Residents puthuge rocks on their sidewalk to keep the homeless away — and launched a battle By Hannah Knowles
For about a month, the rocks
were just a mystery. Two dozen boulders had popped up along a San Francisco
sidewalk — and even officials were stumped.
“We don’t know who put them in,
but it wasn’t the city,” a councilman said.
By the time the rocks were
hauled away Monday, they’d spawned days of headlines and split a community.
Local news outlets began to
piece the story together last week: Weary of alleged drug dealing among
homeless people camping out on their block, neighbors on the street of Clinton
Park had pooled several thousand dollars to physically bar the way. To some, it
was a creative tactic from desperate residents. For others, it was a
declaration of hostility to the homeless — a Band-Aid measure in a city where
their plight has drawn national scrutiny and where shelters still can’t meet
demand. The homeless count in San Francisco jumped
17 percent from 2017 to this year as rents and real estate prices continue to
skyrocket and as the Trump administration considers
an intervention in California.
Opponents rolled the rocks into
the street overnight; city workers put them back; people rolled them out again.
Protesters gathered Sunday, while residents called a meeting and said they
faced harassment.
By last weekend, the boulders
were exposing just how high tensions are running amid a city homelessness
crisis that years of policy proposals have done little to dent. They’d become a
“symbol,” said Danielle Baskin, a San Francisco artist who walks through
Clinton Park on her way to work and whose Twitter account now identifies her as
an “Anti-Rock Agitator.”
“They shine lights — not just to
people in San Francisco but to thousands of people in the country — that the
housing crisis is a serious problem, if people are fighting over rocks,” Baskin
told The Washington Post.
Baskin, who joined the dispute
with an attempt to sell the rocks on Craigslist, became deluged with Twitter
and Facebook messages from people interested in bringing the boulders down.
She’s still working her way through all the emails she has received.
“People
are pretty fascinated at what’s going on in San Francisco,” she said. “This
situation of extreme wealth disparity and homelessness is sort of on the rise
everywhere. And it’s just the worst in San Francisco.”
Baskin’s
dismay over the boulders taps into long-standing frustrations with an
increasingly expensive Bay Area and tech prosperity that has left many behind.
Clinton Park sits in the Mission Dolores neighborhood, home
to the city’s oldest building along with a median
home value and condo listings
that top $1 million. Real estate company Redfin estimates houses overlooking
Clinton Park at more than $1 million in worth as well.
Residents,
many of whom have declined to give their names to news outlets, push back on
accusations that they are overreacting to homeless campers.
“This is
about people yelling and screaming at 3 in the morning and openly flashing
weapons,” one fed-up woman told
the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m not rich. I’m having a hard enough time
making it myself. They even set up a shelf and were openly dealing drugs, and
nobody was doing anything.”
Reports to
San Francisco’s 311 service show frequent requests from Clinton Park for
“encampment cleanups” and complaints about needles. And city officials say the
concerns are valid.
“A
neighborhood had people in tents who were literally selling drugs,” San
Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru told The Post. Echoing residents,
he said the rocks were working — drug dealing in the area seemed to stop.
“So we fully
support the neighbors in this situation,” Nuru said.
Public Works
employees said last week that the boulders will remain in place, as they do not
violate city codes and left a walkway.
But
activists had other ideas. For them, the boulders are part of a worrying
phenomenon called “hostile architecture” that makes public spaces deliberately
inhospitable, often with the aim of keeping homeless people away. Critics have noted
“anti-homeless” design choices around San Francisco, including spiked planter
boxes and benches that fold up overnight; cities nationwide try to ward off
campers with controversial tactics such as removing public seating or even blaring
the song “Baby Shark” on a loop.
“Four
thousand dollars to just dump their rocks on the street,” Baskin said,
referencing the total raised by a now-defunct GoFundMe page documented in
screen shots. “It was pretty upsetting to me and seemed very disrespectful of
another human being.”
Daniel
Bartosiewicz, who said he camped in Clinton Park for two months, lamented to
NBC Bay Area that none of the neighbors talked to him about their concerns.
“They would
have saved a lot of money and a lot of trouble if they just said something to
us,” he said. “Use your compassion and love and understanding. We’re humans.”
Speaking to local
media outlets, a neighbor who recalled struggles with feces smeared around
houses said she’d tried to shoo some campers away.
As news of the Clinton Park rocks spread, a
resistance formed. On Friday evening, police responded to a report of about 30
bicyclists rolling the boulders onto the street, spokesman Adam Lobsinger said.
When officers arrived, the bikers were gone and there was no crime to
investigate, he said, given that the rocks’ owners were unclear.
That was just the start of the anti-boulder
campaign.
People
gathered in the middle of the night to knock the rocks out of place and wear
down a city eager to avoid traffic obstructions. A friend of Baskin’s took the
rocks’ measurements, interested in using wood to turn them into a bench. Some
people tried to cart the boulders away in a truck, Baskin said; she said she
did not participate and declined to name those involved but described chipping
in for the vehicle rental.
The growing
attention to the boulders has reportedly alarmed residents. One video that
circulated on Twitter with the caption “How the Clinton Park folks reacted to
their boulders getting moved again” shows a man yelling for people to leave.
