SHAME OF THE CITY 'WE'RE TOGETHER'

It has been four years since the Silvers have
lived in a home. They are a strong family that
must survive while living in an aging van.
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Kevin Fagan - San Francisco Chronicle - December 1, 2003

SHAME OF THE CITY (Second of a five-part series)

San Francisco has the nation's worst problem with hard-core
homelessness. Thousands of people are without shelter, and as
many as 5,000 spend virtually all their time on the street.

Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan and photographer Brant Ward spent
four months among the homeless and those who deal with them.

In this series, they explore how one of the nation's wealthiest
and most cultured cities came to have so many people living on
its streets.

The dawn breeze swept cold off the water, and Kim Silver shivered
as she threw open the backdoor. There was no time to admire the
million-dollar view across San Francisco Bay. There were two kids
to get off to school.

She woke up 8-year-old Ashley and 7-year-old Tommy where they lay
sprawled across the front and back seats of the family van --
their home. Kim wiped Ashley's face with a wet rag. Tommy pulled
on gray sweatpants and crawled out the front door to stretch.

"Homeless," Kim muttered with a chuckle. "If anybody told me I'd
be living like this someday, I'd have told them they were
crazy."

That beautiful view the Silvers have is from the bare end of 24th
Street near Potrero Hill, next to a park littered with heroin
needles. The last time they lived under a roof was four years
ago. The family -- 40-year-old Kim, her 32-year-old husband, Tom
Silver, and their two children -- came here from Vermont in 1999,
looking for the easy life in the California sun.

Things went wrong, and they now exist crammed into their rusting,
1970s- vintage Dodge Ram, sleeping on mats and seats. Their
clothes and food are in plastic bags and boxes neatly arrayed
along the walls. A 9-inch black-and- white TV is hot-wired into
the van battery; the kids like "Scooby-Doo" the most, while the
parents watch sports. A 5-gallon bucket just inside the door
serves as the toilet; they dump it every day at a gas station
rest room.

Lucky, a stray cat they picked up a few months back, sleeps
anywhere she wants. Her litter box sits next to the bucket.

The Silvers' lives have held to a rigid routine for so long, the
kids can't remember it being any other way: Wake up at 6:30 a.m.
Get the kids dressed. Drive them to school about a mile away.

Fetch groceries or medicine or car parts, fill up the family
water jugs at a faucet and drive back to the end of the street
where they always park. Pick up the trash and a half-dozen or so
needles that junkies leave every night in the windy little park
at the water's edge next to the van.

Wait.

Pick the kids up at 2 p.m. Drive back to the end of the street.
Do homework with the kids. Play in the park. In bed by 8 p.m.

When the Giants play day games, Tom Silver -- who is disabled and
uses a wheelchair -- panhandles the stadium.

The family waits in the van a few blocks away; Tom doesn't want
the kids to see him. On Sundays, they attend church in a school
bus that parks on their street and ministers to the penniless.

Once a week, they drive to a truck stop for showers.

The Silvers have been offered emergency housing by the city, but
they stay on the street because they are afraid of being
separated or being placed somewhere dangerous.

Call it lethargy, dysfunction or bad luck -- the fact is, they
can't figure out how to get out of the mess they're in. And now
they've been in it so long it's become automatic. Familiar.

"We've got neighbors and a good view, and nobody really bothers
us here, so it's OK," said Kim, waving a hand at the half-dozen
other vans, cars and buses parked around her; they're in what
social workers call Car Nation because of all the wheeled
homeless.

"Nothing glamorous, but we're together," she said. "There's
hardly any other homeless families out here who can say that."

Every year, about 800 families stay in San Francisco's emergency
homeless shelters, according to Connecting Point, the city's
central intake agency for homeless families.

Another 130 are on waiting lists to get in. Of those waiting,
about 50 families live outside or in cars, making them part of
the city's 3,000 to 5,000 "hard-core" homeless people -- the ones
social workers say are the hardest to serve and to get off the
streets.

But it's rare to see families outside, because when county
authorities find children living at risk, they are taken away and
put into state care.

"A lot of the families wind up staying somewhere most of the time
they're on the waiting list (which is usually two to six months),
with friends or other temporary arrangements," said Rebecca
Rognes, crisis assessment counselor at Connecting Point. "You
just don't see them out there that much."

The Silvers are in that hard core, but they defy conventional
wisdom.

The children are top achievers in their classes, the family goes
to church every Sunday and the parents are not substance abusers
-- their only vice is chain-smoking cigarettes hand-rolled from a
bulk tobacco can.

County authorities know this, so aside from hooking the Silvers
up with social services, they leave the family alone.

