SF Has Ramped Up Homeless Sweeps. This Nonprofit Sees Another Way

As he walks down Jones Street in the Tenderloin, Russell Roberts pauses to strike up conversation with a couple leaning against a corner apartment building and hands them some fruit snacks.

“Do you all have housing?” he asks after a few minutes.

Trisha and Jay tell Roberts, who is making his rounds as a community ambassador with the San Francisco anti-poverty nonprofit GLIDE, that they signed up a couple of weeks ago and were waiting for an update. They had been on a city program that provides cash assistance to low-income residents, they say, but Jay missed his most recent check-in, so he lost his eligibility.

Roberts invites the couple to walk with him the two blocks back to GLIDE, where there’s hot fried chicken being served — and options to sign up for a place to stay.

“We can help get you guys assessed, get you a number to give you an idea of how long it’s going to be [to get housed]. In the meantime, I can get you guys into shelters,” Roberts tells Trisha and Jay, who are already packing the blanket they’re sitting on into a rolling cart carrying the rest of their belongings.

“If you want, even today, I can get you guys a place to stay. It’s up to you guys, if you come with us,” he says.

They quickly agree, and Roberts is back on the move to tell them about their possible next steps.

The community ambassador program that has Roberts and others walking the streets of the Tenderloin was launched in July in honor of the late Cecil Williams — GLIDE’s longtime pastor and a civil rights leader — and funded by Mayor London Breed’s 30X30 downtown revitalization plan. Its goals are to make the Tenderloin safer and cleaner, build community in the neighborhood and ease peoples’ transition from the streets to housing and other services.

The launch came at a tough time for the Tenderloin, as Breed promised aggressive encampment sweeps after a Supreme Court decision made it easier for cities to cite or arrest people for sleeping on the streets. In a tight re-election year for Breed, all eyes have been on how the mayor handles the neighborhood’s notorious problems, and how her challengers say they would if elected next month.

Crackdowns and sweeps have certainly had an effect on the number of tents and visible encampments on the area’s sidewalks since August, but GLIDE’s strategy is emblematic of another approach to people experiencing homelessness. The nonprofit’s chief operating and information officer Donna LaSala said its work has a “special sauce” that helps people not just move around more but get off the streets for good, and also serves to revitalize the neighborhood, which has become increasingly fraught in recent years.

“Cecil said all the time, ‘We got to be for the people, feet in the street,’” LaSala told KQED. “And so what we did was we launched an ambassador program to bring those feet in the street and bring our walk-in center out into the community.

“Yes, we’re out there cleaning the neighborhood — almost as an excuse to be there and to build the trust and to engage with folks,” she continued. “Our ultimate goal is to create a relationship so we can get them to trust us so that we can bring them into services.”

GLIDE’s seven community ambassadors have lived experiences that make it easier for them to connect with potential clients, and understand which resources to offer and how.

“We are these people,” said Roberts, who grew up in Reno, Nevada, where he said he experienced a lot of problems similar to those the Tenderloin is facing. He moved to San Francisco after being released from incarceration, looking for a fresh start.

“The only difference between them and me is that I have a roof over my head at the moment. But, you know, that’s subject to change. If I miss a paycheck or two, guess what? I’m in the same position that they are.”

Roberts leads one of the four ambassador teams at GLIDE. They all start with a 7:30 a.m. meeting before heading out to their designated zones in pairs for morning rounds.

“We clean up everything from last night’s parties or encampments that were started,” Roberts says as he picks up littered receipts and dumps them into the quickly filling trash can he’s pushing. “We want to get the streets as clean for the community as possible.”

The ambassadors are acutely aware that the Tenderloin is also home to a community of small businesses — and one of the largest child populations in the city.

“They need to be able to walk and access services too,” Gina Fromer, GLIDE’s president and CEO, said at a morning meeting full of song, prayer and friendly greetings Thursday.

