Finding affordable housing in San Francisco proved almost impossible. Apartments in her price range either had waiting lists of up to two years, or were so poorly maintained that they were unlivable.
Everything else was well beyond what she could afford. She used some of her savings to stay in cheap hotels while she continued to look for affordable housing. When she couldn't afford the hotels any more, she stayed with friends. So there were times I'd have to leave my older daughter with other people and take my little daughter with me. Maye recalls sleeping in a car with her daughters on three occasions. She was often separated from one of them.
The times they were able to stay together, they slept in cramped spaces, either in the corner of someone's room, or sharing someone's couch. Like Todd, Maye learned that being homeless isn't just about not having a home — it becomes a full-time job to survive. In the mornings, if one of her daughters was staying elsewhere, she'd have to go pick her up.
If they were staying at someone's house, the two daughters would shower together. When they slept in the car, Maye used baby wipes on her younger daughter. After getting her older daughter to school and finding someone to mind her younger daughter, she'd often arrive at work late. Unable to afford childcare, she'd have to leave work early to pick up her kids. Every day she had to figure out where they would sleep, where they would eat, how they could stay clean, and what would happen to her daughters outside of school hours.
I did that to my younger daughter," Maye says. It was only because my purse was in the back seat, and I never leave my purse in the backseat. It was only because of that I went back to my car. When I went back to my car, I found my daughter there. That's when I completely broke down.
Everything was so focused on how do we eat, where are we going to stay, how do we eat, where are we going to stay? How do I clean our clothes? How do I make it look like we're not homeless so I don't get my kids taken away? Maye was homeless in total for six months. In the sixth month, her constant lateness to work cost her her job at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. In the same month, Hamilton Family Center's First Avenues program accepted her, providing her with a rental subsidy and support through a case worker.
Maye and her daughters now live in a three-bedroom house in Vallejo, 45 minutes north of San Francisco. She commutes into the city for work each day. Finding affordable housing didn't undo the six months of homelessness her family went through, though. In our first month in our house, she locked herself in the bathroom and sat in the bathtub crying, crying, crying, saying she wanted to go to heaven, that she didn't want to do it any more.
She was like, how do we know we won't get kicked out of here? How do we know someone won't take it from us? Until First Avenues, Maye described her life as being like a roller coaster that only went in one direction: down. It had all happened so suddenly and unexpectedly, too. Who would have thought a case manager would herself become homeless? The coupling of unforeseen circumstances — loss of a job, eviction, a health crisis —with the exorbitant cost of rent in San Francisco is making it all too easy for people to fall through the cracks, and non-profits like St.
Anthony's, Hamilton, and shelter programs like Compass Family Services are struggling to keep up. Today, the wait list for Hamilton alone sits above Even if a person gets into a shelter, it's only a Band-aid fix.
With the exception of programs like Compass Family Services' Clara House, which provides an intensive, supportive environment for families for two years, most shelters offer only temporary relief.
People staying in shelters have to leave during the day. They have little to no privacy. They don't have a fixed address to use while looking for work.
Studies about family homelessness show that kids who are homeless for more than six months growing up are five times more likely to be homeless as adults and 40 percent more likely to drop out of school. One small longitudinal study showed it will take a kid who's been homeless for a long period of time 2.
The last time San Francisco went through a tech boom, the bubble burst in the late s, leading to an exodus of tech workers from the city. Rent prices dropped and, while they were still high by national standards, the poor had a place to live. The current tech boom shows few signs of slowing down. The rising cost of living is now spreading to the East Bay, where tenants in Oakland and Berkeley are also feeling the effects of a more expensive San Francisco.
The narrative about the role of the tech industry isn't as simple as techies kicking out Mickey Mouse so they can live in Disneyland, though. As much as the influx of affluent tech workers has served as a catalyst for many of San Francisco's affordability issues, they have also tried, with varying degrees of success, to find the solution. The Hamilton Family Center rental subsidy that supports Todd and his daughter is the result of philanthropic efforts by Salesforce's Marc Benioff.
Anthony's technology training center, which aims to equip the homeless with basic computing skills, is often staffed with volunteers from Zendesk and Twitter. Zendesk has even developed software to help St. Anthony's volunteers train clients more effectively. For non-profits like St. Anthony's, sometimes it feels like the city is making progress in finding a solution to the complex problem. Then sometimes it feels like they're taking several steps back. Instead of this dream team of economists, developers, and low income housing providers, the city's non-profits continue to fight for the poor and vulnerable.
The Tenants Union is currently working on legislative and policy work to strengthen eviction protections and mitigate evictions via increased relocation benefits. It's also pushing through an anti-speculation tax to discourage real estate speculators from buying up rent-controlled properties, then evicting the tenants and selling off the units as condos.
Programs like Hamilton and Compass are working with families to secure affordable, subsidized accommodation, while St. Anthony's is partnering with Mercy Housing to build 90 affordable units in the heart of the city for low-income senior citizens. But non-profits can, at best, chip away at a much bigger problem — a problem of inequality, a problem of severe wealth disparity, a problem of a system that has winners and losers.
San Franciscans have long complained that tech workers ruined their city, driving up rents and homelessness and eliminating diversity. Now even the tech workers agree.
I t was a beautiful winter day in San Francisco , and Zoe was grooving to the soundtrack of the roller-skating musical Xanadu as she rode an e-scooter to work. The year-old tech worker had just passed the Uber building when, without warning, a homeless man jumped into the bike lane with his dog, blocking her path.
She slammed on the brakes, flew four feet into the air and landed on the pavement, bleeding. That dude is a wealth of knowledge, he knows everything that has ever happened within a four-block radius of his store. I say all this and yet, just the other day a woman stopped me in Union Square and asked for directions, which I was more than glad to give. And last week I saw strangers laughing with each other on the bus about some wild shit that was going on outside.
And the man who lives in a tent around the corner from my house wished me happy New Year when I walked by. Stuart Schuffman is a travel writer, TV host and poet. Follow him at BrokeAssStuart. His column appears every other Thursday. He is a guest columnist and his point of view is not necessarily that of the Examiner. The Chinatown neighbourhood dates back to the 19th century, while the Mission district has been a hub for Latino and Chicano arts and culture.
Today, San Francisco remains one of the cities with the highest number of artists and arts organisations per capita in the United States. Its creative and cultural scene attracts tourists from across the world. In the city had This is one of the largest performing arts complexes in the United States, with almost 7, seats spread across multiple venues, and is home to the San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Symphony. The city also takes pride in a pluralistic, localised arts scene in which world-renowned arts institutions and deeply rooted community based arts organisations exist side by side.
0コメント