County-time

by Valerie Schwartz/PNN Community Journalist

Roughly a year ago, I had camped out on the corner of Mc Allister and Larkin. There were about eight of us in all. I had made a small lean-to, out of sawhorses for a construction site and cardboard, in front of the small gray concrete power plant in the midst of all the government buildings near city hall. The night was discomforting and eerily quiet like a mausoleum awaiting a new tenant. I finally managed to fall asleep briefly and was woken to the sound of a nightstick banging on the pavement next to my head, accompanied by an officer's voice shouting, "get up and show me your identification now." I had no ID; it had been stolen too many times and it seemed futile to obtain another one. As I explained this to the officer, he wrote me a ticket for camping out in public/being homeless. His partner, now busy doing the same to the other tenants of the sidewalk then announced, "get your shit the hell outta here and don't come back!" I then asked if there was anywhere, a person could sleep outside and not get a ticket. I was told to go sleep under the Army St. ramp or go to jail. Needless to say... I did not sleep that night. This was not the first time I had been given a "quality of life" citation.

It is now two a.m. on a typical San Francisco night cold ,damp, and the misty tendrils of fog swirl and dance for me, while I am looking out the window. As I find myself wishing I had on a pair of thermals to fend off the chill I feel a radiant warmth from the smile of Darlene Smith, a 40+ woman of Cherokee and Irish descent, who refused to pay $2,500 for sixteen "quality of life" citations. For those of you who do not know, what a refusal to pay a fine of this amount usually means for a person who can not pay it.... means they wind up doing "County-time". A quality of life citation is a ticket essentially for being homeless/living on the street.

"They treated me like I was a criminal for being homeless", said Darlene. As we sat there I listened to Darlene tell her story. As it unfolded, full of things that many homefull people find hard to believe because they have not experienced lives like ours and therefore treat our stories like a rueful fairytales. She and I sat sharing the small space at the phone-desk, inside the cubicle known as the "phone room" in the residential treatment program where we are both clients. There is a gray fabric partition with a tinted Plexiglas window. This room inside this large building, originally a convent has incredibly high ceilings, old wood dark stained baseboards and doors. The bone colored walls are semi-cluttered with posted notices for how to run the PBX-phone system and transfer call to the proper Staff and proper phone decorum. Two long pine shelves along the far wall have stacks of various logs,forms, and paperwork that are used daily by the facility. Tonight Darlene is the PBX operator.

"When we first arrived in San Francisco in 1985 we were homeless, we lived and camped in Civic Center Park near the AIDS Vigil, there was a tent-city then." Ms. Smith then explained that she and her husband didn't even know that they were eligible for assistance or knew about General Assistance for the first three-to-four months that they were in the city. They had found out about "hot-line" rooms from other homeless folk and while standing in line on Otis St., for a voucher for from hot -line, they had found out about G.A. (The service for hot-line rooms no longer exists today). She had gotten a room through G. A. and was evicted on Christmas Day.

Darlene says, " My rent was due on Christmas morning in 1985. On Christmas Eve my husband went out to get some money and never returned." When he didn't return the Mentone Hotel, put her out Christmas morning in the rain." I didn't know what to do or where I was going to go, I was told some homeless people hung out at the bus terminal." That cold wet Christmas night, alone she had fallen asleep on a bench in the bus terminal only to awaken to the police. They ran her name and said she had a warrant, that she did not have, and took her to jail to ID her. Darlene then said, " The police put a note on my cart that said, "in jail please leave". "They might as well put a sign on it that said FREE- take what you want!" All of her belongings, including what few meager presents she and her husband had to share with each other, all of his possessions and the cart no longer were there. "When I got out and came back to the terminal the next morning everything was gone, everything."

Darlene then told me that the reason the hotel had put her out was because her rent was late; that she had a check coming in on the first and the hotel would not wait, her rent was late because: The hotel had charged her husband $10 nightly to stay there with her, that they had been made to apply separately for G.A., but had to apply for food-stamps as husband and wife. This in itself made it hard for them to rent a room as a family unit therefore; both of their checks went to paying the rent of that room. Hers, in a BI-monthly payment and his a nightly visitor's fee.

" Have you received, how many quality of life citations have you received since being homeless in San Francisco?" I asked. Darlene replied, " Oh God yes, pages and pages listed on the computer, bunches and bunches, probably hundreds. I never went to court on any of them, after so long they usually pull them out of the system. I got a ticket once for Obstruction at the water fountain in United Nations Plaza while sitting on one of the cement blocks of the fountain." She told me that she hadn't understood what she had been obstructing and that all kinds of different people always sit there and how it just did not make sense to her.

" Recently you had some of these tickets, did you go to court and what was the outcome?" I asked. Darlene then told me, that after she had been in program for a few days she had gone to court for $2,500 of citations for being homeless/quality of life tickets. Most of these tickets were for 647(J) PC (unlawful lodging in public) and the rest were 372 PC ( maintain public nuisance). she refused to pay the tickets because she felt that it was outrageous, that she had no way to pay them, was in a treatment program and that most of all homelessness should not be a crime. Says Darlene, " I entered treatment on my own, I hadn't had a job for ten-years, a drug history, and had been homeless for almost as long. I couldn't find work or a place to live. I knew I needed some kind of help to get off the streets and get my life together.."

