Look a homeless person in the eyes
Look into their eyes. Listen to their words.
Are all homeless people the same?
If you lump them together as one, then the voice should be considered more powerful. The voice should be allowed to have its say, its representation. The words shouldn’t be ignored.
Homeless people are individuals who share a circumstance. The problem is that many in society consider people without a home as a collective without distinguishing characteristics.
If that’s the case, we’ll let the homeless people we interviewed as part of the SF Homeless Project to speak as one. From the interviews, we created a unified voice. After you read their story, scroll to look into their eyes.
Really, LOOK.
Then ask yourself, are they all the same? Or maybe the question should be this: should I continue treating them the same as I always have?
[Ed. note: The following was compiled from the interviews we conducted. Find the corresponding sentences under their eyes.]
Let’s talk about being out here, you know, homeless.
Well, it was very easy how I got to this point. I walked in the bedroom and found my wife dead on the bedroom floor. I was happy as a clam in mud, but seeing her like that broke me.
It’s one thing to look at the picture, but it’s something completely different than when you are the picture.
How are you going to get rid of the problem you guys created? How are you gonna put a stop to a monster that you created?
You know, it’s pretty boring out here, not really anything to do. At the end of the day, we’re all just people trying to get by.
I’m out here by choice because, you know, a sense of direction and stability, that’s not really my thing anymore.
Change doesn’t happen overnight. In time, things will be different. Maybe I’ll get used to not being out here. So far, I always come back to this. They don’t want you on the street, but they don’t wanna put you up anywhere nice.
It’s loud, you can’t hear anything. A girl could be screaming. You can’t even hear screaming when you got a big old truck passing by.
No matter how many arrests, no matter how many things are stolen, no matter how many people betray you, you learn the value of the things around you and within yourself. Do you know how hard we work for our stuff?
It seems like every time they turn around, they’re using their cell phones to call the police on us. They can dress all nice. I see them going to work, but in the end they’re just thieves.
Most people that hate on me are just fucked up anyways. I’m a good person. You know, I still pay taxes. I may not pay rent, you know, but you don’t have to. Having four walls doesn’t mean anything when there’s a bunch of people who are predators. Those four walls become a trap.
I get given food, a lot. Way more than I could possibly eat. So I come out here and give it to the people who don’t have anything to eat.
This city is golden. It’s like donation central here, man. People are compelled to help.
Eventually we will get it right, I think.
I hope.
I kind of live two lives. You know, in one I’m homeless and in the other I go back to work. How people see you, depends how you dress. I’m a mechanic. All the time I’m greasy, so say if I try to go to a restaurant, a lot of people [around the Mission] that know me are like, ‘Oh Anthony, welcome! A lot of times the other people who don’t know me will go, ‘No bums allowed!’
I think a lot of people around here, they live two lives, too. They can dress all nice. I see them going to work, but in the end they’re just thieves.
ANTHONY MONROY
I didn’t start out like this. I just recently became homeless. I was a crack addict and went through all of this shit because my girlfriend passed away and my best friend is gone now, too.
This city is golden. It’s like donation central here, man. People are compelled to help. It’s amazing — furniture, clothes, food. It’s too easy to be homeless in the city.
This world is a fucked up place and I want people to hear about it because if you don’t see it, then you don’t know it.
There are some spots in the city that people leave alone. All you have to do is just stand your ground. For the most part, if you’re sleeping in the streets people kind of leave you alone. It’s safe that way. Us homeless people, we all kind of watch out for each other when we sleep in cliques, but sleeping by yourself out here is not healthy. You shouldn’t ever sleep by yourself. You know right away who is safe to sleep next to.
I have 14 plates in my face. I have been beaten. I was fucking stomped and smashed in my sleep after sleeping alone. I woke up in the hospital in handcuffs because they didn’t know what happened. They thought it was my fault. My face was cracked, it was insane. My advice to other people is that just because you’re right doesn’t mean you always have to try to prove it, because someone out there is bigger than you and stronger than you and they’re going to teach you a lesson.
