Cutting Through the Red Tape

This is the second in a two-part series by Fellow Rachel Alonso on her experiences volunteering for the San Francisco Homeless Count. In her first post, she wrote about her experiences arriving at and leaving the count.  In this post, she focuses on her experiences during the count.

Part 2, The Count itself was an interesting experience:

I arrived at the Department of Public Health at 7pm, which was the deployment location for the Downtown/Central City area. The room was full – I noticed many young people, volunteers with Community Ambassador jackets, and some Code for America fellows in the audience, as well as a wall lined with police officers. My friend had saved me a seat, where for about thirty minutes we received instructions about how to safely count the homeless population. Volunteers weren’t allowed to approach people, ask questions, or enter large parks or abandoned buildings. In addition to individuals on the street, we were on the lookout for people living in tents, cars, and other structures. We needed to note each person’s gender (male, female, transgender, or unknown) and age (under 18, 18-24, and over 25). There was a section for families, though it was unlikely we would see many.

My friend and I were expecting to walk, as neither of us have a car. However, because we are city employees, we were placed with two HOT (Homeless Outreach Team) members in a city car. The four of us were assigned two locations: Lower Haight/the edge of Hayes Valley, and the northwestern part of SoMa. In the Lower Haight, we saw fewer than ten individuals. Knowing that the neighborhood won the 2012 Curbed Cup Neighborhood of the Year earlier this month, I was not very surprised to find more hipsters congregating outside bars than homeless people. The only ‘hotspot’ we saw was at a construction site along Octavia. After this, we headed to SoMa, where more than thirty homeless people were counted – fewer than I was expecting. The HOT members seemed surprised as well; attributing the diminished homeless presence to the on-going mid-Market construction boom, they noted an overall population shift to the south and east.

Our group finished the count earlier than expected, close to 10pm. After dropping our tallies off at the DPH deployment center, the researchers confirmed our totals, and I went home with a lot on my mind. I attended the homeless count because I was interested. The methodologies of such homeless censuses have been criticized, so I wanted to see for myself how the work was organized and assigned, and whether it seemed accurate or not. I also wanted to learn more about the City’s efforts related to homelessness, because increasing access to safe, decent, and affordable housing and improving the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable populations are personal and professional interests of mine. I was less critical of the process than I expected to be, and I liked the logic of having all of the homeless counts across the country take place in late January.

Our team’s biggest challenge was efficiently navigating the boundaries of our areas; I pondered the usefulness of creating some sort of smartphone application to make this process more effective. On the one hand, this idea seems like a prime candidate for something that could be developed at a civic hack-a-thon and/or by Code for America – yet wouldn’t the resources for making such an app be much better allocated to directly serving the homeless population? Making the homeless count more efficient does not actually address the problem of chronic homelessness. Ideally, a count would not need to occur, because everyone would have access to safe, decent, and affordable housing. In reality, the count is a pragmatic way to evaluate the number of homeless individuals at a single point in time. Personally, I see both sides of the situation, but am ultimately uneasy at the thought of prioritizing homeless-related work (i.e., enhancing counters’ navigation) at the expense of thinking bigger picture and targeting the structural issues underlying homelessness, such as housing costs and supply, jobs, or access to mental health care, facilities, and treatment. I’d rather see hack-a-thons and other civic-minded technology tools focus on meeting the bigger picture. What do you think, reader?

by Rachel Alonso, SF2013

This is the first in a two-part series by Fellow Rachel Alonso on her experiences volunteering for the San Francisco Homeless Count.

Ever wondered what it’s like to volunteer for the San Francisco homeless count? Let me share my experience from January 24, 2013.

I went to the deployment location straight from work, so I was dressed “business casual” and was carrying a purse and my lunch bag. While waiting to receive my location assignment, some other volunteers began chatting and warned me that I was “a target” due to these possessions. This made me feel ill at ease, unwelcome, and silly – especially because I practically live in the neighborhood we were going to be counting! Every day, I walk ten blocks to and from my office in City Hall and my apartment in Lower Nob Hill, or “the Tendernob,” as dubbed by the real estate industry. Furthermore, over the summer I worked at the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, which meant walking through the heart of the TL every day. Hearing that other people have apparently seen me as nothing more than “a target” the past eight months – or that these community volunteers are so cynical that they are propagating invidious stereotypes – was unsettling and disappointing. I realize I live and work in a challenged neighborhood with safety issues, but I don’t walk around in constant fear, and I don’t assume everyone I pass is trying to rob me. Should I be more vigilant and wary of strangers? This interaction was confusing, and left me full of doubts.

