by Kaponda

I had already envisioned its sight before I opened the pale door held together by incongruent strips of wood. The stench of abandoned viscosity smothered my nose when I stepped into the small, forlorn room. I quickly mixed a milky abrasive the label of which claimed to be stronger than dirt -- into a liquid whose label portrayed a man whose head was shaven completely. The result was a product that could probably have annihilated the most hardened of scum. After three hours of scrubbing mucous and crud from the walls inside the room at the Jefferson Hotel, I felt the environment was safe for me to sleep.

Vulgar sounds on the other side of the door invaded my sleep like the teeth of a lion piercing the flesh of an African wildebeest. A loud thump on the door brought me to full alert as I moved quickly to the door. The person at the door held crack cocaine in his hand as he blurted out the price of his bag of death. I snapped back with threats that I was the master of this house and that I did not want to be disturbed. He replied on that April night in 1999, while five or six people sat in front of doorways smoking rocks in their crack pipes, that the Jefferson Hotel "belonged to the dope man" so I had no rights.

It has been over 11 years since that rude awakening at the Jefferson Hotel on Eddy Street had welcomed me to San Francisco. It was a hotel in which I had never thought I would have to sleep. There are many other hotels in San Francisco that operate like the Jefferson. They are like bordellos with organized drug dealers, prostitution and unsanitary living conditions. However, as of Wednesday, October 4, 2000, the Jefferson can no longer be classified as that kind of hotel.

The Jefferson is one of five (5) hotels in San Francisco whose residents have adopted a new attitude because the Board of Supervisors approved a proposal to launch a Master Leasing program which affects every part of the life of the tenants of the Jefferson. The program was spearheaded by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and the Coalition on Homelessness.

"This program at an extraordinarily low cost has brought conservatively 350 vacant units (and overall 800 units) onto the real estate market because the hotels that had been leased prior to this did not maximize the permanent residency," stated Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, to me in an interview as he discussed some of the strategy that was involved with the development the Master Leasing program.

Before both the dot.com boom and surge in the economy, hotels such as the Jefferson had charged rents which were tied to the income that a person received from General Assistance or other fixed income. Since 1997, however, all of the residential hotels in San Francisco had begun to charge unaffordable rents and the housing shortage had tightened. Hotels were no longer accepting referrals -- the prevailing system at that time -- due to the rent increases. Out of this dilemma was born the concept of a Master Leasing program.

"I think that there are aspects to what the Tenderloin Housing Clinic is doing that are beneficial for people to get into housing. I think it sets up a scary situation when the only way a poor person can get housing is through a social worker," Paul Boden of the Coalition on Homelessness advised me during a telephone interview.

Since both Paul Boden and Randy Shaw, two people who have advocated for social change for years in San Francisco, view this program as a constructive move toward affordable housing, it could probably be safe to assume that the program would have passed through without a hitch, right?. Not so!

The Master Lease program went through intense scrutiny as part of the budget hearings. There were many concerns by members of the community and community-based organizations which forced the Coalition on Homelessness to request Board of Supervisor President Tom Ammiano to place money in reserve that had been earmarked for a Master Lease program at the Hartland Hotel, the first Master Lease program to come on line. In addition, the Coalition on Homelessness subpoenaed all papers related to any shelter policies by any agency of City government under the Freedom of Information Act. These processes by the Coalition on Homelessness caused a cooperative meld of the Department of Human Services (DHS), the Coalition on Homelessness and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

After all the players in the attempt to find affordable housing for homeless and impoverished people had begun to interact, the Master Lease program began to take form. The Coalition on Homelessness submitted a detailed report that recommended the course of action for the program. I asked Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness about the position paper and what it included?

"The Coalition came up with recommendations around how access [to affordable rooms] should work for Master Leasing. We took the issue before the Board of Directors of the Coalition on Homelessness, the Substance Mental Health Work Group and other service providers who tried to get leasing." Jennifer continued to recount the developments of the process that brought respectability to five of more than 100 residential hotel buildings in San Francisco.

"During the time we were in negotiations with DHS, there were only one or two people getting referred from the Department of Human Services’ PAES program and/or shelters to hotel rooms. The process was slow. Rooms were vacant while people slept on the street. The Department of Human Services wanted to handpick people in shelter case management programs or employable in their PAES program. After the Coalition on Homelessness and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic negotiated the Master Lease program with the Department of Human Services as a solid unifying force, the Hartland, Jefferson Seneca, Mission and Vicente hotels were approved as sites for San Francisco’s Master Leasing program."

The approval for these hotels means that these buildings are no longer managed and/or operated by their owners. These buildings are managed and maintained by employees of City Housing, a nonprofit in San Francisco. However, any major repairs are the owners’ responsibility. Residents of these hotels pay their rents to City Housing, which uses it to pay the monthly lease to the private owners of the hotels.

I asked Kerry Abbott of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic who actually is eligible for the Master Lease program? "Originally, only people coming out of case management for 30 days in shelters and those on PAES were eligible. Now, people working with any community-based agency can be referred." Kerry stated that this system is much better than the earlier policy.

I asked Paul Boden why have only five buildings out of 100 signed onto the Master Lease program?

"I am glad that there have only been five buildings to sign on at this point," stated Paul with an expressionless tone. "The access is not broad enough to satisfy the Coalition on Homelessness. If you are not able to go to work, for example, you cannot access these hotels." It seems the policies around the Master Lease program are not yet satisfactory, according to Paul Boden. With a surge of renewed interested, he went on to state that, "If we use government money to lease a building, then there should be a long-term plan to own that building and any homeless person should have an equal shot to access the building. Furthermore, there should be made available, if government money is used, direct access to housing throughout for people with disabilities."

There have been much handwriting on the walls of the Jefferson since that day in 1999, when I was told that I had no rights in my room. Today, however, thanks to the masterplan of both the Coalition on Homelessness and Tenderloin Housing Clinic, if the walls could talk, they would say to me, "Welcome to your clean home, master!"

by Scott Clark

The building at 255 9th St. in San Francisco is, by comparison to a lot of office buildings nowadays, a dinosaur. The words: Warehouse Union Local 6, I.L.W.U. stand out over top of a mural of an infamous labor struggle, which is partially obscured at all hours by two semi-clasping trees . The look of the place inside, with its muted sunlight, and red oak paneling, is a quieting influence in contrast to the flow of traffic up 9th St.. Except, that is, when there are union meetings going on, the occasional early evening or a Saturday; or early in the morning when the dispatch office opens. This is also the home offices for I.L.A. Local 38-44 Weighers, Warehousemen, & Cereal Workers; and the San Francisco Bike Messenger Association, The United Farm Workers and POOR Magazine, as well as the aforementioned I.L.W.U. Local 6.

The warehouse industries mentioned above are facing new challenges as commerce changes into ecommerce, and new styles of doing business accommodate themselves to the fast-changing paradigms of the 21st century. The presence of POOR Magazine in the same location, and the fact that POOR is an Internet-based nonprofit that has a reporting focus on, among others, issues of class struggle, were the influencing factors behind this article.

To shed light on the issue I sought out Fred Pecker, Business Manager for Local 6.

POOR: I'm here to talk to you about the ecommerce delivery companies that are not union-based.

Fred: Well., just so you know, a lot of them are union-based. What did you want to know?

P: Why can't a union-based company do just as good a job as a non union-based company?

F: They can. Traditionally, the union does not necessarily get all the contracts that are out there. With companies that have been around for awhile, there is more opportunity for unions to do the work and the organizing that is required to get those contracts.
Webvan, for example. They have their main warehouse, which they stock from the big Webvan trucks centrally. They stock the big warehouse with items that are currently in demand, and the central warehouse provides stock shipments and delivery/pickup services to the smaller warehouses, which are satellites of the main location.

But the situation in a large operation such as Webvan is that you get some of the locations becoming union-based, while others remain unorganized. This is really due to two things: the efforts of local unions to organize the workers; and the response of the workers themselves. It takes a certain type of person to organize a company, it's not easy work sometimes, and sometimes the employees themselves may be unresponsive, for whatever reason.

P: Some of the assertions in my reading material is that the unions are not actively working to organize the employees of ecommerce or attempting to get the ecommerce contracts. What do you have to say about that?

F: Well, with a lot of these companies, they will subcontract out to the unions to provide certain services to them. Say a company sets up to do web sales, they set up a catalog on the web. They may link up with a warehouse union locally that can store and stock all of their catalog items. Then they may want to do the delivery themselves, or they may contract out the delivery, as well. But whoever they contract out to is going to have to administer the billing, and the accounts management, and the time it takes to deliver the items in question, etc.

So, quite often the companies or unions doing the subcontracting will have their administrative services in a separate location from the warehouses and other services. So, again, you get down to the question of how many of these different locations and services are part of a union, and what parts have a history of not being organized, or organized with some success, and also, again, the people doing the organizing. It takes a certain amount of mettle, and perserverance; these are the main qualities of a successful organizer. It may be just one or two people, or it may be several. If these people do not appear, or they appear briefly and then move on, or if the workplace itself remains unresponsive from a worker perspective, then organizing within some part of a company, old or new, could take a very long time.

P: What are your future plans around the ecommerce warehouse industry? I see some new styles of delivery services taking place currently, as far as companies like Kozmo.com that do delivery of essentially whatever the customer wants, in under an hour. Do you have any response as to how this will affect expectations within the delivery industry overall?

F: Well, it won't really affect the companies that already have their contracts set up, and that do more large scale warehousing and delivery. What you’re going to find more with companies like Kozmo, and that you already find taking place, is that they’ll be using other people to provide the delivery, such as bike messengers used to do when it was business-to-business and they would just be delivering somebody’s important documents.

P: Yeah, I've noticed the Bike Messengers' Union is here in the same building as you guys (ILWU Local 250). So you think that they're going to have more involvement with the ecommerce industry than they do now?

F: Sure, well they are already involved with it. But the situation in an increasingly urban environment is that if people want something delivered quickly, they’re better off using bikes or motorscooters to do it, because these are the best types of vehicles for getting around when you have traffic jams all day long.

Tune in next week for Part 2 of “E-What?”. I will be interviewing Chris Johnson, research analyst for the I.L.W.U. International.

by Lester the Cat And Dee

Well, well, well, imagine me, Lester the cat,
writing about pigeons- whatever I know about pigeons could go in a cook book, along with all of the other tasty things that I’ve eaten.

Hands tells me secretly, Why don’t we invite those
pigeons over for dinner sometime soon?

Good idea, I tell him.

The reason I’m writing about pigeons is that this
guy named Joe sent me something that he wrote about
pigeons taking over the world (not with us cats
around, someone should tell him). This Joe wrote to
me and Hands:

Pigeons and cats mostly run Planet Earth!
Human’s destructive capacities are their own traits.
Let the humans believe that they’re in control,
stumble on to discoveries that we drop in their minds.
Their hidden control continues: These are
Birdview, Pigeon mind(s). Are You Sure That What
You Think Is You Or Are They P-Minds?

And he also sent us some photos- I’m including a
few. Don’t notice if they’re a little spotty: me and Hands had a little trouble with our spit the day that
we looked at them. We had a drooling problem
for some reason.

