Mr. Brooks’ Bay

by Zehra Tüzün Güvener and Vlad Metrik

Mr. Asim Brooks was born in Los Angeles, but has been living in San Francisco for 35 years and considers himself a native. He used to live in the lower Haight, off of Pier St. Asim tells us the demographic of his old neighborhood has considerably changed over time. “Ten-twenty years ago, there were more African Americans and more families, but now there are more young people and more homeless. I used to see more corner stores, they are all gone now. It is filled with restaurants and coffee shops, they sell a cup of coffee for the price of 3 dollars and more”

Mr. Brooks first became homeless in 2014 due to a mental illness his mother was coping with. He was her main caregiver and started missing work. At that time, he was a security supervisor who was in charge of plans and people placement. The job could not afford him being absent so much and he ended up losing his job. He stayed with his mother but she eventually lost her place. He then started to rent hotel rooms, eating up his savings of $47,000. He was moving from hotel room to hotel room, spending $65 per night. “If I had known, I would have moved to a shelter early on and kept my savings”, he says. The money was leaking away. When he was down to his last $14, he had no idea what to do. He ran into a high school friend, going through homelessness, who told him about St. Anthony’s and the 311 program. He promptly went to St. Anthony’s and in July of 2017 finally got into the shelter system.

He is currently located on 6th and Howard, living in an SRO, in a 10x10 space, much like a dorm room. He keeps to himself most of the time. He doesn’t drink or do any drugs. On a daily basis he sees so many homeless people dealing with mental illnesses, depravity and craziness. “Someone last night was screaming at 3 am. They cannot get it to stop” he says. He has noise cancelling headphones, but still hears the noise and the screams. Additionally, there are “people randomly knocking on the door asking for random things. And, this happens all the time.”, he says. He had a bad experience living at shelters and has been robbed twice — both his wallet and his cell phone were stolen. People were preying on him because he was working at the time. He says: “everybody wants to have something on a constant basis.”

Mr. Brooks says “it is very tough going through life with low income”. He has a monthly income of $473 from the city and $318 of it goes to rent alone. He gets $183 for food stamps and volunteers at the San Francisco Food Bank to supplement more meals. He wants to work full time, but he also points out how the system is holding him back. “It pisses me off because every time I try to do something better, system works against that. Getting out of poverty is a slow process” he says. He emphasized that when he’s working, his rent proportionally increases with his income and health insurance costs more as well. It feels to him like an uphill struggle, a never ending loop.

Mr. Brooks feels that “the average person looks at homelessness with mental illness and stigma. But you have to also look at under-class!” He adds: “what people usually see in homelessness is panhandling. They don’t see the under-class homelessness.”