One of the main focuses this month on the street
was discussion about Mayor Tom Bates’ regional approach to homelessness,
the Multi-Plan on Homelessness developed between the city of Berkeley,
the county of Alameda and the city of Oakland and his meeting with the
Alliance of Bay Area Governments concerning the issue of homelessness.
He has been chairman of the ABAG Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
This has been discussed in several local newspaper
articles which has led to discussions with folks on the street about
this with me giving some background like explaining the national push
towards Housing First and defunding of other homeless services like drop
in centers and shelters to create more money towards housing. While this
month I have a number of criticisms of all shelters in town there is
both skepticism and concern about where the mayor is going with this
given the context of the recent talk of the UC Berkeley-city revising of
the Downtown plan basically greenlighting development by the University
putting more stress on the affordability of housing in Berkeley.
This has been accentuated with reports of Katrina
victims getting first priority for Section 8 vouchers. At the
Multi-Agency Services Center there is concern that this result in the
end of MASC with the withdrawal of city funding. The closure of the
Homeplate youth drop-in center due to this shift by Housing and Urban
Development aggravated this concern and the concern of older homeless
about more unserved homeless youth on the streets with no place to go.
There is a generalized anxiety that much of Berkeley’s homeless services
will be slashed and the housing being offered will be offered elsewhere
like bad unpleasant areas of Oakland or out in places like Pittsburg and
Tracy.
The San Francisco model that the city of Berkeley
seems to want to model its plan on is not looked at favorably by many of
the streets who have heard of one way tickets out of San Francisco,
people being forced out of the Civic Center area out to Golden Gate Park
or out of the city---which they fear may be Berkeley’s real plan with
the mayor’s focus on regional approaches and other cities needing to
take a more fair share of the burden of homelessness. Many are feeling a
nostalgia for the Bushville protest when they stood up in resistance and
think the mayor should sleep outside again because he seems less
sensitive to their concerns.
They feel police harassment is up particularly
those in the downtown Shattuck corner but also in the Southside. They
feel Berkeley is generally as lot better to the homeless but feel
anxious that an agenda moving toward gentrification and development is
going to push them out, feel incidents of anti-homeless sentiment is
rising in Berkeley and fear the mayor really is more concerned about
this sentiment than truly coming from a place of compassionate concern.
My efforts to defend his actions is often met with a scornful attitude
by many but still many others do feel is honestly trying but don’t
really feel he understands the problem as he seems to feel he does.
The Free Box and Homeless
Vets
The following is a letter I sent to Mayor Tom
Bates, his public relations man and to a number of others. I have
received no response.
Dear Honorable Mayor Tom Bates and Cisco de Vries,
I am writing for two reasons. One has to do with
what is happening on Veteran's Day. I just read the Contra Costa Times
article but read an article earlier I think it was in the Daily Times
that different information on Veteran's Day. In this article I recall
reading that the replacement keynote speaker was from a national group
of Homeless Veterans that Kriss Worthington had talked to. Now I read it
is going to be Michael Blecker from Swords to Ploughshares. Now I told
the earlier information to two veterans one from the Vietnam War now
both in the Oakland Homeless Project that there would be a keynote
speaker on the issue of homeless veterans and they were eager to come.
They were also hoping there would be someone speaking on accessing
benefits which is what Michael Blecker said there would be. There is
also another homeless alcoholic veteran who often hangs out on Channing
Way off of Telegraph by name of Mike who I tried unsuccessfully to get
him assistance but who I also talked about last year's Veteran's Day
memorial. I would like to give them the right information.
Last year after the memorial I mentioned to Country
Joe that there were three homeless veterans hanging out on the outskirts
of the park watching. Country Joe said he wanted to say something about
the homeless veterans. I asked him that some acknowledgment of their
suffering be made this year, mentioning the loss of homeless Vietnam
veterans (one that year who had been in the Harrison St. shelter, was
well known and missed at MASC) who died from drinking their pain away.