As soon as I finish this column, which is now, I
think I’ll send this guy Joe a Hands-written
invitation to dinner with me and Hands- for him
and for his pigeons. We’ll talk Joe (humor him)
into going out and taking many more rolls of film of
many more pigeons, lots and lots of pigeons. We’ll
give him categories: most beautiful pigeon, most
happiest pigeon, and so on- whatever takes him the
longest.

Meanwhile me and Hands will amuse ourselves,
discussing with the pigeons this plan for taking over
the world, and how Pigeons and cats mostly run
Planet Earth, and the Delicious Dinner we will
make OF, for, I mean, the pigeons that this Joe guy
leaves with us.

by Tiny

A cold grey mist carpeted the cement floor- and gathered at the base of the massive palm trees. Those large, brown, dusty trees that lined the path of what looked like a half-constructed Taj Majal. As I drove in to the circle of municipal art structures in the interior of Golden Gate Park towards an event entitled; Painting The Picture, Raising Awareness About Homelessness’ I started to get nervous.....

It was 2:00 pm and I couldn’t see any humans - only those dusty trees and empty benches that surrounded The Golden Gate Park Bandshell. The event sponsored by Community Action Now (CAN) a youth organization whose mission is to train young adults from diverse backgrounds to be leaders and life long learners by engaging them in service to develop their leadership potential was already supposed to be in progress and yet I saw noone.

And then suddenly through the trees and fog - I saw a small crowd gathered on the stage - sitting in a circle talking on a microphone-" Do you know what homelessness feels like...Do you know how hard it was for myself and my children......?"
As I got closer I noticed a young woman from Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP) on the verge of tears grappling with words to describe the pain of "being homeless"....how do you describe the pain of outsideness...I thought back on my own description of that experience;

"I climbed out of my chair, unable to say a pleasant goodbye, and tumbled outside. I watch the masses pass me, certain each of their twinkling laughs was unfetteredby the imminent danger of homelessness. I had never felt so desperately sad. My bones ached with the overwhelming sadness of it all. Dry tears welled in the corners of my eyes, large gulps of unused air throttled my breathing. I could not explain this sadness to the minions of apartment dwellers that surrounded me-to be able to know your kitchen sink, look at it comfortably and know it will always be yours. To sit on your back step and fondle your light weed growth, look calmly upon your front door with no danger of not seeing it again, to lavish in insideness - your walls, your light fixtures, your toilet paper holders....

Eventually I climbed up on the stage where the small group was talking about what none ever really talks about - and of course the fact that it was only a few of us, representatives from organizations like Huckleberry House, Coalition on Homelessness, Youth Industry, Delancey Street, Homeless Prenatal Program and POOR Magazine, made complete sense, because that is the reason we were meeting... to talk ... to think and to... Paint the Real Picture.about homelessness.

by Anna Morrow

It’s Thursday, May 23rd, in San Francisco. I’ve lived here all my life, so I know that, weather-wise, this could mean anything. It’s almost noon, and the sky is so clear blue that the buildings around Market Street look like those three-dimensional holographic images. I’m hurrying over to the Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP) for a meeting on the Transitional Housing Misconduct Act of 1992. It’s the year 2000, which means this act has been on the books for 8 years. So why has it never been used in court; why has no one ever heard of it.

I'm cutting across the UN Plaza, acutely aware of my attire: black dress slacks, button-up, sheer, embroidered shirt, gold earrings, necklace and ring. I’m walking fast, hoping no one will pick me out of the crowd and solicit me for money or cigarettes. I’ve been homeless for 6 months, but I clean up pretty well. I still can’t decide if it is a compliment, or a nuisance, or just down right offensive to be approached by strangers who have mistaken me for someone who is financially stable. All of the above maybe, depending on my mood or the current status of my intimate relationship with homelessness.

I duck inside the narrow building and let the darkness of the small corridor protect me for a moment while I wait for the elevator. The building is old, and the elevator is small with one of those grill gates. I press number 10. Once upstairs I walk out onto a yellowing and gray mosaic tile hallway at the end of which, just to the right, is HPP. There are two swinging fake wood paneled doors with a big chip out of the corner of one side and a diaper pail just to the right of the bottom hinge. Inside I find a room with 7 chairs and a huge window that displays a magnificent northwest gaze across Market Street. There is no fog today to impede the view past the top of City Hall, all the way to the "sleeping lady" mountain in Marin. The sight of this local landmark brings me a secret sense of well-being: I am happy to see that she, at least, still has her home.

Back in the room I see the woman I am here to meet. Her name is Falechia. I met her while my son and I were staying at the shelter. She facilitated weekly support groups for women there every Thursday night. Now she is talking to a woman who is holding a small child. They're discussing groceries and best buys for your budget from what I can tell without trying to listen. The little girl is content, no fussing, wearing rolled up overalls and a T-shirt that says, 'Shit Happens' and little flower hair clips that say 'Jesus saves’. As their conversation ends and Falechia passes me towards the door, I re-introduce myself and she turns quickly to greet me.

"Hi Anna! How are you? I'm glad you could make it. We're running a little late. Let me take you upstairs."

I follow her up the stairs, past the diaper pail, and she tells me about the agenda for the meeting and who she expects to be here: Rebecca Vilcomerson from HPP, Arnett Watson, a client advocate, Allison Lum from Coalition on Homelessness, and various shelter and Transitional Housing ex-residents who will be giving their testimonials about having to leave abruptly. As we’re walking down the hallway, I'm thinking about my own shelter experience and how hard it was to live in that environment. I used to lovingly refer to it as "Anna and Jesse's Grand Adventure"( Jesse is my 14 year old son), like it was our version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But the sense of "grand adventure" wore off after about five months. By that time I had lost my job and our application for Transitional Housing had been denied. Both of these events occurred within a week of each other. I was stunned, after two lengthy and optimistic interviews with the housing program, to receive the denial letter. Apparently, from their perspective, I was not homeless enough.

I was feeling beyond hopeless at that point, which is somewhere my head goes when I've done everything I can think to do and can't conceive of the next steps. I'm feeling electrocuted by fear and "what-ifs": What if I can't get a job in time? What if we have to live on the street? What if I just have a nervous break down? and then, What if Child Protective Services takes my son?

Right about this time I'm staying sane by reading things like The Bell Jar, Girl Interrupted, Little Altars Everywhere and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. My final claim to sanity came with the self-appointed title of "Hagatha the Shelter Hag." It was a title which was respected by my loyal subjects because it represented my lengthy tenure at the shelter; my high seniority as it were. This was a fun little game I played with my dormitory bunkmates. It included things like re-writing the words to show tunes to fit our current circumstance. To the best of our abilities (which never exceeded our enthusiasm!), we belted out our own lyrics to songs from Oliver, Rent, Fiddler on the Roof. Our songs were usually about us overcoming the odds despite our deplorable conditions. The game was more comic relief therapy than one might think. It was meant to keep us afloat in the turbulent sea of rules, regulations and the power differential which permeated our institutionalized lives. At every turn we were reminded that the we were not authorized to run even the most minute details of our lives. This fact manifested itself in situations like my having to eat cough drops for lunch for an entire week because no staff member would fix me lunch and, of course, I was not allowed into the kitchen.

When I left, I bestowed the title of Shelter Hag to my friend Gaia who had played the game most willingly with me. I gave her my shelter-rat mascot (a stuffed toy) and instructed her to carry on the reign of my position. She still calls me Haggie though, when she sees me. It took two more lengthy interviews and a complete redirect of my life to be accepted as a Transitional Housing participant. I was so happy to be saved from the jaws of "what-if's" that the reality and uncertainty of being in such a program had not yet sunk in.

The images of these crossroads are floating across my mind’s eye as Falechia gestures me into a big room, one entire side of which is windows. She tells me pizza will be here soon and then she leaves to go get sodas. I wander over to the window and take in a second amazing view. This one spans all the way down Market Street to the ferries, out over the bay and across the bridge. The sky is still pristine blue. My eyes skip over smoke stacks and tarred roofs and land on the side of a building painted in huge white letters that spell out:

I work for a guy called myself.

Somehow this message encourages me; I take itin with a hint of amusement and turn back tothe room. Six folding tables have been pushedtogether to make one giant table in the middle.There are three separate doors opposite thewindowed wall, which also has tables the fulllength of it. They’re crowded with papers andplants and assorted stacks of books. I ventureover to the big table and choose a seat near thefar end of the room. I'm guessing this is thehead of the table, as there is a flip chart closebehind and a TV-video resting on a chair nearby.The wall is crowded with posters and signsleaning against a mail bucket filled with manilafolders and paperwork. In the very back is awhite-board with no tell tale signs of writingfrom previous meetings, presumably because it’stoo hard to get to. By now other people aregathering around, joining me in the room: themother with the baby from downstairs andFalechia, who is talking to a co-worker. SoonAllison comes in and we are ready to begin.

As we are going around the table introducingourselves, I Iearn how it is that these peoplecame to be here and how they are related to thesubject at hand: the Transitional HousingMisconduct Act. "It is a moral issue," Falechiasays firmly. She would repeat this statementthroughout the meeting. Falechia goes on to tellus of her own experience, one in which havingcompleted a Transitional Housing Program ingood standing (meaning she accomplished allshe had set out to do and did not get into anytrouble along the way), she is then told that shecan not stay past her exit date. The staff at theTransitional Program, who had spent theprevious months portraying themselves as herallies, had suddenly become strangers who werekicking her out on the street. Her newapartment was not yet ready for her to move in,so there would be a 2 week lapse of housing forherself and her children. She fought their rulesand won, but she carries a permanent woundfrom feeling forsaken by people who instantlychanged from caring and supportive toindifferent and unyielding the moment herprogram clock ran out. The sense of disbelief andbetrayal is still evident in her voice, though sheis recounting an incident from nearly 2 yearsprevious.

Next we heard from Allison Lum. She works atthe Coalition on Homelessness. She says thatshe periodically gets phone calls from currentshelter and Transitional Housing residents whoare been forced out of their living arrangementswith no place to go and no where to turn forrecourse. She recounts a day when such a phonecall came in as she was simultaneously staringdown at a document on her desk titledTransitional Housing Misconduct Act of 1992.This coincidence prompted her to call Rebecca atHomeless Prenatal Program in search of moreinformation.

Rebecca spoke next. She continues Allison’sstory and says that she too had been at a loss forhow to advise clients who were going throughsimilar difficulties in SF shelter and Housingprograms. She reviewed the Act and drafted asummary which she passes out and readsthrough for us. The most significant piece ofinformation for me was that it is illegal forprogram residents to be excluded (a termequivalent to evicted, for housing residents)without due process, although this is clearlywhat is taking place. The second piece of vitalinformation for me was a clarification made byArnett Watson.

Arnett introduces herself as a client advocate. Iremember her name from an information boardat the shelter. Her name and number whereposted for representation during grievanceprocedures. I have yet to be given anyinformation at my current Transitional Housingprogram about who to contact for grievanceprocedures requiring third party mediation. As itturns out, there is none. What Arnett Watsonsays is that there are only two ways for aprogram resident to be excluded from a program:one is unlawful detainer and the second ismisconduct act. No one can just be thrown outon the streets without due process. Again myhead is searching for understanding. So why isthis happening? I am still trying to comprehendwhy no one running these programs iseducating the people they are supposed to behelping about their rights.

