised of District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell, District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, and Lt. Walter Cuddy from the Richmond District SFPD station.
The Richmond District’s own Supervisor Eric Mar did not attend the event.
Focus of Wednesday night’s discussion was on details around the city’s efforts but the lack of connection to the Richmond District. Even the Richmond District’s only police station only has two officers trained in homeless outreach.
The city recently imposed an overnight closure on Golden Gate Park where many homeless typically camp out. What has resulted from the enforcement is that many homeless have moved into neighborhood streets.
“Our homeless in the Richmond seem to be long term residents,” said one woman in attendance.
One of the neighborhood’s homeless residents named John also attended Wednesday night’s meeting. He lives near Golden Gate Park and spoke of increasing hostility, needing a bathroom and his inability to take spot jobs due to city regulation.
Attendees also discussed the need for a distinction between those without a home, and those homeless that also struggle with mental illness. Mention was made of Laura’s Law, the state measure that allows mentally ill people to be compelled into treatment by a court. It was approved by the Board of Supervisors in July 2014.
Supervisor Farrell was a supporter of Laura’s Law and told the Chronicle after its passage that “it will give the city another tool for dealing with mentally ill residents and, it is hoped, help take some stress off the city’s public safety and emergency management departments.” Laura’s Law goes into effect on September 30, 2015.
What are your thoughts on homelessness in the Richmond District and how to best address it? Leave a comment to let us know.
Special thanks to cub reporter David H. for reporting and photos.
Sarah B.
Attendees at the homeless forum. Photo by David H.
I feel the phrase ‘homeless’ has come to mean mentally ill and pretending these people just need a home is never going to work.
“researching resources for homeless in the neighborhood. What he found was that there were none – no homeless shelters, no outreach organizations, no food programs.”
And if you build them, it will draw the human detrius to the single family home centric Richmond. It’s like feeding stray cats. They’ll just keep coming back for more.
The city is too expensive for citizens with homes, let alone people with no homes and no prospects and nothing to offer the community but free riding and taking. They have no business here.
Scott Weiner seems to have forgotten about Mayor Willie hiring OPD helicopters to successfully chase the vagrants out of GG Park. That message seems to have been forgotten. We don’t want to coddle more homeless in our neighborhood. We don’t want them living in our parks and we don’t want them Send ’em packing.
I support fewer resources for the homeless in our neighborhoods, and more resources where they are already established in more urban parts of the city.
I would support more public bathrooms across the city, even in the Richmond. It is inconceivable that people can buy food and drink anywhere but nowhere to eliminate…
I’ve called the non-emergency line to try to get the police to check on an elderly homeless woman who lives on Clement Street, but I don’t know if anyone ever checked on her. She is still outside every morning and I wish something could be done for her.
I see so many people sleeping on the street in the morning while I’m walking to the bus, some seem fine mentally but there are a few who are definitely scary/on the edge and I worry about them hurting themselves and others.
sounds like the key takeaway here is that the City eagerly awaits 9/30/2015 to start rounding up the homeless & take them to some kind of faux-asylum concentration camp?
Where was Mr. Mar? I’ve called the homeless support folks about the guy who sleeps on 14th and Clement- and leaves trash that blows all over the street. They really don’t want to come “all the way” out here. We as a city provide so many programs, I just don’t think we ha e to support those who don’t want to live by society’s norms.
Supervisor Mar was attending the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee hearing regarding funding for our public safety net, including humane homeless services, public safety, and stable funding for community and non-profit organizations. That evening he attended the annual event supporting Community Housing Partnership, their tenants and leaders. CHP is the model program that helps to lift people out of homelessness with supportive services and job/employment training. CHP is a key organization founded by the Coalition of Homelessness, Mayor Art Agnos, and affordable housing leaders and is one of the key city partners for transitioning homeless residents off the street.
Our full-time policy fellow, Scott Blood, was in attendance and provided the Supervisor with a full debrief.
WILLIE BROWN FOR MAYOR!
The “problem” of people sleeping in the streets has been going on since the time of the Roman Empire. If they could not stop it, what makes anyone think that one can stop it in a county with a Bill of Rights?
The only thing that can be done is to manage the problem, it will not go away. To that end the public needs to come to some consensus on that management.
From the comments one reads on this issue, it is obvious that there is no consensus. Some want to toss more money and programs at it and some want to just push it someplace else.
I tend to think that we need to set clear boundaries as a society on this issue. Namely, we make it clear places were people can sleep in their own filth if they choose and places were they cannot. This coupled with service at those places. In the places they many not sleep and hang out with carts of junk, we will have to deprive them of some liberty to stay in those places.
Every Right we enjoy comes with a indivisible responsibility. Those that are not seriously mentally challenged want to enjoy their rights a citizens without that responsibility. Given that stance, we as a society are within our rights, I think, to demand when and where that can exercise that “right”.
I was just popping in to say that the lack of services is a feature not a bug, that the neighborhood specifically doesn’t have those kinds of services due to NIMBY-ism, just like the hoo-ha around grocery store recycling centers. And then I saw the comment from TheDudeAbides and I became sad.
