 All right. Well, we are at six oh six, so I'm going to go ahead and start our introductions. Are you ready for it? All right, welcome everyone to our talk today. Where do we go from here? A conversation about the Bay Area's homeless crisis with Reverend Harry Lewis Williams, the second and Randy Shaw. My name is Taryn Edwards, and I am a librarian for the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco, which is a pioneering library, cultural event center and chess room founded in 1854. Right now we're doing virtual events only, but I encourage you to come and come to the Institute, but take my virtual tour, which I'm hosting on July 8th. You can see all the beautiful spaces of our library, our world-renowned collection, the oldest chess club in the United States, and all the cool spaces of our landmark building. I'm going to put that link in the chat space as we, once I stop talking, once I introduce all our speakers. So this event has been produced in partnership with the San Francisco Writers Conference, which is an entity that I work closely with to provide writing classes and other learning experiences of relevance to the Bay Area. And tonight we have two speakers. We have the Reverend Harry Lewis Williams, the second, who is affectionately known by the nickname of OG Rev. He is a fixture on the streets of Oakland and San Francisco as a community minister and an activist. And he works closely with the homeless, with gang-involved youth, human trafficking victims, and foster children. So basically our most vulnerable populations. He also is serving as the interim minister for interim minister of compassionate care at the Historic Glide Memorial Church in the San Francisco Tenderloin neighborhood. And I met OG Rev at the San Francisco Writers Conference a few years ago. He's a very warm and wonderful person. He's also a prolific writer with nine books under his belt. His latest is entitled, Taking it to the Streets, Lessons from a Life of Urban Ministry. And I'm going to put a link to his book offered by Alexander Book Company in the chat space. So if you're interested, you can buy his book directly from them. They are a wonderful bookstore that we use at Mechanics Institute because they're just across Market Street. And they can also get you books within 24 hours. Puts Amazon to shame. Anyway, we also have Randy Shaw with us tonight, who is director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which he helped found in 1980. And the Tenderloin Housing Clinic is San Francisco's leading provider of permanent housing for homeless adults, single adults in the city. So that's just incredible to me, the work that they are doing. He also is a high volume writer and an expert on San Francisco's Tenderloin history and contemporary issues. He's the editor of Beyond Cron, which is an alternative news source that has a particular focus on housing issues and politics. And his books run along those lines as well, focusing especially on social change. His most recent book is called Generation Priced Out, Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. And of course, it discusses strategies for increasing affordability in progressive cities like San Francisco. All right, moderating the Q&A will be myself, as well as Lori McLean. She is the director of the San Francisco Writers Conference. Lori has some internet issues going on right now. So in case she cannot, in case she fades out, we also have Barbara Santos with us tonight, who is the marketing director of the conference. Either way, we plan on hopefully handling all of your questions. The way it's going to work tonight is Mr. Shaw will present, and then Reverend Williams will also share his knowledge and I hope impart upon us a feeling of hope. We have a large audience, so I would appreciate if you would put your questions into the chat space, and then Lori and I and or Barbara will try and fold them into a conversation. Anyway, thank you very much and take it away, Randy. Thank you. Thank you Mechanics Institute for having me and for the OG Reverend for joining us. I appreciate this. I wish we could do it in person, but this is the next best thing. So we're actually, I'm going to try to give some hope to, and I'll tell you why. I was here in 1982 when homelessness began not only in San Francisco, but across the United States. And the reason widespread visible homelessness began, the very simple answer, the federal government starting in the mid-70s cut back on federal housing funding. And then as cities were sort of gentrifying and affordable housing money was more needed than ever before, people couldn't afford rent, we kept cutting it. And for the last 40 years, I'm sad to say, the federal government has never stepped up and funded homelessness. And what we have seen though in the last three months is really the federal government's most direct funding of homelessness in putting people in tourist hotels who are in shelters or the unhoused. And it's very interesting because you read a lot about, I read a lot about people saying, oh, you see, now that the fact, now this is all happening in cities that they wanted to could have done it. Well, no, that's not true. Cities didn't have the money. 75 percent, 75 percent of the money of putting people in hotels is from the federal government. Now, if we were a different kind of country, we wouldn't have had a homeless problem. We would have continued to fund people who can't afford the rent. I mean, 75 percent of those eligible for federal housing assistance don't get it. What if 100 percent who are entitled to federal housing assistance got it? We wouldn't have a homeless problem in this country. So there's a lot of chaos and confusion thrown by people to change the fundamental issue that the reason people are homeless is they can't afford rent. And the reason they can't afford rent is because our government, unlike almost every other industrialized country, doesn't fund housing adequately. So what we've had with the pandemic is suddenly the federal government's funding because of the crisis, as a health crisis. And really, the issue that I think I'd like the audience