Episode 3: What Are Shelters Like in the Time of COVID-19?

Episode 3: What Are Shelters Like in the Time of COVID-19?
August 13, 2020

In this episode we speak with Meghan "Roadkill" Johnson and Ben Baczkowski, both Shelter Client Advocates who work at the Eviction Defense Collaborative to protect the rights of people living in San Francisco's shelter system. They offer a brief history and overview of the program before diving into the nitty-gritty details of how COVID-19 has changed everything. 

The weather report for this episode is brought to you by the Timothy O'Neil Band. Timothy O'Neil is a songwriter from Temecula, California, currently submerged in the Sonoma County Americana scene. Timothy O'Neil Band bares its influences of punk-rock and mixes it into songs, nodding to genres of bluegrass, folk, and singer-songwriter. You heard their original song "Build a Home". 

Learn more about the Shelter Client Advocacy Program: https://evictiondefense.org/services/shelter-client-advocacy/

Transcript

Street Speaks Ep 3

Thu, 8/13 8:15AM • 41:11

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

shelter, people, homeless, hotels, client, advocates, waitlist, san francisco, system, city, homelessness, pandemic, community, moratorium, pretty, denials, providers, bed, residents, service

SPEAKERS

TJ Johnston, Ben Baczkowski, Quiver Watts, Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson

TJ Johnston  00:12

You're listening to the Street Speak podcast answering your questions about poverty and homelessness in San Francisco.

Quiver Watts  00:22

On today's episode, we speak with Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson and Ben Baczkowski, both shelter client advocates with the Eviction Defense Collaborative, about their work advocating for the rights of homeless people staying in the city's shelter system and about how things have changed during the coronavirus pandemic.We are your hosts Quiver Watts..

TJ Johnston  00:44

...and TJ Johnston..

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  00:47

So I go by Megan 'RK' Johnson at my job, but everybody also knows me as Roadkill. So there's that. I'm 26, I am a shelter client advocate.

Ben Baczkowski  01:06

My name is Ben Baczkowski. I'm a shelter client advocate. My pronouns are he and they. And I've been an advocate for like, two years now.

TJ Johnston  01:21

It is thanks to Arnette Watson that the shelter client advocate program exists to support homeless people who have been denied service in the shelter system back into their beds.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  01:33

We were started in I believe, 1996. And we were founded and birthed out of the Coalition on Homelessness by Arnette Watson, who was a very wonderful and fierce like, Black radical woman, who also was formerly homeless herself and she lived through the shelter system. And she saw that, you know, there was this very big power dynamic and like a division like a separacy, of like shelter residents and staff and you know, she had to go through a lot of like mistreatment and then um, you know, being a woman of color, a Black woman of color and having children. There wasn't a system like this before. So she created it, in like a sense to like combat that that kind of like oppressive system, you know, that we still see today even like. I mean, this is like her legacy and we're seeing it still 25, 26 years later, maybe even longer. 

Quiver Watts  02:50

A lot of people in San Francisco believe that there are shelter beds available to anyone who wants them. 

Ben Baczkowski  02:55

The city has been adding beds to the homeless response system pretty consistently, since they put together coordinated entry, which is like the main access points for people trying to trying to access services for unhoused people. So over the last like three years, as long as the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has been running it, they've been adding beds to it pretty consistently. And so we cover like 3200 as in March, we covered like, 3,200, somewhere in there. 

Quiver Watts  03:38

But in reality, they're not nearly enough shelter beds for every San Franciscan experiencing homelessness.

Ben Baczkowski  03:45

No. So on any given night, there's usually 1000 to 1200 people on the waiting list for a shelter bed. And so there is definitely not enough beds for people who want them. And it's also incredibly...even if you get one, it can be really difficult to keep it because they're not set up to work well with jobs, especially jobs that have hours that are at night or like run into the evening. And they come with like, a laundry list of rules. So it really, it's not like living...It's not...it's certainly not a comfortable living environment for anyone, but it's kind of like sets people up for failure too. So

TJ Johnston  04:33

It can be difficult to stay in the shelter because there are so many rules.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  04:38

