After ten years of living in San Francisco, I am more or less officially a resident (in a town of transplants they only give the title out grudgingly). Over this period I have developed deep roots and a torrid Love affair with my fair town, but we have a complicated relationship. Like last year the Sit/Lie ordinance was passed, which made it illegal for people to sit or lie on the sidewalk between the hours of 7:00 AM and 11:00 PM. No one pretended this wasn’t focused on the homeless citizens who use the sidewalks as a place to rest, hang out, and panhandle. I was passionately opposed to this on the basis that our sidewalks are a public space that shouldn’t be regulated in such a way, and that I found it to be a direct attack on people who have little power and often, little peace in their lives. I felt strongly that it was an attempt to make it easier for San Franciscans not to have to deal with the realities of poverty and homelessness. It’s amazing how conservative our liberal town can be.
I have been volunteering as an outreach worker for the past three years, and have worked on Haight St., the epicenter for wayward homeless youth, for five. In this time I have experienced the wildly divergent worlds that help to make San Francisco the anachronism it is famous for being.
This blog is meant to share some of those experiences and the lessons I have learned from them. It is also a collection of my opinions about harm reduction, drug policy, sex-work policy, homelessness, and those things that affect the underclass of our society.
My opinions do not necessarily represent the views of the organizations I volunteer or work for.
