As is the case in all parts of the United States, indeed around the world, too many people are “unhoused”, living day to day with shelter uncertainty.  

San Francisco, home to staggering amounts of wealth and innovation is also home to people who live in tents, boxes, cars, RVs. On a couch here, a couch there, or directly on the ground in sleeping bags, packing blankets, or the remnants of Amazon packing boxes. 

In San Francisco tomorrow, on two parking lot between Merlin and Morris streets, about 40 people will be evicted from spaces they have “lived” at for between a few months and 5 years because … well there is always a reason. What is never answered fully is why these folks, why here, why now. The lots are owned by Caltrans and were operated by a parking contractor who went bankrupt.

Here are four of the “residents” and a few of their thoughts.

(I’ve been here) all together about 5 years.  I have a place, like I said, I can’t afford a, I would have to win the Power Ball to be able to afford a house here.  I’ve always had mobile homes before, a “camper”, you know.  They’ve gotten towed, a couple of them, so I’m down to this (a box truck).  But I’ve always had my own place where I rent or parked.  I’ve rented here (a spot in a parking lot) for about 5 years until they declared bankruptcy and gave the place (the parking lot) up. I’m just looking for another place to rent space for my vehicles, a place I could but a small trailer.

That’s how I live.  I’d rather live this way than in an SRO and not be as happy and secure.  I like to have my own place. I can come in when I want, have my stuff, don’t have to look anybody in the eye when I come in and out, you know.  And be me, just like you, you know what I’m saying.”

“Maintaining. It’s hard out here, like as far as showers and food and, security.

It (living on the street as a single woman) got to be self-sufficient and take care of myself, nobody else to do it for me.

We’re kind a like segregated down here.  We got people at one end and then there’s people at the opposite end, we kind a stay to ourselves.

(I miss) being with my kids. Yeah, it sucks. Once I get my housing back my kids will be home but it’s hard.  Stuff is like irritating.  COVID hit and then everything just came to a halt.  So now I got to wait.

They (the city) leave us here to fend for ourselves with no resources at all. The only time we do get resources is when we raise hell and cause problems for them.

“I was homeless from 2007 to 2012 and then I became housed through DAAH.  I moved in there about 2012, or 2013, and when I moved in there from the very beginning it seemed as if I was targeted. The staff was very difficult to deal with, and just very unpleasant. But I stayed and I thought that maybe I needed to adjust myself. Or maybe I needed to take a step back and take a look at things further. Maybe I’m being treated fairly and I’m not giving people the benefit of the doubt. Well as a human being we’re born with certain things that tell us when something’s not right, or when something’s wrong. Bottom line is that I never felt like I was being treated right from the very beginning.  The slowly but surely things started to happen with the tenants.  Everybody comes with psychosis issues in those buildings, or disabilities of some sort, myself included. What happens is administration starts to personalize things, so they target you. Next thing you know you’re getting written more, you’re under a microscope. Then you’re being evicted for small reasons, things that only warrant a warning or disciplinary action. There is such a disconnection with the tenants and the staff that there’s no community.  You know it’s supposed to be that kind of healthy community originated environment, (but) everybody is walking around in the SROs mad. Very angry and upset. While I’m there I’m not happy, I’ve been assaulted on multiple occasions, asked to be moved, but I was told they don’t do that. … The police downplay everything that happens in the SROs, it’s almost as if they don’t want to take the report, would rather settle it right there, but that doesn’t get anything done.  Someone went in my building and killed my dog. Finally, I got fed up and I left. I just go and I pay my rent. Once COVID hit I just even didn’t go back to the building.  I’ve just been living out here on the streets. I’m safer out here than I feel like I am in there. I go in my unit and I can feel like somebody’s been in my unit and when I discovered how they were getting in, they (managers) said they had remediated the problem, they didn’t. I’m in court with them Friday to determine some kind of settlement, if they’re going to put me out. If that’s what they are trying to do, what are they going to do for me for everything I’ve been through? You have rodent problems. You have staff issues. Discrimination issues going on in the building, I’ve had all those issues happen to me. I was sexually assaulted in the building, made a police report and they said they couldn’t do nothing about it. I filed reports with DPH asking to be moved. I went to City Hall, I went to the Department of Building and Inspection, I went the people who investigate if people are discriminating against you, and then I went to the rental board. All these places failed me. Nobody could help me. There was nobody to oversee what happened to me at that SRO.”

“(The hardest thing about the street), the harassment, social indifference. The way that people, you know the authorities, address you. They act like it’s my fault. I’m pretty sure, myself, and a lot of these people, if the resources were available, we would take them. Not no hotel room for a couple months and then kick us back out on the street to do this whole recycle thing again because it generates currency, it generates money. They’re getting paid off peoples’ misery.

“They moved us out of this aisle and told us to pack up, that they were sending out resources, that they were going to put us in hotel rooms.  We packed on the corner and streets well into the night and no one came, and so I said let’s go in this parking lot.  People still park their cars here; we don’t allow peoples’ cars to get broken into.  People call the cops on us because they feel some type of social righteousness, that we’re doing something wrong because that’s how it’s portrayed through media.  If social indifference continues to happen, they’re going to feel they can do whatever they want to us and not have to worry about any type of repercussions.  I don’t understand how that’s right.  If you’re moving us off the streets because we’re on the streets, then that means that San Francisco has an obligation to house its citizens.  Not just place them in hotels, rundown hotels, that been condemned since ’89 (the earthquake) and cannot be reopened unless all the requirements of building inspections, safety codes, are met.  This is not happening.  Take for instance the Marathon Hotel, there’s holes in the roof and people are still living there.  These are the homeless people that they take off the streets from a bad situation and put them into a worser one.  It’s all designed so that you can be kicked out.  San Francisco, there not addressing the homeless crisis that’s happening out here in the wealthiest city in the United States of America, and I don’t understand what’s going on.  They’re moving (us) and they’re using fear of incarceration to intimidate because people on parole and that’s not right.  You’re taking a hopeless person in a desperate situation; you’re provoking them to have some sort of negative episode.  It’s going to drive people insane.    What do they think going to happen?  Now you provoke this situation and everybody’s watching.  Not just Americans but other people in other countries are watching America, “home of the brave land of the free”.  It don’t feel very free, don’t feel very free at all.”

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All photos copyright Robert Gumpert 2021