New York City Style treatment of houseless people

by Dale Ray/PNN

I remember waking up each morning to the strong stench of piss all around me and the cold ground beneath me. I would awake with my mouth feeling like cotton, as I tried to lift myself up off the hard concrete.

I lived homeless in San Francisco for many years. I was addicted to crack for 20 years and alcohol for just as long. I still remember my many sleepless nights on the street. Sometimes I would go to the Transbay Terminal just to get out of the cold and there would be twenty or thirty men beside me trying to sleep and stay warm.

These painful memories crept back into my mind, as I read about the future plans for a new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. I thought about all those homeless men, women and children whose only safe refuge is the Terminal. What will happen to them if the new Transit Center is built?

The proposed plan for the new Transbay Transit Center is being called the Grand Central Station of the West Coast. They say it will be a transit hub for a metropolitan
“New York City style San Francisco,” but how will this city look, and whom will it be for?

In the discussion around the new Transbay Transit Center no one is talking about what will happen to the many homeless people that walk through the current Transbay Terminal doors to find a safe shelter. It is a story that the mainstream media and corporate developers are ignoring.

C.W. Nevius attempted to address the issue in his September 18th article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled, "Guards, homeless form odd kind of community at Transbay Terminal,” yet he failed to make any connections or see the issue for what it is; a human rights issue.

He did not critically address the issue of what will happen to the homeless people who take refuge at the terminal, as he wrote, "If all goes according to plan, by 2014 a glittering, towering Transbay Transit Center will be erected in the heart of San Francisco. Designers say the tower will not only be a transportation hub, but send a message as a symbolic gateway to the city."

The message San Francisco and the new Transit Center’s supporters, like Nevius, are sending is that this City cares more about its appearance and attraction to wealthy visitors than it does for its own people. Rather than providing what’s necessary for those here to survive the City will be catering to rich outsiders.

The new Transit Center will set the tone for a new generation in the City that will increasingly view homeless people as a problem to push away rather than a symptom of much more rooted problems, such as the lack of services and resources in this city. San Francisco has a reputation as being a liberal minded city, yet its 2007 and San Francisco still considers poor people a problem that need to be cleaned up and out to make way for the rich.

Many people wrongly believe that all homeless people can find sleeping space in shelters if they simply try and that there is no need for people to seek shelter in places like the Terminal. From my own experience I know this is not true.

When I was desperate I would stop in at the McMillan Center on 39th and Fell Street. People go in there to get off the streets but you can’t go to sleep. They only have chairs. When I would start falling asleep someone would come around and say, "You can't sleep in here." All I wanted was a little rest, "I'm tired," I would say to them. But it was always the same. Shelters are no place to live. I preferred my spot in the alley near the corner of Seventh and Market. I along with many other people prefer the streets or the Transbay Terminal to McMillan or other shelters. As a recent Coalition on Homelessness article stated, "While the City no longer officially tracks “turn-aways” from shelters, one Coalition survey of shelter reservation sites found an average of 50 individuals turned away a day from shelter."

San Francisco does not have enough resources and safe places for homeless people to turn to and therefore, many are forced to sleep outside and in public places, like the Transbay Terminal. And often, in lieu of safe housing, houseless folks are cited and arrested for the sole act of being homeless.

In his article, Nevius quotes Charles Drew, a man who frequents the terminal. Drew calls the security guards there his family. In response Nevius ends the article with, "I've been trying to decide, is that the saddest thing I've ever heard, or the most uplifting?" Nevius does not conclude with any kind of analysis of the situation and certainly does not address the deeper question of why in the richest country in the world people are forced to create spaces to sleep and homes where none are provided?

Like Drew, I lost my family when I started living on the streets and when my addiction was at its worst. I lost everything. I lost my sense of integrity and morals. I did not have many people looking out for me on the streets and I was down and out every day.

Once after a night of heavy drinking, I met a couple of officers while I was singing the Nat King Cole song Mona Lisa. After that night they came around three to four times a week and started looking out for me. They became like brothers to me and often brought me food, and clothes, and once a pair of boots. Those two cops kept telling me I could do better, I could leave the life of an addict. They told me I was killing myself on the streets. They were my only constant source of encouragement. "You can do this," they kept saying to me.

I was lucky to have met those two cops. This city needs more people who are empathetic to those struggling on the streets. This city is in dire need of more places and resources to help the homeless instead of sweeping the problem and the homeless out of the streets and under the carpet.

I know what its like to have no where to go and to have to sleep on the street or in a place like the Transbay Terminal. Too many times it was my only option. The people who are still sleeping in the Terminal will be displaced and swept out of the City if the proposed plan is passed. These people will be forced out of their only shelter for a new glittering, towering symbol of the City’s wealth.

Dale Ray, has been living clean and sober for the last five years and has just graduated from Session 1 of the Race, Poverty and Media Justice Institute at POOR Magazine. He will be releasing his book To Hell and Back published on POOR Press in February of 2008. For more information on his book or to order a copy, please call 415-863-6306.

To view Nevius' full article go to:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/18/BAOBS820J...

To learn more about the Redevelopment plans for the New Center you can visit the Transit Transbay Center Website at:
www.transbaycenter.org/transbay

The Transbay Join Powers Authority Citizens Advisory Committee (TJPA CAC) meets monthly on the second Tuesday of every month at 5:30 pm at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street (at 3rd Street), San Francisco, CA, in the 2nd Floor Conference Room. TJPA CAC meetings are open to the public. Send an e-mail to cac@transbaycenter.org to be added to the CAC mailing list to receive copies of upcoming agendas.

Currently TJPA CAC has no voting members who represent the homeless community.