San Francisco is the crown jewel of United States cities. To many it is the land of opportunity. There is more money here in a small area than in most other areas of the country. Success can be found by those with skills and the drive to work hard. As cities go, it is one of the cleanest and best organized. The taxpayers care about their fellow citizens, and are willing to show this with their pocketbooks. Even so, there is a side of San Francisco that demands ever more attention: the plight of the desperately poor. Anyone who spends time here has encountered them, begging for money on the streets. A large proportion of these people are homeless.
Homelessness presents many challenges to any city. San Francisco has one of the largest homeless populations per capita of all the cities in the United States. On any given night there are somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 homeless people sleeping on the streets and in parks. These people need to eat, they need health care, and they need a way out. There are programs to lessen the desparate conditions in which they live. Most of these programs are designed to help them survive on a daily basis. There are very few programs designed to lift people out of poverty, so they are left to themselves to figure out solutions that will work. Meanwhile, they need to find ways to eat, bathe, use the restroom, and to find meaning in their lives.
The daily needs are too great for any one organization to meet, including the city government. Fortunately, San Francisco is home to many organizations and individuals who want to make a positive difference. It has become the preeminent city in the nation in terms of the help available for people caught in the cycle of poverty and homelessness. The leadership of this city has had the foresight to institute government programs to help. Private organizations, primarily churches, provide help to the homeless. There is no place in the country that does more to provide opportunities for people to gain access to resources they need to survive, and to provide opportunities for homeless individuals to climb out of the cycle of despair. Hundreds and thousands of people work together here to prevent homelessness from becoming hopelessness.
Homelessness is extremely expensive to the others in the community. By spending time and by providing funding for an organized provision of services and resources, that cost can be reduced. For instance, to incarcerate a person because of a quality-of-life crime such as sleeping on a sidewalk costs $2,500 per month just for the housing cost alone. By comparison, subsidized rent in an SRO hotel is under $500 per month. By taking a proactive approach to housing it immediately saves more than four times the cost.
Many point to the problem of substance abuse. National studies have shown clearly that most homelessness is not caused by drug and alcohol abuse. However, due to the prevalence of illegal substances on the street and the cost associated with the use of these substances, it becomes a barrier to the individual who desires to climb out of homelessness. It is important to recognize that homelessness is primarily an economic problem. But it is a problem which develops many debilitating symptoms which make it very difficult for those afflicted to improve their lives. Prevention is much less expensive than remediation.
The economic realities of life in the city are such that national studies have shown repeatedly that there is no place in the country where individuals working at minimum wage can afford even a one-room apartment. It is also easily shown that raising the minimum wage simply results in fewer workers being hired, all else being equal. Subsidized housing raises the taxes of working families. With so many people working at minimum wage, it does not take much of a disruption to push them into a situation where they may be potentially homeless. There is no simple solution.
Homeless families present a particular problem because there are many fewer shelters available for families. Fortunately, the Coalition on Homelessness is focusing specifically on this aspect of the problem, as is The National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Besides the county and state governments, local churches are on the front lines in providing services and resources to the homeless community. This booklet is being produced in order to better help coordinate their efforts. Our desire is that every point of contact with any of these organizations should be capable of leading homeless individuals to all the services available. We are providing this guide to service providers so they can have knowledge outside of their primary expertise. It is clear that many people want to help, so we want them to have confidence that they are able to do so.
Poverty can be beaten, but it requires diligent efforts by everyone involved. Primarily, each homeless person is responsible for themselves. Secondarily, churches and other organizations have a responsibility to utilize their resources in an efficient manner, providing their specific help in a way that affects the maximum number of people in the best possible way. Each organization can determine their best role as determined by their capabilities. Leadership comes at all levels, from the Mayor who helps fund various organizations, to the local pastor deciding how much of the church's funding to put to work for the poor, to the person metering out the amount of food on each plate in a soup line.
If everyone can share the dual vision of helping ease the daily lives of people and helping them lift themselves out of poverty, it will impact our community in a positive way. Charities and volunteers are in the unique position of being able to make San Francisco the best example in the country of how caring people can affect a whole population.
Hopefully this guide will make a difference by providing a one-stop-source for the overall picture, enabling every point of contact to operate with as much knowledge of the whole range of available resources and services as possible. As you encounter people, they will usually be concerned about day-to-day worries such as food and clothing. What you can offer them is a way out.
This booklet contains very specific information such as addresses, days of the week, and times of day. This information does change over time. It will be revised on a quarterly basis.
The web site will be kept current. Service providers are invited to utilize the web site when giving counseling and guidance to poor or homeless individuals.
San Francisco Helps! is a small group of volunteers who are dedicated to helping the poor in San Francisco. Please partner with us by helping us to be aware of any changes to the information contained here. Those changes can be submitted via email to SanFranciscoHelps@gmail.com
Together, we can make a real difference. It is clear that better than any city in the country,
San Francisco Helps! Thank you for being a part of this effort.
–S.D. Dennis
www.SanFranciscoHelps.com
Sunday, December 30, 2007
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