I was born in the Richmond District and am a third generation San Franciscan. While I too am frustrated, sometimes frightened, appalled, etc., I’m guessing Dude Abides is yet another of our newer residents, who have caused the catastrophically high cost of living in our city. And he says, “if you can’t afford it leave.” This is our home place. We have earthquakes that slide homes into the abyss, we may face never-ending water crisis, but in the end, people just want to live where they’ve always lived. Most of the homeless in the Richmond District have probably lived here far longer than The Dude. Maybe the City can get a copter out and run off the assholes instead.
SF has always had a vagrancy problem and it will continue until there are fundamental changes to the manner in which we deal with economic deprivation, mental illness, substance abuse, and crime. While there are certainly some who are homeless due to job loss, eviction, and/or lack of skills; the vast majority are mentally ill, addicted, and/or felons.
Policies and programs need to be set in place that effectively deal with each of these issues proportionally to their impact on the community.
In response to Colleen – I have to disagree. If I could no longer afford to live in the neighborhood I was born in, my first response wouldn’t be that I would live on the street just to stay close by. I’d find a place i could afford to keep a roof over my head. I believe living on the street is a secondary issue to some other serious problem that needs to be dealt with. If you don’t address the primary problem you’re never going to make headway with the secondary. If drugs or mental illness make you incapable of living indoors and taking care of yourself then there should be a place where you will go to be taken care of. Perhaps you will have to give up some of your freedom but no, you cannot live on the street.
Colleen, My family has been in the Bay Area (SF and Oakland) since the 1860s and in this district since 1917. Some have worked in social services. Until the ACLU pressured California’s Legislature in the 1970s those who were incapable of caring for themselves due to disability, addiction or mental illness were sent to facilities and segregated from the general public. What is now Moscone Center was the old skid row until SF lost the primary industry, shipping to Oakland. SFPD and other agencies kept the drunks and addicts somewhat contained in skid row. While this transition was happening, a significant increase in heroin addiction arrived with returning GIs from Vietnam and their business minded friends who shipped extra supplies in from the Golden Triangle via body bags. The State Legislature closed down the taxpayer funded hospitals and failed to fund community based services for those who would no longer be institutionalized. Proposition 13 followed shortly thereafter (and I did know people who lost their homes before it passed because property tax was simply a matter of City Hall deciding how much to spend in the coming year and assessing that amount, leading to 20 and 30% tax increases). I sat in on and processed a lot of “educational” material for organizations loosely and tightly affiliated with the potential change in status of public health, most populated by individuals with LCSW and MSW licensing as well as non-profits in this district. Back then I could tell they were unrealistic about the services they would offer, especially those who did not work for the State Department of Mental Health and who had clients in Napa and Atascadero (among many other hospitals).
Since then, it has been my experience that many who are incapable of caring for themselves chose to come to San Francisco or were given a ticket so they would no longer blight their family or home town. It has also been my experience in the world of treatment and recovery to addiction that few are willing to do the actual work, which involves a lot of self-examination, to get to the root of their problem and take the long series of actions such as finishing school, gaining marketable skills, maintaining a schedule, and not offending others, to become self-sufficient. New clothes, hot meals and cheap or free housing do not often provide the stimulus to make the effort, especially when the individual has poor judgment.
Delancey used to have a good model but it, like many other treatment facilities that receive taxpayer funding, have been pressured to expand their specific service missions to include significant outside issues and to accept clients who are not appropriate to be in contact with the existing clients who are actually working to improve their lives. Much of this has been driven by social worker claims that he/she has nowhere to stay.
Do keep in mind the largest piece of the General Budget goes to Health (rather than infrastructure) and little is publicly disclosed of the Mayor’s Budget which the Coalition on Homelessness wants even more of. Greater transparency in accounting as well as interdepartmental expenditures correctly re-allocated to the actual use would go a long way in disclosing how much is actually spent in the $8 Billion + annual city budget (plus Mayor’s Budget). So would a thorough review of taxpayer funded non-profits for effectiveness and redundancy.
@ Collen
I’m hardly a newcomer. 4th Gen native born at St. Lukes.
Nice insinuation bordering on insult though… must be new here… cute. Oh wait, you called me an asshole too? That’s an insult based on a faulty assumption…. that you and your homeless friends have been here longer than me and have some righteous primacy in determining who’s opinions are valid… here’s my unvarnished opinion- people willing to give away our resources to a never-ending conveyor belt of transplant street folk are a major part of the problem (looking at you) and I don’t want them in my neighborhood.
I am unwilling to cede anymore of the district to transients, transplants, runaways, indigent, crazies and grifty politicians throwing tax money and our quality of life down the drain.
I do possess empathy for many of the folks I see on the street, it breaks my heart, however as a parent, spouse and citizen, I just don’t want to see them camped out on my doorstep anymore and I don’t want ton deal with the plethora of negative issues they bring with them- drugs, crime, filth, etc.
Yes I am a NIMBY, and even though for many the term has a negative connotation, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to protect my family’s quality of life… NIMBY is still better than a hypocrite homeless coddler.
Where was Eric Mar??
Am I the only one who finds that amount of money astonishing? $41k per head … a truly remarkable use of the public’s resources.
You are not the only one, no.
On the other hand, if you look at it as 5 cents, per San Franciscan, per homeless person, I guess it’s not as shocking.
I’m with Dude Abides. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
“In January 2015, there were 6,500 sleeping on the streets…$265 million is spent by the city to support homelessness” $41,000 per homeless person. Why are we “supporting homelessness” anyway? There is money for parklets, batkid and plastic grass at the beach. Priorities.