tonight to think about is something that I get asked more than anything else, which is, okay, San Francisco is putting thousands of people into hotels temporarily. At some point, you're not just going to put people back on the street. You can't do that. And so you need strategies to transition people directly from being in the tourist hotel they're in into like one of our hotels or hotels that other nonprofits run. And that can be done. And people are going to say, well, how do we fund it? Well, we don't have all the federal money, but there can be pressure. There's a bill right now that you might have read about the Heroes Act, 100 billion for rent subsidies to prevent the mass evictions, which could be happening if we don't get that done. So the federal government is on the hook in a way it has not really been forced to be sent forever, really. That's one thing. But secondly, in places like San Francisco, where we did pass Prop C, which the Court of Appeal just upheld this week, there is $300 million a year that is coming to house homeless people and for other related homeless services. So you can acquire a number of hotels like the ones we acquire and just take people from where they're staying at the Cova or the Intercontinental or the tourist hotels they're being using on Lombard Street and move them directly into existing hotels where they would never be on the street again. And that really should be our expectation. And we really shouldn't be satisfied with anything less because just think of the psychological trauma of taking people who are in a tent in the tenderloin, moving them into a hotel where they're finally having a roof over their head, they have heat, they have hot water, they take a shower, whatever they want, and then say, sorry, we're putting you back out on the street. That is cruel and we can't allow that to happen. So I think the focus we don't know when, and this is the big mystery, we don't know when the federal government is going to say we're stopping our funding on the temporary tourist housing. Originally, the plan was for them to stop August 15. But that was in a different era. It seems like in the last week, the whole approach to COVID-19 has changed. Just today, Texas's governor now is saying he should wear a mask. So things have radically changed. And there may be the recognition among the federal government, Trump administration, that they can't pull the plug on the federal money in mid-August. But whenever they do pull the plug, it's incumbent on San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, the cities that we're talking about who have a homeless problem in the Bay Area, that they figure out a strategy for transitioning people into the permanent housing. And I think I don't want to get boring on the details, but it can be done. It's actually a lot less expensive than people realize. There's some state money that can be used that from the Newsom is 500 million and acquiring it. So we need to start thinking about that. Because if we don't, we not only are facing a major eviction crisis soon, adding to the homeless ranks, but we're going to take all these people, thousands of people who've been in housing and then giving them back on the street. And that's a human horror show, which we can allow. So that's the big picture. And I can get back answering other questions about it. But I think that right now, the federal, we are showing firsthand what all of us have been arguing for 40 years. You can't solve homelessness without federal help. The federal government was always the major source of affordable housing. Richard Nixon began to change that. Ronald Reagan killed affordable housing funding, and we've been just scrapping by ever since the Reagan's 81 budget. So I'm optimistic that I think the times are changing. I foresee a new administration in Washington that will be more open to this. So the key thing is getting through the next four or five months. If we can get through that, I think we'll be okay. And I'll turn it over to the Reverend. Well, you know, first of all, I want to say that first, can you hear me? Can everybody hear me? Yes. Okay. First of all, I just want to say what an honor it is to be on this platform, to share this platform with you, Mr. Randy Shaw. You are a legend in the San Francisco Tenderloin. I have friends that work for you, and I have friends who live in THC housing, which you preside over. So I've been hearing your name for years, and you've blessed a lot of my loved ones and saved a lot of lives with some good people that I know. And I'm grateful to you, and I'm honored to be on this platform. Thank you very much. And I'm also welcome, all true, all true. And Tara and Edward, so glad to thank you so much for putting this together and for letting me be a guest on this Zoom broadcast. Thank you so much. And then to my literary angel, Laurie McLean, who was my literary agent, I wanted to thank you so much. And with that, I'm just going to get right into what we were asked, today we were asked, we were asked to talk about gentrification and some of the issues that surround the Tenderloin. And so I want to go back and I want to talk about something that I want to talk about how the beginning of my journey here. Let me, I'm going to go back to the beginning of the situation that really changed my opinion. But every Tuesday night, we have Bible study at Glide Memorial Church, and we call it the People's Bible Study. So about four months ago, I was, we walked into, I walked into the church and people were talking about something called the coronavirus. And so we had heard about it, I'd heard some news about it on CNN, but I didn't really think too much about it until we were brought into the sanctuary. And that day something, usually we have Bible study in a small room, but this one evening we were brought into one of the main sanctuaries, the main sanctuary. And we were told to create social distance. That was the first time that I'd heard that expression. We were asked to sit six feet away from each other. Before we took our sheets, there was somebody standing at the door with a hand sanitizer, and we were