10% More Diners
at St. Anthony's
And more are getting back in
line for seconds and thirds
By Marjorie Beggs
“You can say this report was
blessed by the mayor,” said the Rev. John Hardin of St.
Anthony’s Foundation about the 78-page, not-quite-hot-off-the-press
San Francisco Plan to Abolish Homelessness. Hardin had just
concluded his presentation of the plan, published in mid-July,
to Tenderloin Futures Collaborative members.
“YOU can say it’s blessed,” quipped the Faithful
Fool’s Kurt Kuhwald, with no malice.
“We can all bless it,” came back Hardin, “and
we can all do something to help by passing Prop. A, the housing
bond.”
Homelessness and housing consumed
much of the September Collaborative meeting.
The call for a plan
to end homelessness by 2014 was one of Mayor Newsom’s
first post-swearing actions. He named former Supervisor Angela
Alioto to head up a Ten-Year Planning Council; Hardin was
vice chair of the Outreach, Assessment and Behavioral Health
Committee, one of five committees that comprised the council.
“It
was an intense, five-month planning process,” Hardin
said. “Our target was hard-core, chronic, visibly homeless
people — the estimated 3,000 people who use 90% of our
high-end services.”
After the meeting, The
Extra pulled more facts from the report: Today’s S.F. homeless population
is 15,000 — up from
12,000 two years ago — and 63% of the $200 million that
the city spends annually on homeless services goes to those
3,000 chronically homeless people. Goal No. 1 of the plan is
to build 3,000 units of permanent, supportive housing so that
no one would be discharged to the street from any program,
hospital, jail or other facility.
Traditional shelters would
be phased out in the next four to six years and replaced
with 24-hour clinics and “sobering
centers” that would divert inebriates from high-cost
emergency care.
A Collaborative member
asked Hardin if St. Anthony’s
stats reflect increased homelessness.
“Our client numbers
went up 20% this January,” he said. “It’s
leveled off since then, at 10% over last year. But what’s really changing
is that more people in the dining room are self-defining themselves as homeless,
and we’re seeing more people going through the line two or three times.”
Asked
what he thought about the outreach teams that go looking for homeless people
who might be eligible for Care Not Cash supportive housing, Hardin said: “I’ve
told them to come to the jails. We can fill their housing immediately” — a
reference to the fact that, according to the report, 90% of the chronically
homeless “rotate
through the jail system on a weekly or monthly basis. At any given time,
40% of the people in jail are homeless.”
Hardin said he also was
concerned about what happens when homeless people are
placed in SROs: “Isolation
is a real problem. Their friends are still on the streets or elsewhere.” Support
from longtime street pals, he suggested, is tangible and, perhaps, irreplaceable.
The
lion’s share of the report — almost 40 pages — covers
how to develop permanent supportive housing, and the acknowledgements
take up another 23 pages. Not surprising: Between March and June this
year, the Ten-Year Planning Council and its committees met 85 times;
785 people from more than 400 organizations participated in those meetings.
Among
the plan’s advocacy recommendations: Support both state Proposition
63, the mental health services initiative, and the city’s Affordable
Housing Bond, Prop. A. The Plan to Abolish Homelessness is online:
http:// sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/planningcouncil/
news/TheSFPlanFinal.pdf.
Care Not Cash update
In May, when
Care Not Cash started officially, San Francisco had 2,500 homeless
adults in the CAAP program, Scott Walton, Depart-ment of Human
Services supportive housing manager, told the Collaborative.
CAAP,
the County Adult Assistance Program, is a collective term for
four independent city welfare programs that help people not entitled
to state or federal benefits.
“By this November, 1,700 of
the (CAAP recipients) will have been converted to the new housing
program,” Walton
said, “and by the end of the year, we expect to have
1,600 units available for them. We currently have 12 buildings
in SoMa, the Tenderloin and the Mission.”
What does “converted” mean?
Walton was asked.
“It means the homeless in
the CAAP program have been offered permanent, county-subsidized
housing — their
CAAP cash benefits have been converted (to CAAP Benefits Package
or CBP),” he
answered.
CBP offers housing, food
and services in lieu of benefits. Recipients still
get a little cash — as
little as $59, but not less — after
deducting the in-kind value of services.
Do the buildings have
on-site support services? Food? Treatment for substance abuse
and mental health problems? Walton was asked.
Every building has
a 24-hour desk clerk, but none has food service, Walton said. “Case
managers try to get them the food they need, and we have roving
teams of professionals who can go to the hotels and help link
people to services.”
So far, 266 CAAPers have
accepted housing in the SROs, he added. If the number
seems small — since
DHS says it has 1,600 units available — it’s because
those SROs had more than 800 people already living there when
the Cash Not Care program started up, Walton explained.
Hardin’s
comment about post-placement isolation was still hanging
in the air.
“How are you going to get
these people integrated into the community?” asked Michael
Nulty, co-president of Alliance for a Better District 6 and
Tenant Associations Coalition program director.
“We’ll try
to house people near their friends,” Walton
said, “and we’re going to try to build community
within the buildings.”
Ladies in their scanties
The meeting closed on
a sexier, if less conclusive, note.
“There are ladies in
sheer panties and bras out on the street,” said
S.F. Rescue Mission’s Clint Ladine, who stood and glanced
across the table at his next-door neighbor, Terrance Alan, owner
of the Chez Paree at 220 Jones.
“They’re soliciting,” Ladine
continued. “Terrance
assured us (activities inside) would not spill out onto the street.
There’s more than a strip joint going on there now.”
Alan
shot back: “I’ve told you that if there’s
a problem, you could always call me. And you haven’t.”
Whoa! said TLC Chair Glenda Hope of S.F. Network Ministries.
She suggested that the topic appear on the October agenda.
“Amen,” said
someone at the back of the room. n
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