Editor’s Note: Guardian intern Bryan Cohen contributed to this week’s cover story: “Shelter Shuffle: Inside San Francisco’s confounding system of housing the homeless.” What follows is a fascinating log of his experiences:
Mural on the southeastern wall of MSC South, one of the city’s largest shelters
By Bryan Cohen
I have a new saying for the San Francisco Human Services Agency: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me; fool me three times . . . Oh wait, shame on you again because public service programs shouldn’t be in the business of fooling people — or making them feel shameful about being fooled.
Here’s the story – I’d just arrived in San Francisco from Boston when my car was impounded. I got a job, but came up short for a down payment on an apartment. With no back up cash, staying at a hotel would put me back even farther and I don’t know anyone on the west coast, let alone the state of California or the Bay Area.
All of this is absolutely true, except for one fortunate detail: I was able to Craigslist my way into a short-term apartment. Otherwise, this would have been much more than just an undercover investigation for a newspaper.
I took off on a chilly Saturday evening, expecting at the very least a gym floor and a blanket. Three days later I had yet to see a bed or a good nights sleep. And to add supreme insult to that injury: official city reports I reviewed later showed lots of vacancies at the very shelters that were denying me and others a place to stay.