Arnett goes on to explain that interestinglyenough, the act originated as a way for programsto speed up the "eviction" process by offering aless time consuming legal procedure. Anotherinteresting point made by Arnett is that the pieceof paper which I, and all other participants in myprogram, were made to sign in which we gaveaway our rights as tenants was not worth thepaper it was written on. The fact that we signedit is meaningless because LEGALLY there areonly two ways which a person can be made toleave - even if you are still within your 30 dayprobationary period. Well, this is very differentfrom the message I was given. I was led tobelieve that just as it was up to them to decide ifI would be allowed into the program, it would betheir decision if I was to be put out of theprogram. They would have the final say, andthey would always be right because they makethe rules. What I was hearing today, however,led me to believe otherwise. Arnett said, "Peopledon't know that they can get help, they don'tknow they have rights." I am feeling exhilaratedat hearing this and reach for extra flyers todistribute when I get "home".

At this point the woman with the childintroduced herself. She has 2 more children athome. She says she had recently been put outfrom a Transitional Program. It is the same onethat I am currently at. She tells her story of beinggiven 15 minutes to gather her things and go, ofall of her belongings being left in the hallway, ofher sons new jacket disappearing during theshuffle. It is when she is at the peak of her anger,strongly declaring the injustices she hasendured, that I realize a startling and alarmingfact: This woman sitting beside me is the womanwhose room I now occupy. When she is donespeaking, I reach over to give her a hug. Shethinks, perhaps, that I am showing my supportor empathy. With my arms are around her Iwhisper in her ear, "I think I 'm staying in yourroom."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ *~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Legally, you can not be made to leave from a

Transitional Housing Program without due process, i.e. ,

Unlawful Detainer or Transitional Housing Misconduct Act.

Either of theses methods will buy you time, at least 5 days.

For more information or a copy of this act you may contact

Homeless Prenatal Program at 546 - 6756.

Ask for Falechia at x23 or Rebecca at x12.

If you believe that you have been, or are going to be, unlawfully excluded from a program, please call Arnett Watson, client advocate, at mn346 - 3740.

These people are ready to go to court to fight for your rights !

by Chance Martin

After decades of neglect, our state legislature is being
aggressively lobbied to restore California's mental
health system. All of the treatment enhancements and
services that are being proposed are desperately
needed and would be welcome, with one exception:
an attack on the civil rights of mentally disabled
people called involuntary outpatient commitment.
Involuntary outpatient commitment is the cornerstone
of AB 1800, an assembly bill sponsored by
Assemblymember Helen Thompson.

Involuntary outpatient commitment is court-mandated
medication compliance. In some cases, it can mean a
person is court-ordered to keep regular clinic
appointments to receive long-lasting injections of
powerful psychiatric drugs. The consequences of
non-compliance are hospital commitment and forced
drugging. These proposed legal provisions are termed
"assisted treatment." In practice, its primary victims
are poor and homeless people, particularly
African-American men. In some urban areas,
homelessness itself is interpreted as proof of "grave
disability," creating the justification to drug homeless
people against their will. In states where this policy is
law, forced medication coupled with a lack of medical
supervision has led to deaths due to toxic levels of
psychiatric medication.

At New York's Bellevue hospital, a pilot study
testing the viability of involuntary outpatient
commitment failed to support its advocates' claims. A
three year study of its relative effectiveness found no
statistically significant differences between the
experimental group, a control group, and those who
discontinued treatment in the areas of
re-hospitalization, arrests, violence, symptomatology,
or quality of life. It concluded: "there is no indication
that, overall, the court order for outpatient
commitment produces better outcomes for clients or
the community than enhanced services alone."
Alarmingly, it also noted that the court procedures
themselves became perfunctory, and accountability
was so lacking that renewal orders frequently
occurred without a formal hearing, despite the fact
that "the court order itself had no discernible added
value in producing better outcomes."

The betrayal of the de-institutionalization movement in
California only became apparent when the state-funded
community-based mental health services we were promised
to replace the snake pits were themselves facing extinction.
Now we are faced with a proposal to criminalize an entire
community of people based on disability. Disability isn't a
choice, it's something each of us learns to accommodate as
best we can. We need to ask ourselves: how many violent
acts committed by untreated mentally ill people, however
sensationalized, might have been prevented if a
comprehensive range of voluntary, culturally appropriate
community mental health services were available?

A look at twentieth century history gives the best
illustration of how far stigmatization, scapegoating and
hate can go when misrepresented as scientific authority.

Eugenics originated as a sub-discipline of psychiatry right
here in the United States. The first compulsory sterilization
laws in Germany were modeled on American sterilization
laws enacted a decade before. In the three years from
1941-1943, over 42,000 Americans were sterilized under
the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law. California led the
nation with over 10,000 forced sterilizations (mostly
persons of color). The "mental diseases" targeted by this
law were "insane," "feeble-minded," "epileptics," and
"idiots."

The Holocaust's first victims were "mentally ill" people.
The first extermination facilities were designed and
operated by psychiatrists, who later trained the SS how to
use them. In a culture where ruling authority was
maintained in the name of a higher "biological" principle,
psychiatrists weren't ordered to murder people, they were
simply empowered to do so by their government, and so
they did. In 1941, 90,000 German psychiatric inmates
were murdered, 71,000 in gas chambers at psychiatric
institutions.

If our generation remembers no other lesson, we must
remember that no supposed biological marker - no stigma -
is reason enough to deny anyone's liberty. We must
support fully funded, community-based, VOLUNTARY
mental health treatment before we consider discarding
someone else's self determination.

If it isn't voluntary, it isn't treatment!

by Terry Messman

Suppose a surreal scene (for, in Oakland, politics is the
art of the surreal). Suppose an elitist city planner goes
out of control after watching the film, Invasion of the
Body Snatchers, where the real inhabitants of a town are
replaced, one by one, with aliens and no one is supposed
to even mention the sinister plan. In a frenzy, said city
planner decides to create a master plan for the secret
removal of the unwanted poor from Oakland and their
one-on-one replacement by white, affluent dot-commers.

Quick shift of scene to the Oakland mayor’s office,
where the blueprints for the removal of the poor have
already been drawn up by the landlords and city planning
officials working in tandem to slowly replace the
longtime residents of downtown Oakland, one by one,
with outsiders…

A city report leaked to Street Spirit by Lynda Carson, an
anti-eviction activist who works with Just Cause
Oakland, shows that Mayor Jerry Brown ordered his
housing development staff to conduct a survey of all 24
Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels in the Central
District and analyze how much it would cost to remove
and replace them, presumably with market-rate housing
and upscale commercial developments.

Outrage among advocates

Housing advocates in Oakland are expressing outrage
that Brown would even request a secret report to analyze
what it would cost to eliminate low-income hotels in the
downtown area. The analysis, conducted for Brown by
city staff in the Housing Development Section, surfaced
recently in activist circles, although it had circulated
among a small inner circle at City Hall considerably
before then.

Even though the price tag for eliminating all 24 SRO
hotels in Oakland’s Central District may be prohibitively
expensive and therefore unworkable, tenant advocates
called it a betrayal by Jerry Brown of his poorest
constituents and a blueprint for increased homelessness.

"I found it to be chilling," Carson said. "When I first got
wind of that survey, I tried to visualize all these people
being forced to move out of their homes and relocate. It
really sunk in on me that if all the SROs are gone, there
will really be no place in Oakland for those of us who
have hit rock bottom."

Staff members of several Oakland housing agencies
confirmed that the report was prepared because Jerry
Brown and the redevelopment officials in charge of
pushing his plan to bring 10,000 new residents into the
downtown believe it will be very hard to "market"
Oakland when so many poor people are on the streets.
Advocates close to the mayor’s office say that Brown
had told his staff that SROs are the culprit and should be
closed down because there are too many low-rent hotels
and, therefore, too many poor people.

"Jerry Brown is under the influence of wealthy
developers who may fear that it’s very difficult to bring a
lot of rich new residents into a downtown area dominated
by poor people," said Carson. "I think the mayor’s office
is full aware that it’s discouraging to his plans to bring in
10,000 rich people to see so much poverty in their face
night after night."

Blueprints for gentrification are nearly always designs
for dislocation, eviction and homelessness. The moral
blindness of this mayoral administration is that it would
remove real, flesh-and-blood citizens of Oakland who
have lived downtown all their lives for fantasized hordes
of upscale people who have never yet lived in Oakland.
"It’s a pipe dream of Jerry Brown," said Carson. "His
slogan is ‘Oaklanders First.’ But Oaklanders first are
being run out of town."

The stages of gentrification

The first stage of this blueprint for gentrification and
homelessness requires a mayor willing to turn a blind eye
as Oakland’s avaricious landlords jack up the rents to
unconscionable levels and unleash a barrage of no-cause
evictions on poor renters and people of color.

The second stage of this plan involves canceling the
City’s lease with the Henry Robinson Multi-Service
Center, the largest transitional housing program for
homeless families in the East Bay, and negligently
allowing many other homeless services to be driven out
of downtown Oakland by escalating rents. But the
Multi-Service Center is only one of an estimated 24 SRO
hotels that provide the only housing still affordable to the
poorest residents of downtown Oakland.

Therefore, the third stage of this design for displacement
is clear: Target the other SRO hotels for possible
removal. Evidently, that is just what Jerry Brown began
contemplating last summer.

The report prepared for Brown by the City’s Housing
Development staff estimated that it would cost more than
$102 million "if the SROs were to be acquired by private
developers" and more than $162 million "if the
Redevelopment agency were to acquire these hotels given
the additional, state-required relocation costs of
$25,000/unit."

The study begins on an ominous note: "In order to assist
our discussion of this topic with Mayor Brown, the
Housing Development Section has analyzed the estimated
value of all the Single Room Occupancy Hotels (SROs)
in the Central District. In addition, we have reviewed the
report prepared by the Police Department regarding crime
reports and arrests near the SROs and have reviewed the
Code Enforcement Division’s records with respect to
building conditions."

Those are chilling words to anyone who knows the
history of how city officials in Oakland’s code
enforcement division have worked hand-in-glove with
the police and fire departments to close down unwanted
SROs, such as the El Centro and the Royal, in the past.
Police crime reports, coupled with complaints received
by the code enforcement division, can be used to close
down these buildings. Once an SRO has been
red-tagged, its market value plummets, and it becomes
more feasible for a private developer to buy it out and
remove or renovate it.

A brake on Brown’s ambitions?

Reportedly, this study was completed under the direction
of Oakland Housing Director Roy Schweyer, a longtime
supporter of affordable housing, and that may have
resulted in some cautionary observations that placed at
least a momentary brake on Mayor Brown’s ambitions.

The report warns, for instance, of dire consequences if
SRO units are eliminated entirely: "The elimination of
these units, which provide shelter, and in some cases,
social service resources would create an increase in
homelessness. The impact then could be a larger
presence of displaced people on the streets of
downtown."

Yet despite this warning, the report recommends
developing a comprehensive strategy that would include
"continued and stepped-up code enforcement activities,"
and even more chillingly, "marketing the areas and the
privately owned SROs to private developers."

