Dead crow, 7th Street near the corner with Brannan. 5 September 2015.
Two buses for the early morning commute, a San Francisco city bus carrying mostly service workers either home or to their jobs and a chartered “google bus” taking tech workers to their jobs at the tech firms in the south bay. 14 September 2017.
A small encampment on Pennsylvania and 22nd Streets, opposite the Food Bank. 19 April 2021.
San Bruno Avenue between 15th and Alameda Streets in SOMA, an area often used by the unhoused to encamp. And just as often “swept” by the city. 06 June 2021.
Robbie Lebon, 45 years old and homeless for about 5 years. Currently he is sleeping rough under the freeway overpass at Division Street near the corner of San Bruno Avenue and 9th Street. 7 October 2021.
In the foreground, the old Pacific Telephone building, then YELP’s San Francisco headquarters and now tech office space for lease. In the back, the new Salesforce building behind. 7 April 2019.
Storefront window on Divisadaro near Bush. 29 Jan 2019, San Francisco, CA.
SFO International Arrivals waiting area. Drivers waiting for their customer. 8 March 2019.
Lincoln Park Public Golf Course overlooking the Golden Gate. 3 Sept 2019, San Francisco, CA.
Overlooking the Pacific outside the Golden Gate from above Sutro Baths. 3 January 2021, San Francisco.
Bus shelter tax return ad says “Get you Billions Back America” while a unhoused man takes a moment to rest before moving on. 16th and Bryant Street. 12 February 2015.
Sign left on the ground at Utah Street near Division. 14 November 2015.
Jamie Crisco’s personal space in the "Bat Cave", under the foundation of a hardware store and along the commuter rail tracks where he lived with several others.. The building was sold and torn down for market rate apartments. Jamie, as of 2020, had found permeant housing after 8.5 years of living in tents, boxes, and hidden holes. 18 March 2016.
Morning exercise, 16th and Bryant Streets. 1 August 2016.
Man sits with his morning coffee at the Ferry Building Saturday Farmer’s Market. 24 Sept 2016.
The view from a MUNI trolley of morning rush hour traffic on Market Street at 6th as tech workers head to work. 22 August 2017.
More people from the Division Street project…
Name: Mr. Greg Smith, 67
Without a home: 5 years in his truck and paying for parking
Place: A parking lot on Merlin Street, San Francisco
Date: 23 April 2021
(I’ve been here) all together about 5 years. Like I said, I can’t afford a (house), I would have to win the Power Ball to be able to afford a house here. But I have a place. l’ve always had mobile homes before. A “camper”, you know. They’ve gotten towed, a couple of them, so I’m down to this (a box truck). But I’ve always had my own place where I rent or parked. I’ve rented here (a spot in a parking lot) for about 5 years until they declared bankruptcy and gave the place (the parking lot) up. I’m just looking for another place to rent space for my vehicles, a place I could put a small trailer.”
“That’s how I live. I’d rather live this way than in an SRO and not be as happy and secure. I like to have my own place. I can come in when I want, have my stuff, don’t have to look anybody in the eye when I come in and out, you know. And be me, just like you, you know what I’m saying.“
Update: 27 April 2021: The lot is owned by Caltrans and with the bankruptcy of the original lot operator Caltrans has found a new parking lot operator and wants the lot cleared by May 18th.
Name: Alexia Castaneda, 21 and Oliver Cienfuegos, 1 ½ years
Without a home: 6 months sleeping mostly on the street
Date: 5 June 2019
Place: Compass
“At first when I lost my house I literally was just sleeping on the street in front of libraries. I finally got hotel vouchers for two weeks so at least I had somewhere to go. During that process you have to look for permanent rentals. Obviously, I couldn’t get one, especially with no job or childcare, so I ended up back on the street. After receiving welfare, I use that on emergency nights when it’s stormy, or we’re sick and I’ll get a hostel in the Tenderloin for the night, thirty bucks, fifty bucks, but that’s better than what could potentially happen.”
“(On the street it’s) me, my stroller, my blanket, and that’s it. I get really scared that people will see us, especially me with a stroller and a baby and call the police and try and have my son taken from me. I always make sure to be in a place that’s very hidden at night. There have been times where (an area) a lot of the homes can’t see underneath in the doorway because they have a little roof so when it’s raining, I get in the corner, they can’t see me, they don’t know I’m there, and it’s just for the night. I’m gone before anyone wakes up.”
