by Mike Miller on January 6, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
We are “The City That Knows How” our civic cheer-leaders tell us. Unfortunately, it’s not so: Regarding people without homes, our city is a disgrace. Neither wealthy individuals, nor corporations, nor government appear capable of a solution. Under-funded nonprofits lack the capacity to do so. Everyday people—citizens, residents, workers and others— have to fill the gap.
As a veteran community organizer (Mission Coalition, All Peoples Coalition, Coalition for Effective Schools and San Francisco Organizing Project), each of which was a broadly-based alliance of religious, labor, civic, interest, identity, labor and other groups, here are some proposals for doing that:
Market and Mission Street Workers
Start talking among yourselves. Agree that, as the Good Samaritan story tells us, “everyone is a neighbor.”
Learn from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, the Coalition On Homelessness, and others the dimensions of the problem. Learn the differences among people without homes.
Go outside at lunch, on a break or when your workday ends and start talking with people who make the street their homes. Listen to them!
When you think you’ve earned some trust, ask them if they think it would be a good idea if vacant offices in your building were converted into living spaces.
If they do, propose to your building owner that s/he make that conversion, and tell him/her you and your colleagues are available to help.
If you get agreement, all of you should celebrate together: your fellow building occupants, the resource people who advised you, the people who will occupy the spaces your activity has made available to them.
If you don’t get agreement, learn how to take non-violent direct action against people who should agree with your proposals.
Mobile Home Residents
Scattered around San Francisco are mobile homes that are the semi-permanent residences of immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere. Many of them are families. They try to park inconspicuously on city streets. Neighbors and official San Francisco move them; police sometimes give them tickets.
Take a different approach: Find out what streets and other public spaces lend themselves to night-time parking. Typically, these are lots, paved squares or streets with housing only of one side of them.
Visit the residents and others who would be directly affected by mobile homes parking across the street from them. Talk with those residents. Propose that you and they go to the Department of Public Works (DPW) to provide extra service to the spaces-turned into anchors for homes.
Before going to DPW, meet with the San Francisco Police Officers Association and win their support for the idea. Go to the Service Employees Union that represents city workers and win their support as well. Your group, residents, mobile home owners and public employees could then go to official San Francisco with specific proposals for specific places to become residential spaces.
Empty Schools
Parents do not want to see their neighborhood schools closed. The San Francisco Unified School District claims closure is a budgetary necessity. I think there’s a way out of this conflict.
A group of parents, neighbors and neighborhood groups could get together and agree on a concept something like this:
— Instead of closing the schools, block off space no longer needed for school purposes and turn it into residential use. Meet with the unions of jurisdiction in the SFUSD and win their support for the idea. Perhaps the cafeteria could open evenings, long after students have left school, and serve food to hungry and homeless people. Perhaps the gym could be used by those people and their children as recreation space after dinner. Public departments like Welfare, Recreation and Community Development could contribute funding to SFUD for their jurisdiction’s role in these programs.
— Maybe add this twist: see if the student government and teachers’ union at SF State would be interested in meeting with your group and work out a program in which students majoring in social work could get field work experience by being assigned to these schools.
A Tactical Note
Don’t treat unions and other associations of everyday people the same way you treat “the power structure.” The Teachers Union constitution’s preamble says, “We…believe that the active participation of [educational personnel] in the development of educational policy is essential for sound education in a democratic society…” Service Employees Local 1021 says, “We value human dignity, equality, solidarity, and the principles of democracy. We acknowledge diversity and traditions. To that end, we seek to empower, support, and encourage our members to improve our status and the status of other working people.” [I assume they include unemployed people.]
Most, if not all, public employee unions and associations share statements of principle like these. Your task is to get them to live by their own rules. In my organizing work in San Francisco, I have seen such alliances between community organizations and unions representing firefighters, teachers, service employees and others.
Conclusion
The Common Thread in these proposals is “planning from below.” In these ideas, and others you can think of as well, I’ve begun with the most directly affected people. The point is to deal with public agencies and elected officials after you’ve got those most affected people together around a common program. In street language, leave the bureaucrats and politicians to the last. They have had time to solve this and other city problems. Ideas, pressure and programs “from below” are required.
Rather than the frustration, sense of powerlessness and anger from these public failures, let citizens gather and, with one another, come up with new solutions.
To close:
“No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.” Matthew Desmond, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University, in Evicted.