all given hand sanitizer to have Bible study. And at a certain point, one of the leaders of the foundation of the church came to us and said that this will be the last time they will be having Bible study face to face for a while, because San Francisco is going to be having a skeptical shelter in place. And they said, it was said to us that night that the building is going to be shut down. And so again, I didn't really understand a lot about what coronavirus was, but the building must be I came to church and people were wandering outside of glide, and we had been a hot chocolate for them. And we were told that this disease had come to us, and they were going to have to sheltering in place. Because I'm older and because I have a pre-existing condition, I did not go to the tenderloin for about four months, not four months, about four weeks. But I still serve as the Minister of Compassion and Carey Glide. And so I get phone calls from members who live in the tenderloin all the time. And these phone calls so moved me because they began to talk about the plight of folks who are living in the tenderloin. And so I kept telling myself, I'm not going to go back until we get a clearance. I'm not going to go back. I told myself that until one day I was tying up my shoes, and I was heading toward the bus where I live in Oakland, and I was headed to San Francisco, and the next thing you knew I was walking down Jones Street. And I saw something that day that really struck me. It was something that was in the air. It was something that you could taste. It was impalable. No, you couldn't smell it, but there was something that was in the air of this difficult place called the tenderloin that I had never seen before. And that was hopelessness in the air. Now you have to understand that we have folks on this line who have never been to the tenderloin. The tenderloin is a place of extreme poverty, drugs or everywhere, alcoholism. There are a lot of different issues there in the tenderloin, but at the same time there's a lot of laughter. There's a lot of joking. There's a lot of love in the tenderloin. But when I began to walk down Jones Street, I saw something and I felt something that I'd never sensed before. And that was the complete lack of hope. And when I walked down the street, what I saw was there were people who were, nobody had a mask. Nobody had a mask. And I began to tell people, don't you know you need to have a mask? And at that time it's changed now, but at that time no one, masks were not available. You couldn't buy one in the store. There were a few organizations that were handing them out. And so I walked up to YWAM, which is an L Street, which is an incredible organization that feeds people who are unhoused and provide showers and we chatted and talked. And I realized that day that a lot of the service providers had left the tenderloin because people could not, because of health reasons, stay in the state any longer to fight for the poorest people during the pandemic. And so I came up with an idea. And my idea was this. The idea was that I realized that there were a lot of homeless, unhoused people who are hungry because you had tents everywhere. I mean, there were tents everywhere. And these tents, people weren't practicing any type of distance at all. And so what I began to do was I would come there and I would hand out sandwiches. I would have something that I called Subway Day. And on Subway Day, I would come to the tenderloin and I would ask my friends through social media, I would say, hey, I'm going to the tenderloin today. And I want you to call the Subway Store at 147 Mason Street and buy a sandwich. And I would get a bunch of sandwiches and I would go up in that Eddie Street, down Joan Street, down Ella Street, and I would give people sandwiches and I would tell people, hold on, because there is hope. Hold on. We love you. Hold on. You're going to make it. And you know, that brought some joy to people. But I realized that not only has the homeless crisis, not only has that crisis metastasized, but the drug crisis is metastasized in the wake of hope, in the wake of churches closing, in the wake of organizations used to give hope to people closing. There's heroin everywhere. There's methamphetamine everywhere. People are sitting outside in tents, smoking on a bubble or shooting heroin. In broad daylight, there's just a lack of hope there. The first time I went back, I believe there were tears in my eyes because I'd never seen the community like this. I first came to Glide, not as a minister, but as a case manager. And that was in 2005. You see, back then, if you were somebody who was on the street and they were unhoused, they could get housing. There was something, it was like a tip sheet, it would be like four or five pieces of paper that was stapled together. And it would have all of the, like for Mercy Housing or for TNDC or for THC would list all of the housing that was going to be available and the housing, the percentage housing. And so everybody who was unhoused had a copy of this sheet. And as a case manager at Glide for the health clinic, they would come up to me and they say, hey, would you help me to make this phone call? Would you help me to fill out this application? And Mr. Shaw, a lot of those people in those times got housing through THC. A lot of those people got housing through TNDC and Mercy Housing. But now, because of the influx of folk coming from the tech industry and because of the massive scope of homelessness, I can't go to somebody and say, well, you know, if you follow this list and if you do what you need to do in six months or a year, you get a place. Those avenues have seemed closed. And in preparation for this call, I made a, I talked to a couple of friends of mine who were in San Francisco who were working with people who were unhoused, who were formerly unhoused. And they began to talk about the fact that the city doesn't seem to have the compassion or the care. One friend said there's, he works for one of the city agencies and he says, you know what? The city sends somebody to work with us. They send a new person every two weeks and