Story Archives 2001

by Alison VanDeursen

It was a rare day in San Francisco- blue skies, balmy air, and the circus appeared to be in town! In the plaza across from City Hall, colorfully dressed stilt walkers danced and unicyclists juggled fire, tossing spiraling pins back and forth. I saw a man in a sleek suit posing in front of the performers. His associate, laughing, snapped a photo before they scuttled back to the office, lunch break over.

But this carnival was no tourist attraction. It was, in fact, a symbolic representation of the kind of clownish (but hardly amusing) politics that threaten the welfare and lives of the city’s homeless poor. Thursday’s action was organized by the Coalition on Homelessness as a protest and “Speak-Out” against the City’s Shelter Re-Design Program. Signs held aloft by protesters that challenged the new “design” read: “This Does Not SIT Well With Us!” and “A Chair is Not a Bed!”

Here’s an April Fool’s Day joke:

Q: How do you fit more people into an already overcrowded homeless shelter?

A: Replace the sleeping mats with metal folding chairs!

This is no laughing matter. I asked Marvin, 64, and Bobby Dansey, also a senior citizen, why they came out to participate in the action. Both men currently stay at Multi-Service Center South, the shelter that will cram an extra 100 men onto it’s overcrowded second floor, and force many to sleep upright in chairs.

“The more bodies the better,” said Bobby. (He was referring to the number of activists protesting at City Hall, not on the population of the shelters!)

“I’m one of the people who is homeless,” said Marvin. “I’ve heard this rumor for 6 months. Now it’s becoming reality and it’s frightening. Being my age, sitting up in a chair is gonna be horrible.” Marvin explained that he has illnesses, especially swelling of the legs and feet, that would be exacerbated by hours of sitting upright.

I asked how seniors are accommodated in the shelters. Bobby said, “I don’t know what they do about seniors. But you do get first preference. You get a bed first, get to eat first, get blankets first...”

“Get robbed first,” chimed Marvin, and the two friends laughed.

Bobby, still smiling, shook his head. “He got the nail on the head. It’s a joke, but it’s really true.”

I wondered if the City’s attention would be better spent attending to issues of safety and health care within the shelter system, rather than in a Shelter Re-Design Plan that does not address the needs of the homeless.

When I spoke with Paul Boden, Director of the Coalition on Homelessness, he confirmed that most homeless believe that seniors and disabled should get preferential treatment, “But it’s not system wide.” In other words, it is not part of San Francisco policy. “Seniors and disabled folks shouldn’t be in congregate housing” at all, he argues. “It’s not about humanity, it’s about number crunching.”

A game of chance- pick a number, any number!

Boden told me an incredible truth about the shelter system in San Francisco. It seems that the City, when planning the shelters, “picked the number of people who would stay there before they saw the space!” The result is overcrowded shelters and the ridiculous redesigning. “They can only sleep 85 in the drop-in center,” said Boden. “They [Willie Brown & co.] don’t want to look like they’re dropping numbers. And they can fit 100, sitting up!”

So this is what some politicians mean when they brag, “I’ve developed resources so that more of our homeless can sleep inside, out of the cold!” When I was a kid, I’d go to the fair and the barkers would make the game look so easy. “A prize every time!” they’d leer, and when by ball failed to go through the hoop, I’d get my prize- not one of the coveted stuffed animals hanging from the wall, but a puny pencil eraser from a hidden box.

The City is forcing the homeless to go through more and more hoops in order to be granted a basic human need and right: shelter. I learned that the uproar about the Shelter Re-design Plan was about more than chairs when I spoke with Jennifer Friedenbach of Coalition on Homelessness. In response to complaints about homeless people by the Polk Street Merchants Association, the MSC-North shelter, located at Polk and Geary, will be reserved for what Friedenbach calls “the upper crust” of homeless people. These “good homeless,” who are deemed “most likely to succeed,” will be screened through a complicated process and agree to mandatory case management services. These demands will make MSC-North inaccessible “less desirable” homeless people, especially the disabled and women.

Mark Adams, 23, is a self- described professional activist I met at the rally. He lives in a Single Room Occupancy Residency near MSC-North. “I’ve been there,” he said, “and it’s very dirty. The staff treats people like a herd of cattle, another thing to be sold.”

Marvin and Bobby had also spoken to me of the staff. “They don’t do their work,” Marvin said. “The guys working on the staff will sell you a bed. They tell you to sweep- ‘I’ll give you an extra hot dog.’ They take advantage of people.”

Perhaps the staff could use some additional training. Perhaps the staff is overwhelmed by the overcrowded conditions of the shelters. Perhaps additional janitorial staff is necessary to keep the facilities clean. Perhaps homeless clients might appreciate such job opportunities- not as volunteer work or for an extra hot dog, but in exchange for room and board, a suggestion I heard from homeless people who, like Marvin, would like a “work program...something to do instead of the same old things, drinking and smoking.”

A political protest is about more than protesting- it is about solutions. The homeless people and their advocates in San Francisco have articulately voiced such answers. 407 homeless responded to a survey conducted by Coalition on Homelessness and the results outlined what a true “Re-design” could accomplish: More, not less, access. Available, but not mandatory, services. Clean facilities, trained staff, job opportunities. No one, according to the survey, asked to sit up in chairs all night. But despite protest by the Coalition on Homelessness and the community, the City held its meetings behind closed doors, and chose not to consider the input of homeless people when adopting proposals for the MSC Shelters.

As bilingual Master of Ceremonies Renee Saucedo, resplendent in her lion-tamer’s garb, lamented, “I wish Willie Brown was here so I could use this whip!” Why does the City refuse to listen to the voices of the homeless? I wish Willie Brown had been there as we lay on the warm grass that day, listening to the rally’s speakers and watching the sun glint on the golden accents of City Hall’s regal dome. He would have heard the crack in Saucedo’s whip as she shouted, “We are no fools! Homeless people are no fools!”

