Amanda Witherell of the SF Bay Guardian Gets it Right On Homeless

Hat's Off To Journalist Amanda Witherell and her colleague, Bryan Cohen of The San Francisco Bay Guardian for their Courage.

Their Recent Undercover Investigations of Tax Funded Home-less Shelters In San Francisco, Happened Right Before Our City's Board of Supervisors Were Starting To Vote On Shelter Standards Of Care.

Their report showed us all why these Standards of Care are vital because for almost 15 years, our non-profit contracted shelter providers and city agencies (like HSA, Human Services Agency) had failed to enforce existing contract requirements, let alone the fact that there were 'no real standards' of health, safety, hygiene, staff training being implemented, followed or enforced, in any of the 19 shelters and resource centers that serve close to 1,500 every day or every month in San Francisco.

They truly deserve nominations for The Pulitizer Prize for their in depth, unbiased, first-hand reporting.

They lived in the shelters to see, with their own eyes, all of the realities that lay in store for them inside our City's homeless shelters and resources centers.

Amanda and her colleague, Bryan went 'undercover' as homeless residents to see what was really happening inside our City's tax funded homeless shelter system.

They did not need to rely on any HSA Reports; Shelter Monitoring Committee Reports; press releases; glossy non-profit service provider promo videos; or even the homeless advocate reports from our Coalition On Homelessness, to come to their own conclusions about how our elderly, disabled, poor and home-less residents are 'really' being 'cared for' and treated at our tax funded, non-profit contracted shelter sites.

Public Officials, like Mayor Gavin Newsom seems to keep shutting down shelters (on short notice without stable replacements) and 24 hour 'drop in' centers like Buster's Place (which serves about 120 people a day) -- even through the whole City realizes that it's money well spent as 'human investments'.

In a recent press conference, the Mayor said he wanted to 'get out of the shelter business'.

We want to be fair to the Mayor. We believe that perhaps, he wants to 'do the right thing' but unless he already 'knows the truth' or has people around him that he can trust to 'tell him the truth' then he is going to keep making the same mistakes and mis-spending of money because he's being kept 'in the dark'. Maybe that is why it 'looks like' he's not 'up to speed' with what's really going on and been going on in our homeless shelters. Maybe EVERYONE that has been making money off of the abuse and captivity has been lying about it, to all of us.

Well, we say this because we can't believe that's what the Mayor meant to say, (about closing down all the shelters or all except two) because just as you need different size measuring cups to move ingredients from one place to the other, to make a proper cake, you need to have all of the assorted sizes of cups to measure out the ingredients properly or you end up with a mess.

Similiar to that example, each 'place' that a homeless, mentally ill, disabled, elderly or poor person has to have services to meet their needs as they change and become more 'stable'. It's not an 'either-or' proposition.

It's about 'quality', 'quantity' and value (performance) of the ingredients (resources) that go into the mix of 'taking care' of our people with their unique and diverse needs.

You can't decide to eliminate ingredients in a recipe that you do not like and expect to come out with a winning meal. Each ingredient must be 'balanced' in value and proportion to the other ingredients to make it all 'work together'.

If you try to bake a cake and the yeast is rotten, then you don't just stop using yeast...

No, you would replace the box of yeast or replace the supplier (if their products or services could not be trusted), but you would continue to work with each ingredient because they are all necessary for the entire recipe to work.

We must have places for people to go that are safe and humane. Shelters are just one necessary step. It's part of a larger pipeline.

Others are transitional housing, SRO's and supportive housing and in certain cases, some sort of medical 'respite'.

Some people, no matter if they are on the streets or in an SRO or shelter or friend's couch, need a safe place to go, like a 24 hour center, even if its just a few nights a month to 'get away' and 'be safe' from bad or hostile home environment.

However, it's a continuous 'path' moving people from streets all the way to affordable housing which means not everyone should be at the 'same' type of place or need all services offered.

Every one has different needs, but what they all have in common, is the need and the right to be safe and taken 'good care' of, for as long as needed, at any place they go to.

One cannot replace the 'shelter beds' with 'respite' beds or 24 hour drop in center chairs; it's not like that. Each place and each type of place has it's own unique set of resources and fills certain needs.

What Is A Monopoly ?
Monopoly (economics), economic situation in which only a single seller (or 1 or 2 sellers) or producers supply a commodity or a service.

For a monopoly to be effective, there must be no practical substitutes for the product or service sold, and no serious threat of the entry of a competitor into the market. This enables the seller to control the price.