That marketing strategy may be Brown’s best hope to
begin removing SRO hotels in a piecemeal fashion,
rather than in one fell swoop. When the city staff put the
numbers together (reportedly, sometime last August), it
became apparent that finding $100-$160 million to
remove all 24 SROs at once was nearly impossible.
Affordable housing advocates say that Brown’s real
game now is to implement this plan incrementally by
encouraging private developers to buy out SROs one by
one and replace them with new commercial offices or
market-rate housing.

Also, sources close to Mayor Brown say he was set back
on his heels by the community outcry against his plan to
bring in 10,000 new market-rate housing units while
rejecting any low-income housing in a time of rising
rents and eviction rates. Because of this widespread
criticism of the potential loss of affordable housing,
homeless advocates say that Brown has backed off
somewhat and now is supposedly more open-minded
about including a modicum of affordable housing in his
master plan to perform cosmetic surgery on downtown
Oakland.

But boona cheema, a longtime homeless advocate and
social services provider, warns that even when the mayor
talks about supporting bonds for affordable housing, he
is talking about housing for people at 80 percent of the
median income – housing that will never help homeless
people remain in Oakland.

A Trojan Horse

All too often, that is simply gentrification by another
name – using the promise of affordable housing as a
Trojan Horse to smuggle in higher-rent units for
middle-income renters in a city with a crying need for
housing for very low-income people.

Cheema, the executive director of Building Opportunities
for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), has seen and studied the
secret city report on SRO hotels. She commented, "I
think Jerry Brown is really misguided. We have poor
people and disabled people and mentally ill people who
he wants to address from a law-and-order point of view,
and not a public-health point of view."

BOSS provides a comprehensive array of services,
shelter, long-term housing, counseling, job training and
referrals to homeless people in Alameda County.
Because of rising rents, cheema said, the poor people her
agency serves are facing a far greater struggle to remain
housed and avoid eviction than ever before – so Brown’s
proposed tampering with some of the last truly affordable
housing in Oakland comes at the worst possible time.

"We need more services for poor people," cheema said.
"We need to create a downtown in Oakland that is truly
mixed. Poor people have lived there for years. The SROs
are their only home. So in a way, Jerry Brown is
ass-backwards in his approach. By removing the SROs,
he will create more poor people on the street, like in San
Francisco."

Brown’s highly touted plan to upgrade Oakland’s
downtown has always consisted of an overt agenda and a
covert agenda. The publicly announced agenda is to
work with large real estate developers and contractors to
build market-rate housing for 10,000 new residents –
middle-income and affluent people who would create a
"more desirable" populace when the mayor tries to entice
big business to move into downtown Oakland.

But the hidden part of this so-called "10K" plan is to
drive away all the social problems and poor people that
might make downtown Oakland an unappealing place to
live for your average, upwardly mobile dot-commer.

The people advising Brown on his 10K plan to redevelop
and upgrade downtown Oakland, said cheema, have
made a fundamental error in judgment. "They’re up to no
good, because their thinking is flawed," she said.
"Instead of putting in resources to help people, they go at
the problem in a way that will create more problems.
Who is thinking for this man? He’s not thinking with
long-term vision. He’s just thinking, ‘We’re really
wired. Let’s bring in the techies.’"

An urban removal project

Brown has definitely chosen a new approach to the
age-old problem of poverty – not an urban renewal
project, but a flat-out attempt at urban removal.

Housing developers and homeless advocates labored
intensively for years to create an umbrella of support
services for poor people in downtown Oakland.
Programs for poor people blossomed, including the
Henry Robinson Multi-Service Center, the First Step
recovery program, St. Mary’s Center for Homeless
Seniors, Sentinel Fair Housing, the Oakland
Independence Support Center, BOSS, Traveler’s Aid,
Dignity Housing West, and Oakland Community
Housing, Inc.

Now, ironically, some of the very service centers set up
to help the poor and homeless are themselves threatened
by rapidly rising rents and face the same bitter fate of
displacement and eviction undergone by those they set
out to help.

Clearly, the SRO hotels are first on the endangered list.
SROs are rarely popular in the halls of power. The fatally
prejudicial notion in the elite circles of real estate
developers, mayors, and city planners is that SROs
contribute to urban blight and provide cover for the
undesirable poor, the mentally disabled, substance
abusers and street people. Thus, they are viewed as an
impediment to Oakland’s long-thwarted progress
towards becoming an affluent city of gleaming
skyscrapers and thriving commerce.

In truth, much of this "housing of last resort" is far from
ideal. SRO hotels run the entire spectrum – the good, the
bad and the ugly. Nonprofit agencies have created
architecturally attractive SROs that are models of decent,
humane housing, while slum landlords have let SRO
hotels deteriorate into rat-infested firetraps.

Hovel or haven

But, hovel or haven, one thing is certain about SROs:
they’re an absolutely essential lifeline for the poorest
citizens. They are indispensable in providing one of the
last places of refuge where very low-income people can
live without being forced to sleep on a chunk of
discarded cardboard in an alley.

The growing tragedy of homelessness in modern
America is inescapably bound up with the loss of SROs
to demolition, gentrification, fires, and conversion to
tourist hotels. In city after city across America, the
equation couldn’t be more precise or chilling – the loss or
destruction of every SRO hotel has always resulted in
ever-greater homelessness.

When I worked with the Oakland Union of the Homeless
from 1986-1994, we organized rent strikes and worked
with attorneys to have successful lawsuits filed against
some of the more slum-ridden SRO hotels. But make no
mistake: SRO housing was essential then to the
preservation of the lives of the poor in downtown
Oakland. It still is.

To have a mayor come into Oakland from the outside –
without understanding its problems or its history,
without caring about the effect his grandiose plans will
have on its poorest residents – is an outrageous misuse
of political power. Every major study of urban
homelessness has concluded that the loss or destruction
of SRO hotels is an absolutely central cause of increasing
homelessness.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has released carefully
documented reports every year tracing the rise in
homelessness in the major U.S. cities for the past 15
years. A major component of this increase in
homelessness documented by their reports is the loss of
SRO hotels caused by gentrification.

So why is Oakland’s mayor so clueless about this
phenomenon? He isn’t. He knows full well that bringing
in his sleek crowd of yuppies and dot-commers will
cause displacement of the poor. He asked for this study
of SRO hotels precisely to see how fast and how far he
could go to expedite that displacement.

Watch this administration carefully as it goes about
polishing its image by encouraging big real estate
developers to buy off entire city blocks. Watch every
time a developer takes over a parcel of land in downtown
Oakland that has a homeless program or a low-income
hotel where poor people live. Where that happens, start
an SRO death-watch. Maybe drop off a memorial wreath
or decorate the block with black armbands to lament the
lost housing of the urban poor. Better yet, sit-in at the
mayoral offices of the Evictor-in-Chief responsible for
these designs for displacement.

Preferential option for the rich

A deliberate choice is at work when Jerry Brown uses
the full power of his office to attract the rich while he
presides over the displacement of Oakland’s homeless
programs and SRO hotels, and turns a blind eye to the
growing evictions of poor people and people of color.

What should we name this fateful choice that the Brown
administration seems hell-bent on making?

Jerry Brown, the former Jesuit seminarian, knows that
all over the world, Catholic bishops and nuns and priests
have made "the preferential option for the poor" a central
commitment of their lives and faith. In Latin America
alone, hundreds of priests, bishops and nuns have given
their very lives to stand in solidarity with the aspirations
of the poorest of the poor. And not just the clergy, but
thousands of lay people in countless churches have
dedicated their lives to this preferential option for the
poor.

What then constitutes the core of Jerry Brown’s urban
removal policy? A preferential option for the rich. And
given that most of the people evicted in Oakland have
been and will be people of color, it is inescapably a
preferential option for the affluent white.

"For someone who puts himself across as having lived
with Mother Teresa and being a Jesuit seminarian –
excuse me, I know something about that spiritual path,
and this man is not on it," said boona cheema. "If you
look at the Jesuits, you see a whole order of people who
go into the poorest communities and offer their service.
But as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t help the poor,
and he didn’t learn anything in his time with Mother
Teresa. It just didn’t register."

Under the Brown administration, said cheema, "the
advocacy on behalf of the very, very poor – the homeless
and disabled folks – is just not there. People are not
politically motivated from their souls to reach out and
help homeless people. That’s a great loss to our
community."

A fateful question awaits Mayor Brown in the future:
When did I see you hungry and not feed you, homeless
and not house you, evicted and heartsick and not come to
your help? But, of course, that question was already
answered long before the mayor’s blueprint for
gentrification was ever drawn up: "I tell you solemnly, in
so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of
these, you neglected to do it to me."

by PNN Staff

On Wednesday, April, 12th, Mission community
organiza-tions, tenants, and supporters met in front of
the former National Guard Mission Armory holding
the dot-com industry and real estate developers
accountable to the interests of communities of color,
working-class and middle-income residents,
neighborhood nonprofits, artist groups & local small
business. In the last year, two of San Francisco's
oldest neighborhoods, the Mission and South of
Market, have suffered incalcula-ble upheaval as a
result of: Ellis Act evictions, condo conversions,
live/work loft construction and the rising rates of
small business & light industrial dis-placement that
have accompanied dot-com development.

Fueled by the engine of this new economy, the
"sell-ing" of the Mission district is indicative of
city-wide gentrification, increasing radicalization of
the digital divide, and growing income inequalities in
San Francisco.

With last year's purchase of the BayView Building at 22nd
& Mission, over 40 local businesses and non-profits await
a July eviction. The Bryant Square Pro-ject slated for
retrofit & construction this year, will occupy an entire
Mission district block as a site for dot-com companies and
commercials lofts -- making the Mission a major
multimedia investment zone.

The City has failed to appropriately make dot-coms
re-sponsible for the displacement they cause. Moreover, in
February, Supervisor Leslie Katz proposed amending the
City's Planning code to reclassify dot-coms and
multimedia firms as research and development, not
of-fices. This legislative maneuver would substantially
reduce what firms would pay to meet the City's
requirement of building affordable housing and would
exempt multimedia firms from the voter approved growth
cap, Proposition M.

We are speaking out in front of the former Armory to
protest the displacement that will likely be caused by the
development of this landmark fortress by Eikon Ltd.
Eikon's intention is to develop 250,000 square feet in the
Armory for dot-com firms. Such development will greatly
impact the housing stock and ethnic di-versity of the
Mission community. When dot-coms compa-nies move
into low-income communities, their high-paid employees
scour the neighborhood looking to buy or convert available
housing, realtors speculate existing properties and
corporate ancillary services follow -- all this leading to the
displacement of tenants, local small business and the loss
of blue-collar jobs.

by Simon Kasada

The scene out of the smeary windshield as I push my
1989 Toyota Corolla off the freeway is this: cop cars
take up all the available parking in front the San
Francisco County Courthouse. A few are even
double-parked, despite the placard posted on the light
post which threatens that this a $286 fine. Probably not
for them. I swear, my son does a better job with his
Matchbox cars than this.