And he might well remember what Marvin, senior citizen, homeless citizen, told me: “I vote. This is where I register, right here in this park.”

by Terry Messman, (reprinted from The Street Spirit)

Sitting in the crowded, bustling offices of the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC), Clifford Crooks gestures at James Gorman, an articulate homeless man working feverishly on the phones to try to convince churches in Sacramento to open their doors to street people during this rainy winter. Gorman has a vision of convincing churches all over California to wake up and realize that the bedrock principles of their faith compel them to become more actively involved in working for justice and offering sanctuary for the homeless poor.

Crooks watches Gorman working the phone lines in his one-man crusade, and says with satisfaction, “This is how SHOC works. When a person gets really ticked off, they have an office to come and fight… You find that an angry man gets a lot done.”
Fueled by that kind of dedication and outrage, the homeless organizers of SHOC have beaten all the odds and endured in their stubborn and tenacious defense of homeless people in our state capital for more than a decade now. Since 1987, SHOC activists have somehow kept up a remarkably creative drumbeat of protests and pressure campaigns in support of the human rights of the poor.

SHOC has persevered in its grassroots organizing for justice despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and the limitations of a shoestring budget. This bare-bones, impoverished group made up of equally impoverished members somehow has found the heart to take on the powers that be in a very unequal struggle. For SHOC’s efforts to defend the defenseless are opposed by powerful forces: by a police force notorious for unleashing aggressive raids to tear apart homeless camps; by merchants who launch heartless campaigns to drive away the poor; and by a City Council which committed one of the most shocking acts of officially sanctioned bigotry in recent history by voting to sue Loaves and Fishes, one of the pre-eminent service providers in the state, in an abortive attempt to push the poor out of downtown Sacramento.

One of the reasons for SHOC’s survival in this climate of intolerance is surely their feeling that poor people’s lives hang in the balance. SHOC is now involved in an effort to end police brutality against homeless campers. Lillian Hanson believes that a systematic police effort last winter to demolish encampments, slash tents, and confiscate the blankets of homeless campers directly threatened the lives of her friends. “They were being robbed of their sleep and their life was being taken from them literally,” she said.
Mikeal O’Toole, one of SHOC’s founders, took part in past efforts to block bulldozers that roared up to demolish a homeless encampment. He quietly demonstrates the life-and-death stakes involved in this struggle by pointing to one of nearly 200 names inscribed in marble on a memorial built by Loaves and Fishes to honor homeless people who died on the streets of Sacramento. O’Toole points to the name of Gene Kulik, a founder of SHOC, who was his friend and a dynamic reason for SHOC’s very existence. Following a period of depression, Kulik died while he was still homeless. Now all that is left is a name etched on a marble wall.

Street Spirit: For the last several years, I’ve heard story after story from friends in Sacramento of police mistreatment of homeless people, especially raids on encampments by motorized cops they call “Bronco Billys.” What has the situation been like in your city this past year?

Lillian Hanson: I remember very clearly how last winter I came down to Loaves and Fishes and my homeless friends were not allowed to sleep in Sacramento. The police were raiding their camps consistently, every night or every other night, at two or three in the morning. Deliberately and with forethought, they would take the campers down to jail, and sometimes just release them, sometimes hold them in jail. But the point is the campers could not sleep anymore. They were robbed of their ability to sleep.

SS: Where were the camps located that were being raided by the police — in the downtown, sprinkled around the city, or mostly on the American River?

Lillian: The police were concentrating on the river camps. Definitely up and down the river.

SS: Was this random harassment or a deliberate effort to systematically tear down homeless encampments?

Lillian: It was a deliberate move on the part of the police. It was planned with foresight. The police during the day were scouting to find where the camps were. Then at night, they would wait till two or three in the morning and consistently go after the same camps and roust the campers.
The NSA security people were also making the rounds of the camps and waking the campers up — telling the campers that they were sleeping on ground that belonged to businesses and calling the police. Then the police would come and take them to jail and give them tickets and citations. Later on, we found out that the NSA was actually raiding camps on property that was not business property; they had no business being there.

SS: What is NSA?
Clifford Crooks: It’s their security in the downtown area — NSA Security.

Paula Lomazzi: They’re hired by the Business Improvement District in this area of Sacramento. They hired their own private security.

Lillian: Later on, SHOC was able to find out that where they were raiding the camps, they had no business being there because it was public property. It did not belong to the businesses, but they were doing that anyway, overstepping their boundaries.

SS: Did they arrest homeless people themselves or call the police?

Clifford: They would call the police and get the police to do it. But they did other things themselves, too. For instance, one of the guys here, they gave him three days to clean up his camp. On the last day, when he had his stuff sorted out and his sleeping bag and everything ready to move, the same guards that told him he had three days, took it and threw all his stuff in a pond.
What we did was Debbie and I went up and confronted each of the security guards, and we told them they were being watched now, and anything they do is going to be reported and documented. And it stopped right then.

SS: Debbie was a member of SHOC?

Lillian: She was a friend of ours who died of cancer last year. She was a homeless person who camped out along the river.

SS: That’s how you confronted the private security force. What about the police?

Clifford: As far as the police go, we had to do a lot of complaint forms about how people were being harassed in encampments by the police, and then it was taken before Don Casimere’s office.

Paula: Casimere directs the Office of Police Accountability.

Clifford: Casimere was brought in by the work of the NAACP. They had like 1,500 complaints against the Sacramento police brought into Internal Affairs, and only one was investigated in a year’s time.

SS: So the NAACP spearheaded the effort to get Casimere appointed to investigate all the complaints of police abuse?

Lillian: Yes, the NAACP negotiated with the city for about four years and they take credit for Casimere being hired, and the Mexican organizations also took credit. The police brutality to the Black community and the Mexican-American community was really quite horrible and they needed to do something to set it back.
This is aside from the police brutality to our homeless population. When we entered the picture, Don Casimere just happened to be appointed there recently and we were able to work with him.

SS: What happened with the complaint forms SHOC collected from homeless people harassed by the police?

