San Francisco, CA
Contributor: May we never grow inured to homelessness
Most Saturday mornings, I stroll half a mile downhill from my tiny apartment in a bosky part of San Francisco to a farmers market. My usual reverie of anticipation (about carrots with their tops attached, about the price of berries) was interrupted recently by the sight of three bodies.
That is, I thought of them as bodies; it was not evident whether they were alive or dead. All lay splayed on the sidewalk, one a couple blocks from my home, the other two, blocks apart, closer to the market, itself located in a neighborhood where need is evident. (Food stamps are often the tender for buying produce.) The bodies belonged to shabbily but fully dressed men — except one man, who was missing a shoe. Maybe the men are sleeping, I thought, or unconscious from drink or drugs. Or maybe they are dead. Nobody walking by — including me — slowed down to pay attention to them, beyond a glance.
For decades, encountering such a scene, I used to stop, then wait to see a leg twitch, a chest rise. I rarely do even that anymore. In high school, I had read with shock that poor people in India, people with no home, slept on the sidewalk, while others just walked by. How awful of those others, I remember thinking. How could they live with themselves? The reproach has come home. We’ve gotten used to homelessness — the homelessness of others.
I guessed the three men on that recent Saturday had no homes, but from many years interviewing a formerly homeless man who is now a civic leader in San Francisco, I learned not to rush to conclusions. Del Seymour, today known locally as the mayor of the Tenderloin, taught me that a man lying with his eyes closed on a sidewalk may have a home, but perhaps was interrupted by temptation or a medical situation on his way there. I also learned from Del, to my initial shock, that some homeless people work full-time jobs. I’ve learned a lot about homelessness, mostly from him, but also from my daily Google alert for the word in the news.
Because those alerts are so rarely encouraging, one seeming spark of good news recently stood out. In Los Angeles County, according to newly released statistics about 2024, the number of deaths among the homeless population decreased from 2023. Yay! I thought. The myriad programs are working! Whether naloxone intervention or tiny houses or new shelters or other efforts (free job training like Del initiated in San Francisco?) are to praise, I felt a surge of hope. Then I read more closely.
Deaths among unhoused individuals in L.A. County had fallen in 2024 not to 100 or so, as I naively hoped, but to 2,208. A trend in the right direction, yes. A cause for celebration, no.
Far too many people know firsthand the emotional and physical grind of homelessness. Virtually all other Californians know it secondhand and have probably asked themselves the same question: What is a (presumably well-meaning) housed person to do in response to the sight of an unhoused person, not to mention many unhoused people? I know of a nurse in San Francisco who screeches her car to a stop when she spots a person in bodily distress and administers CPR if appropriate. I admire her action, but doubt I could replicate it.
Granted, my own main and stubborn response, to spend nearly a decade writing a book about the subject in the hope it will have a helpful impact, is not a route available or attractive to many. And shorter term efforts, such as volunteering at local nonprofits, certainly have more immediate results. One common impulse, in which I take part, if insufficiently and awkwardly, is to give someone food or money, or call 911 when someone clearly needs help.
Yet any pedestrian, especially any female pedestrian, will attest that the impulse to help someone on the sidewalk becomes more challenging if that someone is awake, and male. Will an offering lead to a spit, a scream, a chase? Should we avoid eye contact and walk on? Not necessarily.
What I’ve learned from Del is to offer something that may mean more than a dollar or a sandwich: Say hello.
Acknowledge the person whose face is several feet below your own. This individual is part of a family, “somebody’s son, somebody’s auntie,” Del’s litany goes, and remains a human being. Remind yourself of that. More importantly, remind them. Del adds: Don’t stop if the person seems “nuts,” his enjoyed foray into politically incorrect phrasing. Otherwise, slow down for a few seconds, maybe longer. At some point, over time, and the same route, you might recognize one another and actually have a conversation. Meanwhile, keep it basic, but say something.
I obey. Often, just “Hi.”
Almost always comes an incalculably generous reward: a smile and a greeting returned. Humbled, I move on, again resolved not to let our unhoused neighbors feel invisible, nor to forget that homelessness is, among other adjectives, abnormal.
Alison Owings is the author of “Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour’s Journey From Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco.”
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San Francisco, CA
Dozens of apparent shopping carts stuck in marsh along SF Bay: ‘How did they get there?!’
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KGO) — Dozens of apparent shopping carts are stuck in a marsh along the San Francisco Bay. And residents are puzzled as to how they got there.
“It’s crazy! Gross!” said Kim Avalos, who frequents the trail. “What is that?!”
