At a few minutes before seven o’clock on this Saturday morning, the usual line of about twenty customers needing their morning infusions of caffeine was already growing along Haight Street at the establishment’s front door. A long-haired man named Wes Farrell, in jogging pants and a T-shirt that read “DAM-Mothers Against Dyslexia,” stood holding in one hand the hand of his live-in girlfriend, Sam Duncan, and in the other the leash of Gertrude, his boxer. They, like many others in the city that morning, were discussing the homeless problem.
For decades San Francisco has been a haven for the homeless, spending upwards of $150 million per year on shelters, subsidized rental units, medical and psychiatric care, soup kitchens, and so on. Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, and apparently due to a series of articles that had just appeared in the Chronicle, came a widespread outcry among the citizenry that the welcome mat should be removed. Wes finished reading today’s article aloud to Sam and, folding up the paper, said, “And about time too.”
Sam extracted her hand from his. “You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t? I thought I did.”
“So what do you want to do with them, I mean once you give them a ticket, which by the way they have no money to pay, so that won’t work.”
“What part of that statement, I hesitate to call it a sentence, do you want me to address?”
“Any part. Don’t be wise.”
“I’m not. But I’d hate to be the guy assigned to trying to diagram one of your sentences.”
“You’re just trying to get me off the point. Which is what would you do with these homeless people who suddenly are no longer welcome?”
“Actually, they’re just as welcome. They’re just not going to be welcome to use public streets and sidewalks as their campsites and bathrooms anymore.”
“So where else would they go?”
“Are we talking bathrooms? They go to the bathroom in bathrooms, like the rest of us.”
“The rest of us who have homes, Wes. I think that’s more or less the point. They don’t.”
“You’re right. But you notice we’re loaded with shelters and public toilets.”
“They don’t like the shelters. They’re dangerous and dirty.”
“And the streets aren’t? Besides, this may sound like a cruel cli ché, my dear, but where do you think we get the expression ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’?”
“I can’t believe you just said that. That is so”-Sam dredged up about the worst epithet she could imagine-“so right wing.”
Wes looked down, went to a knee, and snapped his fingers, bringing Gertrude close in for a quick pet. “It’s all right, girl, your mom and I aren’t fighting. We’re just talking.” Standing up, he said, “She’s getting upset.”
“So am I. If you try to pet me to calm me down, I’ll deck you.”
“There’s a tolerant approach. And meanwhile, I hate to say this, but it’s not a right wing, left wing issue here. It’s a health and quality of life issue. Feces and urine on public streets and playgrounds and parks pose a health risk and are just a little bit of a nuisance, I think we can admit. Are we in accord here?”
Sam, arms folded, leaned back against the windows of the coffee shop, unyielding.
“Sam,” Wes continued, “when I take Gertie out for a walk, I bring a bag to clean up after her. That’s for a dog. You really think it’s too much to ask the same for humans?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Why not?”
“Because a lot of these people, they have mental problems too. They don’t even know they’re doing it, or where.”
“And so we should just tolerate it? You send your kids out to play and there’s a pile of shit on your front stoop? Next thing you know, half a school’s got hepatitis. You don’t think that’s a small problem?”
“That’s not what’s happening.”
“Sam, that’s exactly what’s happening. They’ve got to check the sandbox near the merry-go-round in Golden Gate Park every morning for shit and needles. Some of these people think it’s a litter box.”
“Well, I haven’t heard of any hepatitis epidemic. That’s way an exaggeration.”
“The point is the alfresco bathroom kind of thing that’s been happening downtown for years. I think you’ll remember we had a guy used our front stoop at the office every night for a month. We had to wash the steps down every morning.”
“There,” Sam said. “That was a solution.”
“It was a ridiculous solution. It was insane. To say nothing about the fact that using the streets for bathrooms punishes innocent, good citizens and devalues property.”
“Aha! I knew property would get in there.”
“Property’s not a bad thing, Sam.”
“Which is what every Republican in the world believes.”
“And some Democrats too. Dare I say most? And for the umpteenth time, Sam, it’s not a Republican thing. You can be vaguely left of center and still not want to have people shitting in your flower-pots. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“I think they might actually be.”
“Well, no offense, but you’re wrong. Public defecation and homeless encampments on the streets and in the parks are gross and unhealthy and sickening. I don’t understand how you can’t see that.”
Sam again shook her head. “I see those poor people suffering. That’s what I see. We’ve got a fire department with miles of hoses. We could deploy them to wash down the streets. The city could get up some work program and hire people to clean up.”
“What a great idea! Should we pay them to clean up after themselves, or after each other? Except then again, where does the money to do that come from?”
“There it is again, money! It always comes down to money.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, sometimes it does.”
“The point is, Wes, these people just don’t have the same options as everybody else.”
“And they never will, Sam. That’s rough maybe, okay, but it’s life. And life’s just not fair sometimes. Which doesn’t mean everybody else has to deal with their problems. They get rounded up and taken to the shelters whether or not they want to go, and I say it’s about time.”
Without either Sam or Wes noticing, several others in the line, both male and female, had closed in around them, listening in. Now a young hippie spoke up to Wes. “You’re right, dude,” he said. “It’s out of control. It is about time.”
A chorus of similar sentiments followed.
Sam took it all in, straightened up, and looked out into the faces surrounding her. “I just can’t believe that I’m hearing this in San Francisco,” she said. “I’m so ashamed of all of you.”
And with that she pushed her way through the crowd and started walking up Ashbury, away from her boyfriend and their dog.
Sam was the director of San Francisco ’s Rape Crisis Counseling Center, which also happened to be on Haight Street. Her plan this morning had been to take her early morning constitutional from their home up on Buena Vista with Wes and Gertie, share a cup of coffee and a croissant at BBW, then check in at the office to make sure there hadn’t been an overnight crisis that demanded her attention.
But now, seething, just wanting to get away from all the reactionaries, she had started out in the wrong direction to get to the center. Fortunately, the line for the BBW stretched down Haight Street, and not up Ashbury, and she’d gone about half a block uphill when she stopped and turned around, realizing she could take the alley that ran behind the Haight Street storefronts, bypassing the crowd and emerging on the next block on the way to her office.
But first she stopped a minute, not just to get her breath, but to try to calm herself. After an extraordinarily rocky beginning to their relationship she and Wes hadn’t had a fight in six or seven years. She’d come to believe that he was her true soul mate and shared her opinions about nearly everything, especially politics. But now, apparently not.