CITY SWEEPS THE "UNDERCLASS" UNDER THE RUG "Just how many homeless people there are in San Francisco is a highly politicized question. "In an application for federal housing funds, the Mayor's Office placed the number at FIFTEEN thousand -- although, when speaking publicly to the press, it prefers to use ten-year-old data from the 1990 census, which found only FIVE thousand." "After a dramatic increase in police citations of homeless people throughout March --tickets for sleeping in public surged from 19 in February to 103 in March-- it's not surprising that a team of some 20 census counters spent four hours in Golden Gate Park in April and didn't find ONE homeless person ... "Under a SECRET plan under consideration by City Hall, homeless people would soon have to PAY to stay in shelters. "People seeking a bed for the night would first have to TELEPHONE a VOICE-MAIL number to find out where to connect with a 'mobile access team,' which would travel to different sites throughout the city. "Once the mobile team confirmed their need for shelter, homeless people would have to report to a 'coordinated care team,' to be located in a facility in the Bayview [ghetto]. "Sending people there is a thinly veiled attempt to 'decrease the visibility of homeless people' by forcing them to assemble in the city's poorest, MOST UNSAFE neighborhood." _____________________________________________________________ Editorial: THE HOMELESS CENSUS San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 19, 2000 The U.S. Census has always been a blunt instrument. Poor and minority communities are routinely undercounted, leading to inequities at every level, from congressional redistricting to the allocation of funds for service providers. But this year, in San Francisco, when it comes to the poorest of the poor, the cops have made the problem much, much worse. Homeless people are hard to keep track of, for obvious reasons. Many don't have a mailing address; many are fearful of giving information to the government; most have enough to worry about without adding census forms to the list. Still, the city, the state, and the federal government need to know just how many people live on San Francisco's streets -- so they can design policies and get funding to help those people and so we can all see the cold, hard facts of the terrifying homeless crisis. But as Stephen Bender reports, the weeks leading up to the count saw the cops dramatically stepping up citations for the kind of minor infractions that are most often committed by homeless people. In the month of March, tickets for sleeping in public increased more than fivefold. Census workers suspect those citations, which impel homeless people to stay out of sight, were one reason they found surprisingly few homeless people on the streets -- and none at all during a four-hour search of Golden Gate Park. Just how many homeless people there are in San Francisco is a highly politicized question. Homelessness activists estimate that number to be around 14,000. Speaking to the press, city officials have used data from the 1990 census, which found 5,000 -- although, in an application for federal housing funds, the Mayor's Office placed the number at 14,818. There's no evidence that the cops were acting under a direct order from policy makers when they stepped up their vigilance against the menace of people sleeping in doorways. But the Board of Supervisors should hold hearings to find out how this debacle could have happened. And the city should consider bringing in an independent agency to conduct a real count of homeless people – a count that takes more than a few days, that directly involves groups that provide services to homeless people. An accurate count will give us an accurate sense of the problem. Then maybe we'll start to see some real attempts to address it. DOESN'T ADD UP Cop crackdown, dumb mistakes set to undermine census's homeless count by Stephen Bender San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 19, 2000 "Census 2000" has come to town, along with a publicity blitz and the promise of expanded outreach to low-income and homeless locals. Census figures are used by policy makers to determine which areas get what proportion of federal largesse; if homeless people are undercounted in San Francisco, the city is likely to lose out on federal funds for homeless-related programs. It's disturbing, then, that the number of homeless people counted in the Tenderloin and Golden Gate Park may be much lower than the number of people present there on an average night. Census workers say the count has suffered from disorganization and low turnout. But a look at police practices in the months leading up to the census suggests another reason homeless San Franciscans have been scarce: a dramatic increase in police citations of homeless people. San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Sherman Ackerson maintained that "no sweeps at all" had taken place in the Tenderloin in the period before the count and that officers' approach to homeless people was "absolutely standard." But numbers compiled by the San Francisco Municipal Court raise questions about the cops' behavior. The number of tickets issued for quality-of-life infractions (such as panhandling) rose significantly in March, the month in which the count occurred. Police issued 1,893 such tickets in January, 2,017 in February, and 2,613 in March. Even more dramatically, tickets for sleeping in public surged from 12 in January and 19 in February to 103 in March. In light of those figures, perhaps it's not surprising that a team of some 20 census counters spent four hours in Golden Gate Park in late March -- and didn't find a single homeless person. Officer Bruce Majors of the SFPD's Richmond Park station told us the department had received "a lot more complaints" about homeless people. Improved weather in March also likely increased the number of interactions between homeless people and pedestrians in public spaces -- although it's not clear how sleeping in public constitutes harassing or threatening behavior. Paul Boden, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, doesn't think the cops stepped up enforcement to keep the census count low. "It's more ineptitude than intent," he told us. In theory, the city should be eager to have the fullest count possible, to maximize federal funding. But a high number would embarrass those hoping to downplay one of the city's most obvious problems. In a recent application for federal housing funds, the Mayor's Office estimated, under penalty of perjury, that San Francisco harbored 14,818 homeless people. When talking to the media, officials often cite a figure less than half of that. Ten years ago, after a single day of outreach, San Francisco census workers counted some 5,000 homeless people. If this year's three-day count also produces a low figure, increased police presence might bear some of the blame. But there are other factors that make counting homeless people a difficult job. Census workers struggled to overcome mistrust on the part of the homeless people they tried to track. Although the census guarantees confidentiality, many of the homeless people we spoke with were still suspicious. "A lot of people around here think the cops will get