ERROL HALL
I’m 68-years-old and I’m homeless and jobless. I’ve been homeless since I was 31, so I’ve been on the streets for 37 years. There’s a reason. My damn pride was my greatest enemy, and it always will be. It is [through] the integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ and how we live that in our lives that will be our witness when we are standing before God.
It’s not all bad here. Yeah, I’d like to make a lot of money, but if I did that would be to give to other people. I’m not interested in being rich, you know, yeah, I’d like to be financially comfortable and I believe that I will be one day. I have faith. But once I please God, once I am pleasing Him with the things I do, and he sees that I trust him and do his will, then I believe He will give me the good job I need or maybe even some help financially until I can pay him back. You know, I have to carry my cross as the Bible says.
DAVID BRADY
I’m a mother of one; my son just turned 12 this year. I go to school, even though I’m homeless. In August, I’m going to be a freshman at UC Berkeley. I’m going to be studying criminal research and paralegal studies. But being out here on the streets, you feel me, there are a lot of people who judge us. You know they pretty much look down on us like they’re better than us and I’ve experienced that not only through random people walking by, through law enforcement, by our own kind, you feel me.
I just got arrested three weeks ago for unauthorized lodging. Yes, SFPD warned me multiple times that I had to move from a specific area, but it got to the point where they targeted just me.
At times I wish like on every level that the people that hold office here in San Francisco would literally step up out of their own shoes, step away from that desk for a whole week, just that one week, and come out here in a tent and try to survive out here. You see what I’m saying? I could survive in their world. I’ve been there as well, you feel me? But I want them to come to our world right now. it doesn’t matter how much we talk about it or express our feelings about it, nothing is more pertinent than to have the actual experience.
I have family. I’m from Oakland, you feel me. They are the total opposite of San Francisco. The violence out here doesn’t supersede what’s going on in Oakland right now. Oakland’s crime rate is out of control right now, because they’re over it. When it comes down to it, let Oakland come out here and regulate some shit. Watch how some shit would just really change so quickly. I feel like they’re literally pushing us to the side to try to get rid of us, but it’s like how are you going to get rid of a problem that you guys created? How are you gonna put a stop to a monster that you created?
SHY BROWN
Seven years ago, and an ex-husband ago, I had just got out of prison and just got married — you know the whole gay rights thing, woo! I decided it would be very romantic, you know kinda cool to live in the Yay and it would be all nice and stuff. Yeah see, the pretty thing about art is that from the outside, it all portrays a pretty picture, until you really look at it. It’s one thing to look at the picture, but it’s something completely different than when you are the picture.
I’ve had houses, apartments lost. I’ve had things given to me — trust me I’ve had mine — and nothing beats making your own. Having your own and keeping it. No matter what. No matter how many arrests, no matter how many things are stolen, no matter how many people betray you, you learn the value of the things around you and within yourself.
Now imagine if that happened to you every single day for a week. We’ve been doing it for years. And why? We have a fucking classist system, and if we had a very circular society instead of being very tower like, we wouldn’t be so quick to fall.
Not to be graphic, but in all honesty, living out here, it’s like having your virginity taken. Now it’s either by your choice or it’s not, there’s no grey area. So when you’re out here, if it wasn’t by your choice your only other option is to constantly be grasping and grasping for survival and that’s all you’re ever doing. There’s no bigger picture.
We all have basic needs — food, water, shelter. If animals, insects can get this right — the spider has said, ‘Hey look, I can do all three things with just my webbing, fucking snails have got a shell. If animals, who are supposedly lower on the food chain, have gotten these things down, they have more intelligence and spirit than we ever will, and we’re supposed to be top notch. I don’t see a cat asking me for change. I don’t see a dog asking me for a divorce, or where are your tickets or, ‘No, you can’t be here next to my lawn.’
No, we do those things. We divide ourselves. We are the first thing that will go running to a cage and call it home, but any other creature would rather be free than stuck in a box of four walls and a ceiling. Nowhere in the amendments does it say I have to live in four walls. No, it says I have to do these other things like not kill people, bear arms, etc.
Eventually we will get it right I think. I hope.
MEMPHIS LAROSE
You know, it’s pretty boring out here, not really anything to do. I’ve lived here for 39 years, so I did all of the going to the museums and, you know, all of the other landmarks.