Rene Colorado, the executive director of the Tenderloin Merchants and Property Owners Association, said he’s seen the ambassadors out and about, doing a lot of cleaning that helps the neighborhood.

“There’s no one above picking up some garbage; there’s no one below engaging with ‘Good morning,’ ‘How are you doing today?’” said Sam Dodge, the director of street response coordination for the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management.

He has worked closely with GLIDE to get the ambassador program up and running, and said it has made real gains in the community, despite a long road ahead.

“It’s not easy. It’s a marathon. It’s coming back and back,” he says to the ambassadors. “Our friend here said it’s giving people three or four chances — no, we’re in the double digits at least. That’s unconditional love.”

As they walk along picking up trash, the ambassadors also check in with anyone sitting or lying on the sidewalks.

“People are idle,” says Kenneth Holloway, another ambassador. “By going up and engaging, saying ‘Hi,’ letting them know GLIDE has lunch, it kind of re-enlivens them. Telling them to just go around the corner and get something to eat, something to drink. And now look — do you see anybody still sitting there?”

After heading out of GLIDE’s headquarters on Ellis Street and up Taylor, Holloway engages with familiar faces like a man known as Smooth, whom the ambassadors see just about every day.

“Sometimes, he’s having a good day; sometimes he comes down to GLIDE and gets food. Sometimes, it’s like, he’s not,” Holloway says. “But either way, we’re here; we say, ‘I still got you,’ every day.”

Holloway has been in San Francisco for a long time, though he was in prison for about 30 years of his life.

“I was on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle one time. I robbed a bank and I shot some people many years ago,” he says as he walks back to GLIDE for lunch alongside clients and regulars in need of a warm meal. “I’m almost 60 now, but I didn’t want to be acting like I’m some Puritan person.”

The ambassadors, who travel in pairs, are all considered low-threshold case managers, meaning they’re trained in “starting the process of bringing people out of marginalization back into community,” LaSala said.

That’s their focus in the afternoon, though they all have a different area of expertise. Some work on street beautification, while others, like Holloway, offer people on the streets snacks and socks, grab water from corner stores, and encourage them to come to GLIDE for meals, harm reduction tools and other resources.

Roberts looks for ways to connect his clients with housing. Sometimes it can take many tries to get people into a housing option that works for them. But when it happens, he says, “it’s a success story for me.”

“There’s a couple with a dog that I’ve been working with since we started in July,” he tells KQED. “I finally got them housing on Monday for both of them in the same spot with their animals. You know, it’s very gratifying because we went through like three different shelters to get to where we are.”

While it’s often said that people on the streets refuse shelter, LaSala said that the truth is more complicated than that.

“People don’t accept housing that feels dangerous to them,” she told KQED. “So, yes, we have folks who are afraid to go into the shelter system here.

“I’ve never experienced any one of our clients refusing long-term housing, but what I have experienced is people afraid to go into the shelters.”

This week, Roberts has gotten eight people into shelters and 13 into the Journey Home program, a relocation assistance service that Breed required to be the first offer for unhoused residents starting in August.

Roberts also regularly checks in on his many clients who are still on the streets.

“I know these people, I know them by face,” he says.

There have been times when he’s out on a shift and comes across one of his clients in a tense situation with police.

“Instead of talking to them like … somebody that’s committing crime, I come up and I talk to them like a person, and I make them remember who they are,” Roberts says. “I ask, ‘Hey, it’s me, man. What can I do for you?’”

One ambassador says he’s helped reverse seven overdoses in his first two and a half months on the job. More than two dozen people have been referred to recovery support groups, and four have been placed in sober living environments, according to GLIDE’s early data.

GLIDE “allowed my lived experience to be a viable, marketable, usable tool to help them,” Holloway said.

“They gave me the opportunity to really help me too — I’m employed. When I stand up and get to see you on the street, I get to stand up with a straight face and almost be on equal footing with everybody.”