“The cops
are already on their way,” he shouts. (San Francisco police said Friday’s
bicyclist incident was their only record of a call involving Clinton Park
boulders).
“We traded
criminals for activists and the media,” one unnamed resident told the San
Francisco Chronicle. “We don’t want to feel the fire anymore."
Opponents
were ready to move rocks as many nights as they had to until officials gave in,
Baskin said, even gathering Sunday for a small protest with signs. Then, on
Monday, they got their wish.
Nuru said
the request to remove the boulders came from the residents who put them up —
worried now not just about the sidewalks but about “threatening” emails they
had received. The residents want the source of the controversy gone while they
“regroup and figure out what’s next,” he said.
That next
step could be some sort of landscaping, he said. One option: heavier boulders.
“The problem
is they were not big enough,” Nuru told
the San Francisco Examiner on Monday.
Saying the
city is working to expand both temporary and permanent solutions to
homelessness, Nuru told The Post he thinks the rock-movers would do better to
“channel their energies to do positive things.”
Baskin said
she wishes that “we could all talk.” She’s planning to put out signs for a
community meeting, although she does not know how many of the residents behind
the rocks will be willing to show up and reveal their identities.
With the
controversy still brewing, advocates who have spent years tackling San
Francisco’s homelessness crisis are attempting to keep the focus on underlying
issues rather than a media-sucking drama.
“So ask us
about the boulders,” the Coalition on Homelessness dared its Twitter followers
this weekend. “Ask us Contacted Monday about the rock debacle, Joshua
Bamberger, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco who
helps lead a homelessness research initiative, said he was far more interested
in big-picture problems and proven solutions to the crisis afflicting his city
and so many others — solutions such as “housing, housing and housing.”
“There are
so many streets in San Francisco where people are sleeping or uncomfortable
sleeping,” Bamberger said, sounding exasperated. As for the boulder story: “Why
is this a thing?”
*******
On Sunday, the Main
branch of the SF public library, I took Adam to the main branch of the SF
public library since Adam had never been there. I thought he’d enjoy the atrium
and the various floors devoted to media. We entered from the Larkin Street
doors came upto the great light-filled atrium. As we climbed the stairs from
the children’s book section, we noticed the netting that lined the hand rails
to the atrium. I mentioned that it must be for the pigeons. When we got to the
4th floor, we looked about to gain our bearings, when a librarian
met our eyes, “Can I help you? “
“Just wondering if the
side spaces are available for studying” motioning to the glass enclosed areas.
“Yes, they are. They
are first come, first served.”
“This is my nephew’s
first time here, so I am giving him a tour.”
“Welcome, the spaces
are available to anyone. You must have to check in fiwht the librarian there.”
“By the way, what is
the netting for? To keep pigeons out?”
“No, it is a suicide
barrier.”
There was an awkward
moment of silence as if the allow time for the speaker to allow for the gravity
of the words to sink in and for the hearer to process the information.
The librarian added,
“There are a lot of people hurting here.”
The information
haunted me for the rest of the visit there, as if the sacred space of the
library was no longer immune from the pain of suicide. The library has become a
refuge for he homeless that a full time social worker is on staff to support
the community.
******
Jesus
said to the Pharisees:
"There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen
and dined sumptuously each day.
And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,
who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps
that fell from the rich man's table.
Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
When the poor man died,
he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.
The rich man also died and was buried,
and from the netherworld, where he was in torment,
he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off
and Lazarus at his side.
And he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me.
Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue,
for I am suffering torment in these flames.'
Abraham replied,
'My child, remember that you received
what was good during your lifetime
while Lazarus likewise received what was bad;
but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established
to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go
from our side to yours or from your side to ours.'
He said, 'Then I beg you, father,
send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers,
so that he may warn them,
lest they too come to this place of torment.'
But Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets.
Let them listen to them.'
He said, 'Oh no, father Abraham,
but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
Then Abraham said, 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'"
"There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen
and dined sumptuously each day.
And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,
who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps
that fell from the rich man's table.
Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
When the poor man died,
he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.
The rich man also died and was buried,
and from the netherworld, where he was in torment,
he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off
and Lazarus at his side.
And he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me.
Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue,
for I am suffering torment in these flames.'
Abraham replied,
'My child, remember that you received
what was good during your lifetime
while Lazarus likewise received what was bad;
but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established
to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go
from our side to yours or from your side to ours.'
He said, 'Then I beg you, father,
send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers,
so that he may warn them,
lest they too come to this place of torment.'
But Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets.
Let them listen to them.'
He said, 'Oh no, father Abraham,
but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
Then Abraham said, 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'"
Luke
16:19-31.
****
If I am in good health
and have slept decently, I rise early to run in the morning before work. A few
months ago, an older homeless man was living at the end of the street, he had
his belongings in bags in a shopping cart while he slept on one of the two
wooden benches. My first reaction was that this was no place for a homeless
person. Should I not call someone from the city to report him. It will cause a
nuisance of rubbish and human waste. I had the same reaction a few years ago
when two men were sleeping under a tree; there they can taken residence there.
Again this was no place for a person to live. I never saw the older man awake
except one day when he was up early eating breakfast. I could not even muster
the courage to say good morning. A few days later he was gone—and my conscience
cleared. What happened to Lazarus? I completely missed Jesus when he visited my
street.
