More than 100 unhoused people died in San Francisco last year.
On Thursday afternoon, a few of the city employees, volunteers and friends who knew and worked with them gathered inside St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church for a memorial service.
The ceremony was organized by members of San Francisco’s Homeless Outreach Team, who regularly wander the city’s streets, looking for people who need a bed. They also provide case management to those who have been in and out of the shelter system.
It’s a tough job for those who got into this line of work to aid people. “We do our best to get through obstacles,” said one veteran outreach worker, addressing the group. But sometimes the obstacles win.
The person you’re assisting may reject addiction treatment, or prefer to sleep on the street. At the same time, there never seems to be enough beds to meet demand.
“Sometimes,” he said, “you get someone to housing, and they still don’t make it.”
It was important to remember, he said, that even a small act, like handing someone a bottle of water, can make a difference in their life.
Losing someone you’ve been trying to support can harden your heart, Lydia Bransten said to the group of about 40 people gathered inside the airy church. But, she added, that loss can also open it. Bransten is executive director of the Gubbio Project, a nonprofit that operates out of the church, which offers a place to sleep during the day.
A woman wearing the neon-green uniform of the Homeless Outreach Team read a poem she’d written: “May the earth be gentle with those who were denied gentleness in this life.”
More than 100 names of people who died in 2025 were read aloud, and I found out after the ceremony that I’d known one of the men by a different name.
We met a year and a half ago, when I was reporting on a sweep of a homeless encampment in the Bayview. Police were coming to remove the tent he’d been living in, but he was was cleaning the sidewalk — both so that Public Works employees wouldn’t have to, and so onlookers wouldn’t have more to criticize.
He introduced himself to me as “Pineapplez,” took me around to meet the encampment’s other residents, and helped me connect to a free public WiFi network so I could file dispatches.
Pineapplez talked about how much he loved fashion (we squeezed in a photoshoot) and how he put together outfits for others with treasures mined from Goodwill bins. A friend who came to help clean described him as “immaculate.”
He had a shelter bed, but preferred to sleep on the street, saying he wanted just “a little bit of privacy.” I found out he’d moved from the Bayview to the Mission shortly after the encampment sweep, when I saw a silky green dragon-print scarf he was fond of fluttering in an alleyway a few blocks away from the Mission Local office.
He had joined a treatment program for substance abuse earlier this year, outreach workers told me, but they stopped hearing from him a few months ago. They hoped for the best before finding out that he had died. Sometimes, they said, people disappear and reappear healthier than ever. Other times, they never come back.
At the end of the memorial, a moment of silence was held for everyone who would never return and whose names were not known. Then, everyone was asked to make a peace sign, raise their fists, and say “peace.” It echoed to the church’s exposed wood rafters.
Thanks for caring, Abigail,
I clean up to keep a nice view out my window and my dog and I are rewarded with the affection and respect of our Mission hood which totally rocks.
I’m inactively recruiting other Single Pickers if anyone wants to learn how to pick up shit from an expert.
Broken glass too.
My little trash cart is an ongoing art project that get’s more efficient all the time.
It’s heavy duty Porter work is what it is.
That’s when you do janitor work with the Public present.
Challenging to deal with the different personalities.
I’ve just become part of the landscape.
Sometimes I smoke pot with them.
We’re all bit players in everyone else’s cosmic productions.
As are they in ours.
I try to conduct myself in such a way that people smile when they see me coming.
go Niners !!
h.
Once I see a nonprofit actually lift one person out of poverty, instead of monetizing the maintenance in poverty of many thousands, homeless and not, I’ll take their tears seriously.
When my husband was in social work school back during the Reagan years, they were taught to put themselves out of business. The rise of the nonprofit economy during Clinton I institutionalized nonprofits as insulators of the political system from increasing economic deprivation. Every homeless person is viewed as a potential revenue point.
Yes. People die due to the high risks associated with homelessness. Nobody gets any points for helping people live another day in miserable squalor and then processing once the predictable outcomes of this arrangement transpire.
I’d warned that this was not sustainable and would need to be rethought to forestall further progressive political collapse. I was cancelled by the progressives for naming their grift. Now the right wing is taking up the mantle of nonprofit corruption and is coming at the problem from the opposite direction, just as the nonprofits wanted.
Causes of poverty are what causes poverty. Nonprofits , trying to help do not cause it. As a matter of fact , capitalism causes poverty: the need for the cheapest labor possible. If you have a chance , take some economics horses at your local college. There is a lot that you don’t understand.
Thank you for this very human story. In the midst of policy debates about housing, treatment, and policing, I sometimes find it easy to forget that ultimately we’re talking about human beings with personal histories, senses of fashion, shared stories, and communities around them that we are losing. Thanks for sharing a little about “Pineapplez” and echo the sentiment that I hope the earth is gentle with those we lost.
Thank you for reporting that this exists. It was moving, and my heart goes out to the folks who do the work to help struggling people. I hope it moves someone else. I’m going to see how I can help too.
This is heartbreaking.
Hello I am the mother of Wanda Griffin aka my one and only she died on the streets of SF in 2024 feb 24 th not even a block from the navigation center on South van ness she was my one and only daughter . Would have loved to be at that memorial I lost my nephew Terry McDaniel Aug 21 -2025 also thank you for the memorial it’s been hard to forget them they were my mother’s grandchildren . RIP to Wanda & Big T first cousins born in the city and county of San Francisco CA
While I feel for those that have to live that way,do gooders that were trying to help them managed to get a law passed,that you can’t move people unless you have housing for them, or that they want to be moved. So of course you’re going to have people with various medical conditions,who should not be on the street die on the street. I spoke with a gentleman, who has a housing voucher, but does not want to live in an HRO.
Thanks, Abigail. Well written and informative.
It would be nice if the people organizing these memorials every year took the time to let others know. I would be at it every year to give a little postmortem love, but every year for the last 5, at least, I see the news only afterwards. Why not do a story before the memorial, there may be people who would like to go that are not part of the hot team outreach? Maybe next year give it a try?
The San Mateo County Point in Time Homeless Count is coming up this week, and I am volunteering for my third time. It’s important to get an accurate count here on the Unincorporated Coastside, where often people are Vehicle Dwellers, and not merely living in tents on sidewalks or sprawling in an alleyways. We may find more people in RV’s this year that may have migrated south, due to Mayor Laurie’s crackdown and enforcement of the new 2025
2-Hour RV Parking Restrictions that basically prevents Vehicle Dwelling within San Francisco’s 7 X 7 miles.
Part of the past the Homeless Memorials was A Buddhist monk named Janna Drakka who use to also do memorials at the SROs so that everyone could be remembered in peace.
Skywatchers has been holding a similar memorial each December at Civic Center Plaza for years.