Lillian: Casimere stated to us that the complaint forms that SHOC gave him were to his advantage and something he could really use. I remember many a night last winter coming down to Loaves and Fishes in the rain collecting these complaint forms; Clifford did it, Paula did it, we all did it.
My friends, the campers, they had long, dreary faces then. They were worn out, they were tired, they could hardly walk, there were no smiles, and it was raining hard. It was really quite ghastly, the sleep deprivation. Their sleep had been taken from them. You try going without sleep for one month and see how you feel. They looked like ghosts. They were being robbed of their sleep and their life was being taken from them, literally. After awhile you can’t focus and you can’t think and you can’t get a job.
Some of the ones I had spoken to had gotten jobs and saved money and they had their gear to go to work; but they were unable to do the jobs because the police would come in and raid their camps with all their gear. So they couldn’t show up at work. The police were constantly taking every blanket they had, and they couldn’t sleep at night.

SS: What were the police excuses for confiscating blankets in the middle of winter — illegal camping?

Clifford: Yeah, they’d use the camping laws.

Lillian: The camping laws gave them the right to steal people’s blankets. There was a terrible, horrendous lack of blankets last year — people were freezing. That’s when SHOC stepped in. We collected the police reports. Clifford created our complaint forms.

SS: What kinds of complaints did you document?

Clifford: Police abuse, and things like cutting their camping gear up. As a matter of fact, we have a sleeping bag right there with a complaint form on it that has been all sliced up. Police would cut up tents, sleeping bags, everything. They would either slash them up and leave them there or they would take them with them. Like underneath the overpass over here, people would camp under that. On a rainy night at about two in the morning, the police came in and confiscated all their gear, forced them out from underneath the overpass out into the rain, and left them defenseless to the elements.
This was all going on until we took our complaint forms to Casimere’s office. Then he called Internal Affairs and he drug them over the coals for all this abuse.
According to the NAACP, there were 1,500 complaint forms turned in from all over the city from citizens, and Internal Affairs only investigated one or two of them out of all those. That’s why they brought in Casimere; he’s above everything. He can drag the police over the coals and that’s exactly what he did.

SS: So he was brought in because the community found that there was nowhere to go with their complaints because Internal Affairs would not investigate. What did Casimere do with your complaints from the homeless community?

Lillian: Well, he called a meeting with himself there and members of SHOC and the police department. The first confrontation began and, of course, the police denied a great deal of this. Their position was, “We didn’t do it. We’re innocent.” Then, SHOC would bring forward the complaints.

Blake Smith was a homeless man who became involved in this. He later became the president of SHOC; but at that time, he was camped out on the river with his friend. One day he went to his camp after eating lunch at Loaves and Fishes, and there were two policemen hiding behind the trees with guns drawn. The police came out from behind the trees and said, “Get out of here now,” or something to that effect. They ran, because the police had their guns drawn.
Now Blake knew that was totally against the law, so he wrote out that complaint and we submitted it to Casimere, and Casimere was really able to go to bat with that. It was one of the outstanding complaints he had to work with.
Blake Smith was so angry over what had happened that he was willing to back up that complaint all the way. We had several meetings with the police after that, and we had meetings with Tom Clinkenbeard, the public defender. The outcome of all this was that Blake needed witnesses because the police, of course, were denying it. We went and found one of the witnesses and she wrote up a complaint. So we did back it up; but as far as I know, neither of the officers involved were punished in any way, and nothing was done. Blake Smith has since left Sacramento.
I just want to say Casimere was such a gentleman about this whole thing. He actually came to Friendship Park [the park for homeless people at the Loaves and Fishes complex] and he said that he wanted to meet everybody. I’ll never forget that day. This man who looks like a judge, all dressed up, very educated; he sat right down and homeless people came up complaining about what had happened to them, and he listened to them all. I thought it was really wonderful because he didn’t think of himself as better than us.

SS: What role did the public defender, Clinkenbeard, play?

Lillian: Clinkenbeard had witnessed last summer, when he came out with one of the people he was representing, and he saw helicopters, two cars, a jeep, and various policemen chasing the homeless down the river. He couldn’t believe what a waste of taxpayers’ money that was. When he saw this, he comprehended what was involved and he has since become a defender of the homeless, and he has a legal clinic he runs at Loaves and Fishes.
He represents homeless people in front of the judge with his lawyers. All the homeless have to do is to show up and he drives them there and he brings them back. He worked out an arrangement with the judge. A typical sentence for misdemeanors is four hours of cleaning up at Loaves and Fishes. Clinkenbeard has been a real help and a tremendous asset for us.

SS: What was the ultimate outcome of your work exposing police misconduct?

Lillian: After we made the complaints and had several meetings with the police — even though, as far as I know, the policemen themselves were not punished — Casimere was pleased because he was able to convince the police that something was wrong. And they did back down! They did back down without further ado; they stopped making the raids at two or three in the morning, which is what we were aiming for. They no longer do that. They were ID-ing homeless people and they’re still doing that and even taking IDs away. That continues; they are harassing the homeless now. But we were able to stop the merciless practice of waking up the campers in the middle of the night so they couldn’t sleep. That was so inhumane. That stopped.

For more on this story you can read SHOC The COPS By Terry Messmen on www.poornewsnetwork.org. For more information about SHOC write: SHOC at 1351 North C Street, Sacramento, CA 95814. Phone: (916) 442-2156. E-mail: Homeward2@yahoo.com

by Terry Messman

When autumn winds blew the roof off Kendra Wilson's apartment last October,
followed by a five-day rainstorm that ruined all her belongings and flooded
her out of her home, she thought she had weathered the worst of the storm.
She soon found that the hard rains had only begun to fall in Oakland, a city
where tenants forced out of apartments closed due to uninhabitable
conditions or natural disasters have virtually no rights, no protection from
becoming homeless, and often no relocation assistance.

Apartment buildings can be repaired and belongings replaced, but Wilson has
not been able to recover from the final blow: her landlord evicted her from
her rain-damaged apartment after she and other tenants spoke out about their
losses on a KRON TV news broadcast.

In an interview with Street Spirit, Kendra Wilson charged that after she
exercised her First Amendment rights to speak to the press about the
intolerable conditions she faced after the roof blew off her apartment, she
was subjected to a retaliatory eviction by her landlord, Jerry Curtis, a
Deputy Attorney General for the State of California.

After huge chunks of the apartment building's roof landed on the walkway
below her second-story unit, the rain poured in through 30 leaks in her
ceiling, soaked her bed, ruined her furniture and stereo, and destroyed a
closetful of books for her college courses. Finally, the ceiling began to
buckle and sag and the rain began streaming in through all the electrical
fixtures, forcing the Oakland Fire Department to cut the power off as an
electrocution hazard and shut down the building.