"It's hard for them, I know, but these children are highly
skilled," said Chris Telles, 40, who taught and has mentored both
children at Daniel Webster Elementary School. "They came that
way. They're very strong. And their parents are good people."

He glanced down at Ashley, who was hugging his legs and smiling.
School was just out, and everyone was schmoozing in the yard.

"I want to be a teacher when I grow up," Ashley said. Telles
betrayed not one whit of surprise.

"You can be anything you want," he said. He looked over at Tommy,
who sat on a cement planter, so deep in the story of "Mulan" --
his sister's book- reading assignment -- he was oblivious to
everything around.

"So can your brother," Telles said. While Ashley ran off to play
with friends, he added: "Even in kindergarten, Tommy was one of
the best readers I ever saw. He'll go far."

Not without some pain.

Ninety-five percent of Daniel Webster's students qualify for
subsidized lunches, and the Silver children get that, plus free
breakfast. They're at the bottom -- and some kids don't let them
forget it.

Last winter, for several days in a row, a boy trailed after Tommy
on the playground at lunch, chanting, "Homeless boy, homeless
boy."

Ashley stormed into her brother's classroom -- demanding, in
front of the entire class, that the taunting stop. It did.

A few weeks ago, a girl shouted at Ashley on the playground, "You
homeless bitch, you sleep with the rats." Ashley stuck her tongue
out at her and walked away.

But the next day, she approached the girl and told her: "I sleep
in my own bed, I have my own toys, and I don't sleep with rats.
I'm just like anyone else."

"She left me alone after that," Ashley said, biting off each
word. "I don't like to talk about it."

Principal Adelina Aramburo has weighed in a few times to mediate,
talking to all the kids involved and their parents.

"Most of the children in the classes don't know about each
other's housing situations, and we try to keep it that way,"
Aramburo said. "But you are going to get clashes. It's hard."

"Whee!" Ashley cried as she pushed her father around in his
wheelchair in the park next to their van. "Pretend we're an
airplane!" he called back to her, and she made whirring noises.

The park is a dirt lot covered with scrubby bushes and weeds,
with one picnic table and little trails cut through.

Tommy pushed his scooter around the trails -- then stopped when
he found a discarded heroin needle. Tom Silver pulled up at the
table and groaned as Tommy handed him the syringe.

"I thought we got all of these this morning," he said to his
wife, who wrapped the needle in paper bags and tossed it into a
trash can. "You'd think getting six of them off the ground would
get them all."

The children took off on Tommy's scooter.

"The only trouble is that none of the kids from school can ever
come play here," Kim said out of earshot of the children.

"The kids at our school are poor, too, but they have places to
live. And coming here ... well, it's just uncomfortable. They
don't visit us, and we don't really visit them.

"It's just the way it is."

She went over to the van, opened a plastic cooler on the
backseat, and took out a package of Tater Tots and chicken legs.
Every night, she cooks their dinner on a hot plate set on the
divider between the two front seats. They eat in the van,
watching TV, with the plates on their laps.

Tom's legs are withered and atrophied, the result of having
nerve- destroying Guillain-Barre syndrome since childhood.

He can stand a few minutes at a time only if he leans against
something. His arms are thin but functional. He once worked as a
welder, but for years, his only income has been a Social Security
disability check.

Kim worked as a housekeeper and clerk before coming to
California. But she has high blood pressure, heart and back
trouble and severe asthma, and it's gotten so bad in the past few
years, she doesn't feel she can work. For now.

"I just can't get around very well," she said. "I wish I could,
but I can't."

Between the two of them, they receive $1,192 a month in welfare
-- just enough, they say, to keep the van repaired and insured,
and to pay for food, medicine, gas, clothes, school supplies and
a cell phone to talk to relatives.

"They don't drink, they don't do drugs, and believe me, I'd know
because I've shown up unannounced plenty of times," said Kathleen
"Kat" Villasenor, 40, whose daughter is friends with the Silver
children at school.

In the four years since they met, Villasenor has become their
guardian angel: She is coordinator for the citywide employee
charity campaign at the phone company where she works,
interacting closely with everything from city shelters to United
Way programs, so she knows how to help.

"Their trouble is they keep trying, and it's been consistently
one dead end after another," she said. "I helped them look into
public housing, and it was too scary.

We looked into family shelters, but they wouldn't let the family
stay together. Then when we found a hotel room in the Tenderloin,
they were scared and people broke into their van.

"Tom's in that wheelchair, and he can't defend them if they're in
a drug- infested, violent hellhole," she said. "So they'd rather
just stay in their van where at least they can keep the family
together. And I can understand that."

"They are such a sweet family, your heart goes out to them."