The alleys off Bryant come up quickly, narrow and
crowded with bail bond offices, but this is where I
maneuver my car, which unfortunately doesn't have
power steering. I bought it brand-new while Christina
was pregnant, my first car right after my 18th birthday.
It, like my son, is now 11 years old. Oh man, I'm so old.
The good thing about it is, it noses easily into a shoe
box sized space by a rumpled-looking man who wants
two dollars for "finding" it for me. Whatever. There's
time to grab something to eat at nearby McDonalds and
run inside.

I'm not good with huge public buildings; the heels of my
cowboy boots make more of a racket than other
people's shoes, I tend to not be able to find the
elevators, and when asking for directions my voice
bellows octaves above the sibilant tone observed in
these sanctums. I thought I'd waltz in and say, "Hey,
Judge, I need a reduction in my child support payments,
so I can take some classes at City College and get a
better job." With a few simple classes I can get an
apprentice mechanic's job with Northwest Airlines at
SFO. Up until now I've had many jobs, most recently
door-to-door watch salesman; and I can usually only
afford my son's birthday, Christmas, and child support
two or three months out of the year.

I, like more than half of all non-paying dads, according
to a University of Wisconsin study, typically earn less
than $6,100 a year. For this, thousands of fathers are
criminalized as "deadbeat" dads, when in reality it
comes down to a question of poverty. Huge sections of
working-age males in the United States are unemployed,
and have exhausted all hopes of finding jobs.

When the mainstream media reports unemployment
figures of 10, 15, 20 percent, whatever they are, this
neat figure masks the truth of hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of people, not percentages, totally
unemployed. The predicament of African-Americans
and other non-whites is even more staggering. On top of
this are those who are underemployed, working
part-time or in the home.

Rich men can throw cash at their "exes" for the upkeep
of their children, and then, no problem. In addition, if
they are well-connected or powerful, then the courts
look the other way. It is on the shoulders of the poor
that the wear and tear in the fabric of society is blamed.
None of this addresses the question of what is needed to
care for and maintain people; children, mothers, and
fathers.

The courtroom is packed with men. They are slumped
in the benches, with resigned looks of boredom and
exhaustion imprinted on their faces. Somehow I've got
to make contact with my court-appointed counselor. I
don't know how I'm going to do this.

When Christina and I broke up, we decided that we
wouldn't go to court over child support; instead, I'd
send what I could, when I could. This has included half
of all the money I've made through writing; some six
thousand dollars. Eventually, Christina went forward
and married someone else, who has a good paying job,
that meets both of their needs better than I can. While
this doesn't excuse me from sending money along, nor
from being whatever kind of parent I can be from two
thousand miles away, I thought "Okay".

In order for my son to be covered by the insurance
through this man's job, we were steered in the direction
of the court system. Which seems to be the overriding
message that comes down to people; that it is good to
have the system in your life, your business, and your
personal affairs.

The court turns fathers into visitors in their own
houses, brief interlopers through the lives of their
children. If you don't have a home, it can be even worse.

If you are homeless in America, and are trying to have a
family, it is like saying to the legal system, to Child
Protective Services (CPS), "Come take my kids away!"
It is increasingly arbitrary, the reasons for taking
children away from their parents. CPS has a checklist
for what constitutes abuse, and they define emotional
abuse as including "constant family conflict".

In families, especially low income ones, where there's
job turmoil, the struggle for shelter, perhaps issues of
substance abuse, where there is often just a single parent
trying to hold everything together; who's ever heard of
conflict?

The focus of the legal system has been child support
enforcement, which does nothing to cure unemployment
or strengthen family traditions. Supposedly the aim of
the courts is to help women, who are more often than
not the custodial parent.

The San Jose Mercury News reported on the case of
Hortense Bishop, a mother in Los Angeles, who went
on welfare when the court didn't pass on to her the
support they had ordered. Then the district attorney
kept all but $50 because he found out that she was
receiving the welfare assistance.

Welfare reforms that have come down in the last few
years have tied the monetary assistance from
government agencies to workfare type programs,
meaning that if you don't work you can't get assistance.
And now if you don't work you can't get shelter. If you
don't have shelter your kids can be taken away (See:
"Little Noah"; story on PNN).

Poverty levels for custodial parents have been estimated
at 49%. Tangentially, mothers who are in jail face
substantial barriers to parenting, and face having their
children placed in foster care. The court system in this
country has never been a friend of poor people, or of
families struggling to keep their heads above water.

My sweaty eyes take in the courtroom. My ears cannot
take the noise, nor my head the confusion. There doesn't
seem to be any organization whatsoever. It's hard to
understand what the process is for finding my
counselor, or for going before the judge.

There are, literally, hundreds of men here; and they are
wearing work shirts, and some have carried with them
the little Igloo coolers that house their lunches. Some of
them have done bad things to their exes. I remember
when I found out Christina was having an affair I
punched a hole in the plaster wall of our apartment and
yanked the phone out of its jack.

The U.S. Congress has been reviewing a sequel to the
1994 Violence Against Women Act, which would offer
social services to women, and requires employers to
make special arrangements for women who claim abuse.
Once again the bill focuses on increased child support
enforcement as being the main solution for crumbling
families and for the autonomy of women.

There is also the Fathers Count Act, which the National
Organization for Women (NOW) opposes, which would
offer the same sort of services, as well as job training for
fathers who would otherwise fall into the dreaded
designation of "deadbeat dad". NOW opposes it because
it would take the focus off of women's issues; for in
their view men are violent and women are victims, and
capitalist justice is appropriate for everybody. An
outlook like this splits men and women, who ultimately
need to work together. Both of these legislative
maneuvers stress legal means within an unfriendly
judicial system, one that criminalizes poverty.

I love my son, and I don't want to end up making his life
harder, which is why I am here. But I understand why
it's difficult to show up in court. Many men come here
already facing previous summons, and fear getting into
bigger trouble. Finally I am able to locate my counselor,
who doesn't seem the least bit interested in me. He asks
me if I've filed the appropriate papers with the court in
order to get a reduction in my child support payments. I
ask him, what papers? Nobody ever told me about
needing to file any papers in advance! The counselor
licks his thin wispy lips and assures me that the judge is
not going to listen to a thing I have to say if I haven't
filed my notice yet. He tells me to look around at the
huge backlog in the courtroom today, and that I might as
well go home. Maybe he doesn't know, but I took the
day off from work so I could come here. He also tells
me that since I haven't been paying child support in a
timely manner, my tax refunds will probably be seized.

All I can look forward to tomorrow is lugging my case
of five dollar watches down Mission Street in Hayward.
"Anybody wanna buy a nice ladies wristwatch?"

by PNN Staff

Last Tuesday, the Housing and Social Policy
Committee of the SF Board of Supervisors conducted
a hearing on "musical rooms". This is the illegal
practice of many residential hotel operators who
routinely force their residents to leave for an evening,
only to check back into a different room the next day.

"Musical rooms" is a violation of California Civil
Code 1940.1 which states that no landlord is allowed
to force a resident to move before a period of 30 days
in order to prevent that resident from gaining tenant
rights.

"Musical rooms" has caused much hardship for
hundreds of San Franciscans trying to stabilize their
housing. Sandra James and her son, Isaiah, lived at
the Hotel Sunrise on Valencia Street for a year,
moving out every three weeks. "I didn1t even realize
what they were doing to me and my son was illegal. I
just figured that I had to do it just to keep a roof over
our head." Tony Hester was forced out of his room at
the All Star Hotel on 16th Street over a period of 4
months. "It created great instability and turmoil. I
didn1t know from one week to the next where I
would be living. Being disabled and a recovering
alcoholic, getting kicked out of the hotel was another
obstacle placed in front of me. It created the inability
to formulate plans of action to further myself in life."

(top of article)
The practice of "musical rooms" not only disrupts the lives
of individual hotel residents, it also wrecks havoc on hotels
in general. The practice increases rent as weekly rates tend
to be higher than monthly rates and as rents' increase
without the protection of rent control. The practice of
"Musical rooms" also works to deteriorate hotel conditions
as owners shirk responsibility without permanent tenants
there to hold them accountable. Moreover, "musical
rooms" is a big contributor to homelessness in San
Francisco.

Last month several tenant and housing organizations sent a
letter to the City Attorney raising the issue of "musical
rooms". They asked for a meeting with the City Attorney
to talk about a strategy to deter "musical rooms".
Unfortunately, the City Attorney never responded.
Although the City Attorney has filed one lawsuit regarding
"musical rooms", the tenants and housing advocates such
as Mission Agenda believe they need to launch a flurry of
lawsuits in order to curb this practice.

by Liana Fabiani

OAKLAND---How do you change the make-up of an
entire community?---maybe by changing the school
system used by the community. Oakland Mayor Jerry
Brown has come up with a sure fire way to move
forward with his gentrification plans for Oakland..... or
so he hoped.

Last week Mayor Jerry Brown was defeated for the
second time this year by the Oakland School Board. The
vote just before midnight Wednesday brought an end to a
five hour hearing on the mayor’s plan to launch a
Military Academy (magnet school) on the former
Oakland Army Base by September. Arguments for and
against the proposal were heard but, one vote in
particular set forth by one of Brown’s own, drew a roar
of applause from the very diverse crowd of people
present. Brown was bewildered by his appointee Wilma
Whites no vote who throughout the meeting seemed to
lean towards casting a yes vote, but at the end denounced
the plan as RACIST. White believed that the military
academy proposal offered no real choice for students
trapped in Oakland’s public schools. She described the
plan as being the provider of a racist two-tier system in
education. ìI do not think the proponents of this academy
are racists; I respect them all,I found the military
academy charter petition, however, racist in it’s effect.

Brown responded with "I don’t understand" (white male
rhetoric), as well as lashed out against the other board
members who voted against his plan by saying that they
were flat-earth society members who jealously guard a
failing school system and resist any kind of change

Along with White, board President Dan Siegel and
members Jean Quan, Bruce Kariya, and Ken Rice all
voted against Brown. Siegel argued that a military school
would be a bad fit for progressive Oakland and that it
would be unethical because the charter school would
receive 2-3 times more funds than any of the 90 other
public schools in Oakland.

"We’re not trying to nail Jerry", Board member Rice said
last Thursday. He’s a bright guy. But he just doesn’t get
it when it comes to what’s needed for real school reform
in Oakland.

Oakland’s School Superintendent Dennis Chaconas
agrees. Formally Alameda's Superintendent, Chaconas
also opposed Browns proposal. Believing that he had
come back to a district that was in worse shape then
when he had left it in 1993, he states that student
achievement had not been the #1 priority of the Oakland
School District like it should have been. He brought forth
the notion that there is no significant data proving charter
schools effectiveness and that he is therefore committed
to improving the overall educational system and not for
separating the community by only helping a small
number of students through charter programs.

So what are some of the answers? Chaconas proposed,
"We do need to pay teachers more, which requires more
funding, fundamentally, you create a system with high
standards and you hold teachers and principals
accountable for performance. You tell those who are not
doing their job how to improve and you reward those
who are doing a good job."

