What the Homeless Want Us to Know

The Bold Italic is proud to be part of the SF Homeless Project, a media collaboration to draw attention to solutions to end the crisis.

When locals discuss the problem of homelessness in San Francisco — and more specifically how to fix or impact it — we have a habit of prioritizing big-picture imperatives. Take a step back and observe next time the subject comes up. You’ll hear a lot about task forces, NIMBY-ism, Reagan, mental institutions, affordable housing, and income inequality. Noticeably missing? Any talk about the importance of individual human contributions. Instead we focus on the size of the issue and problem-solve at scale.

This is unfortunate. Because the truth is that those of us who haven’t experienced homelessness — or who aren’t involved in the effort to stem its lethal tide — know little about it, much less how to curb or mitigate its essential horror. Our pontificating, in other words, just isn’t all that productive.

For those of us who really do want to make a difference, then — even in our limited individual capacity — the question is, Where would our energy be best spent?

To find out, I visited Glide Memorial Church, which provides comprehensive social services—from helping folks find shelter to providing free health care, meals, and adult education — as well as St. Anthony’s, a nonprofit that employs a similarly holistic model of support along with advocacy, job-search counseling, and shelter during the winter. The goal was to learn more about homelessness from those who are actively experiencing it. What do they want their housed neighbors to know? What can we do better? And what, ultimately, are we missing?

The first person I spoke to was Carl, a 56-year-old college graduate who’s lived in San Francisco for six years. For most of that time, he’s been homeless. Carl has a cool, sonorous voice and hazel eyes that are as hard as excavated metal. When I met him in the coffee room at Glide, he spoke pointedly about the resources available to homeless people (they’re limited and often difficult to obtain), the unpleasant nature of most navigation centers (they smell bad and impose too many arbitrary rules), and the life-saving importance of service providers who offer more holistic kinds of support (like Glide).

“You can’t sleep. There’s humiliation. It’s constant. A 24/7 struggle. You have no place to close the door behind you.”

He softened, however — those hard eyes turning pearlescent — when he described his personal descent into homelessness: the cocaine he became addicted to while caring for his dying mother; the depression that followed her death; the panic he felt when her insurance money ran out; the perpetual, disorienting grind of maneuvering each day for food, a bed, and clothes; and then finally, his suicide attempt.

“I wasn’t homeless at first — I had some savings from my mom’s insurance. That kept me off the streets. But when that ran out, I had nowhere to go,” Carl said. “I’ve been bouncing around ever since. No one has any idea if they haven’t been through it—what actually goes on. You can’t sleep. There’s humiliation. It’s constant. A 24/7 struggle. You have no place to close the door behind you. Shelters I can only bear for an hour or so because they smell so bad. And outside? No peace of mind, no solitude. It drives you crazy. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

“In some navigation centers, the ratio of men to women can be a hundred to one. Every night. It can be really, really scary.”

The next day, on the second floor of St. Anthony’s, I spoke with a woman named Gabrielle. Native to the city, middle-aged, and deeply sun-tanned, she’s been homeless — and using the services of outfits like St. Anthony’s — for at least 20 years after a robbery arrest resulted in her losing her job at Macy’s. Her dog, Brown Sugar, lay sleeping by her feet, her small head resting on Gabrielle’s large and well-weathered backpack. Both Brown Sugar and Gabrielle were wearing down jackets (one dog size).

“It was freezing last night,” Gabrielle told me, blowing gently on her coffee, which she drank with both hands. “Most nights, it’s freezing. Also scary — for women, especially. In some navigation centers, the ratio of men to women can be a hundred to one. Every night. It can be really, really scary.”

Kenny, a man who moved here from Chicago with his partner 10 years ago — and who wore a black “I 💛 San Francisco” beanie over his mop of gray hair — expressed frustration more than fear, mostly, about the city’s efforts.

“It’s fucked up,” he said, his voice brusque as a Brillo Pad. “All of it. It’s really fucked up. People don’t really know. This city—it’s like they don’t care. I think they should have places where we can put our stuff. The cops come and throw our stuff away. I only keep one or two backpacks with me, so I don’t experience that much myself. But it happens. Being homeless here—it’s fucked up.”

This affirms what most already know about homelessness: that it’s scary, cold, dangerous, and frustrating. Being homeless is also, however, hard work. The labyrinthine, multistep process of obtaining food, securing shelter, let alone positioning yourself for long-term housing or a chance at employment: it’s as arduous as it is complicated.

