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Raw
Deal for Elderly Homeless Lou's
head is hairless except for the wild white eyebrows. His teeth look like
the jagged remnants of an old cemetery. His nose, he says, has been broken
so badly and so often that the nasal passages have collapsed. He runs a
bony finger from his nose's bridge to the tip. It serves only decorative
purposes now, he says. Lou
will be 93 in November. He walks a little slowly, but he still does 200
push-ups a day. "Not all at once,'' he says. He
lives at "You
see guys pushing the seniors around when they're waiting in line,'' said
Jesse Schele, the case manager for MSC-South's elderly men and women, who
number from 35 to 40 a night at the 340-bed shelter. "They're a
vulnerable population.'' In
homeless shelters, seniors are sometimes beaten and robbed of their Social
Security money, their belongings and their medication. Sometimes the only
beds available are top bunks without ladders. At most shelters, clients
have to return to the streets in the morning, with no place to rest and no
haven from the elements until the shelters reopen at 4 p.m. -- assuming
they get into their first-choice shelter and aren't shuttled around until
late at night to score an open bed. The elderly also face shelter
employees who view them as nuisances, making no allowances for their
physical and sometimes mental vulnerabilities. This
is not news. Indeed, the city began more than two years ago to look into
creating appropriate shelters and housing for the growing population of
homeless seniors. There was a resolution by the Board of Supervisors in
April 2002, a task force convened in January 2003, and a proposition
passed by voters in November 2003 (Prop. J). The
result of all these propositions and resolutions and task-force meetings
over the past two years? Still
no shelter for seniors. And fewer beds in the existing shelters that are
designated specifically for seniors. Two
years ago, 49 beds were set aside for seniors at "We're
really shunted aside,'' said Barbara Blong, the housing director for
Senior Action Network and chair of the senior housing task force. The task
force helped to spotlight some problems, gain funding for case managers
and push for permanent housing, but it went the way of many task forces.
It hasn't met since February. It failed in its mandate to present a plan
for creating shelters that address "the unique needs of homeless
senior populations.'' The
task force bowed to fiscal and political pressures. The city's money for
homelessness is going toward permanent housing, not shelters, a policy
pushed vigorously by attorney Angela Alioto, Mayor Gavin Newsom's
appointee to oversee a 10-year plan to end homelessness. "Shut
them down,'' Alioto said of the shelters in a telephone interview this
week. "We don't need shelters. We need supportive housing. Shelters
are unsupported housing.'' But
in two years, just 90 new units of low-income, somewhat supportive housing
have been created for seniors. And 50 of the units require seniors to pay
half their income for rent. (More than a few seniors have declined the
opportunity.) And despite all the rhetoric from the Board of Supes, three
caseworkers hired a year ago to provide the support in "supportive
housing'' will be laid off by the end of this month if their city funding
is not renewed. The
reality is that there will not be enough permanent housing in the near
future to accommodate the estimated 3,000 to 4,000 homeless people 55 and
older on "We
need a separate shelter,'' says Schele of MSC-South. Just as young people
have Larkin Youth Services and the Lark Inn shelter, the elderly are a
vulnerable group that should have its own place. It's not only about
safety, but also efficiency. When senior housing becomes available, the
word can go out quickly and thoroughly to everyone. Case managers can
share resources. Meals can be tailored to older clients; medical needs can
be met. "I'd
feel safer in a building with only seniors,'' Lou says. Lou was a
foundling, as he puts it, abandoned in the "They
wouldn't let you in the homes,'' he says. "Can't blame 'em there.'' He
wore hand-me-downs from the farmers' children. "Got some shirts and
some old beat-up shoes. Good enough for me,'' he says. He
worked the fields in Maybe
that's why he doesn't mind the shelter, despite being robbed of $25 in
change recently and being regularly shoved around in the food line. "A
little disrespect don't hurt anybody,'' Lou says. "All you need is a
guy like this,'' he says, pointing to Schele, the bearded, pony-tailed
case manager young enough to be his great-grandson. Schele
watches out for him and the other seniors at the shelter. He came on board
a year ago, the first time the shelter has hired a case manager
specifically for the elderly population. He knows guys like Lou feel safer
at this particular shelter than at some of the single-occupancy rooms in
dangerous neighborhoods that are supposed to pass for permanent housing. "I
want to find an area to live where if you come out the front door, you
won't get knocked off,'' Lou says, adjusting the wad of tissues in the
front pocket of his shirt. Until
he finds that place, he will sleep another night on MSC-South's second
floor, third bed in from the aisle, his life's belongings locked in a
drawer on the floor. Young men fill the rest of the cavernous room. But
here in this corner, by the bathroom and the elevator, Lou settles down
among the nine other old men lucky enough to score beds in the elders'
section. Is
this as good as it gets today for a 92-year-old homeless man in
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