“A really hard thing about being the street is not having a frig or having a way of heating up your food. You actually, get driven crazy by not eating hot meals; everything is room temperature or cold. When you’re trying to make your food stretch and you can reheat it and you can’t refrigerate it, it grows bacteria, and you get sick.”
“Secretly the hardest thing is boredom. When you’re in the mood to just go home and turn on your TV and relax, you can’t. You’re on the street, bored, and people watching. It’s hard when everywhere you walk there’s always houses. And when people come home, you see them watching TV and you’re like, “Man I really miss that”.”
“It’s really hard. I didn’t think I could grow up this much in 6 months. Even when I was pregnant with him, and like wow I’m going to be a parent, I did not grow as fast as I did when we ended up on the street. I just turned 21 but I feel 31.”
Name: Anastasia Lagrone, 20; Brenda Soyos, 40; Stacy Sayos, 3
Without a home: About a month
Date: 4 September 2019
Place: Compass Family Services
Anastasia: “I’ve been in San Francisco for about 2 months now. I moved out here because I just see more opportunities for my family, more opportunities for me to grow as a person with my children.”
“The shelter system, we stay in with a group of people. Sometimes we’re in bunk beds, it depends on where we’re at. But sometimes we’re on the floors and it’s just me and my daughter on a little mat. You go in and sign in and stay there for the night and the next morning you go do your normal stuff – Some (shelters) are different. Like we’ve tried a women’s shelter but we have my boyfriend with us so we couldn’t go into it women’s shelter.”
Brenda: “It’s hard to get a place. If you’re not there at the right time then if you’re in the middle of the line then sometimes we don’t get places to stay so we end up being in the streets, at the park sleeping. We have a tent, we always have to carry our stuff everywhere – our clothing, our papers, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, our hiking stuff.
“He goes space hunting while we come here to Compass or someplace else that they send us. What we will do is get up early in the morning, we will walk, and he will pick-up the whole tent and stuff and then he will go space hunting, somewhere he knows we’re not going to be thrown, harassed for the night.
“We’re on our own, one family, that’s all we have, each other. We have each other.
Anastasia: “This is just us. This is home for us. It’s our family. We’re just trying to make out here, just being together, that’s it. We’d just rather be together, that’s home for me. That’s love, that’s home, that’s everything.”
Brenda: “We want a home. Just somewhere we can lay our head down at night, know we’re warm and safe. Now since she’s going to have a baby, we want one before then, before Christmas comes cause she’s going to be a Christmas baby.”
Anastasia: “Playing with my daughter. Playing with her, spending my time with her reading books. Trying to make her as happy as she can be, that’s it. I just want her to be happy and feel like we’re at home, that we’re not just hurting, suffering, that we’re OK.”
Name: Robin Lee, 35
Without a home: Off and mostly on since she was 18
Date: 8 May 2021
Place: Dore Street
“I have been on the streets on and off since I was 18, more on than off so well over 10 years. I started out in Sonoma County where I grew up with my mom. We lived in a home. I choose to come outside and be a rebellious 18-year-old.”
“(Hardest thing), definitely the showers, cleanliness, having to deal with a lot of illnesses and decease, and a lot of scary elements out here. I unfortunately have endured a few of them. Thankfully I’m recovering finally, but the elements out here can take a toll. I wouldn’t say the four walls necessarily are important but cleanliness, showers, toilet, bathroom, a refrigerator, a stove, … I mean being inside’s great and everything, but we can really make it out here if we try. Having your so-called freedom, that can go two ways. It’s a Catch 22 because you are moved and told where you can and cannot lay. There are certain laws and things that you have to abide by that are different than people that have homes, that are inside don’t have to worry about: sitting on the ground and getting a ticket because of the “sit and lie law”, or invading a parking space, or having a car that’s broken down, it’s a disadvantage for us at times.”
“When I was younger, I didn’t quite see a community but as I’ve gotten older and spent more time with people in different areas of the city, I learned there’s definitely community. We support one another. It works in a lot of different ways. Each one, teach one. You give, I give. You’re sick one day and you don’t have much and I have a plethora of things, I’m going to make sure that you’re taken care of, and you’re going to reseparate that when you see another person sick. To us, as a community, it could be a stranger or it could be somebody that I know, that’s what makes a big difference. It helps bring us all together. But you have to abide by that, you can’t just take, and take, and take. It has to be an equal balance, otherwise it becomes a shit show.”