  Like when you're in the shelter, they're like, oh, you're going for a consecutive of 56 hours. It's abandonment now, so like things like that. Whereas like when you're living in a home, you'd be able to leave, you know, for a certain amount of days and there would be no like penalty, going back to your own house versus having to deal with this like, you know, city funded system. A lot of the times people get written up for like very like, kind of like mundane things. Where again, I have to like I have to say like when you're in your own home, like it's not a problem. But like when you're in the shelter, it's like, it's like this huge deal. And like a lot of this time, a lot of the times people are getting written up, not just for like, arbitrary things, but for like, like natural reactions, like natural human reactions. I guess like for example, there's been times where like somebody who felt like they were unsafe and shelter and they felt like they were threatened by let's say, like, another staff member or even a client. Um, you know, sometimes the natural like function is like somebody's like coming at me, and they're combating with me. And my natural human reaction is to defend myself or to even pushback per se, because I've even had people denied service because they push back.

TJ Johnston  06:05

Not only that, but the rules may be selectively enforced.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  06:09

And that's another thing. A lot of the times people, they say, like, clients in particular, they noticed that there's a pattern of favoritism, like in the shelter system itself. And so whereas like, let's say, I got five write ups for what I'm smoking, maybe not six feet away, or 20 feet away, but here's this other guy who's smoking right next to the door, but he's friends with like the staff member or the clerk inside. So I mean, he gets special treatment, and I don't. I got all these write ups. So like, that's another thing too, that we hear a lot about. Um, I mean, yeah, it just goes on and on.

Quiver Watts  06:51

People are denied service from shelters for small violations that add up; or for bigger violations people can be pushed back out to the streets immediately. Ben told us about the complicated intricacies of different rules in different shelters.

Ben Baczkowski  07:07

I have to say like shelters have really like 30 rules, maybe and like they're each shelter is different and most, like unhoused people who use the homeless response system tend to live in multiple different ones over the course of their being homeless. So you there's tons of rules, they're applied differently a lot of times and I'm just giving you like a short..I won't go into detail but like they get really detailed and like not having certain pictures taped to your wall not like tenting which is like when you put like sheets up so you're not so people can't see you. There's just like, tons and tons of rules and...not coming back. That like rules around curfew are ones that a lot of people have problems with because you...The shelter staff sometimes don't know the some don't know the intricacies of the system. So they'll give people like kind of wrong advice. So it's like you have to, you have to be in like for shelters, a lot of shelters, traditional shelters, they're not 24 hour access. So you have to be, you have to sign in by like five o'clock. And then you have to be in your bed at nine o'clock. And then the staff will do checks of the beds through periodically throughout the night. And they're like safety checks, too. So there's like, some good reasons for them. But if you're not in your bed, your assigned bed at one in the morning or whatever. They give you a warning, and it's like a curfew violation. If you get enough of those, they'll drop your bed and kick you basically you'll kick you out. So there there's a lot of ways to...most people don't even know they get warnings and then they're like, they're just trying to live their life,  work. A lot of people work so they'll like, they'll, the staff will come to them and be like, Oh, you're getting a denial of service because you did these things. And they're like, What are you talking about? Why don't you just talk to me about this? And then and it's really it can be the show the shelter staff can be pretty sloppy about it, they don't usually have to justify their reasoning for things. And so unless they're like forced to follow the procedures, they won't.

TJ Johnston  09:24

When the shelter waitlist was open, there were over 1000 people on the waitlist on a given night. But there are many San Franciscans who would still rather sleep outside then stay in the shelter system. Not just because of the rules, but because of the conditions inside.

Ben Baczkowski  09:40

A lot of people will, would choose to sleep outside in a tent because it's safer. They have people around them in community who they choose to be around. And, you know, you do have to deal with the police and whatever but on the flip side you...if you've got a staff member in a facility who is that doesn't like you for whatever reason, or maybe they're having a bad day, even good shelter workers do fucked up things sometimes. We all do. So you know it..even to homeless people, they're not really like a place that you want to live even if you're homeless, frankly. But it but to be honest, like, I don't really have any I've been in pretty much every shelter in San Francisco and I've never, like I have to be careful about like, bugs and you know, staying like hygenic but they're not like they could be worse for sure.