Another aspect of the evening that was particularly noteworthy to me was how it was book-ended by two drastically different events. All day, a party was set up at City Hall for the ballet; when I arrived at work, caterers were setting out trays and cups in the basement, and throughout the afternoon, large hanging displays, tables with elaborate place-settings, colorful carpets for the stairs, and giant curtains were set up in the lobby. Similarly large-scale events are held in City Hall multiple times each week, but I had never seen anything as opulent as this ballet party. When I left work, I saw waiters wearing tuxes, and women in beautiful floor-length ball gowns; I felt as though I had stepped into an episode of Gossip Girl or something. To go from that environment to a homeless count really brought to life the increasing income inequality in the U.S., and San Francisco in particular. The end of the count was similarly marked by a sign of San Francisco’s social and economic cleavages: not comfortable walking home at that late hour, I used the Sidecar smart phone app, which is so symbolic of the growing role technology plays in the city, to get a ride instead – in a BMW, nonetheless!

Overall, I was expecting my “world to be rocked” and my “eyes to be opened” more by the homeless count. Perhaps because we were driving in a car, rather than on foot, I felt more removed from the lives of the people I was counting. I was of course made more appreciative of my personal comforts: a job, apartment, and warm clothes. My biggest problems at the moment were feeling cold with the car windows rolled down and hungry because the leftover pasta I ate for dinner was not satiating enough. Participating in the count enhanced my sense of perspective and gratefulness, but I was left with a peculiar feeling, a wish to have done more, or to have made a more meaningful contribution. As suggested by one of the HOT members, perhaps I will volunteer at the next Project Homeless Connect.

In part 2, Rachel will share her experience during the count itself.

On the occasion of recruiting next year’s Cohort of Fellows, Belle Yan (SF ’13) looks back at what she wish she knew when she was applying for the program.

During the last seven years, I have spent my free time working on social justice initiatives. Whether it was teaching lower-income students math or preserving voting rights for Asian Americans, my activities epitomized my dedication to using direct service and public policy to create more opportunities for those who are marginalized, underserved, or somehow just ignored.

Knowing that 90% of my fellowship would be spent at my placement, looking at previous placements rendered me uncertain about incorporating my interests in social justice into my day-to-day responsibilities. I knew that the skills learned in any placement would be immeasurably important to my professional development – which tangentially connects to my pursuit toward social justice – but would this fellowship fulfill the commitment I had made to myself to dedicate my life to social justice?

Since August, I have come to learn that the fellowship continually offers me vehicles to serve equitably all residents of San Francisco:

Many, if not all, of the placements have social justice components.

Whether you are working toward environmental justice through the Community Choice Aggregation at the SFPUC or streamlining the process for any hopeful small business owner to obtain permits through the Office of Economic & Workforce Development (OEWD), you can make San Francisco a better place to live and work for anyone, regardless of documentation, race, gender, class, sexuality, home language, etc.

When I started working at the Municipal Transportation Authority, I did not think of my work as transportation justice. Sure, public transportation is a civil right – every resident has the right to access it, regardless of physical ability – but my helping visualizing data so we could easily identify trends in our on-time performance was not what I envisioned to be social justice work. I knew the graphs would help improve transit experiences of our Muni customers, but when our maps of historical Muni collisions, with the expertise of our Performance team and service planners, pointed out trouble spots and pushed SFMTA to create plans to improve safety in lower-income neighborhoods, I realized how much impact data could make, even in areas in the city that are generally ignored.

Small Team (and Cohort) Projects are great ways to work toward providing opportunities for the City’s underserved.

Small Team Projects (STPs) are excellent spaces to work directly with government to create opportunities for all residents. When designing STPs, we had proposals to research how to reduce recidivism for those in the San Francisco prison system, and incentivize small businesses to sell produce in food deserts.

In my project, other fellows and I are developing a list of products to help underbanked residents build credit to avoid predatory payday lenders. Consulting with the San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment (SFOFE) has taught me the difficulties of overcoming barriers to enter the financial mainstream for many San Franciscans. With financial institutions avoiding and payday lenders crowding lower-income neighborhoods, residents have a hard time accessing affordable and credit-building banking. If SFOFE implements our list and the messaging we’re developing to help residents understand these complicated financial products, we hope that we will be part of a national movement to reduce predatory payday lending.

While it was not originally apparent, I have been able to weave social justice through my City Hall Fellowship. I stayed committed and watched how my work have created safer streets and wealth-building opportunities for fellow San Franciscans. San Francisco, with its history of empowering the marginalized, is one of the best places in the country to think, plan, and act on ways to serve the underserved with one of the most powerful tools: local government.

Applications for the 9th cohort of City Hall Fellows!  The deadline to apply for either program is Thursday, March 14 at 11:59 PM PT.

More information and the application for City Hall Fellows is available here.

Correction:  An earlier version of this blog post announced availability of applications for the Mayor’s Innovation Fellows program.  The Mayor’s Innovation Fellows program application process will open later this spring.