On a rainy evening in late March, Supervisor Matt Haney was walking through the Tenderloin when he lost his way. He slipped and slammed the back of his head into the slick pavement.
The first person to respond was a homeless man sitting out the downpour in a cardboard shelter. He helped the dazed and bleeding supervisor out of the rain and offered him a napkin and a bottle of whiskey. Haney gladly accepted both.
The two men leaned up against a wall and watched the rain fall; the homeless man put his arm around his supervisor and told him he’d look out for him.
Now, Haney wants to return the favor. But he’s found the process is not unlike banging your head into the pavement.
When we met in his City Hall office last week, Haney seemed somewhat fatigued. He’d already appeared at more than a dozen separate meetings regarding the proposed Navigation Center on the waterfront, and would, that night, be at another. There have been more since. These have not been civil nor sedate affairs.
In the era of the Embarcadero Freeway, the central waterfront was a realm of dying industry, flophouses, and crime. Now it’s a place for luxury condos and dog-walkers in yoga pants. The notion of dropping a homeless navigation center here has been received as well as suggestions of opening a rendering plant or a training facility for Somali pirates.
Haney has been accused of being anti-family and anti-child. He has been callously accused of facilitating crime and blight in the neighborhood and angrily threatened with a recall (good luck with that). Navigation Center opponents, in short, have behaved like the villains in a movie where the hero is a dog — and everybody looks more sensible standing next to them.
To wit, the disrespectful reception waterfront residents gave to Mayor London Breed was so over-the-top that one could be forgiven for forgetting that she campaigned against homeless measure Proposition C with disingenuous arguments, and that the unhoused are still being relieved of their tents by police during torrential rainstorms.
Haney, as his close ally Supervisor Hillary Ronen did before him in the Mission, is fighting for a homeless shelter in his own district, perhaps against his own political well-being. Like Ronen, he’s sticking out his neck and will have to own the results, come what may (and, in the Mission, far from fears about crime or blight or reduced property value, the results appeared to be rather good.).
If Haney has his way, all of his colleagues will soon be familiar with this process. He’s introduced legislation mandating a navigation center in every supervisorial district.
Is this the decent thing to do? Yes. Is it good politics, especially among D6 constituents frustrated that they’re saddled with the majority of the city’s burden? Yes. But is this the best solution for the people in question — the homeless? That’s harder to say. Is this practical? Is this politically feasible? And has this city’s elected leadership been honest about what a navigation center is — and what it is not?
Not really.
San Francisco is in an odd position. It needs to build more navigation centers. And it also needs to stop monomaniacally focusing on navigation centers.
The city’s first proto-Navigation Center was born of fire. A blaze erupted at a homeless encampment at 5th and King in 2012; fires burned on both sides of the roadway and cars and trams rolled through the smoke like a scene out of some dystopian future.
Being engulfed in flames diminishes one’s leverage, and the 30-odd residents of the shantytown agreed to then-homeless czar Bevan Dufty’s plan to move them into a nearby church basement and work to house them permanently (on the day of the planned move, a cop came by with three chronic homeless people and dropped them into the encampment so they could be housed, too. “It was the most entrepreneurial thing I’d ever seen,” recalls Dufty.).
Of those 30 people, Dufty says 29 were housed (one, who had warrants, was jailed and later entered a treatment program).
In 2015, the city opened up its first official Navigation Center, at 1950 Mission St. It was small, 75 people tops, and the rules were ostensibly simple: “My mantra was, you’re only gonna leave if you’re housed or if you become violent,” recalls Dufty. There was a 75-year-old grandmotherly Filipina woman who came in with nine shopping carts she’d been keeping on the 16th Street BART Plaza. She was sweet and charming and she played with dolls and would tell you about her sister, who was a mermaid.
Responsibly placing someone like that in housing is a challenge. As it is for undocumented people, people who’ve slipped off of General Assistance, people who have outstanding warrants in other states, and others. This woman was at the Navigation Center for a year.