the information," Steve, who asked that we not use his last name, told us. But some critics question the outreach strategy census workers used. Boden is skeptical about the value of late-night counts in the park: he argues that people who sleep there usually hide so adeptly as to frustrate roaming counters with flashlights. "We attended meetings and suggested going out at 7 a.m. with coffee and cigarettes," he told us. "Instead they went at three or four in the morning with flashlights. These are human beings; it just seemed asinine and inhumane." Boden says the census should have hired more homeless people, to capitalize on their experience and knowledge. "We had thirty-five homeless people pass the entrance exam, and they only hired one from the group," he said. Whatever the case, anecdotal evidence from census workers --who asked that we not use their names-- suggests that the final count of homeless people in San Francisco may be surprisingly low. Almost 100 counters showed up at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church March 28, when the church provided a free chicken dinner. At least 20 were dismissed before 1 p.m. Some hadn't counted a single person. In the early hours of the following morning, census workers patrolled Civic Center and the Tenderloin. Several commented on how few people were on the street. [Stephen Bender is working as a census counter in San Francisco] ["BUSTED,"] CITY BACKS OFF SECRET HOMELESS PLAN by Angela Rowen San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 19, 2000 The San Francisco Department of Human Services appears to be backing away from a controversial plan to revamp the city's homeless shelter system -- a plan that would require anyone seeking shelter to go through an assessment process at a central intake point before getting a bed and force homeless people who receive public assistance to use most of their welfare check to pay rent in exchange for shelter. Earlier this month the Coalition on Homelessness obtained city documents showing that the department had been secretly planning major changes to homelessness policy for more than a year. Homelessness activists publicly criticized DHS, charging that the plan would micromanage the lives of homeless people and prevent them from saving money to obtain permanent housing. And they say DHS failed to seek out input from any of the 15,000 or so homeless people in the city, their service providers, advocates for the homeless, or the Local Homeless Coordinating Board, which is charged with designing the city's homeless policy. At the board's April 10 meeting, DHS director Will Lightbourne repeatedly denied that DHS had been meeting in secret to develop a plan. He told board members that there was "not really a plan" and that it was "a month or two premature to bring before the board." He had a hard time convincing some board members of that. By that time, most of them had examined the documents, which the coalition obtained under the city's Sunshine Ordinance [requiring open hearings and public records]. One such document is the department's 2000-2001 budget proposal, which Lightbourne submitted to the Mayor's Office Feb. 11. That request includes a project dubbed "Redesigning the Front-End of Homeless Services," projected to cost $9.8 million. Another document lays out the redesign plan in more detail. According to that flowchart, DHS plans to have the first phase of the new shelter system in place by Oct. 3 of this year; the rollout would be finished in July 2001. Board members were visibly angry at Lightbourne's continued denial in the face of the evidence. Board member Steve Bingham, an attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid, called the secretiveness "appalling" and "completely unacceptable." Bureaucratic nightmare A review of the documents shows how DHS planned to restructure the shelter program. Presently most homeless people get shelter through a lottery system: They go to any of the city's homeless shelters -- which provide a total of 1,520 beds for single adults, youths, and families -- and put their names on a waiting list. Some are directly referred to shelter beds by outreach workers, resource centers, and shelter staffers. The cost of those beds is borne by the city. Under the new system, homeless people would have to PAY to stay in shelters and would access them from centralized locations. People seeking a bed for the night would first have to TELEPHONE a VOICE-MAIL number to find out where to meet up with a new "mobile access team," which would travel to different sites throughout the city. Once the mobile team confirmed their need for shelter, homeless people would have to report to a "coordinated care team," which would refer them to beds in shelters throughout the city. By next summer that central intake point would be relocated in a facility in the Bayview [ghetto]. Paul Boden, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said pushing people to the Bayview site is a thinly veiled attempt to "decrease the visibility of homeless people" by forcing them into one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. When San Francisco's estimated 3,000 homeless welfare recipients signed up for shelter beds, they'd be signing away all but $60 of their cash benefits, which range from $287 to $355 a month. (Although homeless people would be paying rent for their beds, there's no mention in the documents of extending tenancy rights to them.) Lightbourne was in Washington, D.C., on business when we called DHS offices. But Maggie Donoghue, the department's director of homeless services, commented on the need for the shelter revamp at the April 10 meeting. She told board members that the time had come to change the city's handling of homelessness as a "temporary emergency." She said the city must work in partnership with DPH to prevent the use of shelters as long-term housing and to stabilize housing for low-income people. Critics say the plan would do no such thing. Jenny Friedenbach, a member of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board and project manager for the Coalition on Homelessness, says using people's checks for shelter money would make it impossible for homeless people to find a place to live. "They will no longer be able to save up money to move into permanent housing," she told us. She also said the plan would make it harder for homeless people who don't receive benefits -- such as undocumented workers and people who are employed in low-wage jobs -- to get into a shelter at all. According to DHS's plan, homeless people on assistance would be placed at three shelters, which provide a total of 972 beds. Those who don't receive public assistance (71% of the city's homeless, according to a DHS study) would be limited to four shelters, which provide a total of 255 beds. Only 50 of those 255 beds are for women. Boden called the redesign an effort by the mayor to leave a legacy of addressing the homelessness problem. "They've got way too many people picking and prodding with the program to make it look like they're doing something," he said. "The city should be listening to homeless people, neighborhood people, and service providers. This plan contradicts all the input that the city has been getting around homeless policy."