Wiping out competition & resident's choices, by City Officials expressing a desire to 'close all shelters' except the two largest (which would create a grotesque monopoly or bi-monopoly, leaving us all with just 2 shelter providers) shelter providers, that have not performed, nearly as well, as their smaller non-profit competitors) is like some sort of a 'non-profit' mad dictator's dream.

It surely does NOT represent the will of the people and residents that live and work at all the shelters, resource centers, and service provider facilities.

It smells like cheese, say the latino residents.

That means it's bad for everyone and the real motives or reasons are either not clear or are not being given to us, or they do not exist.

Investments made by us now, in standards and true shelter reform, will give us great returns because it insures the health, safety and enabling of our residents to get through the shelters, faster, onto their next step.

That's a lot cheaper than paying for preventable 'premium' costs associated with emergency response and treatment of people, later, who are 'loose in the streets' that need our help but have no place to go to 'be safe' because of short sided budget cuts.

We're talking about a couple hundred people a day, (elderly, disabled, mentally ill and women) at risk, due to our Mayor's 'cuts' -- to the only 24 hour center we have.

These short sided cuts perpetuate cycles of much higher costs (later) due to gross overtime pay to police, fire and medical response personnel, who's services could have been shifted elsewhere, if we had more shelter beds and 24 hour centers.

It's a no-brainer... but no one except a few 'elected servants', as seen by their own press releases and speeches, appear to want to keep putting the cart in front of the horse and they cannot seem to articulate 'reasons' behind the cuts... they just repeating repeating 'we have ot make the cuts' like trained parrots or puppets.

Who is pulling their strings to run up costs (misuse of our tax money and community donations) and cause us more suffering, instead of just doing 'what the people want'.

Which is -- to save tax money and prevent harm, suffering and premature death or aggravation of mentally ill residents. ???

Whose money is it, anyway ?

It's not the Mayor's money, it's Our Money.

We all pay these taxes, so why isn't it being spent according to Our Will ?

If we want to spend the money now to help people and save a lot more that won't have to be spent on emergency and crisis services later, why can't we ?

Makes no sense when they are unable to 'tell us' why and give us sound reasons for the ridiculously expensive cuts to Buster's Place, shelter beds and mental health services.

Is someone actually profitting politically or monetarily off the backs (and the blood) of our City's homeless ?

Are 'special interest groups' trying to 'stop us' from preventing harm and putting our own people at risk, because 'they' a small number of service providers or emergency services and city workers are 'making a ton of money' in preventable overtime pay ?

Is that what this is all about ? We know we can greatly reduce overtime pay and premium emergency response and treatment costs (and reduce crime!) by taking good care of our elderly, poor, sick, veterans and homeless residents now, instead of waiting until they are 'abandoned' and thrown out to the streets which will result in more injury, sickness, crime, emergency response and possible accidental death by officer shootings.

So, tell us again, why are we NOT spending the money up front now, as an investment ?

Why are we shutting down the only 24 hour center we have ?

Why is the Mayor and the HSA Director Trent Rohrer, slashing away a million dollars worth of 'slightly' mentally ill health care services ?

And why are we NOT holding individual cheaters, thieves, abusers and drug dealers working on staff at some shelters and resource centers accountable for their wrong doing ?

And why are we not encouraging 'clean' shelter operators to come and bid for new 24 hour centers, shelters and resource centers ?

Oh. We almost forgot. What about those SRO's (Single Room Occupancies) that are being used as psuedo-apartments ? We are seeing some 'new ' ones, that look like someone took a single studio and chopped it into two new 'micro' studios.

We all wonder how many of our City's SRO's are doing electrical work and tearing open abestos filled walls, WITHOUT THE PROPER BUILDING PERMITS and WITHOUT A QUALIFIED, LICENSED CONTRACTOR....

Kind of like building little cell-like boxes to warehouse people in. I bet someone is making a fortune off of these 'deals' that result in more people being given less space, and their human rights, dignity and 'comfort' and health are being stripped away like a banana peel in the hot sun.

We look forward to more reports like these from this 'duo' of journalists in the future and if we could only get more journalists in the Bay Area to follow your lead and give us 'the facts' so that as a community, we can decide what's best for ourselves without all the lying, cheating, corruption and selfishness ...

Have A Great Weekend. Stay Safe Wherever You Are !

NowPublic

Tags: ada | harm | San Francisco | 24 hour drop in | Abuse | amanda witherell | buster's place | dignity and respect | disease prevention | dph | elderly | Health | homeless | homeless shelter | hsa | human investment | lack of standards | MONOPOLIES | non-profits | real life | risk | sfbg