Today, that would be difficult. In 2016, time limits were imposed at navigation centers and their raison d’être was unsubtly transmuted from housing each and every individual who walked in the gate to rapidly vacuuming up burgeoning encampments (the term “Navigation Center,” which poll tested at 90 percent positive, didn’t change). A 2017 San Francisco Public Press analysis found the bulk of homeless people “housed” out of navigation centers had accepted one-way bus tickets out of town via the Homeward Bound program.
And that’s still the case. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (DHSH) today claims a shade more than half of those who pass through Navigation Centers exit homelessness — but not quite one in six land in permanent housing. Far more are taking the bus. (To be fair, many of the navigation center’s guests only stay there a night or two prior to their bus journey and never intended anything more).
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build navigation centers. It just means the city needs to be more forthright about what it hopes to accomplish. Jeff Kositsky, the head of the city’s homeless department, says that “every night that someone doesn’t sleep outside is a success.” Navigation centers, famously, meet people where they’re at. You can bring in your pets, your spouse, your possessions. You’re not thrown out for minor transgressions (you can go around the corner and get high). You can eat when you like and head out at night to recycle cans. You can’t do any of these things at a shelter, and lots of homeless people won’t go to one.
“Many studies show that when people come inside, their cortisol levels will drop — their stress levels go down,” Kositsky continues. “They get healthier. They gain weight. They’re far more likely to have access to a doctor. Even though it may not result in permanent housing, it’s still an important service to provide to people.”
And yet, if we’re putting our effort and resources into alleviating people’s short-term suffering, if we’re treating the symptoms of homelessness and not its root cause — a dearth of housing — hasn’t this city’s homeless strategy basically become the equivalent of palliative care?
Kositsky disagrees with this comparison. But other career homeless workers we spoke to did not. Building navigation centers, they tell us, is an interim step until we can actually provide more housing. It’s the best we can do right now. And while it no longer resembles Dufty’s housing-or-bust mantra, he’s in favor of building more navigation centers anyway. The more navigation centers you build, he says, the more pressure it puts on the mayor and the supes to expand housing resources. And, fundamentally, it’s far cheaper and more humane to administer to people in shelters than on the street.
There’s a lot of great things that a navigation center can do, but our city’s elected leaders have always overpromised their capacity and repurposed them so much to meet politically pressing needs that “navigation” is no longer their primary goal.
But that seems typical of this city’s approach to homelessness writ large; we tend to focus on one element of the problem to the detriment of all others — then change course, and do that again.
So, we need navigation centers. We need housing. But we need more. We need things elected officials don’t necessarily call for or point to: We need outreach; we need to stabilize the marginally housed; we need to address the broken mental health system. We need to further refine the methods we use to deliver services and even to organize them. Some of this is getting done, but it’s a struggle.
It can, at times, feel like banging your head into the pavement.
But that’s not nearly as bad as living on the pavement.
Hey! the homeless man put his arm around his supervisor and told him he’d look out for him.
The process of approving the Nav center at the Waterfront was a farce. No one would address local residents questions about the handling of drug addiction, except that nav center residents “can go around the corner and shoot up.” Where is that corner? It is in the midst of a neighborhood with thousands of neighbors with children and seniors and other hard-working individuals.
The sub-contracted nonprofit which will run the nav center will not have any staffing provisions to handle drug addiction or mental health issues. But drug addicts and the mentally -ill will be dealt with by the safety and security plan which boils down to SFPD and a locally hired security company, neither of which are trained to help such clients. This nav center model has made many homeless people concerned for their own safety and ultimately prefer not to stay in them. So how has this approach removed people off the streets?
The approval by the SF Port Commission for Waterfront land use for a nav center was irresponsible and happens to be in breach of the Waterfront land use policies entrusted in that body. Commissioner Makras said he would give the land for the nav center for $1. The Commissioner’s true colors came shining through. He forgot that this land is not his to give. It is public trust land entrusted to him and the rest of the commissioners as custodians of the land use policies on the books.
