PERSPECTIVE ON THE HOMELESS : Off the Streets, Into the Safety Net

Nearly a decade after the Reagan Administration abdicated its commitment to low-cost housing and the social safety net, Americans are experiencing “compassion fatigue.”

Frightened by aggressive panhandlers and unsettled by disheveled street people, citizens are demanding some sort of solution to the growing homeless population.

In New York and Atlanta, public restiveness prompted orders to use police force to clear public parks and streets of the homeless. Closer to home, a pro-homeless rally in Santa Cruz sparked an angry counter-demonstration, where participants shouted “homeless, go to hell.”

Even in San Francisco, a city famous for its tolerance, one politician demanded that police roust homeless people by force from a public park in the Civic Center, across from City Hall.

As mayor, I share the impatience with finding a solution. But San Francisco has chosen a different path, rejecting the notion that homeless people should be rousted out of town on the end of a police baton. Instead we have constructed, and this month began installing, a system of choices designed to help homeless people pull their lives back together.

At its core is a fundamental shift away from the traditional American disaster-relief model with which most cities, including San Francisco, responded to homelessness in the early 1980s.

But we now recognize that treating homeless people like victims of floods, hurricanes or earthquakes ignores the underlying causes: the critical shortage of low-cost housing, along with mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment and family breakups. So, for the past two years, San Francisco has been shifting city policy toward helping homeless people live independently.

After months of planning and coordination with advocates for the homeless and even the homeless themselves, the city opened two multiservice centers designed to connect homeless people with health and social services and, ultimately, the housing they need to stabilize their lives.

When a homeless person walks through the door of one of these centers, he or she is served by a team of health and social welfare workers armed with the resources to address the underlying causes of homelessness. Housing, job training, mental health programs and drug and alcohol programs are all part of this comprehensive approach. The centers are a first stop, not a dead end. The ultimate goal is to get the clients into transitional and permanent housing and onto a track of self-reliance.

During the two years that these centers and the programs supporting them were put into place, there was criticism that nothing was being done to solve the homeless problem. But I could not in good conscience simply tell homeless people in the Civic Center to “get out of town,” as was done in other cities, when we did not have a humane and decent alternative.

However, once that alternative was available, I could not in good conscience allow them to stay outdoors at night. I believe that when decent alternatives exist, people lose their right to sleep outside--and the two centers have fully accommodated all of the homeless people who once stayed in the Civic Center.

Some people argued differently. When the options were in place and police began to enforce the “no sleeping” law, the same advocates for the homeless who had criticized government for moving too slowly now said we moved too fast. Ironically, the same people who for years called attention to the plight of people sleeping on the streets suddenly began to argue that no one should be deprived of their “right” to do so. I do not believe that someone has a “right” to sleep on the pavement when a humane and decent alternative exists.

Meanwhile, children, seniors and lunching city workers, once intimidated by the homeless, have returned to the Civic Center. It is, in a sense, a return to normalcy for this part of the city.

If it works, this San Francisco model, like the city’s AIDS-response model before it, may be copied by other cities. For now, it has at least silenced critics of the homeless: Merchants, newspaper editorial writers and publicity-seeking politicians are giving the program a chance.

We do not claim that this modest, if hopeful, start means that San Francisco has solved its homeless problem. We have taken the best advice of experts in developing a comprehensive system that we think will make a difference.

In a civilized society, we have an obligation to do more than just step over the homeless: We have to step up to the challenge they represent and find real solutions.

San Francisco is now geared up to help. And when decent alternatives exist, people lose their right to sleep outside.