What I’ve seen over the last 10 or so years is people hate us. It seems like every time they turn around, they’re using their cell phones to call the police on us. They called the police the other day over shopping carts. We don’t have no shopping carts. There were no shopping carts around when he showed up. Just things like that. They don’t want us.
I don’t like walls, I just don’t like ’em. I tried living in, I don’t like indoors. Being out here is way comfortable. It’s a choice being out here, that’s the way I’ve made it for the entire time I’ve lived here. I like being out here. You know, I still pay taxes. I may not pay rent, you know, but you don’t have to.
The law states that we’re allowed to be on public property, but what it should say is if you’re homeless you’re allowed to be nowhere. That’s what we’ve dealt with the last 10 years. Whenever a cop showed up, we had to move. All of our things, we either take them with us or they throw them away. I’ve had my stuff thrown away when I went to work. I worked at the hospital for 30 years. If they don’t want us here, then why can’t we work to get off the streets, you know? It’s unheard of.
You know, people [see us that way] because of all of the breaking into cars, stealing bikes, it’s a big part of it. But some of us don’t do that. Yeah, most of the people out here have done that before, but that don’t make every one of us a thief or whatever. I’ve worked all my life, but I was still out here, because I like being out here.
At the end of the day, we’re all just people trying to get by.
ANTHONY WAYNE COOK
I’m out here by choice because, you know, a sense of direction and stability, that’s not really my thing anymore. You know, the family thing, the work, the college stuff, that’s just not my direction anymore. I’m into music. I’m a musician, and as an artist you’re always, pretty much, basically homeless because you travel. I’m not spending my life in one place, and retire from a job or something. We have some RVs and we converted a bus so we stay on the road. There’s not really a reason for me to look for a sense of stability.
This is ideal for me, to have a community in place where you can come to, where there is people and resources — I’m not talking about government resources or state resources, I’m talking resources within this homeless community.
We were all kinda put down here, in this area. I started way up there on 12th and Stevenson and the police come and say ‘move’ and we say ‘where we gon’ move?’ and they say ‘you better go that way.’ They started moving us down here, down this way, and I kept looking at my environment like hey, I’m getting out of the area that I’m used to. Now I’m down here where all of these buildings are, under the freeway where it’s loud and you see tent city. It’s loud, you can’t hear anything. A girl could be screaming, you can’t even hear screaming when you got a big old truck passing by. They’re slowly moving us further and further to this industrial type area where we’re very vulnerable.
Why do I think they’re doing this? Well, one because tourists don’t see all of this. It’s all about perception. I asked one officer why we had to clean up and move and he made the mistake of saying ‘well it’s because you’re an eyesore.’ The chief of police called us an eye sore. The chief. That really stuck with me.
You know, they move us around a lot, but we don’t really have to move. If you said, ‘No, I’m not moving,’ you know what they’d do? They’d give you a ticket. You keep getting tickets and they get a warrant out for you and they take you to jail. You might only be in jail for a few hours, but they take all of your shit and throw it in a dump truck. It don’t matter if you had your grandmother’s ashes in there, they will take it. Do you know how hard we work for our stuff?
RICKY WALKER
Let’s talk about being out here, you know, homeless. I consider myself homeless, but yet I am in a program. It’s a shelter called Navigation. They really give us the resources that we need and make sure that we have our ID, some source of income so that we can start doing something different with our lives, not being homeless. Yet, still I’m here, in a tent.
I look at it like when you have something, you have it, but it has to gradually change you. Change doesn’t happen overnight. In time, things will be different, maybe I’ll get used to not being out here. So far, I always come back to this. What I used to be is still in me, it’s hard to change sometimes. Old habits are hard to break. I’m slowly starting to view things differently.
When I go back to the Navigation Center, they have showers I can use whenever I want. I can get myself clean because when you’re out here in the elements you get dirty. When I transfer back to this life, I get icky all over again.