Lastly, you label the local resident response as “uncivil.” Maybe you have not attended the April 23, 2019 SF Port Commission meeting in which the Commission approved the Waterfront land use for that center. All affected local residents voiced their own concerns. However, the coalition for the homeless and the various SF democratic clubs members took an offensive approach, which could not possibly be described as “civil discourse.” They demonized local residents, characterized them as cold-hearted, hateful rich people and called them Klu klux Clan, and Assholes.
They also used the argument that if the Commission were to listen to local resident concerns, that it would create a precedent for other neighborhoods to reject such centers.
Well, the Commission vote has definitely set a precedent for how the Commission and government representatives have no intention to engage local communities in which these yet-to-be-proven experiments will be located.
It’s clear the author has not read policy regarding homelessness. this is even against what the Board of Supervisors spoke of regarding housing the homeless
You’re spectacularly mistaken. As for “this is even against what the Board of Supervisors spoke of regarding housing the homeless” — I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.
Best,
JE
This is a great article! But I don’t think it goes far enough. We need more Navigation Centers. We need more housing, supportive and not. We need more shelters – well run mostly traditional shelters would also help. We need to reduce the number of people who are sleeping on the streets as well as work on the long term solution to the problem. The problem of homelessness is mostly (with exceptions for a significant minority of people in whom mental health and addiction issues are dominant) poverty which is absolutely solvable (with money) but for a true solution requires federal money and federal reach. For now in addition to everything above (building navigation centers, shelters, and housing) we should give people who are sufficiently competent money so that they can get themselves off the street. This would allow us to focus on people who need more help and make everyone happier.
Of course it’s not in Haney’s political interest to allow a Navigation Center in his district. The idea that other supervisors will allow them in their districts is ridiculous. Supervisor Brown and her political opponent, Dean Preston, have both said they want one in District 5. Where, exactly? Alamo Square? The Panhandle? Voters in District 5 will want to know.
Rob Anderson
“And yet, if we’re putting our effort and resources into alleviating people’s short-term suffering, if we’re treating the symptoms of homelessness and not its root cause — a dearth of housing — hasn’t this city’s homeless strategy basically become the equivalent of palliative care?”
1. The cooption of progressives and leftists under neoliberalism has ensured that there will be neither systemic nor structural changes attempted. All we get are charity operations that accept social and economic realities as immutable givens and attempt to mitigate their worst excesses.
2. The dearth of housing is a symptom of structural imbalances, both from the hyper-demand of tech which is fueled by pro-cyclical economic policies as well as pro-developer capture of City government that caters to developer profit which means luxury condos, which are proven to gentrify and displace existing residents, first.
3. The only palliative care that City expenditures on homeless have achieved is to give politicians cover that they are doing something and to ensure that the charity poverty nonprofits are kept around as fig leaves to provide plausible deniability to politicians.
4. There is no way that San Francisco will ever produce sufficient housing to accommodate the constant 7K homeless people. After redevelopment demolished 4K SRO units to build Moscone Center, the City laid out its agenda in no uncertain terms. and has stuck to it.
M. Justin Herman said in 1970 with respect to SOMA: “This land is too valuable to permit the poor to park on it,” and the policies of successive neoliberal mayors post-Moscone have conformed to that. What was true for SOMA two generations ago is now applied citywide.
Homelessness in SF is all about moving public dollars to the politically connected without really making any meaningful effort to address the problem.