Then her real troubles began. Cold, tired, exhausted from the ordeal, the
shell-shocked tenants were ignored by their landlord, by Oakland officials,
and even by the Red Cross. Finally, Wilson and other tenants spoke out to
the press about these unendurable conditions in a desperate attempt to get
help. After the tenants described their plight on a KRON news broadcast, the
Red Cross responded by providing temporary motel vouchers. But her landlord,
Jerry Curtis, responded by locking Wilson and other tenants out of their
apartments for criticizing his inaction.

It was a one-two punch for Wilson - a disaster followed by an eviction that
left the 26-year-old college student homeless. Wilson and at least two of
her fellow tenants were reduced to sleeping in their cars or living with
relatives. As of April 1, more than four months after being ousted from her
apartment, Wilson has not been able to find or afford housing, and has been
forced to move out of Oakland to live with relatives.
The morning after the Fire Department cut the power off, Wilson said Curtis
finally returned his tenants' calls, and "he said we should pack up
immediately and look for apartments in the city of Richmond where he said it
was a little cheaper."

Wilson said she was stunned and disheartened by the landlord's refusal to
help beyond an offer to pay for moving trucks and return their security
deposit. "His response was extremely cold," she said. "When we first called,
we asked him if he could just put us up in a hotel or somewhere dry because
we were cold, we were wet, we were extremely exhausted. He told us he could
not because he didn't have the money. I told him I'm a starving student and
I don't have money to pack up and move anywhere. I told him it was the end
of the month and I didn't even have the money for a hotel room."

Wilson was left homeless by the disaster in the middle of her senior year in
college at Cal State Hayward, where she is majoring in English and pre-law.
"It's extremely hard because I'm going to school and I'm exhausted by this,"
she said. "I've been looking for housing for four months. I can't find
anything I can afford. This delays my graduation by six months."

Wilson was finally forced to move out of Oakland altogether, part of an
exodus of low-income tenants who have been squeezed out of the city in
recent months due to rising rents and no-cause evictions. She is now
bouncing back and forth between her mother's house in Hayward and an aunt's
home in Vallejo, while commuting to school.

Curtis told Street Spirit that he bore no blame for locking Wilson out of
the eight-unit apartment building he owns at 3474 Boston Avenue in Oakland,
nor any responsibility to pay for her damaged possessions or relocation
expenses. Curtis said that the City of Oakland's legal codes do not require
landlords to pay tenants for any relocation expenses or even grant them the
right to move back into an apartment after a natural disaster unless it was
caused by the owner's actions or negligence.

Asked why he had refused to let Kendra Wilson and two other tenants move
back after repairs had been completed, Curtis said, "If not for them
speaking out against me on television, all three could still be living in
their apartments."

Curtis said that he was so upset that the tenants had spoken out on KRON
about the conditions in their uninhabitable apartments, that he had written
to them that they would not be invited back if they had taken part in what
he called "slanderous attacks against me in the media." Curtis added, "This
in effect precluded them from moving back."

Asked if this was a retaliatory eviction for speaking to the press, Curtis
said that he was justified because the tenants had "slandered and libeled"
him by telling the press he had failed to fix the roof.

Curtis said he especially resented the tenants' complaints because they
could cast a cloud on his professional work as a Deputy Attorney General.
"In essence," he said, "judges who hear me in court in future cases might
think: there's a problem with his integrity because he lets his tenants
suffer unjustly." Curtis emphasized, "There is no relationship with what I
do for [State Attorney General] Bill Lockyer, and what I do with my
tenants."

In a letter to Ira Jones, one of three tenants he expelled and locked out
after the roof blew off the building, Curtis described the damage he
believed had been done to his professional reputation: "Every judge who
knows me may now question everything I represent to him because I have been
characterized as someone who is taking advantage of poor tenants."
Curtis wrote to the tenants that those who spoke to the press criticizing
his actions would be evicted: "Assuming that you may return under the
provisions of the City codes, you are informed that I will file a notice to
evict against anyone who defamed me. I am thinking about filing a defamation
suit against each person who appeared on the KRON broadcast.É My daughter
told me that her mother's priest told her that he had seen a broadcast about
me, and that I was a bad landlord."

Wilson said that, simply by speaking to the media, she suffered the hardship
of losing her home, and said she feels intimidated that a Deputy Attorney
General, a state official with so much legal status and prosecutorial power,
would issue threats to her warning that the mere act of speaking out about
unendurable housing conditions could result in a defamation suit. But Wilson
vowed that she would not be silenced by the threats of her landlord.
"These types of malicious acts are happening all around the Bay Area,"

Wilson said, "and most tenants are afraid or they simply do not know their
rights. Hopefully, the fact that we are standing up to a man such as Jerry
Curtis with his status will encourage others to speak up and fight back.
Other tenants are cowed by Jerry Curtis' high status. For me, my personal
feeling is that if I don't voice or stand up for my rights, there's really
no reason for me to be on this earth. I just refuse to be intimidated."
Wilson said she turned to the media only because she and other tenants were
exposed to health-threatening conditions in the building, and no one would
help - not their unresponsive landlord, not the City, and, at first, not
even the Red Cross.

"Our intentions were not to defame him," Wilson said. "Our intentions were
to seek help. For neither he nor the Red Cross would assist us. The Red
Cross only assisted us after the media came out. We were desperate, cold,
wet, exhausted, and the only thing we stated to the press were the facts of
what had happened. We didn't say anything about his character or family."
Anne Omura, managing attorney of the Eviction Defense Center in Oakland,
said, "I think the conduct of Jerry Curtis is reprehensible. I think it's
really ironic, since he's a Deputy Attorney General and works in the
California Department of Justice, that he's doing things to oppress people
and make these women homeless. To lock them out is illegal. You can't just
lock tenants out of their house. It's retaliatory because he did it after
they went to Channel 4."