What pulled the Silvers West was a classic case of the grass
seeming greener.

Married in 1996, they were working class and rented an apartment
or stayed with family in Rutland, Vt., a 19,000-population town
surrounded by forest.

But cold, snowy winters were hard on Tom. After spending their
lives in the same small state, they wanted a fresh start.

"We always heard California had great weather, and all our
friends said you could come here and get easy housing and quick
jobs," Kim said.

An acquaintance wrote that he would sell them a 30-foot motor
home once they got here. So they drove out in a beat-up, 1985
Mercury sedan, loaded with so much stuff they needed six bungee
cords to tie the trunk shut.

They spent $2,500 of their nest egg of $5,000 on the RV, San
Francisco housing officials were encouraging, and Kim set about
looking for work.

But the recession soon hit, and jobs dried up, as did the
Silvers' savings. The recreational vehicle burned up when some
candles tipped over in 2001, and they had no insurance.

And in a crucial miscalculation, they underestimated how long it
would take to get on Section 8 public housing, a program of the
federal Housing and Urban Development Department that pays rent
for poor people; they thought it would be a matter of months.

Today, after more than three years, the Silver family is No.
8,175 on a list of 27,000 for Section 8 in San Francisco. At
best, 3,000 Section 8 vouchers are expected to be given out this
winter, so they have another year or two of waiting.

"I keep thinking it will get better, and all it does is get to
another day," Kim said. "If I didn't keep laughing, I'd be
crying."

Kim's parents cannot understand how their daughter remains
homeless.

"I wish they'd get a skill and get some jobs," said Evelyn
Horton, a former data processor, who is 67, like her retired
firefighter husband, Ron. "I can't imagine them living in a van.
How can they? They're good people. They can do better."

Her voice on the phone from Rutland caught, and she stopped, too
choked up to go on. "I'm sorry," Horton said after a minute. "It
just hurts that they're homeless. I haven't seen them in such a
long time."

Kim sighed. She hears such things from her mother from time to
time when she calls, and all she can tell her is that she is
trying as hard as she can. "A job, yeah. ... I would love to be
able to work," she said.

"Maybe someday."

Kim and Tom do talk sometimes about leaving, starting again
somewhere cheaper.

The trouble is that the kids are in school getting A's and B's,
and leaving town to look for another place to live means taking
them out of class. The van's drive shaft housing is damaged,
meaning it's good only for short runs around town.

After four years, they know all the spots they can park in to get
a night's sleep, they know their school, they know some friends.
They know the landscape. So they stay.

"We're just stuck," Kim said. "Our life isn't so bad. It's just
not inside."

And so they wait for a federal Section 8 housing voucher, which
would allow the family to rent in a neighborhood of their own
choosing at a vastly reduced rate. Or some stroke of luck.
Anything but going into a housing project.

"I absolutely won't move my children into one of those projects,"
Kim said on a recent trip to the San Francisco Housing Authority
office to check on her Section 8 progress.

She was in a meeting with Eligibility Manager Nannette Sparks,
who noted with a raised eyebrow that the family was offered a
spot in a project last spring -- and turned it down.

"Yeah, it was a spot in Sunnydale, places like that," Kim said.
"They're not safe. My kids will get beat up every day. Every time
I drive through one, I get offered drugs, and I don't want my
kids around that."

"That's your personal opinion, and I disagree," Sparks said. "My
personal advice to you? You shouldn't turn down a unit when it's
offered."

The two part politely, but Kim fumed when she got outside to
where Tom was waiting in the van. Tom got mad, too.

"At least in the van, we can stay safe," Tom said. "We park it in
a project, it'll get stolen. We can't live in one of those."

The main thing keeping the family's spirits up, other than the
comforting routine of school, is church.

A blue school bus, with "Homeless Church" painted on its side in
big black letters, rolls onto their street every Sunday at
midafternoon. Ashley sat in her folding chair on the bus one
recent Sunday, staring intently up at her mother's face. It was
warm.

Thirty people around them were singing and clapping, all eyes
clenched tight except for those of Ashley and her mom.

"At the cross, where I first saw the light," the roomful sang.
"The burden of my heart rolled away, and now I'm happy all the
day." Kim belted out the old hymn with gusto. Ashley mouthed
along. The singing stopped.

"What does it mean, 'Our burdens will roll away?' " Ashley
whispered to Kim, big, brown eyes still staring straight into her
mom's face. "Are we happy?"

Kim's hands tightened on her hymn book. She patted Ashley's head.
"Yes, honey," she said quietly. "We're happy."

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©THE HOMELESS NEWS - H.C. Covington, Editor
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