Quiver Watts  10:49

So not everyone wants to stay in the shelters, but Roadkill and Ben's job is to make sure that those who do want to shelter bed are able to stay sheltered once they make their way through the waitlist. Because when enough rule violations rack up, shelter guests may get a DoS, which is a denial of service. That's when they visit the shelter client advocates.

Ben Baczkowski  11:11

Pretty much every day we've got like a solid five new cases. So we we deal with a lot of stuff. But in our official capacity, we deal with denials of service from shelters, which just mean that there was some sort of behavior that led to a series of rule violations or something like created a...there was one bigger incident that led to someone being kicked out immediately. And so our day to day is uh  doing a lot of intakes with people, but our main function is representing people who get kicked out of shelters or community point, access points or, you know, other places that are funded by the city. And we recommend them in administrative hearings, and so we sort of are like a public defender, but not lawyers, and we're sort of like social workers, but not, [without] Masters of Social Work. And so yeah, so we do administrative hearings, they start with arbitration or sorry, they start with internal hearings, where we just kind of like there's a formal process to it, but we usually will meet with the shelter representatives and try to come to a resolution about whatever issue it is, sometimes it can be: "this person plays their music too loud all the time. And we've we keep telling them not to and they won't, and now we have to do something about it." Or it can be like people getting into fights. So ranges pretty, you know, we do a lot of mediation and conflict resolution, but in the cases that can't be brought to a resolution, we do arbitrations where we meet in front of like a neutral arbiter, and they make a decision that's binding everyone.

TJ Johnston  13:08

Roadkill explained what happens when the more informal hearing doesn't work.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  13:12

And a lot of the times, we can get clients back into shelter. But there's times where that, you know, there's not that we can't come to like an agreement that day or something. So we end up having to do this part of the process, that's called an arbitration. And that's where, like, advocates don't like to lean on that very much. Because we end up losing a lot of like, ourselves and our clients, we end up losing a lot of our power and our say over, like, what's going to happen for them and shelter. So when we go to arbitration, it's like us representing clients, again, staff representing shelter. And then there's like a third party who's like a b arred lawyer of California, and they act as a judge and they make the final decision. So they hear out both cases, the rebuttal all that. And so that's why I don't like to lean on those very often. Because like, there's more to, like there's more set for the client, like trying to restore the community without having to take that extra step because it takes it away from them. So a lot of the times when they end up, you know, losing it that as well. It's just, it hurts like a lot.

TJ Johnston  14:36

So all of this was a situation back in March before COVID hit. When we come back, we'll hear how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted the shelter client advocate program. But for now, we'll take a quick break to bring you the weather

Quiver Watts  19:09

You just heard 'Build a Home' by the Timothy O'Neil band. Listen to their full album 'All Hands on Deck' online at TimothyO'NeillBand.com. Now back to the episode.

TJ Johnston  19:22

In the first part of the episode, we talked about the shelter client advocates program and about the barriers unhoused San Franciscans face inside shelters. But a lot has changed in the last few months. And homeless people have been among the most vulnerable to COVID-19 because, as we talked about earlier, shelter residents don't have a safe place to self isolate. Inside the shelter system, things were thrown into total chaos.

Ben Baczkowski  19:48

Before Coronavirus, really hit in the United States, the city didn't prepare at all for it. Really. No plans were really made in regard to shelters, or at least that were made known to people that work in the service provider community. And so we were sort of left scrambling at the last minute to reorganize our system, because there was a lot of like changing guidance from public health officials about what was safe initially and what was not safe.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  20:30

So I had been like listening in and there was like reports from like, out east saying that this was like starting to come in like a wave. And this was maybe like a few weeks before we I think March 16, was the day that we all that was when shelter in place first started.

Ben Baczkowski  20:49

One of the things that we really kind of like lobbied against was like the opening of like mass shelters, because they're not safe to have that many people living in one place and social distancing, like was not like a was not an implemented implementable policy at that time.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  21:07

Me and the other advocate brought it upon ourselves to start talking to  like our shelters, and kind of seeing like where they're at with the news. And so there was like a, there was like a big panic, you know, and like a big uproar and like a lot of the client, like a lot of the shelter residents. They were kind of like, you know, unless they were plugged in, they were just like, I don't know what the hell, any of this is like, I don't know what you're talking about, you know, like this is just some random thing to me.

