My Complex Thoughts on Homelessness

My office is under construction. There are quite a few reasons that this is inconvenient.  First, because a lot of the services offered to clients are now only available by appointment.  Second, because there is very limited office space so they were only able to hire one intern.  And third, because it means that we can’t come in through the front door.

Instead, we use the service entrance.  My office is on Market Street, one of the longest and arguably the gayest street in San Francisco.  It is lined with pride flags and bustling with people.  The service entrance is on Waller Street.  It is a side street, not a lot of activity.

Earlier this week a group of homeless people pitched a tent on Waller Street.  Their backyard is the service entrance to the Center.  So each day, I walk into my office and through a group of  people who have temporarily made that sidewalk their home. 

At first I felt uncomfortable walking through the group.  The cat calls and whistles made me feel objectified and unsafe and I resented the fact that I had endure them to get into the office.  Next I felt fear, an experience earlier in the week in the Tenderloin had left me feeling vulnerable to the homeless men outside of my office. After the fear came guilt.  Guilt that I was afraid of the exact population I am supposed to be in San Francisco helping this summer. Guilt that I wasn’t offering help, a solution, or at least some spare change.  And finally, I felt pain, compassionate aching pain.

The whirlwind of changing emotions that came with quite literally having to step over human beings to get into my office this week has forced me to confront my own relationship with the homeless in a way that I never have before. 

Tent outside of the office

Cat calls

What is our duty

Tenderloin experience

 Orange is the new black

This is a list that I compiled before sitting down to write this.  A list of thoughts, experiences and feelings that I wanted to touch on.  I think the list displays my range of conflicting emotions well.

So let’s start from the beginning.  First I felt uncomfortable.  I think women have a complex relationship with cat calls. I very clearly remember the first time someone yelled some obscenity at me to let me know they found me attractive.  I was a freshman in high school in Penn Station.  “Hey baby, you look tasty.” I blushed, averted my gaze and walked away.  And then I felt a tiny bit of self satisfaction. Me? Tasty?

I was really small when I was younger.  Like really really small.  So I wasn’t exactly used to male attention.  Most people assumed I was much younger than I actually was and I didn’t yet have the characteristics that normally elicit cat calls (BOOBS!).  In hindsight, it is totally possible this man was a pedophile because I probably looked about twelve at the time, but none the less I felt all warm and fuzzy inside that a stranger in the subway thought I was “tasty.”  We could endlessly analyze the pressures society puts on women that could result in their first experience being objectified by a stranger making them feel good and attractive and desirable, but I’ll save that for another time. 

To be clear, I no longer feel warm and fuzzy when being cat called.  I feel violated.  I have never experienced such blatant and forward obscenities being shouted at me than here in San Francisco.

I kept a running tab in the notes on my phone of some of the quotes shouted at me last week.

“I’d like to fuck you in half” and “Let me put my cock in your mouth you skinny white bitch” are two of the less crude.  The list gets pretty weird, some highlights being, “My wife would love to come all over you” and “I’d tattoo your name onto my ass.”

So when I say that my initial reaction to the group of homeless people outside of my office was feeling uncomfortable maybe what I really mean was dread.  I was dreading having to walk through these shouted obscenities to get into my office.  The truth is I was stereotyping, assuming that every homeless man I passed was going to be crude.  But regardless, upon first walking past the tent deep dread overcame me.

This dread quickly transformed into fear.  This emotion of fear is tied to the item on the list entitled “Tenderloin experience.”

Late last week I was walking home from the apple store.  I was listening to “Friends” on my phone and absentmindedly strolling while I laughed along to Chandler’s lines.  I unknowingly walked directly into the heart of the Tenderloin.  An area of San Francisco infamously known for the high incidence of drugs, sex workers and homeless people.  It was about 7:30 at night.  I was wearing a dress and I was alone. 

I have certainly felt objectified and degraded by shouts from people on the street before but this was the first time that I felt true and unbridled fear.  I had never been to the tenderloin and its reputation had not prepared me for what I was walked into.  I watched strangers shooting heroin, men grabbed my ankles, weapons lay visible on the sidewalk and a seemingly unending stream of obscenities followed me as I walked down the block.  This was a bad decision on my part.  I should not have ended up in this area while walking alone.  The closest uber was 17 minutes away.  I called it and stepped into a restaurant to wait. 

I was very scared.  My heart was beating quickly and I practically ran across the street when “Edwin” showed up in his Toyota Prius 17 minutes later to take me home. 

According to the DukeEngage Website the service theme of DukeEngage in San Francisco is “Youth Homelessness.” Because I am here in San Francisco to try to assist with the severe issue of homelessness, my feelings of fear very quickly led me to guilt.  I felt so intensely guilty that the population I was meant to be helping I was having such an adverse reaction to.  In fact, I feel guilty writing this.  Like these are the kinds of things we’re allowed to think but not say, and certainly not write down.  I felt guilty that I wasn’t offering a solution.  That I wasn’t asking the people outside of my office to come in, have some water and stay inside for the day.  At the very least shouldn’t I be giving out money, spare change? I don’t know. 

The truth is, this feeling of guilt is one that has stuck with me.  Because I’m not exactly sure how to navigate this.  I feel ridiculous walking in with three coffee cups, Starbucks logo glaring and visible, and not offering something to the people I have to walk through.  I don’t know if a friendly smile is too little or too much.  I feel bad wondering if I am in danger.  I feel confused not knowing how I should react.  I am inside researching policy reform for the homeless in San Francisco while the embodiment of this problem sits at my backdoor.  It feels ironic and tragic all at the same time. 

Despite this tumultuous cycle of conflicting emotions I think the one that now stands out to me as the strongest is pain.  I feel this ache to make things better and I don’t know how. 

On Friday, Orange is the New Black season 4 came out on Netflix.  I have binge watched 11 of the 13 episodes.  However, the episode “It Sounded Nicer in My Head” stood out to me.  This episode focuses on a character named Lolly.  Lolly is a paranoid schizophrenic convinced that government agencies are out to get her.  She is a quirky and endearing character who spent most of her life living on the streets.  In the flashbacks to her life before prison, Lolly is shown carrying around a long stick with bells on the end.  Whenever she hears the unwanted voices in her head she shakes the stick and the bells drown out the voices. 

Yesterday while walking to work I watched a man on the street hold up a soda can that sounded like it was filled rice and shake it aggressively around his head.  He seemed so distraught. 

The truth is, I have no idea what this man’s story was and no idea why he was shaking the can next to his head but it made me think of Lolly trying to drown out the voices.  I know, it seems ridiculous to think that a TV show could illicit such a response from me but my eyes filled with tears. 

Because every single person I have passed on the street has a story. Whether it be someone cat calling me as I walk by, or those lining the sidewalks in the tenderloin, or the 6 people camped outside of the service entry to my office, they all have a story. 

And it crystallized the fact for me that these are people with families, and childhoods and friends and histories.  And yet they are living on the street, forced to remain outside while I get to swipe my key card and walk in.  The blatant unfairness and seeming randomness of who's story ends where is almost more pain than I can handle.