it doesn't seem like these people really care about us who are the poorest among the poor. Another friend of mine listed up in Bayview Hunters Point and she said to me, Rev, she said about an hour ago, she said, you know, all the places that people who had disability or social security could go to years ago, that's all gone. All the places that were affordable, that's all gone. She said there was some market rate housing that puts aside a few units for us. But low income housing, she said, to be eligible for low income housing, you can make $70,000 a year. And so she said people are just giving up. They're just going to live in tents and they're just moving out to Antioch. And you talked about the fact that people are going out to Stockton and having to commute into the city an hour and a half each way. You talked about the stress that causes on the environment. Not to mention the stresses that it causes on families. I was, you know, I thought that was amazing even to talk about the fact that families are separated now because they can afford to live here anymore. And so, you know, we're in a place where we don't know what to do. We're looking at, there was an article that came out by some national, it was in the Mercury News, there was some national organization that did a study and said that San Francisco and Oakland have the largest, have the worst problem with gentrification in the whole country. Now, I've been asked to speak about hope and let me go from what is, because see as a person of faith, we don't, I'm mystical, but I'm not magical. Religion deals with the fact that it is what it is. Our ancestors who pray for deliverance from slavery, they didn't say, no, we're not slaves and no, we're not chained up here in the south somewhere. They understood that, but they also believed in divine intervention. And may I tell you in just a few minutes where I see divine intervention, you know, you know, gentrification is like the coronavirus. It's invisible, it's deadly, but unlike the coronavirus, it can't be stopped with a mask or gloves. And when it hits, it's so deadly. About a week ago, about two weeks ago, I went out with Pastor Mustafa Mouyi, we had a caravan of hope through the streets of Oakland, and we pulled up to a homeless encampment. Nobody could practice social distance. People are just squeezed up like this. People didn't have masks. And I took a bullhorn and I preached to the people and I said, there's hope, hold on, you're going to make it. We handed out food that Steph Curry's organization World Cafe provided. We handed out food, but we preached and we handed out, I believe we had masks that day. But my hope comes from this, from this, Mr. Randy Shaw, I'm a hood preacher. I'm a preacher. I don't, you know, I have two degrees, but none of them are economics. None of them are city planning. The only way that gentrification can be stopped is by understanding public policy. And for me, the miracle is me being a hoodcat sitting across from you, who would have the knowledge and the know-how to unravel the different policies that different cities have adopted and tell me about different things that about housing and how we can fight back. That's one of my miracles. And so the other one is that we live in a time of black lives matter. This is a time when people are acutely aware of the injustice and the inequity in our society. And people are willing to fight to see change, not just African American people, not just Latino folk, not just poor people, but the rich. I'm watching young Asian kids with wealth. I'm watching young rich white kids walk through the streets of Oakland carrying signs that say black lives matter, really matter. Somebody's got to care whether we are being pushed out to Antioch, Pittsburgh, Stockton, Modesto, or under a bridge or not. My hope is in the fact that God has sent a new wave through America and that these young people and people like you, Mr. Shaw, will give us the necessary knowledge and know-how to create change in America. That's all I want to say. Thank you both for. I would just, can I just make a quick response? Go right ahead. I think the Reverend makes a really, really, really big point, probably the biggest point people can take away from tonight, which is that the Black Lives Matter movement has inspired hope and made people look differently at a whole bunch of systemic, long-standing problems, not only healthcare, racism, but also the homeless crisis. Because so many people are fatalistic. We've had it all this time. What's going to change? But now I think people are realizing it's not acceptable. We can't keep waiting for the federal government. We need to do it. L.A. has 66,000 homeless people in the city of L.A. Forget the county. We have 8,000 in San Francisco and we're going to be rising. I think the Reverend makes a great point that this movement is inspiring people to think differently and more powerfully about other social injustices. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah. Both of you said amazing things and my mind's reeling. So why don't we go ahead and start taking some questions from the audience who have been busily posting their thoughts. The first one comes from Laurie. Yeah. Does the Trump administration have a transition plan for post-temporary tourist housing situation? I think Randy touched on that a little bit. I mean, you know, as bad as the Trump administration is in everything that people are probably familiar with, they're equal to or worse in housing and homelessness. I mean, yesterday the president came out for racial segregation. They're discriminating against transgender in shelters. I mean, on a scale of 1 to 100, they're one. That's how bad. So no, that's why I said we have to get through the next five months, assume nothing for the Trump administration. Now, if they have to extend that deadline past August 15th, it's not because they care. It's because the states they need to win, their hope to win in November, Texas, Florida, et cetera, desperately need it. So it'll be, it'll be a political consideration. Is this something that the cities also have to take on? Do they also