Quiver Watts  21:36

And not only that, but if you were on the waitlist for shelter in March, when shelter in place was issued, you were shit out of luck. They closed the shelter waitlist pretty much immediately leaving many people with no other option than to tough it out on the streets of San Francisco.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  21:51

Yeah, with that waiting list, you know, pretty much frozen through in one pretty much frozen The only referrals people can really get these days. From an already like, city funded, like homeless organization or a HOT team member, like it's like caused  a huge disservice to our homeless community. And I have seen a huge impact. You know, there are people that I know that would call every day just to get up on those numbers on those waiting lists, that would have already had a bed by now. You know, just because they had that much gumption and that want to, like get off of the streets and be able to stabilize. And now that there's this huge problem with like COVID, Aad, you know, even if you were a part of their system before you can't get back in and..

TJ Johnston  22:44

Early on, the city plan to respond to the pandemic by opening mass congregate shelters with hundreds of vulnerable people laid out on mats on the floors, just six feet apart.

Ben Baczkowski  22:55

People were asking, you know, for months, people were saying "we need guidance for shelters" because it is not safe having 150 to 200 people in one room and we need to figure this out and it wasn't until like April really that or even later, like more like a late April early May that guidance was being issued for shelter thinning. The city kind of we lobby the city to take a policy of thinning or what that's what they call it is "thinning" the shelters out. So in in conjunction with the provider community asking hotels from the you know, hotel industry to be utilized for housing people off the streets, but also to help thin out the shelters. And for people who were like at risk for coronavirus.

TJ Johnston  23:53

Shelter thinning was intended to make it possible for people in shelters to sleep six feet apart. The more vulnerable shelter guests would be the first to move into hotel rooms. But vulnerable was defined by the city as 65 or older or with an underlying health condition. Today, there are only 1900 people in hotel rooms, filling 27% of available hotel rooms.

Quiver Watts  24:20

So when the city finally did start thinning the shelters, the shelter client advocates moved on to advocate for a moratorium on denials of service. They had noticed an uptick in DoS is within the system. And with the waitlist closed, that meant people were out for good. So they pushed through a moratorium that kind of paralleled the eviction moratorium for SF renters.

Ben Baczkowski  24:43

We lobbied the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to get a moratorium on denials of service instituted so that people would not be exited out of the shelters for things that were not like immediate safety concerns.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  25:02

to push for the moratorium that we got an order we had to go to hsh It was not myself though this was like higher up for me. So my supervisor, and also my other peer, they were working on that door trying to present hsh to how to go about this, and to like, make the safety net for, you know, the shelter residents. And so, eventually after all the hoopla happened, and they ended up getting the wording for it. It was like a protections of residence that would be so it was kind of like a cease of all denials that were not, like considered violent, or like a threat to like the community. And we did start seeing like a decline in numbers of hearings that we were going to, which was great because I feel like in the beginning When shelter in place first happened, this kind of gave shelters that were just misinterpreting things to kind of give them an excuse to, you know, deny people. Once we got that moratorium and it was like all in writing, it gave more protection to the shelter residents.

TJ Johnston  26:18

But the moratorium wasn't enough to protect everyone in the system. Because while the advocates were pushing to pass the moratorium, the entire shelter system was being reorganized.

Ben Baczkowski  26:29

So the whole homeless response shelter system got completely reorganized. I probably should have started with that. The very first thing the entire homeless shelter system pretty much has been reorganized since March because they've created a system of stay in place hotels. They have a system of shelters that some shelters operate from People who have had Coronavirus and are now negative for Coronavirus and those are congregate places. There's some shelters that are simply better isolation shelters and hotels that are only for people who are tested who are currently quarantine because they have Coronavirus. And then there's the majority of people I think that live in like stay in place hotels that are just for people who are at risk. So they've created this like completely new shelter system. Human Services Agency, the Department of Public Health in the Department of Homeless Services, homelessness and supportive housing, which operates the normal shelter system sort of have this like joint jurisdictional operation of a lot of these sites. And so they've been using this time to sort of diminish people's rights to due process.