Omura said that the tenants have a legally protected right to go to the
media and expose the hardships and hazardous conditions they endured. "You
can't get angry when people go to the media, and call it slander when it's
the truth," Omura said. "Truth is 100 percent defense in cases of slander.
Curtis just doesn't want the public to know how dirty his hands are. All
that matters to him is this public perception as an official who works for
the Department of Justice when actually he's a perpetrator of injustice."
Before being expelled, Wilson said the monthly rent for her one-bedroom
apartment was $625, an amount that was raised to $681 in May, 2000. "He knew
by law in Oakland he couldn't raise the rent more than 3 percent, but he was
able to use banking and stick it to me," she said. "I remember him making a
comment to me then about raising the rent and how he hoped we would just
move out - that was his intent."

After the building was closed and repaired following the rainstorm, Wilson
said that one of the displaced tenants learned that one apartment would be
rented out for $950 a month. Curtis told Street Spirit that he had always
charged Kendra Wilson and other tenants a very fair rent. After repairs,
Curtis said, he has rented one of the vacated apartments to a woman for $900
a month, and had rented another unit to one of his friends for $800 a month,
both significantly higher rents than charged to the dislocated tenants prior
to their eviction.

The Oakland City Council voted last summer to make it more difficult for
landlords to evict tenants simply to raise rents by imposing a two-year
freeze on rent increases on rental units that are emptied through "no-cause
evictions." Tenant activists warned at the time that the measure had no
teeth and would not be enforced because Oakland landlords are not required
to register their rental units and thus escape detection if they raise rents
after no-cause evictions. These warnings appear to have proven prophetic in
Kendra Wilson's case.

"Isn't that the most disgusting thing, that he's capitalizing on locking
these women out by raising rents?" asked Omura. "That's 100 percent illegal.
I think it's gross to profiteer off what he did in locking them out. The
terrible thing is that these women are now homeless with no place to live.
And he's not in any trouble with city officials at all. He's making more
money because of their tragedy!"

Letter from Kendra Wilson

On October 22, 2000, the roof of our apartment building at 3474 Boston Avenue, Oakland, CA blew off during a windstorm. After notifying the owner, Jerry Curtis, Deputy Attorney General for the State Justice Department, nothing was done. Mr. Curtis left town, leaving us without a roof and exposed to the elements. On October 25, 2000, rain poured into our apartments, seeped into our walls, floors, and light fixtures, along with ruining our personal property. We were later evacuated by the Oakland Fire Department, and the building blue tagged, due to an electrocution hazard. Unable to obtain aid from Mr. Curtis or the City of Oakland, and in our desperate quest for help, we contacted Channel 4 news to cover the story. Because of the news broadcast, we were finally able to obtain help from Red Cross, who had previously denied us because it was a tenant/ landlord issue. The City of Oakland cited our landlord and required he correct the violations. On November 19, 2000 Andria Crosby, Ira Jones, and myself, Kendra Wilson received notices from Mr.Curtis stating that we were to vacate immediately so the repairs could be done. We voiced that we had no place to go, or the financial resources to do so with. This did not matter to him. He said he was not required to help us, and nevertheless, we still needed to leave. Approximately a month later we received a letter stating that we were not welcome back to our apartments, after the repairs were completed, because we brought shame to he and his family by airing the news broadcast.

As of January, and the first of February 2001, the locks to our apartments have been changed and they have been re-rented for $280 - $325 more than the rent we were paying. We never received an eviction notice, only a letter stating his embarrassment and his disgust with our exercising our First Amendment rights. We were not shocked by this behavior, especially since he attempted to raise our rents several times in one year and openly informed us of how much more money he could get for our apartments as opposed to what he was charging us.

We are still homeless, but we are fighting back! We are holding a peaceful demonstration on Thursday, April 26th, 2001 at 1515 Clay Street, Oakland, CA (Oakland’s State Building). It will be held from 12:00 p.m. noon until 2:00 p.m. We are asking that your organization attend, sponsor, and/or speak at our demonstration. This is important to us because we are everyday people and feel we represent many people in our community. We desperately want to stand up to Mr. Curtis to let him know what he did was not only illegal, but malicious and moral less. Our hopes are that our opposition to Mr. Curtis, despite his position in society, will encourage other displaced, oppressed, or fearful tenants to do the same.

If you choose to join us, please feel free to contact Kendra Wilson at (510) 915-3434. Any assistance, no matter how large or small, will be greatly appreciated. We are in need of speakers, donations of food, and amplification for the demonstration. Most of all, your attendance and support will be cherished. There will be a press release, and we anticipate this to be a great forum for all those who are interested in voicing their housing issues. We are also interested in introducing and supporting any housing remedies your organization may have. Enclosed is a flyer that further details the support we have successfully acquired, and other pertinent information about the demonstration.

It is clear that housing is a huge concern for numerous renters in the Bay Area. Silence is a form of acceptance, and we refuse to permit our voices to be smothered. Please assist us in allowing our voices to be heard. Thanks for your time and we hope to see you there!

Sincerely, Kendra M. Wilson

by Chance Martin-Coalition on Homelessness

4/7/01 -- 12:15 p.m.

I just got off the phone with Anita (not her real name), who called us
collect from jail.

When you receive a collect call from jail here in SF, you get one of those
female robot (fembot?) voices: "THIS IS A COLLECT CALL FROM

*** (real voice)
'Anita' *** AN INMATE AT THE SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY JAIL. TO ACCEPT

THE CALL

PRESS '0' NOW. TO BLOCK FURTHER CALLS FROM THIS FACILITY PRESS '1' NOW"

(which blocks your phone from EVER receiving a collect call from the jail
facility).

Being mostly human (even five minutes after walking into the office on a
Saturday, and I hadn't had any coffee yet), I press '0'.

Then the voice comes on and says: "YOU HAVE JUST ACCEPTED A CALL FROM AN INMATE AT THE SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY JAIL."

The caller gets to hear all of this too.

We know Anita. She's struggling with homelessness along with her partner
Brian (not his real name). We had helped them help themselves to the point
where they were going to move into an SRO hotel room, which is a pretty
sorry accomplishment, but the rains have been cold and regular lately. They
were supposed to move in last Friday, but then Anita got picked up by SFPD
on an old petty theft beef she walked away from five or six years ago.
Because she never took care of the charge, she can't be "cited out" or
released on her own recognizance. We were trying to help by getting her
mom's number so her mom could bail her out, then she could find her Brian
somewhere on these fabled streets of San Francisco, and they could see if
their room was still available. Not too hard, right? Well hang on, 'cause
here's where it gets difficult.