have to have their own contingency plans in case the federal government or the state government can't follow through? Well, that's what I was saying is San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland need to plan, start planning right now for the transition of people who've been temporarily housed. We cannot just wait for the, just say, well, we didn't plan. We don't have the might plan now to fund the transition. Okay. So the next question is, homelessness is such a huge problem. And Randy, you know, better than almost anyone, how long you've been working towards solving this complex situation, can you split it into segments to deal with the complexity of it? It just, sometimes when you look at it, it just seems so overwhelming and maybe having different portions of the problem dealt with by different either organizations or churches or, you know, think tanks or whatever would move us in the right direction. What are your thoughts about that? Well, I'll let the reverence start on that one. You want to take that on? Yes, sure. Let me, let me just briefly give another word of hope. I forgot one thing. One of the things that has really blessed my life is the fact that San Francisco, and this is kind of a shaky beginning. I invited Mr. Matt Haney to be with us. I hope he's on this line. Has really fought to get housed, get our friends from who are unhoused into those, into those hotels. And it's had a shaky start. It's got, it's not really worked like the way it should have. But I have one of my members who might also be on this line, who was taken from the MSC South Shelter and put in a hotel and it's transformed his entire life. So just to get this, just to work with the city and push the cities to really make that work, because I've seen the miracle that that can do for people first hand. And then to talk about some of the other issues that, you know, this huge monstrosity of an issue is that people of good will and good, and faith can help so much because there are organizations like Glide in the community. There's YWIM, which stands for youth with a mission on Ellis Street. We're feeding people, providing housing, and hopefully we have an organization called Homies Empowerment. We also call the Freedom Store. And this is people from the community. We say solidarity, not charity. And these are people from the community. We come together and we're able to feed folk and provide for people in the community on a scale that you wouldn't believe. So there's a way that we, at a grassroots level, everybody has to do what they can, and we can do some great things that way. Rev, you were talking about Homies Empowerment, the Freedom Store. Tell people some of the numbers and of people who are getting served and also how long the lines were, and just it speaks to the need in the community. Homies Empowerment is located on MacArthur Boulevard between 76th and 77th. It was headed by Dr. who went to Harvard doctorate degree, then came back to Oakland and started, he's starting a high school, but at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, we realized that there were a lot of people in the community who had lost their jobs, who were not able to provide for their families. And so we came together under his leadership and this leadership of Selene Gomez, and we began to talk about what we can do. So none of us have any money, most of us are poor people, but everybody's got to draw a peanut butter in their closet, everybody's got some string beans, everybody's got some corn or something they could provide. So we bought all of that to the Homie Center one day and we invited people to come by. What happened was that more and more people began to donate food and more and more people came, and then the people who donate food are some of the same people who serve, so we're not doing charity, we're doing solidarity. And now if you walk at Homie's after about two or three months, there's a four-block line and people, we open, we start serving food on Tuesday at 10, we serve groceries and we serve hot food, we start serving at 10, but the line starts at 6.45 in the morning because people are hungry, displaced, and people don't have food, but if the people in the community have a mind to work, we can still do wonderful things. And Homie's Empowerment, the Freedom Store, is one of the success stories of community empowerment for our tops. Well, those numbers are incredible. Kimberly has a question, what can we do to promote and achieve PSH units for those in hotels so that they don't get sent back out on the street? What is a PSH unit, first of all? I think she might need permanent supportive housing possibly, but I mean this is the thing, there's two methods. My organization leases hotels because it's a lot more economically efficient. There is money to buy hotels, so and that's why if you look at the economics, for a million dollars you can acquire an 80-room hotel, a million dollars a year, and that's considering how much we're paying for temporary housing and other methods and the cost of hospital care, that's money we need to spend. And then when people are in shelters they have a place to go and the city's already paying them and they're not paying extra for special temporary housing. Historically, and I talked about this in my book Generation Priced Out and in my book on the Tenderloin, San Francisco has continually historically made mistakes spending vast sums of money on temporary housing, you know temporary hotels in the 80s, the hotline program, and we continued that even with the stabilization program we had until a few years ago. It's very expensive and it doesn't provide any permanent housing, so leasing and leasing is the most cost effective. Groups like Dish and Episcopal Community Services do it along with us and then there's going to be some acquisition, but if when people look at the economics it's cheaper to house someone in permanent housing than in a shelter. That sounds, how can that be because a shelter they're in big with other people? Well the answer is shelters have very high security costs and insurance costs and high staffing costs, so given that it's