Quiver Watts  27:56

So suddenly, people were being moved from shelters where They at least had access to the SCA services and into hotels, which afforded them more privacy and COVID safety, but meant they were totally cut off from the advocates that are there to uphold their rights.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  28:12

People that are still in shelters have more more protections than people that are in shelter in place hotels, and here's why. What we do is a due process so there's a chance for them to contest and for them to be able to come back into shelter and like restore their community now in shelter in place. Hotels, they don't have that option. A lot of the times they're being what is what we considered denied service, but they rewarded different like, and by they I mean hsh has rewarded at different and it's almost impossible like for us to get the clients that are being, you know, kicked out of these hotels. It's nearly impossible to get them back in because they made like such Limited protections have them like, it's literally like a one to two page front and back. And it's so it's so vague, like, you know what they can do to protect themselves, excuse me, we

Ben Baczkowski  29:15

get calls every day from people who have been kicked out of a hotel. And they don't they haven't been given paperwork. So they don't know why they were kicked out. Or sometimes it's unclear, like you, they may kind of they may have an understanding of what the situation was. But there's a lot of times where people will think they were kicked out of a place for something that they actually weren't. It was something completely different. That does happen pretty frequently. So we're getting a lot of people like who haven't, don't know why they were kicked out or they weren't given paperwork or they don't they were given no information about how to appeal it. They didn't even know they could appeal it. They sort of sometimes they just find their way to us. Sometimes. Some of the hotels are run by site providers to Shelter providers that we've worked with before. And we already have relationships with. So sometimes they'll give us our information from the people who are who like to work with us already. So in a way, like our our program has had to adapt to a completely new situation that we don't we're not actually necessarily formally involved in like we are, but we aren't in a way. And so one of the things that we're doing right now is trying to write some legislation that will have all residents of temporary shelters will be covered by the same due process rights, regardless of which agency is running or funding the shelter. or potentially even what provider because there's shelters that exist that are privately funded, not many, but there are some That don't have have to have any. There's no due process they can ask tell you to leave whenever they want.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  31:10

And so yeah, I feel like at this point, we've kind of like us the shelter client advocates, we've almost been pushed out of the due process at the shelter, or excuse me at the hotels. And it's just, it's just very, like unfortunate for, you know, the people that are in there, because we're, as we're, we would be able to get them there'd be a chance to get them back in at shelter. It's kind of impossible. Like it's awful. And at the moment, like, it's kind of, like, the only silver lining is that my peers and my supervisor are working on legislation because it's starting to get like very serious. Like, I remember in my article I was saying that like we're keeping her we're, we're in the wings like getting ready to that's what I'm that's what this is for Because people are going to be getting that carpet or that rug taken from under their feet and like they're going to have nothing and we're going to see huge numbers in like, outbreak. I don't want to be like a negative Nancy. But I mean, that's what's going to happen, you know, when people are pushed out into the cold and they've also been, you know, a lot of the times to get into the shelter in place hotels, they had to get rid of a lot of things that would have kept them safe and protected on the streets like attend a tarp, a sleeping bag, they had to leave all of that behind going into hotels. So having to be reintroduced onto the streets, like violently like that is going to cause like more outbreaks like I know it, you know, and a lot of the people that are Yeah, it sucks, like, I almost like freaks me out. munities Yeah, I'm fine. I'm trying to. I'm not fine, but I'm trying to be.

Quiver Watts  33:16

That was roadkill tearing up while talking about the impact the city's failed COVID response has had and will have on homeless communities here in San Francisco. This work is personal for her as someone who spent 10 years homeless, and it shows in the way that she fiercely shows up for the unhoused people who come to her desperate for someone to have their back.