Anita has Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Not exactly what one
might consider to be the kind of disability that lends itself easily to
enforced confinement. Exercise and cannabis are what she usually uses to
manage this situation, having successfully kicked drugs and alcohol for some
years now. But there's no room to run or play hacky-sack with a paper wad in
the new jail, and pot is pretty much out of the question. You can't even
smoke cigarettes in the state-of the-art facility behind 850 Bryant Street
in San Francisco.

When Anita comes on the phone, she's ping-ponging between panic and
hysteria. Seems a few days ago she was so feeling so frustrated and defeated
and alone she was sitting on the floor of her cell, weeping uncontrollably.
But here in San Francisco, this shining beacon of enlightenment, our jails
are equipped to accommodate prisoners with disabilities. She was placed in a
suicide watch "tank" or cell, better known to the City and County of San
Francisco's women prisoners as the "naked cell." It's called that because
they strip you of your clothing and then place you in five-point restraints
in a cell with a window behind which a guard sits to watch you and whoever
else has merited such special attention 24 unending hours a day.

While Anita was there, one guard, a white male guard named Allen (his real
name), became so moved (or aroused) by Anita's helpless state that he became
especially interested in her. He stood inside the naked cell with Anita for
some considerable length of time and teased her about her remarkable lack of
body hair (Anita is Native American).

Anita was finally released from the naked cell, and placed in a tank where
all the other women are detoxing cold-turkey from heroin. This is only a
very small step down from the naked cell -- the women in this tank are all
sick and miserable as hell, and there is not one scrap of anything that
isn't a bare wall or mattress: no sheets, no books or magazines, no cards or
checkerboard, no paper or pencils, no tv, no toiletries, not even
toothbrushes. The toilet is starkly exposed to any guard who happens by, and
dirt and garbage accumulates in the filthy cell’s corners.

Rita (not her real name), one of the other women in the "kick tank" with
Anita, has diabetes and epilepsy, and no medication. She's been suffering
seizures with hellish regularity, but her pleas for medical treatment are
ignored by the guards. The condition the jail staff places on Anita if she
doesn't want to return to the naked cell is that she is to do nothing
without a guard's permission except sit still on her mattress.

Here’s the inevitable dilemma: while I'm trying to support Anita’s effort to
regain some precious little bit of composure so I can give her mom's phone
number to her, she realizes she has nothing to write it down with. She has
nothing she can even use to scratch it on the surface of the walls or floor.
She has come so close to getting the seven digits that represent her ticket
out of the beast's belly (she's been there since before last Friday) and now
she's stymied once more. She starts getting really shaky again; the little
voice in the back of my head is telling me if she gets too animated behind
her frustration the guard is going to put her back in the naked cell and she
won't have another opportunity to arrange bail until next week.

I listen to Anita. I tell her that we're going to stay on the line together
until the panic passes, no matter how long that takes. I tell her I think we
can figure this one out between us. The storm begins to ebb -- I know we're
making real progress when Anita manages a rueful, shaky laugh at the insane
irony of this inhumane, screwed-up situation. We talk about Brian: had we
seen him? We talk about how she's going to find him when she's finally
released.

We talk about preparing a deposition about what happened in the naked cell.

Then Anita says: "Hey! There's a metal mirror here, and I think I can smear
the number in the soap scum on it!" (I knew you had it in ya, sis!) We share
a hearty, victorious laugh. I give her the number. I ask her to repeat it
back to me. That's correct! We share a few words of relieved, relaxed,
normal conversation. I ask her to read the number back to me again. She's
got it. Anita won.

I tell Anita that she'd better call her mom before they finally clean the
metal mirror in the women's detox tank (yeah, fat chance). We laugh about
that for a moment. I ask her to come to the Coalition's office after she
gets out so we can document the many violations she has been victim to --
let's fight these guys, ok?

More words of encouragement, then Anita and I disconnect.

Now I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I'm setting all this down,
other than for documentation purposes. It's because this is a very real look
into San Francisco's "homeless policy" that is rarely considered by anyone
who hasn't been homeless. It describes a very small part of the terrible and
relentless violation of the civil and human rights of poor people that is
standard operational procedure in this city.

It's because Anita would have been off the streets and safe with her partner
this past week if the "status crime" of her homelessness didn't give some
zealous "quality of life" enforcer probable cause to detain her and imprison
her because of a five year old bench warrant.

It's because if we are ever going to organize together for justice, then we
must organize with people like Anita, and me, and every other luckless soul
who ever got drafted into America's War on the Poor.

It's because an injury to one is an injury to all.

--

Not to know is bad.

Not to want to know is worse.

Not to hope is unthinkable.

Not to care is unforgivable.

-Nigerian saying

by Staff Writer

Its been running through my mind for months; if I ever left "The City" of San Francisco where would I go?

There is New York, where I was born; Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, Los Angeles, Lovely, rustic Fairfield, or Arizona.

All these places have an allure and history but I’m thinking of Nevada, where land is weirdly inexpensive and transplants like me are willing to seek isolation, for the sake of creative fire –just might be my last chance to live free.

Gambling in Reno does not interest me, quiet lonesome mountains, trees, big sky where stars are seen in all their brilliance, and the best asset near absolute quiet.

Careers-jobs as telephone line-workers, "walking Iron" on high rise building sites welders, glassblowing, painters, sculpture, or writers.

Open land, a large home, garage, swimming pool, gym, basement and extra room to get away from future wife, children, when myself or anyone else needs a break.

What would do you do with four or five thousand acres of pristine, untouched, undeveloped land?

Not that I own any land yet but if one did; what to do with it?

I am a city guy, grown up with technology, its part of me until death or rejuvenation; hopefully the latter gets me before old Grim does.

A student of arcane mysteries, mind-traveler.
I do believe people need to have a least "one great quest" in their life.

Attainment of it or not isn't the test staying stead fast is the test and failure is an option not defeat.

