Two women are juxtaposed in my head after reading a heart breaking story in the Mission Local about a homeless Latina mother with three kids and the endless hurdles to her finding permanent housing in a city where rents are immorally high and even most SROs (single hotel rooms) are priced out of the reach of the poor. 

Daniela Mercado was left homeless after her boyfriend was fired for being undocumented (thank you “pro-family” legislators for creating anti-immigrant policies that break up families and make people homeless). Now she and her children go from friends’ apartments and shelters to sleeping in their car.

Mercado’s case is not unique. There are currently 2,200 homeless students in the San Francisco school system. Some 267 families are waiting for the meager 59 rooms in the city’s shelter system. Even if they get one, they can only stay for a short time. 

As I’m finishing the article in tears, my thoughts flash back to a hearing I attended the other day. It concerned new regulations for Harvey Milk and Jane Warner plazas in the Castro where I live. Our local supervisor wants to restrict sleeping, pitching a tent, having a shopping cart or sitting on a moveable chair (after 9pm), measures obviously aimed at driving the homeless out of the plazas.

Among those homeless are many queer youth who have fled here, as they have since the late 60s, for refuge from awful homophobic situations back home. What they find when they get here is not a welcome mat, but high rents, minimum wage jobs and no sympathy from the very community that they came to be a part of.

At the hearing, a woman who lives in one of the condos near Milk Plaza testified that she is tired of the noise and the sight of the homeless in the Castro. Obviously if she lives in a condo at Castro and Market, she’s not hurting financially. She must have a decent job to support her mortgage payments.

Thinking about her complaints after reading Mercado’s story of life on the streets with three small children, I admit that I didn’t have charitable thoughts about that woman. How can she complain about a little partying in a neighborhood known for its 24-hour partying or the sight of homeless people when she has a very expensive roof over her head? 

When she looks at the homeless, does she see Daniela Mercado and her three kids? Does she understand that it’s been 30 years of bad social policy since Ronald Reagan was president that is responsible for so much homelessness in America? Not to mention the bad choices that San Francisco mayors from Willie Brown to the present occupant of room 200 have made.

When do people like that blonde woman from the condo realize that the homeless are not the enemy, and that all the energy she spends complaining about those who sleep outside her expensive condo could be used to advocate for housing for women such as Mercado?

Thanks to the efforts of condo owners, merchants and others in the neighborhood, the new regulations for Milk Plaza will no doubt pass the Board of Supervisors next week and people such as Mercado will be fined for falling asleep on a bench. Unable to pay the fines, they’ll end up with a bench warrant that will hinder their efforts to get housing because it’s considered a “criminal record” by housing providers.  

America the beautiful just gets uglier every day.