I don’t have a job yet. I’ve grown accustomed to certain things like not working, being late and tardy and all of that. I’m trying to change that about me, doing things one step at a time. I know for a fact that me being in a shelter is good for me, because people say I look better. I’m gaining weight, I’m filling out more. My skin tone changes. I scrub and get all comfortable in that water and I get a lighter complexion. They don’t want you on the street, but they don’t wanna put you up anywhere nice.
TONY ROBINSON
I don’t really care what other people think of me. Most people that hate on me are just fucked up anyways. I’m a good person. Haters gonna hate.
Right now, I stay in the Alder on 6th street, but I used to stay out here [on the streets]. I wish I still stayed out here because where I live is just like a fucking hole in the wall. I started using heroin when I moved into the fucking building. I’m fucking dope sick as fuck right now.
At least out on the streets here, you can move around, but they put you in these hotels and they really threatening and now you’re caged with these people. I’m not homeless right now, but I might be pretty soon because I’ve been violating my lease agreement.
I don’t feel safe. Dude, I need to sleep so bad. I haven’t slept in days, I ate some acid. I fucking tried sleeping in my room, and I hear this girl she’s always just crying in my building like she’s being held against her will. I’m not the only one that hears it, too. There’s a guy that called about some girl dying in our building. The cops came, but they don’t know where she is. I hear her all the time. She could be like within the walls, like I don’t know. Like, it’s crazy.
I went to the Navigation Center which is through ECS (Episcopal Community Services), which I think is a cover up for a sham like human trafficking. When I was staying at the Navigation Center, there was a straight pimp that worked there. I know he was a pimp.
A lot of girls die in the city — homeless girls, prostitutes. I know in the past year like five girls who have died. The police don’t really investigate like you think they would. There’s a lot of services and resources in the city, but it’s like it’s a cover up for a bigger scam. Like they get money from people that care about people that are homeless, meanwhile they’re promoting prostitution.
I mean, take the women’s place for example. There are girls that have been there for a really long time and it’s just disgusting. It’s not a safe environment. They don’t let men in there, but there will be women in there that are sent there by men to recruit other women. They’ll be like, ‘Oh girl, you’ve been beat? Come with me. My man will take care of you.’ They’ll take them straight to a pimp.
I was pimped out when I was 14 years old. It was really fucked up because if I didn’t go, then I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I had somebody shoot at me because I didn’t want to be a hoe. What they would do is lure you in like they’re going to help you, and if you’re naïve and not street smart, then they take you shopping and buy you new shoes or whatever to make you more comfortable, but it’s just a sham to, you know, get you home. Once you accept the gifts, then you owe them.
I feel safer on the streets than I do where I live now. Having four walls doesn’t mean anything when there’s a bunch of people who are predators. Those four walls become a trap. I don’t trust a lot of the staff there because I told them I wanted to move, and they were like, ‘Oh, you’re gonna have to wait until a spot opens.’ Meanwhile, they’re going to throw me out or something. You’re supposed to be able to stay in these places for a year and then move up into a more suitable apartment or something, but I’ve been there for over a year.
DANIELLE
“Well, it was very easy how I got to this point. I walked in the bedroom and found my wife dead on the bedroom floor. Liver cancer took my darling girl away from me five years ago. I was happy as a clam in mud, but seeing her like that broke me. I shattered like a piece of safety glass. It took me a while to come completely apart and I went through a whole lot of super glue trying to put myself back together.
I served in Vietnam. This is my country, my flag and I love my country. I’ve got news for everybody: we didn’t play ping pong for our country. You know, ‘Forrest Gump’ the movie? We didn’t play ping pong; we were trained to kill and that ain’t a good thing. It really does bad things to you, killing people. Try killing a child. It don’t feel good, but you can’t do anything else.
I’ve been homeless for about two-and-a-half years now. Truthfully, I’m a nice guy and it takes people a while to believe that I’m real. I’ve never known anyone with the courage to live their life the way that I do, because I treat people good.
I get given food, a lot. Way more than I could possibly eat. So I come out here and give it to the people who don’t have anything to eat. I go over to the ballpark for every home game. The restaurants bring me out big bags of food to give to people because they know that I will.”
NEIL TAYLOR
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed what you read, please click on links to our other stories on homelessness in the Bay Area.