Whatever happens as this new century unfolds; I want a place away, a sanctuary for thinking contemplative, theoretical, or unusual thoughts, or rest, have friends and family gathered.

Could it be all I want is my own space where peace of mind reigns supreme.
Where are other places less expensive, a slower pace of life?

Any Ideas out there? Right now I’m trying to ease into the House-sitting
Business, where do you begin this process? Bye.

PS My email has changed,[AGAIN]I do not know if this is the correct one – please bare with me folks:/
Send m/o or checks c/o Joe to Poor Magazine 255 9th St. San Francisco, Ca. 94103 USA
WWW.Poormagazine.org
www.AskJoe@poormagazine.org

Or Snail Mail to Joe at
1230 Market St. PO Box #645
S.F. Ca., 94102

by Richard Dvorak

I just cannot believe it! It seems so surreal, I am a handicapped man, I
reside just outside of Washington, DC. and through my business I became
unwittingly involved in a government scandal involving a large number of
individuals at the D.E.A (Drug Enforcement Administration). The incident
that I am describing has been tagged the second largest internal embezzlement
scheme in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice! This story until
now has been kept quiet. I am absolutely, totally innocent, and yet have
been made a scapegoat for the government's failure to police it's own people.

I was able to achieve and lead an honest and productive life and now
everything that I worked so long and hard for has all been taken away. Soon I
will be incarcerated for 3+ years in a prison medical facility. In addition
to going to prison, I was ordered to pay $1million dollars in restitution!
And no my friend It doesn't end there...After my criminal trial the
government then proceeded to file a civil suit against me, forcing me to
surrender ownership and leave my business as a condition to avoid yet an
additional $4-5 million dollar judgement against me.

I became successful in spite of my disabilities and now my life has been
destroyed for something that I did not do. Marc Rich gets a pardon... If I
survive prison how will I ever find another job.

I am appealing to all disability organizations in the hope that their members will read my letter, vist my website that friends and supporters have helped me create, examine my story and sign my petition. I need exposure and
grassroots backing to help me in my fight for clemency. I think everyone in
America should be aware of my story because what happened to me could easily
happen to anyone. God bless you all.

My website link is:"http://www.willfulblindness.com/">http://www.willfulblindness.com/

Thank you so very much

Sincerely,

Robert Dvorak

by Staff Writer

My views are three fold:

1) Grow and separate the brain stem, keeping the body and it parts in cold storage until parts are need. The clone: essentially bag-a-flesh.

2) Regenerate some or all body parts in artificial, sterile environments,
modified genes improves and makes younger, stronger, more resilient, longer lasting regenerative parts that slowly makes us better built humans.

3) A full body clone with tougher, improved, longer lasting, regenerative
adaptive powers would have full brain function though in a mechanized coma until the neural net of a healthy or dying human can place her or his electrochemical personality in the perfectly functioning clones brain.

The machine maintaining the simulated Coma State is disconnected in stages
as the original person’s brain patterns placed in the clone.

This process recreates a better, longer lived and possibly smarter human if extra and improved brain cells can also be added.
There are more ideas on this but these are some of my views.

The above might offend many of religious, scientific, or philosophical on ethical grounds.

Please have dialogues, discussions on this an other emerging applied technologies so proper guidelines and laws will be in place before… ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE… AGAIN!

Please send donations to Poor Magazine C/0 Ask Joe at 255 9th St. Street, San Francisco, CA. 94103 USA

For Joe only my snail mail: PO Box 1230 #645
Market St. San Francisco, CA 94102
Email: askjoe@poormagazine.org

by Challa Tabeson

Some 80 San Francisco homeless families marched on City Hall last Tuesday,
where all three freshmen supervisors-Sandoval, Newman, and Maxwell-were
holding hearings. The protesters, loud and unstoppable, called for the
abolition of Mayor Brown's "Merry-Go-Round" policy which forces homeless
families with children out of city shelters. They also called for the implementation of a citywide "No Turn Away" policy at shelters that serve homeless families.

Homeless parents and their children demanded a home to call their own. "We
want permanent housing! We need permanent affordable housing!" Right now!
Currently, no less than one hundred homeless families walk the dark and
dangerous streets of San Francisco on any given night. Looking at the
1999/2000 census, over 50 percent of homeless children are under the age of
five, as documented by the SF homeless advocacy group Connecting
Point(Gateway). The total number of homeless children is just over 4,041.

Homeless children and their families are among the fastest growing segments
of the city's homeless population. These children are often forced to live
inunsafe and unhealthy conditions because of lack of shelter space. They
are more likely to have poor health compared to other children. They are
four times more likely to have delayed development-homeless families are
often subject to hunger and malnutrition. Homeless children and youth also
face multiple barriers to educational achievement.

The facts seem terribly troubling, considering that 14,675 people are
currently on the Section 8 waiting list for public housing units, with
another 9,700 waiting for rental vouchers or certificates. An average San
Francisco family on welfare receives $611 per month; a full-time minimum
wage earner would have to work 53 hours per week to pay for the average one
bedroom apartment, leaving $0 for other expenses.

The Department of Human Services has been quietly working with the Mayor's
Office on Homelessness to limit the use of hotel vouchers, making them
valid only at the Family Resource Center (FRC), which is situated out in
the Bayview Hunters Point District of San Francisco. This would stifle
citywide access for homeless families using hotel vouchers. "But it wasn't
fair to pit the Homeless Coalition against Bayview's Connecting Point...all
we wanted was to find out what Sojourner Truth was doing with
children from the Child Protective Services," responded Bianca, of SF Shelter Outreach Projects. Under this model program, the hotel vouchers would be available only to those families in need of housing who are engaged in family preservation services at the FRC.

Director of Department of Homeless and Housing, Maggie Donahue, towed the
party line during the hearing sessions, by blatantly interrupting
testimonies on abuses homeless families had suffered at the hands of some
homeless protective programs. The mayor's strong-armed lieutenant, spoke at
length about a five-part scheme to confront the San Francisco housing
struggle which included phasing out the Hotel Vouchers Program at
Connecting Point(CP) started early last year.