“It is very uncomfortable to have to use a restroom as a woman on the street. Also, there are predators, male or female, there are some really scary people that prey on women. There are a lot of things I don’t even want to think about so yah, as a woman, it can be very dangerous out here, but having community defiantly helps as far as being a woman and being respected. That’s another big thing, respect. A lot of times people lack respect for women who are on the street thinking there’s a woman in a tent and she’s doing speed, or she’s doing a drug, so she’s going to have sex with me. Or she’s a prostitute. I’m going to get her high and … That’s not what it’s about. Maybe at one time it could’ve been, not for me personally, but it’s not every person that you meet or see.”
Name: Lester Wayne Lewis, Jr., 46.
Without a home: 5 years. Now housed.
Place: Parking lot between Merlin and Oak Grove.
Date: 29 April 2021.
“I was homeless from 2007 to 2012 and then I became housed through DAAH. I moved in there about 2012, or 2013. When I moved in there, from the very beginning it seemed as if I was targeted. The staff was very difficult to deal with, and just very unpleasant. But I stayed and I thought that maybe I needed to adjust myself. Or maybe I needed to take a step back and take a look at things further. Maybe I’m being treated fairly and I’m not giving people the benefit of the doubt. Well as a human being we’re born with certain things that tell us when something’s not right, or when something’s wrong. Bottom line is that I never felt like I was being treated right. Then slowly but surely things started to happen with the tenants. Everybody comes with psychosis issues in those buildings. Or with disabilities of some sort, myself included. What happens is administration starts to personalize things, so they target you. Next thing you know you’re getting written up more, you’re under a microscope. Then you’re being evicted for small reasons, things that only warrant a warning or disciplinary action. There is such a disconnection with the tenants and the staff that there’s no community. You know it’s supposed to be that kind of healthy community originated environment, (but) everybody is walking around in the SROs mad. Very angry and upset. While I’m there I’m not happy, I’ve been assaulted on multiple occasions and (I) asked to be moved, but I was told they don’t do that. …
The police downplay everything that happens in the SROs. It’s almost as if they don’t want to take the report, would rather settle it right there. But that doesn’t get anything done. Someone went in my building and killed my dog. Finally, I got fed up and I left. I just go and I pay my rent. Once COVID hit I just even didn’t go back to the building. I’ve just been living out here on the streets. I’m safer out here than I feel like I am in there. I go in my unit and I can feel like somebody’s been in my unit and when I discovered how they were getting in, they (managers) said they had remediated the problem. They didn’t. I’m in court with them Friday to determine some kind of settlement, if they’re going to put me out. If that’s what they are trying to do, what are they going to do for me for everything I’ve been through? You have rodent problems. You have staff issues. Discrimination issues going on in the building, I’ve had all those issues happen to me. I was sexually assaulted in the building, made a police report and they said they couldn’t do nothing about it. I filed reports with DPH asking to be moved. I went to City Hall. I went to the Department of Building and Inspection. I went to the people who investigate if people are discriminating against you. And then I went to the Rental Board. All these places failed me. Nobody could help me. There was nobody to oversee what happened to me at that SRO.”
Name: Gina C Quidilig, 39 and son Gerwin Embuido, 11
Without a home: Off and on since 2017
Date: 20 March 2020
Place: San Bruno Avenue between 15th St and Alameda, SF, CA
“Home is something that belongs to you. A place where you can be safe and have a family, where you wake-up and prepare food. Where you don’t have to move every day, which is actually like a homeland, like your origin.”
Are you worried about the COVID-19 Virus? “No because I’m in the United States of America and I know that we got the best medicine. And I know that America will search for a cure and I know that no matter what, that they are going to recruit the best doctors that they can to get cure us if we are infected.”
“Hot-teams have spoke to us. My son went to the hospital when he did have the symptoms of the virus however they did a test on him and we were discharged that same night.”
(The next few weeks) “I’m hoping to buy a tent (the one she had was stolen), we’re still going to be here, me and my son. I’m hoping that things will be better because people will be helped. I hope that our president, Donald Trump, or whoever is the sitting one, will come by. I just hope for the best.”
Gina C Quidilig and her son Gerwin Embuido are sleeping on top of concrete support for the 101 freeway. Each morning begins with 15-30 minutes of packing up what they have and moving around during the day. With the “shelter in place” order food is becoming an issue for the unhoused.