Chaconas also believes that the real issues of education
have been buried by politics, which have destroyed
morale causing people and representatives to be on the
defensive. They’re saying you can’t change the system, "
I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t believe I could
change it and if you believe it can’t change, then you
should get out and do something else.Teaching is an art,
a passion. You have to have standards. You have to care
about the kids. Our teaching system doesn’t teach any of
those"

He went on to say that there has been a disconnect
between the district office and the school sites, a lack of
support and understanding. This seemed to ring all so
true on the night of the meeting as the crowd of more
than 150 people (many of them Oakland students) got out
of control because they were not getting a fair chance to
be heard, forcing Siegel to temporarily shut down the
meeting.

To push his proposal forward, it is publicly known that
Brown had exhausted all of his resources and pulled all
of his strings to get the idea funded through alliances
with local and National agencies from the likes of Gray
Davis and the National Guard. But it did not seem to
make any difference, as together-- the People of
Oakland, Wilma White, Siegel, Quan, Kariya, Rice,
Chaconas, and Alameda’s Superintendent of schools
Sheila Jordan stood up for what was best for all the kid’s
in Oakland. Through their courageous votes and/or
opinions they managed to slow Jerry and his troops
down.

"The bottom line is we're going forward" Brown said,
"and the point is Oakland School Board Members don’t
have the last say on this"

No Jerry, I really think the bottom line is that the people
of Oakland are simply not havin’ it.

by Kaponda

The faint sounds, like a wisp of terror, slashed
through the tranquillity of the night. My eyes opened
to the constricted area around my bed as currents of
toxins passed through my throat. The wooden interior
of the walls permitted the reek of death to overwhelm
the entire hotel room.

I was dressed before my feet had touched the floor in
my frantic rush to determine the reason for the
interruption of my sleep. As I reached for the light, I
was turned around by the plume of smoke that had
invaded the fourth floor of the Baldwin Hotel from
the adjoining Sixth Street structure, the Delta Hotel.

It appeared as though I had been the very last person
to escape the flaming disaster on that terrible night in
April of Œ97. The blaze of amber soared high over
the ledge of the Delta Hotel. Its insatiable energy
devoured the entire Delta Hotel and part of the
Baldwin Hotel. The Delta Hotel was destroyed. Its
rooms are among the 600 other rooms in San
Francisco that have been taken off the market in the
last 10 years. Out of the Delta fire was borne the
Mission SRO Collaborative.

On Thursday, March 30, 2000, the Mission SRO
Collaborative held a Fire Prevention Workshop at the
South of Market Recreation Center. The workshop
brought together the fire inspector, Patrick Stranahan,
San Francisco Fire Department, and single room
occupancy tenants (hereinafter, "SRO"), along with
other housing advocates. The spacious meeting hall at
the South of Market Recreation Center was populated
with tenants from hotels of North and South of
Market Street.

Before Inspector Stranahan made his lengthy presentation,
I asked him what is the Fire Department doing to prevent
future disasters to low-income hotels in San Francisco? He
stated that the "San Francisco Fire Department is
aggressively enforcing all codes and also educating
residents on fire prevention." "Furthermore," added
Inspector Stranahan, "the Fire Department has a great
relationship with residents of SRO's."

Emanuel Smith of Mission SRO Collaborative did not
seem that optimistic during our interview, however. Mr.
Smith admitted to me, confidentially, that the City is
"Ill-prepared for SRO fires." When I had heard some of
the questions put to Inspector Stranahan and had listened to
his responses; and after I had determined that this meeting
was convened due to a fire at the Baldwin Hotel only three
weeks ago, I began to understand why Emanuel had
concluded that the San Francisco Fire Department has no
game plan for SRO fires.

As Nick Patel, one of the owners and operators of SRO
hotels in San Francisco, and relatives looked on from the
back of the hall, Inspector Stranahan was responding to a
question concerning construction and combustibles in fire
escape areas. A tenant stated that he had called the fire
department and was told he has to identify himself or no
one will come out to inspect the area. Inspector Stranahan
responded by saying that there are, "Only 30 fire
inspectors covering San Francisco." That is not an
adequate amount, according to him. He noted that Los
Angeles has 300 fire inspectors.

I was further convinced that the City is not prepared to
handle SRO fires when a tenant complained that while he
was at work his room door on the third floor had been
kicked in during a recent fire, yet the fire had occurred on
the second floor. The explanation given by Inspector
Stranahan was reasonable. That is that the San Francisco
Fire Department wanted to make sure that he was not in
there and that the fire did not spread. However, the
tenant's door remained unlocked with all his personal
belongings unattended. Clearly, this constitutes a lack of
communication between members of the fire department
and management.

by Anna Morrow

"Over the last four years gentrification in the Mission
has gotten completely out of hand! .....now it’s time we
take things into our own hands! "

The emotionally charged words came from Lisa
Hernandez who told the crowd of mission residents,
artists, tenant advocates and recently homeless San
Franciscans, that her mother, a long time San Francisco
resident, had been forced out of her home by the
voracious appetite of the dot com dollar.

The crowd around 1660 Mission St. bursted into
cheering and clapping ; a rolling of Congo beats lifted up
into the air. The emcee of the protest, Oscar Grande of
PODER asked the crowd to raise their voices when they
felt compelled by one of the many speakers telling their
stories of eviction and/or gentrification. The target of the
angry voices were on the fifth floor of the large gray
concrete building at 1660 Mission st. A Mr. Gerald
Green Director of the San Francisco Planning
Department was concurrently presented with a letter from
five members of the Mission District Anti-Displacement
Coalition (MAC). The demands of the letter were:

1.Mr. Green and all staff members, including
senior staff members, attend a community
meeting scheduled for Wednesday June 28th, to
answer the demands of the community.

2.that zoning in the Mission be changed
immediately to protect our community from
further displacement

3.that there be no more development, including
pipeline projects, until permanent controls are in
place in the North East industrial zone and
protections are in place for the Mission Street
corridor and 24th Street corridor.

For the past four years, the Mission District as well
as other low income and working class multi-cultural,
immigrant, communities of color have borne the
brunt of gentrification caused by the booming
economy and un-checked development of live -work
lofts of high-tech multi -media offices. All parts of
our community, from small community serving
businesses to low income renters and non-profit
community based organizations, have been displaced.
The Planning department and commission have done
little to protect the most vulnerable residents,
businesses, and community based organizations. The
Department and Commission have blindly followed
the demands of powerful lobbyists and developers
and have overlooked the concerns of the low income
communities like the Mission.

As protesters raise their voices in sympathy and
solidarity to the stories being told by various speakers
it is clear that the plight of the Mission district is yet
another verse in

the song whose chorus is " Economic Boom For
Whom?????"

This is happening in the midst of a booming economy
that is increasing the gap between rich and poor, with
little if any response from city officials.

Last month the Planning Commission approved the
Bryant Square project despite the objections of
community residents. This 150,000 + square foot
project slated for 19th and Bryant streets would be
located right next to a residential area in the Mission.
Over 100 community members mobilized to oppose
the development believing that it would further
displace residents , erode community culture, and
increase traffic-- jeopardizing the safety of children,
seniors and families. Strong arguments made by the
community prompted a majority of Planning
Commissioners to agree that the project would cause
displacement and other problems in the
neighborhood. However the commission then
proceeded to approve the project by a 4 to 1 vote.

Like most of the people here today I represent one
generation of a multi generation San Francisco
family. I am sickened , saddened and outraged by the
careless handling of the our City’s destiny. The
essence of what makes San Francisco San Francisco,
the diversity which draws people from across the
globe, is being eroded and traded in favor of the
dollar. I am proud that we are here, taking a stand to
fight for what is rightly ours: the future of our lives
and communities, in our home - San Francisco.

by Leroy Moore

This is my third article on the increase of racial attacks, police
brutality and senseless crimes toward disabled people of color and I wonder,
am I talking to myself?! I ask this because racial attacks and brutality
continue to happen to disabled people of color, but no one is picking
up the mantle and voicing this issue. This issue hit home for me last year on my birthday, November 2nd. I was standing in a San Francisco Muni bus, and suddenly an African-American man pushed his way to the front of the bus, yelling. He grabbed my shoulder bag, dragging me to the steps of the bus.

I grabbed the inside pole, fearing that if he pulled me off the bus, it
would be all over for me. Fortunately my bag broke, and he fell off the bus, leaving my bag and my self inside.

As I sat down, tears came to my eyes. The man's girlfriend had been the only one who tried to stop him, and not one other person on the bus spoke up. The driver closed the doors and continued on her route.

I escaped that attack with only two deep scars on my neck, a broken bag and a new outlook on how I am an easy target because of my physical disability. I also thought about my disabled brothers and sisters who are not alive today because of racial attacks and police brutality.

Recently I've been keeping a list of incidents of police brutality, racial attacks and other senseless crimes towards disabled people of color, and every day this list grows like a weed.

The latest case brought tears to my eyes when I read it in the San Francisco Bayview Newspaper. A 13-year-old African-American boy with cerebral palsy was approached by two white teens during class. They asked him if they could tie him up. The boy firmly said,"No," but the two teens proceeded to tie him up and then placed a noose around his neck,and joked about tossing the rope over a pipe to hang him. What is even more shocking is the teacher witnessed the thirty-minute ordeal and did nothing. The boy's mother was quoted as saying "If my son was white, everybody in Texas would know about his case." This comment tells me that when you add race to the picture, it becomes even harder to one's your case.

My list of crimes towards disabled people of color is so hard to research because, until recently, the disability was not reported when a person with a disability was a victim of a hate crime. Many leaders in the disability rights movement refuse to talk about this issue, especially when it comes to disabled people of color, and so it goes unnoticed.

Almost five years ago Kathi Wolf authored an article entitled "Bashing the Disabled:the New Hate Crime" in The Progressive. The article reported that the Hate Crimes Statistics Act was amended to include bias on disability. The FBI has collected data about disability-based hate crimes, as well as those based on race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. In this same article, Mr. James Nolan, a coordinator of the FBI hate-crimes programs, said that his department will work with disability groups to understand and identify hate crimes, and will also work with police departments and law-enforcement agencies to make them more knowledgable and sensitive about disability issues.

Now, five years later, we have many documented cases of police brutality and hate-crimes against disabled people of color. For example a recently published book
entitled "Stolen Lives, Killed by Law Enforcement" recorded many cases
of police brutality and hate-crimes among disabled people of color. The
following are some cases:

1997: shooting and killing of Kelvin Robinson, a Black deaf man who was shot three times in the back by LAPD and bled to death because the officers refused to call the paramedics.

April of 1998: an Ethiopian man in Maryland was shot and killed by officer George Byce, a White cop with a history of racism and hostility toward mentally impaired people.

Last year Magaret L. Mitchell, a Black homeless woman with mental illness, was shot to death by a LA police officer.

Many people are surprised when I tell them that James Byrd, the Black man who was dragged to his death behind a truck in Texas, had a disability!

According to an LA Times study last year, since 1994 LA police officers have shot 37 individuals who had some symptoms of mental illness. Many were people of color. The study also found that LA police recruits receive only four hours of training on how to deal with people with mental illness.

On June 21, 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article entitled "Senate Okay's Broader Hate Laws." The Senate voted on June 20th to strengthen federal hate-crime laws by extending civil rights era protections, for the first time, to include violence based on gender, sexual orientation and disabilities, but it's hurdle is in the House. If the Bill becomes law, it will provide the first major expansion of hate-crime law since the original bill that was passed in 1968, which covers only crimes involving race, color, religion or national origin.