"We feel that the Connecting Point program was never designed to be what it
became via the hotel vouchers--a provider of temporary shelter for families
throughout the Bay Area," according to a February 20 memo from Donahue to
the Coalition on Homelessness. She went on to make light of what effect
this would have on homeless families, "CP will now be able to more
productively utilize staff time and resources to act as a broker for
emergency services, prevention services, and other information and referral
services for families who are in crises."

Not a few hopes were dashed upon the phasing out of the Hotel Voucher
Program at Connecting Point in March. The opening of the family shelter at
260 Golden Gate, which can boast only 6 new beds for the hoard of waiting
homeless families is hardly an answer. Or should we be speaking of the
three new medical hotel rooms at Hamilton Family Emergency Center, which
provide a "net gain of 103 beds to the system after the CP closed the doors
to its hotel rooms?" as stated by DHS

"They (CP) don't even go by what they say..." rebuked TJ, who, with wife,
who is six-months pregnant, recently found refuge at St. Joseph House, a
center for homeless families with special needs, "They turned us away when
me and my wife couldn't make it any other way."

According to Sondra Stewart of Family Rights and Dignity, "City Hall is
playing a shell game-robbing Peter to pay Paul..." No less than a 100
families wait for emergency shelter every night here in the city of San
Francisco, "...this is just one more proof of how the City de-prioritizes
families." The massive number of homeless mothers and children certainly
had a unified voice at City Hall, as they spoke out against the forced
merry-go-round they have been on, and called on the Finance Committee of
the Board of Supervisors to fully implement the "No Turn-Away Policy" for
families with children at risk.

The vision was that an additional family shelter would increase existing
shelter beds for homeless families, not that it would replace the Waller
Street location or the Hotel Voucher Program. Instead of the proposed 35
family total capacity, only 15 emergency beds placements were made
available to the City for homeless families with children. Where do the
rest go from here?

In a united effort to ensure that supervisors take appropriate steps to
address the ever-growing housing crisis among homeless families in San
Francisco, homeless advocacy organizations-including the Civil Rights
Committee, Family Rights & Dignity, Hogares Sin Barreras, Shelter Outreach,
Street Sheet, POOR Magazine and Substance Abuse & Mental Health coalitions-have taken the matter to City Hall. These organizations joined forces with homelessfamilies present at the Tuesday hearings, demanding that the City enact their outlined "twelve commandments."

Along with several homeless advocacy coalitions in San Francisco, the
homeless families presented numerous stipulations that the Board of
Supervisors should reimplement the 1998 No Turn Away resolution designed to ensure that no child will ever be abandoned to the mean streets.

by Alison VanDeursen

The opening shot is of a narrow, rocky San Francisco Bay beach. The sky
is grey; the low, rolling waves fall into the shore, scattering gulls.
Then a cut to the back of a woman watching the beach, and my own voice
wonders aloud, "Where did all the birds go?"

Yes, my voice. I had the honor of participating in Ken Moshesh's artistic
documentary "Just Trying to Sleep," and I now have the pleasure of
introducing it to the readers of POOR. I learned more about Ken Moshesh
and his groundbreaking court case by watching his video. And, I want you
to know, by knowing and working with Ken Moshesh, I have learned more
about my self.

"Where did all the birds go?" rang to us as an accidental but apt metaphor
for the subject of this video: homeless people of the Bay Area and of the
entire nation. When the night falls, where do homeless people go to
sleep? And what happens to them there?

What has happened to Ken Moshesh in Berkeley are citations,
criminalization, and incarceration. He spent five days in jail for the
"crime" of sleeping outside, and faces 45 days for "violating" his
probation- i.e., sleeping outside again. (Where else can he sleep? The
shelters are full!) He has been banned from the campus of UC Berkeley,
where he once taught and where he now produces his award-winning videos.
["Endangering the Species", Excellence in Ethnography award, Berkeley Film Festival, 2000].

The "crime" Moshesh is being charged with is called 647j. It is
erroneously known as the "Lodging Law," and it targets those who "set up
lodgings" illegally. One fundamental problem with this law, as outlined
by Moshesh and attorney Osha Neumann in the video, is that "lodging" is a
vague term. What it means to "lodge" has never been defined. Thus, this
law violates the constitutional right to due process. As Neumann says,
"If you can't tell what the crime is," then how can you be prosecuted for
it?

One thing is undeniably true: sleeping is not a crime. It is a fundamental
human right, let alone a biological need. Moshesh refuses to be bullied by a compassionless and unjust system, andis challenging the constitutionality of the Berekeley law. Read: This is huge, folks. This is history.

The video highlights the words of some of the major activists in Berkeley
and the Bay Area, expressing their opinions about homelessness policy in
general and Ken's case in particular. It is controversial, as my friend
Dave and I watched the video and spent an hour debating what a "basic
human right" really is. It is artistic, and my roommate Jonathan, himself
a documentary filmmaker, found its creativity refreshing. There are lots
of unusual camera angles- those are my green Converse shot against the
levee! In my mind, the many shots of shoes and cold, hard ground suggest
the struggle of homeless folks. This may not be a slick production, but
it is originally crafted and thought-provoking.

Perhaps my favorite scene in the video is that of Ken playing drums by the
beach, the audio overlapping shots of Ken convincing Greg Syren, the
Public Defender, why this case is so important. The beats are throbbing,
quick, and unrelenting, both peaceful music and a battle cry. This is Ken
Moshesh: articulate spokesman for homeless folks within the Berkeley
courthouse, and an intense musician inspired by our natural environment.

Ken Moshesh, staff writer and poet for POOR Magazine and www.poornewsnetwork.org is also a filmmaker, musician, a poet, orator, and
activist. He is also homeless. He is also a wonderful person with a
generous heart and a teacher's spirit. Ken has encouraged me to explore
and push beyond my own artistic boundaries, and though I cringe a bit
hearing my voice reciting his beautiful poetry- and singing(!)- I am proud
to have been a part of this project- and he won't let me rest! Ken Moshesh
is a peaceful and inspirational soul and artist, and it would be a true
crime were he to be incarcerated again for "Just Trying to Sleep."

Check out this powerful piece on
Berkeley Public Access Channel 25!!! as well it is available by writing to Po'Products c/o POOR Magazine 255 9th street SF, Ca 94103