Will a Startling Scene of Homelessness Prompt Real Change?
It’s fair to say that on most days San Francisco Chronicle Editor Audrey Cooper sees homeless people, walks past them on the street, or helps shape stories about their lives. But last month, the routine of homelessness here became out of the ordinary when Cooper, while walking her six-month-old in a stroller, came upon a homeless couple having sex in a tent in plain sight on the sidewalk.
Cooper was dumbfounded by what she saw — and outraged. She decided to take action in the best way she knows how: use her influence as a journalist to put a spotlight on the issue.
So, on June 29, her paper, with other Bay Area outlets, including the San Francisco Examiner, KQED, Buzzfeed and Mother Jones will devote a full day to generating a wave of coverage on the problem of homelessness and potential solutions.
7,000–10,000 people live without shelter in San Francisco
The effort is laudable. But it’s fascinating that it took an extreme event to spur action on a problem that confronts journalists like Cooper every day. Today, some 7,000–10,000 people live without shelter in this small city. According to a piece in SF Gate, the number of homeless people here “has stubbornly remained nearly the same” since 2013. And, like in many cities, the homeless population is growing sicker, older, and increasingly being shoved into different neighborhoods because of gentrification. At the same time, the rate of homeless children and families is at a record high nationally.
Homelessness is simply becoming a more visible reality to everyone.
The question for me is this: does one shocking story have more power to move action than a fabric of stories that paint a fuller picture?
At the time I heard about San Francisco’s effort, I completed a moving book by Jim O’Connell, a humanitarian street doctor who for the past 30 years has run the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. O’Connell’s Stories from the Shadows profiles more than 2 dozen homeless men and women who have touched his life, and it illuminates their shared humanity and resilience. O’Connell wrote the book to put a face on the people many of us look past when we walk into a book store, a coffee shop, or a grocery store — the people who are too often, as he describes, “lost in plain sight.”
Would a collection of stories like these have generated the kind of campaign that Cooper and her colleagues are undertaking?
While O’Connell appreciates the power of one eye-popping story, he thinks a collection is more likely to help people understand what it truly means to be homeless, where nothing is routine, nothing is orderly or reasoned. All of the stories profiled in his book are meant to help people understand the array of forces that contribute to becoming homeless from poverty to mental illness to violence to drugs.
And, while he is excited to hear about the media effort in San Francisco, in an interview during Burness’ company retreat he noted that what Cooper witnessed is not so surprising. “These are people who have private lives, and they have to live in very public places because they have no place to go. This shows how tough it is when you live on the streets.”
Whether a one-day San Francisco journalism campaign will have legs beyond June 29 remains to be seen. One national journalist told me that he remains skeptical, if not wary, of special projects assigned by editors when a problem suddenly hits them or their kids personally. Still, something creative could emerge.
In an interview on NPR’s Here and Now, Cooper took pains to avoid talking about how her personal encounter led her to action. Instead, she admitted that when a reporter covers stories about a problem like homelessness on a regular basis “you can become inured to the issue. We’ve gotten to a place where we have thrown up our hands and said ‘I guess this can’t be solved.’”
Cooper and her colleagues hope that devoting one day to elevating this issue will make people take notice. By having many outlets concentrate coverage in lots of different ways and for a wide range of audiences, Cooper says it should promote a civic discourse that goes beyond just numbers and identifies real solutions.
Homelessness is a “vexing and complex tragedy that is best seen as a prism held up to our society.”
O’Connell is cautiously hopeful too that this kind of attention can make a difference. But he says solutions must address all of the things that influence why people end up on the streets in the first place, and what that means for how well and long they live. In his book, he describes homelessness as a “vexing and complex tragedy that is best seen as a prism held up to our society.” That prism reflects weaknesses in housing, education, welfare, labor, and justice.
Says O’Connell, “Homelessness will never truly be abolished until our society addresses persistent poverty as the most powerful social determinant of health.”