Although this expansion will include people with disabilities, the real voices behind this Bill are gays and lesbians, not people with disabilities. The same article mentioned James Bryd, but did not identify his disability as part of his identity, and the article also talked about Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who died after being beaten into a coma and tied to a fence. The article did not identify a disabled victim of a hate-crime.

I have many questions regarding the inclusion of people with disabilities when it comes to hate-crimes, but one sticks out to me. Why are the feds giving local authorities grants to help them deal with these crimes? A
great portion of these crimes among disabled people of color are at the hands of local authorities, i.e. law enforcement, the INS and prison guards!

Have disabled organizations voiced their opinion and advocated on hate crimes since 1995? My research on this issue has mainly come my way via mainstream media and the ethnic press, not through disabled organizations.

With the silence of the disabled community and local authorities inadequately training themselves on hate-crimes dealing with people with disabilities, no wonder things are worse since the Kathi Wolfe article of 1995. Reva Trevino, of the Los Angeles County of Commission on Human Relations Network Against Hate Crimes, was quoted in the Wolfe article. He said that while it is well organized on other concerns, the disability community hasn't yet organized around the issue of hate-crimes.

It is the year 2000 and Trevino's words are still true. Five years later
and still nobody is reacting while many of our disabled brothers and sisters continue to be under attack, and many were forced to leave this earth.

By Leroy F. Moore Jr.,

Founder of Disability Advocates of
Minorities Org.,DAMO

(415) 695-0153

by Scott Clark

"You have no right to be here, who are you people?",
said Will Lightbourne, director of San Francisco
Department of Human Services. This statement was
his first attempt to dislodge a small group of
protesting mothers and their advocates from his
office.

The recent passing of Mother's Day seemed to add
considerable weight to an action against the
Department of Human Services (DHS). On May 15,
2000, at 1:30pm, a group of about twenty
demonstrators met in the small office of POWER
(People Organized to Win Employment Rights), 126
Hyde St. in San Francisco. The protestors consisted
of Mothers on TANF (Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families), working poor Mothers, former
TANF recipients, Foodstamps recipients, and family
welfare advocates.

The reason for the meeting was to plan an action in
response to the implementation of a rigorous
fingerprinting system for recipients of CalWorks
(TANF) and Foodstamps, which was announced by
DHS to be taking place this very same day. The main
concern with the new fingerprinting system is that
DHS will share fingerprint data with other
government agencies, such as the INS (Immigration
and Naturalization Service) and CPS (Child
Protective Services).

The meeting proceeded with a roundtable of
introductions in English and Spanish, followed by a
few minutes of strategizing and answering questions
in the same bilingual fashion. By 2:15pm the group
had split into two factions. The groups were about
equally sized, one headed off to the office of Will
Lightbourne at 170 Otis St., the other to sit in on the
regular Monday 2pm Board of Supervisors meeting
at City Hall.

The conference with Will Lightbourne was brought
about with some argument from Will himself. To his
understanding, he had done the right thing in an
expedient fashion, putting his new fingerprint system
to work as quickly and substantially as possible,
justifying the departmental outlay of the money it
took to purchase the system. In doing this, he was in
accordance with state law, which allows counties to
implement fingerprinting and share the information
with other counties in order to prevent fraud. So,
when this collection of families and advocates
showed up without an appointment and demanded to
meet with him, he did his best to shoo them back out
of his personal offices.

They, however, refused to leave. It was unlikely that
Mr. Lightbourne would have showed up for an
appointment....... even if they had had one. He had a
reputation for not showing up when anyone had any
complaint at all. And they had come to do some
serious complaining.

The mere process of getting to his offices and then
getting him to acknowledge their presence had caused
the group to expend considerable creative effort.
They had bypassed the front desk security by coming
in through the parking lot elevators. Up to the eighth
floor went the bulk of the procession; the drivers of
the three cars they had come in were still parking. By
the time that the last two members of the group,
Steve Williams and another member of POWER, had
arrived upstairs, Mr. Lightbourne had made the
escape from his own front office, and was attempting
to hide (or maybe just take a deep breath) in the hall
bathroom. He might better have picked one with a
lock on the door, because Steve found him soon
enough. Steve calmly told him "Look, we're here
because we need to talk to you, and we're not going
away."

So the two of them headed back to the front office. Once
there, Will totally ignored the group, and again attempted
avoidance via the connected employees’ offices. The group
followed him, asking what the problem was, and why
wouldn’t he talk to them. He mumbled something about not
having an appointment and having to get back to work.
They came back around full circle again to the front area,
which included his personal office. He slipped in there and
attempted to close the door on them, but instead
encountered someone's foot, which kept the door from
closing.

Rebecca Vilkommerson of the Homeless Prenatal Program
(HPP) responded; "We have every right to be here, and
you need to find time right now to talk to us, because we’re
not leaving until you do." The group had brought signs
denouncing Mr. Lightbourne’s methods in respect to
making changes in DHS, not only as regards
fingerprinting. They were there to argue with his self-will;
he had paid no attention thus far to requests by this same
group of people to apply for a waiver from the state. This
waiver would allow for delaying fingerprint requirements
for up to two years. He had also ignored the waivers that
had been granted or were being requested by a number of
surrounding counties in Northern California.

These failings were pointed out to him again after he had
led his opponents into the building auditorium to proceed
with their griefs. They hung their signs on the walls and
took to the front of the room, while he took a front and
center seat, a wary or weary-looking audience of one. He
listened to them mostly in silence. At one point in the
discourse he started to try to respond to some things being
said by a mother with her toddler-aged daughter; he got as
far as "But, but, but...", before the mom resumed
speaking; then she was cut off by her baby repeating, "buh,
buh, buh". Everybody but Will thought this was pretty
funny.

To follow up on the action at 170 Otis St., this group was
to rendezvous with its other half, the complainants who
were to present these same problems to City Hall. The
Supervisors meeting had been dragging along on some land
use issues, and had not yet come to the portion of the
agenda allowing for public comment. This situation turned
the day’s momentum to an advantage.

The protestors who had just arrived from Otis St., when
they got to the City Hall building, went first to the office of
Tom Ammiano, who has been the City’s #1 responsive ally
when it comes to issues of family and immigrant rights.
There, they found Brad Benson, Tom’s assistant. They
explained their situation, and what had happened at DHS.
Brad agreed to work with them to write up a resolution for
presentation to the Board of Supervisors. They gathered the
rest of their consort from the Board conference room, and
Brad seated everybody comfortably in Tom’s spacious
office. He addressed the group briefly, letting them know
he was out to help them get this situation dealt with today in
an agreeable fashion. There were two lawyers present
within the group; Julia Greenfield from the Lawyer’s
Committee, and Eve Stotland from Bay Area Legal Aid.
They, together with a CalWorks mom (and member of
POWER) and Brad, collaborated to get the resolution typed
in legal language for presentation to the Board. When it
was typed and printed, the group in Tom’s office listened
to it read, and voted, approving it unanimously. The
resolution was for the Board to order the DHS to delay
fingerprinting, and to apply for a waiver from the state until
such a time as controls could be implemented, disallowing
the DHS from sharing such information with other
unapproved agencies, either Federal or State.

The lateness of the afternoon, however, did not allow for it
to be brought before the Board on that day so a promise
was garnered from Brad, and in Tom Ammiano’s name, to
present it to the Board at the next regular meeting of the
board. The group left the scene happily, looking as if
Mother's Day had been extended an extra day.

For more information call POWER at (415)776-9379 or
HPP at 546-6756.

by Maurice J., Darrin Lewis and Tiny

It was late.... so late and so dark, even the streetlamps started to fade
and flicker in that disturbing way they do at dusk and dawn. In this hour
of darkness something happened to a homeless friend of mine at the United
Nations Plaza in San Francisco..something that left him.in critical
condition..something that involved my friend and several police
officers...

a knife.." an altercation".... a shooting .

I didn't see my friend hurt. hardly anyone was around..... I did see the faint
glow of police searchlights flicker in tandem with the flickering streetlamps.
The birds, sparkling charcoal clouds and moist brick sidewalks whispered
to me that something was wrong but I was hidden and it is o hard to find
a good place to sleep when you are living outside that I denied what might
have been going on around the corner.

As a homeless not-resident of UN Plaza it is very clear to me, that between
the Mayor's office, the sheriff's department and the federal police, WE
ARE NOT WANTED HERE! Further, my opinions on this event and/or that of
any homeless witnesses, will not hold any weight, suffice to say we know
through personal experience, poor people are rarely believed, and their
opinions are rarely legitimized My neighbors and friends are saying it
was attempted murder by a federal police officer who wants us out of here
- my neighbors and friends are very scared because they feel like its
just a matter of time before they are the next "altercation" The FBI,
the branch of government who are "Handling this investigation" have released
the following statement:

At approximately 10:00 pm on Thursday, August 10th, an as yet unidentified
federal police officer encountered an as yet unidentified individual in
the small alleyway in UN Plaza, behind the fountain, that leads to McAllister
street. As per federal regulations the investigation is now being handled
by the FBI.The individual pulled a knife and proceeded to attack the officer.
After sustaining several cuts the officer then pulled his weapon and shot
the man in self-defense. The suspect is still in General Hospital while
the officer was treated and released that night.

At this point the homeless residents of UN Plaza have no official statement,
so far it is only that, "we are scared"

by PNN staff

One flyer from Zephyr Realty advises landlords that
they can raise the value of their buildings by 20% if
they sell buildings that are empty of any tenants.
Another flyer lists property bought a few years ago
and then re-sold in the last year at huge profits-the
flyer notes "Come In And Ask About Ellis
Evictions."

These practices, and the involvement of Zephyr
Realtor’s buying buildings, evicting tenants and
converting the apartments to condos was the focus of
a tenant protest and picket at Zephyr Reality in Noe
Valley.

Zephyr is one of the leading players in real
estate speculation in San Francisco leading to
the evictions of tenants for condo
conversions. Their ads for condos often say
"VACANT" or "DELIVERED VACANT."
These condos are being sold empty because
the tenants have been evicted, usually under
the state Ellis Act. Real estate investors are
buying up buildings, evicting tenants under
the Ellis Act, and then using loopholes in the
condo conversion law, the units are sold as
condos-usually for about $425,000 per
apartment (with the real estate speculator
typically getting $500,000 profit per
building).

These evictions-for-condos are the leading
cause of evictions in the city.

Using the state Ellis Act, real estate have evicted
about a thousand tenants in the past year for the
purpose of condo conversion.

Even though the city’s condo conversion law limits
conversions to 200 a year and prohibits senior
evictions for condos, these real estate investors utilize
loopholes in the condo law to convert thousands of
units. The Tenants Union is putting a measure on the
November ballot to bring all types of
"condominium-type" conversions into condo law.
When such a law is passed, all rental units which are
sold as condos will be covered by the condo law,
regardless of how the sale is structured or recorded
on the deed.