Ms. Smith refused to pay the fines and she was held in custody until the next morning when she went to court again. She told the court that she was in a program...The prosecutor told the judge that the District Attorney's Office would drop the charges upon completion of a one-year program , although she was only in a six-month program. The judge said that one-year was too much and that after she had completed her treatment-program he would dismiss the charges and that the court was to be given a progress report every two-months until she had completed treatment.

I am a person whom has experienced homelessness and has been ticketed for living on the street. I find this makes no sense and I feel that it is a shame for the court to arrive at this solution. She went into treatment on her own, not because she had committed a crime. What is her crime... poverty? Why weren't the charges dropped right then; I feel as though she should have been commended for making a sound healthy decision for having found the desire and the courage to change her life for the better. Instead she has, in a sense, been given an ultimatum, a mandate for being poor and deciding to better herself.

We then talked about how hard it is for homeless people to make and keep appointments with agencies and people in general such as: Welfare, SSI, the courts, jobs , medical and therapy appointments. Says Darlene, " Yeah, its almost impossible to make or keep appointments. You have to find someone to watch over your stuff, you have to worry more about the cops taking your belongings than the thieves and of course we don't have phones or alarm clocks." Then she related how many people who camp out, sleep during the day because they recycle and that, "Society doesn't want to see poor people out on the street in the daytime."

I asked Ms. Smith if she felt that the public views homeless women in a more derogatory light than homeless men. She looked at me rather strangely, as if to question why would I ask her a question that she knew I knew the answer to. Says Darlene, " Yes, definitely! It is almost like they say... she has a ____, she should be selling it and if you do; then you aren't a person you're a whore. If you don't prostitute you are considered stupid, its double standards across the board. Sometimes I wish I could do that but I can't." Then she added, " The cops write all of us tickets except the young cute girls that they blatantly flirt with."

The building was now quiet and still. No phone calls were coming in, and we continued on our discussion. Darlene talked about how she felt about the shelters here in San Francisco, the lack of beds and the obvious lack of beds for women. As I listened to her tell me about her experience in the shelters; none of them sounded as though they had been positive of helpful, it sounded like being on a Tilt-a-Whirl of despair.

I then asked her, " As a homeless/poor person have you ever experienced what you consider or know to be harassment, unfair or unprofessional treatment by the SFPD?" Ms. Smith answered, " Yes to all of the above." Then I put forth my next question and was not surprised with her answer. I asked, " Have you ever sought help from the SFPD and been ignored?" She became quiet and a bit sullen for a moment while reflecting and then told me, " Yes, myself and three other people tried to flag down two different police cars over by the old library. A homeless man had been stabbed and was laying there dying. The first car slowed to almost a complete stop and then just drove on. Then the second car did the same, they had already been called by 911. They just kept going! It took about thirty-minutes for the man to die. Another time I tried to stop the police when a woman in a wheelchair was being robbed on Market St. Two men were trying to pull her purse out of her hands. I stood in the middle of the street and flagged down a police car. He stopped and said, 'it's not my district and my advice to you is; if its not affecting you... then just walk on by', Obviously it was affecting me, I flagged him down!"

I found myself wondering about the lack of information available to poor people and asked, " Have you ever been given any information about: people, agencies, or groups who could help advocate for you and help you find some kind of housing?" Quick with a response she fired off the answer, " They tell you to go to the shelters, information is not given by the cops but some of the medical vans give information. I found out from a friend that the Coalition on Homelessness would help me with the tickets/citations for being homeless. The Coalition didn't help me. They said that the tickets weren't even misdemeanors and therefore not an infraction, that it must be a misdemeanor."

There has been a lot of negative opinion and stereotyping in the press lately about poor people urinating and defecating in the streets. I asked Darlene, " Did you find it hard to find a place to bathe and are public restrooms hard to find?" She answered, " Yes, that is absolutely true. There is nowhere, the shelters are very limited and there really is no other place to go, even just to the bathroom, no wonder people resort to going outside, its not like they want to... they don't have a choice sometimes."

" How do you feel being homeless had affected your self-esteem, health and well-being?" I inquired. Darlene answered, " I didn't feel any lesser but its just demeaning, you have no privacy, little if any safety, and you have to run and find a bathroom in the morning when you wake up. I guess it does effect your self-esteem and health because everyone tries to make you feel less than human, the cops , the bureaucracy, even the merchants, even if you have money to spend. They won't allow you to be around them, they treat you like lepers, like you have the plague. I'm angry, bitter, resentful and fearful of losing what I have tried so hard to have: food, clothing, sleeping bags, the necessities. It is incredible that Americans can be so ignorant and uncaring about other American citizens....Homeless people don't have shit, except a hard time. a hell-hard time."

I asked Darlene how she felt being in a treatment-program would help her. She looked up at me. Her eyes with glinting sparks that seemed to light a fire of determination and told me that she was learning how to: change her behavior so that she would become a clean, healthy and productive person, find a good job, and find decent housing. She told me that, " These are things I never could have accomplished while being on the street and homeless. Hopefully, I will never have to worry about receiving another "quality of life" citation ever again."