The San Francisco Bay Trail in South San Francisco curves around the mouth of the Colma Creek marsh. It’s a popular walking and running trail, but local residents are starting to notice something in the water.
“Now that I’m looking at… wow…there’s actually so many shopping carts out here,” said Avalos. “There’s an extreme amount.”
Avalos works for a nearby garbage company. She says she walks the trail every day but has never seen anything like this.
“It’s actually kind of insane to think about how they even got there,” Avalos said.
It’s the same story for others who frequent the trail. At first glance, mistaking the debris for rocks until they actually stare at it.
“It kind of blends in,” said Hondres when we approached him on the trail. “I’ve never seen grocery carts out in the Bay like this… I don’t know, it’s kind of weird.”
“Have you noticed it before?” 7 On Your Side’s Stephanie Sierra asked another passer-by.
“Uh… no. This is kind of new,” he said. “Someone is being very stupid… I’ve seen them over the years. I don’t remember there being this many. There’s quite a few.”
Many people who frequent the trail said when it’s high tide it’s hard to notice anything.
“It does look like shopping carts, do you know if that’s what it is?”
It’s hard to say for sure. But at low tide, it certainly looks that way.
“It does look like shopping carts, amongst other things,” Save the Bay representative Josh Quigley said.
And there’s not just one or two, but there’s what appears to be dozens of them spanning the Colma Creek marsh adjacent to the bay.
“Have you ever seen this many shopping carts along the bay?” Stephanie Sierra asked.
“I have not, no,” Quigley said. “This is certainly the greater concentration that I’ve ever seen in one place.”
Quigley is the Senior Policy Manager for Save the Bay, an environmental nonprofit founded in 1961 to stop excessive filling of the San Francisco Bay.
“I think it’s really unfortunate… the bay is treated not as the jewel and resource that it should be, but as a dumping ground,” Quigley said.
So, where is it all coming from? That seems to be up for debate.
“It could be a big prank, if anything, but at this rate I have no idea,” said Alvin Lau, who visits the trail regularly.
“There’s often homeless people in the mobile RV vehicles,” said another. “There’s always a lot of trash here, not going to lie.”
“I don’t know, maybe Costco. They are our neighbors,” Kim Avalos said. “Could be because they do look bigger.”
A Costco Business Center is about a mile from Colma Marsh. 7 On Your Side reached out to Costco’s corporate office, and the South San Francisco Costco General Manager said: “We walk and clean the trail multiple times a week, in addition to checking for any carts that might end up in the bay.”
The goal now is to clean it out — and ensure it stays that way.
“Stop being dumb. There’s only one planet we got, so take care of it,” said Lau.
“It hurts me as an animal lover to see all these shopping carts in their place of habitat,” Avalos said.
“Save the Bay” says overall pollution is decreasing across the bay shoreline, but there are instances–like this one–where smaller pockets need to be addressed.
Locally, there are regulations in place to prevent this type of pollution.
7 On Your Side contacted the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board to further investigate and clean up the area.
Take a look at more stories and videos by 7 On Your Side.
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SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco will celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary this July 4 with a rare fireworks show on the Golden Gate Bridge, the mayor’s office announced Monday. It will be the first time in 14 years, and the third time ever, that a fireworks display will be held on the iconic span.
“The Golden Gate Bridge is as iconic as any landmark in the United States, so it’s an ideal place to launch fireworks for our country’s 250th anniversary,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a news release announcing the event.
With the change of venue for the city’s annual July 4 fireworks show, the mayor’s office is providing guidance on where to watch, and where not to watch, this year’s Golden Gate Bridge display, set to begin at 9:30 p.m.
Recommended viewing locations:
- Crissy Field
- Marina Green
- Fisherman’s Wharf/Pier 39
The mayor’s office noted that “because this year’s fireworks will launch from the east side of the Golden Gate Bridge between its two towers, the best viewing areas are those with a clear northwest sightline toward the bridge.”
Locations that are not recommended for viewing the fireworks show due to obstructed views include Ocean Beach, the Ferry Building and the Embarcadero waterfront.
The Golden Gate Bridge will be completely shut down to vehicle and pedestrian traffic during the Independence Day show. Vehicles will be blocked from the bridge beginning around 8:30 p.m. until “shortly after the conclusion of the fireworks display,” officials said. The east and west sidewalks will be closed from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The two previous fireworks displays were in 1987 and 2012, when the Golden Gate Bridge’s 50th and 75th anniversaries were celebrated.
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