He has done benefits for the Berkeley Homeless Union (along with the
mayor) and for Options Recovery since then to help address this
situation.
This past May another homeless Vietnam veteran of
Cuban American background Richard Moore died of a heart attack. He had
been involved with the Catholic Workers cooking breakfasts for other
homeless folks. He also helped cook for the 200l rally at the city
council the evening the Homeless Human and Civil Rights Resolution was
passed and later cooked for the homeless participants of the Nov. 2003
Bushville peace camp protest in Civic Center Park. Last year he was
rudely treated by a U.C. police officer in People's Park and suddenly he
had a flashback of active combat, of murderous rage firing back on Viet
Cong, killing there. He told me I said it was important to share that,
not hold unto the guilt, the sorrow, the anguish connected to those
post-traumatic memories.
In 1969, he came to Berkeley upon completion of his
service, asked to be let off at People's Park in the early turbulent
days of the founding struggle of that park, very much against that war.
He wanted to come back and help others partially out of guilt of killing
Vietnamese in combat and indeed had. He expressed the real sense of loss
of having experienced despite all his obvious abilities homelessness for
most of years since the late 1970s, his deep bouts with depression. And
then he was able to cry---for the first time he said about all this. I
told him as someone who just missed having to decide to whether to take
the draft or go to Canada who deeply opposed the wars and so my working
class friends go fight there and never come the same I really didn't
want to lose any more Vietnam veterans on the streets. I said it's
important to let it out, experience the grief, the sorrow, the loss in
order to heal. Now I am crying as I write this for my lost friend. As I
keep doing this homeless outreach work, keep going to more memorials for
people I have grown to care about I am feeling my own kind of shell
shock.
I know you as mayor have done much to draw
attention to the needs of the homeless and have to respond to
constituents who just wish Berkeley's homeless problem would just go
away be less visible. I wish it could too but I want the problem to be
very visible until society recognizes its obligation to do something
about this problem.
It grows colder. There is no adequate place for
homeless people to go and get free clothes. The Free Box in People's
Park for all its problem provided free clothes. We the Friends of
People's Park have been trying to rebuild the Free Box after it being
burned twice by UC frat boys who live near the park. I have written at
length on the BOSS Community Organizing Team website (http://www.createpeaceathome.org)
in my Berkeley street reports including the problems around People's
Park and the Free Box. I understand the neighbors' concerns but their
discomfort is not in any way comparable to the pain the homeless who
need the refuge of People's Park, who need (warm) clothes from the Free
Box, who freeze at night.
I have called your office, e-mailed you about this
but have gotten no response. We understand that you have been in
discussion with University officials about the Free Box, heard that they
told you that UC would let us rebuild the Free Box (they keep tearing
down our rebuilding efforts) with conditions. Is this true? What are the
conditions. City councilmember Kriss Worthington has been talking about
a town hall meeting around the issue of the Free Box and People's Park
with the various stakeholders involved which I believe really is the
only to resolve this issue and find working solutions that address
different and seemingly conflicting community needs. I have many friends
who are still traumatized by the police force used back in 1991 around
the volleyball court and I feel strongly they are owed an apology by the
University and the city. Watching that abuse on TV at the Berkeley Free
Clinic grieving for our martyrs (David Nadel, Bob Sparks) was a big
motivator for me to get politically active leading up to battle over
Measure O.
I can not remain silent while people on the streets
continue to suffer in the city of Berkeley, in Oakland etc. I do not
seek out confrontation but I do seek justice---and ever more compassion
for those who have no residence to go and be safe in. It is a deep moral
issue for me. People on the streets hope I will speak up for them. Like
Ron Dellums in his recent speech announcing his candidacy for mayor of
Oakland I feel compelled to try to give them some hope in the face of
great fear and despair. Likewise I look to you as mayor to help bring
hope. I know you care it is not some public relations move to look good.
People need housing, clothes, health care and
caring. These basic human rights have been recognized by the United
Nations and by the city of Berkeley as much as they fall on deal ears in
Washington and Sacramento too much of the time.
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