just another Saturday morning at the Coalition on Homelessness

I just got off the phone with Anita (not her real name), who called us collect from jail.

When you receive a collect call from jail here in SF, you get one of those female robot (fembot?) voices \"THIS IS A COLLECT CALL FROM *** (real voice) \'Anita\' *** AN INMATE AT THE SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY JAIL. TO ACCEPT THE CALL PRESS \'0\' NOW. TO BLOCK FURTHER CALLS FROM THIS FACILITY PRESS \'1\' NOW.\" (which blocks your phone from EVER receiving a collect call from the jail facility) Being mostly human (even five minutes after walking into the office on a Saturday, and I hadn\'t had any coffee yet), I press \'0\'. Then the voice comes on and says \"YOU HAVE JUST ACCEPTED A CALL FROM AN INMATE AT THE SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY JAIL.\"

The caller gets to hear all this too.

We know Anita. She\'s struggling with homelessness along with her partner Brian (not his real name). We had helped them help themselves to the point where they were going to move into an SRO hotel room, which is a pretty fucking sorry accomplishment, but the rains have been cold and regular lately. They were supposed to move in last Friday, but then Anita got picked up by SFPD on an old petty theft beef she walked away from five or six years ago. Because she never took care of the charge, she can\'t be \"cited out\" or released on her own recognizance. We were trying to help by getting her mom\'s number so her mom could bail her out, then she could find her Brian somewhere on these fabled streets of San Francisco, and they could see if their room was still available. Not too hard, right? Well hang on, \'cause here\'s where it gets difficult.

Anita has Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Not exactly what one might consider to be the kind of disability that lends itself easily to enforced confinement. Exercise and cannabis are what she usually uses to manage this situation, having successfully kicked drugs and alcohol for some years now. But there\'s no room to run or play hacky-sack with a paper wad in the new jail, and pot is pretty much out of the question. You can\'t even smoke cigarettes in the state-of the-art facility behind 850 Bryant Street in San Francisco.

When Anita comes on the phone, she\'s ping-ponging between panic and hysteria. Seems a few days ago she was so feeling so frustrated and defeated and alone she was sitting on the floor of her cell, weeping uncontrollably. But here in San Francisco, this shining beacon of enlightenment, our jails are equipped to accommodate prisoners with disabilities. She was placed in a suicide watch \"tank\" or cell, better known to the the City and County of San Francisco\'s women prisoners as the \"naked cell.\" It\'s called that because they strip you of your clothing and then place you in five-point restraints in a cell with a window behind which a guard sits to watch you and whoever else has merited such special attention 24 unending hours a day.

While Anita was there, one guard, a white male guard named Allen (his real name), became so moved (or aroused) by Anita\'s helpless state that he became especially interested in her. He stood inside the naked cell with Anita for some considerable length of time and teased her about her remarkable lack of body hair (Anita is Native American).

Anita was finally released from the naked cell, and placed in a pod where all the other women are detoxing cold-turkey from heroin. This is only a very small step down from the naked cell -- the women in this tank are all sick and miserable as hell, and there is not one scrap of anything that isn\'t a bare wall, mattress or blanket: no books or magazines, no cards or checkerboard, no paper or pencils, no tv, no toiletries, not even toothbrushes. The condition the jail staff places on Anita if she doesn\'t want to return to the naked cell is that she is to do nothing without a guard\'s permission except sit still on her mattress.

Here