She’s homeless, again. Her husband of a decade is a mean drunk and forced her out of the apartment that they shared for a couple of years after years of waiting on the list. They’re not legally married. Sometimes benefits work out better for a couple without the license. The apartment is in his name only, too. Now she lives in her car with her pregnant adult daughter and her cat, three dogs, and their stuff. Kate and I are keeping a few things of hers in the rectory garage, including several of her paintings – she’s an accomplished artist – and the ashes of her daughter’s father.
She spends her days sitting on a milk crate on “the block” – one of the corners of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. Most days she paints. When she was in school, taking classes on-line, she studied and wrote papers on her laptop. She is one of the order-keepers in the neighborhood, helping to enforce the unwritten code of behavior that applies to the other people who spend time on the streets in the Haight. Before her man threw her out last week, coming to the block was like coming to the living room or the front stoop she didn’t have. She could get away from his abuse. She could sit and work among friends. She could paint and sell her art. But now, once again, her car is her home – a small, four-door sedan with her pregnant adult daughter and her cat, three dogs, and their stuff.
It’s an election year, and the mayor is on record as enforcing the sit-lie laws and conducting encampment sweeps. Today, as I began my after-breakfast walk, she waved me over from her car window. City workers in hazmat gear were power-washing the corner where she sits. A police lieutenant, five uniformed officers, and two uniformed sheriff’s deputies were standing by. An impressive show of force and allocation of resources to counter two homeless women, wouldn’t you say?
I checked in with the women and gave the younger pregnant one a hug as she began to cry because the shelters won’t take her with her cat, and she’s scared of going to jail and giving birth and losing her child to the system. The older is mad at the man she still loves for putting them in this situation.
I checked in with the police. The lieutenant was friendly and forthcoming when I asked him what was going on. They have their orders, he said, and when I commented that it’s an election year, one of the officers touched his nose and pointed back at me – the universal sign of answering the charade correctly. To be generous to the police, most of them would rather not enforce these laws. They’re stuck in the middle. But they have their orders, and it’s an election year, and the mayor is on record, and so is the governor, of making homeless people disappear. And many housed city residents and business owners are only too happy that the laws are finally being enforced.
I clarified with the lieutenant just what is illegal. Sitting on a milk crate on the sidewalk is illegal. Sitting on the sidewalk itself is illegal, whether one blocks access to pedestrians or not. And, of course, sleeping in doorways is illegal, and setting up a tent is illegal, and sleeping in a vehicle is illegal. One homeless man across the street was shit-talking the police. He lived in his vehicle, until it stopped running and he sold it for scrap. Now he sleeps on the street with his dog. Am I next? he wonders.
Who knows how rigorously the police will enforce these laws in the months between now and November. One officer suggested that they wouldn’t hassle the homeless woman and her daughter if they sat on the corner after the sidewalk dried – but the lieutenant couldn’t guarantee it. They have their orders. (Afternoon update – the police have moved other sidewalk-sitters on Haight Street along and the two women had driven away.)
A couple of weeks ago I met the San Francisco Chronicle reporter who covers the homeless beat. He recently wrote an opinion piece that said forty-years on since the first sweeps he covered, nothing really has changed. He covered a recent major sweep following the Supreme Court’s aggressive ruling permitting sweeps, and wrote that, again, the homeless folk really have nowhere to go. I know from talking to some and observing others that they get moved off one block, only to set up on the next – tents here, RVs there. Some tell me they can’t stay in shelters (their pets, their past, too much stuff – and don’t we all have too much stuff?) and some tell me they won’t (wanderlust, mental illness, drug addiction, fear – how well would you sleep when the man in the next bunk says he’s going to kill you?).
Some just want a home – one couple I know is tired of living in a tent on the street, but shelters don’t work for them, either. Just a simple apartment, a studio with their own bathroom and small kitchen. Is that too much to ask? (Afternoon update – their tent, which had a welcome mat out front, and most of their belongings were taken this morning by deputies and city workers, including her wallet and her meds. I’m letting her and their dog take a nap on the sofa in the undercroft of the church right now while he sorts out their next steps.)
One might say that some homeless people have made poor choices, make poor choices. You’ve made your bed, now lie in it! – just not where we can see you. But being even justifiably critical of others’ choices and values and manner of living – especially when they are different from mine – doesn’t really address the problems or envision and create the solutions. These are human beings, fellow human beings, made in God’s image, with dignity, and worthy of our respect and care, or so says our Baptismal Covenant, the law, the prophets, and the gospels.
I don’t offer any easy solutions. There is an alphabet soup of agencies in the non-profit industrial complex – churches included – throwing darts at the wall, as are governmental departments, politicians, philanthropists, ordinary folk like you and me, and let’s not forget the over-looked and under-asked homeless people themselves who have ideas because it is their lives, after all – they live the reality what the rest of us study in theory. We know many of the options, but we haven’t the imagination or desire or will to find any kind of consensus, let alone act on it. As one housed resident, wholly sympathetic to the plight of the homeless said to me as I ended my morning’s walk and told her my story, “They’ve had years to figure this out, and they haven’t.”
And it’s an election year. And eight uniformed officers of the law show up on a Monday morning on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. And a homeless-again woman and her adult daughter have nowhere to go, with their dogs and a cat and a car full of stuff. And the ashes of a dead man and some lovely paintings sit in the rectory garage.
God’s blessings and peace,
Dan +
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