1/30 mourning The City's homeless dead

RELIGIOUS WITNESS WITH HOMELESS PEOPLE, 1/30 event:


At the annual public mourning ceremony and rally for San Francisco's homeless dead, 30 January 2005, outdoors at Civic Center Plaza on a mild Sunday evening, queer Assemblyman Mark Leno, straight Supervisor Chris Daly, and queer Supervisor Bevan Dufty show their support.


Linda Hirschorn performs her song, "Are You One of the Homeless?"
Po' Poets A. Faye Hicks, Jewnbug, and Tiny Garcia perform their poems (or song-poems).

In the Nineties, mourners had a rough idea of how many homeless persons had died in the preceding twelve months,and who they were. Now these grim facts are hidden, supposedly to protect "privacy". Such after-death sensitivity comes tardily from a society which often failed to provide these folks with a private bedroom when they were alive.*


Bill Hart (of G.A. Advocacy Project) and Shelly Roder (of St. Boniface) try to summarize how Mayor Gavin Newsom's
Care Not Cash (CNC) policy works today. Here's my biased view:

(A) Non-GA homeless are being displaced:
Some recipients of General Assistance get so-called "housing" in the form of long-terms beds and services in homeless shelters. This means fewer available beds and services for other homeless persons, who aren't currently getting G.A. Those displaced may include more than 1,600 who dropped out of GA; plus some SSI recipients; plus some non-citizens who aren't eligible; plus persons unable to keep appointments, fill out forms, get and keep a $20 California ID card, and do all of the bureaucratic tasks needed to seek and maintain aid; plus those who've decided that GA has become too much hassle for $59 or $63 per month.


(B) Too much hassle?
Before CNC, many GA recipients did some labor ("workfare") to repay the cash and foodstamps which they received.
Having done so, most could believe they had contributed useful service; which may have helped their self-esteem. Now they're forced to approach employers and ask for jobs which they won't get. This useless charade forces them to fail repeatedly, further damaging their self-esteem. It also consumes many hours which they might otherwise spend standing in line to get breakfast, lunch, and supper.

(C) Homeless SSI recipients?
Readers may wonder why an SSI recipient might be homeless. A single room in a slum hotel may cost $600 or more monthly; while SSI runs around $775 to $850. If the landlord also requires a deposit, getting housed becomes difficult.
If a person has ever been evicted, landlords may refuse to rent. SSI recipients are often old (65-plus), or blind, or physically disabled, or psychiatrically disabled, or developmentally disabled -- or suffering from more than one of these conditions, in addition to poverty. Many aren't up to the task of hunting for cheap (and safe?) housing in a very expensive city. The supply of SRO (single-room occupancy) hotel rooms has shrunk since the mid-90s, while demand has grown, with prices rising accordingly. The supply shrinks with each hotel fire; while the supply of short-term (daily or weekly) rooms shrinks whenever the city leases a hotel. Few new SRO rooms, if any, are being built; so supply may continue shrinking while demand may continue rising.


I live in a hotel built around 1908. When I moved in, almost nine years ago, the rent was reasonable, for SF.
By stubbornly staying put, I've been protected by rent control. So today I'm paying less than unlucky Tenderloin peers who have moved from hotel to hotel, or have been evicted, or have lost their rooms because they lingered too long in hospital, et cetera. Rent control rewards healthy and stable persons, while punishing the sick and unstable. As usual, The System gives to those who have, and takes away from those who lack (compare Matthew XXV:29).

As I age, I fear that hospitalization could make me terminally homeless. So I hope I'll be lucky enough to be D.O.A. when the ambulance reaches the hospital. To that end, rather than to mimic Goth-chic, I wear a medical medallion which says:
"Do Not Resuscitate".




Tortuga Bi LIBERTY,
a Tenderloin queer, age 62
San Franhattan

30 January 2005

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PS 1:
For more info,
or to help,
please contact:

RELIGIOUS WITNESS WITH HOMELESS PEOPLE
P.O. Box 420486
San Francisco,
CA 94142-0486
U$A


phone: 415.929.0781

fax: 415.929.0783

e-mail: RelWitHome [at] yahoo.com

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PS 2:

On January 25, the SF Board of Supervisors unanimously urged city officials
to resume compiling the homeless death list.
State and federal privacy laws may prevent this.

Please see SF Chronicle report,
dated Jan. 27:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/27/BAGV4B0SFU1.DTL

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