“Our plate is full,” Carl told me. “Between looking for housing, staying safe, finding a spot to be comfortable at night when you don’t get housing. You have to stand in line to get a shelter bed, in line to get a meal, to shower. If you want to stay off the street, it takes hours every day. And when it’s a struggle just to bathe each day, let alone store your stuff somewhere safe, it’s hard to get a job.”

“Imagine not being able to sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time at night for fear of being robbed.”

Donald, a young man who works in Glide’s kitchen — and who currently lives in a shelter on Polk Street — told me the same thing.

“It’s really hard when you’re homeless to advocate for yourself,” Donald said. “If you don’t want to be on the street, you have to chase bunks every night. Chase meals every day. You don’t have any time to look for a job or to look for housing. All those applications. How are you supposed to show up for a 9:00 a.m. meeting when you need to be in line for breakfast?”

This is just one paradoxical challenge inherent to homelessness. Another is the ongoing dismal task of protecting your relative sanity, something homelessness steadily erodes.

“Imagine not being able to sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time at night for fear of being robbed,” said Lizz Cady, social-work manager at St. Anthony’s. “Imagine then spending your day being irritably told no over and over. By service providers, shelters, your neighbors. ‘No, you don’t qualify.’ ‘No, we’re out of beds.’ You’d be angry, right? You might start taking amphetamines just to function. And you get beat down. And further disconnected.”

If you’re mentally ill, of course, the dangers of becoming further disconnected, further separated from the support you need, become even more pronounced. To chase bunks, prioritize your personal hygiene, and prepare yourself to look for work or long-term housing is a challenging task for the intellectually sound — necessitating supreme organization (think of filling out and turning in all those applications) and unwavering punctuality (in many cases, missing a meeting can result in losing your spot in line or on a crucial list). When you’re schizophrenic or bipolar, or suffering from PTSD, navigating that administrative maze can be nearly impossible.

“The way folks look at you on the street,” Carl told me, his eyes finally filling with tears. “It’s overwhelming. It makes you feel worse. Like you’re less than nothing…We’re people, you know?”

All told, it’s not hard to see how homelessness, once you stumble into it, endeavors only to pull you further down, like quicksand or a hungry swamp. Once you’re in it, how the hell are you supposed to claw back out?

In her office, I asked Cady an approximation of that question. She took a breath and considered her cluttered desk.

“Many don’t,” she said. “Many of these people are going to die on our streets.”

These insights into the psychological hardship, physical discomfort, long lines and even longer nights that are innate to the homeless experience in our city together paint a layered and multifaceted picture. Yet when I asked those I spoke to about the one thing they want their fellow San Franciscans to know about homelessness, the responses I heard were strikingly, disconcertingly similar.

“Treat us like we’re human,” Kenny said.

“It beats you down, being made to feel so bad,” Gabrielle said. “We just want to be happy, you know? We’re people.”

“The way folks look at you on the street,” Carl told me, his eyes finally filling with tears. “It’s overwhelming. It makes you feel worse. Like you’re less than nothing…We’re people, you know? That’s the worst part, and that’s what people need to know. It’s hard out here. Harder being treated like we’re not people.”

Every person I spoke with voiced sincere appreciation for organizations such as Glide and St. Anthony’s, whose services help keep them fed and off the street, and that seek to start them on a path toward re-employment and reintegration. And a few acknowledged the obvious need for systemic change, like a general societal reinvestment in mental health institutions. But they each reiterated over and over again the importance of community and good personhood: general kindness, neighborly compassion, and treating others as you want to be treated.

This is something Rob Avila, Glide’s communications director, emphasized too.

“An essential first step in making this better is treating homeless people not as some ‘other’ but as people — with compassion, by meeting their gaze when you walk past,” he told me.

“What saved my life,” Carl said to me before we parted ways, referencing several specific employees he’d met at Glide, “was knowing that someone gave a damn.”

It seems so obvious, in retrospect, that daily individual contributions of compassion, kindness, and decency make a difference, even in light of the seeming intractability of homelessness. (The most recent count shows that the number of homeless people living in SF is now up to about 9,784 — up 17% since 2017 — in spite of the city spending more than $300 million annually to the opposite end.)

Yet this is precisely what most San Franciscans neglect, both in the conversations we have about homelessness day to day and in the way we live our lives. Many of us avert our eyes when we walk past homeless people on the street, opting for indifference.

We should stop. We need to stop. Of the means of change at our disposal, such small gestures — eye contact, recognition, a nod, and a smile on the sidewalk — may be the most impactful. At the very least, it’s what those I spoke with asked for the most: treat us like we’re human.

To ignore them any longer would be as immoral as it would be illogical.