Getting homeless people off the streets

By Jim Reid

A plan to get homeless people off the streets and into safe shelter and into housing by volunteering for the Adopt-a-Block/Park Program.

Homelessness is bad for our tourist industry, business in general, and the quality of life of our citizens who live and sleep on the street and those of us who do not. Our Political leaders have failed to diligently work to develop solutions to this growing problem and there is no excuse for this. Arresting the homeless is not a solution.

Policy: Build or develop a master shelter system outside of residential neighborhoods. This system would benefit from the economy of scale but be designed to be like smaller housing communities. An ideal site for this master shelter would be at Pier 48, one block east of the former Mission Rock Emergency shelter. This site could house 2,000 people in fifty person community rooms with private sleeping cubicles. The homeless would be separated into seventeen different categories. Any homeless person who cannot prove that he or she lived in San Francisco for more than a year before they became homeless will be offered a one-way non-refundable bus ticket and food vouchers to any city in America. This should discourage homeless from outside the Bay Area from coming to San Francisco. The ticket would be one-way non-refundable with a photo ID attached to it. A central intake of the shelter will do the screening and offer any person a bed and shelter for 30 days and a safe place to store their belongings. Police on foot will patrol areas around the shelter, protecting homeless from predators, drug dealers, and directing them to appropriate facilities; and providing safety for other people who have business in the area. The shelter will have 30-day intensive programs to get them into more permanent housing, job training programs, and jobs. The 30-day stay will be an intensive social-skills class from balancing a checkbook to developing friendships. Anyone who is able bodied, with usable skills, mentally stable, and drug free would get immediate permanent housing, by joining the Adopt-a-block Program. Alternatively, they may work and live at one of the shelters. All San Francisco homeless social services would be located in the shelter. Shelters would have free laundry, clothing exchange, Guests would be required to shower and wear clean clothes before they gain access to any facility in an effort to keep the facility free of disease and insects (lice). Guests could be assigned a bed and locker for 30 days with clean sheets once a week. Each Guest would get an instant photo ID card, similar in look to a CostCo membership card. Stated goals of each facility would be to provide basic clean housing and dignity to the guests. Rules would be minimal. Those who do not respect others will be moved to other facilities with stricter rules. All guests would be required to keep the facility cleaner than they found it and volunteer their skills to help run the facility. No religious or political doctrines would be forced on the guests. Guests are free get God, religion, and politics elsewhere. Guests would stay in the facility most of the day and night unless they needed to go outside. The objective is to stabilize each guests life, get them off the street, get them into programs that will help them get back on their feet, develop self-esteem, and get back into society, if appropriate. Those who are mentally ill will need to be referred or sent to Sacramento for restored services. Long term programs to help guests overcome addiction to tobacco, drugs, and alcohol will be available and sometimes mandatory. All staff must treat each guest with basic human courtesy and respect and expect the same from the guests. There need to be tough but fair arbitrators with the authority to enforce this rule and protect the timid from aggressive guests. Cleanliness will be rule #1 enforced by all. The Master shelter would have community rooms with TV, newspapers, magazines, computers with connection to the Internet and many pay phones in quiet rooms are all possible. Any SSI or other money that the guest is entitled to while in the program will be held for use as a security deposit on long term housing when they finish the program. The lucky guests will end up with subsidized housing, a job, a checking account, and the skills to manage their finances at the end of 30 days. The less lucky guests will get less out of the program, may end up back on the street, and returned to the program.

Goal: to develop a shelter system that will keep homeless people off the streets until they have the skills to stay off the streets.

When this program is fully operational, the police would be mandated to move the homeless to the shelters, because there will be no excuse to live or sleep on the street. Any chronic drug or alcohol abusers will be sent to County Jail for 30 days to dry out and then put into mandatory treatment programs with yearlong probation with regular drug testing. The mentally ill will be moved into City, State, and Federal programs that will deal with their housing and health needs. New Community Health Care facilities could be built to replace Laguna Honda to serve the needs of the mentally ill.

Mayor Reid will donate $50,000.00 or his first year salary as Mayor to buy good quality single mattresses for the new homeless shelters. Candidate Reid stayed in our shelters for nine nights in February to begin to understand homelessness and the services we provide. He knows the value of a good mattress and a good nights sleep and believes that all people have a right to this. Shelters could be used to house disaster victims in emergencies. The homeless need to get P.O. Boxes or other permanent addresses, so they could register to vote and influence public policy to serve their needs.

Long term goals: to develop a homeless program that is a model for other cities to copy; a program that the federal government will adopt and fund nationally. San Francisco needs to copy parts of programs that work in other cities; to try out new ideas; and to ask the homeless for their ideas for programs that will best address their specific needs. We need to analyze all existing homeless and related programs funded in San Francisco and integrate them all into a comprehensive solution to the problem.

Mayor Reid will convene a Homeless Summit for the week of February 14 #15, 2000. He will use funds under the direction of the Mayor's office to immediately begin to build the shelter system designed in this summit and to have 90% of our homeless off the streets in three years. See plank #3 for other homeless housing ideas.

Homeless building housing for themselves: As a retired building contractor, Mayor Reid will implement a housing program utilizing the skills of former homeless plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, and laborers to build small housing cubicles for their fellow homeless people. Thirty years ago the Japanese were building 10' x 10' housing cubicles in Tokyo for their people. These cubicles would have bathroom, cooking and sleeping facilities. This small volunteer army could build about 20 cubicles a day and be able to house 5,000 homeless people in fifty weeks of construction. These cubicles could be assembled three high with steel stairways and walkways in existing sprinkled warehouse buildings around the City. The first 2,000 of these small housing units would be assigned to those qualified people who volunteer for the Adopt-a-Block or Park program. Those participants who stay in the program for ten years will own their unit for the rest of their lives or will be able to trade it for a larger unit. This program will provide skills and self-esteem to the many who participate and large quantities of housing at very little cost to the City. A win for everyone. These good people who build the ten thousand housing units over two years will get to build large studio housing units for themselves which they will own free and clear after two years of their volunteer service. Food, clothing and shelter will be provided to all who volunteer their time to this program. The program will be a model for all cities for the world to copy. These cubicles will cost the City less that $10,000 per unit. We will be able to house all the homeless that now live in San Francisco for less that a hundred million dollars over two years. We now spend over sixty million dollars a year on our homeless programs and we are having little effect on the problem.

Single Room Occupancy buildings. When most of the homeless are housed, what will we do about the sad condition of SRO's citywide? Many of them are a disgrace. Any Ideas?

Jim Reid, September 18, 1999