Seems to me that one of the most important things anthropology can do is to humanise one group of people to another group of people. Dehumanisation leads to lynchings, pogroms, and all that nastiness, but also casual, careless wars (does the phrase ‘Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.’ sound familiar?) and absurdly hurtful public policy.

In the last San Francisco municipal elections, one of the hottest issues was the Homeless Problem. What, exactly, constituted the Homeless Problem was rarely well articulated. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s first State of the City Address was characteristic:

Homelessness has replaced the Golden Gate Bridge and the cable car as one of the city’s most defining symbols. It’s the one thing that every San Franciscan can agree on: Homelessness is the problem.

I imagine, if I were homeless, that I would consider that a problem. While I know that there are a great many truly compassionate people in this city who are concerned about the lives of the homeless, I’m not sure that the Homeless Problem qua problem for the homeless is usually the concern. Some, like, apparently, Newsom, consider homelessness a blight on the city — their concern is almost aesthetic. (Or financial — many business owners believe that the local homeless are driving customers away and cutting into profits.) But I think for most of us, it’s the psychic dis-ease and moral guilt felt whenever we lie about the change in our pocket, whenever we see the tenuousness of the sanity we take for granted, whenever we realise, perhaps subconsciously, that those of us who have do not necessarily deserve.

Maybe that’s just me.

San Francisco’s current solution for the Homeless Problem is Mayor Newsom’s Care Not Cash initiative. The basic idea is actually a pretty good one: Instead of keeping people on the dole, we should provide serious and effective services to help them get back on their feet. But the reality is falling short. Between May of 2004 and May of this year, 789 people were put into long-term housing. Booyah. But here’s the problem. Last May, 2,497 people were receiving welfare checks from the city. One year later, only 653 remained. Assuming that 690 of those who went off welfare are among the newly-housed, there are still 1,055 people unaccounted for. That’s highly disconcerting. The problem? Welfare checks have been slashed by 85.6% from $410/month to $59. Certainly, some people who could take advantage of the Care aspect of the program (since they’re certainly getting no Cash) would choose not to participate. But even if they did want to, there are only 793 rooms, thus far.

Well, damn. If we’re going to focus on care, we’d best learn how to. For several months, I’ve been considering the possibility of conducting some field research at home, here on the streets of San Francisco. The goals: to better understand homelessness and street culture (not solely homeless culture); to humanise the people I pass on the street everyday for myself; to figure out a way to present a human understanding of San Francisco homelessness to those in power — the housed voting public.

Over the next month and a half I’ll be sussing out the feasibility of this project. I’ve got a couple of ins. Next week I begin a temp job at a property management firm in downtown San Francisco, two blocks from the Market Street public chess tables. Market Street’s chess players are by no means all homeless, but some are. I’ve been working on my chess for three months, now, and while I’m still a woodpushing weakling, I think I’m about a month away from becomming a contender on this level. In addition, I’m on friendly terms with a street poet who makes repeat efforts to bring an understanding of his San Francisco to others in the city. This is a connection I need to explore.

I’ll be posting updates to this blog over the next seven weeks, as I scout this out. After that, if I decide to do this thing, I’ll be keeping my fieldnotes on-line.

Sources

Note: All of the information in this article was taken from newspaper articles which I read as they were printed. I am aware that there’s a great deal of information which I’ve missed, and that my perspective may be skewed by ignorance: this blog entry is intended to reflect my learning, so too much research and editing at this stage would be detrimental. I will conduct a great deal more archival research over the next few weeks.

Mayor: Homeless are city’s new symbol: Newsom outlines progress on issue in State of the City address, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 October 2004
Fewer homeless people on streets of San Francisco: 28% drop since fall of ‘02, but other counties report higher numbers, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 February 2005
About 800 homeless move inside with Care Not Cash, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 May 2005
Homeless move west from city’s urban core: Some would rather change their address than change ways, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 May 2005

This entry was posted on Tuesday, 31 May 2005 at 16:45 and is filed under San Francisco Streets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.