cheaper to house people in permanent housing, why don't we do that as a priority and not keep saying which we hear too often, hey I'm all for housing first, trust me I'm all for housing first, but we got to get people then it's like, but no we have to actually do housing first and you know we heard a lot of myths in the Tenderloin that oh you know people on the street don't want housing. Every day when the hot team goes out like 40 people 39 will want housing. The 95 percent of the people reached on the street want housing, so this notion of well that's why they're on the street is just an excuse for an action. I'm sorry if I missed it Randy, but how many people do you estimate are homeless in San Francisco right now? Well they say 8,000 based on the point at the point in time survey and that includes people who are who were in shelters and realize that one of the real challenges the city's going to have to figure out is there's has to be a shelter system and how's that going to work with social distancing and how long are we going to have that issue at what point is there a vaccine where people can because the numbers are really going to be a problem for people who are in house in the net particularly the next six to nine months or you could say a year until we figure out how the shelters can reopen with more people. As you mentioned every city that we talk about Oakland had a huge increase in homelessness San Francisco out of 17 percent San Jose and Oakland had over 30 percent increase in homelessness so doing nothing is not solving a problem or I should say even if whatever we're doing we have to do more because doing less isn't an answer. No. So Sherri Wilk says what about Gavin Newsom's Hotel to Living Plans? How does that and will that work? Well I can answer that unless the red one would like to. You know Gavin Newsom's how's a state hotel plan? Are you talking sir you go right ahead. Okay well his plan which originally was 750 million and now down to 500 million is to for the city to bought the state to buy like there's two tourist hotels at the Oakland airport that have been used for homeless unhoused the state would then buy those hotels and there's a bunch of motel sixes around the state used for unhoused the state would buy them and that's great it is I mean I know 500 million seems like a lot of money but it's not when you're talking about a state the size of California and the magnitude of our homeless problem so so that's great I don't know if I mean there might there's two in Oakland they might buy I don't know if any San Francisco hotel will qualify and also you have to have people who want to sell and not every tourist tell wants to sell so I think it's going to be more impactful in the Central Valley where they've done a lot of motel sixes and and those kind of tourist hotels and and it's good 500 million though these way everyone listening is to realize when you hear about 500 million or even a billion in California it's a really tiny amount and I did have to mention Los Angeles passed a billion dollar sales tax hike a few years ago and that billion dollars is going to produce 7 000 units and that's in a city with 66 000 homeless people a billion dollars in LA 7 000 units so money a billion sounds like a lot but it's not of the scale that we need you know in in your book price generation price that you talked about land use and in the fact that in cities like San Francisco we can't build because I'm looking at certain areas I'm just like if you can tear down buildings to build a you know a super skyscraper for for industry and for technology why can't we do that for housing and and so what can we do about that what what are your thoughts on that well it's been a struggle because you know as I say in my book we have a lot of homeowners who don't want apartments built in their neighborhood over half of San Francisco you cannot build an apartment building so people say I'm all for a affordable housing well you can't build it in most of San Francisco the whole west side of San Francisco you can't build low-income how you can't house homeless families or homeless single adults because the zoning doesn't let you build it and we need to have a bigger coalition to change that because there's only so many sites in the tender holding left to build or the mission or Bayview and it's really a in all the cities I write about in my book apartments are banned new apartments in a majority of the land and that doesn't make sense right how do you how do you do that yes maybe this question I was going to say that there's another aspect to this and it's great to get homeless in housing if we can but what about retraining people so that they can actually have a job that they can excel at and enjoy and help them get off the street that way I was thinking about you know clearing brush and rural areas to prevent forest fires wildfires or repairing infrastructure projects or doing contact tracing via telephone for either COVID-19 or future viruses these are really huge initiatives but it's something that the government um could get behind you know it had to be a pretty large organization I don't know it just like it moving homeless into shelter is step one but then beyond that there has to be some way to get them to be fulfilled as human beings I don't know I'm a real workaholic so you can see where that question's coming from I I found fulfillment in my work and recommended to other people um but I'm also worried about the future if we continue to automate a lot of these unskilled jobs or low-paying jobs will go away and I just see this snowballing instead of being contained so I thought you two could talk about that if you would okay okay you know I think that's excellent you know that covers a lot of ground because we live in a if you go to come to a place like East Oakland you'll see a lot of young men on the street corners and involved in the underground economy because there's no uh there's no industrial sector to give them jobs the jobs that we had years ago were gone and so people are people are hungry and astray and they're scrambling and think sometimes because there