INFORMATION:

Ted Gullicken 282-6543

Pager: 791-1528

558 CAAP STREET- SAN FRANCISCO,
CA 94110 - PHONE (415)
282-6543-FAX:(415) 282-6622

Z

by Aaron Shuman

....Stories about provocateurs in the crowd is true, though there's been
some exaggeration about the materials thrown over the fence separating
delegates from the protest zone. black-clad anarchists were pressing against
the fence and giving cops the finger, and the lapd was using "supersoakers"
to douse the crowd with pepper spray to force them back, though don't
know who's chicken, who's egg. police directed protesters out of the protest
zone and up figueroa; then a cavalry of officers on horseback came riding
down figueroa, driving protesters back into the zone. they attempted to
herd protesters against the fence separating them from the delegates and
drive them out one exit. a toronto globe-mail reporter caught up in it
told me it was a "run the gauntlet" type situation, with police lined
along a narrow fenced-in corridor, delivering verbal and physical abuse
(kicks, batons). the protesters emerged onto olympic; some were given
contrasting directions from police lines, told to go east, then to go
west, then to go east again.

by Kaponda

Like a barge on water, the quaint abode plodded
along the narrow, city road. In tandem with the
seasoned vehicle that slogged ahead, it signaled the
last vestige of free will. Its eyes pored in every
direction in search of a piece of parcel on which to
rest. Even an old-fashioned drive-in would provide
sufficient relief to cool its engines.

But the signs posted on most of the streets -- "No
Parking Between 2:00 PM to 6:00 AM" -- represented
the disdain which most residents of China Basin have
towards homes on wheels. Neither will Officer
Swiatco, the code enforcement officer who represents
the San Francisco Police Department at the Bayview
station, show any compassion for this mobile home
in distress. A tacit contract has been put out on
vehicles used for sleeping or camping in California.

Officer Swiatco of the San Francisco Police
Department has been turned loose by the Bayview
Station in San Francisco on vehicles that are used as
homes. He aggressively pursues any vehicle which
exceeds the 72-hour parking law, or that fails to
display the proper registration. Swiatco, however, is
a puppet, dangling from a strategically vast
conspiracy of economics.

Invoking the time-honored proverb, "The love of
money is the root of all evil", these words could have
been written just for planners and developers in
Silicon Valley and other "growing" areas of
California. Not too long ago, inexpensive trailer
courts and mobile home parks were sprawled along
cities from Sunnyvale to Los Gatos. But the real
estate boom in California has curbed the growth of
these mobile home communities. Developers are
literally snatching the ground from underneath
vehicularly housed residents' wheels.

An article in the San Jose Mercury, dated Thursday,
June 1, 2000, by Laura Kurtzman, states the
deplorable extent to which developers will push for
the love of money. According to Kurtzman's article, a
91-year-old woman, Antonia Telles, a former migrant
worker who lives on $830 a month from her late
husband's Social Security, was given an eviction
notice after having resided for 50 years at the
Campbell Trailer Court in Campbell, California. To
further accentuate the evil visited upon her in the form
of the notice to vacate, according to Kurtman's
article, Ms. Telles' space is beside the cemetery plot
of her deceased husband.

In Los Gatos, Doug McNelly, owner of Los Gatos Mobile
Home Park, admits that it would be very difficult for a
person to find other housing in the California runaway real
estate market. McNelly has put a moratorium on renting
spaces and has negotiated the buyout of every mobile home
resident on his property. He has cleared the way, along
with the hopes and aspirations of many poor people whose
only resort is to find housing in mobile home parks, to sell
his land to a developer, Barry Swenson. Again, both
McNelly and Swenson will probably earn huge amounts of
money in view of the real estate boom in California. But
their financial gains will displace poor and low-income
people throughout Silicon Valley, because most cities are
not creating space for vehicularly housed residents. Santa
Cruz, however, is an exception.

As of May 23, 2000, the first reading of legislation to
decriminalize sleeping in vehicles or outdoors at night was
approved by the Santa Cruz City Council. For years, Santa
Cruz had had a draconian sleeping ban. According to the
June edition of the Street Spirit, in an article written by
Robert Norse of Homeless United for Friendship and
Freedom (HUFF), so severe was the Sleeping Ban,
"...that the City1s own Interfaith Satellite Shelter Program
(ISSP), which has had homeless people sleeping on the
floors of churches for 13 years, is itself illegal in the City
(since churches are not considered domiciles under the
law)."

The recently approved proposed legislation is the product
of a combination of aggressive protests by Campaign to
End the Sleeping Ban (CESB) and bold actions by HUFF.
According to Norse's article, the new law, if sanctioned at
the second reading, scheduled for June13, 2000, "would
throw out entirely the Blanket Ban, which now bars
covering up with blankets at night...". It would also
"...establish legal areas to which the police could direct
homeless sleepers, giving everyone (in theory) a legal
place to sleep within City limits. For those without
vehicles, that would be on thin strips of pavement unless
private property owners granted them access to industrial
lots. Private property owners would be freed for the first
time in 22 years to allow sleeping anywhere on their
property, provided the activity does not create a public
nuisance or violate zoning laws."

The cause of the vehicularly housed was taken on by
activists such as Robert Norse, Becky Johnson of HUFF
and David Silva of CESB. These individuals
single-heartedly committed themselves to the struggle
against the injustice thrust upon one-third of the homeless
population in the City of Santa Cruz. They braved the
mean-spirited attitudes of the people and leadership of
Santa Cruz to gain this historic victory.

by Kaponda

The melodic sound waves from the Xylophone and
Gardigan instruments did not, alone, inspire the expressions of exultation.
Nor could the warmth of the brilliant sun claim all the credit for the
joyous faces. The groundbreaking ceremony and commemoration of the 23rd
anniversity of the eviction of Asian tenants from the International Hotel
fashioned the smiles on the faces of the many people at the juncture of
Kearney and Jackson streets.

"One of the things that we are very committed to
do is to make this happen, come hell or high waters. Many
individuals died because of the International Hotel." Supervisor Leland
Yee was very emotional as he expressed his thoughts during an interview
with me after he had addressed the predominantly Asian-Amercian audience.
"There memories cannot go in vain. The reason it is important to build
this project is so that their memory and legacy will live on from now
and into eternity." Although the Housing and Urban Development had awarded
$7.7 million and the Mayor's Office of Housing had committed another $5.5
for construction of an affordable housing project, there was still a tone
of skepticism in Supervisor Lee's voice as we talked. I asked if a groundbreaking
of the new building at the site where the International Hotel had been
located would occur during the Fall of 2000? "This is a done deal to the
extent that all of the plans and all of the agreements are there, but
we have still not somehow pulled it all together yet. But somehow and
some way we've got to make it happen. There are still some last glitches
in terms of right-of-way and so on that will be dealt with."

The Internatinoal Hotel was built during the 19th
century on the corner of Kearney and Jackson streets. Its occupants were
single Filipino and Chinese men who worked as longshoremen and seamen.
Due to its proximity to the wharf, the International Hotel provided a
convenient location for the Filipino and Chinese community. Since a single
room rented for $45.00 per month, it provided affordable housing as well.
Between 1960 and 1977, during the golden age of the Kearney street corridor,
the Filipino community stretched more than four blocks. This enclave was
dubbed, "Manilatown" and the International Hotel would play a key role
in the Asian Community.

Like a shark in a frenzy from the scent of fresh
blood, in 1968, commercial developers sensed huge profits along the Kearney
Street corridor. Since that time, construction of buildings such as the
Holiday Inn, Transamerica and Bank of America have taken place. In 1968,
notices to vacate were given to nearly 200 residents of the International
Hotel. It was learned that a permit to demolish the hotel was issued,
so that construction of a multi-leveled parking lot could began. The tenants
-- most of whom were elderly -- were only given until January 1st of the
new year of 1969 to pack up and move out. That eviction notice was the
catalyst of a cohesiveness that would propel a fierce, nine-year battle
in the Asisan community over racism and civil rights.

After nine-years and three mayoral administrations
of legal gridlock, on August 4, 1977, at three o'clock in the terror of
the morning, the elderly and all other tenants of the International Hotel
were forcibly evicted from their homes. It was a night when injustice
and racism bellowed every aspect of their tyrannous power. The forced
evictions would result in the dispersal of the historical and cultural
roots of a first-generation of Filipinos whose origin went back to the
beginning of the 20th century.

A resident of the International Hotel in 1977,
Emil De Guzman, who is now affiliated with the Manilatown Heritage Foundation,
a community-based organization formed to assist in the development of
a new Manilatown Center, shared with me his first-person experience of
that night. "On August 4, 1977, 200 police, sheriffs and firemen forced
their way through thousands of protesters into the International Hotel.
The San Francisco Fire Department trucks were used to hoist policemen
onto the rooftop of the International Hotel. People were dragged out of
the building."

The Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial called
the hole in the ground where the International Hotel had been, "The most
important civil rights' issue in San Francisco." Furthermore, he went
on to state as he spoke on the raised platform at the 23rd anniversary
of the forced eviction, "We have to make sure this will never happen again."

I remembered the words of Gandhi, "If the cause
is right, the means will come," when I heard Nancy Hom of the Kearney
Street Workshop, encourage the crowd by stating, "When the cause is right,
the human spirit will prevail....Its what's in the heart that matters."
Many people were in the audience who were personally involved in the struggle
from its beginning.

Bill Sorro, an organizer, activist and former tenant
was married at the International Hotel. He had lived there since May of
1970. Bill did not disguise his frustration while discussing his feelings
with me. "Quite frankly, more and more people need to say, 'screw you,
I ain't leaving' [to any future landlords with plans for gentrification].
I know a lot of people who were there and were hurt. During the
'70's, horses were a legal weapon used to control crowds, and so policemen
came into the crowds on horses wielding billy clubs."

Peter Rubin of Local 261 acted as a member of a
security team outside of the hotel that helped form the barricade around
the hotel to deter the police from storming the building on the night
of August 4, 1977. Many members of Local 261 were sympathetic to the people's
struggle to resist the vacate notices by the owners of the International
Hotel because the members of Local 261 understood the nature of the struggle.
According to Peter, "The sheriff himself came down here and smashed in
some of the doors to get to the tenants who were locked inside their rooms.
When we found out that the police were coming we set up our barricade
around the building. It was six-people deep around the building. The police
came from Washington Street. The San Francisco Fire Department occupied
the adjacent parking lot so that police units and sheriffs could successfully
occupy the roof. The police were pretty violent. Police were riding on
horses, swinging their clubs"

Marshall Werner, a part of the San Francisco community
at-large, shared her thoughts with me about the night of August 4, 1977.
"It was not just activists who were involved. Rather, it was a citywide
effort that saw people from all of the Bay Area providing support to tenants
of the International Hotel. This act [of eviction] by the hotel owners
was viewed as a precedence for developers in San Francisco to seize land
from tenants and the working class for commercial development. Looking
back, historically, it has become true. In addition, the emergence of
greed began to gain politically power among local politicians. We are
no longer able to form the alliances to stop the rapid displacements in
all of the districts in San Francisco. "

As the band, Scratch Pickles, filled the air, I
watched Pearl Ubungen and Wailana Sim Cock interpret the International
Hotel eviction through a dance performance on the barren sidewalk filling
the atmosphere with hope, resistance and revolution.

"By virtue
of its nature, change must occur. Whether a radical or positive force
effects that change depends on you......" Kaponda, August 8, 2000.