Megan 'Roadkill' Johnson  33:35

Okay, so I actually did technically work with somebody who had had COVID but they had already been self quarantined for X amount of days before they were released back into the public and all that other stuff. And so, um, you know, going in and meeting them, I still had to, like take like the necessary precautions to protect myself. So like a mask gloves. Make sure I didn't stand too close to them. But this was also like an elder, you know. And the dynamic of like, why they were being pulled out of shelter was like, very unclear. And so I was getting nowhere with doing this phone tag with shelter and myself to get this, like individual back into shelter. And so I eventually had to, like, meet. Well, we already met our clients before COVID. That's how we do a lot of hands on work. But because of COVID I wasn't able to really meet all of our clients, but I ended up meeting this client, because I had to march with him to the shelter and demand that they let him in twice. So um, yeah, the first time they were really rude, and we ended up not being able to get you know them back in that day. And then the second time I was like, not letting taking no for an answer and I was like, You No, no, we're not doing that. Because one once again, like elder man disabled, like he survived COVID like, come on, like, let him back in, you know what I mean? Especially since that shelter was for like people in recovery after they get out, you know, of being so quarantined, like it was kind of like a drop zone for them to recover and stuff. And

TJ Johnston  35:29

to wrap up, we asked Ben, whether or not San Francisco has done a good job supporting homeless people through the covid 19 pandemic.

Ben Baczkowski  35:39

No, not at all. They've done pretty poorly. And if you listen to them talk about it, you'd think that they were doing a lot. They're very good at talking a lot and promising a lot of things. But there's really like the overall Coronavirus response by the city is really it has like two aspects to it. On the one hand, if you're a landlord or more someone with a mortgage or like even a tenant, there's a lot of protections right now, especially in San Francisco is better than other places in the country. So like there's an eviction moratorium. There's a lot of laws around that. But when it comes to unhoused people, the city really dragged its feet in, in its response initially, which ended up really creating a lot of chaos and issues for people on service providers. For people who use services. It was a it's still a complete mess, frankly. So they didn't implement anything until long after the stay in place order went into effect. And people had been asking questions about what they were going to do, like a month before. The Coronavirus had even hit the Bay Area. Well, that's We knew that it hit the Bay Area. So it was really a blessing that the individuals, many of the individual service providers were at where we're doing a lot of this work on their own sanitizing and really being more self motivated. Um, that kept a potential outbreak in the shelter's down. And we don't really know if there was an out what the outbreak rate in the homeless community is because the city doesn't report those things. But that's another that's like another aspect a whole other aspect of it is they don't even keep numbers for infection rates and outbreak outbreak rates amongst homeless people. That it's it, it's just not it's it's like a completely different response. I mean, on the one hand, if you're like a part of like the I, you know, for lack of a better word privileged community of San Francisco, there were clear guidelines and yada, yada yada. But when it came to on house people, it was just like dragging their feet, not coming up with plans, not listening to the community, you know, a constant constant talk of budget cuts and it was total chaos, and it still is total chaos.

TJ Johnston  38:19

Ben says that the city has been dishonest about their homeless response throughout the pandemic.

Ben Baczkowski  38:25

The mayor and the police department are still conducting sweeps and they will tell you up and down that we do not conduct sweeps but they they do them every day. And and they have been for four years, even though they'll tell you to your face that they don't do that. And it's literally a lie. It really doesn't have anything other than to do with like a just a disregard for for homeless people's lives. And again, the majority of the homeless community in San Francisco are Black or African Americans and black people. If you're having a problem in your shelter, Please contact the shelter crime advocates office. Our the providers hate our guts most of the time because we have a reputation for winning. And yeah, our clients like us, but are the providers not so much some of them respect us. And to the extent that they respect us we get along very well. But, um, yeah out we we have a pretty good success record. So I encourage anyone who listens to this podcast, who has ever run into problems with a shelter provider or individual staff people or city employee or whatever, to hit us up and let us know because we do it all file complaints, represent people in hearings, one stop shop. So the best place is to email email us and our group email is s ca. At eviction defense.org and then our office phone number is 415-346-7685. And that is our direct line. And then my my work cell phone number is 415-860-2179. So yeah, call me direct. I get texts

Quiver Watts  40:33

have burning questions about poverty and homelessness in San Francisco, send them to us and they might just be our next street speak episode, contact us at street sheet sf@gmail.com or call 415-346-3740