is no uh they're undereducated the schools don't prepare them for the future in a technological society so I I agree with that to a point but when you look at a place like the tenderloin many people there um that that we're talking about have mental health and and substance issues and so there's you know I believe in I believe that you know we have to provide people with work that's uh with work and opportunities to learn and grow and go to school but we also have to take into account a lot of the people that you see on the street are debilitated and we need to provide services that help them with mental um there's there's even a uh someone told me about a van service that goes around the tenderloin now where they're doing some type of counseling that's that's you don't even have to come inside of the office the glide has the um vans that go out and do harm reduction in the community but the there are some deeply entrenched issues that help create the cycle of poverty but what you know so we need to deal with that but the people that have been put in those hotels have been have been offered um that have been offered um recovery help and many of them have taken it and been able to maintain that housing so um so yes I believe in training for jobs and and I believe that's a broader question but when we talk about the tenderloin where there's these master structural problems we need to deal with educate we need to deal with not only education but mental health and you know I'll say that in our we house a we house over 2,000 people and of the two over 2,000 people the average age is 56 so a lot of people goes and and half almost half of our people after they get onto our program end up on social security disability so they're not they're not they're not they're not able to work but the point you started the initiative with which is that if we were a different kind of country we would have federal jobs programs so that when we're facing a wildfire season in california we'd hire a ton of people with federal funds to deal with that crisis but that's not the kind of country we've become we're a country that it says you're on your own and so we're going to have wildfires because we don't want to spend the money just like we have a virus so we don't want to spend the money so whenever we hear what I hear what you say it's like you're right that'd be great for the folks of east oakland but it requires a different kind of country different policies different different elected officials um there's another question here uh harry mentioned um teenagers and youth what what is the solution for unhoused teens or even or even smaller children how how can we tackle that so that the cycle of homelessness doesn't continue well well as mr shaw said mr shaw would you mind if I start this one absolutely go ahead okay as mr shaw said most most of the people that you see in the tenderloin are are older people and so when you but there are a lot of children there are children a lot of children that live in the tenderloin um a great deal and they're exposed to a lot and so there's a lot that they systemic poverty creates situations where where people are exposed to things and they see things they shouldn't see at a young age and and one of the one of the uh human trafficking grows in in poverty situations you know like like more sport like um sports and a petri dish and so um I think that if we're gonna if we're gonna heal the young people we have to improve the school system I as a minister I believe that churches have to be more involved in in nurturing families in helping single moms and helping kids to see another world beyond the streets of the inner city and then we have a problem with the foster care system because there's the because of uh there's so many kids in the foster care system who will last age out at some point and they're not able to there's there's no funds or opportunities for them and they end up in really negative situations you know and and out the gate and so I'm gonna stop right there go ahead well you make a great point in terms of connecting the unhoused families to schools because both my kids are teachers in sams school unified school district and the offline online learning for low income kids doesn't work for the most part they don't have a structure they don't have internet access and it really doesn't work for the unhoused so if you don't get the kids back to school it's a big problem in terms of their future uh right before the pandemic mere breed and supervisor peskin arranged to have a new facility for homeless teens at post and high streets the former fan center so they there's an expansion to that and there's often more funding for that but like you said the uh the family crisis is is really a problem because they can't be in sRO hotels for the most part because it's not the rooms the size and the like and we just haven't built the affordable housing and and that's why the expanding a section 8 program and I can go on and on about federal programs we need and again you know the federal government used to do so much and just does so little now that 75 percent of the people don't get any help who deserve it and that has to change as a country we cannot allow that and it's disproportionately families of color who don't get that aid taren asks oh what do you think about building market rate housing in the bayview district as a solution to supply and demand that is supposed to trickle down to homeless people that's a glorious question well that that's we could spend the whole show on bayview I mean there was a ballot measure around linar building that market rate housing and the voters approved it by like 70 so and they improved it in the neighborhood by 70 so so uh but that's a very complex situation that is kind of separate from the homeless baby who doesn't have enough services for homeless they're in house it's clear and their supervisor uh shamona walton has been very aggressive in trying to get more resources to the unhoused and bayview you know whenever you say the word to trickle down I I think about uh trickle down economics and trickle down means it never trickles