Street Spirit March 2006

Bob Mills - Homeless Activist and More

Interview by Janny Castillo - BOSS Community Organizer

In 1971, when Bob Mills saw 80-year-old Felix being dragged out of his home by a San Francisco sheriff, he became determined to make it his life’s work to speak for and fight for homeless rights. He helped organize the demonstration for the International Hotel Struggle in San Francisco where the residents; mostly elderly, Philippine retired teamsters were being evicted to turn their building into a parking lot. Thirty thousand people were present and still the city police dept. took a sledge hammer to the door of the building and hauled off the residents one by one.

By 1980, Bob was in college and working as a tutor of philosophy and political science. His work with the homeless deepened to a new level. He decided to sleep on the streets to better understand homelessness. “I committed myself to being voluntarily homeless because of my dissatisfaction with the entire system and my belief that if I was going to be in solidarity with the people I was trying to help, I had to be with them.” Over the years he has slept on the streets in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. “At that time there were no shelters like we have today. Occasionally you could find a mission or someone who could put you up in their house for a while, if not you had to sleep on the streets.”

His experience has given him a clear understanding of what needs to be done to eradicate homelessness. “Sleeping on the streets turned a theoretical understanding into a direct experience.” Bob says, “We need a real serious economic overhaul. Our system is too much based on profit and the profit margin and NOT on human life. If you are an individual who can not contribute to a company’s profit, you are valueless. The day of the laborer is gone. Most labor can now be outsourced.”

Due to a series of mishaps and his inability to obtain his birth certificate Bob is now living on the streets and couch surfing whenever he can. “I am totally dependant on the generosity of others for my daily survival. I am unable to get identification, unable to open a bank account, unable to cash checks, because it requires identification; I am unable to get any kind of assistance like GA, SSI, and public housing.”  

Bob describes himself as a libertarian anarchist. His passion to advocate for his people has only deepened, “I am working to organize the homeless union. I am developing a radio show through Berkeley Liberation Radio called “Voices from the Streets” and I am continuing to work towards creating an organization that will provide technology to the extremely poor.”

When asked if he could give examples of what issues homeless individuals are facing, Bob shared two stories: “I am working with a 73 year old homeless man who has been on the streets a long time. In the warm months he lives in the Sierra Mountains and comes down to sleep in the streets in the winter time. He has now come to the realization that because of his age, he can no longer risk sleeping outside. Even with his SSI income, he is having a difficult time locating housing he can afford. Bob says his spirit to live is gone. He sent him to the North Berkeley Senior Center and then to St. Mary’s Center who sent him to the Oakland Housing Authority. He is now experiencing what Bob calls the homeless shuffle, going from one agency to another until he gets right back to where he started with nothing.  “He has been told that it could be 5 years before he gets housing. He is 73 years old; he may not even be alive in 5 years.”

Henry is 64 years old and has been on the streets for two years. He is seriously ill; he stayed at a shelter in San Diego and contracted pneumonia and a serous case of bronchitis.  Most his life, he worked as a carpenter until a roof injury made him unable to work.  Right now, he is stuck in a homeless shelter with little opportunities for permanent housing. These stories are repeated every where. Bob says people are thinking, “I might as well continue living on the streets, I may as well die on the streets.”

Bob described the system that we have today. “When a computer becomes too full it shuts down. In our society, we have tons of laws that are the equivalent to hundreds of thousands of lines of computer programming which had been running on an obsolete operating system. We are trying to keep this obsolete system going and our society has become too complex to handle, so essentially we have to throw it out and create a whole new system.”

His last words, “Our elderly, our handicapped, our mentally ill are literally dying on the streets, and our system has become so callous that it can not care for them and has absolutely no respect for the human person. We have work to do. We really need to mobilize and organize.”

To contact Bob Mills, write to homelessunion@yahoo.com.

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