“What is most disconcerting is the homeless have taken over as SF’s acceptable breed of “takers” who do not give back to our community. Their need and entitlement personas demand access to free food, shelter access, and cash vis a vis General Assistance. Their demand for blotted and overstaffed daycare centers for themselves mercilessly bleed the funds of the public trough. This sanctioned behavior is endemic to a city gone mad. San Franciscans have created a society that has gone beyond the pale to care for these poor soles who refuse to care for themselves. Many have no green card. Many are obtaining Male to Female or Female to Male surgeries at the cost of $ 50,00 not to mention free public housing, costly genetic altering medications for their transition, free food. and psychological therapy treatments. What I’ve experienced is for example; the lobby and staff kitchen of the SF AIDS Foundation is atypical of other nonprofits like RAMS and Asian America Recovery Services who offer daytime respite care for the drugged homeless who expect and demand that an endless amount of public funding be spent on them. There is no give and take here. Only TAKE.
@Anonymous
“the homeless have taken over as SF’s acceptable breed of “takers” ”
You seem to imply that there is a general societal role of “being the takers” and that the homeless have succeeded this role’s preceding incumbent, and that some authority has approved the transition. You posit a fiction. And let us not refer to people as being of one “breed” or another.
“Their need and entitlement personas demand access to free food, shelter access, and cash vis a vis General Assistance.”
Are you referring to some formal written demand for free food, shelter, and cash? Or were these impromptu demands, delivered informally? Were the demands addressed to those who are able to distribute or designate free food, shelter, or cash?
“Their demand for blotted and overstaffed daycare centers for themselves mercilessly bleed the funds of the public trough.”
Unless a daycare center has a reliably static level of enrollment, it would be hard to label as being overstaffed. If you have data and analysis which prove that any state-funded agency is overstaffed, then you ought to contact your representatives in state government to share this information. Your image in which public service expenditure “mercilessly bleeds…the public trough” is bold and visceral, yet it is ultimately impotently fallacious. Take heart, for the public pocketbook is neither susceptible to pain, nor is it mortal!
“This sanctioned behavior is endemic to a city gone mad”
Were madness endemic to the city, you would err in anathematizing the mad. I am puzzled-yet-intrigued by your references to unknown endorsements: Who has sanctioned what?
“San Franciscans have…gone beyond the pale to care for these…who refuse to care for themselves.”
San Franciscans have not done so much for the homeless, for the homeless have nothing and they are living on the street. In the entire world you will find no “society…to care for th[o]se…who refuse to care for themselves” as there is no such place.
“Many have no green card.”
This point is utterly irrelevant. People are people and each is responsible for every other one.
“Many are obtaining Male to Female or Female to Male surgeries…”
The general incidence of sex-change operations is proportionally minuscule. In a distressed population such as the homeless, priority is given to the material requirements of daily survival. Do you imagine that a person with no access to food or shelter is focused on completing a gender transition? A human stripped of their humanity does not pursue a finalization of the finer points of personal identity.
Joe,
Slowly move Juvie Hall from a lockdown facility into a center
for ‘termed-out’ youth.
In short, kids who were locked up there get to stay but without
lock and key.
These are the kids (I taught them as did my neighbor, Jack (Omega) Jacqua
at Potrero Middle School 30 years ago.
A mixed-use Navigation Center where as the kids finish their terms, they
basically get a key to their door and not get tossed out into the street.
Put a star on this one tho …
On May 2nd at the Oasis (capacity 2,500) 48 Hills online version of what
used to be the Bay Guardian (thanks to Time Redmond and Marke Bieschke
it still survives) …
Having a big, big party and you can get in and meet every leftover Lefty
in town for as little as 25 bucks if you play it right.
It will be a memory and I’m encouraging all remaining independent Web
Magazines to come en totale and network and dance and drink w/me.
And, hopefully, 2,500 others.
Think about that using a closing Juvie Hall as a transitional Navigation
Cener.
It’s a terrific idea.
Even if it was mine.
Go Giants!
h.
Great piece. I shared on Facebook. Thank you for your work and service.
It’s monomaniacally, with an extra for maniac.
Fixed. Sadly the red-line spell check is everywhere but where you’d most want it, the headline.
Call this well written.
Joe, as usual you have written an excellent report.
Paul,
Well, I’ll swornnnn.
You back or broadcasting from Oregon?
Missed you and look me up.
h.