down to where we are so I have a I have a hard time believing that I don't know how that would work out and I think gloria for that question gloria is a delegate uh for the democratic part who resides in in the bayview so I'm glad she's on this call with us and then there's a question from tim can you help us understand why do we have exclusionary zoning laws and where does this go at with eliminating those laws well this is one of the things I hope comes out of the black lives man and women I mean we have all these laws I mean the revering was talking about why can't we build big buildings for low-income people is because they have laws that prohibit it and exclusionary zoning laws were passed after the civil rights laws movement because it used to be just bar african-americans from by racial covenants and then when the federal law said you could they said well wait how are you going to keep blacks and latinos out of our neighborhood I know we'll have to we won't let any apartments come in it's been a great strategy you have vast stretches of Oakland Berkeley San Francisco where you just there's no black people living there anymore because the exclusionary zoning and yet the irony is that these are all progressive cities and you have supervisors who are progressive who support this exclusionary zoning it's it's rather mind-boggling and they do it because they get the votes from homeowners who don't want housing built don't want apartments built because they think that their value of their property is higher if it's all homeowners and only wealthy people why is a house in San Francisco the median house price now 1.7 million dollars you can't get a house in Berkeley Berkeley for under a million dollars because artificially restricting supplies when we have housing advocates saying we need more units because we need to get be able to let and this is very important affordable housing shouldn't just be in low-income neighborhoods it should be in high opportunity neighborhoods so those kids can have a great experience go to better schools have better transit more safety and we're saying no no we're going to let affordable housing be built but only in distressed neighborhoods that kind of racism has stopped particularly in places like Oakland San Francisco and uh in Berkeley and you know the revenue you work in Oakland Rockridge I was walking through Rockridge the other day and every third house seemed to have a black lives matter sign but you can't build an apartment building in Rockridge because of exclusionary zoning so the number of African Americans living in Rockridge is very tiny yes right when I first moved here there was there was a lot a larger number and now there's it's that's all changed I mean I was in West Oakland last week and I was just shocked that you know at the the change it's uh and these people are being just forced out into into the to the netherworld to underneath bridges and and out of town where they can't get the services that they need to survive so my hope is that we we develop a new build in America I don't know why bank Carson became the lead got that job Mr. Mr. Shaw do you understand why he was given that job uh I think it's because he was the least qualified person in America so Taryn do you want to do some uh have these guys sum up or since it's seven o'clock I think that would be great why don't you Reverend go right ahead well this has been a really a wonderful experience um you know Francis Bacon the great philosopher once said that knowledge is power and I because I feel more powerful than now that I've sat on this call with Mr. Randy Shaw I've been scribbling furiously and not have information now to take back to the community about where we might go next um and and I I believe for the future I believe change is going to come I believe that this is not the end and I believe that the doors are going to open for a brighter future for our young people and I just believe that we have to raise our fists not only in the streets but in the halls of power and I'm grateful for this opportunity to be with you tonight and I'll just say I agree with the Reverend's optimism I mean we see statues coming down that have somehow survived everything I mean every day a new statue makes the Washington Redskins football name will change I mean we're seeing things that have not happened before Berkeley's moving to get rid of police doing traffic enforcement I mean things that have been talked about so I think people who are who are listening tell your friends they listen to the tape a bit who missed it because we're going to the Reverend and I provide I think a very hopeful plan and future and but it does require everyone on this call and all their friends to get involved and I would say in the immediate short term if you if anyone of your you know anyone living in a state with a with a republican senator get them to support the heroes act because the house passed it again 100 billion dollars in rent relief money to stop mass evictions but Mitch McConnell isn't letting it come to a vote so we got to tell your your relatives friends and other states get on the phone get on the email and let's get that heroes act passed and please vote everyone should tell it to vote and tell your loved ones to vote exactly and it's that kind of grassroots you know phone calls emails postcards knocking on their doors it really does help and I do have to say the knowledge is power quote was a common thing a common watchword for mechanics institutes back in the 19th century so is the raised fist anyway I want to thank you both and I want to thank you Laurie and Barbara for sitting in and thanks to all of our guests tonight you had really wonderful questions and I think that we are maybe all close to tears but um hopeful that that uh we'll be able to change the world thank you man also remember to pick up their books from Alexander books thank you that'd be great to take apart books that'd be great you can buy the books anywhere all right thank you everyone thank you all right thank you and have a wonderful evening you too thank you very thank you very much all right bye bye bye bye