The People on the Plaza

On a recent bright and sunny Monday afternoon, I took the sixteen-minute BART ride from Oakland – where I was doing some work – into downtown San Francisco.  I went to several places where people who are homeless tend to congregate. 

What I saw made me wonder.  Do we realize that if we do nothing, up to half of the people who are chronically homeless are likely to die in the next ten years?

I exited the BART train at the Civic Center/UN Plaza station.  When I arrived above ground, I saw more than a hundred homeless people in the vicinity of the station.  They were sitting or resting on the plaza, pretty much keeping to themselves.

Scores of tourists, business people, and shoppers hurried about their business.  There was no interaction between the two groups.  It reminded me of the way old-time cartoons had the action layered on top of a static backdrop – a crowd bustling with activity set against the backdrop of stationary homeless people.

I witnessed something similar in at least three other settings that afternoon.

I walked into Buena Vista Park, a beautiful, wooded park on a hill along Haight Street with awesome, expansive views of San Francisco.  As I climbed its paths, I passed by several people out walking their dogs.  They barely noticed the homeless people sleeping or sitting on the grassy lawn nearby. 

In the nearby panhandle of Golden Gate Park, a few joggers and sunbathers also ignored the small groups of homeless people sitting together under the trees.

And at the Powell Street station later on that afternoon, hundreds of shoppers passed by scores of homeless people without paying them the least bit of attention.

At first, I didn’t see what was wrong with this picture.  I was impressed with the live-and-let-live spirit of the community, where no one hassled anyone else. 

But then I looked more closely.  The people passing through the plaza were so accustomed to the homeless people on the plaza that they were not moved – either to anger or to sympathy – by seeing them.

San Francisco has an estimated 24,000 people who are homeless.  Its governmental agencies and nonprofit community do far more for them than most. 

According to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the city has moved 8,000 people off the streets since 2004, and has 1,155 emergency shelter beds.  A new homeless health care clinic will open this summer with the capacity to accommodate 50,000 visits per year.  And because the homeless population is aging, 77 new apartments are opening for homeless seniors.

But that doesn’t mean that chronic homelessness isn’t a problem anymore.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness released a new report last month that documented some improvements in the prevalence rates of both overall homelessness and chronic homelessness in the United States over the past ten years. 

But the same report shows that the numbers of homeless people have remained steady during the last four years, in spite of an improving economy.  (Perhaps cutbacks in mental health funding are a reason.) One person in every five hundred is homeless. And out of every ten thousand veterans, 29 are homeless.

Here's something to think about.

The Chronicle article also noted that the mean age of the homeless population increased from 34 to 53 between 1990 and 2010, and that the life expectancy of a person on the streets is 64.  It is possible that chronic homelessness is decreasing because of better services.  But it is also possible that it is decreasing because chronically homeless people are dying off.  In the next ten years, half could be dead.

The NAEH report makes it clear that the problem of homelessness is not limited to warm weather and service-rich communities like San Francisco. 

In fact, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and Alaska are among the eleven states with the highest rates of homelessness in the country. 

There is a clear connection between behavioral illnesses and chronic homelessness.  I plan to talk about this in a presentation I will be making at a breakfast open to the public sponsored by the Middlesex County Coalition on Housing and Homelessness in Haddam, Connecticut on Friday, May 17.

My goal in that talk will be simple – to remind people that no matter where you fall on the philosophical spectrum, doing nothing about homelessness is not an option. 

You may be able to walk right by the people on the plaza without them saying a word, but this doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t command your attention.

To reach Paul Gionfriddo via email: gionfriddopaul@gmail.com.  Twitter: @pgionfriddo.  Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.gionfriddo.  LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/paulgionfriddo/